Bobby Vincent on Fixing Richmond’s Roads

Rich Meagher:

Molly’s got a rough commute.

Molly Bristol:

I am Molly Bristol. I live in Verina.

Rich Meagher:

Molly works at VCU in downtown Richmond, but she’s finding it harder and harder to make her way there every morning.

Molly Bristol:

So it used to be really simple. I had multiple routes that I could get in depending on where I felt like going and if I needed to make stops to get gas or whatever. But that’s not been the case for quite a while now. So yeah, like years now,

Rich Meagher:

Molly’s story starts normal, just a traffic problem.

Molly Bristol:

I generally would take Route five. It’s just the quickest. But with all the people that have now moved into Rockets landing, there’s lots of red lights that are outside of a traffic circle, so it just becomes a parking lot.

Rich Meagher:

But when she starts looking for alternatives, it starts getting complicated.

Molly Bristol:

So then I moved over to taking, uh, Darby Town Road to Williamsburg Road. Uh, but Williamsburg Road closed about two and a half years ago.

Rich Meagher:

Then it gets a little unreasonable, I dunno, Kafkaesque.

Molly Bristol:

So with that, I could go over by Government Road, but with that closure for at least two years, I now have to take a lot of little back roads by like 35th Street, something. I don’t even know all the roads. I can’t even remember all the names.

Rich Meagher:

Molly’s story here is giving me bad flashbacks to Forest Hill Avenue on the south side. It was so torn up when I drove down it. I felt like I was riding eternal, shiny and chrome on Fury Road. I mean, it was really bad for years. Maybe you have a road like that in Richmond, or a pothole or a sidewalk, and you probably thought what Molly thought?

Molly Bristol:

When will any of these things be fixed? Because I feel like it’s been more than two years now. So there has to be some kind of finite deadline.

Rich Meagher:

So there’s a particular city office, the Department of Public Works, or DPW that’s supposed to have answers, answers that often determine whether or not we feel like the city government is working. Right. Again, answers to this key question:

Molly Bristol:

So when is this gonna be fixed?

Rich Meagher:

I’m Rich Meagher. This is RVA’s Got Issues. Today on our show, we talk to the head of Richmond’s Department of Public Works, Bobby Vincent, to find out why that answer is often way more complicated than we think. Bobby, welcome.

Bobby Vincent:

Thank you very much, rich. I appreciate you. And, um, looking at the amount of construction projects that we have going on throughout the city of Richmond from a public utility standpoint, as well as from a public work standpoint there in the billions of dollars.

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Bobby Vincent:

And it all stems back to infrastructure. And so we’ve been blessed in the Richmond metro area that we have not had any infrastructure catastrophes like there have been in many other areas of our country.

Rich Meagher:

You mean like a bridge collapse, right?

Bobby Vincent:

A bridge collapse or a major road failure or something of that nature where, um, lives have been lost. And so in looking at, um, the reason why Government Road is closed, Government Road was in the process of collapsing. And so we’ve been monitoring it over the past several years, and we got to the point to where she dropped about an inch in 30 days. That was time for it to close. One of our problems has been trying to get a contractor to actually come in and do that work.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah, right. So you issued an an RFP right? A request for proposals back in July, but like nobody bid on that. Nobody bid on it. Yeah. What’s that all about? Like why is that a problem?

Bobby Vincent:

I think bidding on projects now is becoming an issue because there’s so many projects nationwide, uh, for people to wind up working on. You have a limited amount of contractors that’s actually able to perform those projects. And so what we wound up doing was finding a contractor that we felt would be the best to bid on it. And we worked with them through procurement to make sure that it’s done legally in order to get them to bid on that project.

Rich Meagher:

But, but it’s almost like you had to go find the people…

Bobby Vincent:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

rather than just say, hey, like, Hey, who wants to bid on this?

Bobby Vincent:

Exactly.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. So I, I get that this doesn’t always go to plan. Like you heard me talk about Forest Hill on the south side and I’m the local politics expert, right? So I, I know it’s complicated, but I mean, this was like a nightmare. I just remember like, oh my God, I, I forgot and suddenly I’m on Forest Hill Avenue and I’m like, I have to get out of here. It’s terrible. Like, am I just being dramatic or, or is there that an example of like, is it the case that sometimes projects do get out of hand, they get big and, and, and massive and messy?

