Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 6, 1995 TAG: 9507060052
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: RAY L. GARLAND
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
A few weeks ago it seemed certain the statue would join such heroes of the Old South as Gen. Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue, thereby symbolizing racial unity after a long era of racial division. But after the Planning Commission approved the site, a public outcry caused City Council, which consists of six blacks and three whites, to schedule a July 17 public hearing certain to be contentious.
Councilman Timothy Kaine, who married Linwood Holton's daughter and is the former governor's law partner, is in the embarrassing posture of a liberal who happens to represent many of the affluent whites who live in close proximity to that elegant avenue of history, redolent of the glories of old Richmond.
Kaine, who pushed for a delay in deciding the matter, has called the debate "a symbolic window into the collective soul of this city." Translation: "A lot of my constituents are mad as hell but we can't let this thing blot the refurbished image of biracial harmony we must create if the city's abiding problems are to be addressed."
Former Gov. Douglas Wilder, now a sage of the airwaves, strongly favored Monument as the proper place to honor Ashe and used his radio show to condemn council. "I thought that we had made more progress on both sides," he said, "but I was wrong."
Child and man, Richmond is well known to me. Numerous relations living there meant frequent visits in the 1940s when the city was, arguably, at its peak. Roanoke was far from a poor place in those distant days, but Richmond seemed to exist on an altogether higher plane, always doing things in a big way.
From banking, brokering and lawyering to railroads, coal and tobacco, Richmond was (and still is) the source of many great fortunes. But unbothered by the opinions of rich, old white men settled in comfortable chairs at the Commonwealth Club, sipping bourbon and branch, a new state and nation was rising to overthrow the old.
The liberal dream, which even postwar Richmond shared to some extent, was built on the belief that public housing, education and welfare would close the gap between rich and poor. The reality seems to be that when you subsidize poverty, you get more of it.
Dr. William Lucy, professor of urban planning at the University of Virginia, recently compared Richmond and other central cities with their surrounding suburbs. Using 1989 data, he found that 17.4 percent of Richmond families could be defined as living in poverty, and one in seven residents was receiving food stamps. That may be closer to one in five now. These were the highest figures among the cities included in the study.
While all the cities had lower levels of personal income than their surrounding counties, all were making a much greater tax effort to support public services. Lucy concluded their long-term decline was likely to continue.
But there's a glimmer of hope in the fact the cities now seem to understand their predicament and are beginning to address it. Councilman Kaine recently offered a helpful analysis of city costs and found, on average, that the cost of governing Richmond exceeded other comparable Virginia cities by 31 percent. This has prompted a slew of proposals to trim taxes and offer incentives to people locating or improving homes and businesses in Richmond.
Richmond has joined the stampede of localities offering substantial incentives to businesses either through enterprise zones or outright grants, as it could hardly refuse to do. This is fast becoming a racket all over the country. But no relief is in sight.
When Crestar Bank recently weighed the issue of locating a new processing center either in Richmond or Henrico County, the city fought tooth and nail to get it for a long-decayed neighborhood across the James River. After first deciding the incentives needed were too rich, council approved a package committing the city to acquire part ownership of the facility through its housing authority, and to grant about $6 million in tax abatements.
Council would also have the housing authority buy a "sour" loan in the amount of $9 million that Crestar had unwisely made to Valentine Riverside, last year's bright hope for a downtown renaissance that fell on hard times when support for the innovative museum fell far below expectations.
Taxpayers are entitled to hope Valentine Riverside will not become the open pit of losses that has been the fate of Sixth Street Marketplace, planned in the 1970s as a way of stabilizing Richmond's old shopping mecca along Broad Street, then anchored by Thalhimer's and Miller & Rhoads. While the department stores have long since closed their doors, the city has sunk more than $30 million to keep Sixth Street Marketplace going, with no end in sight.
An unfortunate aspect of the controversy over the Ashe monument is that a new spirit of realism and reconciliation under Mayor Leonidas Young was beginning to engender a small sense of optimism.
In his recent state-of-the-city speech, Young put his finger on the nub of the problem. "As compared to our regional partners," he said, "the city of Richmond is a more costly place to live, work ... or be entertained. We have to change that now."
Easier said than done, of course. But it is a frank appraisal of the fact that our large cities are very much on their own and can look neither to Congress nor the state legislatures for fiscal relief. The positive side is that Richmond has enormous assets and is better placed than most cities to turn years of retreat into modest advance.
Ray L. Garland is a Roanoke Times columnist.
by CNB