👋 Good morning, RVA: Packed Council agenda, A.P. Hill coming down, and tacky light bike route

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F, and today you can expect highs just under 50 °F with a few clouds here or there. This week looks chillier and drier than last, which sounds like an upgrade to me.
 

Water cooler

City Council meets tonight for their very last regularly-scheduled meeting of 2022—and what a year’s it’s been! Today they’ve got a beefy agenda, and at least three things I’ve got my eyes on.
 

• First, I’m pretty sure the stack of ordinances that’ll make the real estate tax rebate happen should pass without issue.
• Second, according to Councilmember Jordan’s email newsletter, “there will be a motion to amend Resolution 2021-R026, the paper containing all of Council’s submitted amendments to the Richmond 300 Master plan. This paper would ask Planning Commission to incorporate the amendments as an appendix to the plan, and would then use those amendments as a starting point for the comprehensive amendments process in 2025.“ You might know RES. 2021-R026 as the “embarrassing Richmond 300 amendments paper” that’s been on Council’s agenda since April 26th, 2021. While I’m glad Council has decided not to try and hastily force their laundry list of amendments into our award-winning master plan, I still wish the entire resolution ended up in bin instead. I supposed “filed away as an appendix” is as close as we’re going to get to that.
• Third, Council will consider RES. 2022-R073, which would kick off the process to rewrite our zoning ordinance to ban convenience stores from lots of different zoning districts. I don’t really understand the purpose or intent of this resolution, but, to me, it certainly reads in opposition to our (previously-mentioned) award-wining master plan, which, at its heart wants to get away from these sorts of use-based restrictions. I’m surprised the Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee recommended it for approval, and I’d like to know more from the paper’s three patrons (Robertson, Lambert, and Addison).

Looks like all signs point to the A.P. Hill monument coming down this morning, and Elizabeth Holmes at WTVR has the updating story. The City should, eventually, replace the statue with a true protected intersection, but, until then, even installing a regular-old traffic light will decrease the number of crashes on the Northside by a bunch.
 

From my inbox, an update on Rep. McEachin’s congressional seat: “Delegate Lamont Bagby will officially announce his campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives to fill the seat vacated by the late A. Donald McEachin.” But! According to Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch: “Senator Jennifer McClellan is ‘very likely to run,’ and will announce her plans early this week, spokesman Jared Leopold said Sunday.” As of this morning, the Governor has still not set a date for the special election.
 

Last week, I asked the internet for a bike route version of this Axios Richmond Tacky Light Tour, and an actual person, Emily Monroe at BikeWalk RVA, put one together! At just under 11 miles, this loop will take you past plenty of tacky light highlights, plus a few excellent overlooks of the city skyline, and send you down some of the Fan’s most lit-up streets. Grabby your scarf, gloves, and your best bike-gang pals, and spend some time taking in Richmond by bike! Thanks, Emily!
 

Yesterday afternoon NASA’s Orion spacecraft splashed down off the coast of California after a month-long, 1.4 million mile trip around the moon and back. You can watch a quick video of the landing that, honestly, doesn’t look a ton different from splashdowns five decades ago. Next up for the Artemis program: Artemis II, which will send human astronauts around the moon and back some time in, fingers crossed, 2024.
 

This morning’s longread

The World Cup’s New High-Tech Ball Will Change Soccer Forever

I know we’re already deep into the World Cup, but I just got around to reading this piece about the positioning technology inside the soccer ball—so cool! Now, the next obvious (and American) question is: So when are we doing this for football? Measuring first downs with “chains” is one of the more ridiculous things in contemporary sports.
 

So any time the ball is kicked, headed, thrown or even so much as tapped, the system picks it up at 500 frames per second. Data is sent in real time from sensors to a local positioning system (LPS), which involves a setup of network antennas installed around the playing field that take in and store the data for immediate use. When a ball flies out of bounds during the course of play, and a new ball is thrown or kicked in to replace it, KINEXON’s backend system automatically switches to the new ball’s data input without the need for human intervention. KINEXON’s in-ball device is supported by suspension technology provided by Adidas, designed to house the sensor at the central interior point of the ball and keep it secure in a consistent location.1
 

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Picture of the Day

RIP Saison Market chicken biscuit. You were a good friend.