🗑 Good morning, RVA: GRTC budget news, Manchester big changes, and making less trash

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, and today looks pretty dang fall-like. Expect highs in the mid 50s and sunshine. I will probably wear my jeans jacket.

Water cooler

Richmond Police report that Calvin Peay, 36, was shot to death on the 2300 block of Gordon Avenue on the city’s Southside yesterday. RPD are looking for a “white, four-door pickup truck with dual rear wheels, covered cargo area and company lettering on the side.” If you have any information you can call Crime Stoppers at 804.780.1000.

In the Richmond Times-Dispatch, C. Suarez Rojas has some updates from yesterday’s GRTC board meeting—specifically about the bus company’s budget. Here are the facts: GRTC’s revenue increased by $825,000 over the previous year and revenue from fares increased by $500,000. It makes total sense that when ridership increases, revenue from fares increases as well. Unfortunately, this is very different from what we heard in a January 17th story, that “GRTC is nearly $1 million below its budgeted revenue because of low fare income, potentially forcing GRTC to cut expenses or charge its partners more.” This lead to a mini fare evasion panic, a (in my opinion, false) narrative that the Pulse is plagued with fare jumpers, and an attempt by City Council to cover the gap between revenue projections and reality through stricter fare enforcement. This would have been a terrible idea, and I’m glad we avoided it despite our best efforts. I don’t know who got their wires crossed when, but it sounds like GRTC has brought their overly optimistic revenue projections in line with reality and that the “proposed 2020–21 budget anticipates only nominal fare revenue increases that are equal to the growth anticipated in this year’s budget.” That’s a budget of $55.9 million, by the way.

Michael Schwartz at Richmond BizSense says a bunch of Hild-owned properties in Manchester will head to auction on December 17th. Some of the properties even have plans and drawings that will convey when sold. This a lot of property in a rapidly-changing part of town, and, assuming a single developer doesn’t buy up all the properties in one go, having a bunch of different owners could bring a more interesting vibe to the corridor. Basically: Maybe one rich White family shouldn’t own a huge chunk of the commercial properties along historic Hull Street, you know?

Remember yesterday when I wrote about how smart people I know want to be cautious about weakening the Dillon Rule, which restricts localities from doing almost anything unless the General Assembly has given them the authority to do so? Campbell, Amherst, Pittsylvania, and Appomattox Counties declaring themselves “Second Amendment Sanctuaries” is exactly what those folks are worried about. On the one hand, “Second Amendment Sanctuaries” are kind of the most OK-Boomeriest thing, but on the other hand, language like this terrifies me: “‘All I can say is we’re just going to have to lock and load,’ said Joe Davis, Dan River supervisor.”

I feel like every progressive policy-minded person I know is drunk on what the New Dem Majority could do over at the General Assembly for the next couple of years. The ERA, guns, Dillon Rule, inclusive zoning, EVERYTHING! Chris Wodicka from the Commonwealth Institute says the State could also reestablish the estate tax, closing a loophole that allows wealthy people to “pass on assets to their heirs free of capital gains tax.” Previous attempts at restoring this tax would have generated about $69 million per year. And, to be ultra clear, this tax would only apply to estates valued at more than $10 million—so, like, the really, really wealthy.

Whoa, I love this piece in Style Weekly by Dawn Williamson about making less trash. We can all do more to create less garbage: Bring your own bags! Do a better job recycling! Carry around a spare fork!

Also in Style Weekly, Edwin Slipek talked to J. Rick Lunsford, the man in charge of decorating the Jefferson Hotel for the holidays. This sounds like a lot of dang work!

This morning’s patron longread

How the Dumb Design of a WWII Plane Led to the Macintosh

Submitted by Patron Casey. I learned several things I did not know from this longread!

It was like having a right-click for the real world. Standing on the mocked-up sundeck, knowing that whatever I wanted would find me, and that whatever I might want would find its way either onto the app or the screens that lit up around the cruise ship as I walked around, it wasn’t hard to see how many other businesses might try to do the same thing. In the era following World War II, the idea that designers could make the world easier to understand was a breakthrough. But today, “I understand what I should do” has become “I don’t need to think at all.” For businesses, intuitiveness has now become mandatory, because there are fortunes to be made by making things just a tad more frictionless. “One way to view this is creating this kind of frictionless experience is an option. Another way to look at it is that there’s no choice,” said John Padgett, the Carnival executive who had shepherded the Ocean Medallion to life. “For millennials, value is important. But hassle is more important, because the era they’ve grow up in. It’s table stakes. You have to be hassle-free to get them to participate.”

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

This morning’s Instagram