Building a Stronger RVA

Your Voice, Our Future

As Richmond continues to grow and embrace ambitious climate goals through the RVAgreen 2030 Climate Equity Action Plan, we believe that empowering our community members is the bedrock of a truly resilient and equitable city. At the Office of Sustainability, we are committed to fostering transparent, accountable, and community-driven development that benefits every resident.

This page is your gateway to understanding key initiatives designed to ensure your voice is not just heard, but actively shapes our city's future. Here, you'll learn about the tools and policies that put our community at the heart of every project.

Explore Our Community-Focused Initiatives:

Below, you'll find pathways to understand how we're working to elevate community input, ensure fair compensation, and measure the real-world benefits of development in Richmond. Click on each section to learn more!

Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs): Shaping Our Future, Together!

  • What it is: Discover how these legally binding agreements ensure new development projects provide concrete benefits—like local jobs, affordable housing, and environmental protections—directly to our neighborhoods.

  • Why it matters: Learn how CBAs empower communities to negotiate directly with developers, fostering inclusivity, transparency, and collaboration for equitable growth.

Community Compensation: Valuing Your Voice our Approach for Richmond

  • What it is: Understand the City's approach to recognizing and compensating community members for their valuable time and effort in contributing to city policies and projects.

  • Why it matters: See how this initiative aims to remove barriers to participation, encourage diverse voices, and acknowledge the expertise residents bring to critical discussions.

Community Benefits Scorecards: Measuring Success for a Stronger Richmond

  • What it is: Learn about the tools we're developing to evaluate and track the true impact of development projects on our community, focusing on social, economic, and environmental benefits.

  • Why it matters: Find out how scorecards enhance transparency, promote accountability, and ensure that projects align with our community's priorities for climate action and resilience.

Why These Tools Matter to YOU:

Each of these initiatives—Community Benefits Agreements, our Community Compensation Approach, and Community Benefits Scorecards—are interconnected pieces of a larger strategy. Together, they form a robust framework designed to:

  • Elevate Community Power: Ensure your priorities are at the forefront of development.

  • Promote Fairness: Recognize and value the time and expertise you contribute.

  • Ensure Accountability: Track and verify that promised benefits materialize.

  • Build a Better Richmond: Create a city that grows equitably and sustainably for all its residents.

Your Partnership in Action:

The success of these initiatives relies on your active participation and engagement. We invite you to explore the pages above, learn more about how these tools work, and consider how you can get involved in shaping Richmond's future.

Your insights, experiences, and dedication are invaluable as we work together to build a more resilient, equitable, and vibrant Richmond.

Community Benefits Agreements

Shaping Our Future, Together!

Have you ever wondered how big development projects in our city can truly benefit us, the community? That's where Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) come in!

The RVAgreen 2030 Climate Equity Action Plan is all about making sure development projects not only help our city grow but also address the needs and priorities of our neighborhoods, especially when it comes to climate action and making our communities stronger. CBAs are powerful tools that help us achieve just that.

What is a Community Benefits Agreement (CBA)?

Imagine a written agreement between a developer and a community. That's essentially a CBA! It's a legally binding contract that outlines the specific benefits a development project will provide to the community, and the responsibilities of the developer to address any potential negative impacts.

Think of it as a roadmap that ensures new developments contribute positively to our neighborhoods, reinforcing the goals of the RVAgreen 2050 Plan.

Why Are Community Benefits Agreements So Important?

CBAs bring incredible value to our community by upholding key principles:

  • Inclusiveness: Your Voice Matters! Historically, community members, especially those from underrepresented groups, have been left out of important development decisions. CBA negotiations create a dedicated space where your concerns can be heard, addressed, and truly shape a project. It's about bringing all voices to the table.

  • Transparency: Clear Commitments for Everyone to See CBAs lay out all the promised benefits in one clear document. This means the public, community groups, the city, and other partners can easily understand and track the commitments made by the developer. No more guessing games! You can see what's promised and hold everyone accountable.

  • Coalition-Building: Stronger Together The process of negotiating a CBA often brings together different community groups that might not usually work together. Imagine environmental advocates, labor unions, local residents, and faith-based organizations all teaming up! This process builds powerful new alliances, uniting diverse stakeholders around shared goals like:

    • Creating good-paying jobs and career pathways for local residents.

    • Securing resources for important environmental projects.

    • Ensuring new affordable housing options.

  • Efficiency: Smoother Projects, Less Conflict When the city and community can agree on benefits early through a CBA, it can actually make the approval process for projects much smoother. This cooperative approach can help avoid lengthy delays and disagreements, meaning good projects can move forward faster, benefiting everyone sooner.

