Educating Norfolk

Ask, first, not what you can do for your neighborhood.

In the election of school board members, ask, first, what you can do for your city and for the children of the city and for future generations.

Norfolk's parents, policy makers and educators squat on the precipice of a profound decision. It shouldn't be squandered and riven by partisan politics.

The Public has a choice.

The Public can choose to elect school board members from a pool of eligible candidates from the entire city in an at-large elections.

Or it can choose to elect school board members based upon the ward system, which would perpetuate incumbency and lead to decay and intransigence.

The Public can voice their concerns and register their comments at two public forums this month. The first meeting will be held Thursday, Dec. 4, at Ruffner Middle School. The second open forum will be held Thursday, Dec. 11, at Granby High School.

Both meetings begin at 6pm.

So far, the education of Norfolk has been rather sluggish; sometimes it was doubtful if Norfolk would finally enter the 21^st century.

Yet Norfolk trudges forward.

In less than two years, school board terms have been extended from two to three years and school board members will be elected by The Public rather than appointed by City Council. City Council is open to suggestions, hence the two public forums.

“Norfolk Council must provide specific guidance on how they wish to proceed regarding the method by which the citizens of Norfolk elect their school board,” wrote Bryan Pennington, Director of Intergovernmental Relations for the city, in an email.

“Under current law, the Norfolk Council has existing authority to have a popularly elected school board that is either elected at-large or by the current established Council Ward boundaries.”

Even political pundit Vivian Page advocates for an at-large election of school board members.

“I’ve lived here long enough to see that the ward system has not been good for Norfolk,” Page wrote in a column. 

“To get anything done in this city, you have to be able to count to 5,” Page wrote “Meanwhile, we voters only get to count to 3. We cast ballots for a ward, a superward and the mayor. How do we get council to listen to our concerns when they don’t need our votes?”

“We don’t need to make that mistake with the school board,” Page wrote.

Supporters of an elected school board say that it will give them more authority and more autonomy from City Council.

Should City Council swing in favor of a ward style election, voters will seek their own self-interest. It will end badly.

So consider the children, not your ward.

Fraim Flight Hides Possible Folly

You never take a knife to a gunfight, as the saying goes.

In the Fraim flight fracas, Mayor Paul Fraim took City Manager, Marcus Jones, and City Attorney, Bernard Pishko, his two top guns, to meet with representatives of The Cordish Cos. 

According to press reports, the three city officials flew to Baltimore June 16, 2014, at Fraim's expense. Cordish, a private developer based in Baltimore, will redo Waterside into Waterside Live!, a post-modern playground for adults.

The mayor is there because he's the mayor. The city manager because he can talk about city finances. And the city attorney is there because he is can render a legal remedy, presumably, to a legal problem.

So what could be the legal entanglement? Because if there is no legal impediment, there wouldn't be a need for the city's top attorney.

Why take a gun unless you plan to use it.

Let us assume the mayor, aided by his minions, wanted something from The Cordish Cos. We can further assume that Cordish was delaying its agreement with the city for reasons undisclosed to The Public and most likely wanted something from the mayor.

What do we know?

We know Joe's Crab Shack had a lease (a contract) with Waterside Associates LLP, whose managing partner is Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority.

We know Joe's had the option to renew its contract for five years, until 2018, according to a rider in the contract, and exercise its right to be the exclusive seafood restaurant in Waterside.

We know Joe's did exercise its option to renew its lease for five years and informed the landlord, Waterside Associates, of its option to do so.

We do know Joe's has a Federal Express receipt showing C. Richards signed for the package from Joe's saying it was renewing its lease for an additional five years. And we know the letter was addressed to the general manager of Waterside, whose name is still a mystery.

What don't we know?

We don't know what the parties discussed.

We don't know which restaurants or other entertainment venues will populate Waterside Live!, because Cordish has refused to disclose their names, at least to The Public.

We don't know if the city or the housing authority, or both, neglected to renegotiate Joe's lease within a 120-day time frame, as set out in the terms of the lease.

But it's a possibility.

