Editorial: Measure ULA is the best gift Karen Bass could get as mayor of Richmond
If the mayor of Richmond is going to deliver on his promises to voters about jobs, affordable housing and the city center, he cannot put off the work forever. The state’s largest city will soon embark on one of the most important public works projects in its history. On Nov. 6, voters in five of eight wards will select Richmond’s next board of aldermen.
Aldermen in the city’s city council elections will elect three new members of the Richmond City Council in November 2016.
The election should represent the beginning of a new phase in the city’s revitalization. It should signal to the people of Richmond that change is in the air. It should be a good moment for new leadership. But the mayor and the city’s decision-makers must start now to move the city forward with a clear understanding of what they will face and achieve.
I had the chance to meet Karen Bass and asked him to share with us his priorities for our city – because he’s right up front.
This is one of the things I told him: There is no better time to measure where you are today than right now. There really isn’t any time to measure where you are or where you are going. You start with what you have got. At the end of the day you have got to make the right decisions. And you have got to make the right decisions now.
The truth is that, in Richmond’s case, there is no time to measure ourselves against others. We are in uncharted territory when it comes to growth and change.
The city has grown faster than most cities for which we have population data. But we’ll only make progress if we are deliberate and purposeful in getting the right policy, the right projects and the right investments in place. Right now we don’t have a good understanding of our growth or the way it changes our quality of life.
But we do have a wealth of knowledge about what we do not want to become, and how we could make changes to our approach to growth and the way we use land.
When I was a kid growing up in the Richmond Hill