Bobby Vincent:

What we learned from Forest Hill was that there was a lot of unforeseen conditions when they started digging on Forest Hill. Many of our sewer lines were made out of terracotta, so they weren’t able to be located by Miss Utilities. So once they started digging is when they started finding that they were actually digging up some of the stormwater and sewer lines, which was causing major issues, which wind up creating, um, long-term liquidated damages for that particular project.

Rich Meagher:

So I think this is what people don’t understand, right? We think there should, shouldn’t all that stuff be mapped already or you’re saying it’s so old that you, you, even you Bobby Vincent…

Bobby Vincent:

mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Rich Meagher:

Head of the DPW don’t know where all the pipes are.

Bobby Vincent:

Well, we know where they are, but in terms of when you’re trying to put things in place in terms of one foot, um, when you’re digging down 10 to 15 feet, that’s when you wind up running into issues. So when we look at sewer lines or when we look at storm water lines, or when we look at our water lines, it’s almost like the difference between being on a airplane or being on a train.

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm.

Bobby Vincent:

When you are on a train and you look down the aisle, you see that there’s some differences in terms of the train movement, in terms of, um, horizontal movement. It’s the same thing with utilities underground. So that’s was one of the issues that we ran into on Forest Hill. Now looking at the government road, um, um, issues that we have with regards to closing Government Road, we also have on Williamsburg Road, a CSO project, um, combined sewer overflow project that DPU has been working on for the past couple of years in terms of trying to reduce the amount of overflows going into the James River. So due to the depth of that construction, that street had to be closed, and they ran into some unforeseen circumstances underground. So at the same time with government Road being closed and now Williamsburg Road being closed, we know that it put a burden…

Rich Meagher:

Yeah.

Bobby Vincent:

On many of our sister residents in the Varina area coming in from Eastern Henrico County.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. So I, I mean, this is kind of brings us back to the, the introduction brings us back to Molly, right? So lots of details here, right? These, these explanations make sense, but for residents of the city and, and folks coming through the city, it it like they’re just experiencing the commute, right? And they’re not really thinking about all these details. So is is, is it a comms problem, right? Is it, is it that you need to kinda clue people in better to all these different closures and the reasons behind them and things like that?

Bobby Vincent:

Well, the weird part about communication is that we do our best to wind up being able to alert Channel six, eight and 12, um, as well as the Richmond Times Dispatch. We put our media releases on social media. So we are doing the most that we can, with the exception of going door to door.

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Bobby Vincent:

Uh, which is something that we certainly can’t do on many of, of our projects. So the good news is, is that these areas are going to be much safer in the future, not just from a combined sewer area issue, but also we are doing major construction right there at Williamsburg and Main Street to improve that intersection. So that project is also happening at the same time while the CSO project is happening. So within the next year or so, that intersection is gonna be great. It’s gonna be something that people can travel through easily.

Rich Meagher:

So I think the, the message you might have if I’m getting this right, like you’d want to tell commuters like, Molly, look, I understand your frustration, but these delays are, are really worth it for because the long term, the safety and the travel is gonna be improved.

Bobby Vincent:

Yes. And the fact that we didn’t, um, have loss of life, uh, with, um, government road, I just would’ve, I, I I can’t explain how I would’ve felt if we knew that the road was in the process of failing, but we left it open.

Rich Meagher:

Right.

Bobby Vincent:

Wishing that it didn’t.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. So let’s bring the scale down a little bit, right? We’re talking about road closures and things like that, but let’s take the, the classic local government problem, right, which is the pothole.

Bobby Vincent:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Rich Meagher:

Um, I, I see a hole in my street. I put in a 311 call. I expect it will be fixed. Uh, and I don’t think about it ever again, but, but it’s actually a lot more complicated than that, isn’t it? Like how does it get fixed?

Bobby Vincent:

Right. So, um, seven years ago we were doing 20, 25,000 potholes a year.

Rich Meagher:

Hmm.

Bobby Vincent:

Um, and so the administration came and said, what are some of the biggest challenges that we’re facing? We said, potholes and sidewalks. So at that point in time is when we started putting $15 million a year into our paving program. Um, and since that point in time, the number of pothole requests have dropped by more than 50%.

Rich Meagher:

Hmm.

Bobby Vincent:

The number of potholes that we actually repair have dropped by more than 50%. So looking at that work by itself has helped us with regards to our road conditions. Going from a pavement condition index of 35% of our streets being good or better, um, back in 2017 to right now, about 75% of our roads have been rated good or better.

Rich Meagher:

So that does seem like the, the repaving is going well, like you say here. I I mean, I hear sometimes like you do these like pothole blitzes or pushes. Is that part of the, the schedule maintenance or is that kind of a, a PR thing, like to let people know this is what we do and this is how we do it?

