If “budgets are moral documents,” as the old saw holds, then the story of Chimborazo Elementary School’s privately funded playground is as much a case study in right vs. wrong as it is a heartwarming tale of neighborhood generosity.

The Richmond Public Schools’ (RPS) low-slung branch on East Marshall Street has for years offered its 3rd-5th graders little more than a boring, oft-broiling blacktop for recreation. Thanks to yeomanly fundraising efforts from the school’s parent-teacher association (PTA), assistance from the Richmond Ed Fund, and volunteers from CarMax and neighbors across the East End—plus a spotlight from the local news—Jaguars recess will now center around a brand-spankin’-new playground, replete with all the bells and whistles. The total fundraising haul topped out around $250,000.

“The sheer amount of resources it takes to bring kids solid play structures is unfathomable, and I had zero idea of what it would take when we got started,” Denise Hicks, a Chimbo Elementary parent and PTA member, told The Richmonder’s intrepid education reporter Victoria Ifatusin at the ribbon-cutting for the new playground Thursday. “And now we know.”

It’s fitting Ifatusin was on hand to report on the celebration. Just a day prior, she won a lawsuit against the Richmond School Board, which a Richmond Circuit Court judge ruled had improperly redacted public documents related to alleged embezzlement by a former senior employee of Richmond Public Schools. In 2022, that now-separated RPS head of facilities scored a $30,000 raise on his already-six-figure salary after Fox Elementary School was destroyed in a fire—something CBS 6 uncovered only after obtaining public records showing “dozens of instances of school staff throughout RPS submitting work orders for fire alarm panel issues,” including at Fox.

These dismal dots connect. “The Church Hill neighborhood school requested that the Richmond Public Schools division include $250,000 in the budget for the playground, but was rejected in consecutive years,” Ifatusin reported. Providing more than a parking lot for Chimbo Elementary’s kids to play simply wasn’t in the budget. But when RPS forced The Richmonder to lawyer up and go to court to obtain records that belong to the taxpayer, it chose to waste the public’s time and money in an effort to obstruct the details of its richly paid former employee’s alleged waste of the public’s time and money. Now, the school board will likely be on the hook for the nonprofit newsroom’s attorney’s fees, too. (Rightly so.) That would mean more misspent dough that could’ve helped fund a playground instead.

Zoom out further and you’ll only find more dots to connect between the city’s sloppy, shady, or senseless top-down stewardship of public dollars, and the inspiring efforts of rank-and-file East Enders to improve Chimbo Elementary from the ground up.

Sorry Jaguars, a quarter-million-dollar playground just isn’t in the cards; the Avula administration needed to spend more than twice that sum on getting pantsed in court defending the bizarre bungling of former mayor/failed lieutenant governor candidate Levar Stoney’s flack instead.

Don’t forget the Jefferson Avenue street redesign! Here’s a pop quiz, kids: do you think dragging that project out for over a decade increased or decreased its overall cost?

Oh, you thought maybe it would be cool to have recess on something other than asphalt? Yes, that would be cool, but I think you’ll agree it’d be much cooler if the city dug an unpermitted gravel pit at Chimborazo Playground and tossed $68,000 into it instead. Right?

Examples abound. There’s the ~$3 million worth of alleged fraud finagled out of the Richmond Fire Department over the course of eight years without detection; the feds just filed charges last week. Then again, corruption is a matter of bad actors and bad oversight, while bad budgeting is a matter of moral bankruptcy. On the latter front, some recent Richmond line items jump out.

Since 2024, Richmond has spent more than a million bucks on its Flock surveillance network, an always-on, artificial intelligence-enabled digital dragnet that tracks you wherever you drive and is ripe for abuse by the police department and the Trump administration alike. In 2023, Stoney et al. negotiated a ~$30-million give-away to the multibillion-dollar operator of Allianz Amphitheater. That same year, City Council greenlit $130 million in general obligation bonds for the baseball-stadium boondoggle, which just this month saw the city draw down $25 million from its “emergency” fund to purchase Virginia Commonwealth University’s Sports Backers Stadium.

I could go on, and I bet you could, too. But for the sake of our collective sanity, let’s return our focus to Chimborazo Elementary’s dazzling new playground. Bravo to the school’s PTA, and all the donors, and to CarMax employees and other volunteers who showed up over the course of three days to build the damn thing for free in the heat. It’s a spectacular achievement that will benefit the East End’s children—and by extension, all of us—for years to come. But two things can be true, and often are. This grassroots effort was commendable and transformative, and the city must do better to serve its citizens so such efforts become less necessary. That requires our city’s leaders treating budgets more like moral documents, prioritizing community investment over corporate giveaways and flashy fiascos.

When there’s no money in the banana stand at 900 E. Broad St. for a public-school playground, but plenty to pay for police equipment and grease the wheels on private development, it may not technically be wrong. But it certainly isn’t right.

Possum Poetry is original verse written exclusively for The Lookout by Penelope Poubelle, the Lookout’s litter critter-at-large. If you spot roadside trash you’d like her to immortalize in doggerel, email a photo to [email protected]. All submissions anonymous!

After two and a half years, the Department of Public Works finally awarded a contract for the $10-million reconstruction project on Government Road. As The Lookout reported in mid-June, contractor Posillico, Inc. is slated to begin work in earnest next month, with a projected completion date in spring of next year.

The Lookout obtained the 44-page schematic for the job from Ross Catrow, the director of the city’s Office of Strategic Communication. Review it in full on The Lookout’s share drive

Courtesy of Lookout reader Diane Olearnick, the latest edition of East End Animal Friend is live now, and cute as hell:

As a reminder, East End Animal Friend is a new recurring feature spotlighting the many creature companions of Church Hill and its surrounds. Fill out this form to introduce your beloved animal(s) to the neighborhood in a future edition of The Lookout!

Happenings on The Hill is a digital bulletin board for events, causes, and other items of interest to East Enders that don’t necessarily merit full editorial treatment. Got something for a future edition? Email the relevant details, links, etc. to [email protected] for consideration!

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