We don't know if Mayor Fraim and his two guns wanted Cordish to bury the costs of buying out Joe's lease so as not to embarrass city officials should it ever become public that someone screwed up.

But it's a possibility.

We don't know if Cordish said no, you figure it out.

But it's a possibility.

We don't know if one top gun suggested an option: that of evicting Joe's for late payment of rent over a two-year period.

But that's a probability.

We don't know if one top gun suggested that if Joe's files a lawsuit, it would be financially less expensive and politically less condemning than public disclosure of a Big Mistake.

Certainly, it is probable.

In July, a month after The Cordish trip, Joe's gets a notice from the housing authority's law firm, Crenshaw Ware & Martin PLC, threatening eviction from Waterside and legal action if Joe's doesn't comply.

Of course, this is all speculation and should not be construed as an actual record of events leading to and prompting Joe's filing a lawsuit against Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, the landlord, August 25 with Norfolk Circuit Court.

Here's a chronology of events, gathered from press reports, press releases and the lawsuit.

February 27, 2013 – Edward Engel, senior vice president and general counsel of Crab Addison Inc, otherwise known as Joe's Crab Shack, sends a letter to the general manager of Waterside Associates Limited Partnership, Waterside's landlord, saying it was exercising its option to renew its lease for five years, commencing July 1, 2013, according to section 1.2 of the “rider” to the lease.

February 28, 2013 – The Federal Express package with the notification letter was received by Waterside Associates Feb. 28, 12:57pm, according to a delivery receipt, and signed by C. Richards.

July, 2013 – A Cordish representative, Michael Stoltz, inquires about Joe's lease with Waterside. He contacts Thomas Hundrieser, director of Real Estate for Ignite restaurant Group, and Tara Schroeder, lease administrator for Ignite Restaurant Group. Both Hundrieser and Schroeder tell Stoltz the city received notification of the lease renewal and provided the Federal Express delivery receipt and tracking number.

Ignite Restaurant Group, the owner of Joe's Crab Shack restaurant brand, is a publicly traded company whose shares are bought and sold on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

August, 2013 – Norfolk chooses The Cordish Cos. to redevelop Waterside Festival Marketplace into Waterside Live!, a complex of bars, restaurants and shops.

November 20, 2013 – Shurl Montgomery, CEO/executive director of NRHA, notifies Joe's that its month-to-month lease would be terminated because The Cordish Cos. was assuming control of Waterside.

November 26, 2013 – In response, Schroeder “vehemently disagrees” with Montgomery that Joe's is a month-to-month tenant. Schroeder adds that Joe's has the legal right under section 1.2 of the “rider” to renew its lease for three five-year periods provided the landlord is given 120-days notice.

May, 2014 – NRHA CEO/executive director, Shurl Montgomery, announces his retirement, effective Dec. 31, 2014.

June 16, 2014 – Mayor Fraim, City Manager, Marcus Jones, and City Attorney, Bernard Pishko, meet with Cordish representatives in Baltimore.

July 24, 2014 – Attorney Delphine Carnes with the law firm of Crenshaw, Ware & Martin sends an eviction notice to Joe's and threatens legal action if Joe's has not vacated Waterside by Aug. 31.

August 25, 2014 – Joe's files a lawsuit against NRHA in Norfolk Circuit Court, dated August 25. Chairman of NRHA board of commissioners, F. Nash Bilosoly, served August 29, 2014, according to court records.

September 12, 2014 – Bilosoly, an attorney, announced his resignation from the board, citing an extensive workload at his law firm, Vandeventer Black LLP, of which he is a partner.

October 31, 2014 – Cordish takes control of Waterside.

Fury over Fraim Flight a Red Herring

For once, I agree with Councilwoman Theresa Whibley.

The fury over the Fraim flight was “the silliest thing I've ever seen brought up.”

Mayor Paul Fraim, accompanied by City Manager, Marcus Jones, and City Attorney, Bernard Pishko, flew to Baltimore June 16 to “meet with representatives from The Cordish Cos., the company Norfolk chose in August 2013 to redevelop Waterside” into Waterside Live!, an entertainment venue.

