Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney (File photo)
While Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney listed his administration’s accomplishments during its first year at his State of the City address Tuesday night, his plan to raise the city’s meals tax captured the spotlight.
In December, the Richmond School Board passed a $224.8 million facilities modernization plan that would revitalize a portion of the division’s 44 schools. This week, Stoney announced a proposed 1.5 percent meals-tax increase — from 6 percent to 7.5 percent — to help fund the cost of improvements with an additional $9.1 million per year. The proposal, which must first pass City Council, was met with mixed reactions from the community.
“Mayor Stoney’s 25 percent tax hike IS NOT an ‘answer,’ ” Paul Goldman, a law partner of former mayoral candidate Joe Morrissey, wrote in a Facebook post on Wednesday. “This is the key point: Stoney’s ‘answer’ actually provides no hope to the overwhelming number of RVA kids since this ‘answer’ actually leaves these same overwhelming number of RVA kids in the same intolerable conditions with no plan to help them in the foreseeable future!”
Goldman also championed the modernization referendum that appeared on ballots in November. The referendum, which passed with 85 percent of the vote, calls for Stoney to develop a fully funded school facilities improvement plan without raising taxes.
Two versions of the measure have been introduced to the General Assembly by former School Board members Del. Jeff Bourne, D-71st District, and Sen. Glen Sturtevant, R-10th. Bourne’s version, HB1409, would allow a tax increase; Sturtevant’s SB750 would not. If either bill becomes law, it would not take effect until July 1, allowing ample time for City Council to approve a meals tax before then.
During his speech, Stoney shed some light on the rationale behind raising the meals tax — which is already higher than Henrico’s 4 percent tax. Chesterfield and Hanover counties do not have a meals tax.
“As opposed to an increase in our city real estate tax, which would be borne 100 percent by Richmonders, nearly a third of the meals taxes paid in the city are paid by out-of-town visitors who live more than 50 miles away,” he said.
Laura Lafayette, CEO of the Richmond Association of Realtors, signaled her organization’s support in a tweet Tuesday night: “@RARealtors endorses @LevarStoney's proposal to raise funds for city schools via meals tax. Strong schools = strong neighborhoods.”
ChamberRVA, which counts 40 members in the restaurant, food and beverage category among its 900 member companies, also released a statement from its board of directors backing the plan. The statement quotes board chairman Kym Grinnage as saying, “Paying 75 cents extra on a $50 meal to provide funding to replace or refurbish crumbling schools seems reasonable."
Some members of the restaurant industry felt differently, though.
David Hahn, who is planning to open a restaurant called Salt & Forge in Jackson Ward in March, said he might have considered a different location had he known about the meals-tax increase proposal.
“It’s a very shortsighted policy proposal that may temporarily increase city revenues, but in the long run, excessive taxes will decrease restaurant traffic,” he says, “and the result of that is decreased earnings and closure of restaurants.”
He says he hopes City Council does not approve the increase. “The other question I have is, why are we increasing our taxes on restaurants when we have $5 to $7 million in unpaid property taxes that are going uncollected?”
During his address at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School in Richmond’s East End, Stoney wrapped up his argument for the meals tax with an appeal to the sensibilities of those sitting before him: “We are talking about one-and-a-half pennies. One and a half cents for our children. Surely our kids are worth that much.”
If the tax increase passes, it would allow Richmond to borrow up to $150 million more to finance school construction costs and “emergency needs” until 2023, when the city’s debt capacity expands. Still, this would be more than $70 million short of the School Board’s modernization proposal — and as Stoney adamantly asserted from the podium, waiting that long to plan for using the future debt capacity was not an option.
“We can no longer afford to talk about education, housing, public safety and poverty mitigation – the four pillars of building One Richmond — in silos,” Stoney said. “That’s why building One Richmond will require one plan … to guide our investments in schools, housing and neighborhoods to build true communities of opportunity.”
The mayor’s address began shortly after 6 p.m., preceded by a year-in-review video presentation, the pledge of allegiance led by Bellevue Elementary students and an invocation by the Rev. Dr. Yvonne Jones-Bibbs of Sixth Baptist Church. Stoney was introduced to the stage with members of his cabinet by Miguel Walden, an eighth-grader at the school.
After thank-yous and acknowledgements, the mayor cut to the chase: “I can confidently stand before you tonight and say that the state of our city is strong.”
Stoney evidenced this with an impressive list of 2017 accolades:
- Richmond was ranked one of the South’s Top Cities by Southern Living;
- U.S. News & World Report placed Richmond 24th on its Best Places to Live list;
- Business Insider put the River City in its Top 5 for Hippest Cities to Live Under 30; and
- Realtor.com listed RVA as a Top 10 Tech Town.
