Good morning, RVA! It's 44 °F, and rain should move into the region before lunch. As youâre trapped inside or hiding under eaves and awnings, you can expect highs in the mid 50s. The wet weather will most likely continue straight on through to tomorrow afternoon, dumping upwards of two inches of rain onto our already sodden region. Hang in there, because clear skies and a beautifully warm weekend sits just around the corner.
Today at 3:00 PM, Mayor Levar Stoney will introduce his FY25 budget at City Council Chambers. Heâll give some prepared remarks, which usually serve as a sort of budget executive summary, and, should you find yourself with some time to spare this afternoon, you can stream the whole thing live over on the Cityâs legislative website. PDFs of both the Annual Fiscal Plan (operating budget) and Capital Improvement Plan (capital budget) should be available online shortly thereafter. Iâll make sure to get the Mayorâs speech up on The Boring Show as soon as I can, because Iâm sure itâll be worth a listen.
By the way, I put this past Mondayâs City Council kickoff session up last night, so, if you hurry, you can listen to that before the Mayor gets to speechifying later this afternoon. Itâs only 38 minutes longâjust 19 minutes at 2xâand something you could crush out on your morning commute or maybe even while eating breakfast. Oh, also, you should just subscribe to The Boring Show in the podcast player of your choice, too.
Participatory budgetingâwhere you, a Richmond resident, get an actual say in how the City spends $3 million of its moneyâhas been a long time coming. Now the wheels have started to turn, the opportunities to get involved have started to pop up, and Iâm starting to get pretty excited. If youâd like to learn more about the process, you can head on over to the Powhatan Hill Community Center tonight at 6:00 PM for the second participatory budgeting workshop. If you tapped through the previous link, also got excited, and donât want to wait all the way until this evening, then I recommend downloading the really well-put-together Peopleâs Budget Richmond Rulebook. Itâll give you some of the PB specifics and slake your PB appetite until tonightâs meeting.
Hayleigh Colombo and Luca Powell at the Richmond Times-Dispatch have an interesting report on the situation with Richmondâs mail delivery. I think, anecdotally, we all know that Something Is Amiss with the Postal Service, and I had sort of chalked it up to underfunding and the wrongheaded idea that USPS needs to fully fund its own operationsâa more general set of issues facing post offices all across the country. However, what I didnât realize is that the Trump-appointed Postmaster General decided to implement his grand vision for âfixingâ the mail in Richmondâs own Sandston facility: âRichmondâs Sandston facility was the first facility in the country to undergo DeJoyâs efficiency makeover, which began in 2023.â So maybe the issues facing our regionâs mail delivery really are specific to Richmond? Weâll learn more soon, because USPSâs Office of Inspector General plans to release a âthorough examination of systemic failuresâ in the next couple of weeks. Yikes, thatâs some intense framing on that future PDF!
Richmond BizSenseâs Mike Platania has good news for soccer fans: The Kickers will install a new, 65 foot x 35 foot video scoreboard in City Stadium this coming summer. City Stadium is old, like 95 years old, and I love that weâve found a fun way to keep it in use while also slowly modernizing it here and there.
Congratulations to VPMâs Ben Paviour who âwas recently selected by The New York Times to become a part of their 2024-25 Local Investigations Fellowship cohort.â Paviour will continue to work in Richmond but will focus on âVirginiaâs judicial appointment system.â Fascinating, and Iâm looking forward to reading what comes out of Paviourâs fellowship...with the actual New York Times(!!).
This articleâs subhed is great: âCrows are smart enough to pick up trash. Why wonât they?â And itâs like, I dunno, humans are smart enough to pick up trash, too, and you donât see us doing that either.
Klein, the inventor of the âcrow vending machine,â has called himself a âpassionate hacker of all things,â but, the more I watched crows in the Jardin des Plantes, the more I wondered who was hacking whom. I saw crows fish McDonaldâs bags out of trash cans and follow strollers and toddlers, knowing that children were more likely to drop crumbs. They visited the gardenâs menagerie, one of the worldâs oldest zoos, to raid food from the llama and rhea enclosures. Evolution had empowered crows to expose the weak spots in our designs, and I found myself admiring their mischief as a rebellion against our hubris. âCrows and ravens have co-evolved with us since the time of Neanderthals, and yet weâve never domesticated them,â Marzluff, the Seattle ecologist, told me. The real mark of crow genius may be its ability to maintain independence in spaces that humans think of as their own.
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Bringing Up Baby spoilers.