Good morning, RVA! It’s 54 °F, but highs today will hit a summery 80 °F. Assuming the sun finds its way out from behind the clouds, we’re heading into a top-notch Wednesday.

Water cooler

Richmond Police are reporting three murders in the City—the first in over a month. This past Saturday, officers were called to the 1300 block of Coalter Street and found Malik D. Banks, 21, shot to death. Then, on Monday, police were called to the 1800 block of Southlawn Avenue and found Tijuan D. Davis, 20, and Eric D. Wheless, 21, shot to death in a vehicle. The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Ali Rockett has a few more details on the double homicide and an update on this year’s statistics. You can always find a list of Richmond’s homicide victims on the RPD’s website.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 54 °F, but highs today will hit a summery 80 °F. Assuming the sun finds its way out from behind the clouds, we’re heading into a top-notch Wednesday.

Water cooler

Richmond Police are reporting three murders in the City—the first in over a month. This past Saturday, officers were called to the 1300 block of Coalter Street and found Malik D. Banks, 21, shot to death. Then, on Monday, police were called to the 1800 block of Southlawn Avenue and found Tijuan D. Davis, 20, and Eric D. Wheless, 21, shot to death in a vehicle. The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Ali Rockett has a few more details on the double homicide and an update on this year’s statistics. You can always find a list of Richmond’s homicide victims on the RPD’s website.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and today you should expect highs near 70 °F and less of that dang wind. Tomorrow, temperatures could hit summer-time levels! Get excited!

Water cooler

Is it hot in here or is it just BUDGET SEASON? The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Mark Robinson has the details from yesterday’s budget work session. Most interesting to me is this list of amendments from members of City Council. As of right now, we’ve got five folks signed on to Councilmember Hilbert’s proposed amendment to keep the real estate tax at its Recession-era austerity level of $1.20 (Addison, Hilbert, Gray, Larson, and Trammell). Councilmember Newbille, on the other hand, proposed an amendment to increase the rate to $1.25. Adopting either of these amendments would force Council to find $21 million and $9 million of cuts (or new revenue) respectively to balance the budget. So, with five opponents on record, it looks like the Mayor’s proposed $1.29 rate is dead, yes? Not so fast! Alright, hold on to your butts, because we’re going to take a thrilling dive into the City’s Charter. First, City Council must adopt a balanced budget by May 31st (§ 6.05 and §6.11). If they cannot do so “the budget as submitted by the mayor shall be the budget for the ensuing year.” Not only that, but “the ordinances providing additional revenue, if any, as recommended by the mayor shall have full force and effect to the same extent as if the same had been adopted by the council.” So: If City Council doesn’t want to roll back those Recession-era real estate tax cuts, they’ve got to build a five-member consensus on how to cut $21 million from the Mayor’s proposed budget or the Mayor’s original budget becomes the One Budget To Rules Them All. Additionally, and thanks to Mark Robinson for pointing this out, the second paragraph of § 6.11 says that the “mayor shall have the power to veto any particular item or items of any city budget ordinance…Council may thereafter override the mayor’s veto with a vote of six or more of the currently filled seats on council.” I am not a lawyer, but it sure seems like even if City Council could find five votes to make tens of millions of dollars in cuts to desperately needed City services, that the mayor could just veto the whole shebang. I definitely have no idea if there are six Councilfolk that reaaaally want to be forever be defined as the people who cut millions from schools. Anyway, there’s lots of discussion left to be had, and City Council: Endgame is about to get really interesting. Conspiratorial P.S.: Keep your eye on that last bit of § 6.11 that says “six or more of the currently filled seats,” especially after yesterday’s news of further legal action toward removing Councilmember Agelasto from his 5th District seat. I also definitely have no idea if that’ll come into play or not, but those words exist in the charter.

Because it’s fascinating, you should read this article about combined sewer overflow events in Richmond at the Virginia Mercury by Daniel Berti. After reading that and getting a handle on the scope of our sewer-related needs, you should read this piece by WCVE’s Roberto Roldan about Councilmember Gray and Trammell’s proposed budget amendment to cut the planned increases in utility rates.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and today you should expect highs near 70 °F and less of that dang wind. Tomorrow, temperatures could hit summer-time levels! Get excited!

Water cooler

Is it hot in here or is it just BUDGET SEASON? The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Mark Robinson has the details from yesterday’s budget work session. Most interesting to me is this list of amendments from members of City Council. As of right now, we’ve got five folks signed on to Councilmember Hilbert’s proposed amendment to keep the real estate tax at its Recession-era austerity level of $1.20 (Addison, Hilbert, Gray, Larson, and Trammell). Councilmember Newbille, on the other hand, proposed an amendment to increase the rate to $1.25. Adopting either of these amendments would force Council to find $21 million and $9 million of cuts (or new revenue) respectively to balance the budget. So, with five opponents on record, it looks like the Mayor’s proposed $1.29 rate is dead, yes? Not so fast! Alright, hold on to your butts, because we’re going to take a thrilling dive into the City’s Charter. First, City Council must adopt a balanced budget by May 31st (§ 6.05 and §6.11). If they cannot do so “the budget as submitted by the mayor shall be the budget for the ensuing year.” Not only that, but “the ordinances providing additional revenue, if any, as recommended by the mayor shall have full force and effect to the same extent as if the same had been adopted by the council.” So: If City Council doesn’t want to roll back those Recession-era real estate tax cuts, they’ve got to build a five-member consensus on how to cut $21 million from the Mayor’s proposed budget or the Mayor’s original budget becomes the One Budget To Rules Them All. Additionally, and thanks to Mark Robinson for pointing this out, the second paragraph of § 6.11 says that the “mayor shall have the power to veto any particular item or items of any city budget ordinance…Council may thereafter override the mayor’s veto with a vote of six or more of the currently filled seats on council.” I am not a lawyer, but it sure seems like even if City Council could find five votes to make tens of millions of dollars in cuts to desperately needed City services, that the mayor could just veto the whole shebang. I definitely have no idea if there are six Councilfolk that reaaaally want to be forever be defined as the people who cut millions from schools. Anyway, there’s lots of discussion left to be had, and City Council: Endgame is about to get really interesting. Conspiratorial P.S.: Keep your eye on that last bit of § 6.11 that says “six or more of the currently filled seats,” especially after yesterday’s news of further legal action toward removing Councilmember Agelasto from his 5th District seat. I also definitely have no idea if that’ll come into play or not, but those words exist in the charter.

Because it’s fascinating, you should read this article about combined sewer overflow events in Richmond at the Virginia Mercury by Daniel Berti. After reading that and getting a handle on the scope of our sewer-related needs, you should read this piece by WCVE’s Roberto Roldan about Councilmember Gray and Trammell’s proposed budget amendment to cut the planned increases in utility rates.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and that is the basically temperature for the rest of the day. Last night’s storms have cooled things down a bit, but, don’t worry, we’ll get back into warmer weather tomorrow.

Water cooler

Today, because I can already hear your eyes rolling when I bring up the Mayor’s proposed budget yet again, I will condense all of my budget-related thoughts down into a single paragraph. First, City Council will meet today to propose budget amendments to a huge stack of departments as well as begin to balance Capital Improvement Plan amendments. I haven’t seen either sets of amendments yet (if you have, send them my way!) but am nervous that someone on Council will decide to strip the $965,000 of new GRTC funding out of the Mayor’s proposed budget. Second, RPS’s School Board meets tonight at 6:00 PM on the 17th floor of City Hall. If you wanted to let your School Board representative know that you support the Mayor’s budget and his Big Time investment in schools, tonight would be the night to do so. The public comment period is right at the beginning of the meeting, and you do not need to sign up ahead of time. Easy peasy. Third, Superintendent Kamras has a great column in his email today about trust (scroll down to the bottom). By far the most common refrain I’ve heard from progressives who do not support the Mayor’s proposal to roll back the Recession-era real estate tax cuts is that they’re convinced RPS cannot be trusted with any more money. If that describes you, please, please read this piece by the Superintendent, and ask yourself: What more could he and the school district do to begin winning your trust? Dude has already done a ton of planning, cutting, efficiency-finding, and it’s time to give him the resources he needs to start rebuilding our school system. Fourth, something to keep in mind and on your calendar: City Council will hold their public hearing on the budget on April 22nd at 6:00 PM. This is the time for the physical manifestation of support for the Mayor’s budget (by showing up in the room). You can, of course, digitally manifest your support (by emailing your councilmember) at any time.

