Today, I’m getting a drink with a politician. Coffeeshop, lunch spot, in-studio – those are perfectly fine places to get to know someone, but there’s nothing like a good whiskey to loosen up a conversation. Garrett Sawyer is meeting me at The Camel for happy hour on a Wednesday.
He is another one of the six current candidates we have for Mayor this November, the fifth one I’ve gotten to meet. His public service pedigree is strong. His experience ranges from working with the NAACP to serving in leadership at the Ethics Reform Commission and the Richmond Public Library. He’s considered an HR wizard and gets really excited about Richmond restaurants. He’s a happy product of Richmond Public Schools and a Richmond native. These are just things I know about him from his website. I’m excited to meet the real him. Also, I need a drink. It’s been a long week.
He walks in, silhouetted by the sunshine outside the dim bar’s doorway and picks me out of the sparse crowd. He’s charming, clearly attentive to style, and friendly to boot. His gentle manner cradles a striding confidence that could magnetize voters. He needs a drink too.
Christian Detres: So, kind of routine at this point, but the first thing is, who are you? Where are you from? Where are you coming from?
Garrett Sawyer: First, I want to start by thanking you. Thank you for taking the time to not only interview me, but everybody that’s running. It’s really important that we have these conversations and these open dialogues because a lot of people don’t know a lot of us. This is our opportunity to share who we are, our backgrounds, and what our true visions are for the city.
CD: Thank you for saying so. I want to add something to that for the readers. I want them to know how easy it was to get these interviews. All of you were like, “absolutely!” Our readers tend to be young, artistic, counter culturalists with little naturally occurring access to politicos. I’m happy to give them something of a seat at this table. I think this project is helping to soften the walls between them and understanding their options for representation. So, yeah, I’m proud that we have the opportunity to do this.
GS: I love that because, just from an accessibility perspective, that’s what anybody that’s running for office should be about. It should be about the people. It should be about every single person within the community and what their opinions are. I literally had a conversation about this earlier today. An issue that may exist in the first district may be completely different than the ninth district. We have to make sure we’re going to every single neighborhood with these conversations, getting feedback so we can do the best we can for our residents. That’s what I’m all about.
CD: That’s a top line issue. Everybody knows Mosby Court is gonna have different needs than Windsor Farms, but, squeaky wheel gets the grease. We have a lot of squeaky wheels. Speaking of squeaky wheels, which of them do you feel that you’re prepared to lube up, with your background? In fact, rewind. Tell me about your background.
GS: Well, I grew up in Southside Richmond, right near George Wythe High School and Swansboro Baptist Church, a great area around Roanoke street. I’m a product of RPSs as well. So from kindergarten to 12th grade, I matriculated through the school system. And I’m proud to say that. After that I went on to UVA to obtain my Bachelor’s in English language and literature. I got my Master’s in Public Administration and then I came back to the city. The first thing I said to myself is how do I give back? How do I stay invested? My mom was a single mother. She retired in 2018 from the Richmond Department of Social Services. I’m so blessed that she’s still here with us.
CD: How proud of you is she right now?
GS: She glows. She did ask cautiously, “are you sure you want to get involved in that?” I told her yes, absolutely. I’m invested in making sure that the city that I truly love moves in the right direction and has leadership that it needs to be able to do so. After I came back from college, I joined our local Richmond, Virginia branch of the NAACP. I got involved with the Richmond Crusade for Voters leadership for many, many years. I was fighting for the everyday issues and making sure that the people who felt like they didn’t have a voice had a voice.
From there, I started getting involved with local elections, helping people get elected to the School Board and to City Council. I been the campaign manager for two School Board Representatives, and recently served on a campaign for my dear friend Rae Cousins, who got elected in the 79th district. I’ve always had a passion for making sure people truly care about doing what’s right for our communities to get into office. Then make those changes.
