A week after a majority of Portsmouth City Council members signaled support for hiring former councilman and mayoral candidate Danny Meeks as city manager, a group of business, civic and religious leaders gathered Thursday to call him woefully unqualified and push the council to hire a more experienced person.
A crowd of about 100 people listened to the speakers in a vacant lot near City Hall, with half cheering and clapping in agreement and half waiting for the speaker to stop so they could break into chants supporting Meeks.
The dueling protests were sparked by last week’s unscheduled vote to hire Meeks, who lost in the 2020 mayoral election to Shannon Glover.
That vote initially passed 4-3, but was rescinded. Meeks had not applied for the job, so the council voted to reopen the application portal.
Paul Battle, who has been Meeks’ most vocal supporter on the council, said Meeks knows the city and its problems better than anyone who applied for the job, and he has proven his merits in the running of his businesses. Vice Mayor De’Andre Barnes and councilmen Bill Moody and Christopher Woodard also voted in support of Meeks.
Glover and council members Lisa Lucas-Burke and Mark Whitaker voted against Meeks, saying he did not meet the education or experience criteria of the application. Glover and Lucas-Burke also said it was out of order to hire Meeks when the city had invested money into a hiring process that yielded more than 90 candidates.
The manager, who reports to the elected council, is effectively the CEO of city government, choosing department heads and proposing a budget.
Hiring a manager is broadly agreed to be one of the council’s most important tasks. The job has been vacant since Lydia Pettis Patton, who planned to retire at the end of 2020, stepped down months early under pressure after controversial charges city police filed against Black public officials, which were later dismissed.
LaVoris Pace has been the interim city manager since September.
In a job listing, the city said it was seeking candidates with at least a bachelor’s degree in specified fields — preferably a master’s — and seven years experience “in a senior executive position in a municipal or closely comparable operation.” Meeks did not go to college and runs a recycling firm.
Meeks told The Virginian-Pilot on Thursday he applied for the job before the new deadline of Wednesday and spoke with the city’s hiring consultant. It was also unclear when the council might vote again, though the city is meeting with its consultant Monday.
The past three months saw the election of two new council members and the appointment of a third to fill Glover’s old seat. That flipped the racial balance of the governing body in a majority-Black city. For the previous four years, a white mayor led a majority-white council. But Glover, who is Black, beat out Meeks, who is white, for the mayor’s seat. Now all but one of the other council members are Black, too.
Under the previous council, split votes on controversial issues typically broke along racial lines — with the white majority coming out ahead — but new voting blocs and dynamics already have emerged in the council’s first few meetings.
At Thursday’s rally, demonstrators for and against Meeks echoed many of the sentiments expressed by the council.
“Though we might like a person and feel that person has done much in the community, the reality is, if you’re not qualified, you’re not qualified,” said Milton Blount, a pastor and president of the Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Steering Committee. “We cannot afford to take a risk.”
Fred Pasquine, president of Fairlead Boatworks, asked the council to take a step back and “move from being divided to being united … from arrogantly short-circuiting a process to humbly supporting a proven process.”
Max Greenhood — owner of Rocketbike, a Portsmouth-based digital marketing company — organized the demonstration and also set up an online petition and gathered letters advocating the council not hire Meeks. He said within about a week, he collected 500 letters and planned to deliver them to city hall.
Those advocating for Meeks voiced distrust of established leadership in the city, saying the neighborhoods they live in see violence, lack of opportunity and poverty that’s not been fixed in decades.
“They talk about qualifications, but everybody that had a City Council job the last 40 years have had degrees and the city has not prospered, not been elevated,” said Germain Green, an organizer of the demonstration supporting Meeks. He said Meeks doesn’t have the same background as others vying for the job and would approach government differently with new ideas.
Green also said he believed Meeks would not be influenced by existing groups or officials who hold power because of his business operations and personal wealth.
Meeks served on the council from 2013-16, resigning before the end of his term. He attempted a return to local government by running for mayor last year, losing by 2,880 votes. Meeks spent $458,727 in that race, far outpacing his opponents.
Josh Reyes, 757-247-4692, joreyes@dailypress.com