A while back, Councilmember Agelasto moved out of the 5th District—which he was elected to represent—and into the 1st District. As he continues to serve the 5th District he’s faced a couple of challenges to the legitimacy of his position, and this new one, from former 6th District Councilmember Sa’ad El-Amin (circa 1998–2003), seems the realest. Commonwealth’s Attorney Mike Herring says that while he appreciates El-Amin’s stance he doesn’t want to disrupt budget season with litigation. First, hmmmmmm! Second, how come the only people working to oust Agelasto are former Richmond City Councilfolk?

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and that is the basically temperature for the rest of the day. Last night’s storms have cooled things down a bit, but, don’t worry, we’ll get back into warmer weather tomorrow.

Water cooler

Today, because I can already hear your eyes rolling when I bring up the Mayor’s proposed budget yet again, I will condense all of my budget-related thoughts down into a single paragraph. First, City Council will meet today to propose budget amendments to a huge stack of departments as well as begin to balance Capital Improvement Plan amendments. I haven’t seen either sets of amendments yet (if you have, send them my way!) but am nervous that someone on Council will decide to strip the $965,000 of new GRTC funding out of the Mayor’s proposed budget. Second, RPS’s School Board meets tonight at 6:00 PM on the 17th floor of City Hall. If you wanted to let your School Board representative know that you support the Mayor’s budget and his Big Time investment in schools, tonight would be the night to do so. The public comment period is right at the beginning of the meeting, and you do not need to sign up ahead of time. Easy peasy. Third, Superintendent Kamras has a great column in his email today about trust (scroll down to the bottom). By far the most common refrain I’ve heard from progressives who do not support the Mayor’s proposal to roll back the Recession-era real estate tax cuts is that they’re convinced RPS cannot be trusted with any more money. If that describes you, please, please read this piece by the Superintendent, and ask yourself: What more could he and the school district do to begin winning your trust? Dude has already done a ton of planning, cutting, efficiency-finding, and it’s time to give him the resources he needs to start rebuilding our school system. Fourth, something to keep in mind and on your calendar: City Council will hold their public hearing on the budget on April 22nd at 6:00 PM. This is the time for the physical manifestation of support for the Mayor’s budget (by showing up in the room). You can, of course, digitally manifest your support (by emailing your councilmember) at any time.

A while back, Councilmember Agelasto moved out of the 5th District—which he was elected to represent—and into the 1st District. As he continues to serve the 5th District he’s faced a couple of challenges to the legitimacy of his position, and this new one, from former 6th District Councilmember Sa’ad El-Amin (circa 1998–2003), seems the realest. Commonwealth’s Attorney Mike Herring says that while he appreciates El-Amin’s stance he doesn’t want to disrupt budget season with litigation. First, hmmmmmm! Second, how come the only people working to oust Agelasto are former Richmond City Councilfolk?

Good morning, RVA! It’s 58 °F, and today we’ve got another day on deck with highs in the mid 70s. You probably should expect some rain later this evening and into Saturday morning. Runner-types are gonna get wet, but at least they won’t be wet and cold.

Water cooler

Speaking of runner types, the Monument 10k runs from 7:00 AM to 1:00 PM this coming Saturday. This means you’ve got the opportunity to take part (or at least witness) a lot of rad, weird, and very-Richmond things–in fact, here’s a PDF from Sports Backers with every single detail you could want. If you’re trying to get around on Saturday, note that some roads are closed—like Monument, duh—but also a handful of streets in the Fan near the starting line. The Pulse will detour up to Leigh Street and skip the VCU/VUU station. The #14, #20, #76, #77, and #78 will all see detours of some sort. If you’re trying to get to the action without driving and parking, I recommend going by bike, but also the #5 bus (PDF) remains undetoured (autocorrect suggests undeterred, which, sure!) and will get you right to Monroe Park. For some background, Tim Pearrell at the Richmond Times-Dispatch talks with Sports Backers’s Jon Lugbill about the last 20 years of the race. Not to be a bummer, but, at some point, we’ll probably need to have a conversation about how one of the biggest events in Richmond is focused on (and named after!) a street full of Confederate monuments, right?

Whoa! This seemingly-boring announcement is a big deal, I think! The City will increase the cost of their work-in-street permits and change the structure of the fee to a “pay-by-time format.” Part of the reason it’s so easy to forever close a sidewalk in the City is that the permits cost a flat fee of $20–100. That encouraged folks to close public rights-of-way and…just leave them closed. Seems boring, I know, but this will have a real impact on the City’s Vision Zero goals of keeping pedestrians safe. Also, color me interested in what the Mayor means when he says “More to come…”

Good morning, RVA! It’s 58 °F, and today we’ve got another day on deck with highs in the mid 70s. You probably should expect some rain later this evening and into Saturday morning. Runner-types are gonna get wet, but at least they won’t be wet and cold.

Water cooler

Speaking of runner types, the Monument 10k runs from 7:00 AM to 1:00 PM this coming Saturday. This means you’ve got the opportunity to take part (or at least witness) a lot of rad, weird, and very-Richmond things–in fact, here’s a PDF from Sports Backers with every single detail you could want. If you’re trying to get around on Saturday, note that some roads are closed—like Monument, duh—but also a handful of streets in the Fan near the starting line. The Pulse will detour up to Leigh Street and skip the VCU/VUU station. The #14, #20, #76, #77, and #78 will all see detours of some sort. If you’re trying to get to the action without driving and parking, I recommend going by bike, but also the #5 bus (PDF) remains undetoured (autocorrect suggests undeterred, which, sure!) and will get you right to Monroe Park. For some background, Tim Pearrell at the Richmond Times-Dispatch talks with Sports Backers’s Jon Lugbill about the last 20 years of the race. Not to be a bummer, but, at some point, we’ll probably need to have a conversation about how one of the biggest events in Richmond is focused on (and named after!) a street full of Confederate monuments, right?

Whoa! This seemingly-boring announcement is a big deal, I think! The City will increase the cost of their work-in-street permits and change the structure of the fee to a “pay-by-time format.” Part of the reason it’s so easy to forever close a sidewalk in the City is that the permits cost a flat fee of $20–100. That encouraged folks to close public rights-of-way and…just leave them closed. Seems boring, I know, but this will have a real impact on the City’s Vision Zero goals of keeping pedestrians safe. Also, color me interested in what the Mayor means when he says “More to come…”

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F now, but later this afternoon get excited for some more temperatures in the mid 70s. I’m loving this spring!

Water cooler

I’ve been going on and on about the budget for the past couple months with a focus mostly on the Mayor’s proposed investment in schools, but the potential funding for streets is important, too! We all use our streets—either driving alone in our cars (boooo!), taking the bus, riding a bike, or just crossing the street on foot. Bike Walk RVA has a good post up linking the Mayor’s financial commitment to streets in his budget to his Vision Zero policy commitment from a couple years back.

More Brookland Park Boulevard news! Yesterday, we learned that there’s room for a new brewer on the Boulevard, and, today, Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense says the Brookland Park Threatre building is officially for sale. Richard Hayes at RVAHub has the beer pun I was looking for yesterday.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F now, but later this afternoon get excited for some more temperatures in the mid 70s. I’m loving this spring!

Water cooler

I’ve been going on and on about the budget for the past couple months with a focus mostly on the Mayor’s proposed investment in schools, but the potential funding for streets is important, too! We all use our streets—either driving alone in our cars (boooo!), taking the bus, riding a bike, or just crossing the street on foot. Bike Walk RVA has a good post up linking the Mayor’s financial commitment to streets in his budget to his Vision Zero policy commitment from a couple years back.

More Brookland Park Boulevard news! Yesterday, we learned that there’s room for a new brewer on the Boulevard, and, today, Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense says the Brookland Park Threatre building is officially for sale. Richard Hayes at RVAHub has the beer pun I was looking for yesterday.

Photo by: sandy’s dad

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and get ready for an excellent day. Expect sunshine, highs in the 70s, and no excuse not to spend at least some of today out of doors.

Water cooler

Taikein Cooper, Executive Director of Virginia Excels, writes about his experience growing up in Prince Edward County, why we need to heavily invest to truly bring an end to separate-but-equal schools, and why he supports the Mayor’s proposed budget. I agree strongly with this next bit, and it applies to citizens and councilmembers both: “Subsequently, I’ve witnessed many people say that they want to enrich the city’s infrastructure, enhance our schools, and make Richmond a better place for all, but then they are adamantly against taking any of the necessary steps to accomplish those things. The proposed budget is not flawless, but instead of turning it down, we should work together over the coming weeks to perfect it for those who need it the most.” We can dismiss the Mayor’s proposal to roll back the Recession-era tax cuts out of hand—and the investments in schools, streets, housing, and transit along with it—or we can figure out how to work together to do something big. Now is not the time for cuts, austerity, or political posturing. It’s time to do what’s right, get to work, and begin undoing decades of disinvestment in our City.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 63 °F, and we’ve got another warm day ahead of us. Expect temperatures in the mid 70s and cloudy skies until later this afternoon.