So why are we here today? To answer that question, a little bit of frustration. I have grown tired of seeing a government that doesn’t work best for all of us. I have grown tired of looking at our City Hall and our city services. It doesn’t do the best we can for our residents. I’ve felt I’ve done enough in different ways, from being on boards, to commissions, and being a community advocate. But there’s more I can do. This is the best time to get somebody who truly has experience, with driving operational effectiveness, efficiencies, and processes. All in order to make the city work the best way that it possibly can.
CD: You’ve been involved at the grassroots level, you’ve matriculated through organizations and systems that have given you the trust to lead. What is it that you think you can accomplish as mayor that you haven’t been able to do? What’s your White Whale?
GS: I appreciate that question. You know, I think for me, the mayor is truly the visionary of the city. It is your responsibility to make sure that not only are you building the vision or the strategic plan, if you will, for what the city and how it should operate. But then making sure that you also build a team around you that can be able to enact that vision, day in and day out. This is not the Garrett show. I don’t want it to be the Garrett show.
Unfortunately, historically, you have people who’ve gotten into roles and it’s become more about them and it’s become about the actual work that needs to happen. And I’m not that person. I’m about being able to build things. That’s what I do for life, you know, for a living. We build teams, we build systems, and then we execute. So that’s what I want to focus on as mayor is being able to build that execution, build those teams. Also recognize that you know, we have amazing people that work in our city right now. Amazing. My mother was one of them. They are doing the work every single day. They’re facing the challenges that are presented before them and figuring out ways to navigate them and still be effective. I do want to recognize that, but there’s still a lot that we can do to make it better. You know, I think for as much money as residents in the city invest in taxes, it better be phenomenal.
CD: We have a surplus right now.
GS: That is the case. How are we in situations where our finance department is not operating?
CD: I want to ask about that. Are these funds compartmentalized in some way that is not accessible to the other programs and agencies that need them?
GS: The way I look at it? I think it’s all about prioritization. The mayor will announce his budget plan at the end of this month, and then we’ll go to eventually pass it. But it’s all about prioritization. It’s all about asking what are the key goals of the city? What are the key areas that we need to focus on and then make sure through conversations that we allocate what we can appropriately allocate into the particular areas to address the needs.
I think that’s what true budgeting looks like for me. Also making sure that we’re bringing the community to the table. You know, people think about participatory budgeting and making sure that their voices are being heard through this process.
CD: What does that look like? Participatory budgeting?
GS: Honestly, good question. I have two good friends that are leading that effort right now. For them, it’s being able to speak towards what’s happening in the budget. Being able to not only learn about what’s happening, but then to be able to take that information to their communities. The goal is to bring back results, or at least information, that’s constructive towards realizing what their vision of the city is.
CD: Okay. I’m glad you said that again, because I wanted to get back to the word vision. One thing I’ve seen as a commonality between the candidates I’ve spoken to, is that they all have a very keen eye on administrative systems, streamlining, budgeting, HR – retention of the right people, it’s a bit boilerplate and that’s not a bad thing. It seems there’s consensus across the board that these things need attention.
The mayor is in charge of the vision of the city. Making all of government equitable should be a base function. It’s not a feather in the cap. It’s the cap itself. Finding better housing for the unhoused and vulnerable among us shouldn’t have to be a feature. That should be a given.
I want to hear something visionary. Where is Richmond strong and attractive? What features or aspects of this place should we be highlighting? What are the things you want to draw people’s attention to? While we’re getting our house in order, so to speak, how are we decorating this space so it’s not just a well-oiled machine, but a comfortable and exciting one?
GS: The first thing is that the city is growing. I was born here in the late 80s. You know, born here, raised here. We have made such significant strides. We’ve had so many great advances here. I remember being here in the early 90s and you know, at first Richmond had the tagline “The Murder Capital”. People were afraid to go outside. We are not that anymore.
We should all be proud of that. We have made very positive changes to get us to where we are today. Now we’re booming. We’ve become a top destination for breweries, we have amazing restaurants – and I’m a foodie. We can talk about it a little bit later on, haha. There’s so much to celebrate, you know? Our concert scene is blowing up. Obviously we’re at the Camel right now, and there’s a band about to go on.