Bobby Vincent:

That’s a schedule of maintenance. Um, particularly right after the winter. Um, because that’s when we wind up having, um, the most potholes because of the freeze and thawing. So the way that potholes are generated in, I guess, high density areas and urban environments like the city of Richmond is because all of our utilities are located in the street, they’re under the street. So if you can imagine your human body consistently being under construction, because people always have to go in there and gain accessibility to your veins, you’re gonna have scars.

Rich Meagher:

Mm.

Bobby Vincent:

So those scars leave voids in the asphalt during the wintertime when you have the freeze and thaw, it makes those scars wider, which winds up creating potholes. And that’s how come we tend to do blitzes in the, um, late winter, early spring time of the year.

Rich Meagher:

Yeah. So you mentioned that the repaving is going pretty well here, right?

Bobby Vincent:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Rich Meagher:

75% big, big increase from a couple of years ago. I wanted to ask about sidewalks. It seems like sidewalks are a little bit more of a mess. And we here at RVA’s Got Issues are a little obsessed with, with the, the number of sidewalks around.

Bobby Vincent:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Rich Meagher:

Right? Uh, I think the statistic is over 800 miles of sidewalks. Like you could get to Miami, probably…

Bobby Vincent:

<laugh>

Rich Meagher:

if you, you lined them up. I mean, is it, is it just a case like it’s similar to potholes, you just gotta focus a little more and, and get them cleaned up? Or is it more complicated there?

Bobby Vincent:

It’s more complicated with regards to sidewalks because it takes a, a longer period of time and it’s more expensive. And, um, it’s also, it’s less of a hazard for sidewalks than it is for streets. Streets is priority one because somebody’s driving in the street, they’re going 40 miles per hour. If you hit a pothole, you can be in an accident, you can have a loss of life. Um, if you’re walking down the sidewalk, chances are you’re not gonna have loss of life. Um, not saying that it’s not important because we have had people injured.

Rich Meagher:

Sure.

Bobby Vincent:

And so we certainly understand that that’s how come it’s still a priority for us. But looking at the fact that the city of Richmond has over 880 miles of sidewalks, many of the sidewalks dating back to the beginning of the city of Richmond when the city of Richmond was basically Shockoe Bottom. At that point in time, we had brick sidewalks, we have cobblestone ways, um, in the, in the city of Richmond as well as ultimately, um, concrete sidewalks. But when you look at our infrastructure versus that of our surrounding, uh, municipalities, we have more sidewalks than the surrounding municipalities combined. So we tend to prioritize our sidewalks based upon number one, where are the people? So we have some people that’s trying to prioritize sidewalks on the street where there’s a cul-de-sac. It is not gonna be a very high priority in comparison to a neighborhood such as the fan or in Churchill or in Highland Park, where you may have churches, grocery stores, um, and schools. So that’s where we try to prioritize where the people actually are.

Rich Meagher:

So what’s the deal? Like sometimes there are high profile sidewalk issues. I remember of course remembering the, the Richmond gun hole. It sort of got addressed a lot more quickly. I wonder if there’s a sense, right. It does feel a little bit like, if I can get enough media attention to my particular problem, I might be able to jump this years long backlog and, and get my, my personal pothole or sidewalk bumped up to the top of the list. And, and so what do you say to that? Is it, is it like jumping the line or is there something else going on there?

Bobby Vincent:

Uh, we always have things to jump the line always, but we don’t let the news reports or citizens dictate where we go and do our work. If we did, we would never get anything done. So one of our philosophies in the Department of Public Works is to provide people with what they need, not with what they want. Um, sometimes the the two do, um, simultaneously exist. Why? Because we are working with the neighborhoods. We’re working with economic development, we’re working with RPS, we’re working with ongoing construction that we have in our city in order to help us to make the determination of where we need to do the work. Now, if there’s a situation where somebody has trip and fell, um, you know, we are not just empathetic, but we also become sympathetic with that situation and try to get out there and get things taken care of. And so it’s things like that, that we’ve been trying to do that may get moved ahead of something else. So it really doesn’t depend upon who you are. It really depends upon your circumstances.

