🤫 Good morning, RVA: A medium-big win!, school construction money, and Ride of Silence

Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F, and that was a lot of rain last night! Today, though, you can expect dry skies and highs in the mid 70s. It may be the best day of the week weather wise, but it’s hard to tell since the five-day forecast looks so amazing. Definitely time to queue up your best late-spring outside plans, which, for me, means (finally) getting the vegetable garden planted.
 

Water cooler

Hey, I think this is a medium-big deal: The Department of Public Works is, once again, asking for your feedback on the proposed bike lane on Westover Hills Boulevard south of the Nickel Bridge. Back in February, I wrote about DPW’s original survey, suggesting that folks request physically protected bike lanes as part of the project. In this new survey, DPW notes that they “received significant feedback to add physical protection to the proposed bike lane. DPW proposes placing a physical barrier between the bike lane and traffic.” First, thank you to everyone who wrote in asking for a better project design. Look, it made a difference! And, honestly, we really shouldn’t even be building bike lanes without some sort of physical protection at this point. Second, thank you to DPW for listening to the folks who wrote in—it’s really gratifying to see the public engagement process working properly. However, because I can’t leave well enough alone, I do still think this project can be even better: As currently designed, the bike lane leaves Westover Hills Boulevard at Clarence Street and continues down 49th Street—with just sharrows!—and dead ends at Hill Top Drive. Currently, there’s no way to get from that dead end over to the apartments by Reedy Creek or, more importantly, George Wythe High School. I’m not sure I know the best and safest way to make this connection other than to just extend the bike lane all the way down to Midlothian Turnpike instead of branching off to 49th. So…that’s what I’m going to ask for, emphasizing a safe connection to George Wythe, when I fill out this new survey!
 

Speaking of George Wythe, this evening, Richmond Public Schools will hold another one of their school-renaming public hearings, this one for George Wythe High School. The renaming committee has come up with an interesting set of names for folks to consider, which includes zero options that feature people(!): Capitol City High School of the Arts, Culture High School of the Arts, Gateway High School of the Arts, Heritage High School of the Arts, and South Richmond High School of the Arts. All told, RPS will rename four schools this round—Binford Middle, John B. Cary Elementary, Ginter Park Elementary, and George Wythe High—and I think I’ve now written about them all! We’re not done, though, because I imagine there are still schools within the District named after dead Confederates or slaveowners (looking at you John Marshall), so I bet we’ll see at least one more round of renaming at some point in the future.
 

Also schools related—and some good news—Superintendent Kamras reports that the state awarded RPS over $27 million in school construction grants To quote from his newsletter, that’s:
 

• $20 million to begin the process of turning the Maury Street property that we own (the old Altria building) into a new, high-tech CTE high school.
• $5.6 million for the rebuilding of Fox Elementary School. This is in addition to the insurance payout and the $15 million from Mayor Stoney and City Council. In short, we’re now all set for the Fox rebuild.
• $1 million for Henderson Middle School and $1 million for J.L. Francis Elementary School to begin switching from open-space floor plans to more traditional plans (i.e., building walls :). While this isn’t enough money to complete the transformation, it’s enough for a solid start.

Jahd Khalil at VPM reports on the Richmond Police Department voting to move forward with figuring out their union. I have all sorts of feelings (that I’m still trying to parse) about increasing the already enormous amount of power the police have in City Hall. Regardless of how you feel about that particular part of the process to unionize Richmond’s employees, Khalil also has a few interesting updates on the City’s other bargaining units that are now able to unionize.
 

Tonight, as part of RVA Bike Month, you can join the Ride of Silence, a slow-pace ride honoring victims of traffic violence. Meet up at 5:30 PM in the cobblestone parking lot at 3115 Wharf Street for a 10 mile ride out east to install a Ghost Bike for Jonah Holland, who was hit and killed by a driver last year. There are a couple different ride/parking options, so check out the Eventbrite if you’re interested but a little intimidated by a 10-mile ride.
 

This morning’s longread

What It Felt Like to Almost Die

Listen, I never know what to make of near-death-experience writing, but it’s a genre I can’t not read. If, like me, you gotta tap through, make sure you also read her follow up, “How It Felt To Come Back To Life.”
 

Since that day, whenever someone has expressed grief and sorrow about a loved one they’ve lost, I haven’t known how to respond. I so badly want to tell them that I am sure the transition was an incredible one. I want to tell them what I saw and felt, let them know I think their loved one experienced something unimaginably beautiful, and reassure them not worry about that part of it. I want to tell them that I am certain no loss is ever in vain. But I know all of it sounds ridiculous. So I simply reply, “I’m sorry for your loss.” I’m sharing this story now not just in hopes that it helps others move past death, but so it might help us live too.
 

If you’d like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
 

Picture of the Day

Probably against the law to build a place like this now.