East Enders trying to visit the dog run on the backside of Chimborazo Park recently have found themselves on the outside looking in. As part of its long-delayed construction project to shore up Government Road, the Department of Public Works has fenced off the access road and sidewalk leading to the park’s lower level, severing it from the neighborhood without warning or explanation.

“If you want to use the dog park you can either drive your car down the stairs at the end of North 32nd Street, or wade through shoulder-high weeds” that have choked the paths down the hill, Windsor Bisbee, a Church Hill resident and the owner of two border collies, said wryly.

It’s just the latest neighborhood frustration with DPW over its management of the Government Rd. project, which finally got underway in July 2026 after more than two years of postponements. At a meeting in late August, residents asked city officials pointed questions about plans for pedestrian and cyclist safety on the windy stretch of road upon its reopening. With representatives from DPW and the Richmond Department of Transportation (or RDOT; despite its name, it is not a departmental authority and exists within DPW) short on specifics and requesting more time to respond, city council president and longtime 7th District member Cynthia Newbille promised at that gathering to provide updates on October 1st.

But when residents returned Chimborazo Park’s Round House on the appointed date for a follow-up meeting with the politician, they encountered a problem. Newbille and her liaison, Sam Patterson, were there, as were officials from the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Community Facilities (DPR) and RDOT. But according to multiple sources in the room, Tim Lewis, the DPW staffer managing the project, did not show. Without a decision-maker from the department overseeing the project, the meeting was unproductive.

“If we residents can spend our personal time to help out our neighborhood, city employees should at least do their jobs and not act like we’re just huge pains in their collective asses,” Kathi Sanders, a Church Hill resident who was present for both meetings, told The Lookout in an email exchange this week. She wasn’t the only one rankled by Lewis’ absence. During the meeting, Newbille appeared annoyed at not being able to get ahold of DPW’s lead herself, even going so far as distributing his phone number and email to attendees and encouraging them to try to contact him directly with their complaints.

“I’ve not always been a big fan of Dr. Newbille but, in this case, I do feel that she is saying the right words and making a solid effort thus far by scheduling these meetings and showing up ready to engage,” said Sanders. She credited DPR and RDOT staffers for at least showing up to read previously composed answers residents’ questions stemming from the August confab, and trying to answer new ones about the sudden closure of the access road to the dog park. A Parks employee promised to contact DPW’s long-tenured director, Bobby Vincent, about the neglected mowing on the sloped paths leading down to the park’s lower tier. (As Bisbee noted, they are currently so overgrown as to be unusable, rendering the long, steep staircase at the terminus of N. 32nd St. the only viable route down to the dog park—and only for those residents who can handle them.)

Beyond that, the meeting “finally got to the point where it was just futile,” Sanders said. “The sidewalk and road closure [to the dog park] have to be dealt with by Tim Lewis.”

Neither Newbille nor DPW responded to a request for comment.

On October 7th, Debra Sinnott, the president and founder of the Chimborazo Park Conservancy and the leader of the Friends of Chimborazo Park group, sent an email addressed to Lewis and DPW’s long-tenured director Bobby Vincent laying out the compounding issues. Copied to her message were Newbille, Patterson, RDOT director Andy Boenau, DPR director Christopher Frelke, and DPR deputy director Shamar Young, as well as several community members, and The Lookout.

“We were told at the original walk-through meeting in August that the road access to lower Chimborazo Park would remain open, and access to the dog parks would not be affected,” she wrote. Residents were notified of a closure in early September that lasted a week. But now, with the road, sidewalk, and cobblestone stairs down to the large dog park (the one further east) all obstructed by construction fencing, DPW had offered no notification as to the duration or purpose of this unannounced closure.

“We request that the city re-open the sidewalk access and mow and maintain the pathway from the Round House to lower Chimborazo,” Sinnott wrote. “We also request that Tim Lewis, the project engineer, attend the community meetings […] and work with the community, to ensure we can continue to have access to our park while the project continues.”

Of the city representatives Sinnott copied, only one replied to the group. “DPW has contracted a company to provide the grass cutting-they should start very soon-” [sic] wrote Patterson on the afternoon of October 7th. At publication, it remains unmowed.

To Sinnott, an Army veteran, the city bureaucracy’s apparent disregard for the community demands more scrutiny. “I want to force the issue so that the public knows and understands the city's rationale on why they did this,” she told The Lookout in a phone interview earlier this week. And if the thicketed paths remain unmowed, the route to the dog park remains cut off, and DPW remains unreachable?

“You have to go higher […] maybe this is something that the mayor needs to take a look at,” she said, noting that the East End’s own Danny Avula helped push through stalled construction on the sidewalk redesign at the entrance to Chimborazo Park this past summer. “But that doesn't fix the way city government interacts with city residents.”

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!

Less than a month after releasing a Saturday social-media video addressing the future of Richmond’s seven-figure deal with controversial surveillance firm Flock Safety, Mayor Danny Avula dropped a sequel. “Today, I am announcing that the city will not move forward with the Flock [automated license-plate reader, or ALPR] contract when it’s up for renewal,” Avula said in a video published mid-morning on October 10th. According to The Richmonder, the city’s current contract expires in June 2027.

It’s a win for Richmond residents who have been organizing against the always-on, AI-powered tech for nearly a year. In that time, many East Enders, who drive past the solar-paneled Flock surveillance devices the Richmond Police Department has placed all over the neighborhood and the city have joined the “Block Flock” movement; their yellow yard signs can be seen across Church Hill. But Steven Keener, Ph.D., an assistant professor who teaches crime and mental health courses at Christopher Newport University and also sits on the board of directors of the nonpartisan criminal-justice reform group Justice Forward Virginia groundwork, told The Lookout that Avula’s retreat on the ALPR issue—which comes after Goochland and Henrico Counties both announced their own plans to de-Flock themselves in recent months—is not yet complete.

“Not renewing the city’s Flock contract is a good thing,” Keener, a Church Hill resident, told The Lookout by text. “However, it is simply performative if we leave the surveillance infrastructure intact and allow a new vendor to take its place.” As Flock’s brand has become radioactive this year due to high-profile abuses, hacks, and breaches, many municipalities have switched to competing ALPR vendors with less public name-recognition, like Axon or Leonardo.

To Keener, Avula’s choice to let RPD keep operating its Flock system until next summer, rather than removing them immediately, is confounding. “Every day these cameras run, they record the private daily movements of residents without a warrant or community oversight,” he said. “I hope the city moves forward with a full ALPR ban and establishes a mandatory public input ordinance to ensure future surveillance tech is not imposed on our city again."

Since the Richmond Police Department’s 1st Precinct shifted to its new $13.9-million digs down by Richmond Jail this past April, its old home at 2503 Q St. has sat vacant. After some chatter this summer, the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development last week published a request for qualifications (RFQ) to solicit interest from firms to redevelop the 0.93-acre site. The document, which you can read in full on The Lookout’s share drive, outlines five goals for a mixed-use project on the land, including “ensuring that at least 20% of the housing units developed on the Site are affordable to households earning up to 80% of Area Median Income (AMI).”

Developers that make it through the RFQ process will be invited to submit their actual proposals for redeveloping the lot. Per the published timeline, those RFP submissions are scheduled for spring of next year.

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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