Government
Since Richmond established its sister city relationship with Shimada, Japan, local people have taken initiative to take the cities’ cooperation even further.
Richmond will elect future City Council members by district instead of at-large elections following a resolution passed Tuesday night.
Congressman Mark DeSaulnier, addressed Washington’s current preoccupation with the possible impeachment of President Donald J. Trump during a Town Hall meeting.
Electrician and two-time cancer survivor Sherry Padgett could throw a baseball from her 49th Street cabling business and hit what Richmond residents call “the Zeneca site:” an eighty-seven-acre property that contains more than a century’s inheritance of hazardous waste from manufacturers including the now-defunct herbicide maker Stauffer Chemical and the European pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca. Padgett calls the chemicals on the site a “witch’s brew.” Around 10 p.m. Tuesday, the City Council voted 5-2 to reverse its support for a cleanup…
A new community-led committee postponed regulating local air pollution in favor of gathering more data – a delay some say comes at a cost.
Richmond landlords may be forced to give tenants the first shot at buying their homes before putting them on the market under a proposed rule whose drafting the City Council kicked off on Tuesday.
The commission currently seats only five of nine members. This means that if one commissioner is absent, the commission won’t have a quorum and will be unable to take action.
The report last year by MBD Innovations, a public safety consulting group, identified six key issues within the department: a lack of a compelling vision; a disconnect between management and staff; poor morale; poor handling of high-profile disciplinary cases; a lacking relationship between the city manager and the police chief; and an unnecessarily acrimonious relationship between the Richmond Police Officers Association and the Richmond Police Department (RPD) administration.
On Tuesday, the Richmond City Council voted to not proceed with annexing the unincorporated area of North Richmond, with only Mayor Tom Butt voting in favor. Additionally, Butt removed three proposed appointments to the Citizens Police Review Commission from the agenda—one of them highly controversial. Until the appointments are finalized, it leaves the commission to operate with only five out of nine members. City attorney Bruce Goodmiller also announced that the city is beginning negotiations with developer SunCal to build…