Rich Meagher:

So another area where we’ve at least had some success in the city is the, the Vision Zero. Right? The city’s plan to have zero traffic fatalities. Now, we’re not at zero, right. But the numbers are trending downward. So how much, when you’re doing all this work, right, are you thinking about cars versus people? Right? You talked earlier about like streets. You gotta think about potholes more than sidewalks just because the danger is so much higher…

Bobby Vincent:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Rich Meagher:

In the streets. But when we think about traffic fatalities, right? That’s streets and sidewalks. So, so how do you think about that when you’re doing DPW’s work?

Bobby Vincent:

So the way that we are designing our streets now, we are narrowing the vision of the driver. So you’re not gonna see very many 13 foot wide lanes in the city of Richmond. You’re gonna see some that’s 10 feet, but the average is about 11 feet in width. When you see an 11 foot wide lane, it funnels and tunnels your vision to make you slow down. If you see something that’s wide open at that point in time, it makes you drive faster. So in the city of Richmond, we would wind up putting in, um, items like floating parking in order to protect the bicyclists. And then we put in a median with trees to protect the pedestrian. So now in order for a pedestrian to get struck on a sidewalk, they have to hit that car, go through a tree, and get up on the sidewalk. And so when we have those different layers of protection, it protects the bicyclist, it protects the pedestrian, and it also protects the person that’s driving.

Rich Meagher:

So in terms of broad success, right? Um, the, the mayor recently issued his own report card, right? Danny Avula’s, uh, mayoral action plan.

Bobby Vincent:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Rich Meagher:

But it’s also kind of your report card.

Bobby Vincent:

Oh, definitely.

Rich Meagher:

Right. So one of the seven pillars of the plan is a thriving and sustainable built environment includes some metrics to show progress. So there is that pavement index…

Bobby Vincent:

mm-hmm <affirmative>

Rich Meagher:

That you mentioned earlier. Right. The pavement index is this map of the city with streets marked red for bad and green for good. I mean, if, if progress isn’t happening on this, there’s really nowhere to hide anymore, right?

Bobby Vincent:

Correct.

Rich Meagher:

So are there any concerns about being put on blast by the mayor here?

Bobby Vincent:

Not at all. Um, actually we in the Department of Public Works, we’ve been transparent, uh, for years. We’re becoming more transparent now because it’s obviously one of the pillars. But we’ve had our website up for years. Um, our dashboards have been up for years. And, um, to be quite honest, we receive about 20,000 requests per year from citizens. So we are consistently engaged through 311 requests, as well as through people just contacting Ask Public Works, um, with regards to work that’s being done. Everybody gets to see the work that’s being done in the Department of Public Works, we touch everybody house at least once a week, if for no other reason: trash. So every time you pull up to an intersection, we have crosswalks, we have traffic signals, we have pedestrian signals, we have bike lanes, we have the asphalt, we have the trees, we have the sidewalks. So we are touching people’s lives, even when they don’t want or don’t realize that their lives are being touched. So we want people to be able to understand what it is we do, and to understand the magnitude of what it is that we do in the Department of Public Works.

Rich Meagher:

We’ll hear more from Richmond Public Works director Bobby Vincent, when we come back on RVA’s Got Issues.

This is RVA’s Got Issues. We’re talking with Bobby Vincent, the director of the City of Richmond’s, Department of Public Works, or DPW. There’s a lot of confusion, I think, among city residents about DPU and DPW. DPU is public utilities. I dunno if you guys, do you have a rivalry? Like do you order pizzas to their office or who sneak in a night and put whoopy cushions on their, on their chairs or anything?

Bobby Vincent:

No, we, we meet, uh, we meet weekly, uh, with the Department of Public Utilities. And obviously we are all in the same portfolio, um, together. But the, the, the way to make things easier to understand is that DPU is everything underground, and we are everything above ground.

Rich Meagher:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Bobby Vincent:

Um, and so that’s kind of the easiest way to to, to look at the two parts.

Rich Meagher:

Okay. So for, for them it’s mostly like the underground pipes, right? The water, the gas, the sewer.

Bobby Vincent:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

And I mean, but when you’re saying everything above ground, there’s a lot of things above the ground, right? We’ve been talking about roads and sidewalks, but there’s the traffic signals, right? There’s the condition of the bridges, trash and trees. How do you prioritize all that stuff?

Bobby Vincent:

Uh, the Department of Public Works is comprised of 13 different operating divisions. The way that we prioritize it is by having all 13 of those operating divisions working together. We come together underneath the most complex circumstances, like when you look at snow. So snow removal is something that’s performed by everyone from bridges to potholes, to solid waste to sidewalks. Everybody comes together in order to take care of our city during an emergency. So when a individual division has an emergency, at that point in time, we can reprioritize our resources in order to help build that division up and vice versa.

