Richmond's chief executives of recent memory felt compelled to leave some monument to their tenure. Mementos include the Sixth Street Marketplace, the Convention Center, a crumbling City Hall, and so on. Hanging over us presently is the boondoggle ball park of Shockoe Bottom.
Each installment has been preceded by fanfare, then falls generally flat. The press keeps a few fancy dancers aloft, ever tossing carrots to us donkeys -- the disconnected taxpayers, trudging wearily through each escapade.
This is the perfect time for Mayor Jones to seize the moment and -- for the first time in over half a century -- perform as our governmental system was intended. It's time for a Richmond makeover! All the ordinances for a well-ordered city have been written.
Freed from the burden of leaving yet another disappointing memory, Jones could focus on things that make a better life for us all.
Top of the list: Enforce building maintenance codes on every building. Want to see downtown come alive? Then enforce the laws on maintaining a building. The price of code-deficient buildings would plummet as absentee owners scrambled to avoid $1,000-a-day fines for each violation. Mind you, many will squeal. Buildings would come on line at a realistic value -- and owners would pay real-value taxes.
Another existing ordinance requires owners to remove trash up to the center of the streets and alleys surrounding their property -- not a problem in Windsor Farms, but the inner city is a mess.
Good citizenship already has been legislated. Needed now is only a mayor who uses his machinery of government to remind the slackers.
Richmond would become the place that people flee to -- not from.
Call it The Real Richmond Renaissance. And it's already been funded and staffed.
Sam Forrest is a Navy veteran, internationally published furniture designer, and trans-Atlantic solo sailor who has lived in Richmond most of his life.
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