Reforming City Hall starts with three simple ideas:

1. Auditing every agency in City Hall and creating publicly accountable goals
2. Partnering with our city’s union workforce to deliver long-term change
3. Building a management team, including a new CAO, to support these changes

In order to change City Hall, we can’t repeat the mistakes of the past, like overly relying on outside consultants, focusing on highly-paid supervisors rather than frontline workers, and deferring critical internal infrastructure projects. City Hall’s challenges will not be solved by hiring a Chief Transformation Officer or making a couple changes at the top of the organizational chart. Change management is hard – and it starts with the basics: auditing for accountability and goal setting while working together with our frontline workers.

Richmonders deserve a city government that works for them – and while we have much to be proud of, we have much to improve.  Our blueprint to reform the city ensures that the government delivers on its promises to Richmonders. We will work together with our talented workforce in every city agency to create the tools, systems, and structure needed to get results. Managing and executing the budget is one of the Mayor’s most important jobs. I will bring extensive finance and management experience to the budget process to make sure our city’s taxpayer dollars are being used wisely.

We will conduct a top to bottom review and audit of every agency with a clear goal: providing results and setting the stage for full accountability. We will develop a five year operating plan for every facet of our government – while delivering quarterly progress reports to the public to provide enhanced transparency around performance data. I’ve implemented plans like these with organizations as large as the city government – and with meaningful nonprofits that measured success by impact. There’s no reason we can’t do it at City Hall. It just means thinking differently, and looking at challenges with a fresh perspective. We can focus on delivering timely and high quality services to residents in every neighborhood while partnering with our City Hall workforce – and our residents – to ensure an open, transparent, and responsive government.

Together, we can: