Richmond Councilman E. Martin Jewell was arrested early yesterday and charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, Richmond police said. The 5th District councilman was arrested about 1:30 a.m. near Byrd Park, about a mile from his Maplewood Avenue home. Jewell was released later in the morning on a $500 bond, an officer at the Richmond city lockup said. Police did not release further details about the arrest.

Richmond is tapping the brakes on a proposal to build roundabouts at four intersections in South Richmond and the East End. At the same time, a City Council committee moved a step closer to blocking a proposed roundabout at a busy intersection in North Richmond. The Land Use, Housing and Transportation Standing Committee voted 2-1 yesterday in support of a proposal to prevent a roundabout from being created at Laburnum Avenue and Hermitage Road. The long-pending proposal by 3rd District Councilman Chris A. Hilbert now moves to the full council at its meeting on Monday.

Embarrassing as many of the audits produced by Richmond Auditor Umesh Dalal have been, at least the city has had the courage to give them a full airing—until now. But recently the City Council’s office stopped issuing press releases about Dalal’s findings. Council president Kathy Graziano notes that other localities don’t air their laundry in public, either. Council chief of staff Daisy Weaver says doing so is “not necessary.“

One of Mayor Dwight C. Jones’ top administrators is out of contention, but controversy still swirls over Richmond’s pending appointments to the GRTC Transit System board. The City Council is set to vote Monday to appoint former Chief Administrative Officer Sheila Hill-Christian, as well as current members Linda G. Broady-Meyers and James M. Johnson, to the GRTC board of directors. Chesterfield County, which jointly owns GRTC with the city, will tap the other three members.

A Richmond woman can keep street access to her carport on Stuart Avenue. The City Council voted 6-2 yesterday to strike a proposal to revoke the permit allowing Roberta Crowell to build a driveway across a city sidewalk in the Museum District. First District Councilman Bruce W. Tyler had proposed canceling the permit, citing safety concerns and the driveway’s proximity to St. Gertrude High School.

The peace at Richmond City Hall has taken the urgency out of fixing flaws in the city charter that were at the root of legal clashes between then-Mayor L. Douglas Wilder and the City Council. While a commission is polishing its recommendations after months of review, council members are talking about not taking amendments to the General Assembly in 2010, as planned.

About a dozen people, mostly city officials, attended last night’s hearing on changing Richmond’s city charter, and the three who spoke urged that the City Council continue to name the auditor. Preliminary proposals by the Richmond City Charter Review Commission suggest letting the mayor and City Council share hiring and firing power over the auditor.

Sarah Johnson fumed when her Volkswagen Jetta was towed this summer from a parking lot in Shockoe Bottom. She got angrier when she discovered that the towing company should not have charged her more than $65—far less than the $155 she had to spend to retrieve her car. “How in the world could they get away with that?“ she asked.

Underlings don’t do oversight. Subordinates don’t supervise the boss. Giving Richmond’s mayor the power to appoint the city auditor is asking for trouble. It’d be a license to steal for hizzoner, who would pocket the one person more capable of keeping him honest than the City Coun cil. A commission charged with reviewing the Richmond City Charter has advanced a preliminary recommendation that the mayor hire the auditor “subject to the advice and consent of a majority of council.“

The Richmond City Council last night scheduled a July 27 vote on final changes to the downtown master plan, including ones to guide decisions on development and public access along the eastern riverfront. The master plan has been in the works for two years, but officials have been grappling with changes since October. Last night, residents urged the council to preserve aspects of the plan that promote access to the river and to resist being wooed by developers.

A Richmond commission has released preliminary recommendations for changes to the city charter in hopes of avoiding clashes like those between the City Council and then-Mayor L. Douglas Wilder. The council last night received a memo on suggestions by the Richmond City Charter Review Commission. The commission hopes to get feedback from the public, council members and Mayor Dwight C. Jones through next month before holding a forum in September. A final report is to be released in October so that changes can be presented to the General Assembly for approval early next year.

Richmond City Council approved Byron C. Marshall as the city’s chief administrative officer last night. The council voted 9-0 at a special session to approve Marshall’s nomination to the post by Mayor Dwight C. Jones. “We want to be able to say our city is a first-class city and in order to do that, we’ve got to be operating right and to do that we’ve got to have a leader,“ Jones told the council.

Byron C. Marshall, the lone finalist to be chief administrative officer of Richmond, is being brought back to town for another round of meetings with the City Council. Marshall, president and CEO of the nonprofit Austin Revitalization Authority in Texas, was expected to arrive last night for a series of private meetings this weekend, Tammy D. Hawley, press secretary to Mayor Dwight C. Jones, confirmed yesterday.

With his trial balloon for a top city post taking some hits and losing altitude, where does Mayor Dwight C. Jones go from here? His officially unacknowledged candidate for chief administrative officer, Byron C. Marshall, leads an agency whose performance is being audited. That review of the Austin Revitalization Authority could delay Jones’ timetable for picking a CAO.

Sitting with Mayor Dwight C. Jones, the Richmond City Council last night approved a $630 million budget for the upcoming fiscal year that includes no pay raises for employees and imposes a new fee on property owners to fund stormwater-management projects. The council voted 8-1 to adopt the plan for fiscal 2009-10 that’s about $25 million less than this year’s budget and $400,000 more than what Jones had recommended.