📒 Good morning, RVA: Public school funding, meals tax update, and the return of a local reporter

Good morning, RVA! It’s 25 °F, and that’s officially cold in my book. Today you can expect highs in the mid 40s and probably a little more sunshine than yesterday. Rain moves in on Saturday while temperatures stubbornly stay in the 40s—which is a real bummer. Big sighs all around from me, because I think I might need to give up on my dream of riding my mountain bike through a snow-covered forest. If you do want to go looking for snow this weekend, head west and you might have a decent chance of finding some.
 

Water cooler

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Michael Martz has some more reporting on the governor’s proposed (and regressive) tax plan. This first sentence is kind of incredible: “When Gov. Glenn Youngkin challenged the General Assembly last month to eliminate the ‘hated’ car tax, he acknowledged that his proposed two-year state budget does not mention a way to do it.” I think this is the third time I’ve written about the governor’s plans to reduce taxes for the very wealthy while raising taxes for regular folks, but this piece by Martz connects some dots on how a lot of Youngkin’s tax tinkerings advance his goal of defunding public schools. First, localities across the commonwealth depend on the car tax to fund a portion of public education. Second, the governor’s proposed budget would not “replace money that localities lost when the state eliminated a portion of the sales tax on groceries and personal hygiene products that helps pay for public education.” Finally, when you add in changes to the education funding formula, you’ve got a consistent and coherent plan to defund public schools in a bunch of different ways. It’s not great. This is complicated stuff but really clear and comprehensive reporting by Martz, and I’m thankful for it. P.S. Make sure you read down to the “Four deck chairs” section to watch a Republican delegate unintentionally use the classic equity vs. equality illustration to describe how regressive taxes don’t really bother him or his Party.
 

VPM’s Dave Cantor has some follow up reporting on the whole “City quietly charging restaurant owners late fees on their unpaid meal taxes” thing. Cantor talked to CAO Lincoln Saunders who says it’s not a widespread problem, and, to make things easier, the newish RVAPay Personal Property Payment Center will expand to allow residents to pay their real estate, lodging, and (maybe) meals taxes by the end of the the year. Sounds good, and I’ve put a note on my Landscape calendar to check back in come December.
 

A VPM Dave Cantor double header! Have you ever wondered why Virginia has independent cities unlike the rest of the entire country? Tap through to find out, but, to spoil it a little bit, here’s a quote from a former Library of Virginia employee, “This is an accident…It just happened. And nobody planned it…And because every other state in the country has a very different system, people who move here are stumped. And people who live here think it’s normal.” Side note: That last bit describes how I sometimes feel about a lot of things in Richmond! Anyway, the Commonwealth’s archaic independent city system has a huge impact on, basically, everything and makes tackling big, regional projects a huge pain—sewers, housing, public transportation, taxes, schools…the list is enormous. It does, however, lead to Richmond showing up at the top of a lot of lazy per-capita listicles like The 11 Top Tattooed Cities or These 23 Cities Drink The Most PBR. Despite our ability to dominate dumb lists, I’d switch to a combined city-county system in an instant.
 

Whoa, big local reporter news: Axios Richmond has hired Sabrina Moreno to fill the Ned Oliver-shaped hole in their reporting. You may remember Moreno from her excellent work in the Richmond Times-Dispatch covering the protests during the summer of 2020 and a large chunk of the COVID-19 pandemic.
 

How long have I have been writing about a potential food hall coming to Scott’s Addition? Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense says at least four or five years, and, now, we’ll have to wait even longer as the most recent food hall plans have fallen through. You’d think the food hall concept would absolutely crush it in Scott’s Addition, so I’m not sure why none of the attempts have yet to make it to opening day. Maybe food halls aren’t a thing anymore?
 

This morning’s longread

The Hottest Year

If you joined me in grumbling about the forever lack of snow, tap through and check out these neat/terrifying visualizations Reuters did about 2023: The Hottest Year Ever.
 

Deadly floods, heatwaves and storms have unfolded against the backdrop of what climate scientists say is set to be the world’s hottest year on record, with observations stretching back to the 1800s. The world, on average, has seen about 1.46 degrees Celsius (2.63 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming above pre-industrial temperatures this year, with global greenhouse gas emissions hitting new highs. Every new benchmark brings crippling economic losses and untold human suffering to communities across the world. This year’s added warming has been like pouring gasoline on a fire. Extremes became more extreme. Warmer ocean waters fed stronger storms. Heatwaves persisted for weeks instead of days. And wildfires, feeding on dry forests and high temperatures, burned out of control.
 

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Picture of the Day

I got yelled at while taking this picture.