Staff at Richmond’s water treatment plant never informed their boss, Department of Public Utilities Director Scott Morris, that excess fluoride had been discharged into the region’s drinking water on April 23, text and email correspondence between officials shows. Instead, Morris found out about the incident four days later from the Virginia Department of Health. And Morris didn’t notify Mayor Danny Avula, the correspondence shows. Avula found out when Henrico County Manager John Vithoulkas sent him a frustrated text message regarding the situation — to which Avula replied that he had not even heard about it. The Times-Dispatch obtained the correspondence via a records request under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act.

Richmond’s interim inspector general says he has “deep concerns” about the firing of the city’s former top watchdog, Jim Osuna, according to correspondence obtained by the Richmond Times-Dispatch. In a Tuesday email sent to 8th District Councilwoman Reva Trammell, interim Inspector General Foster Curtiss wrote that he and Osuna “shared a vision about what this office should be.” “I believe we may be headed in a different direction after his departure,” Curtiss wrote in the message to Trammell. “My overarching concern is for the employees of the OIG who are demoralized.”

Four major Lynchburg business owners and investors are calling out members of the Lynchburg City Council for their behavior and actions behind the dais. This all started after Tuesday night’s council meeting, where members discussed whether or not to go into closed session to discuss another council member’s actions against all three council-appointed positions. Dave Henderson, who is a managing partner with Hen and Hound Management Company, sent a scathing email to the council Wednesday afternoon. Vice Mayor Curt Diemer said he’s glad citizens are paying close attention to the city council now, but also hopes they are more concerned with where their money is going. However, all four business owners said that in order for the council to have those discussions, council members need to grow up and learn to compromise.

Hopewell’s city attorney says it is not his place “to get crossways” with anyone on City Council because they are all his clients, but he added that he plans to answer a charge of assault being brought against him by a councilor following a brief confrontation at a contentious meeting earlier this week. In a telephone interview May 16 with The Progress-Index, Anthony Bessette said it was “on video and in clear view of the public” what transpired at the May 13 meeting between him and Ward 7 Councilor Dominic Holloway. Bessette said he planned to go to the Hopewell Police headquarters on the morning of May 19 to personally receive the summons. According to a livestream of the meeting and video shot by The Progress-Index, Holloway took offense to Bessette putting his hand on Holloway’s arm as the councilor reached over to point something out to him.

In the late 1950s, when he was a graduate student at the University of Chicago, James Q. Wilson became curious about a redevelopment plan being considered in a nearby neighborhood. He dropped in on a few public meetings and discovered something interesting. Though there seemed to be plenty of support for the project in the community, the meetings were dominated by active and vociferous opponents. Wilson, who became a legendary social scientist, ended up writing a paper about the situation and enunciating a more general principle: When planners open up their plans to local debate, it’s largely the naysayers who show up and complain. Public participation, however well-intended, most often yields nothing more than a great deal of public grousing. Over the years, there has been broader academic research on the Wilson principle, and scholars have come up with some consistent conclusions: Not only is public participation in planning decisions indeed dominated by opponents of significant change, but the participants themselves don’t reflect the broader community. Much of this research has been summarized by The Urbanist, a Seattle-based nonprofit.