Water cooler

Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense says City Council approved a special use permit last night (at their regularly scheduled meeting, which I totally forgot to mention yesterday) for 224 apartment units on Brook Road right next to the post office. I’m officially excited about the intersection of Brook and Lombardy! It’s near Downtown and the Fan, at the intersection of two bike lanes, close to transit, has a plan for the area that’s part of the City’s Master Plan (PDF), and is seeing development that matches that plan. Meanwhile, Planing Commission is working their way through the process to officially rezone parts of the area to help make sure future development lines up the Mater Plan and to discourage a thousand and one special use permits. Tangentially related: If you’re into zoning and rezoning, I highly recommend this PDF from the Department of Planning and Development Review about how the VUU/Chamberlayne rezoning will work and how it will impact the neighborhood.

David Streever writing for Richmond Magazine has a neat profile of Jeremy Hoffman, the Science Museum of Virginia’s earth and climate scientist. This dude is an actual, literal scientist using actual, literal SCIENCE to make Richmond a better place to live. I think that’s rad. He’s a good follow on Twitter, too.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and, whoadang, we could see highs in the upper 70s today—or even 80s! Expect some rain later this evening that carries on through tomorrow morning.

Water cooler

This morning, City Council will meet for another budget work session at which they’ll hear their final set of presentations. Today’s theme is “Responsive Government” and includes Citizen Service and Response, Finance & Risk Management, Human Resources, Procurement, and Non-departmental—the latter is a bucket for all sorts of things like GRTC, the ambulance authority, and a bunch of other grants to nonprofit-type organizations. Then Council will spend the afternoon discussing proposed amendments which were fairly uncontroversial…until now! Over the weekend, Councilmember Jones tweeted out the latest round of proposed amendments and the first look at how some councilfolk plan to balance the Mayor’s budget without rolling back the Recession-era real estate tax cuts. On the revenue side, Councilmember Hilbert wants to up the proposed cigarette tax from $0.50 to $0.80 and increase the admissions tax from 7% to 12%. This, plus “repeal tax exemptions by designation” (which I don’t understand yet), gets him about $5 million, leaving him to make $16 million of cuts. Here’s what Councilmember Hilbert plans to cut: $2.1 million from street paving (despite an enormous amount of poor-quality streets in the 3rd District); $6.1 million from the City’s contribution to schools; and 1.5% of the budget from every. single. city department (leaving a handful of departments—unrelated to schools, streets, housing, or any of the Mayor’s proposed investments—with less money than they had last year). All of those cuts frustrate me, but it’s the last one that really gets me. I called it “weak and lazy” on Twitter, which, in retrospect, perhaps wasn’t the nicest way to put it—but is exactly how I feel. If some councilmembers don’t want to raise revenue, they should make the hard decisions of where and what to cut. This blanket, city-wide cut feels like a hands-off attempt to distribute the burden equally but is exactly why I talk about the difference between equality and equity. This is the exact definition of an inequitable distribution of resources, and there’s no reason why departments providing services to those who need it most should face out-of-the-blue, unrelated budget cuts.

Related: The Mayor made his case for rolling back the Recession-era real estate tax cuts in the paper over the weekend.

Photo by: cpjRVA

Good morning, RVA! It’s 50 °F, and, after yesterday’s most beautiful weather, today we’ve got a bit cooler temperatures and rain probably lasting the entire day. This weekend’s weather looks great, though.

Water cooler

Today, the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a column by Omari Al-Qadaffi, Takein Cooper, and Amy Wentz focused on how the Mayor’s proposed budget addresses some of the historical and systemic inequities and racism built into our City’s very infrastructure. Here’s the truth, in their words: “Now is the time for Richmond, with more than a quarter of its residents living beneath the poverty line, not only to attempt to build wealth for its historically marginalized residents, but to give to its youth, families and the city as a whole the justice they so rightfully deserve.”

Photo by: VaDOT

Good morning, RVA! It’s 40 °F, but later today it will be 70 °F and sunny. That sounds wonderful.

Water cooler

The hands-free driving bill predictably died yesterday at the General Assembly, and I’m predictably frustrated. I assume some legislator somewhere will submit a similar bill during next year’s session, which is how these things go sometimes, but I’m still angry about the Republican trickeration that killed a bill which literally passed both houses of the GA. Gah! There are, of course, still policies we can and should implement to make our streets safer at the local level while state-level policies flounder. Take, for example, the recent move to lower speeds on some of our high-injury streets and this announcement from Mayor Stoney yesterday: “I’ve directed my team to begin the work of introducing an ordinance that will add an extra penalty for drivers who are distracted by the use of their cell 📱 while driving in Richmond.” Sounds great! Also, an ordinance requiring sidewalks to remain open during construction is another policy we could pass locally.

Photo by: tess_marie

Good morning, RVA! It’s 31 °F, but dang if highs won’t hit nearly 70 °F today. Too cold to ride a bike this morning, perfect bike-riding weather this afternoon: The Story of Spring.

Water cooler

I don’t typically talk about the Board of Zoning Appeals, even though this is Richmond’s premier zoning and rezoning daily email newsletter. But today the BZA will hold a public hearing to consider an application for turning the Lee Medical Building on the southwest corner of Monument and Allen into 63 apartments (PDF) (1:00 PM, City Hall, 5th Floor Conference Room). If I understand it properly, the current office building doesn’t fit the existing zoning (R-6, single-family attached residential) and, after altering the building, the new, proposed apartments wouldn’t fit the existing zoning either. So off to the BZA we go. Councilmember Gray is against these apartments and distributed a letter to residents in the area—on official Council letterhead, even!—citing concerns over parking, traffic, a negative impact on property values, and the vague threat of “student housing.” These apartments are an opportunity to take an existing structure in a walkable, bikeable, close-to-transit neighborhood and convert it to over 60 places for folks to live! Richmond needs more, denser housing, and we shouldn’t squander any opportunity to create it. The thing that I can’t get over is that literally one block away there are MASSIVE apartment buildings on both the northwest and southeast corner of Monument and Lombardy, yet somehow we all survive. Anyway, if the above was too wonky/boring, read more about how the particulars of zoning work against creating a thriving neighborhood in this wonderful and human-readable thread from Twitter user @SmithNicholas.

Photo by: tess_marie

Good morning, RVA! It’s 31 °F, but dang if highs won’t hit nearly 70 °F today. Too cold to ride a bike this morning, perfect bike-riding weather this afternoon: The Story of Spring.

Water cooler

I don’t typically talk about the Board of Zoning Appeals, even though this is Richmond’s premier zoning and rezoning daily email newsletter. But today the BZA will hold a public hearing to consider an application for turning the Lee Medical Building on the southwest corner of Monument and Allen into 63 apartments (PDF) (1:00 PM, City Hall, 5th Floor Conference Room). If I understand it properly, the current office building doesn’t fit the existing zoning (R-6, single-family attached residential) and, after altering the building, the new, proposed apartments wouldn’t fit the existing zoning either. So off to the BZA we go. Councilmember Gray is against these apartments and distributed a letter to residents in the area—on official Council letterhead, even!—citing concerns over parking, traffic, a negative impact on property values, and the vague threat of “student housing.” These apartments are an opportunity to take an existing structure in a walkable, bikeable, close-to-transit neighborhood and convert it to over 60 places for folks to live! Richmond needs more, denser housing, and we shouldn’t squander any opportunity to create it. The thing that I can’t get over is that literally one block away there are MASSIVE apartment buildings on both the northwest and southeast corner of Monument and Lombardy, yet somehow we all survive. Anyway, if the above was too wonky/boring, read more about how the particulars of zoning work against creating a thriving neighborhood in this wonderful and human-readable thread from Twitter user @SmithNicholas.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, and today’s highs will top out in the 40s—plus there’s a decent chance of rain later this evening. Boooo! But don’t worry: Beginning tomorrow, the rest of the week looks springlike and incredible.

Water cooler

If you support the hands-free driving bill and safer streets across Virginia, just like the majority of both houses of the General Assembly did earlier this year, take one minute this morning and let Speaker of the House Kirk Cox know. Additionally, if you have a Republican delegate or senator you can use this handy form over on Bike Walk RVA’s site to get them to talk to their good pal Delegate Cox about bringing the amended hands-free bill to the floor for a vote.

