As President of

the

Richmond City Council, it is my honor and pleasure to welcome each of you.

Our city council members, our uh mayor, our CAO and administrative staff, our RPS superintendent, uh school board representative and school board members, all of our uh city council staff who are present, as well as our council agency staff.

Uh I want to thank you for being here for the 2027 Richmond Legislative Summit with our Richmond delegation of the Virginia General Assembly.

As you know, we come together today to review and discuss Richmond's 2027 state legislative proposals.

We hope that today's meeting will be informative, useful, and productive for everyone.

And at all we look forward to an open dialogue and to the wisdom and insight of our state legislators who have joined us.

Uh, we have delegate right cousins, Senator Lamont.

Thank you so much.

And I suspect we'll have a few more who'll join.

We'll have a few more other than the one that's behind me.

Uh Betsy Carr.

Welcome.

As always, uh again, we we really look forward to an open dialogue and wisdom and information and guidance from all of our members.

And so, with that, um, because I'm trying to make sure that the majority of our time is spent in discussion, we will now invite Mayor Buller and then Delvin McFar uh to share some brief thoughts, and then we will proceed uh with our lobbyists.

Mayor

thank you, Dr.

Nibbil, and uh thank you everybody for joining us for the summit.

Um before we jump in, I'm gonna

spend a little time kind of unpacking

uh the agenda for our legislative agenda for 2027.

But uh first want to really thank our delegation.

Thank you guys for being here for prioritizing this time with us, uh, for being in constant communication and always for advocating for us.

Super grateful for the work that you all do.

Um, and I will say that this agenda does represent a ton of collaboration, city council, school board, our delegation, uh, across the administration, throughout City Hall.

Uh and and I think you know, one of the things that has felt very different to me from you know, the first General Assembly, obviously the water issue sort of colored all of that.

Uh, but from from that first uh assembly session to our second, um the idea that Richmond really did present uh a united single legislative agenda.

Uh I think you know, I I got feedback from some of you around this table about previous years where that was not the case.

Uh President Newville and I came in uh two years ago and said, hey, let's let's have one set of lobbyists, let's do the work to get on the same page as council and administration.

Uh and let's really like wrestle through that and make sure that we have a unified approach to what we are uh partnering with the state for.

And I think that unity matters a ton because when we as a city speak with one voice, uh our delegation has greater clarity.

You all know how to advocate for us more effectively, uh, and ultimately the residents of our city are better served.

And

so just know

how grateful I am to my partners on council for that for doing that work, uh, and how grateful I am to the delegation for the way that you have responded to that and and carried that through.

I think what we saw happen this last session uh was a was a wonderful manifestation of that partnership of that uh you unification of thought.

Uh, you know, during the 2026 session, we worked together to accelerate improvements in city infrastructure.

Uh and I think as Senator Bagby said when the state budget was finalized, you would be hard-pressed to find a better budget for Richmond than the FY27 Virginia budget.

Essential dollars will go to our uh CSO system, our water treatment plant.

Uh, thanks to the work of the regional water work group.

Um, we have even more that is is going to be invested in that water treatment plant.

Uh, there's money that's going to the future of our downtown, and we have you all as our advocates in the legislature to thank for that.

So appreciate

that.

Uh

in 2026, we also advanced a number of affordable housing tools, inclusionary zoning authority, school funding priorities, public safety initiatives, uh, and other measures that strengthen our local government's ability to service residents.

And we are now doing the work, you know, translating from the budget to actually implementing that work uh out in our communities.

And you know, right now we're uh all seeing a couple weeks from now, hopefully, that the General Assembly's giving us the option for the local options sales tax.

Uh, we hope that'll get across the finish line and create a generational opportunity to invest uh in aging infrastructure that has much uh, you know, for for too long uh maintenance has been a bird.

And so this creates an incredible opportunity for us to change uh the trajectory for the buildings of our schools, but more importantly for the kids and the families who are being served by those schools.

Uh looking ahead to 27, our agenda is centered on a few key themes.

Um we have a lot of work to do together to ensure that Richmond is a city where people of all income levels and all backgrounds can thrive.

Uh so we've got to address our housing crisis, and we hope to see more tools and financing that can help expand housing affordability, build thriving neighborhoods, and protect the rights and the dignity of renters.

We also remain committed to a partnership with the Commonwealth to advance our infrastructure needs, and you guys have been amazing champions uh in the Commonwealth's budget.

And so we're championing stronger stewardship and stronger execution.

Uh well, main example is in DPU, right?

We have restructured our engineering and our project delivery functions.

We've strengthened our procurement support, and we're improving our accountability and project management.

And as a result, our capital project execution rate is now up to 80% uh from 60% previously, and we're gonna continue that work as we uh work together to invest in our infrastructure.