Robert Bobb Group plans to present fiscal strategy for Hopewell at Tuesday council meeting

HOPEWELL — The group that pulled Petersburg from financial ruin seven years ago has its sights set on Hopewell, and that is not welcome news to the Youngkin administration who sprung for a private accounting firm to make recommendations to improve the city’s policy and offered $200,000 to bring in people to implement it.

At a special meeting Tuesday night of Hopewell City Council, the Robert Bobb Group will outline strategy for getting Hopewell’s checkbooks balanced and its nonexistent bond rating up. The planned eight-month project to right the ship is expected to cost the city $988,000, a tab that City Manager Dr. Concetta Manker said will be covered by leftover American Rescue Plan Act funds.

Monday, a spokesperson for Gov. Glenn Youngkin sent a statement to The Progress-Index criticizing the anticipated agreement, saying in essence that the city was turning its back on the administration after reaching out to previous administrations with no response.

“The governor is disappointed that, despite the city being provided a roadmap by the commonwealth to address their longstanding issues, the city’s leadership continues to double down on a string of decisions that further exacerbate long-standing cracks in Hopewell’s financial foundation,” Macaulay Porter said in the statement.

Hopewell and the governor’s office have been embroiled in a political staredown ever since Stephen Cummings, Youngkin’s secretary of finance, called Hopewell’s fiscal practices “a five-alarm fire” at a council meeting last May. Since 2014, Hopewell has not submitted a state-required annual comprehensive financial report [ACFR] on time detailing city revenues and expenditures, and that has negatively affected the city’s ability to issue bonds for sorely needed capital improvement projects such as a new fire station.

More: State urges Hopewell to get financial house in order: 'This cannot continue'

In July, after telling the city it had no more funding to help get the books in order, Cummings sent a letter to the city saying that the General Assembly’s budget-writing committees had agreed to send Hopewell an additional $200,000 to address its needs. It came with the conditions that Hopewell hire a short-term city manager and finance director with experience in government turnarounds to replace, for the time being, Manker and finance director Michael Terry.

More: Interim hired as permanent Hopewell city manager despite calls from state for 'experience'

Opponents said the offer amounted to bribery and said the state was trying to block them from giving the city manager’s job to Manker. Manker had been interim leader since August 2022 when March Altman left to take the helm in Petersburg.

Her backers on council claimed she had accomplished more in her short time in the office than Altman had done his entire four-year tenure; therefore she was the right person for the job. The others said Hopewell should take the state's offer and let Manker serve as deputy city manager for a six-month period, strengthening her resume and giving her necessary city-management experience to be the permanent replacement.

On separate, similar votes, council rejected the state’s offer and gave the job to Manker full-time.

Del. Carrie Coyner, a Chesterfield Republican whose district includes Hopewell, stopped short of calling the move a rebuff of the state. Instead, she said, the motives were more political than anything else, and that is her biggest frustration point.

“The city asked for help in figuring out where their problems were and how to fix them. The state brought in a very prominent auditing firm to help not only figure out the problems but provide a turnaround plan for protection,” Coyner said Monday after a groundbreaking for Plenty Unlimited Inc.’s vertical-farming complex in Enon. “We’ve offered again to help with what the report said needed to be done, and that was rejected.”

Still, Coyner said, she was “hopeful” RBG would be able to persuade the city that something needs to be done.

So what will the group be doing?

Manker said the agreement with RBG calls for “hands-on support to help thee backlog of annual audits and to assist the city with achieving a clean audit.” Once that is done, the group will present a strategy for “maintaining good financial health” through new policies and procedures.

“They have read the audit report provided by Alvarez & Marsal, and they have a good working relationship with them,” Manker said. “There may be opportunities where the Robert Bobb Group may reach out to Alvarez and Marsal regarding their roadmap for clarity. But I fully expect that the Robert Bobb Group will address the issues and make their own recommendations as they dig into the work.”

The contract would call for RBG to work with all city departments, not just the city manager and the finance office. That would include the city’s commissioner of the revenue and treasurer, both of whom are constitutional officers directly elected and not technically city employees.

Is Hopewell the next Petersburg?

Seven years ago, the Robert Bobb Group took over management of Petersburg’s daily government functions and worked to get long-standing problems with utility billing and collections that were at the core of the city teetering on insolvency.

Many citizens in Hopewell complained that Hopewell would wind up in the same boat now that Petersburg sailed in 2016. During his appearances before City Council, Cummings even said that Hopewell was not as dire as Petersburg because unlike Petersburg then, Hopewell can still pay its bills. He and the accounting firm stressed, though, that unless Hopewell develop and stick to basic financial policies, and got its ACFRs caught up and clean, then it was setting itself up for disaster.

RBG’s presence in Hopewell is likely to stoke citizens’ concerns that the group is poised to take over like it did Petersburg. Quite the opposite, Manker said.

“I think these efforts are steps taken to assure that the city of Hopewell does not head down the same path as Petersburg in 2016,” she said.

Council’s meeting to hear the RBG presentation is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. in council chambers at the Municipal Building downtown.

More: Hopewell's new city manager talks about the rocky path to appointment, history in the job

Bill Atkinson (he/him/his) is an award-winning journalist who covers breaking news, government and politics. Reach him at batkinson@progress-index.com or on Twitter at @BAtkinson_PI.

This article originally appeared on The Progress-Index: Robert Bobb Group plans economic strategy for Hopewell