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Broken promise?
City seeks bids only for 3 new schools
Earlier this year, Mayor Levar M. Stoney stumped to raise $150 million to help replace obsolete and decaying schools.
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CARE van drivers reject latest contract offer
Union drivers who provide door-to-door service for the elderly and disabled on the area’s CARE vans have rejected a new contract that lacked the wage increases and improvements they sought.
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Organizers claim success in schools petition drive
The petition drive to put the issue of modernizing Richmond’s dilapidated public schools before city voters has succeeded, according to the leader of the campaign
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McQuinn may be unseated from Slave Trail Commission
For 12 years, Richmond Delegate Delores L. McQuinn has led the city’s Slave Trail Commission to bring attention to the history and legacy of slavery in Richmond.
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VCU center developing master plan for historic Evergreen Cemetery
Richmond’s biggest university is taking a role in restoring the historic, but neglected Evergreen Cemetery. The Enrichmond Foundation, the new owner of the 127-year-old African-American cemetery, has hired the center for Urban and Regional Analysis in Virginia Commonwealth University’s Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs to create a master plan for the burial ground, which includes the graves of such notables as banker and businesswoman Maggie L. Walker and newspaper editor and banker John Mitchell Jr.
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Former Highland Park church to become affordable housing
A derelict church building on North Side is headed for conversion into 76 apartments. The new apartments would replace the long vacant former Mizpah Presbyterian Church in the 1200 block of East Brookland Park Boulevard near the Six Points intersection in Highland Park.
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City plans public awareness campaign about trash fee exemption
Christine Page rents a house in the 1700 block of North 19th Street, and her monthly utility bill has always included $23.79 for trash and recycling collection. She was surprised to learn that she could apply to the city to remove the fee from the bill without any impact on her service.
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RRHA poised to name Duncan as new CEO
Damon E. Duncan, a public and affordable housing veteran with 26 years of experience, is to be named the next chief executive officer of the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority, the Free Press has learned.
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City to get new children’s hospital
Construction is set to start in a few months on a $350 million, 92-bed hospital for children on the medical campus of Virginia Commonwealth University.
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Congressman Robert C. ‘Bobby’ Scott, four other CBC members expected to lead House committees
Raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour is expected to be a top Democratic priority in the next Congress, and U.S. Rep. Robert C. “Bobby” Scott of Newport News will be in a prime position to lead the charge in January.
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Council committee blocks entry of medical transport company into Richmond market
A City Council committee has rebuffed Mayor Levar M. Stoney’s attempt to end the Richmond Ambulance Authority’s 28-year monopoly on emergency and non-emergency medical transports.
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Court moves closer to declaring Va. law unconstitutional linking court fines to driver’s license suspensions
For more than two decades, people who cannot pay court fines and costs in Virginia automatically have had their driver’s licenses suspended.
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Letter to VUU board offers insight into theology school, university problems
Dr. Corey D.B. Walker may continue to teach after stepping down as vice president and dean of Virginia Union University’s Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology at the end of December.
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RRHA working again to settle heating problems
Tina Shaw has gotten most of what she wanted for Christmas — working heat in her two-bedroom apartment in the Creighton Court public housing community.
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Dr. Corey Walker leaving VUU School of Theology
Virginia Union University will soon start looking for a new dean for the Samuel DeWitt Proctor School of Theology. In a surprise move, Dr. Corey D.B. Walker announced in a letter to the students and faculty that he is leaving what he called his “dream” job as a VUU vice president, theology school dean and professor of religion and society on Dec. 31.
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Official: City has fallen short on lead abatement efforts, contractor training
City Hall has confirmed a Free Press report that it has failed to hire a qualified trainer to offer mandatory classes for small contractors seeking to compete to remove poisonous lead paint from Richmond residences.
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Jones gets pushback on renaming South Side center
Ninth District City Councilman Michael J. Jones has put on hold his proposal to rename the Southside Community Center for Richmond area entertainer Lonnie Battle, a.k.a. DJ Lonnie B.
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City Council members not embracing new location for Social Services building
A marketing campaign to sell the public on the $1.4 billion plan to reshape Downtown and develop a new Coliseum is in full swing, even though the legislation to support the plan is still incomplete and has not been sent to Richmond City Council.
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Blackwell development to continue with 96 available lots
It has taken 21 years, but the Hope VI redevelopment of Blackwell appears to be moving toward completion.
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Plans underway for new VCU in-patient children’s hospital
A new in-patient children’s hospital is being planned, according to Virginia Commonwealth University. The design work is underway nearly four years after VCU and Bon Secours pulled out of a proposed free-standing children’s hospital, collapsing that effort.