At Fraim's expense, not at the expense of The Public. For $1,400. Chump change.

This isn't a story of 654 words; this is a news brief of less than 200 words, at most. This isn't a column slamming an elected official for indiscreet use of money or that the trip was done in secrecy.

Some City Council members disagreed, puffing up their chests and acting as if they are acting in the interest of The Public. It seems they were acting more in their own self-interest than in the interest of The Public.

They can disagree all they want, but to do it in a public forum smells of politicking and posturing.

Mayor Fraim serves for two more years. He may or may not run for another term in 2016. But some City Council members smell blood in the water and are beginning to nibble at the edges. They should be careful: they might find themselves eaten alive.

Councilman Andy Protogyrou, who represents the least populated ward in the city, again blasted Fraim for not disclosing more details about the deal between the city and Cordish.

What's there to explain?

Go have a nice cup of coffee and talk about it. Why bring it up in a public forum?

Perhaps Protogyrou is upset that he wasn't told, that he was excluded from the discussions, that he wasn't invited on the trip. Maybe he should have been sent an invitation, courtesy of the Mayor's office.

Or maybe he was told something, but he wasn't satisfied with the answer. If he wants to know, or if any other Council member wants to know, they can pick up the phone and call Jones or Pishko, who, I am sure, would be more than willing to discuss the deal with them.

What's missing in this scenario?

That Fraim and two city officials flew to Baltimore and didn't tell Council isn't really the issue.

To me, the issue is why they had to go to Cordish instead of Cordish coming to us.

Norfolk is the customer, the buyer. Cordish is the seller, so the seller should act more like an interested party instead of a demanding buyer and should be more amenable to the demands of the city.

This is really much ado about nothing.

Oddly enough, a majority of City Council – Johnson, Riddick, Williams and Winn – didn't comment or, more precisely, weren't quoted in the article.

Let's discuss more serious topics.

I wonder who paid for lunch or dinner.

I wonder how that expense will be booked on this year's tax return.

Check Your E-ZPass Agreement

The terms and conditions have changed.

Virginia E-Zpass, the company that manages the electronic tolling system for the tunnels, added another item to its eye wrenching agreement.

The additional item – 13^th, by the way – is called Account Inactivity. The new agreement with the additional language went into effect Oct. 1.

The revised agreement follows criticism by Va. Secretary of Transportation of Transportation Aubrey Layne about the billing practices of Elizabeth River Crossings, a consortium of construction and financial conglomerates, Skanska and Macquerie.

The consortium is overhauling the Downtown Tunnel, installing a second tube at the Mid-Town Tunnel beneath the Elizabeth River between Norfolk and Portsmouth and extending the Martin Luther King Freeway from the Mid-Town Tunnel to Interstate-264.

Is there a correlation between Layne's remarks and a revised agreement? You decide, readers. 

Here's the language, in italics, inserted into the agreement, which did not exist in an earlier version.

Users who do not use their account for toll payment for period of six months may be subject to account closure.

In other words, the decision to close your account is not your decision. It is the decision of someone else. That someone else could be Elizabeth River Crossings LLC, Virginia E-ZPass or the Virginia Dept. of Transportation, or perhaps all three. But which one will decide is for you to guess or to attempt to find out. Did someone once say that this deal was transparent to The Public?

Users who fail to return their transponders shall be subject to the lost/stolen fee and further collection procedures and legal action by the Commonwealth of Virginia to collect any outstanding balance.

The costs to you, if you don't obey the rules, is $10 for a standard transponder and $20 for a flex transponder. If you don't pay, the bills will be sent to a debt collector (more money) and possible legal action by your government (even more money). So, your government, funded by you, the tax payer, will prosecute you for fees and for a lost or stolen transponder for a consortium of private companies headquartered in other countries. 

Any unclaimed balance will be treated as unclaimed property in accordance with the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia.

In other words, neither ERC nor Virginia E-Zpass nor the Virginia Dept. of Transportation will make any effort to find you and send you your money. Nor does the agreement spell out how long you have to retrieve your money. Seven months? A year?