There’s so much happening in the city. What it all comes back to is people are not necessarily happy with how the government is functioning. So they can actually enjoy all those other things. They want to see a government where they know if they remit a payment for personal property tax for a car, that it’s accurate. That they’re not receiving a notification of some action that needs to be taken for something they no longer own. You want to have a system where you can rely on that all city services are going to be efficient and honest about their mission. Like you said, this is the baseline. If we’re not getting the baseline corrected, we’re not truly operating effectively and as efficiently as we can. We have to make improvements. And I’m not gonna say that things are not going well, but we should always be in a place where we’re trying to be better every year. That should be my metric.
CD: Okay, cool. Let’s move on. One of my peeves has been the woefully out of date systems we use to interact with the city and its services. I believe you have approached this after reading your website. What’s your take?
GS: One of my key points is modernizing City Hall city services and investing in critical technology for today. It’s painful, as a resident, to go through and utilize our systems. I can give you a direct example from 2023. It’s very close to my heart. In March 2023, I decided that I was going to tear down the deck in my backyard. I wanted to build a brand new deck. I went out to find contractors, and the first thing they clarified was that I live in the city of Richmond. I said “absolutely, proudly!” and they said, “I can’t take your business because of the inefficiencies within the permitting process.”
CD: Wow. So you have a contractor turning down a job, turn down money, because the city is a pain in the ass?
GS: The individual who actually ended up doing the work for me was a family friend. So he was a little bit more inclined to go through the process with me, which I appreciate. But you know, I submitted that permit in March. I didn’t get approved until almost August. For a demo and rebuild.
CD: Is that scalable to our largest development projects? I know some of them linger for a long time, because they’re huge and complicated. On the permitting side though, are they favored? Are they eating up all the oxygen in the room?
GS: I’ve had the opportunity to speak with developers and real estate entities within the city and the feedback I’ve gotten from them is that it’s the same. It’s the same hurdles they’re experiencing, They’re having to pay 1000s of dollars to be able to try to get their permits moved along. It is the same permitting office. There are some really great people in the permitting office truly trying their hardest to navigate the issues that persisted, but some of it goes right back to our investment in technology. Our systems are just not strong enough to be able to help people navigate through the process.
So for an example you know, I was a month in at this point, trying to get my deck re-done and I still have my permit to be approved. I kept calling and every once in a while my contractor did as well. And then on day 31, they were like “oh you owe $3.66.” And I said “where is that on the website?” If I had known that I would have absolutely taken care of that. Soon as I heard about it.
CD: I would have sent a $5 bill and said keep the change, like just get it done.
GS: The individual I spoke with on the phone was very understanding, and got me through to the next part of the process. But that was a month lost on the ability to move this forward. That gets back to things not being able to sync and talk to one another. We need to come up with a strategy towards assessing the challenges that may persist. Help them get resources, additional training. There may be allocation issues that we need to address. And maybe that’s a tiered approach. Maybe there’s bringing in third party vendors that help in the interim until they level up to where they need to be.
There’s assessments outside of that to look into as well. We have to vet the technology we employ. How can we infuse the stakeholders that are within city hall, or even external users as residents of the city, to test it out before it goes live? To make sure that it actually works and addresses the different lenses through which people will utilize this system? That’s what we need to be focusing on to make sure that we’re building systems that work for everybody.
CD: It seems that when we put our efforts into fixing this, or much of anything actually, we keep going to the same playbook and getting hit by the same obstacles. We keep going to the well we know, not the well with water in it.
GS: I couldn’t agree more. My entire tagline of my campaign has Reimagine Richmond, because I am tired of doing the same old, same old, and expecting a different result. Not everything that we try out is going to work, but that’s okay as well. Being able to try something different, to pull in stakeholders that are more than capable and competent? There are people waiting in the wings right now that are ready to step up today, if they were called upon. They are ready to do the work. They just need to be called to the table.
