🏠 Good morning, RVA: School rezoning, a TIF resolution, and the Dillon Rule

Good morning, RVA! It’s 43 °F, and you can expect highs in the 50s today. Maybe some rain here or there, but mostly cloudy and meh until tomorrow when things start to warm/brighten up.

Water cooler

Superintendent Kamras’s newsletter is worth your time this week—honestly, it’s worth your time every week. You’ve got updates about the R.E.B. Awards for Teaching Excellence which let teachers travel the world; Thomas Jefferson High School’s historic playoff run, possibly aided by the installation of a new field for the first time since 1930 (?!); a no-holds-barred picture of an actual factual school lunch that totally will not make you want to barf (and includes Texas Pete); and, of course, updates on the school rezoning process.

Speaking of, I screwed up and didn’t have last night’s School Board meeting + rezoning hearing on my calendar. Justin Mattingly at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a recap 💸, and it sounds dramatically different in tone from earlier public meetings: “Nearly all of the speakers supported using the process known as ‘school pairing’ to achieve more integration in a city where about 3 in 4 schools are what researchers define as ‘intensely segregated,’ meaning less than 10% of the student body is white.” If you can’t make one of the District’s public hearings on rezoning, you can fill out this online form. Before you do so, you will definitely need to get a hold of and familiarize yourself with this PDF of the four rezoning options (named W, X, Y, and Z). Maps start on page 30!

Following the public rezoning hearing, the School Board had their regularly scheduled meeting, which included an “informational presentation on TIF funding and a Resolution for action.” The resolution, which Twitter user @ternary_logic says was introduced by 3rd District School Board Rep Gibson and adopted 7–2, seeks to “allow schools to be held harmless from TIF funded project deals.” I wasn’t there (since I totally blanked on the meeting’s existence), and I haven’t listened to the audio, but, after reading the resolution, I’m not super clear on what it does or what authority the School Board has to do this sort of thing. Here’s the active bit: “THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED THAT; Richmond Public Schools seeks the authority to opt out of contributing its share of revenue to TIF district funds or other tax deals that fund city development projects.” I…don’t know what that means! It’s my understanding that the School Board doesn’t have a whole lot of power in the current NoBro discussions. That certainly doesn’t mean they shouldn’t pass resolutions like this if they—as a body—feel like the project will negatively impact schools. In fact, I’m always talking about how City Council should pass legislation related to things outside of their authority to mostly serve as a signal to the General Assembly. You gotta use whatever power you have, even if it’s limited! Anyway, I am not smart enough to understand what’s going on with this particular resolution and totally look forward to learning more.

City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meets today, and I wanted to point out two things on their agenda. First, they’ll hear a presentation of Complete Streets Richmond’s Vision Zero Scorecard (PDF). This scorecard—which I contributed to as part of my day job—looks at the progress the City has made on its work to keep safe the people who use its streets. The City has certainly made some progress since Mayor Stoney signed a Vision Zero pledge a few years ago, but there’s clearly still a lot of important work left to do. Second, LUHT will work through Councilmember Addison’s excellent Streets for All legislative package, which I summarized here. If I were to pick a third item to point out, it’d be Councilmember Gray’s RES. 2019-R025, which would attempt to prohibit building dense housing on certain properties. It’s anathema to the housing policy we need in Richmond, and I don’t support it. But because of Council’s Culture of Continuation, I’m not sure if the committee will actually discuss this resolution today or not.

The RTD has a few photos from last night’s World Day of Remembrance for Road Traffic Victims event put on by Richmond Families for Safe Streets.

Brad Kutner at Courthouse News has an informative piece on the Dillon Rule and how it impact’s Virginia’s localities. Whenever you hear a good-natured, progressive person say something like “Why doesn’t the City just do XYZ!” usually the answer is that XYZ is specifically against the law unless the General Assembly allows it—and that’s because of the Dillon Rule. With the New Dem Majority in the GA, some folks want to strike the DIllon Rule and allow localities to decide how to govern themselves. However, lots of very smart people I know are against this idea (aka Home Rule) as the state would most likely end up with very progressive cities and very, very regressive rural areas. I think a pilot program that at least gives some of Virginia’s larger cities a bit of freedom from the GA would be an interesting middle ground.

Episode 72 of the Sam and Ross Like Things podcast has dropped! Give it a listen and hear about why I am desperately in love with The Expanse series of books and how Sam really, really likes lunch—but who doesn’t?? Lunch is the best!

This morning’s patron longread

The most remote emergency room: Life and death in rural America

Submitted by Patron Laura. This piece about remote doctors is both amazing in a “we’re living in the future!” kind of way and terrifying in a “oh wait the future is dystopian” kind of way.

As hospitals and physicians continue to disappear from rural America at record rates, here is the latest attempt to fill a widening void: a telemedicine center that provides remote emergency care for 179 hospitals across 30 states. Physicians for Avera eCare work out of high-tech cubicles instead of exam rooms. They wear scrubs to look the part of traditional doctors on camera, even though they never directly see or touch their patients. They respond to more than 15,000 emergencies each year by using remote-controlled cameras and computer screens at what has become rural America’s busiest emergency room, which is in fact a virtual ER located in a suburban industrial park.

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

This morning’s Instagram