In the late 1960s, with 32 miles of shoreline, there was only 67 feet publicly accessible. By 1975, only eight years later, there were over 3,000 acres of shoreline park and miles of shoreline publicly accessible.

In a crucial vote on February 25, 1985, the City Council voted to turn down a request by Petromark for an encroachment permit for a pipeline across Dornan Drive to serve a proposed tank farm expansion at Ferry Point. By a single vote, Ferry Point was saved and eventually became part of Miller Knox Regional Shoreline.

I was there, and I started a chronicle ( Click on A 25-Year Journey from Saigon to Richmond City Hall) as a summary, from my point of view, of Richmond politics from the early 1970s to 1995, when I was elected to the City Council. But those years were so intertwined with personal and business affairs that this turned into much more. There are three intertwined themes in this chronicle: Richmond government and politics, the Butt Family in Richmond and the architecture-engineering firm of  Interactive Resources.