Rick Tatnall is a man with a plan for everything — including a campaign to become mayor of Richmond.
Tatnall, 54, of Church Hill, made it official last week that he will challenge Mayor Dwight C. Jones this year. A longtime community activist, Tatnall filed his statement of organization last week at the Richmond registrar's office.
His reason is simple: to give Richmond a plan of action that he contends the city has lacked in Jones' first term as mayor.
"He's detached. … He's not engaging and he's not engaged," Tatnall said of Jones. "It just ends up being talk. We need a whole lot more than talk, and there's no time to waste."
Tatnall, like Jones, is a Philadelphia native. He arrived in Richmond in 1987 after graduating from the University of Virginia in 1979 with a history degree and working in insurance and finance in Charlottesville.
He runs a purchase management business that helps companies with their inventories, but he has devoted most of his time and energy for 15 years as a grass-roots activist in Richmond's East End. He runs his business and activism through Replenish Richmond, a for-profit organization.
Tatnall's causes have included the East District Recreation Association, volunteer work at George Mason Elementary School in Church Hill and other public schools in the city, community gardens and anti-crime initiatives, and an educational relationship with Richmond's sister city in England, Richmond upon Thames.
His goals as mayor would be helping people in Richmond's public housing projects and other poor neighborhoods, revitalizing the public school system, and doubling the region's tourist trade to bring badly needed revenues to the city.
"Bottom line is, Richmond is one of the coolest places going," he said. "We don't promote that we're great, and I think we are."
For example, Tatnall said Richmond needs to promote 2013 as the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation that President Abraham Lincoln issued to free slaves in the states of the Confederacy.
"We can immediately turn on a spigot of people," he said.
Tatnall acknowledges that he's a "one-person, unfunded organization," but he said he's counting on his contacts with people throughout the city and civic organizations to fuel his candidacy.
"This is not about personalities," he said. "This campaign is about results."
Jones is expected to seek re-election to a second term as mayor but had not filed any paperwork by last week.
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