“After years of unmet expectations, neglect and breakdowns in the basics, we restored faith and confidence in city government by improving its efficiency and concentrating our focus on delivering the service our residents deserve,” Stoney said. “We did the little things that can make a difference in the everyday lives of our residents.”
He rattled off some of those “little things”: snow plowing, grass cutting, leaf raking, alley fixing and pothole filling — but also making parking and the permit process more user-friendly and increasing funding for emergency services to give first responders a pay raise.
When Stoney announced that the city fire department was recently awarded the Insurance Services Office Class 1 rating for fire safety — a noteworthy distinction, considering only 270 of the country’s 45,000 departments have received the designation — the remark was met with big applause from the audience.
An even bigger reaction came in response to Stoney’s commentary on the creation of the Monument Avenue Commission and the broader implications of the national dialogue on Confederate monuments, particularly in light of the rallies in Charlottesville last summer.
“We faced the hate and bigotry and disruption that targeted our own city, and handled a Confederate rally and counter-protest with professionalism, preparation and a plan,” he said, as Richmond Police Chief Alfred Durham — a member of Stoney’s cabinet — nodded onstage behind the mayor.
Both Stoney and Durham drew criticism after the Richmond Times-Dispatch published the total cost of preparation — $500,000, including nearly $18,000 for “food and snacks” — for the September rally on Monument Avenue that drew a handful of out-of-state pro-statue demonstrators.
“When six people showed up — that's a bridge too far,” said Claire Guthrie Gastañaga, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Virginia chapter, during an interview last year. “[Durham]'s got a tough job – he's trying to balance things; I understand why he made those decisions — but I do think it's sort of interesting that he managed to get his $83,000 for body [cameras] that he wasn't able to get in the budget previously.”
On Tuesday night, Stoney breezily dismissed such criticisms by focusing his attention on the chief and thanking his department, and other local law enforcement agencies, for their service on that day in September — just one month after the white nationalist demonstration, and subsequent deaths, in Charlottesville.
“Chief Durham — I want to let you know that I am thankful and proud of the job your department did to make that day so uneventful,” Stoney said to overwhelming applause. “Monuments may move, they may rise, they may remain or they may fall — but we will never let the hate, intolerance and bigotry of those looking to cling to a Jim Crow past get in the way of this city’s future.”
Stoney used this motif to segue into the more highly anticipated portion of his speech: city schools, affordable housing, equal opportunities for advancement and the perpetual inequality that has long hamstrung the latter. Here, the mayor’s tone shifted slightly as he pivoted from presenting the city’s “wins” in 2017 to sharing some of his own life's narrative.
As the first in his family to graduate from high school, then college, the mayor said he wants all of the city’s students to have the same access to the opportunity to succeed. And as for the “shameful and unacceptable,” Stoney said he knows what it’s like to live in a place where winter coats are worn inside and the stove and oven are used as substitutes for heat.
This transitioned into a slew of big announcements.
Despite the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority — whose CEO, T.K. Somanath, stepped down amid criticisms of the RRHA not addressing the faulty maintenance that caused more than 50 public housing units to weather the bitter cold this winter without heat — having more than $150 million in deferred maintenance costs, Stoney called for the creation of 1,500 “new, affordable housing units” in the city over the next five years.
“Our current situation underscores a hard truth,” Stoney said. “Our city is only as strong as our weakest neighborhood and our most vulnerable neighbor.”
The city's Office of Community Wealth Building will create a network of more than 50 local organizations to “address and destroy systemic barriers to the upward mobility of Richmonders,” as well as create attainable career plans and case manage more than 500 low-income residents. The goal, he said, is to create sustainable services that are a “hand up, not a handout.”
Similarly, the police department will launch the One Richmond Combined Interdisciplinary Team, which will bring together officials at all levels of government to address violent crime in the city, where murders claimed more than five dozen lives last year. In March, the mayor said to look out for increased allocations toward after-school programs and neighborhood community centers, so all students have a safe place to go after the school day.
Other developments to watch for in 2018 include:
- The completed GRTC Pulse rapid-transit bus line;
- The 17th Street Farmers Market ribbon cutting;
- A revamped city website that, among other things, will make the permitting process more efficient;
- A first look at developer proposals for the Downtown / North of Broad redevelopment project;
- A more efficient City Hall through recommendations to improve communication and accountability;
- Progress on the Lumpkin’s Jail/Devil’s Half Acre site memorial project; and
- Working with stakeholders, regional partners and residents to continue forging forward.
“Whether it’s working together on economic development projects and transportation or addressing challenges that know no boundaries — like homelessness and the opioid crisis,” Stoney said as he began wrapping up the evening’s remarks, “our localities are different, but our goals are the same, and our futures are intertwined.”
