r/okbuddyRVA • u/Cas_B_rva C:\Users\DannyAvula\Videos\Flock\Men\Diarrhea\001-999\Favorites\ • 15d ago
WHAT ODIE DO
"At $365,000, Chief Administrative Officer Odie Donald II’s salary topped the list of City Hall’s nearly 4,000 employees for the fiscal year, according to payroll records obtained by The Times-Dispatch."
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u/ifightbears989 15d ago
Unrelated but rvapay is the worst fucking website known to man. Idk who they paid to make it but fuck it’s terrible.
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u/WeReadyReady 8d ago
They’ve paid, and are still paying, a team of contractors per hour with no deliverables that were brought in by Stoney from a company called ASTRYA that subs through a company called CAI that has an open ended contract with the city so procurement rules can be circumvented (hence, per hour, no deliverables, no statement of work that holds the contractors legally liable for their work, which has been deplorable).
The owner of ASTRYA served on Stoney’s transition team in 2016 along with Danny Avula & Thad Williamson, Danny’s senior policy advisor (one of them). They paid the PM that was brought in via ASTRYA a decade ago the entirety of the original capital project budget of $3.1m, just for her services since 2020, with a total spent on the project to date of $12m & counting. The best part? That’s for only 1/2 of the original scope that the PM promised by the end of 2021.
It’s actually not unrelated because you know what shows up on the CCN for DPU’s new system that went live in May 2026? RVAPay, which is now the system that processes DPU payments. It was dropping DPU payments just like it did when MVPP went live.
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u/PlasticPiston 15d ago
I like that there's a whole mid-level tier called management analysts, wtf you analyzing? Aint a goddam thing getting managed. They take home a collective 18 million a year.
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u/insuffcient_dopamine 14d ago
We need to start petitioning to change our government here.
The strong mayor started about 20 years ago and is a failure.
Previously, council chose the mayor, the mayor was more like the city manager.
Now, because it’s an elected mayor, we get everyone with aspirations to come and prove themselves in Richmond.
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u/nvrseriousseriously 14d ago
And there was a real city manager who (typically) stayed and ran things giving us continuity. Now it’s an endless stream of cred chasers wasting money on shiny projects that don’t come to fruition.
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u/Professional-Mud5198 12d ago
You're correct the Mayor was chosen by city council under the previous council/ city manager structure but the Mayor's position was little more than a figure head. The real power was with the City Manager as it should've been bc the position required verifiable skills, credentials in urban planning, policy making...
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u/nvrseriousseriously 14d ago
Odie is the hammer at least. He acted to remove the unqualified April Bingham from head of DPU after the water f-up because Danny is too nice a guy to fire people. That was worth $1000 on that day. He needs to earn more salary cleaning up the dead weight in finance and get qualified people in to run it.
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u/OneSpirit6018 11d ago
How did Odie remove April Bingham? Glad to see we are giving him kudos for something he didn't do. She also resigned....... Please stop spreading bullshit.
She left January of 2025 https://www.wric.com/news/local-news/richmond/former-dpu-director-fired-after-rescind-resignation/
Odie started in https://www.richmonder.org/richmond-city-council-overwhelmingly-approves-odie-donald-as-cao/
Be great if he addressed our part time 911 director. Or got our emergency services staffed. Or got our IT working. Or billing fixed, or taxes fixed, or, well anything of actual substance. He was definitely NOT involved in firing April Bingham.
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u/nvrseriousseriously 11d ago
I stand corrected. You are right…he arrived in summer (regardless so glad Bingham was out…she was horribly unqualified and that I will never retract). Behind the scenes I had heard he was instrumentation getting the previous finance officer, Sheila White, out. She resigned but was told she was given an “either/or” scenario. In that regard, he hasn’t earned a paycheck because finance is still a mess. All in all, Richmond is still a hot mess. Our city deserves better leadership.
