🏎️ Good morning, RVA: Eliminating parking minimums, fire code violations, and two events

Good morning, RVA! It’s 45 °F, and today you can expect highs in the mid 70s. The National Weather Service has issued a “Red Flag Warning” from 12:00–8:00 PM today, which means that a “combination of dry conditions, low humidity, and strong gusty winds will result in favorable conditions for the rapid spread of fires.” Other than the fire stuff (maybe take a pass on the campfire this afternoon), those other things sound like the makings of a really nice day.
 

Water cooler

Yesterday, Richmond’s Planning Commission voted unanimously to eliminate parking minimums across the city (Twitter)! This is excellent news, and while I did expect Planning Commission to recommend this ordinance for approval at full Council, I didn’t think it’d be a unanimous decision. Now, with Planning Commission’s go-ahead, the ordinance (ORD. 2023–101) will head over to City Council in the coming months for an actual vote. With that in mind, I think now is the time to spin up your email machines and let your councilmember know that you fully support eliminating parking minimums. Remember my tips for writing a good public comment, and just tell them something like: “Dear Councilmember, I’m a 15-year resident of the 3rd District and proud RPS parent. I own a home in the Ginter Park neighborhood. Today, I’m writing in support of ORD. 2023–101 which would eliminate parking minimums. I ask that you support this ordinance, which was recently approved by the Planning Commission with a unanimous vote.” Yes all that stuff about RPS and being a homeowner is gross and tacky, but it helps underscore that residents who would be impacted by the ordinance support this sort of parking reform. I’m sure over the next couple of weeks we’ll hear more from the people who are opposed and read quotes in the paper from councilmembers with “heartburn,” but, for now, I think getting on the record as supportive of ORD.2023–101 is the best thing you can do. You can find all the contact information for all of City Council (and their liaisons!) here. If you’d like to read more, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Em Holter continues their almost entirely positive coverage of eliminating parking minimums.
 

Related, Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports that the 250-unit apartments on Grove Avenue near the highway also got Planning Commission’s approval. The developers made some changes to the building’s height and cut 13 units out of the proposal (mostly to appease resident concerns about “traffic impacts”). Real estate attorney Jennifer Mullen said, “We appreciate the Museum District’s time and their comments through the process, it’s improved the product all over.” Honestly, I don’t know how real estate attorneys make it through the day, having to deal with the same “resident concerns” over and over and over again. I’m not sure I’d be able to give such a level-headed comment!
 

Connor Scribner and Megan Pauly at VPM have done a ton of work reporting on the last half-dozen years of fire code violations at Richmond Public Schools facilities, work they started after the fire at Fox Elementary. Make sure you read their companion piece that goes through the details of the violations to get a better sense for the type of issues across each school—things like expired fire extinguishers to busted exit lights to fire alarm systems in “trouble” mode.
 

Reminder! The City will host their Speed Management Symposium tonight on the second floor of Main Street Station from 5:30–8:00 PM. You’ll hear a few presentations on what the City is doing to combat speeding in Richmond and then have an opportunity to give them feedback on their work or ask questions during a Q&A session. Remember, as Bike Walk RVA put it: “It is important to be open-minded while also staying laser-focused on the fact that the most impactful way to slow speeds is through INFRASTRUCTURE and STREET DESIGN.“ Laser-focused! Whatever money the City spends on paving, new stop lights, or other routine maintenance is good, but it should not replace a dedicated effort to change the physical design of our fastest and most dangerous streets. The event is free and open to the public, and you can RSVP here—which you should do to help them plan for the right amount of refreshments (free food!).
 

Also tonight, Mayor Stoney will host a competing event(!) at the Library of Virginia. At 6:30 PM, you can join the Mayor and Michael Tubbs (current Special Advisor to California Governor Gavin Newsom for Economic Mobility, former mayor of Stockton, California) for a conversation about Guaranteed Income. Tubbs is also the founder of Mayors for a Guaranteed Income and instituted a successful guaranteed income program during his tenure as mayor. Richmond’s got its own guaranteed income program that runs through the City’s Office of Community Wealth Building called the Richmond Resilience Initiative, and I’m pretty interested in learning more about how we build off of what Tubbs accomplished in Stockton. Guaranteed income programs are great, this event seems cool, and I wish it didn’t conflict with the street safety event above!
 

This morning’s longread

Substack CEO Chris Best Doesn’t Realize He’s Just Become The Nazi Bar

After a certain point in an online community’s growth, if you ignore the need to keep your community safe through moderation—or you choose not to because of some hand-wavey definition of “free speech”—you become a tantalizing place for bad people to hang out…aka you become the Nazi bar. Is Substack the Nazi Bar of email newsletters? I’m not sure, but the CEO’s recent interview on Decoder doesn’t reassure me otherwise.
 

When you’re a private centralized company and you don’t deal with hateful content on your site, you’re the Nazi bar. Most companies that want to get large enough recognize that playing to the grifters and the nonsense peddlers works for a limited amount of time, before you get the Nazi bar reputation, and your growth is limited. And, in the US, you’re legally allowed to become the Nazi bar, but you should at least embrace that, and not pretend you have some grand principled strategy. This is what Nilay was getting at. When you’re not the government, you can set whatever rules you want, and the rules you set are the rules that will define what you are as a service. Chris Best wants to pretend that Substack isn’t the Nazi bar, while he’s eagerly making it clear that it is. It’s stupidly short-sighted, and no, it won’t support free speech. Because people who don’t want to hang out at the Nazi bar will just go elsewhere.
 

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Picture of the Day

Someone had an incredibly sad morning.