I have spent the last 17 years of my life professionally in human resources and operations. It is my jam. I love it. I love being able to build culture and make it one that people can appreciate and feel comfortable in. To feel like they can grow within that culture. But operationally, I’m all about making sure that that it gets from A to Z. If it doesn’t do that, it’s not worth doing. We need to start engaging with our actual residents, more than what we’re doing right now. I think our city council representatives do the best job that they possibly can, holding their community meetings on a monthly basis, hearing directly from residents. Having attended a lot of those meetings over the last 20 years in my life, it’s always the same people who go to those meetings. Yeah. We have to be able to reach others. That’s what I’ve seen.
CD: There’s a community that’s engaged, and will always be engaged, whether you like it or not. There’s a lot more people that aren’t. To that effort, could we expect a more robust use of social media from the city?
GS: Yes! I’m glad you mentioned that. There’s ways that we can do better from a community engagement perspective. You know, we talked a little bit about how to reach these people. There’s a few out of the box ideas that I have. We should be going directly into communities where we’d likely find computer-challenged and less mobile Richmonders. Why can’t we go to a community meeting with ThinkPads and say, let me help you remit your payment. And we can do that on a monthly basis. Why not set up hubs and communities where people have easy access instead of having to try to come down to city hall, where parking is a massive challenge. Why not do that? Why not grow on social media platforms? Right now, it’s lackluster.
CD: Showing that the city has a technological literacy about itself says a lot without using any words. We’re talking about vision. How to get the city to be something bigger and better than itself, not because it’s not good now, but because if we’re not moving forward, what are we doing? Right?
Tell me about your vision for the public schools. Where are the places you feel that we can improve?
GS: We have student achievement issues that we need to address. If we do not reach a certain academic achievement level out of our schools by 2025, we’re going to be in a different conversation on how the school system is actually going to be governed, if you will.
CD: Tell me what changes that brings. I don’t think many people know what the implication of that is.
GS: We are currently under review by our state government. If we do not get to a certain amount of accreditation for schools within RPS, the state will step in and they intervene. And then they will have their approach on how the school system will operate. We’ve seen that in other school systems throughout the state of Virginia. We should be 100% focused on making sure all of our kids are prepared to thrive and be competitive, regardless of whether they continue their education at a trade school, or a two to four year institution. We should also be taking care of our educators putting themselves out there every single day to make sure that our kids have the best education possible.
CD: Let me follow up on that. The city has been having a challenge getting our schools to the level of accreditations that they need to not be under the threat of the state intervention. They would essentially be pushing our locally elected leaders aside and getting it done. OR that would be the plan anyway. Why should we not welcome that considering the state we’re currently in? Because, at the end of the day, we want our schools to work. We don’t care who gets the credit for it. It just needs to happen.
GS: It does need to get done. We have elected our school representatives. We have a superintendent and that’s what they’re there for. That’s their job. They are on the hook every single day to make sure that this school system is operating to the best capability that it can.
CD: Explain to me why it should matter to the parent of a child failing in the current regime, whether or not the elected official keeps their position that they’ve been failing at or not. If the job can get handed to someone at the state level that has a track record of succeeding…
GS: I say that to say that there still needs to be a high level of accountability and transparency to how we move forward. If it stays in the current structure or if it pivots a little bit. The goal, the responsibility doesn’t change. My goal is that I want to make sure that we get every school accredited. We need to look at how we take models that we’ve seen work in other places, and learn from best practices.
CD: Have we compartmentalized ourselves outside of, maybe not in opposition, but maybe in competition, with the counties? They’re achieving results that we would dream for right now. How are we not working with or learning from the lessons that are just happening right down the street?
GS: Let me speak to that directly. It goes back to our conversation about permitting. You know, you go to Henrico, go to Chesterfield, you go to Hanover, their turnaround times are literally within a few weeks. We should be able to go from one municipality to the next and ask what are you doing that’s working? What best practices do you have in place in policies, procedures? How are you operationally handling the day in and day out? What do your staffing levels look like? If you had to bring in a third party to help as you were going through integration of a new system, how did you navigate that?
