Good morning, RVA (lite): Strategic costs, advisory commission, and Pump House dreams

Good morning, RVA! It’s 40 °F, and today should see highs in the mid 40s. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your wintertime disposition), the chance for snow this coming weekend is…uncertain. The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s John Boyer sounds skeptical.

Water cooler

Richmond Police are reporting a murder on the 1900 block of Raven Street. On Sunday evening, an officer on routine patrol found Yishawn Robinson, 17, shot to death.

Remember over the summer when Richmond Superintendent Jason Kamras had us all filling out a pretty epic survey to help with his 5-year strategic plan? The estimated costs of implementing that plan are out (PDF), and the whole shebang will cost $150 million. Y’all, this is a dang good and straightforward PDF right here, with a page for the five-year costs of each of the actions in the strategic plan. Make sure you scroll down to the last couple of pages for two good summary tables.

Mark Robinson was at City Council’s Organizational and Development committee meeting last night where they voted to recommend Councilmember Gray’s ordinance that would create a coliseum redevelopment advisory commission (ORD. 2018–297). Gray, Hilbert, Larson, Agelasto, and Trammell voted for recommending the paper, while Addison, Robertson, Newbille, and Jones voted against. OK, prognosticators! Read what you will into these early votes, and tell me where you think each of these cats sits when it comes to supporting or opposing the project as a whole. Also, apparently the Mayor is against the paper, but I had to read this statement he put out, which kind of sounds like a mayoral subtweet, a couple of times to catch that vibe. I mean, just say you’re for or against a thing!

Richmond 300, the City’s master planning process, is back with a new stack of parking meetings. After presenting the initial conditions earlier this year, these new meetings will go over the parking recommendations for seven areas of town—dun dun dunnnnnn. Fingers crossed for a whole lot of “there’s already plenty of parking, we should build spaces for humans instead of cars.” The meetings begin tonight out in the western part of the City and wrap up on the 13th Downtown. If you can’t carve out the time to attend seven meetings in seven different neighborhoods, keep your eye out for a bunch of PDFs and a survey which should show up online soon.

Also tonight: A chance to weigh in on the future of Pump House Park. The City and some folks are working on a vision for the creepy gothic building and surrounding park, and if you stop by the the open house at the Byrd Park Roundhouse between 5:30–7:30 PM tonight, you can be a part of that process. You can and should suggest that we turn the building into a permanent horror movie venue.