🙄 Good morning, RVA: School rezoning, #NoCarNovember thoughts, and Rumors of War

Good morning, RVA! It’s 23 °F, and today you can expect highs in the low 40s. Rain might could come around tomorrow, but today looks sunny and dry.

Water cooler

First, it’s good to be back! New Orleans is a fascinating place with a surprisingly complex set of public transportation problems. For example, did you know the public transit agency lost the vast majority of their bus fleet during Hurricane Katrina and still have not yet replaced them all? Also, the semi-recent collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel has severed important pieces of their public transit system—and will continue to do so for months. I couldn’t help but wonder how Richmond’s important public systems would hold up to disasters. Anyway, on with the show!

OK, so, RPS rezoning took a turn over the last several days. After punting on any rezoning proposal for the Northside at all, Richmond’s School Board asked Cropper—the mapfolks—for new options to consider. Cropper responded with six entirely new options, none of which pair schools together. That’s…a lot of options, especially since the School Board plans to get together on December 16th (Monday) and vote on a final rezoning for the Northside. 3rd District School Board Rep Gibson, whose district includes much of the Northside and who voted against the original rezoning proposal for process reasons, said this in a medium post a couple days before the six new options were release, “History has proven that process is as important as policy when it comes to successfully creating racial equity. As such, the lack of democratic process and sufficient community engagement have made it premature to adopt a plan to pair schools.” Whether you agree with the first part of that quote or not, blasting out six new rezoning maps just a week before the final vote is pretty much the definition of a lack of democratic process and sufficient community engagement. We did all that stuff over the course of this past year! The moment for a courageous vote was a couple weeks back when the Board decided to punt, and now, with the date for open enrollment looming, I’m not sure what the right move for the Board is. I do know that voting on one of these new options on Monday is wrong, but, with communications so fudged up, I’m not convinced voting on one of the four original proposal is right, either. If you’ve got strong feelings, consider sending your school board member an email and letting them know.

It didn’t fit anywhere in the previous paragraph, but 3rd District Rezoning Advisory Commission member Theresa Kennedy makes a good argument for the original pairing proposal here.

For the entire month of November, as part of a #NoCarNovember challenge, 1st District Councilmember Addison left his car at home and got around using the bus and his feet. He’s written up his thoughts on the experience, which you should read and can probably relate to. Getting legislators—the folks with the actual power to, you know, make and change laws—to walk around the city and use the dang bus is one of the best ways to getting better and safer streets. Addison says as much in this Style Weekly piece by David Streever, “I have to go out and understand the challenges if I’m going to write legislation around this.” Yes! I really appreciate the Councilmember putting the time into this and will definitely try to convince our other elected officials to take the #NoCarNovember challenge. P.S. Something I disagree with the Councilmember on and is probably an unpopular opinion: The Pulse should focus on reliability and maintaining its 10-minute frequency, not waiting for folks to cross the street to board. We fix that problem by increasing frequency so people who miss their bus have a tolerable wait, not by delaying the bus and breaking reliability for everyone else.

Y’all! I missed the Rumors of War unveiling and am so super bummed about this. Here’s the WaPo’s excellent coverage; Michael Paul Williams has his take, which is, honestly, a little more cynical than I expected; and Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury talked to the artist about where he’d like to install additional casts of the statue.

Related, Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says Councilmember Jones reintroduced a resolution asking that the State give the City the authority to take down Confederate monuments. Jones tried and failed to get Council to pass a similar resolution last year (YES: Robertson, Newbille, Jones; NO: Addison, Gray, Hilbert, Larson, Agelasto, Trammell). Honestly, I don’t know how folks are out there opposing a non-binding resolution that just asks the State for the authority to do a thing—it’s about as far away from actually taking down monuments as you can get. I’m with Councilmember Jones, “You’ve got to decide: Are you going to be racist or anti-racist?”

All these localities passing non-binding gun resolutions declaring that they vow to uphold the Constitution’s 2nd Amendment are so eyeroll-y. C. Suarez Rojas at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says Hanover County is the latest to do so. He also says, over on Twitter, that Henrico County Supervisor Pat O’Bannon introduced a “surprise resolution” along those same lines. O’Bannon would later say that the resolution “was to bring ‘consensus’ that the board will uphold the Constitution.” Ahh yes, the completely necessary and non-binding resolution letting folks know that you’ll not violate the Constitution of the United States. OK, sure, totally cool. Also, and more interesting, “surprise resolution” is NOT how Henrico County rolls, and I’m wondering what the fallout from this stunt will be for the Supervisor—not that we’d ever hear about it (because that’s not how Henrico County rolls).

This morning’s longread

Your Gas Stove Is Bad for You and the Planet

I’m fascinated by this topic—especially since, in Richmond, the City itself is the natural gas provider. What does that mean for our climate goals?

A new wave of ambition to address climate change is sweeping across state legislatures this year as more and more commit to 100 percent clean electricity or debate doing so. But despite this progress, the Rhodium Group estimates that climate-altering emissions in the United States increased 3.4 percent last year from the year before, one of the biggest jumps in decades. Burning gas is now a bigger source of such pollution than burning coal, and nearly a third of that gas is burned in homes and commercial buildings. But despite the rising chorus of climate pledges by state and local governments, none of them has really tackled the problem of gas in buildings. In fact, gas companies are still being allowed to spend billions extending new lines, connections that will have to be capped off long before the end of their useful lives if we are to meet our climate goals.

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This morning’s Instagram