Treska Smith hopes her second push to change Petersburg doesn’t take as long as her first. Smith, who lobbied for 16 years for student uniforms in Petersburg’s public schools before they were approved, is now pushing for the election of the city’s mayor by the people. Smith, Gloria Brown and others are seeking to secure enough signatures on a petition to present to the City Council, which upon approval would send the proposal to the 2010 General Assembly.

Petersburg residents dissatisfied with the City Council’s leadership are taking a cue from Richmond and circulating a petition they hope will lead to an elected-mayor form of government.

Perhaps it’s too much to hope Dwight Clinton Jones will toss away the security blanket Mayor L. Douglas Wilder draped around himself. Wilder has been the mid-city mayor with the big-city security detail—around-the-clock coverage from an eight-member Executive Protection Unit whose police officers chauffeur the mayor to his appointments in a Mercury Grand Marquis.

Ever since his election, folks have wondered how the Rev. Dwight Clinton Jones of First Baptist Church of South Richmond will balance his role with that of Mayor Dwight Clinton Jones.

Richmond Mayor-elect Dwight Clinton Jones is ready to accept congratulations, concerns, questions and suggestions. His transition team is settling into an office suite on the 11th floor of City Hall and can be reached by e-mail at or by phone at (804) 646-6933.

Richmond Mayor-elect Dwight Clinton Jones reached out today to more than 40 leaders in a wide range of fields to prepare his transition to the top job at City Hall. Jones expanded his mayoral transition team to 45 leaders, including corporate executives, public finance experts, political leaders and business owners—even a former professional basketball star. The team is divided among 10 areas of public policy—budget and finance, education, public safety, community development, economic development, human services, parks and recreation, transportation, employee relations, and information technology.

Minus Richmond’s current and future mayor, members of the City Council and School Board pressed last night their priorities for the 2009 General Assembly session. The dinner discussion touched on a range of topics but was dominated by talk of a hope that lawmakers would limit the impact of potentially severe budget cuts on critical services, including education and public safety.

The counting of votes in Richmond’s mayoral race dragged into its fourth day, with the Richmond branch of the NAACP expressing frustration yesterday over why it’s taking so long. “People have had it up to their eyeballs with delayed election results,“ said Melvin D. Law, president of the Richmond NAACP and former chairman of the Richmond School Board. “People don’t understand, in this age of cutting-edge technology, that we don’t have results that were available [sooner] with the old mechanical machines.“

NEWARK, N.J.—The former mayor of Newark, N.J., is due today at a federal prison camp in Petersburg. Sharpe James was to report to begin serving a 27-month sentence. He was convicted earlier this year on corruption charges. James had requested being sent to the prison at Fort Dix so he could be closer to his family, but that was denied. Instead, he will serve his time at the Federal Correctional Institute in Petersburg.