CD: Well, what’s stopping us from doing that now? Seems pretty easy.
GS: Like I said, earlier, it’s about making the ask. It’s extending the olive branch and not being so caught off in our thing.
CD: Being proactive combines motivation and desire to fix a problem before the crisis, but it also involves being able to spend the time to do it. If you’re constantly working on putting out dumpster fires, then you don’t get to actually give attention to the other priorities slowly sliding into a ditch behind you. We don’t have an infinite amount of resources, whether that be human, technological, or financial. I’m sure it’s escaped no one that the thrust of this series is to take a George Carlin-esque approach in that we’re done hearing excuses. We’re finished with it. I think you, and the other people seeking public office right now, are inheriting that attitude. You all are going to have to jump onto the merry-go-round at full speed.
GS: I agree. I think all that I’ve been about with this campaign, and just in general, whether it’s this or just the work I do professionally – is assessment and consensus building. Whoever gets the Mayor’s job, obviously, I think it’s going to be me, you have to be able to go in and do assessments department by department. Be with the key stakeholders, be with the department heads. I’m pretty sure they have a lot of challenges that they don’t speak about. I’m sure many of them haven’t been able to turn to needy issues because maybe there’s a dumpster fire that they’re dealing with on week one. Sometimes big problems eat up all the bandwidth. But you know, our job is to listen. Only after listening can we build the actual implementation process of how we’re going to address those challenges for them.
Some of the very visible problems that we’re experiencing right now are easy fixes. We have to be able to re-allocate resources internally, to ensure that we can address these challenges efficiently. We can pull in our community partners to help get this work done. It can’t continue to be done in silos. We can’t continue to push on the same overworked population and expect greater outcomes. They’re doing the absolute best that they can, but they only can do it with what they have.
CD: I want to move forward to aggressive policing. There’s no easy way around this issue. There’s no easy way through it. You can’t fix it by yourself. As Mayor, you still have real human beings at the police department, including the chief and everyone underneath them, that you need to get to cooperate with you. Where do you move forward with what we have now? Better question, what can we hold
you accountable for?
GS: You can hold me accountable for making the police department work for you as a citizen. Point blank period. There. That’s the foundation. Having been raised in the city, I’ve seen many different police chiefs. I’ve seen many different approaches to what policing looks like. Obviously 2020 was a critical year, not only just Richmond but nationwide. Policing was reviewed and what people deemed critical to see, charted a new pathway for me. What I’m gonna do day one, even before day one, is sit down with our police chief and communicate what the community is saying. To initiate programs we need to look into putting in place. This is what we need to do to strengthen our community policing approach. There’s more chance of being effective when everyone’s sitting at the table talking and not yelling, for sure. The end goal of equity, and the police working with the community- Let’s not pretend like that we’re gonna sit down and talk it through and when we get up, we’re all gonna see it the same way.
We need to look at mental health and making sure that we are investing in training our police to approach individuals properly. Let’s figure out different ways to assess a situation so we can have outcomes that are not adversarial to citizens of the city.
One of my dear friends several years ago created an application called the SWAT app. Brandon Anderson. I’m sure he’s going to love being name-dropped, haha. His partner was in an unfortunate situation with the police in their community. And they’re part of this was to make sure that we have access to body camera imagery. Regardless of whether we’re talking about police or any other agency, accountability and transparency has to be at the head of its mission. If we’re not doing that, we’re never going to be able to build trust within our communities.
CD: How does the mayor hold the police chiefs’ feet to the fire on this issue? What kind of ‘hand’ do you actually have on this? The police unions factor in too. How do you get around them to effect real accountability?
GS: It’s all about being able to have consistent credible conversations with them about what’s happening, being able to look at data, get community input, that’s how you hold their feet to the fire. There’s no way on earth I can turn around four years, eight years from now, whatever the timeframe that the city will allow me to serve as mayor, and we’re in the same place. That would be unacceptable.
