As the Richmond City Council started to dive into possible changes to Mayor Danny Avula’s budget proposal Wednesday morning, it was clear early on that there was a math problem.

Collectively, the nine council members had come up with about $20.9 million worth of ideas on how to spend more money, but had only identified about $8.2 million that could be saved.

The mismatched numbers added up to an at-times tense meeting.

Interim Chief Administrative Officer Sabrina Joy-Hogg said many of the council’s proposed spending cuts would be harmful and jeopardize key city goals. Some new council members pushed back, reasserting their right to make decisions about a budget that affects the constituents who elected them to change how things work at City Hall.

Council members floated a variety of topics that they believe are worthy of discussion as the budget process moves forward, but there were no votes or clear policy decisions at the budget work session.

As she has several times since being elected last year, Councilor Kenya Gibson (3rd District) took issue with the process, saying too much of the 2-hour meeting was being taken up by hearing the administration’s views on why the council’s budget ideas wouldn’t work.

“If you agreed with the cuts we’re suggesting, you would have made them,” Gibson said to Joy-Hogg. “I understand that.”

The council’s proposed budget reductions mostly dealt with eliminating vacant or new positions, including Avula’s proposal for a new transformation manager who would think strategically about how City Hall processes could be improved. 

Joy-Hogg said the transformation job was converted from an existing role in the city’s budget office. And if the council didn’t agree with Avula’s vision, she said, they should give the funding back to the budget office.

“I’m happy to not do presentations,” Joy-Hogg said to Gibson. “I’ve done this because I was asked to do it. If I don’t ever have to do a presentation, I’m good.”

Raises for high earners

One of the biggest proposed spending reductions came from Gibson and Councilor Sarah Abubaker (4th District), who suggested putting limits on the 3.25% across-the-board raises Avula proposed for city employees. To ensure lower-paid workers get the most benefit, the two new council members proposed cutting off the raises for people making more than $150,000 per year.

That proposal would save the city almost $750,000, but Joy-Hogg said picking and choosing who gets raises would hurt morale and cause salary compression issues.

The idea behind the proposal, Abubaker said, was to make sure the raises go to union members subject to the city’s collective bargaining agreements, not to upper-level managers who have already gotten large salary increases in the last few years.

“I’m all for us going through growing pains and becoming a top-tier city. And that does require investment in people,” Abubaker said. “I do take into question how we hijacked collective bargaining to give people substantial raises that were already at $200,000 and above. If you want me to call them out I can.”

Abubaker said the proposal was meant to enhance pay equity instead of giving everyone the same percentage increase regardless of their salary and how much it’s already grown.

In a written response to the proposed amendment, the administration seemed to take issue with the equity framing, saying “we do not presume to know the financial burdens of employees.”

“Equity is based on contribution, not just compensation level,” the administration wrote. “Equity means recognizing and rewarding performance, impact and leadership across the organization. Applying an arbitrary income cap ignores the work performed by professionals and executives who manage complex systems, oversee large teams and budgets and bear significant responsibility for city operations and outcomes.”

Joy-Hogg said that even though vacant positions might seem easy to cut, they give necessary flexibility to department heads to manage their teams as they see fit.

“Just because they are vacant now doesn’t mean that the department doesn’t need that position,” she said.

Joy-Hogg said cutting more City Hall positions could threaten improvement that’s occurred over the last seven or eight years, particularly the struggling Finance Department that officials say is in the middle of a turnaround project. 

For all the talk about dramatic improvement in city government, Abubaker said, many Richmonders aren’t seeing it.

“There is this sense of threatening what will happen if these things are done,” Abubaker said. “And I think that’s counterproductive to this conversation.”

Potential funding boosts

With no consensus on what the council is willing to cut, there’s a question mark hanging over all the funding boosts its members are suggesting. The city has to adopt a balanced budget eventually, so the council can’t add spending without making an equivalent reduction elsewhere.

Council President Cynthia Newbille (7th District) proposed giving another $6.9 million in operating funds to Richmond Public Schools on top of the $9.6 million funding boost Avula suggested. But — without raising taxes — the council would need to make nearly all the spending reductions on the table in order for that math to work.

Other council budget proposals include more staff for the city auditor’s office, including the possibility of a specialized auditor who would focus on the Richmond Public Schools budget. Council members also suggested beefing up the council’s own staff, creating two new positions for a pending rental inspection program and expanding the city’s $20 minimum wage commitment to cover contracted janitors and security guards who work at city buildings but aren’t city employees.

Expanding the minimum wage to contracted workers, Joy-Hogg, would also potentially cost millions of dollars the council would have to make up somehow.

Money for nonprofits

Many of the council’s proposed amendments deal with funding for local nonprofit groups, which has been a hot topic since an audit released earlier this year found the city has a sloppy process for awarding and tracking money given to outside groups.

The administration countered the audit by pointing out that the City Council can essentially steer money to any group it wants regardless of the rules the city imposes through the annual application process for public funding.

Several council members are doing just that, proposing funding increases to many of the groups who saw funding reduced or removed in the mayor’s proposal.

According to budget documents, Council Ellen Robertson (6th District) proposed awarding $350,000 to a group that provides after-school programming. The group in question, UBU 100, “did not submit an application” for the upcoming budget year, the council’s budget spreadsheet notes.

Newbille proposed several funding increases for nonprofit groups, including a $50,000 bump to restore funding for the Help Me Help You Foundation, a prisoner re-entry nonprofit run by former City Council president and 2025 mayoral candidate Michelle Mosby. Newbille also suggested restoring $100,000 to the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia and $50,000 for the Sports Backers fitness group.

Newbille and Councilor Stephanie Lynch (5th District) both proposed restoring $400,000 for youth development group NextUp RVA.

Though Avula has said he intends to overhaul the nonprofit funding process for next year’s budget, Gibson proposed an amendment to start reforming the system immediately.

Instead of elected politicians picking who is and isn’t worthy of funding, Gibson is proposing that the city set aside a finite amount of money for services like housing, arts and families and leave the funding decisions to city administrators.

“I see no reason why this process would be any different than awarding a contract,” Gibson said. “City Council is not in the business of determining who wins a contract for any particular service.”

Councilor Katherine Jordan (2nd District) said officials are broadly in agreement the process should change, but it could be overly complicated to try to adopt a new strategy on the fly through this year’s budget.

“I think that is something that is going to take a whole year,” she said.

There was little indication Wednesday about how the council intends to resolve the gap between what it wants and what it can afford. But council leadership and the administration said they would keep sharing information as the budget process moves on.

“The administration will get back with us,” Newbille said.

Contact Reporter Graham Moomaw at gmoomaw@richmonder.org