Tammie Smith at the Richmond Times-Dispatch was at a panel on food insecurity in the East End yesterday and reminds me that the new grocery story at 25th & Nine Mile opens on April 29th. Smith talks to some folks, including Senator Mark Warner, about how building grocery stores in lower-income areas often isn’t profitable until the area starts to (or already has) gentrified. I think you’re definitely seeing some of that in the northern part of Church Hill today. The big, tough question—as always—is how do we keep folks from being displaced? The smaller, still-tough question is how do we make sure folks have access to healthy food regardless of where they end up living? I’m glad smarter people than me are working on finding answers to both of these questions.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 32 °F, and our brief flirtation with fancy, late-springlike temperatures is over—check back on Wednesday. Today highs will just creep into the 50s, so bring a jacket.

Water cooler

We’ve got a lot to get through this morning, so lets get started! Today, City Council will continue working through their scheduled budget work sessions. They’ll tackle “Safe Neighborhoods,” which includes presentations from the Commonwealth’s Attorney, Police, Fire and Emergency Services, Emergency Communications, and the Sheriff’s office. After that they’ll presumably discuss amendments. You can listen to these (fascinating) meetings by subscribing to the Boring Show podcast.

I’d hoped Superintendent Kamras would address the new, more expensive school construction cost estimates in his weekly email, and I am not disappointed! Let me just quote this bit, a thing I didn’t explicitly say but maybe does need saying outloud: “First, this is not a case of cost-overruns. The initial estimates were just flat-out wrong. The current numbers reflect the true, current market cost of building three schools in Richmond in 2019.” The $30 million increase is a case of bad forecasting, not of poor project management or waste or grift or whatever. Moving forward, Kamras will recommend that a 3rd party compile up-to-date and accurate construction costs for the rest of the new schools we need to build. There’s a lot more to like in this email, but I love his closing sentence: “If we can collectively avoid the inclination to weaponize every issue for the political fight of the day, and instead roll up our sleeves and the do the hard work of fixing our problems, there’s nothing we can’t achieve for our children.”

Photo by: Accretion%20Disc

Good morning, RVA! It’s 48 °F, and, whoa, get ready for a beautiful day. Highs in the mid 70s that will continue through tomorrow plus a generally dry forecast. We may see some cloudy skies, but the rain should hold off until Sunday. Fingers crossed!

Water cooler

A couple of days ago, Kelly Avellino at NBC12 posted this story about how the 17th Street Farmer’s Market project has run out of money for things like landscaping, benches, and fire pits. There’s a lot going on in that piece, but there a couple things on which I can cut the market some slack. First, the Franklin Street cut-through under the train station is a separate project, and, until it’s finished, breaks a useful connection between Downtown, the Market, and the Capital Trail—and probably makes the northern end of the space feel like a construction zone. Second, the utility shed redesign did have to go through the Urban Design Committee for approval late last year, and I imagine that’s holding up some finishing touches. However, a thing I cannot cut a single bit of slack about is the lack of seating—especially on a day like today, with sunshine and highs in the 70s. Enrichmond, the nonprofit that programs the space, should pull a Janet Sadik-Khan, and throw down a couple dozen lawn chairs today—this morning even. To inspire anyone with a checkbook and the authority to humanize our new public plaza, here’s a quick excerpt from Sadik-Khan’s book, Streetfight, about her pedestrian-focused redesign of Times Square: “We had café chairs and tables on order, but the wheels of municipal procurement didn’t move as fast as our traffic barrels, and it would be weeks before they arrived. The moment called for creativity and a bit of dumb luck. Tim Tompkins of the Times Square Alliance made feverish phone calls to find cheap seats, locating 376 beach chairs in lollipop colors at $10.74 each from Brooklyn’s Pintchik hardware store. The result was an immediate Broadway sensation. Within minutes of the closure there wasn’t a free beach seat in the house.”

Photo by: Accretion%20Disc

Good morning, RVA! It’s 48 °F, and, whoa, get ready for a beautiful day. Highs in the mid 70s that will continue through tomorrow plus a generally dry forecast. We may see some cloudy skies, but the rain should hold off until Sunday. Fingers crossed!

Water cooler

A couple of days ago, Kelly Avellino at NBC12 posted this story about how the 17th Street Farmer’s Market project has run out of money for things like landscaping, benches, and fire pits. There’s a lot going on in that piece, but there a couple things on which I can cut the market some slack. First, the Franklin Street cut-through under the train station is a separate project, and, until it’s finished, breaks a useful connection between Downtown, the Market, and the Capital Trail—and probably makes the northern end of the space feel like a construction zone. Second, the utility shed redesign did have to go through the Urban Design Committee for approval late last year, and I imagine that’s holding up some finishing touches. However, a thing I cannot cut a single bit of slack about is the lack of seating—especially on a day like today, with sunshine and highs in the 70s. Enrichmond, the nonprofit that programs the space, should pull a Janet Sadik-Khan, and throw down a couple dozen lawn chairs today—this morning even. To inspire anyone with a checkbook and the authority to humanize our new public plaza, here’s a quick excerpt from Sadik-Khan’s book, Streetfight, about her pedestrian-focused redesign of Times Square: “We had café chairs and tables on order, but the wheels of municipal procurement didn’t move as fast as our traffic barrels, and it would be weeks before they arrived. The moment called for creativity and a bit of dumb luck. Tim Tompkins of the Times Square Alliance made feverish phone calls to find cheap seats, locating 376 beach chairs in lollipop colors at $10.74 each from Brooklyn’s Pintchik hardware store. The result was an immediate Broadway sensation. Within minutes of the closure there wasn’t a free beach seat in the house.”

Good morning, RVA! It’s 27 °F, but later this afternoon we’ll see temperatures in the mid 60s! Sounds great, can’t wait.

Water cooler

Listening to one of the recent episode of the Boring Show, probably March 18th’s, I heard a couple councilmembers bring up increased costs for the three new schools currently under construction and funded by the recent meals tax increase. Last night, I got this combo statement from both the City and RPS (PDF) about those costs now that the procurement process has wrapped up. The total for all three schools is up by $30 million from the 2017 estimates, and the two administrations point to increased construction costs industrywide, an increase in the size of E.S.H. Greene Elementary (which accounts for $7 million of the increase), LEED Silver requirements, and “a 2% contingency.” From this statement, I also learned of the existence of the Joint Construction Team, which seems like legit group of folks, meets weekly. and has their minutes uploaded to Board Docs (IMHO they should be in Granicus, too, see below). I don’t know anything about school construction, so I have absolutely no idea if these increases seem obvious or out-of-whack. I imagine we’ll hear more about this over the next week or so.

Today, City Council’s Governmental Operations committee will meet and hear a presentation titled Granicus Opportunities (PDF). What is Granicus? Oh, it’s only the software that the City uses to publish all of the agendas, minutes, and PDFs I’m always overly excited about. It is literally one of two bookmarks that I keep in all of my browsers, and I’ll tell you what: I’m overly excited about this presentation. There are all kinds of features buried in the software that the City isn’t using that could increase transparency and accountability—top on my list: how votes went down on each ordinance or resolution! If I were King of Richmond for a day, I’d also encourage/force every one of the City’s bodies, committees, commissions, boards, and hangouts to use Granicus and publish a minimum set of documents. It’s more work for City staff, sure, but don’t you want to know what’s going on at, say, the Safe and Healthy Streets Commission?

Good morning, RVA! It’s 27 °F, but later this afternoon we’ll see temperatures in the mid 60s! Sounds great, can’t wait.

Water cooler

Listening to one of the recent episode of the Boring Show, probably March 18th’s, I heard a couple councilmembers bring up increased costs for the three new schools currently under construction and funded by the recent meals tax increase. Last night, I got this combo statement from both the City and RPS (PDF) about those costs now that the procurement process has wrapped up. The total for all three schools is up by $30 million from the 2017 estimates, and the two administrations point to increased construction costs industrywide, an increase in the size of E.S.H. Greene Elementary (which accounts for $7 million of the increase), LEED Silver requirements, and “a 2% contingency.” From this statement, I also learned of the existence of the Joint Construction Team, which seems like legit group of folks, meets weekly. and has their minutes uploaded to Board Docs (IMHO they should be in Granicus, too, see below). I don’t know anything about school construction, so I have absolutely no idea if these increases seem obvious or out-of-whack. I imagine we’ll hear more about this over the next week or so.

