When she went to City Hall to speak to her elected representatives, Kathy Brown made clear she’s a lifelong Richmonder educated in city schools and at VCU.

But her pride for her hometown, she told the City Council last week, is slipping because of the city’s inability to send her a water bill that makes sense.

“The citizens of Richmond have been treated like a cash cow,” Brown said. “We can’t be milked any longer.”

After sending bills based on estimates instead of her actual water usage, Brown continued, the city now says she owes $600 and recently sent her a disconnection notice. But according to her math, she believes she’s been overcharged by about $1,000.

The five candidates running to be Richmond’s next mayor say they’ve heard the pleas of people like Brown who feel city government needs an overhaul in basic functions like sending out bills, issuing permits and responding to concerns from people having trouble with city services.

Just this year, the city has made headlines for charging taxpayers penalties and interest on tax bills that were never delivered due to mail problems, hitting restaurants with big bills for unpaid meals taxes after failing to notify them there were issues with their accounts, sending numerous estimated utility bills to some customers instead of getting accurate meter readings, forcing entrepreneurs to endure lengthy waits for permits needed to open a business and violating transparency laws by repeatedly failing to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests. 

A report by 8News also revealed that the Richmond inspector general’s office had stopped publishing its watchdog reports online in 2019, a decision that was reversed shortly after it received media scrutiny.

‘Back to Basics’

Amid all that, the mayoral candidates are all making City Hall reform a key aspect of their pitch to voters.

Dr. Danny Avula and software investor Harrison Roday, both of whom are newcomers to city politics, are highlighting their experience overseeing big budgets and organizations while promising to bring better management to City Hall.

Former City Council president Michelle Mosby is putting up banners and billboards around the city with the slogan “Back to Basics,” while arguing someone with City Hall experience is best equipped to fix its problems.

City Councilor Andreas Addison (1st District) is also running on experience, saying he has tried to improve things from within both as a city employee and a two-term city council member. But he says he could do more with a promotion to mayor.

Community organizer Maurice Neblett is running as a true, people-focused outsider, saying “financial accountability” is key to his platform.

In an interview, Avula — who formerly led the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts, Virginia’s COVID-19 vaccination effort and the Virginia Department of Social Services — said that, if elected, he would emphasize the “super unsexy organizational culture work that needs to happen.”

He stressed better training for mid-level managers, particularly in how to use human resource policies to improve performance. At the local health department, he said, he made workplace civility and customer service two key metrics that employees would “be evaluated on and held accountable to.”

“Having somebody friendly answer the phone. Being able to effectively pay a bill online. Not having to go down to the physical building of City Hall to try to find a person who can resolve your issue,” Avula said. “There are just basic functions that need to work much better. Our people expect that and deserve that, and that's where I want to be focused.”

Avula’s plan for City Hall reform promises to hire “top-quality professionals to run City Hall,” foster collaboration with the City Council by regularly attending meetings, modernize technology and hire a “Chief Transformation Officer” focused on using data to improve the city’s performance.

Roday, who has a background in finance and private equity and runs a nonprofit community development fund, said he’ll audit every city department and craft an improvement plan with clear goals and quarterly progress reports to promote transparency with the public.

“When goals are missed, you have to say why and what you're going to do to fix it,” Roday said, adding that officials shouldn’t be “blaming” residents and business owners for problems with city services.

Though Roday frequently talks about Richmond’s meals tax controversy “chasing restaurants out of the city,” he also cautions against campaign rhetoric that criticizes City Hall workers.

“We've seen other candidates talk negatively about frontline workers in City Hall,” Roday said. “From what I have observed, that is not the problem. The challenge is with systems and leadership. And we don't need folks callously disparaging the almost 4,000 people who work hard every day to serve the city.”

Mosby said her “Back to Basics” message means making City Hall work better for both people and businesses.

“The people have to believe in government,” she said in an interview. “And right now they do not. Because the services are not in excellence for the everyday person.”

Mosby’s campaign website says she would work to stop outsourcing functions like bill payment, review a city efficiency study and “make department adjustments accordingly,” and assign a liaison to work with neighborhood groups and civic associations.

Mosby has implied that picking an outsider hasn’t been working all that great recently as Mayor Levar Stoney — who had no City Hall experience when he was elected in 2016 — finishes up eight years in office.

“You cannot afford to put anybody in this seat on training wheels,” Mosby, who ran against Stoney in 2016, said at a recent forum in South Richmond. “You’ve already seen that movie. And everybody knows the sequel is not as good.”

