🎤 Good morning, RVA: Public schools defunded, changing our streets, and the State of the City

Good morning, RVA! It’s 50 °F, and this is as warm as it gets! Today you can expect dropping temperatures and a decent chance of rain pretty much all day until the sun goes down. I hope you had a chance to spend some time outside yesterday, because it was just the most wonderful flannel weather.
 

Water cooler

Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that due to “human error” Virginia’s public schools will be shorted $201 million in the budget signed by the Governor last year. Regionally, this means millions of dollars that school districts—and localities—are now left wondering how to replace: $3.2 million in Richmond, $8.1 million in Henrico, and $10.8 million in Chesterfield. Martz says, “the mistake was made when the [Virginia Department of Education] inadvertently failed to recognize the effect of a ‘hold harmless’ payment made to local school divisions to offset money they receive directly from the state’s portion of the sales tax on groceries.” Remember this from last year? When the General Assembly agreed to reduce the grocery tax but wanted to make sure that public schools still received the same amount of funding? Well, VDOE just…didn’t do that? It’s some real amateur-hour stuff, and, depending on how conspiratorial you want to get about it, this “human error” falls right in line with the Governor’s consistent efforts to defund public schools. Now, presumably, the General Assembly will scramble around trying to fix and fill this new and totally avoidable funding gap. Let’s hope they get it figured out soon.
 

I’ve yet to see the City or VCU officially address—like, with a plan of action—the student who was hit and killed by a driver at the intersection of Main and Laurel last week, but WTVR’s Tyler Layne has some early quotes from stakeholders. Let me just highlight a quote from Bike Walk RVA’s Brantley Tyndall: “People who are killed walking in dense urban environments are saved because traffic calming has been built around them…We really want to avoid these traps of blaming one person against the other and really, if we want to save lives, we have to do it by changing how our streets are engineered.” Read that last bit again! Enforcement, education, culture-shift, those are all things that exist and, theoretically, have some degree of impact, but if we actually want to save people’s lives we need to change the way our streets are built. And we should feel an incredible sense of urgency about this on the streets that we know are dangerous, too. Case in point: Literally while Lane was out filming this very story, police showed up in response to another pedestrian hit by a driver (Twitter)!
 

Somehow I missed this last week: Richmond Connects, the City’s work to equitably update their citywide transportation plan, released some “weighted needs maps” and would like your feedback on them by February 6th. I like the implementation of these maps! They’ve cleverly plotted out transportation and infrastructure needs and then let you literally slide an equity lens over those needs to determine how to prioritize investments. For example: There’s huge need for bike infrastructure in both Scott’s Addition and Southside Plaza, but when you slide over the equity lens, the needs in Southside Plaza outweigh those in Scott’s Addition. Basically, we should focus our transportation work mainly on the Southside—especially in the part of town annexed from Chesterfield and built with suburban land use in mind. We already knew that, but it’s nice to see it on a bunch of cold, hard maps.
 

VPM’s Ben Paviour reports that, once again, Virginia’s Board of Education will take up the proposed updates to the State’s history and social science standards at their meetings this coming Wednesday and Thursday. I’m deeply cynical about this process already, so I’m not incredibly excited about the Department of Education’s third attempt to get the Board to approve the Governor’s newest version of these standards. What weird, myopic Republican talking points will creep their way into the document this time? Which enormously significant historical event will they just forget to include? How will they casually offend large swaths of Virginians? We’ll find out later this week, I guess!
 

Jack Jacobs at Richmond BizSense reports Chesterfield will get a new indoor pickleball facility. It’s called “Bangers and Dinks,” which is all I really wanted to share.
 

Tonight at 7:00 PM, Mayor Levar Stoney will deliver his 2023 State of the City Address. It’s a chance for him to highlight his wins from the last year, focus on his goals for the coming year, and maybe even drop a hint or two about his upcoming budget. I predict you’ll hear about the Diamond District, monuments, parks, the City’s use of ARPA funding, and, of course, the casino. The event will take place at Main Street Station and is open to the public if you want to stop by, but they also typically stream the address somewhere and post the text afterwards.
 

This morning’s longread

America, the Bland

I almost always tap through and hateread these arguments about if today’s 5-over-1 apartment buildings—with their ubiquitous big blocky colorful siding—are “good design.” Like the quote below, I’m sure better design exists, but I’m not going to complain too much about the way new housing looks.
 

As with brownstones and dingbats, distaste can dissolve with time. “A lot of people’s lives will have been lived in them, 20, 30, 40 years from now. In their role as housing and much-needed housing, people might look back on them more positively,” Ms. Falletta said of today’s buildings. “They may not be valorized as good design, but people’s attitudes will change.” At the end of 2020, the nation was short 3.8 million units of housing, according to Freddie Mac. Multifamily buildings, despite their aesthetic shortcomings, can close that gap far quicker and cheaper than, say, brownstones or bungalows. Critics agree that more housing is positive, but they also feel that the current construction misses an opportunity. “Getting housing built is more important than nit-picking over aesthetics,” said Kate Wagner, an architecture critic and the creator of the “McMansion Hell” blog, “but there is definitely room within the housing to improve aesthetics.”
 

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Picture of the Day

I found this muffin in the middle of the street.