Good morning, RVA! It’s 37 °F and cloudy and that’s probably the weather for the first half of today. Later this afternoon, though, the sun will come out and lead us into a generally bright and chilly weekend. Alert! Temperatures tonight and early Saturday morning look downright cold, so make sure you drip your faucets (or whatever other sub-freezing rituals you may have)!
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have medium CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 70, 165, and 127, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 13.2. Other than a quick spike to high a couple weeks back, our region has lived on a fairly consistent plateau of medium for nearly nine months at this point. While the situation on the ground hasn’t changed much, there are a couple upcoming COVID-19 policy changes that’ll impact how we (like, our country) responds to the waning pandemic. First, President Biden announced that he’d let the COVID-19 emergency declaration expire on May 11th. This will have some administrative, funding-type impacts, and, notably, will have the costs of COVID-19 vaccinations transfer over to folks’ health insurance plans. I’m not smart enough to know all the nitty-gritty about what else will happen when the emergency declaration ends, but I’m sure we’ll see more reporting on it in the coming months. Second, the FDA voted to “harmonize” the COVID-19 vaccines so they’re all using the newer bivalent recipe. This way, even if you’re just now ready to get your first shot (or maybe you’re new to the world), you’d get a bivalent doses, protecting you against the more recent strains of the virus. I’m into this and how it simplifies both the number of available vaccines and the decisions families have to make when deciding to get vaccinated. I can’t wait for the days when we all just get our updated COVID-19 shot in the fall alongside our flu shots, and I don’t have to write an entire paragraph about it every Friday!
 

Richmond Public Schools is putting together some really great interviews with students during Black History Month that you should check out over on their Instagram. Imani Adewale, a senior from Armstrong High School who’s now a published author, and Jackson and Cassidy, members of RPS’s first Battle of the Brains team (also from Armstrong!), talk about why it’s important for them to celebrate each other during Black History Month. Young people! So inspiring! I love this type of thing and will be checking back in for the rest of the month.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 32 °F, and, from where you sit, can you see any snow? I can!! However, NBC12’s Andrew Freiden, a much more trustworthy source of weather information than whatever’s outside my window, says we should expect a “barely there batch of winter weather this morning” (Twitter). Sigh. Expect clouds and cold weather, with lows around 40 °F for most of the day.
 

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4th District School Board member Jonathan Young’s proposal to close five schools—none in the 4th District and with absolutely zero community engagement—fell entirely flat at last night’s RPS budget meeting. In fact, Maggi Marshall at WTVR reports that “a majority of Richmond School Board members…denounced” the proposal. I tuned in to a bit of the meeting (skip to around 20 minutes in for this particular discussion) and was thankful to hear board member Gibson say she was “disappointed” in Young’s process and the stress it caused families and to hear Board Chair Rizzi apologize for the chaos and confusion Young’s half-baked proposal brought to the RPS community. Honestly, as frustrating as it was to hear about Young’s plan, it was really nice to see the School Board smoothly and empathetically handle it, pass it by, and move on with Board business. Give how this group has operated over the last couple years, last night seemed like progress!
 

We all know how foolish it is to get your hopes up this early in the General Assembly process—especially in years with control of the Senate and House divided. So I’m hesitant to even point out that SB 1293, a bill permitting safety stops (more commonly know as Idaho stops) has made it out of the full Senate on a bipartisan (!) 24–16 vote. Ian M. Stewart at VPM reported on the bill a couple of days ago, back when it was still in committee, and if you tap through you’ll definitely catch the, let’s say, realistic expectations Senate Democrats have about this bill making it through the House after crossover.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 32 °F, and, from where you sit, can you see any snow? I can!! However, NBC12’s Andrew Freiden, a much more trustworthy source of weather information than whatever’s outside my window, says we should expect a “barely there batch of winter weather this morning” (Twitter). Sigh. Expect clouds and cold weather, with lows around 40 °F for most of the day.
 

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4th District School Board member Jonathan Young’s proposal to close five schools—none in the 4th District and with absolutely zero community engagement—fell entirely flat at last night’s RPS budget meeting. In fact, Maggi Marshall at WTVR reports that “a majority of Richmond School Board members…denounced” the proposal. I tuned in to a bit of the meeting (skip to around 20 minutes in for this particular discussion) and was thankful to hear board member Gibson say she was “disappointed” in Young’s process and the stress it caused families and to hear Board Chair Rizzi apologize for the chaos and confusion Young’s half-baked proposal brought to the RPS community. Honestly, as frustrating as it was to hear about Young’s plan, it was really nice to see the School Board smoothly and empathetically handle it, pass it by, and move on with Board business. Give how this group has operated over the last couple years, last night seemed like progress!
 