Today, City Council’s Governmental Operations committee will meet and hear a presentation titled Granicus Opportunities (PDF). What is Granicus? Oh, it’s only the software that the City uses to publish all of the agendas, minutes, and PDFs I’m always overly excited about. It is literally one of two bookmarks that I keep in all of my browsers, and I’ll tell you what: I’m overly excited about this presentation. There are all kinds of features buried in the software that the City isn’t using that could increase transparency and accountability—top on my list: how votes went down on each ordinance or resolution! If I were King of Richmond for a day, I’d also encourage/force every one of the City’s bodies, committees, commissions, boards, and hangouts to use Granicus and publish a minimum set of documents. It’s more work for City staff, sure, but don’t you want to know what’s going on at, say, the Safe and Healthy Streets Commission?

Photo by: sandy%27s%20dad

Good morning, RVA! It’s 27 °F, but today’s highs will be right back up in the mid-to-upper 50s accompanied by plenty of sunshine.

Water cooler

Michael Paul Williams has a column today about believing victims of sexual assault, especially when those victims are Black women 💸. This column comes immediately after—and maybe prompted by—this terrible, offensive quote by Marty Jewell in the New York Times: “We do know that women, through their scorn, have made false charges against men to get even.” The Times article is worth reading, despite Jewell’s comments, and stitches together the stories of Justin Fairfax’s accuser Meredith Watson, Chicago-based activist Aliyah Young, R. Kelly, and some gut-wrenching statistics. For example: More than four in 10 Black women experience physical violence from an intimate partner during their lifetimes.

Photo by: Tony Webster

Good morning, RVA! It’s 43 °F, and warmish temperatures continue with highs in the mid 50s. Yesterday’s rain has come and gone, and we’ve got maybe an entire week ahead of us for things to dry out.

Water cooler

Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says Council passed RES. 2019-R009 last night, and, honestly, I don’t know what to think about it or what it means. The resolution is, of course, nonbinding, so maybe it means nothing at all? Assuming it does mean something, RPS now has a funding stream that sounds a lot like The Roanoke 40—let’s call it The Richmond 55.4. The idea is that Council will appropriate 55.4% of the real estate tax receipts to RPS each year. The positives of a plan like this is that it would, theoretically, remove politics from the conversation about funding schools, although I’m sure the politicians would still manage it somehow. No longer would you have this annual drama about how much the Mayor, or ultimately City Council, will fund/underfund schools. It’d just be 55.4% of the real estate tax, every year, to be reevaluated every three years. I have questions! Does the Education Compact—the Voltron-like group made up of School Board, City Council, the Superintendent, and the Mayor—support this plan? What happens if our real estate tax receipts change dramatically (in either direction)? Why is the amount of funding suggested by this resolution less than what RPS says it needs? What other options, presumably being explored by the Education Compact, exist that still dedicate funding to schools and keep the political garment-rending to a minimum? This passed with so little fanfare and so few PDFs to read, that I don’t know what to do with myself!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 53 °F, and warm weather finally returns in earnest. Highs today are basically 70 °F. Get excited, but keep in mind it does look like rain could fall this afternoon and into tomorrow morning.

Water cooler

1st District School Board Representative Liz Doerr has two posts for you to read today: 1) a nice piece about why she supports the Mayor’s proposal to roll back the Recession-era real estate tax cuts; and 2) a great companion piece explaining why certain line items in the Richmond Public Schools budget have increased or decreased. The latter is wonderful and addresses a lot of the concern/trolling/concern-trolling I’ve seen floating around the internet. I would love more of this from all of our elected representatives! I know that she’s a busy person and has things to do besides knocking out 2,400 words explaining the budget and its mysterious ways, but, dang, those are some valuable words and I really appreciate them.

It’s Monday, so here’s the link to this week’s RPS Superintendent email. As you might have guessed, the Superintendent focuses on the budget, and there’s some pretty heavy budgetchat along with a useful budgetFAQ that you should take the time to read through. He also points out that the application for the VUU is RVA program is now live (in both English- and Spanish-language versions. It was a literal forever ago, but maybe you remember VUU announcing they would award full rides to 50 current 8th graders who graduate from an RPS high school. Applications must be submitted by April 15th, so take a minute today and think hard about which young person in your life you should encourage to apply.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 45 °F, the rain has stopped, and highs today will hit the mid 50s. The sun should stick around for the weekend and we might even see temperatures in the 60 before Monday shows up.

Water cooler

Have you seen The Chart floating around? You know the one, it’s blue and purportedly shows that the City spends a jillion times more on “general government administration costs” per capita than a whole list of other localities—neighbors, peers, and far-flung places you’ve never even heard of, like Loudon and Stafford. Generated with actual state data, The Chart has been used as Exhibit #1 by folks against the Mayor’s proposal to roll back the Recession-era cuts to the real estate tax. It is, of course, a deeply misleading chart in this context. “Look at all that waste and incompetence!” they say while proposing more and more cuts to City services that are already hanging on by a thread. Thad Williamson has a very thorough dunking on that chart in Style Weekly, if you want to dig in, but the tl;dr is that the City categorizes expenses differently than other localities. Ultimately, and you know this, we’re not going to find the amount of money needed to reverse decades of disinvestment in our streets, schools, housing, and transportation in the couch cushions. P.S. Williamson links to this City Auditor’s report (PDF) from August that compares per-capita costs of functional areas of government across localities. It’s a quick and interesting read.

The Governor signed a couple bills that make it easier for folks with autism to get health insurance regardless of their age. Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a neat, human story about how these new laws made their way through the long and arduous legislative process to the governor’s desk.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F, and today looks a lot like yesterday, but with a steady chance of rain. Things may dry out after dinner—or maybe they won’t!

Water cooler

One thing that I think about a lot lately is how facts are broken, and social media (starting with talk radio) has done this new and terrible thing to the way we communicate about anything folks could disagree about but, specifically, about politics. For whatever reason, Republicans and Democrats have different communication strategies in this weird, fact-free moment of time—and I’m going to generalize here so don’t email me with #notallrepublicans. The president employs a Childish Sick Burn Strategy and it’s followed by a lot of Trump-adjacent Republicans and by folks who are just continually against things. It’s incredibly effective and almost impossible to address with facts or civil discourse or whatever normal-person thing you might want to attempt. Democrats, in response to a Childish Sick Burn, typically want link to a 300-page PDF with several appendixes of footnotes to prove that the Sick Burn is actually inaccurate and therefore must be rejected. It never works of course, because the audience for Sick Burns is massive and the audience for 300-page PDFs is small. Sometimes, some Democrats (again, I know, I know #notalldemocrats) will attempt to address this communication power imbalance by attempting their own Childish Sick Burn. Graham Moomaw at the Richmond Times-Dispatch gives us an excellent example of how this is almost always a bad idea and usually results in a stupid own-goal. The model for effective progressive communication is, of course, AOC. You can scroll through her timeline to get a feel for the strategy, but it almost always involves 1) speaking to your room not the person who disagrees with you (in her case, her supportive Twitter followers); 2) Making a joke or pointing out something ridiculous the opposition said; and 3) pivoting to a positive position you hold. It is never, ever just hanging a Childish Sick Burn out there with no connection to policy or progress.

Richmond Magazine’s Sarah King looks back to 1979 and how prescient then-Mayor Henry Marsh III was to fear the negative economic impacts of building the I-295 beltway around the City. This story features both highway-building and annexation—two of my favorite topics!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 27 °F, and you can expect temperatures in the mid 50s along with some rain later this evening. That rain will probably continue through tomorrow.

Water cooler

1st District Councilmember Addison’s always thorough newsletter is out, and in this addition he addresses the Mayor’s proposal to roll back the Recession-era real estate tax cuts (PDF). The Councilmember does not mince words, “I am opposed to this tax increase.” he says. He’s also the first Councilmember (I’ve seen) to propose the ~$21 million of offsetting cuts needed to balance a budget which does not include any of the Mayor’s proposed new revenue. Y’all, I wish that Richmond were in a place where all this new money was needed to take us to the next level, to make us a tier-one city as the previous mayor liked to say. The unfortunate reality is that Mayor Stoney’s proposal to add $24 million of new revenue is absolutely necessary to permanently fix decades of disinvestment in extremely basic city services. It’s not for shiny new things, it’s for streets, schools, houses, and buses. It gets us back to a barely acceptable baseline. While I agree with the Councilmember that we should explore every possible way to increase funding, if there were some magic public-private partnership out there waiting to solve all of our problems, we’d have found it by now. It’s not new news that almost every aspect of City government is underfunded—just listen to a budget work session or two. It’s been that way for ages, and now’s the time to do the hard work to get it fixed.

Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a short recap of yesterday’s event with former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. Here’s more from Katja Timm writing for the Capital News Service. Does video of this conversation exist somewhere? Anywhere? Please let me know if you come across it!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 27 °F, and you can expect temperatures in the mid 50s along with some rain later this evening. That rain will probably continue through tomorrow.

