📝 Good morning, RVA: Pre-election reading, a Richmond 300 forum, and a new podcast

Good morning, RVA! It’s 53 °F, and while a bit cloudier than yesterday, today looks pretty nice. Expect highs near 70 °F as we gear up for even warmer temperatures later this week.

Water cooler

Wyatt Gordon at Greater Greater Washington weighs in on Richmond’s 5th District special election and the focus almost every candidate has given to safe, multimodal transportation. I like how @Morr_Ruth puts it: “Let’s just breath in the fact that we have created some real consensus on the priority of safe, multimodal transportation in this #rvacouncil race. This is a marked change from 2016 & makes me super excited for 2020 races & truly building a safer city.”

A while back, I said to be watchful of state-level Democrats making a fuss about covering the nearly $1 billion in extra schools funding that the state itself says it needs to pony up. Today, in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Michael Martz, says Secretary of Finance Aubrey Lane warns there may be a “math issue” with next year’s budget 💸. While the “math issue”—aka there may not be enough money to make the math in the current budget work out—is not presented as a cut-and-slash situation, it does make me go hmmmmm.

Chesterfieldians! The RTD asked all of the Chesterfield Board of Supervisor candidates a couple questions ahead of next week’s election. You can also read their answers to some transportation-related questions from RVA Rapid Transit. With two open races and the other three seats facing challengers, November 5th should be an exciting night in the County. Maybe we’ll wake up next Wednesday to a slightly more progressive Chesterfield?

Also ahead of the November 5th elections, the executive director of Equality Virginia Advocates has a column in the Virginia Mercury about how important these elections are to LGBT rights and policies. Again, maybe we’ll wake up on Wednesday to a more progressive General Assembly, which could mean more progressive housing and employment laws for LGBT Virginians.

The penultimate Richmond 300 forum takes place tonight at the Patrick Henry School of Science and Arts (3411 Semmes Avenue) from 6:00–7:30 PM. Over the past month or so, as these meetings have unfurled, I’ve asked you to complete a bunch of surveys about the neighborhoods in which you live, work, and play. Now, if you want to go a bit deeper, you can review and comment on both the Draft Future Land Use Map and the Draft Connections Map. Folks with on-the-ground knowledge of how neighborhoods work and connect with one another can definitely provide insight that planners may miss—you are mostly likely an expert in your own neighborhood!

Richard Hayes at RVA Hub has a bunch of pictures from the 15th (!) Richmond Zombie Walk, which shambled about Carytown this past weekend.

Also, this photo of some folks sitting on a bench watching a sunset at Robious Landing Park (via /r/rva) is just lovely.

The 71st episode of the Sam and Ross Like Things podcast is up! This go around, Sam likes Having Written and I like GMRVA, this very morning email. These two things are super related and I enjoyed talking about both of them—plus you get a little bit of insight into the process behind GMRVA. Give it a listen and subscribe here.

This morning’s longread

1.5 Million Packages a Day: The Internet Brings Chaos to N.Y. Streets

I’m starting to feel the same way about having packages delivered all the dang time, straight to my door, as I do about using single-use plastic water bottles. I think I might start restricting myself to Amazon’s new Amazon Day program?

Images and videos of delivery trucks blocking bike lanes, sidewalks and crosswalks are easy to find on social media. In some neighborhoods, Amazon’s ubiquitous boxes are stacked and sorted on the sidewalk, sometimes on top of coverings spread out like picnic blankets. “They are using public space as their private warehouse,” said Christine Berthet, who lives in Midtown Manhattan. “That is not acceptable. That is not what the sidewalk is for.” The total number of trucks on tolled crossings into New York City and within the five boroughs rose about 9.4 percent in 2018, to an estimated 35.7 million, from 32.6 million in 2013, according to transit data.

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

This morning’s Instagram