Schmitt, Burkarth seek Brookland supervisor's seat

For the fourth time in five years, Brookland District voters will cast ballots to select their representative on the Henrico Board of Supervisors. Citizens of the district have had four different supervisors during the past four years – an unusual cycle of instability that began with the February 2017 death of 30-year Brookland representative Dick Glover, who was 82.

Next month, voters will choose between Republican Dan Schmitt, who has served in the role for nearly a year, and Democrat J. Steven Burkarth, a political newcomer.

For a district that had experienced no leadership change in three decades, the past four years have brought a revolving door of representatives.

After Glover's death, the board appointed former assistant county manager Harvey Hinson as interim supervisor, a role he filled for about nine months. Democrat Courtney Lynch won a special election that November to fill the remaining two years of Glover's term, but her relationship with the board and county leadership quickly soured, and she resigned in June 2018.

Hinson returned to serve the same interim role until another special election could be held last November. In that contest, Schmitt defeated Democrat Danny Plaugher for the right to fill the final year of the four-year term.

Now, Schmitt is seeking to win his own term and bring stability to a seat that hasn't had much recently. Burkarth, however, is aiming to shake things up again and potentially help restore the Democratic majority to the board that it had during Lynch's brief tenure.

Schmitt: 'I love it more than I thought I would'
Schmitt has spent nearly a year in the Brookland seat and said he's learned plenty – and achieved a lot – during that time.

"I love it more than I thought it would," Schmitt said of his time in office. "It might have exceeded my expectations there. I put my phone number out there [publicly], and that might have execeeded people's exepctations but it met mine."

Schmitt (the founder and owner of event management company RMC Events) has come away from his work as a supervisor even more impressed with the state of the county, he said.

"I thought the county was in really good shape – it's probably even better than I thought," he said.

Schmitt's 20 years of experience as a business founder and owner and a decade as president of the Glen Allen Youth Athletic Association prepared him for the task of representing a magisterial district, he said. He's made time for the 25 to 30 hours a week he spends on supervisor's duties, he said, by delegating many key tasks in his company to employees. He resigned his post with the athletic association prior to running for the seat last year.

"I'm not a lifetime politician – I don't even think I'm a politician," he said. "I consider myself public servant to 66,000 people."

Schmitt has championed himself as an accessible leader, someone who has prioritized the traditions of the "Henrico Way" – fiscal discipline, funding for education and public safety, strong customer service and low tax rates. He has pointed to a number of achievements by the Board of Supervisors during the past year as evidence of those priorities at work – among them, plans for new versions of Tucker and Highland Springs high schools (at a cost of $191 million); a 3-percent pay raise for teachers and additional funding to address pay compression countywide;

He cited improvements to a number of Brookland District schools and facilities – including to the Bethlehem Little League and Lakeside Youth Baseball fields, as well as the Hermitage High School stadium restrooms – as examples of his specific ability to address and fix problems.

"Those kind of tangible things, I love doing that," he said.

Among his goals for a full term: the eventual elimination of trailers at Brookland District schools, with no core instruction occurring in them in the meantime; continued improvement of teacher salaries; continued financial support of all necessary public safety resources; the completion of Glover Park; establishing a park-and-ride lot for GRTC at the Willow Lawn stop; and helping to usher a new indoor arena to the county.

Schmitt's experience with RMC Events, which provides unarmed security and event management officials for more than 11,000 sporting and other events statewide annually, and leading the Glen Allen Youth Athletic Association has him particularly excited by the ongoing growth of sports tourism in the county. He'll chair the Richmond Region Tourism Board of Directors in the coming year.

Burkarth vows to address five key priorities
On his campaign website, Burkarth outlined five priorities – education; environmental stewardship; diversity, inclusion and equality; economic opportunity; and public safety – and general goals within each one that he would address if elected, though he didn't provide specifics about how he would do so.

Burkarth did not respond to multiple interview requests – made during a two-week period through voice mail, e-mail, Facebook and Twitter – for this article. He did not attend the Chamber RVA candidate forum for the Brookland and Varina districts Sept. 16, at which all other Board of Supervisors and School Board candidates from the two districts outlined their plans for office. He originally committed to an Oct. 29 Hermitage High School PTSO candidate forum but then pulled out, citing another commitment, according to organizers of the event.

On his website, he pledged to be accountable to constituents and work to connect them with local government.

"I'm running to give the residents of Brookland a supervisor who represents their values, their interests, their hopes and their struggles," Burkarth wrote. "I am passionate about being your customer service supervisor and I will fight every day to make it easier for Brookland residents to get the quality government services they pay for."

Burkarth has lived in the district nearly his entire life. He graduated the county's public school system and later earned a political science degree from VCU before spending 12 years working various roles in economic development, tourism marketing and disability services for state government agencies. He currently is a community services specialist for a nonprofit civil rights organization based in Brookland, according to his website.

Burkarth vowed to work to ensure that the county's government reflects its diverse citizenry and to have trailers removed from schools in the Brookland District. He wrote that he would support higher teacher pay; work for a greater investment by Henrico County in green technology; seek to provide more support for businesses located in Henrico and more incentive for others to move to the county; and work to provide full funding for public safety agencies in the county.

Schmitt addresses campaign pledge
Speaking with the Citizen last week, Schmitt addressed a campaign pledge he made several weeks before last year's special election, in which he vowed if elected to immediately cancel all contracts between RMC Events and Henrico County and the county's school system. He posted the pledge on his website and said he was making it even though county officials had assured him that such a move was not required legally, since as a supervisor he did not have direct oversight over the county agencies involved.

Though he did cancel RMC's small contract with the county's general government, Schmitt's letter of request last year to cancel RMC's contract with the school system was denied by school officials, who hold sole authority to terminate the contract, he said.

That contract is a one-year agreement with four renewable years; the school system opted to renew for the third year, which began July 1, school system, spokesman Andy Jenks told the Citizen. RMC Events has provided unarmed security guards for the school system at football and basketball games for 14 years; during Fiscal Year 2019, which ended June 30, the school system paid RMC $33,071.63 for those services. The total payment varies each year, based upon the number of games played; on the high end, it might reach about $50,000 during a fiscal year.

RMC earns about a 11-percent profit on the work it does for the school system, Schmitt told the Citizen. When he learned that he couldn't cancel the contract, he chose to make a $5,000 donation to the Henrico Education Foundation to cover all profits the company would have made on the services. He said he will continue to make such an annual donation to the HEF of any profits RMC makes from the contract.

"Me personally, I think it's a win for everybody," he told the Citizen. "We are the lowest bidder, providing jobs for Henrico County residents [RMC Events employs about 400 Henrico citizens, he said], and we took the five grand that we made and gave it back to the schools."

Schmitt said that he has removed himself from the bidding process for RMC and that if the school system asks RMC to bid again at the conclusion of the current contract, it will.

"If we are the lowest bidder and the most responsive, then we're doing the county a favor," he said. "I truthfully believe I'm doing them a favor. As long as I'm serving the people of Henrico, I don't wish to profit from them."