We all know how foolish it is to get your hopes up this early in the General Assembly process—especially in years with control of the Senate and House divided. So I’m hesitant to even point out that SB 1293, a bill permitting safety stops (more commonly know as Idaho stops) has made it out of the full Senate on a bipartisan (!) 24–16 vote. Ian M. Stewart at VPM reported on the bill a couple of days ago, back when it was still in committee, and if you tap through you’ll definitely catch the, let’s say, realistic expectations Senate Democrats have about this bill making it through the House after crossover.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, wet, and we will probably not see any snow this morning. We will, however, see lots of drizzle-drazzle, doom-n-gloom, and plenty of excuses to stay inside—preferably under a blanket. The sun may come out right before it decides to set. If ever there was a day to call in sick and watch classic Star Wars movies, it’d be today!
 

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Henry Graff at NBC12 reports that 4th District RPS School Board Member Jonathan Young “plans to introduce a school consolidation plan” at tonight’s budget work session that would close five schools across the city: Woodville Elementary, Swansboro Elementary, Fairfield Court Elementary, Henderson Middle, and John Marshall High. None of these schools are even in the boardmember’s 4th District, and the proposal, as it stands, would leave the entire Northside without a middle school or comprehensive high school. Worst of all, Young hasn’t done a single second of community engagement or even the basic work of bringing alongside his fellow board members from the 5th, 7th, and 3rd Districts who would all lose schools. This is an unserious proposal from a person who, when talking to Graff, put the specter of utility costs ahead of the upheaval and chaos his proposal would cause. I think this is a troll, and, unfortunately, I fell for it. We’ll see how far it goes with his colleagues at the budget meeting. You can stream tonight’s meeting at 6:00 PM over on the RPS YouTube or stop by Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School.
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Michael Martz reports an unexpected-but-predictable story about Sen. Joe Morrissey: the Senator is “banned from visiting the Henrico County Jail for three months after an incident in which Sheriff Alisa A. Gregory said the lawmaker threatened staff over the weekend.” Here’s a great sentence from Martz: “In response to the sheriff’s ban, Morrissey said, ‘She’s not going to ban me.’” If you really want to feel deep dismay, Cameron Thompson at WTVR has a transcript of the events from the sheriff’s office. I’m excited for whenever this man eventually recedes from the headlines for good.
 

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.
 

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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)!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F and drizzly. Later this morning, though, the drizzle should dry up and, even later, the sun might come out. Enjoy it however you can, because the next couple of days look wet and increasingly cold.
 

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This past Friday morning, just before 9:00 AM, a driver hit and killed a 22-year-old VCU student at the intersection of N. Laurel and W. Main Street. I don’t know any of the specifics of this tragic incident, but I do know that drivers treat Main Street like a highway, speeding their way east from downtown, because the physical design of the street allows it. In fact, around the same time this student was killed for simply crossing a street on their college campus, I was writing “We’ve got to do something to discourage folks from using Main/Cary as a toll-free version of the Downtown Expressway.” Everyone, students especially, know Cary and Main Streets are dangerous, the question now is what will we do to make those streets safer for the thousands of students who criss-cross it daily? Anything? Will our City’s leadership take what we know—that these are dangerous, fast streets, as noted in the City’s own High Injury Street Network Map—and implement quick fixes to keep people from dying? Or will we look around, shrug our shoulders, and talk about how nothing could have been done to prevent this student’s death? If you’re fed up, you can find contact information for the Department of Public Works leadership and your City Council representative on this spreadsheet.
 

Richmond BizSense’s Jonathan Spiers reports that the proposed amphitheater down by the river has had its launched date pushed back to spring 2025. That’s two full years from now, but you should still tap through today to see a bunch of cool renderings of what the space will potentially look like. Also, check out this incredible sentence: “Existing parking in the area is expected to accommodate the venue.” No new parking! For a 7,500-seat venue! I feel like this is a major accomplishment in shifting the mindset of Richmonders Who Build Big Things!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, which is colder than it’s been in a minute. Today you can expect highs in the mid 40s, which, again, will definitely feel chiller than the last couple of days. However! The sun will come out, stay out, and that’s something I’m looking forward to. You can expect more of the same over the next couple of days, slightly warmer temperatures, and a pretty decent weekend weatherwise!
 