Rich Meagher:

I mean, that sounds good. Like in terms of everybody pulling together on that, is it necessary, though, to have all that many divisions? Like is it too much for a single department to oversee? Can it pull you in too many directions when you’re under normal operations?

Bobby Vincent:

No, and the reason why I would say no to that is because, uh, when you empower the managers of those divisions to make decisions, at that point in time, they’re able to prioritize what’s needed within their individual division. When things are too separated, people tend to go without. And so they just tend to go without, if bridges wasn’t a part of traffic engineering, if traffic engineering didn’t have its sister agency with regards to streetlights, if you lose a bucket truck, you can get one of our bucket trucks. When you look at urban forestry, if they’re down with regards to, um, knuckle booms, they can get a knuckle boom from grounds maintenance. And so when you look at how we tend to help our sister divisions within one department, it makes things work.

Rich Meagher:

I hear what you’re saying, right?

Bobby Vincent:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Rich Meagher:

And, and so I get how that looks that way from your perspective, but I, I, I wanna just think about this idea of, of DPW having a little too much on its plate. Like, so here’s an example, right? When a, a developer builds or renovates a building, you guys are also responsible, right? For issuing permits and enforcing rules to make sure they don’t do anything dangerous. Uh, but it seems to me like every week someone’s posting on social media, like trucks are parked in the bike lanes outside of a new building, or the building’s going up and the sidewalk’s completely blocked. And it seems like DPW is supposed to be the ones responsible for the right of way management that’s supposed to keep that from happening. So it, it feels like sometimes things like that where you are, like snow trees have fallen down, like, but the block sidewalk that kind of falls through the cracks.

Bobby Vincent:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Rich Meagher:

Do you, I mean, do you get that sense from what I’m saying there?

Bobby Vincent:

I certainly understand what you’re asking for, but who better to be responsible for getting that sidewalk back open than the people that are responsible for maintaining that sidewalk? And so oftentimes when the sidewalk is blocked, it’s blocked due to private development. And so the private developers have their system of permits to take care of backup on private property. The building permit, the plumbing permit, the water permit, the electrical permit, all of that stuff is happening in a very tight and confined space. So when a guy gets there to, um, connect the plumbing, where is he gonna park? So in the city of Richmond, oftentimes he winds up parking and blocking the sidewalk. Why? Because he’s in between two businesses that’s operating. What we do in the Department of Public Works is make certain that that guy, Hey, you need to get off of our sidewalk and you need to park around back, or you need to pull a permit to make certain that he knows that we are coming by monitoring our sidewalks and our public right of way on a frequent basis to make certain that he’s not parking there all the time.

Rich Meagher:

So what do you say to the people who, who feel like, and I I, I mean, I’ve seen these media accounts, they’re like bikers who go around the city and they’re like, here’s another block sidewalk, here’s another, somebody’s parked in the bike lane. Um, is it that if you had more staff, you’d be able to make sure that that never happened? Or is it just they’re just picking out the few incidences where it is happening?

Bobby Vincent:

They’re picking out the few incidents where it does happen and enforcement. Um, we have people that unfortunately probably steal candy bars every day. Do we put a police officer in every store? No. Um, and so if somebodyy is going to be…

Rich Meagher:

Fair enough, enough, fair enough. Right? Yeah.

Bobby Vincent:

<laugh>,

Rich Meagher:

one other point of pressure are this is a political office, right? You work in, in government and politics and, and you are a bureaucrat, that’s not an insult, uh, focused on a job. Uh, but you have political figures that you work for, right? The mayor and, and to some extent the city council. So I’m thinking here of this incident in 2021 where DPW installed these traffic bump outs in Brooklyn Park Boulevard.

Bobby Vincent:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Rich Meagher:

Right? This is in Barton Heights. Some businesses got upset about parking. City council member Ann Lambert, who was the, the council member at the time, got involved. Uh, I I believe you decided like, all right, I’m gonna have to pull these things out because there’s too much opposition. But that costs taxpayers money to put it in and take it out again. Like, how can you stick to the plan if city council or the mayor or local businesses throw up roadblocks to doing the things that you know are the right things to do?

Bobby Vincent:

That’s a very good question. And it’s, and I’m glad you brought that one up, because I drive Brooklyn Park Boulevard every day. I live in, I actually live in Barton Heights.

Rich Meagher:

Okay.