Water cooler

1st District Councilmember Addison’s always thorough newsletter is out, and in this addition he addresses the Mayor’s proposal to roll back the Recession-era real estate tax cuts (PDF). The Councilmember does not mince words, “I am opposed to this tax increase.” he says. He’s also the first Councilmember (I’ve seen) to propose the ~$21 million of offsetting cuts needed to balance a budget which does not include any of the Mayor’s proposed new revenue. Y’all, I wish that Richmond were in a place where all this new money was needed to take us to the next level, to make us a tier-one city as the previous mayor liked to say. The unfortunate reality is that Mayor Stoney’s proposal to add $24 million of new revenue is absolutely necessary to permanently fix decades of disinvestment in extremely basic city services. It’s not for shiny new things, it’s for streets, schools, houses, and buses. It gets us back to a barely acceptable baseline. While I agree with the Councilmember that we should explore every possible way to increase funding, if there were some magic public-private partnership out there waiting to solve all of our problems, we’d have found it by now. It’s not new news that almost every aspect of City government is underfunded—just listen to a budget work session or two. It’s been that way for ages, and now’s the time to do the hard work to get it fixed.

Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a short recap of yesterday’s event with former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu. Here’s more from Katja Timm writing for the Capital News Service. Does video of this conversation exist somewhere? Anywhere? Please let me know if you come across it!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 27 °F, but we should see temperatures a few degrees warmer than yesterday and basically no rain—drizzles or otherwise.

Water cooler

Reminder: Mayor Stoney will host the first of four budget-related town halls tonight at Woodville Elementary (2000 N. 28th Street) from 6:30–8:00 PM. This is an excellent opportunity to ask the Mayor specific questions about both his budget and his proposal to roll back the Recession-era cuts to the real estate tax. If you’re already on board with the Mayor‘s proposals and supportive of new revenue for basic city services, bring that support (and your IRL body) into the room tonight.

Justin Mattingly at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, says 4th District RPS School Board member Jonathan Young will not vote for any RPS budget that relies on the Mayor’s proposal to roll back tax cuts. That’s certainly an interesting strategy for a guy who did just vote for a schools budget that included millions of dollars in additional funding requests from the Mayor. Ultimately, City Council, not School Board, will decide the fate of the real estate tax, but it definitely wouldn’t hurt to have as many of the School Board members on board, too. So, if you want to let your elected representatives know how you feel about taxes and budgets, you can find School Board contact info here and City Council contact info over here.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F, and we’ll see temperatures top out right around 50 °F later this afternoon. You can expect warmer weather as the week progresses.

Water cooler

Budget season continues today with Council hosting their second work session from 9:00 AM–1:00 PM. I didn’t realize this until right now, but each session has it’s own cute(ish) name: last week was “21st Century Richmond,” and today is “Strategic Infrastructure.” As you might expect from the name, today we’ll hear from Public Works, Information Technology, capital improvements, and Council offices. I would guess that we’ll get some questions ranging in tone from pointed to intense during DPW’s portion of the day. Last week, a couple Councilmembers wanted to know more about the $2 million they asked be shifted into streets and sidewalk repair late last year, and the response from the administration wasn’t the clearest thing I’ve ever heard. I imagine Council will look to dig in further this morning. I haven’t done enough digging myself on this to know what’s going on, but I did find the resolution Council passed to ask the Mayor to shift that money around: RES. 2018-R098 (PDF). Anyway, I’ll get the audio up from today’s session on the The Boring Show as soon as I can.

Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a good, human-centered story about the Homeless Crisis Line 💸 (804.972.0813, put it in your phone!) and homelessness in Richmond that you should read if you’re able. This story reminded me that City Council passed ORD. 2018–241 this past December requiring the CAO to develop a Homeless Strategic Plan by October, which, of course, lines right up with when folks need to start getting their budget requests in line for next year’s budget season. Maybe we’ll see some funding go towards whatever recommendations fall out of the strategic plan?

Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F, and highs today return to the mid 70s. There’s a chance of rain this evening, but the rest of the weekend looks pretty dry—cooler, but dry.

Water cooler

Former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu will visit Richmond this coming Tuesday, March 19th, from 9:30–11:00 AM at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. Landrieu will chat with our Mayor during this public event and is in town as part of his E Pluribus Unum initiative to “bring people together across the American South around the issues of race, equity, economic opportunity and violence, proving the American motto that ‘out of many, one.’“ You may remember Landrieu as the guy who just up and took down four of his city’s prominent Confederate monuments several years ago. In a surprising twist, New Orleans did not crumble to dust and remains standing to this very day. The Mayor’s press release says members of the public can RSVP by emailing info@unumfund.org, but the event is free and open to the public with doors at 9:00 AM.

Whoa, the Richmond Times-Dispatch has an column by four former Virginia Secretaries of Education supporting Mayor Stoney’s proposal to fully fund RPS by restoring the real estate tax to its pre-Recession levels (oh, and, adding a cigarette tax, too). Heavy hitters! Three of these folks served under Democratic governors, and one under a Republican.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 45 °F, and today you can look forward to highs in 70s. Enjoy!

Water cooler

The Richmond Police Department is reporting a murder that occurred the night of March 12th. That evening, officers were called to the 2300 block of Halifax Avenue and found Husain El-Amin, 59, shot to death.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and, while not as nice as yesterday’s preview of spring, today still looks pretty OK. Expect lots of sunshine and highs in the mid 50s.

Water cooler

The Mayor will host four town hall meetings across the City to discuss his proposed budget—on March 19th, March 21st, March 27th, and April 2nd. While you’re welcome to discuss any aspect of the budget at these meetings, I’m pretty sure the focus will be on his much-needed proposal to roll back the Recession-era real estate tax cuts. These meetings are an opportunity for folks to get in there, ask him some questions, and show him (and, with any luck, City Council members in attendance) some support.

Speaking of the real estate tax, Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has the early vote count for rolling back the tax cuts. Using my gut—which is based on absolutely nothing other than beer, and, lately, a lot of Chex mix—and interpreting the words in this article I’d say that the 5th, 6th, 7th, and 9th District are all gettable votes; the 2nd and 8th District are probably not; leaving one from the 1st, 3rd, or 4th District to get this thing to pass. You should definitely contact your Council person and let them know you support more revenue for basic, necessary services—especially if you’re represented by Councilmembers Addison, Hilbert, or Larson. But really, all Councilfolk, even those that support this bold budget from the Mayor, will need your support (and cover) if they’re going to vote for this to pass. Should Council choose not to go along with the Mayor, they’ll have to cut millions of dollars from his proposed budget. But, as Robinson notes, “Last year, this council didn’t make a single cut to the mayor’s proposed general fund budget after more than 40 hours spent in work sessions.” Now those would be interesting budget sessions.

Photo by: sandy’s dad

Good morning, RVA! It’s 53 °F, and, this afternoon, you can expect highs in the 60s! Better than that, you can even expect warmer days later this week—perhaps an opportunity for things to dry out a bit.

Water cooler

It’s really and truly budget season, and that means City Council will begin holding their epically long meetings at which representatives from each City department make a presentation, answer questions, and try to justify their existence. It’s fascinating, an excellent way to learn about the status and needs of our City, and I love it. Today, up first through the gauntlet: Richmond Public Schools; Public Utilities; Economic Development; Housing and Community Development; Planning & Development Review; and Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities. This year we’ve got the interesting twist of the Mayor’s proposal to roll back the Recession-era real estate tax cuts. Lots of departments will have an influx of cash, and I’m looking forward to hearing them advocate for keeping that cash. The best way to consume these sessions, in my opinion, is to subscribe to The Boring Show podcast and listen at 2x speed.

Photo by: sandy’s dad

Good morning, RVA! It’s 53 °F, and, this afternoon, you can expect highs in the 60s! Better than that, you can even expect warmer days later this week—perhaps an opportunity for things to dry out a bit.

Water cooler

It’s really and truly budget season, and that means City Council will begin holding their epically long meetings at which representatives from each City department make a presentation, answer questions, and try to justify their existence. It’s fascinating, an excellent way to learn about the status and needs of our City, and I love it. Today, up first through the gauntlet: Richmond Public Schools; Public Utilities; Economic Development; Housing and Community Development; Planning & Development Review; and Parks, Recreation and Community Facilities. This year we’ve got the interesting twist of the Mayor’s proposal to roll back the Recession-era real estate tax cuts. Lots of departments will have an influx of cash, and I’m looking forward to hearing them advocate for keeping that cash. The best way to consume these sessions, in my opinion, is to subscribe to The Boring Show podcast and listen at 2x speed.

