☀️ Good morning, RVA: Newark!, police equity, and renaming streets

Good morning, RVA! It’s 53 °F, and today looks beautiful. Expect highs in the upper 70s and lots of sunshine. Enjoy!

Water cooler

I’m still in Newark, NJ, where I’ve had a total blast! However, I thought I’d do a late-arriving email today, mostly to remind me how this all works, before getting back to the regularly-scheduled grind tomorrow. Here we go!

BUDGETCHATS CONTINUE! This article by Justin Mattingly in the Richmond Times-Dispatch is mostly a recap of this past budget season but does include this sentence: “A day after the Richmond City Council approved a budget that fully funds what school officials requested, Mayor Levar Stoney did not rule out the idea of proposing a real estate tax increase to fund the city school system again next year.“ Heck yeah! We’ve got a million and one priorities left to fund, and there simply are not enough efficiencies to find, vacancies to cut, or capital money to raid to get them all done.

I really liked this article in RVA Mag by Chelsea Higgs Wise, Monica Kelly, and Nathan Land about equity in policing. As a member of a community who is, basically, never policed for anything I may do, I don’t have the lived experience to understand what changes (or lack of changes) in police policy and practice have on folks. Reading this article (and all of the links!) is a good start, and a good way for me to listen and learn.

Jeremy Lazarus at the Richmond Free Press has an article from a couple days back about Councilmember Hilbert’s response to the Salvation Army’s plan to move its homeless shelter to Chamberlayne Avenue: “I am firmly against this,” he says. Lazarus calls that a NIMBY response, which, good on him. Also, this is a bad quote/paraphrase from the nearby-ish Chamberlayne Avenue Industrial Association (which also opposed the Brook Road Bike Lanes): “Mr. Hilbert backs the position of the Chamberlayne Avenue Industrial Association, which represents nearby businesses and fears the impact of having dozens, if not hundreds, of people needing help wandering streets in the area.”

We’re starting to see on-the-ground efforts in response to last year’s NYT story about Richmond’s nation-leading eviction rates. Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury has the details about Janae Craddock, a lawyer whose job it is to hang out at the courthouse and help folks facing eviction trials. Craddock works for Central Virginia Legal Aid and “will primarily work out of a converted storage closet in Richmond’s civil district court.”

Freddy Mejia at The Commonwealth Institute has crunched Virginia’s Medicaid enrollment numbers, and, turns out, lots of folks enrolled after the State expanded the program last year.

This seems like a not great headline for the City from Mark Robinson at the RTD: “Richmond hired its top administrator’s daughter. She makes more than 127 others with the same title 💸.” I don’t have any of the details I’d need to form much of an opinion on this—beyond how even the perception of nepotism was enough to generate this story and headline in the local paper. The most interesting thing in this piece, at least in my opinion, is the difference between the City’s nepotism Policy and the Schools’ much more stringent policy. I will say, however, that I’d be real careful about increasing the intensity of the City’s nepotism policy, and I’d think hard about the equity of that change and who the new policy would impact the most.

Patricia Sullivan in the Washington Post reports that the Commonwealth Transportation Board agreed to let Arlington County rename their Jefferson Davis Highway to Richmond Highway. As we learned from the new Arthur Ashe Boulevard, the City can rename streets at will. All it would take is for someone on City Council to submit an ordinance…

The 67th episode of the Sam and Ross Like Things podcast is now available in podcast players of your choice! In this episode we took a break from liking new things and checked in with some old Likes from bygone days (all the way back in 2015!).

Remember:

• Bike & Urbanism Happy Hour is tonight from 5:30–7:30 PM at Champion Brewing Company (401 E. Grace Street).
• The second Regional Housing Framework public meeting is also tonight from 6:30–8:30 PM at the VCU Student Commons (907 Floyd Avenue).
• Bike to Work Day is tomorrow! Meet on the north end of the Manchester Bridge (??) at 8:00 AM for some fuel for your body before hitting the road around 9:20 AM.