🧑‍⚖️ Good morning, RVA: Budget PDFs, Southside scooters, and the Justices

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and cooler(ish) weather starts to move in today. You can expect highs “only” around 60 °F, and temperatures may dip below freezing for just a bit this evening—let’s hope its not cold enough to kill all of the springtime plants who are very confused about it still being the first week of March. Other than that, today still looks sunny and wonderful, so I hope you can find time to enjoy the out-of-doors at some point.
 

Water cooler

The Mayor introduced his FY23 budget to City Council yesterday afternoon, and you can watch his presentation over on the City’s legislative website (or you can soon listen over on the Boring Show). Dive straight in, first hand, if you want, and download the FY24 Annual Fiscal Plan (aka the operating budget) and the FY24 Capital Improvement Plan to your PDF library. However, if scrolling through a 485-page document is not your thing, the Mayor’s “transmittal letter” to Council (p. 6) provides a good overview of the highlights. Top of mind for me this morning, although I haven’t had a chance to dig in fully yet, is RPS funding. The School Board passed a budget asking for about $29 million in additional funding, and the Mayor has proposed a $21 million increase. How that $8 million gap gets filled, I don’t know, but this stat from the Mayor blows my mind: The City’s “contribution to RPS…is $69,921,277 more than the FY 2017 funding level and represents a 46.1 percent increase in RPS funding during my tenure as Mayor.” That’s a huge increase over just a handful of years! Regardless of that massive financial support, it’s not enough, and I don’t think we’re done discussing school funding. I’m pretty sure that State’s budget will shortchange the district a whole bunch of cash, further increasing that funding gap and requiring either more support from City Council or more cuts from RPS. Which means: Prepare yourself for some stressful public meetings in the near future. While funding Richmond Public Schools is the City’s largest expense, there are a million and one other details to dig into (like the decision to basically flat-fund GRTC and how they City will support the Affordable Housing Trust Fund) that I’m sure we’ll hear about in the coming weeks. For now, though, just download those PDFs and get to scrolling!
 

Remember how City Council updated the scooter ordinance to incentivize companies to start deploying scooters on the Southside (ORD. 2023–029)? At the time, neither of our two existing vendors, Bird and Lime, had a single scooter south of the river. Since then, Spin has started dropping their bright orange scooters around town, and Reader Andrew sent me this picture of a tiny flock parked over at Semmes and 34th. Most of Spin’s Southside fleet hugs the area around the James, but, still, it’s at least something to provide better connectivity to that part of town. Of note: As of this morning, neither Bird nor Lime have expanded their coverage to the Southside (at least according to a quick look at their apps).
 

Tonight, at Binford Middle School from 6:00–7:30 PM, you have an opportunity to join the 2nd and 5th District Councilmembers—plus special guest Director of Planning and Development Review Kevin Vonck—for a meeting about those Three Zoning Changes (ADUs everywhere, abolish parking minimums, and tweak the City’s Airbnb regulations). I’m extremely for the first two and pretty hesitant about the third, especially the proposal to get rid of the City’s current residency requirement for Airbnb owners which, practically, limits the number of Airbnbs a person can own and, hopefully, preserves some housing as actual homes for people. If you’ve got thoughts and feelings, head out to this in-person meeting and ask some questions of the actual people making the actual decisions on this kind of thing.
 

Also tonight, Jennifer McClellan officially becomes Representative McClellan, the first Black woman to represent Virginia in Congress. It’s exciting stuff, and if you want to get together and celebrate her swearing-in you can RSVP to the Democratic Party of Virginia’s watch party here.
 

I don’t know how much you follow high school basketball, but RPS’s John Marshall Justices are one of the country’s best teams. You can usually find them dropping triple digits on opposing teams and they are currently fresh off a 112–49 victory in the Virginia State Class 2 Tournament semifinals (they’ll play in the finals on March 11th). Last week, they added another honor to this year’s undefeated season: The Justice’s head coach, Ty White, was named the Naismith Boys High School Coach of the Year.
 

This morning’s longread

How to write fast — or at least faster

While this writing advice is geared towards journalist, I think it can benefit anyone—especially if you’re writing about ongoing, immediate events (even if it’s just for your own blog or Mastodon).
 

To be a good writer, you have to learn to write slow. Some sentences or passages just take a long time. But slow writing need not be the norm. In journalism and all public writing, the goal should be fast writing — or at least faster writing. I’m a pretty fast writer, but not the fastest. I would give that title to Bill Blundell, formerly of The Wall Street Journal and author of “The Art and Craft of Feature Writing.” I once attended a workshop with Blundell in which the class was assigned a news feature story. We all had access to the same information. In the allotted time, I managed to squeeze out a couple of clumsy paragraphs. Blundell, who nervously chewed paper (literally), knocked off three pages in no time, good enough to be published the next morning.
 

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Picture of the Day

I did my best not to shred over these wild daffodils.