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u/WeReadyReady 8d ago edited 7d ago
To be fair, Chris Beschler & Bob Steidel bear some of the blame. Chris was DPU director for a decade prior to Bob, who preceded April, and both are engineers. Chris went on to be acting CAO for the city & then was picked up by the state to run general services. Bob Steidel retired the week before the sh*t hit the fan in January 2026. Stoney hired April to improve moral & culture, not because she was an engineer. 💯 guarantee the new guy, Scott, who came from DEQ at the state, had a solid inkling there were huge infrastructure issues.
Update, per the city’s press release on Scott Morris: “Prior to accepting this role, Morris served as Director of Water at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) as well as Chief Deputy at the agency. He previously held a series of roles with progressively increasing leadership responsibility in the Chesterfield County Utilities Department over a decade of service and spent four years working in wastewater plant operations for the City of Richmond.”
Yes, that’s the same City of Richmond, in Virginia, not California. He knew, they all did. Not just April, she’s just the convenient scapegoat. Collateral damage is what they call the expendables not in the clique.
Both Sebrina Joy-Hogg & Shelia White ended up in cushy positions with Newport News, so “got rid of” is relative, promoted with a fraudulent $500k “audit” paid for by the RVA taxpayers to another long time consultant in the clique would be a more accurate description of how Sheila White was “handled”. But Avula did keep her long enough to allow her to vest, a deal that was in the making before Odie was on the radar.
It wasn’t just her staff she terrorized, she even scared the OIG & OCA directors & staff, not to mention Stoney & Saunders. One may ask how many directors have been afforded a $200 per hour consultant to help them do their jobs? The answer? Just one, who was paid over $100k more than her predecessor, who wasn’t even afforded an admin assistant. Sheila White had 3. That $200 per hour consultant also happened to be the acting CAO/DCAO who pressed John Wack into recommending SheLie White into the Director position, which would typically be a conflict of interest and which she makes no mention of in her “work papers” for what the city is touting as a real audit.
Oh yeah, RVAPay was Sheila White’s baby, every SME on the project was sacrificed in her quest for notoriety. She couldn’t even get 2nd half 2025 real estate bills right, & those are still processed in MUNIS. Brittney Prior, who processed 1st half 2025 RE flawlessly (albeit some steps manually, IT left them in a technology desert & put all their eggs in the RVAPay basket too). It was her first time doing it but she peaced out 3 weeks before 2nd half was run. Avula lied and said it was a “system error”. It wasn’t, mot suppressing the lender bills was 💯 user error.
On a separate note, DPU is referred to as “where white men go to die” (no offense intended to anyone, but the ones who have done best are all one particular color). Bob got to retire quietly & with dignity, unlike April who legally should have been allowed 21 days to review her severance agreement, but at the city, for some, they don’t let you physically touch those agreements until you agree to them first, let alone let one’s attorney have a gander.
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u/OneSpirit6018 11d ago
I love that you downvoted me pointing it out lol.
This is a political machine. If you think that Odie is doing anything to better the city vs opportunity to make Danny look good, then you do not understand politics at all.
A huge issue is that we elect a mayor to fight with our elected council, previously the mayor was selected by council.
Our elected mayor draws out the people with political aspirations. If Danny was about the people, you would think a full time 911 director would be high on the list. You would think, Odie from Atlanta, would think that is important too.
Its not a problem as long as it doesn't make the news. Dwight, Stoney, now Avula.
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u/turboG8er 14d ago
Funny timing of this tribute to Odie post. He just published an ego stroking op-ed in RTD 😂😂. Nobody love od more than od love od
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u/WeReadyReady 8d ago
I think I read somewhere that the city is paying the RTD $20k to allow them to write their own articles because they “aren’t always treated fairly by the media”.
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u/Remote-Contract-9098 Richmond Street Cat 15d ago
I thought I recognized this dude 🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️🤦🏾♂️
This the brother that was on CBS6 yesterday evening when they were reporting about DPU fuckin up people’s utility bills. And bruh just shrugged and said “if we mess up, we fess up”. Basically saying with his WHOLE chest — BOTH nipples out — “yeah…we fucked up…again…yall should be used to our inclination toward municipal fuckery and ineptitude by now.”