Bobby Vincent:

Um, and so I was very aware of what the businesses were discussing there. And so, uh, the amount of bumpouts that we had there, taking up additional parking spaces from the businesses was detrimental to the, um, neighborhood. The barber shops, the sandwich shops, the bars, um, that’s located now on Brooklyn Park Boulevard with businesses that are thriving, that wind up having customers needing somewhere to park. They used to park on these side streets, but they’re no longer spaces on those side streets. So I took all of that into consideration when I said, okay, our project went overboard here. We need to remove some of these, um, bumpouts. And I was willing to stand behind it, and I did. And I’m glad I did. And now things are working really well on Brooklyn Park Boulevard. Even with those bumpouts being removed.

Rich Meagher:

It’s, it’s the case here that you actually think that they had a point and you were willing to change the plan…

Bobby Vincent:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

That you originally had.

Bobby Vincent:

Yes.

Rich Meagher:

Uh, based on that input from residents.

Bobby Vincent:

Correct.

Rich Meagher:

I just wanna get at this kind of question about politics, right? Because I know, you know, we talked to a lot of city workers and they’re like, look, I’m not doing politics. I’m just doing the best job. But you do work for political bosses, right?

Bobby Vincent:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Rich Meagher:

So I just, I wonder about this kind of idea of priority setting. How much of priority setting is what you do in DPW and how much of your priority setting is direction that comes from the political side, right? Comes from the mayor, your boss comes from the city council and their budgeting and their, their requests to you.

Bobby Vincent:

Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

Rich Meagher:

Where does that priority setting come from?

Bobby Vincent:

I would say that the priority setting actually comes from the people. Um, and so oftentimes the people are contacting the mayor, they’re contacting their council representative, and the mayor’s office and the council representative’s office are contacting us as directors. When I first came to, to work with the city, I remember we were in charge of stormwater management at that point in time, and we had this 10 year plan of redoing drainage ditches all throughout the city of Richmond. Well, guess what? It was gonna rain Thursday. I didn’t have 10 years…

Rich Meagher:

<laugh>

Bobby Vincent:

to get this particular plan taken care of. So we had to reprioritize. So you can’t just come back to a citizen or to an administration and say, Hey, that’s part of the plan. We’re gonna get that taken care of in year eight. We have to reprioritize. And so that’s where our jobs come in to play. That’s why we are here. We are here to make those modifications and those changes to how we prioritize on a daily, weekly, monthly, and annual basis.

Rich Meagher:

So you said you regularly meet with the mayor. What’s your ask for the new mayor? Right? What, what are you asking for? What you need to do your job better when you meet with him or when you’re thinking about the budget for next year?

Bobby Vincent:

Understanding. Because when you understand the reason why somebody does something, it makes that decision making a lot easier. And so with us providing the mayor and having an avenue to be able to provide the mayor to provide the CAO information on what it is that we’re responsible for, and the magnitude of what we’ve been doing over countless years, at that point in time, we have our own benchmarks that we’re trying to set for ourselves. We are looking at benchmarking from a national, um, accreditation standpoint, and we’re looking at a benchmarking from our own administrative standpoint. So when you look at that and you mix all of those together, that’s how we are able to understand what achievement looks like.

Rich Meagher:

The mayor is giving you the understanding that you’re seeking from him. Right? Do you think you, that he gets a sense of what this mission is about and that he’s behind that mission?

Bobby Vincent:

Without a doubt. And it’s not necessarily our mission, it’s his mission and us providing him with the answers to the questions that he, number one has. And number two, we are being proactive with giving him data based upon the questions we know he’s going to get asked. So if we can do that and continue to do that, I think we make, um, our city better, we make our administration stronger, and we are able to take care of more issues that, that we know is gonna be coming down the line.

Rich Meagher:

Bobby Vincent is Public Works Director for the City of Richmond. Thank you so much, Bobby.

Bobby Vincent:

Thank you.

Rich Meagher:

That’s our show. Thanks to our guest, Bobby Vincent. Special thanks to Molly Bristol. Tell us about your issues by visiting our website, RVAsGotissues.vpm.org, or send us an email at [email protected]. Be sure to leave a review on your favorite podcasting platform. RVA’s Got Issues is produced by Max Wasserman and Rachel Dwyer. Script editing on this episode by Nicki Stein. Audio mix by Steve Lack. Our theme music was composed by Alexander Hitchens. Shawn Freude is our executive producer. Steve Humble is VPM’s Chief Content Officer. Rebekah Sausmikat is our team photo archivist. I’m your host, Rich Meagher. Thanks for listening.