Photo by: Jonathan Piques

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, the clouds are back, and with them maybe some rain later this evening. The chance for rain continue through the weekend, unfortunately, but warm weather returns in a big way on Sunday.

Water cooler

FYI, Sunday is the “Spring Forward” portion of our relentless commitment to the oppressive regime of Daylight Saving Time and when we enter Eastern Daylight Time. I’ll value an hour of sleep over an hour of daylight any day of the week, including this Sunday.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 24 °F, and today’s highs won’t break 40 °F. But! It looks like a dry and sunny day ahead of us. I’ll take it; my back yard is starting to mold over.

Water cooler

Today, at 3:00 PM in Council Chambers, Mayor Levar Stoney will present his proposed budget to City Council, officially kicking off Budget Season aka the most wonderful time of the year. I didn’t invent the saying, but it’s true: You can tell a City’s real priorities not by what politicians say but by what’s in their budget—ideally the two things align. So what priorities will the Mayor lay out this year? If I had to guess it would be a continued commitment to schools (which may not mean more money over last year, but certainly not less) and housing (possibly framed around eviction). Of course, if I tell my brain to hush and let my heart take hold, I would love to see more money for transit, more money for bike infrastructure, more money for Vision Zero, and, really, just more money in general. I haven’t banged on the Increase the Property Tax™ drum in a while, but, at some point, we’re gonna need more revenue. Council will kick off their deliberations on Monday, March 11th, with a daylong meeting of presentations by departments trying to justify their budgetary existence. On the agenda: Public Schools; Public Utilities; Economic Development; Housing and Community Development; Planning & Development Review; and Parks, Rec. and Community Facilities. With Councilmember Newbille leading these meetings, they may actually get through all of those scheduled presentations in a single day! I will post the audio from the meetings, beginning with today’s initial budget presentation, to The Boring Show podcast as quickly as a I can. Go ahead and subscribe now.

I forget who sent it to me, so, apologies, but this article about the history of slavery at Bermuda Hundred in Chesterfield is excellent. Great work by Rich Griset in the Chesterfield Observer, and you should mark this as your reading homework for the day.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 25 °F, but, after the sun comes out, things should warm up a bit. Later on this afternoon, you can expect highs in the low 40s and a bunch of sunshine.

Water cooler

FYI, Today is Mardi Gras aka Fat Tuesday aka Shrove Tuesday. I don’t really know what that means for folks in Richmond, but I imagine people are out there getting ready to eat some king cakes and drink some booze.

Superintendent Kamras’s email from this past weekend is, again, worth reading. He devotes the majority of the space to a discussion of why he wanted to keep portions of the budget confidential: To spare the RPS employees losing their jobs from first hearing about it in the newspaper. This, of course, is exactly what happened, and today the Richmond Times-Dispatch ran a story titled “Which jobs are being eliminated by Richmond Public Schools? Here’s the list.” I think if I were about to lose my job, I’d find that title a little flippant. Anyway, I really respect the way the Superintendent communicates, even when his Board and the community ask him to do things he’d rather not do. One other detail mentioned in his email that I wish I would have know about earlier or had the time to dig into: “In an effort to be responsive to Board requests, we developed the ‘full,’ roughly 230-page version of the budget recently. Please note that this comprehensive document is normally prepared much later in the budget process—after RPS knows how much funding it is going to receive from the City and the State.“ Hmmm.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 34 °F, and highs today will hit the mid 40s. With any luck. We should see the sun a bit, while avoiding anymore rain. In fact, the weekly forecast looks pretty rain-free.

Water cooler

Heather Mullins Crislip, president and CEO of Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia, has a column from this past weekend’s paper about how housing policy can help address the years of systemic racism, intentional discrimination, and decades long disinvestment in our City. Actually, I should just quote her directly: “Our segregated communities are not accidents of history or preference, they are the legacy of systemic pressures, institutionalized discrimination, and regulations that advantaged one group and disinvested and stripped another of wealth.“

City Council’s Organizational Development Committee will meet today. The best part about that committee is that folks give them presentations, and then we get to download those presentations as PDFs. First, have look through this presentation from the folks running Richmond 300, the City’s master planning process (PDF). The back half of the slide deck goes through the results of the first “community consultation process,” which involved over 1,000 surveys and a bunch of public meetings. Of note, check what categories people’s responses fall into when asked about “big ideas” for Richmond. Spoiler: The first four categories, in order, are Transportation, housing, parks & rec, and urban design & land use—this PDF digs a bit further into those big ideas. Those are, like, my top four favorite things to have big ideas about, so great job, Richmonders. The second presentation OrgDev will hear focuses on housing and the “Regional Housing Framework” (PDF). I think, and I’ll have to listen to the audio to be sure, that this is the regional housing plan we’ve all been looking forward to. It’s a short presentation, but the list of folks involved includes Chesterfield, Hanover, Henrico, and Richmond. Sounds pretty regional to me!

Photo by: sandy’s dad

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F, and the rain has returned. Expect showers on and off today, a beautiful Saturday, and maybe some more rain on Sunday. It was nice/dry while it lasted!

Water cooler

Did y’all make it out to Mayorathon: Policy Jam last night? I had a great time, but, admittedly, was back stage doing night-of tasks for a lot of it. Please let me know what you thought! Over the course of an hour and a half, the Mayor talked through three of the commits he made over the last two years in each of four areas: Urban Environment, Transportation, Neighborhoods, and Youth & Families. He also reacted to three policy suggestions (from local nonprofits and organizations) in each of those topic areas. Scroll through Twitter user @dbass1978’s timeline to read all 12 commitments and all 12 policy suggestions. The specifics are interesting, but this is the part of the event that I’m most excited about: creating a culture of accountability for our elected officials in Richmond. Yeah we had a good time and made some jokes, but the reason Mayorathon exists is to help citizens focus on policy and remind our representatives that these things are important to us and that we are paying attention.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 42 °F, and today’s highs will creep up just a couple of degrees. Expect a cloudy sky, but it’s, like, the fourth dry day in a row, so nothing to complain about from me!

Water cooler

I have a couple updates and thoughts on yesterday’s fatal crash that killed a pedestrian trying to cross Broad Street. First, Richmond Police have identified the victim as Luther A. Waller, Jr. 67. Second, GRTC has closed the bus stop on the northeast corner of that intersection, which is utterly inaccessible since the sidewalk is entirely blocked off. You can see from this picture by @_SmithNicholas_ that transit riders were a complete afterthought when closing this huge section of sidewalk. Third, I keep thinking about how this terrible incident illustrates the need for a Richmond Department of Transportation—I know, that’s a wonky and boring thought, but it’s true. Richmond doesn’t have a dedicated Department of Transportation, and so we don’t have anyone who has the authority over and responsibility for all of the things that impact transportation in the City. We have lots of hard-working, smart folks scattered over many departments all across the org chart, but without a team focused on transportation we end up with situations like this: a decision to allow a sidewalk closure on a block that contains a bus stop, is adjacent to the Pulse, is in a pedestrian-heavy part of town, and no requirement to provide a safe alternative. Who can champion the sidewalk-closure policy inside City government? Who can make sure that sidewalks, bike lanes, and bus stops are considered and prioritized during construction and demolition? Who can ensure that investments in our transportation network—be it for pedestrians, people on bikes, or public transportation—are done in an equitable way?

Justin Mattingly has an update on the weirdly secret RPS budget, including an explanatory quote from Superintendent Kamras: “The only reason that I held on releasing [the budget] was because we wanted to provide our employees with the dignity of a face-to-face conversation and now that’s not possible.” He’s talking about the employees in the 49 positions he plans to cut from the Central Office. You can download the full budget here (PDF) and learn more about those positions, but, be warned, it is a 228-page document. According to Mattingly, you can find the Superintendent at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School tonight at 6:00 PM hosting a public meeting to answer questions about his proposed budget. Next up in budgetland: The Mayor’s budget presentation to City Council on March 6th at 3:00 PM.

Photo by: Nicholas Smith

Good morning, RVA! It’s 33 °F, and today you should expect lower temperatures with highs in the upper 40s and more clouds in the sky.

