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November 22, 2006
November 7th Dist. Roundtable Notes
The 7th District Roundtable meeting was held Monday night from 6-8 PM at EDI on 25th Street. There were two items on the agenda, a set of presentations by the Department of Public Works and a discussion of parameters for a strategic plan for the 7th District.
The meeting began with a set of presentations by Andrew Glen & Darlene Mallory of the Department of Public Works on Leaf Collection and the city’s Citizen Request System. Mr.Glen spoke on the newly reengineered seasonal leaf colection program. Goals of the program include minimizing the impact on the city drain system and improved customer satisfaction. He spoke on the 3 types of leaf pickup, bag&go pickup of 6 bags at the curb, scheduled vacuum collection, & bulk collection. FACT: Typical peak foliage drop occurs in the last 10 days of October. A special leaf pickup will occur prior to the Christmas house tour, stay tuned for more information on that. There was a suprising amount of discussion following Mr.Glen’s informative (if dry) presentation.
Ms.Malory then spoke on the Citizen Request System, an online tool for reporting all types of situations that the city might need to know about or respond to (such as downed limbs, vacant but open houses, criminal activity, etc). Benefits of the online system include 24-hour access by the citizen to their request, email confirmation of receipt, and accountability. If you do not have online access, the same service is offered by phone at 646-7000 or 646-0999.
At just after 7pm, Sharon Burton gave a presentation on developing a strategic plan “to work together to enhance what we have” in the 7th district. The basic thrust is to collect and organize ideas on how to enhance the neighborhood. She has structured 4 broad areas of suggestion, with subcategories as seen here. She basically read over the points outlined in her original document, with some input and clarification from the audiance. One topic of interest that was discussed is the liscensing of landlords, based on working program in Minneapolis and a more palatably named ‘Rental Inspection Program’ in Williamsburg.
Ms.Burton is getting folks to volunteer for the committies for Economic Development, Housing, Education, & Public Safety + Health, and Human Services. If you are interested in signing up, please email Sharron Burton @ scburton@comcast.net.
It came up during the meeting that once ideas have been honed, they will be forwarded to the folks in the local government that are in the best position to act on them. It was described by Ms.Burton that the city council is for ’shaping policy and rules, land use and ordinance’, while the mayor’s office is responsible for services.
Seems a rather hopeful division of powers: hopeful by the Mayor, that is. Again, we just had a council election where a good majority of the people of the 7th said it did not want our Councilperson to be subservient to the Mayor. I recall Mr. Malone ran on a rather direct platform: that is, the Council did not know its place in the newly organized city government and needed to be more quiescent to the Mayor (he was thusly endorsed by the Mayor). He lost rather handily on that message.
This is not about whether the Rev. McQuinn is effective or ineffective with regard to her role, but is about whether we want a lion share of power to be vested in one man. Indeed, Council has brought this on themselves through their historical shenanigans, but why replace a set of mini-monarchies with one big one? Efficiency?
Council is already at a concerted disadvantage here. This was evidenced by Jackie Jackson’s loss. She summed up the role of a council person in Richmond this way: it is a part time job. And due to the fact that most folks who have the smarts and backbone to be effective, also have to keep their day jobs: how effective can they really be if they are also being sidelined in terms of policy process and information by the administration? We are seeing how: not very.
Sure, representative democracy is messy, but what are our alternatives? The current alternative may seem more effective on its face, but it is hardly representative or accountable. I would much rather see an administration that partnered with the Council on a strategic plan. It would certainly add a modicum of legitimacy to the process.
Anyway, assuming the Mayor’s proposed division of powers, parroted by Ms. Burton above, I am pretty sure that the job of shaping policies and rules, land use and ordinance is completely overlapping with most if not all of the strategic plan topics above. So, why not publicly invite the council person to have a substantial role in this process, and if she declines, then it would be up to her to explain to us why she refused, and we could judge her accordingly.
Again, I cannot stress this point enough, a weak council weakens local representative democracy and hurts all of us. And oh, don’t take my use of a trite Nom de Plume as invalidating my opinion: but let it be a reflection of the sorry state of open democracy in this city.