Addison, who worked in City Hall for eight years as a management analyst and “civic innovator,” said in an interview that the city doesn’t need more “salesmen” as mayor. It needs someone with in-depth knowledge of city government and a belief in “showing up and doing the work.”

“If you want to fix permitting, you're not going to consult that solution,” Addison said. “You're going to sit down with every decision maker that is needed to make a building permit decision. And you're going to go through every single active submitted building permit, one by one, around the table. So that you learn where the mistakes are and where the gaps are.”

Addison is promising to hire a “Chief Innovation Officer” at City Hall who could focus on the  technology side of city government and help modernize its systems. As someone who has already proposed numerous operational changes and at times been “ignored,” Addison said, he doubts others coming in with “zero policy experience” can be more successful at reforming City Hall.

“They’re talking about just changing things at the top and then hopefully that trickles down,” Addison said of his opponents. “I'm talking about empowering the employees that already work here — do the good work, want to do better — and empowering them to help advise what it's going to take to make that shift.”

In an interview, Neblett said he has doubts about whether his competitors are serious about bringing major culture change to City Hall because “they’re part of the problem.”

“We need to clean up the cesspool in City Hall,” Neblett said. “I understand they’re doing the best that they can under the guise of what’s been going on for years. I believe they need a new structure, new system.”

Neblett said he would launch an “accessible online platform” to give city residents more insight into how the city spends taxpayer money.

“My commitment to transparency is foundational,” said Neblett, who has a steep hill to climb in the race after raising just a few thousand dollars for his campaign.

Stoney also ran on cleaning up city government during his first run for the office in 2016, saying “we just can’t accept more of the same in City Hall.” 

Clean house or stay the course?

As he finishes two four-year terms, Stoney is going out on a defiant note, pushing back against City Hall critics whom he feels only focus on the negatives. At an August news conference, the mayor defended the work of city employees and said he was “Tired of people shit-talking my city.”

The current administration’s belief that it’s already making good progress on improving City Hall could put some high-ranking officials at odds with an incoming mayor interested in shaking things up.

All five mayoral candidates have indicated they intend to hire their own chief administrative officer, according to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which would presumably end the tenure of current Chief Administrative Officer Lincoln Saunders. 

Saunders, who previously served in a more political role as Stoney’s chief of staff, stepped into the top job overseeing City Hall’s day-to-day operations in 2020 after former CAO Lenora Reid had a medical emergency. That appointment became permanent in 2021.

There have been signs that some top City Hall figures would possibly like to stay on under a new mayor, apparently out of the belief the work they’re doing could be disrupted by more staff turnover.

At a Sept. 3 City Council committee meeting, Finance Director Sheila White presented a chart showing high levels of churn over the last 15 years among top administrative and finance officials. She called it “a picture of chaos.”

“The question for the city of Richmond is: We’ve gone more than a decade without stability in the administration,” White said. “Is more change really the answer?” 

White went on to call Saunders and Deputy Chief Administrative Officer for Finance and Administration Sabrina Joy-Hogg the “most steady” leadership team Richmond has had in over a decade.

“One thing is clear, putting in a new finance director will most certainly disrupt the work in progress and revert to the dysfunction the city has experienced in the past,” White said.

In a statement to The Richmonder, Saunders said he loves doing the job of CAO, calling it “the most fulfilling role I can imagine.”

“While I would love to continue serving Richmond, I believe in the mayor’s right to select the team they believe will best execute their vision,” Saunders said. “That’s why we have already begun transition planning, and we’ve met with each of the candidates and have committed to each of them that we will help the next mayor start strong.” 

Saunders said the current administration is starting to change the trend of city workers being “underpaid and underappreciated” and trying to make City Hall a place where “skilled workers aspire to work.”

“I’ve not heard the candidates talk about their proposed next steps to continue this work, but there’s still time,” Saunders said. 

City officials recently received a consultant’s report on the struggling Finance Department’s Revenue Division that revealed a litany of basic human resource problems in addition to larger issues with systems and management. The consultant reported front line employees sleeping at desks, using phones and ear buds while working, taking unpermitted breaks, wearing unprofessional clothes, a significant amount of “attitudes and drama” and phone calls and emails going unreturned.

Reviews and audits of city departments haven’t always translated to quick or easy fixes.

An audit of the city’s Department of Public Utilities released in early 2023 flagged the problem of repeatedly sending customers estimated bills, noting the city at the time had “no process in place to monitor estimated bills” even though they can lead to inaccurate charges.

That audit didn’t stop officials from getting an earful from Brown, the South Richmond resident who went to last week’s City Council meeting to vent about her water bills.

She urged city leaders to insist on accountability for “the folks we are paying with our tax money.”

“They have to do better,” Brown said.