👻 Good morning, RVA: Casino impacts, CRB recommendations, and not closing Hanover Avenue

Good morning, RVA! It’s 50 °F, and today looks ominous. Expect highs in the 60s and cloudy skies while we wait for tonight/tomorrow’s big rain.
 

Water cooler

Former 2nd District City Council candidate Tarvarris Spinks has put together a great post on the harm a casino can cause to their surrounding communities, saying “When casinos implant themselves into struggling communities, they inflict caustic, irreparable social harm, with proximity to a casino being the key factor in creating a surge in pathological gamblers.” I really enjoy this bit, too: “I firmly believe that our city can and should embark on bold projects that uplift and empower our struggling communities. But, unfortunately, we have yet to see a project or proposal that meaningfully prioritizes the interests of vulnerable communities…”Just like Navy Hill, the casino project is not the ONLY way to create tax revenue for the city and build into communities that have seen decades of disinvestment. It is a big, shiny, temporary fix that gives some folks the opportunities to cut a ribbon and add a bullet point to their campaign website. It does not and will not build a thriving, sustainable community or neighborhood.
 

As foretold, letting the Richmond Police Department update Council’s Public Safety committee about officer morale right before the Civilian Review Board Task Force presentation was not the best idea. Jon Burkett at WTVR reports that Chief Smith told Council that “morale and retention is a problem already and that if the CRB is implemented, he says it’s likely more officers will abandon ship.” Ali Rockett at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a few more details and quotes worth reading through, too. I don’t have a lot of empathy for the RPD in this situation. City Council created the CRB task force and asked them to come up with recommendations on how to best implement a CRB in Richmond. The task force has spent months doing just that, researching, according to Rockett, “more than 200 other bodies to tailor their recommendations specifically to Richmond’s needs.” Council should listen to their own task force and realize that the Chief of Police is in no way unbiased when it comes to civilian review boards—which are specifically designed to keep police accountable.
 

The RTD’s Colleen Curran reports that the City will not close Hanover Avenue to vehicle traffic for Halloween on Hanover, which sounds like a dangerous disaster waiting to happen. I think the neighborhood typically needs to file (and pay) for a street closure permit, and I can see why they might not be interested in doing that for our second pandemic Halloween. But I feel like it’s a pretty safe bet you’ll see hundreds of kids out there on Hanover Avenue this coming Sunday. Maybe DPW could just do everyone a solid and close the street for a couple hours to help keep kids and their families safe?
 

While we’ve got big rain headed our way tomorrow, this weekend looks simply stunning. Spend that stunning Sunday—aka Halloween actual—riding bikes around some of Richmond’s spookies spots with Breakaway RVA. You’ll get to see terrifying sights like entire neighborhoods of single-family residential zoning, too-fast one-way streets, surface-level parking lots, and even the scariest place in all of Richmond: The former site of the 6th Street Marketplace! I made all of that up, but you can check out the real map of the route here. At 16 miles, this one’s a bit longer than previous rides, but I know you can handle it! Wheels up at 5:00 PM, meet at the Carillon, and costumes are totally encouraged.
 

This morning’s longread

The Haunting Power of Miso-Maple Loaf Cake

I am incredibly charmed by this piece in the NYT about writing, journaling, and making miso-maple loaf cake. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve slowly started journaling more, but I’m still not quite at the “write down all of the cool ideas and thoughts I have” stage yet.
 

It was Michael, my husband, who planted the current crop of notebooks, and the sharpened pencils that keep them company. We’ve been together forever, and since forever, he’s heard me say, “I’ve got an idea” — almost always an idea about food, a new recipe, an ingredient I wanted to use or a combination I wanted to try — and then, an hour later, I’d ask him if he remembered what the idea was. Now if he hears me mumble “hmmm,” “ahhh” or “what if,” he’ll call out, “Write it down!” Sometimes I just keep chopping the onions or frosting the cake or doing whatever I was doing when the thought flew through my brain. And sometimes I scrawl a word or two, and when I do, I often think of the French pastry chef Pierre Hermé, with whom I wrote cookbooks.
 

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Picture of the Day