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As of last night, all three of Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have medium CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 107, 168, and 147, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 14.3. Another week in 2023, and another week with our region at a medium COVID-19 Community Level—although I’d consider all of these numbers pretty meaty for medium. You should keep that in mind as you assess your own person risk budget! As for me, I’m continuing to: Wear a mask on the bus and in crowded public places (like VCU basketball games), test before heading off to big gatherings, and wash my hands frequently because I feel really accomplished when my Apple Watch is like “You did! You washed your hands, guy! Great work!” While we’re on the subject, Katelyn Jetelina took notes from yesterday’s VRBPAC meeting—the FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee—at which experts sorted through data in hopes of coming up with a longterm COVID-19 vaccination strategy. It’s still early, but it sounds like we’re headed towards annual vaccinations, just like flu, sometime in the fall.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, which is colder than it’s been in a minute. Today you can expect highs in the mid 40s, which, again, will definitely feel chiller than the last couple of days. However! The sun will come out, stay out, and that’s something I’m looking forward to. You can expect more of the same over the next couple of days, slightly warmer temperatures, and a pretty decent weekend weatherwise!
 

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As of last night, all three of Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have medium CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 107, 168, and 147, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 14.3. Another week in 2023, and another week with our region at a medium COVID-19 Community Level—although I’d consider all of these numbers pretty meaty for medium. You should keep that in mind as you assess your own person risk budget! As for me, I’m continuing to: Wear a mask on the bus and in crowded public places (like VCU basketball games), test before heading off to big gatherings, and wash my hands frequently because I feel really accomplished when my Apple Watch is like “You did! You washed your hands, guy! Great work!” While we’re on the subject, Katelyn Jetelina took notes from yesterday’s VRBPAC meeting—the FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee—at which experts sorted through data in hopes of coming up with a longterm COVID-19 vaccination strategy. It’s still early, but it sounds like we’re headed towards annual vaccinations, just like flu, sometime in the fall.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 38 °F, and today looks cool and dry with highs right around 50 °F. Looking into the extended forecast and I think we’ve got around four, solid rainless days for the world to dry out a bit. Friday and Saturday look like excellent opportunities to head off into the forest and explore some of Richmond’s trails!
 

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City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meets today for the first time in 2023, and, aside from a ton of ordinances allowing the City to spend a bunch of State money on cool bike and pedestrian projects, I’ve got my eye on three different papers. First, RES. 2023-R005 would adopt RVAgreen 2050’s Climate Equity Action Plan as the City’s official sustainability plan. This is a chonker of a PDF—566 pages!—so, if you want to skip past all the great stuff about why climate work in Richmond is so important and get right down to the meaty action bits, you can scroll to around page 88. Second, ORD. 2022–375 repeals ORD. 97–105–173, which, yes was adopted back in 1997, and, maybe unintentionally, created a street light policy for the entire city. From the staff report: “The intent behind the [original] Ordinance was to outline a plan for creating special service districts for ornamental street lights and not necessarily to establish a perpetual street light policy for the City. Nevertheless, the Ordinance’s broad language setting the 1997 Policy as the City’s official street light policy has frozen the City’s street light policy for over 20 years.” Amazing! Repealing the old policy would give the Department of Public Utilities the ability to figure out their own street light policies, which seems fine—but if anyone has street light conspiracy theories, I’d love to hear them. Third, ORD. 2023–029 updates the City’s scooter policies. Exciting! This ordinance would increase scooter operating hours from 9:00 PM to 1:00 AM, increase the fees for scooter companies by 25%, and “mandate shared mobility permittees in the City of Richmond deploy at lest 20% above their permitted fleet maximum, South of the James River.” I can’t tell if that last one requires scooter providers to drop a bunch of scooters on the Southside or just stipulates that they can exceed their maximum number of scooters for free if they do so on the Southside. That’s a pretty nice list of ordinances for January, and I’m excited to see how the committee’s new members work through their business.
 

