Samuels and Baliles: 'Revisit'

What was another bad week for Mayor Dwight Jones ended on this particularly sour note.

This email came in this evening from Steven Skinner:

The Honorable Charles R. Samuels, Councilman, Richmond City Council, Richmond North Central 2nd Voter District, and The Honorable Jonathan T. Baliles, Councilman, Richmond City Council, Richmond West End 1st Voter District, today announce that that they will cast votes against the Mayor’s proposed Shockoe Bottom Baseball Ordinance when it comes to the Richmond City Council Formal Meeting for a vote on Tuesday, May 27, 2017.

The administration requested a public hearing date of May 27th when they introduced the latest version of the plan on May 12 and, to date, no one has asked for a continuance. The request for another briefing did not come until after 5:00 p.m. on a holiday weekend only three days before the scheduled vote.

"If the Administration wants to revisit this issue in the fall when they may have a complete plan, we would be happy to consider it along with other potential proposals," says Samuels. "But at this time, there is a growing consensus that this slow drip approach of information is not helpful to the City of Richmond. Instead, it is increasingly interfering with more urgent matters that Richmond City Council needs to resolve."

"This proposal is still, after seven months, fundamentally incomplete and continues to unravel with almost every presentation. We have kept open minds on this plan since before Thanksgiving, but the time has come for us to move on to more pressing matters," says Baliles. "We can always revisit this or any other plan at a later date.”

For more information, please contact:

The Honorable Charles R. Samuels, Councilman, Richmond City Council North Central 2nd Voter District, at 804.646.6532 or by email, at charles.samuels@richmondgov.com

and/or

The Honorable Jonathan T. Baliles, Councilman, Richmond City Council, Richmond West End 1st Voter District, at 804.646.5349 (tel), or jonathan.baliles@richmondgov.com (email)

Looks to me like this pair of wily politicians want to see how the referendum petition drive will go before they vote on the mayor's plan. The deadline for gathering signatures to get the Citizens Referendum Group's proposals on the ballot in November is July 31, 2014.