  • Clarity of Outcomes: Proving What Works CBAs provide a clear record of promised benefits, like the creation of new jobs or specific community improvements. This makes it easier for the city and community to track and show that these benefits actually happen. It's a way to demonstrate the real return on investment for our community.

How Do CBAs Work in Practice? An Example from Los Angeles

While we're building our local experience with CBAs, looking at examples from other cities can show us their power.

A notable example comes from Los Angeles with the LA Live Entertainment Complex. In the early 2000s, community groups, labor unions, and environmental organizations came together to form the "Figueroa Corridor Coalition for Economic Justice."

Through extensive negotiations with the developer, Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), they secured a groundbreaking CBA for the LA Live project. This agreement included:

  • Local Hiring Commitments: A significant percentage of construction and permanent jobs were designated for local residents, particularly those from disadvantaged communities.

  • Living Wage Requirements: The agreement mandated living wages for workers at the complex, ensuring good jobs for the community.

  • Affordable Housing Contributions: The developer committed funds towards creating and preserving affordable housing in the area.

  • Green Building Standards: The CBA included commitments to environmentally friendly construction practices.

  • Community Space and Amenities: The project agreed to provide public spaces and amenities that would benefit the surrounding neighborhoods.

This CBA for LA Live served as a national model, demonstrating how communities can successfully leverage large-scale developments to achieve tangible benefits and ensure equitable growth. It showed that by organizing and negotiating, communities can have a real say in shaping their future.

Ready to Learn More and Get Involved?

Community Benefits Agreements are a powerful way for Richmond to ensure that development truly serves our residents. We encourage you to:

  • Stay tuned for updates on local development projects and opportunities for community input.

  • Join local community groups that are working on development issues.

  • Share your priorities for future developments in our city.

Together, we can make sure RVA's growth benefits everyone!

Community Compensation

Valuing Your Voice: A Community Compensation Approach for Richmond

At the City of Richmond, we believe that truly effective policies and projects are built with the input of our community members. Your time, effort, and unique perspectives are incredibly valuable as we work together on important initiatives, especially those related to our climate future through the Office of Sustainability (OOS).

What is a Community Compensation Policy?

This policy outlines how the City of Richmond aims to recognize and compensate community members for their valuable time and effort when they volunteer to help inform or create city-wide policies, processes, or projects with the Office of Sustainability. It's about acknowledging the significant contribution you make and encouraging a wider, more diverse range of voices to participate.

Why Value Community Contributions?

Recognizing and compensating community contributions is crucial for several reasons:

  • Recognizing Time and Effort: We understand that sharing your insights, attending meetings, or participating in discussions requires your valuable time and effort. This approach seeks to acknowledge that commitment and the dedication it takes to contribute to city-wide initiatives.

  • Promoting Broader Participation: By addressing potential financial barriers like childcare or transportation, we hope to encourage participation from all parts of our community. Our goal is to ensure that more diverse voices are heard, leading to more inclusive and representative outcomes for Richmond.

  • Enhancing Policy Quality: When city policies and programs are informed by a wide range of community experiences and needs, they are stronger, more effective, and better reflect the realities of our neighborhoods. Valuing your input helps us create better solutions for everyone.

How Will Community Compensation Work?

This outlines general principles for when compensation may be provided or not, in the coming years:

When Compensation May Be Provided:

  • Direct Community Input is Needed: If community members participate in specific activities designed to gather targeted input for climate policies and programs, such as listening sessions, focus groups, or detailed surveys, compensation may be considered.

  • Time-Intensive Engagement: When individuals commit to ongoing or multi-session participation, such as serving on a climate advisory group or attending a series of workshops, the compensation approach would aim to reflect this significant time commitment.

  • Skill-Based Contributions: If community members provide specialized expertise, such as leading sustainability workshops, offering insights on environmental justice strategies, or co-facilitating discussions, their unique contributions could be recognized.

  • Reducing Barriers to Participation: To help ensure participation is accessible to all, compensation may be offered when financial constraints (like childcare needs, transportation costs, or lost wages) might otherwise prevent someone from taking part.

When Compensation May Not Be Necessary:

  • Public Outreach and General Information Events: Compensation is generally not expected for attending voluntary and casual public informational sessions, open houses, or general climate fairs where the primary purpose is broad communication rather than direct policy input.

  • Educational and Training Opportunities: If the primary benefit to participants is gaining valuable skills, certifications, or professional development (for example, training on home energy efficiency or sustainable gardening), direct compensation may not be provided.

  • Volunteer-Driven Initiatives: For community members participating in hands-on sustainability initiatives, such as tree plantings, litter cleanups, or community garden work, where the engagement is primarily voluntary and driven by civic spirit, compensation is generally not anticipated.