Water cooler

Yesterday, a driver hit and killed a pedestrian attempting to cross Broad Street at Summit Street near a massive and complete sidewalk closure that I’d just complained about just three days ago. Did this person die crossing Broad Street because the sidewalk was closed and no safe alternative was provided? I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter. No one should die in our city because they crossed the street. We can do better. In fact, we tried to do better, but have, obviously, come up short. Back in March, City Council passed RES. 2018-R025 which requested that the City’s CAO “cause to be developed and implemented regulations requiring that temporary sidewalks be provided within the city of Richmond whenever a sidewalk is closed due to construction or demolition.” As a non-binding resolution, this was Council asking the Mayor’s administration to create internal policies that require safe pedestrian passage through or around construction. Obviously, this has yet to be done in a meaningful, citywide way as sidewalks are still closed all over the place—including in some of the most pedestrian-heavy parts of town (the southern side of Broad Street between 3rd and 4th comes to mind). I don’t know if this person would still be alive had the City moved faster in creating a sidewalk-closure policy, but, regardless, we need to be proactive keeping people of all ages and abilities safe as they use our streets. If the Mayor’s administration is unable or unwilling to act on RES. 2018-R025, maybe City Council should pass their own ordinance instead.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, but I’m looking forward to today’s clear skies and highs in mid 50s. Soak it up/in, because rain probably returns later this week.

Water cooler

I forgot to link to Superintendent Kamras’s email yesterday, which is a real shame since the School Board also voted to approve their FY20 budget yesterday (PDF). Read the email in retrospect, though, to get an idea of where the new funds RPS has asked for will be spent. Helpfully, outside of the local match for the State’s teacher raise money and capital expenses for facility maintenance, it’s all linked to strategic plan priorities. The Mayor will now take this budget request and factor it into his budget which he’ll present to City Council this coming Monday. Stoney had this to say about the schools’ budget: “The school board faced a number of tough decisions in crafting this budget, and I appreciate it choosing to pass a plan that prioritizes students and teachers. I am committed to identifying the resources needed to provide our students with the learning opportunities they deserve. Fully funding Richmond Public Schools would be easier if the Commonwealth of Virginia would step up and fulfill its constitutional obligation to adequately support K-12 education. Virginia’s current approach to funding public education is not only inadequate and inequitable, it is unjust and immoral. The Commonwealth needs to do more for Virginia’s children, especially those growing up in poverty. The RPS adopted budget demands a lot from the City of Richmond. We have our own tough decisions ahead, but our kids deserve nothing less than our bold leadership.” Justin Mattingly at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has the vote count 💸, with a few members of the Board dissenting and citing concerns about cuts to the central office.

Mike Platania, writing for Richmond BizSense, says that City Council approved the SUP for a new, mixed-use, adjacent-to-transit development on Semmes. I’ve talked about this development before, and, while still single-family homes, they are pretty densely packed onto the 12-acre property. Despite the proximity to a bunch of good public transit, opposition from both citizens and council members came in the form of “concerns regarding traffic.” At some point soon—before the planet burns down around us—we’re going to have to shift our mindset away from this idea that everyone in Richmond has the god-given right to drive themselves in and out of town, never once encountering the slightest slowdown.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 42 °F, and, today, we’ll see the sun! With any luck, plentiful sunshine and highs in the 50s will dry out the soggier parts of Richmond.

Water cooler

Virginia’s hands-free driving bill officially died yesterday. Here’s an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that doesn’t really get at why the billed died and instead quotes only Republicans who shrug and lament that a compromise couldn’t be reached. Well, it was Republicans who intentionally killed the bill using a procedural strategy that I still do not fully understand. At one point, legislators introduced a inconsequential 3-word amendment to trigger a thing, which then led to more language that allowed holding a phone in your hand (?!) while talking into it, which then led to concerns about equitable enforcement. So frustrating, and I don’t see how citizens and advocates get involved in a process specifically designed for maximum subversion (if you don’t believe that, read this by Megan Rhyne, the executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government). Distracted drivers kill people with their cars, and I don’t understand why Virginia’s Republicans were unwilling to pass something that would help save lives and has broad support from pretty much everyone.

In more pleasant state government news, the General Assembly voted to create its first redistricting commission. OneVirginia2021, the experts in this matter, say the compromise is good progress: “And although this bipartisan plan does not reflect every provision we urged in our original proposal, make no mistake: This reform will end partisan gerrymandering in Virginia.” Next up, since this would would amend Virginia’s Constitution, it’s gotta get through next year’s General Assembly session, and then pass a statewide referendum in November 2020. Exciting news, and Mechelle Hankerson at the Virginia Mercury has some quotes and reactions from lawmakers.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 42 °F, and, today, we’ll see the sun! With any luck, plentiful sunshine and highs in the 50s will dry out the soggier parts of Richmond.

Water cooler

Virginia’s hands-free driving bill officially died yesterday. Here’s an article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that doesn’t really get at why the billed died and instead quotes only Republicans who shrug and lament that a compromise couldn’t be reached. Well, it was Republicans who intentionally killed the bill using a procedural strategy that I still do not fully understand. At one point, legislators introduced a inconsequential 3-word amendment to trigger a thing, which then led to more language that allowed holding a phone in your hand (?!) while talking into it, which then led to concerns about equitable enforcement. So frustrating, and I don’t see how citizens and advocates get involved in a process specifically designed for maximum subversion (if you don’t believe that, read this by Megan Rhyne, the executive director of the Virginia Coalition for Open Government). Distracted drivers kill people with their cars, and I don’t understand why Virginia’s Republicans were unwilling to pass something that would help save lives and has broad support from pretty much everyone.

In more pleasant state government news, the General Assembly voted to create its first redistricting commission. OneVirginia2021, the experts in this matter, say the compromise is good progress: “And although this bipartisan plan does not reflect every provision we urged in our original proposal, make no mistake: This reform will end partisan gerrymandering in Virginia.” Next up, since this would would amend Virginia’s Constitution, it’s gotta get through next year’s General Assembly session, and then pass a statewide referendum in November 2020. Exciting news, and Mechelle Hankerson at the Virginia Mercury has some quotes and reactions from lawmakers.

Photo by: sandy%27s%20dad

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and it’s gonna be way warmer today. Highs in the mid 50s, and, what!, we may even see the sun later this afternoon.

Water cooler

Police are reporting another murder that occurred last Thursday. Officers received a call around 11:00 PM about a shooting on the 3100 block of Broad Rock Boulevard after Edwin D. Gonzales-Urbina, 27, arrived at the hospital with a fatal gunshot wound.

Photo by: sandy%27s%20dad

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and it’s gonna be way warmer today. Highs in the mid 50s, and, what!, we may even see the sun later this afternoon.

Water cooler

Police are reporting another murder that occurred last Thursday. Officers received a call around 11:00 PM about a shooting on the 3100 block of Broad Rock Boulevard after Edwin D. Gonzales-Urbina, 27, arrived at the hospital with a fatal gunshot wound.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, highs today will break into the 40s, and there’s a chance for some sort of wintery precipitation late tonight. Sounds like tomorrow morning’s commute may be gross and/or outright delayed.

Water cooler

I realize this space has become a very inefficient RSS reader for City Council meetings and the Superintendent’s weekly email. Well, buckle up, because today is no different! Superintendent Kamras’s email from this past weekend has a great explainer on the schools’ budget and how budgets work in general—required reading. Last year, the Mayor gave RPS a one-time $12.5 million pot of money. This year, the Superintendent will cut $13 million from the Central Office (PDF) while asking for $12 million more to fund the next phase of the Dreams4RPS strategic plan (PDF). Then on top of that, he’ll ask for the required $6 million match to get at some state money for teacher raises. Bottom line, as I interpret it: Not including the teacher raise money, which the City has to cough up if they want more cash from the State, RPS will ask for the same amount of funds as last year but with a promise to spend it all on students—as defined by a strategic plan which went through a pretty extensive community engagement process. It seems like some trust-building is going on here. Superintendent Kamras will submit his budget to the School Board for approval tonight, which, spoiler alert, you can read right now (PDF).

Oh, also! You can and should read this op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by the Superintendent about the funding changes we need at the state government level. He mentions it in the aforelinked email, but I’ll longquote it down here. Look how he appropriately ties state education funding to systemic racism and asks our elected leaders for real, concrete commitments to dismantling the racism that they’ve all had plenty of hot takes on Twitter about over the past couple of weeks: “If the Commonwealth’s leaders are truly committed to dismantling racial injustice, they must begin by ensuring that the students who need the most actually get the most. Right now, the exact opposite is true. According to the National Center on Education Statistics, Virginia’s highest poverty school divisions—which serve large percentages of children of color—receive 8.3% less in per-pupil funding than the state’s wealthiest districts. Is this about race? Of course it is. If all the children in our poorest school divisions were white, I am certain the Commonwealth would have found a way to fix its convoluted and unjust education funding policies so that our lowest-income communities received more.“