Candidates emphasize student vote

When Richmond citizens go to the voting booths tomorrow, more than the presidency will be up for grabs. Thomas Benedetti and William Pantele are both running for the 2nd District seat on Richmond City Council. VCU is situated within the 2nd District.

City council is a group of nine elected officials who represent nine districts in Richmond. Council members work closely with city government officials and with the soon-to-be-elected mayor of Richmond to run and manage the city. They deal with issues such as public safety, crime, transportation and city services.

Pantele, the incumbent running for re-election, has been a council member since 2001. The Richmond lawyer said he has worked to improve the overall quality of life in the city by restoring parks and neighborhoods. If re-elected, he hopes to continue his work and concentrate even more on new issues such as public safety.

“Where I hope to go is to really start addressing the challenges of public safety, parks and congestion of traffic and the parking problem,” Pantele said.

Benedetti, Pantele’s challenger, said the current city council does not address important issues such as crime and public education as well as it should. He said there needs to be a change of leadership in the city . He said he will address Richmond’s crime rate and formulate a clear plan to get local businesses and the community involved to stop crime.

“The city businesses will follow a well thought out plan, and they will get involved,” Benedetti said. “They are hungry to get involved and solve the high crime problem, but they will not follow this current city council and this current mayor.”

When people think of Richmond, he said, they think of a racial divide and a high crime rate.

He wanted everyone to know that first and foremost he wants to return the integrity back to the city of Richmond and its city council. He said, after that he will work to reduce the crime rate.

If elected to city council, he said, he will initiate a 60 day crime summit, which he describes as a series of meetings addressing crime

He wants them to be open to everyone and include members of the community, as well as other city council members and the mayor-elect. He said he wants to include heads of surgery from MCVH because they see the result of violent crime every day and could play a role in addressing it.

He said after the summit everyone will know their role in the city, and what they can do to stop crime.

“We need to work together,” Benedetti said. “Only together are we going to be able to solve this (crime) problem.”

Along with the summit, he wants to create a community focus fund, in which the council will work with local business groups to raise money to increase police officer salaries and create incentives that would encourage officers to patrol.

Benedetti said he wants to encourage police officers to stay in Richmond by increasing salaries for those who have put in more than 5 years of service. He said the city is losing good officers to suburban areas and he wants to keep them in Richmond.

Along with crime, city council members deal with construction, city district lines, parking and the overall quality of life in their district, said Donald Gehring, vice president for government and community relations at VCU.

Because VCU falls within the 2nd District, the 2nd District city council member works closely with VCU officials concerning decisions that affect the university and how the university affects the surrounding area. He said if university officials and the councilperson do not work well together, it would be difficult for VCU to expand.

“If the city does not cooperate with VCU,” Gehring said, “that has a very negative effect on our day-to-day lives.”

However, he said city council members understand VCU is the engine driving the “economic truck” of Richmond.

“The relationships have been pretty darn good,” Gehring said. “And we’re very pleased with the cooperation we’ve had.”

Both candidates emphasized the importance of VCU students and their role in the community, adding that students are critical to shaping the city.

Benedetti said many students think they are not citizens of Richmond, but rather students who happen to live in Richmond because they are going to VCU. He said he feels differently, and he wants to keep VCU students here after they graduate.

“I think it’s important that the students be part of the fabric of Richmond,” Benedetti said.

Pantele said VCU itself is almost a neighborhood. He described his strong track record for advancing things for VCU students and said he encourages students to vote and keep things moving in the direction the university has been going.

“There is no question VCU has made tremendous progress over the past couple years,” Pantele said. “(Students) can’t take that for granted.”

Both candidates plan to address crime.

Pantele said Richmond has a reputation for crime, and that he has worked and will work to get rid of that reputation. Pantele’s plan to eliminate crime in the city includes cleaning up and restoring areas of extreme poverty around the city.

“Violent crime is grouped around concentrations of extreme poverty in this city,” he said.

Pantele said during his three years on city council Richmond’s crime rate has decreased by 20 percent. “But it needs to decline more,” he said.

He said three years ago police in the city were understaffed by 15 percent and that he worked to put an emphasis on restoring those vacancies. He said about 100 more officers patrol the streets because he lobbied for a larger police force.

During his tenure as a city council member, Pantele said he has emphasized the importance of technology in public safety. He worked with the Richmond Police Department to install the FlashCam Program, in which covert cameras were installed around the city in key locations to discourage vandalism and other crimes.

“Students want a good place to live,” Pantele said. “So when we have unfortunate things such as vagrancy and outsiders coming in and committing crimes we need to have the tools available to address it and make it stop.”