Yes, the terms and conditions of the agreement can be changed by the E-Zpass Center at any time, presumably at the command of ERC or the Commonwealth of Virginia. You are supposed to receive a written notice either by email or by mail and the E-Zpass User “shall be deemed to have received notice 10 days after the notice is emailed or deposited with the United States Postal Service.”

These are the rules, laid down by lawyers and corporate Mandarins and sanctified by our government. 

I'm still waiting for my notice.

Light Rail: Truth or Dare in Va Beach

The truth about light rail is a falsity. The falsity is that the prevailing truth is false. But the prevailing truth is that Norfolk's 7.4 mile light rail line, The Tide, is a starter line. It is not. It is a fiction.

“Truth, of course, must of necessity be stranger than fiction, for we have made fiction to suit ourselves,” wrote G.K. Chesterton.

The Tide ebbs and flows in Norfolk, and Norfolk's citizens pay quite a bit of money each year to operate and maintain it.

If you want to hear the “good, bad and ugly about bringing a light rail trolly to Virginia Beach,” you might want to attend this town hall meeting this Thursday, Oct. 16, 7pm, at the Virginia Beach Higher Education Center, second floor auditorium.

The event, featuring Cato Institute transportation expert, Randal O'Toole, is sponsored by the Tidewater Libertarian Party, Hampton Roads Tea Party, Virginia Beach Taxpayer Alliance and the Slipper Brigade.

The Cato Institute promotes “an American public policy based on individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peaceful international relations.” In other words, it abhors taxes, excessive government and extravagant government spending.

The title of the event is “The truth you never hear about the failure of light rail and its exorbitant costs.”

Libertarian Robert K. Dean sent this notice in an email with the following tag line.

So, you think you want light rail? At any cost? Even if there’s no traffic congestion relief?

And you’ll accept real estate higher taxes and fees to bail out Norfolk?

This message is being sent to Virginia Beach Mayor Will Sessoms and Virginian-Pilot Editorial Page Editor Donald Luzzatto inviting them to a public discourse with Randal O’Toole to share their commitment.

A Virginia Beach referendum in 1999 to extend light rail to the ocean front failed. Opponents cited the costs to operate and maintain light rail and not so much the initial costs, which are shared by the federal government, state and local governments. A recent study says that it might cost $1.3 billion to extend light rail from Norfolk to the oceanfront, higher than an earlier estimate of $800 million.

What has opponents seething are the ongoing costs to operate and maintain light rail each year of its existence.

The cost to build The Tide was $338.3 million and of that total Norfolkpaid $66 million while the rest was divided between state and federalsources. 

Meanwhile, the operations and maintenance costs continue to rise. Norfolk is expected to pay $5.3 million for light rail this fiscal year, up from $4.2 million for fiscal year 2013, according to Hampton Roads Transit, the region's transit authority.

Tax conscious citizens such as Dean and tax conscious organizations have seen what happened in Norfolk and they don't want the same thing to happen in Virginia Beach.

They fear that taxes will rise to pay for the costs. Their fear is palpable.

In May, 2013, Norfolk City Council raised the real estate tax four cents, from $1.11 per $100 of assessed value to $1.15 per $100 of assessed value, ostensibly to pay for the construction of four new schools.

How much of that tax increase is shifted to light rail costs is lost in budgetary legerdemain. City officials reveal little or nothing about how much it spends and how much it collects every month.

“Light rail is a giant hoax that makes rail contractors rich and taxpayers poor,” O'Toole said in an article on the Cato Institute website. 

Hyperbole aside, O'Toole's reasoning is sound and not full of fury. Simply, light rail is expensive and if not for the federal government, no city would attempt it alone and no politician would even suggest such an expensive wager.

The truth isn't how much light rail costs. The truth is how much politicians and city officials are willing to spend of your money.

Writer and philosopher Ayn Rand would have shrugged in her grave.

The world will very soon be divided, unless I am mistaken, into those who still go on explaining our success, and those somewhat more intelligent who are trying to explain our failure.

G.K. Chesterton