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A steal for the Squirrels?
Baseball team gets sweet deal with city’s five-year lease at The Diamond
Virtually free rent. That’s what the minor league baseball team, the Richmond Flying Squirrels, got in their new five-year lease deal on The Diamond.

City Council wants more time to study, consider collective bargaining
City Council hit the pause button Monday on authorizing collective bargaining for city employees.

Dr. Delores R. Greene, longtime educator and former VUU and VSU dean, dies at 86
Dr. Delores Ann Richburg Greene felt the call to be a teacher when she was just 4 years old and in pre-school. She would play school in the backyard of her Petersburg home, where she would provide instruction on reading to her neighborhood friends. From that beginning, Dr. Greene would follow her dream. In a career that spanned 57 years, she rose from a classroom teacher to become a dean in the College of Education at Virginia State University, her alma mater.

Bring it down
Judge rules that Gov. Northam has authority to take down towering statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee on Monument Avenue
Virginia is finally washing its hands of Robert E. Lee, 150 years after his death.

George Wythe Principal Riddick T. Parker Jr. dies at 49
George Wythe High School in South Side will start a new school year Monday, Aug. 29, without the principal who was looking forward to starting his second year of helping students achieve success in school and in their future careers.

City’s plan leaves fewer people with shelter this winter
City Hall is ending its decades-old effort to prevent homeless people from freezing to death when temperatures plunge.

Closing of area shelters leave many without shelter
Joe Barrett is back to living on the street. Left paralyzed on his left side by a stroke, the 62-year-old Richmond native is among more than 130 homeless people who lost their shelter beds Saturday.

Lee statue removed in U.S. Capitol; injunction remains keeping Monument Avenue statue
The statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee was removed with ease Monday from the U.S. Capitol, but the towering statue of the slavery-defending general will remain on Monument Avenue for now, courtesy of a Virginia Supreme Court ruling.

South Side churches merge, with Pastor Alexander ‘Jay’ Patrick as new head
Celebration Church and Outreach Center, formerly the Richmond Outreach Center, ap- pears to have merged with the nearby Liberation Church, with Pastor Alexander “Jay” Patrick of Liberation named the pastor of the newly merged church.

Vacancies continue to rise in Richmond Police Department
The Richmond Police Department is continuing to shrink in size.

Ready to serve
Jennifer McClellan defends rushed primary after landslide victory
Richmond state Sen. Jennifer L. McClellan is on the fast track to Washington.

State Jails Board creates improvement plan for City Jail
Investigation cites 6 deaths, inconsistent inspections and other unmet standards
Only a small staff of deputies is working in the Richmond City Justice Center on any given day, the Free Press is being told, as the number of sworn officers under the command of Sheriff Antionette V. Irving continues to fall.

Heads up for a head start?
$19M from projected Casino revenue proposed for child care needs
An already short supply of child care operations could soon grow worse in Richmond and across the country, experts say. But the good news is City Hall has a solution, even though it could take three years to fully come to fruition.

The need for food and shelter grows for city’s homeless
“The need has tripled,” Rhonda Sneed said. “More and more people are experiencing a crisis at this time, and so many with food insecurity. I am seeing more people seeking some form of nourishment from a trash receptacle.”

City betting millions on brewery
In its California hometown, Stone Brewery is a standout in San Diego’s burgeoning craft beer market, with Stone’s two beer gardens ranking as important tourist lures. The company boasts that only the renowned San Diego Zoo and the LEGOLAND amusement park attract more visitors to the Navy port city with 4 million people in the metropolitan area or four times the population of metro Richmond.

Plenty of jobs, not enough workers
Commission recommends aligning training with opportunities
Talk about a huge surprise: Four job openings exist in Richmond for every job seeker in the city, according to government data. In fact, more jobs in the city go begging for qualified workers than anywhere else in the Richmond region, which overall has 1.5 job openings for every job seeker, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) stated in its December report.

Herring to run for re-election, not for governor
Mark Herring enjoys his job as Virginia’s attorney general. That’s why the state’s top legal officer announced Wednesday that he would seek re-election for a new four-year term in 2017 rather than going after the top job of governor.

Petersburg City Council chooses new leader
W. Howard Myers is out and Samuel Parham is in as the mayor of Petersburg. Foiled in his effort to gain a second term, 5th Ward Councilman Myers nominated Mr. Parham to be Petersburg City Council’s presiding officer at a time when the city continues to face severe financial challenges.

Mayor-elect Stoney plans to be ‘hands-on, visible, transparent’
As he looks forward to becoming Richmond’s next mayor, Levar Stoney is planning to be more visible after he takes office. As he puts it, he wants to be a “hands-on, visible and transparent mayor who can be a champion for accountability, measure outputs and inputs and, at the end of the day, say that the buck stops with me.”