Given failure on school construction, no justification for using City funds to build a new Baseball Stadium

Goldman for Mayor - 2 September 2008 - For Immediate Release:

Statement from Paul Goldman

In the Washington Post today, there is this quote from Mike Berry, the general manager of the Richmond Metropolitan Authority:

"One of the considerations in any discussion would be the playing venue as well as what the community feels it could invest," Berry said. "A partnership could be created with their expectation and what the local community is willing to support."

The RMA is a regional authority, so presumably the "local community" he is referring to are the localities represented on the RMA board.

It will soon be three years since my "City of the Future" plan was praised by Mr. Pantele, the Mayor, City Council and the School Board. It was part of what I call my "Construction Initiative" for improving our schools, a compliment to the "Instruction Initiative" that I want to enact if elected Mayor.

The key component of this plan was to begin the first wide-scale modernization of our school system in modern history, which has the oldest such facilities in the state.

To date, neither the Wilder Administration, any member of the City Council nor the School Board, has seen any urgency in all of these three years to make sure we even began the modernization of a single school, not to mention all the one's included in my plan.

As indicated, I am not sure what Mr. Berry has in mind regarding the City of Richmond putting up money for a new Baseball Stadium. Hopefully, he will enlighten us as to what he means and with whom he has been consulting.

But for me, the choice is clear: If the elected leaders of this city are so indifferent to the plight of the children and have shown no interest in the last three years in finding the time to figure out how to modernize one school in the oldest such system in the state, then there is absolutely no justification for this city contributing any funds from it's public treasury toward a new baseball stadium.

I don't see how a city that is prepared to vote overwhelming for Barack Obama can read his education platform, and then believe that the failure of these last three years in terms of school modernization can be at all justified.

And then to compound the failure by giving public money to a baseball stadium before you have even modernized a single public school?

That's why I say it is time for a change in Richmond.

Given this continuing failure on school construction, there is no justification for the City of Richmond dipping into it's budget, currently 6 million in the red, and spending many millions on constructing a new Baseball Stadium.