Looking Ahead: Your Partnership in Action

This Community Compensation Policy reflects the City of Richmond's commitment to building strong partnerships with our residents. As this approach is developed and implemented in the coming years, it aims to be a step forward in ensuring that your valuable contributions to our city's future are recognized and supported.

We encourage you to continue engaging with the Office of Sustainability and other city departments. Your partnership is essential as we work to create a more resilient, equitable, and sustainable Richmond for all.

Community Benefits Scorecard

Measuring Success: Community Benefits Scorecards for a Stronger Richmond

As Richmond grows and evolves, ensuring new development truly benefits our communities is essential. Just as we use Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs) to secure commitments, we also need tools to track if those promises are met and if projects are creating the positive impact we envision. That's where Community Benefits Scorecards come in!

What is a Community Benefits Scorecard?

A Community Benefits Scorecard is a powerful tool designed to evaluate and track the real-world impact of development projects on our neighborhoods. It focuses on the social, economic, and environmental benefits a project is expected to bring.

Think of it as a transparent report card for development. It can be used by various partners—including community organizations, developers, and government agencies like the Office of Sustainability (OOS)—to:

  • Assess potential benefits: Clearly identify what positive impacts a project aims to achieve.

  • Guide negotiations: Provide clear metrics for discussing and agreeing upon Community Benefits Agreements (CBAs).

  • Track progress: Monitor whether promised benefits are actually delivered over time.

This aligns directly with the RVAgreen 2050 Climate Equity Action Plan, specifically Action C-1.4: Community Benefits Scorecard and Agreements. This action directs us to develop tools with frontline communities to evaluate City development projects and ensure they address community priorities for climate action and resilience. We also aim to encourage the use of these scorecards by private developers.

Why Are Community Benefits Scorecards So Important?

Scorecards bring invaluable benefits to our community by promoting clarity and accountability:

  • Transparency and Accountability: A scorecard makes the promised community benefits visible and measurable. It helps everyone—from residents to city officials—understand exactly what's expected from a development project and whether those expectations are being met. This clear record fosters trust and allows the community to hold all parties accountable.

  • Informed Decision-Making: By outlining specific criteria and metrics, scorecards help evaluate potential projects with a clear, objective lens. This ensures that decisions about development are not just based on financial returns, but also on how well a project contributes to our community's well-being and long-term goals.

  • Community-Driven Priorities: The process of developing and using a scorecard allows community priorities to be directly incorporated into how projects are evaluated. It ensures that the benefits being measured are the ones that matter most to local residents, reinforcing our commitment to climate equity and resilience.

  • Continuous Improvement: Scorecards provide a way to track progress over the entire lifespan of a project. This allows for ongoing assessment and helps identify what's working well and where adjustments might be needed, leading to better outcomes for future developments.

How Community Benefit Evaluation Works: An Example from Seattle

While Richmond is developing its specific Community Benefits Scorecard, looking at how other cities approach structured evaluation of development projects can be insightful.

The City of Seattle, for instance, has embraced an Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) that involves a comprehensive framework to ensure development benefits existing communities and minimizes displacement. While not always called a "scorecard," this framework serves a similar purpose by guiding and evaluating projects based on key community priorities.

Through this initiative, Seattle uses a range of metrics and processes to assess how projects contribute to:

  • Affordable Housing: Ensuring new developments include or contribute to affordable housing options.

  • Living Wage Jobs and Local Hiring: Prioritizing the creation of good-paying jobs for local residents.

  • Small Business Support: Protecting and fostering local small businesses.

  • Cultural Preservation: Supporting community and cultural assets.

  • Green Infrastructure and Environmental Justice: Ensuring projects meet high environmental standards and address historical inequities.

The positive impact in Seattle is seen in guiding public and private investments toward projects that intentionally address equity goals. By having a clear evaluation framework, they can better ensure that development contributes to a more inclusive and resilient city, creating tangible benefits like more affordable housing units and local employment opportunities. This approach demonstrates how a structured evaluation tool helps a city consistently measure and achieve community-focused outcomes.

Your Partnership in Action: Shaping Richmond's Future

The development of Community Benefits Scorecards is a key step in making Richmond's growth truly equitable and beneficial for everyone. We believe that by working together, we can ensure that every new project contributes positively to our city's climate goals, strengthens our neighborhoods, and creates lasting advantages for our residents.

We encourage you to:

  • Stay informed about proposed development projects in Richmond.

  • Engage with the Office of Sustainability as we develop and refine these vital tools.

  • Share your input on what matters most to your community for future developments.

  • Learn about local scorecards from our friends at Virginia Community Voice.

Together, we can ensure that Richmond's progress is measured not just by growth, but by the tangible benefits it brings to every single one of us!