Dear Editor,
I recently met a young man who managed to effectively undermine my pessimistic assumption that there are no people of his age group in Richmond who are aware of or care about how badly mismanaged the development of this community has been over the past 10-20 years.
While he and I share the same opinion that those in charge of the running of Richmond’s government and its planning departments have wilfully failed to ensure that the city’s building codes and bylaws are properly and fully enforced, and have therefore cynically undermined the trust placed in them by the public to do so, he made it clear to me he had a much more optimistic outlook than I do about the possibilities for changing these attitudes and conditions in the future.
He came across as a well-educated, extremely dedicated, and thoroughly altruistic community activist — the kind of person who I fervently hope will someday wrest political power away from the self-serving, unconcerned, and ethically suspect individuals the public has been voting into office in this city since my family moved here in the 1950s.
If more young citizens like him join together in challenging the political status quo in this community we might yet experience what it is like to have enlightened, responsive, and responsible governance in Richmond.
Ray Arnold
Richmond