CD: I feel like right now that our police departments serve at the leisure of their Union. I’m very pro union. I am for a police union specifically. But when it comes to disciplinary actions, when it comes to being able to hold our officers accountable, I don’t see how it is appropriate for them to be in the room. We do not pay taxes to the Union. The idea that a force would retain an officer that betrays his oath because his union says that you can’t fire him? That has to change. Discipline does not come from the fucking Union. It comes from the state. How do we rectify this?
GS: It takes the conversations. Nothing’s going to change in a silo. It’s literally about being the representative for what the community is asking for. “This is what we’re demanding, and this is the scope and timeframe in which we want to be able to see this change.” I completely understand what you’re saying. I appreciate that. Our police union here is in a good place. They feel like they have a police chief that they can actually rely on and trust. And that’s great, because we weren’t there for a long time. As a new mayor comes in place, what we need to continue to build that strong partnership and have those tough conversations. Like if we don’t do that, and if I don’t come back to you and a year as a Christian, we talked about ABCDE and this is what we’re going to do to address those things, then I’m wasting your time. I shouldn’t be even talking to you, simple as that.
CD: Okay, one last thread to pull. What parts of our culture give you joy? What parts of Richmond culture get you going, like, where do you go on a Saturday night?
GS: You know what excites me about the city? What gets me going is unique small businesses and the entrepreneurs that start them. I have a lot of friends that own small business owners here. I know plenty of people that own barber shops all over the city. And I love to see them thrive. Andre Julius – he just opened up his own bespoke suit company. He’s fantastic. You have to check out his IG. There’s so much greatness that’s happening within our small businesses throughout the city that I love to celebrate. I love just being able to walk into a small business that I haven’t been in yet. I’m like “let me throw you on my IG. Let me throw them on my Facebook.”
The Stables at Belmont is my spot! Not too far away from VMFA, they have some of the best food in the city. It’s the best kept secret. It’s a very quaint spot. I love their food. I love their experience. I have spent many evenings and, oh, just this past New Years’ with friends before we went to a party. Check it out!
But there’s so many other restaurants. I’m mad into this haha, it’s what gets me excited. Whenever a new restaurant opens, me and my four closest friends immediately have a group chat and figure out when we’re going. Being able to immerse ourselves in new experiences, and then be able to share our experiences with our friends and get them to go too.
CD: That’s nice. I think showing your face around town as Mayor really matters. It matters a lot.
GS: You can catch me on a Friday at a restaurant or at a movie. Usually Bowtie or CineBistro. I’m a movie critic, if you will. Every year, whenever they announce the 10 films nominated for Oscars, I have to see all of them. I have to give my own opinion. I loved American Fiction. It played better than actually reading the book in some ways. They did an excellent job with that.
CD: My only point even going down this route is that I think that there’s something to inviting our leaders to experience the city that we see everyday. The things that make all the hassles worth it. I think it helps keep our elected officials from getting disconnected from the lifestyles their constituencies hold dear and want to protect. Go check a band out on a Tuesday night. In these conversations, I don’t hear enough awareness of the excellent homegrown entertainment and culture from the people seeking to lead. It’s good to know exactly what you’re trying to protect by making the city run smoothly. Why be efficient if it’s not to give you more time to enjoy yourself, your family, and your friends? Like, come hang.
There is a lot to be said for being a part of the culture. Or at least drinking it in. Local arts tend to be undervalued in political discussions, not because politicians don’t understand its value, but because they rarely experience it for themselves. What’s bubbling up right here in town is phenomenal. Like those small business owners, our artists should be supported in kind. There are so many small businesses, venues, art galleries, underground shit that that probably shouldn’t exist (but we’re not telling you about those).
Sorry, I’m just now realizing what time it is. The thing I’m supposed to go to is at six. Oh, yeah. All right. So how about this? We have a lot so we’re gonna leave it there. Cool? Great talk man!
For more information on Garrett Sawyer HERE
