We congratulate Richmond City Council members Kim B. Gray, Chris A. Hilbert, Kristen N. Larson, Stephanie A. Lynch and Reva M. Trammell who — like we — are neither bought nor bound to Dominion Energy CEO Tom Farrell’s and Mayor Levar M. Stoney’s vision of a $1.5 billion new Coliseum and accompanying development in Downtown.

The five council members introduced a resolution at Monday night’s City Council meeting asking Mayor Stoney to withdraw the expensive Navy Hill plan.

Instead, they would like to see proposals submitted by other developers after assessments are done of the value of the city-owned property in the development area and of the existing and required infrastructure. They also want a more transparent process with more public engagement.

We agree.

Their request for a more accurate picture of what the city and the taxpayers would be giving up and gaining — financially and otherwise — by Mr. Farrell’s plan is neither “laughable” or “selfish,” as Mayor Stoney contends. We believe it would be less than prudent for City Council to commit city tax money to a 30-year payback plan for a big, new Coliseum and to sell city-owned land for possibly less than its true value to private developers without asking tough questions.

We are glad these five members of the nine-member City Council are looking more deeply into this project and its implications and ramifications than Mayor Stoney and Mr. Farrell would like.

And, yes, the Navy Hill project will become an election issue for City Council and the mayor in November, even if council tanks the project as expected during the Feb. 24 vote. We are certain Mayor Stoney will seek to capitalize on it — or club opponents with it — during his bid for re-election in November. Ms. Lynch won her 5th District seat on City Council during a special election last November because she listened to voters and expressed concern about and opposition to the Navy Hill development plan.

We want readers and voters to be clear: Ms. Lynch and the four other City Council members who asked the mayor to withdraw the plan are not opposed to development of the area. But they are opposed to many aspects of the plan pre- sented by Mayor Stoney and the Navy Hill District Corp., led by Mr. Farrell.

We still have heard no clear explanation from Mayor Stoney or the Navy Hill gang of why the private money to be invested in portions of the project outside of the Coliseum still cannot take place, or why a new Coliseum is central to the overall project’s success.

The project’s financing and other components have shape- shifted in the past few weeks as Mayor Stoney and the Navy Hill gang have pulled out all the stops to make it more enticing to Richmond voters and to put more pressure on City Council to approve it.

In the last few weeks, they have trotted out the head of CoStar, a real estate research and information company, saying he will expand the business to add 1,000 new jobs and move into an office tower in the proposed development. They also announced a shrinking of the TIF District, Tax Incremental Funding District, in Downtown to repay the loans on the Coliseum on a lark that the General Assembly will approve a bill granting state sales tax money to be dedicated to help pay for the public and private elements of the project.

This week alone, the Navy Hill gang announced that Rich- mond would once again get a minor league hockey team if a new Coliseum is built. That was on top of a pledge from Mayor Stoney that school funding would not be harmed in paying for a new Coliseum.

This last-minute, high-pressure sales pitch sounds more like that of a used car salesman or a dishonest real estate dealer: They will tell you anything to make you sign on the dotted line, leaving you on the hook for big bucks for many years.

These promises are just that — promises. What would make any of these companies, team owners and elected officials walk away from their publicly professed commitment to the project — A downturn in the economy? Another recession? A different mayor? Or a better deal from another city?

Richmond has been suckered by past promises of dollars and/or development to be spurred by the Washington NFL team training camp, such as the scrapped nursing school promised by Bon Secours at the former Westhampton School property. Even backers of the original Coliseum made such promises. When the Coliseum opened in August 1971, it was heralded as the kind of attraction that would spur Downtown develop- ment that never materialized.

Why would we now take the word of people who stand to gain economically whether the project is a success or a failure? They will walk away with tax breaks and money even if the Coliseum replacement and Downtown redevelopment project is a bust.

The project needs to be better put together so that it doesn’t jeopardize money needed for critical needs and services in the city for the next 30 years, including schools, police and fire services, street and other infrastructure improvement and social services.

Currently, we, as a city, are allowing people to live in a tent city in the dead of winter while we mull over a $1.5 billion plan to build a new 17,500-seat entertainment venue, a high- rise convention center hotel, new office buildings, apartments and restaurants and a fancy bodega to help feed their whims. But there isn’t $2 in the plan to deal with homelessness and hunger. We question whether any of the folks living in the tent city could rent the “affordable” new housing promised in Mr. Farrell’sandMayorStoney’sproject,oriftheywouldbehired to run a concession stand at the new Coliseum.

We believe the five council members have a better alter- native: Shop the Coliseum and 10-block development plan around to developers who have completed successful projects in medium-sized cities like Richmond and see what they come up with.

This plan is too costly, too important and consequential to residents, taxpayers, voters and Richmond’s future to simply turn it over to a corporation that has no track record in de- veloping similar projects. Mr. Farrell and Dominion Energy may have put up nuclear energy plants, coal-fired electricity generators and dabbled in solar and wind farms, but they haven’t built a new Coliseum and redesigned entire blocks of a Downtown. The promises by Mayor Stoney, Mr. Farrell and the Navy Hill gang are too great to blindly trust them with our Downtown.