Related, City Council will host a joint meeting with the RPS School Board tonight at 6:00 PM (which you can stream on RPS’s YouTube). Looks like they’ll hear a presentation of the proposed RPS budget by the Superintendent and then have a discussion about it together. This is great, fascinating, and I can’t remember them doing it in previous years. Sure we’ve had the Education Compact—Mayor Stoney’s valiant, but mostly ineffective, attempt to get Council and School Board discussing critical crossover issues—but a special meeting to discuss the budget feels new. It makes a ton of sense, too, since, ultimately, City Council decides how much of the School budget to fund, and it’s probably really helpful to catch Council’s vibe early in the process. Having this conversation in January, should, with any luck, prevent shenanigans like last year, when the School Board left millions of dollars offered by City Council on the table.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and, according to my weather app, today has a 100% chance of rain. You can expect the wet weather to move in right before lunch and, unfortunately, stick around until basically tomorrow. I think I’ll try and stay inside under a blanket as much as possible today—I recommend you try and do the same!
 

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Jessee, aka @BossRVA, livetweeted last night’s 3rd District meeting which featured Bobby Vincent, the City’s Director of Public Works. Full disclosure I didn’t attend or tune in to the meeting, so I can’t provide any context that Jessee may have missed, so maybe take some of this with a grain of salt. Regardless of context though, hearing the man in charge of safety on our city’s streets say he’s against speed tables and that we have to wait until someone’s hurt at an intersection to put down a crosswalk just…makes me real sad. I don’t know how we’ve come this far into Mayor Stoney’s tenure and are still failing to take big, serious, progressive steps toward making our streets safer for everyone. Look: I’ve said it six million times before, Vincent did incredible things at DPW when Stoney took office (and still does!), but Richmond needs someone who will champion proven ways to make our streets safer. Whether that’s finding a Director of Public Works who understands and has a passion for it, or, better yet, creating a true Department of Transportation that sits at the same level on the City’s org chart as DPW. It’s time to get thoughtful, strategic, holistic, and creative about how to make it safe for folks—everyone!—to move around the City.
 

Tonight at 6:00 PM, the RPS School Board will hold their first of four budget work sessions, this one at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School (or you can, of course, stream it via the District’s YouTube). This year, the Superintendent has asked for a $35.3 million increase over last year’s budget, with most of that funding teacher and staff pay increases. It’s a big number, and I’m not sure the Mayor or City Council will just want to hand it over—especially considering the last 12 months of School Board shenanigans and their inability to competently run last year’s budget process. Tonight, though, we’ll start to see if things have changed, and if the Board has it in them to make the tough choices required to deviate significantly from the Superintendent’s proposal. Fireworks or boring public meeting? We’ll see! If you do plan to show up or tune in, beware: There’s no public comment period at this particular session, although they do have a combined work session / public hearing scheduled for February 6th. That said, you can always listening in via the livestream tonight and then send the entire board an email with the best of your budgetary thoughts after things wrap up.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, and today we’ve got more of the same: Drizzles and clouds with highs right around 50 °F. I think, though, we should see the sun after the rain moves through this morning.
 

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Tonight—637 days since its introduction on April 26th, 2021—City Council will finally vote on RES. 2021-R026, the confusing, conflicting laundry list of proposed amendments to Richmond 300. The compromise that Council reached (thankfully) was to add these amendments as a non-binding, mostly ignorable appendix to the back of our City’s master plan. So they technically exist, and the councilmembers that proposed changes that don’t really have anything at all to do with land use can skip the part where the Planning Commission would have had to tell them that directly in a public meeting. It’s a decent compromise, but I’m mostly glad we get to skip a bunch of unproductive back-and-forth. Also of note tonight, a General Assembly update presentation at the informal meeting—check out the bills of interest at the bottom, including one to extend the moratorium on annexation for 15 years and one about restricting local Airbnb regulations.
 

For whatever really disappointing reasons, Richmond never really took advantage of how the pandemic shifted folks toward more outdoor dining—even in the winter. We didn’t change regulations or policies, we didn’t convert parking spaces, and we didn’t do much at all to incentivize restaurants to move a few tables outside to benefit from Nature’s Ventilation. But lack of support from the local government hasn’t stopped business owners, and, to prove it, RIC Today has put together a nice map of restaurants who have heated patios. Perfect if you’re trying to remember what it’s like to leave your house but are still not in love with packing into a hot, germy bar with three dozen of your closest Richmonders.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 49 °F, and today you can expect temperatures right around 60 °F served up with plenty of sunshine. You can expect more of the same over the weekend as temperatures slowly creep down—not to, like, wintery temperatures, of course, just slightly less unseasonably warm temperatures. I hope you find some time to get out there and enjoy it.
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield all now have a medium CDC COVID-19 Community Level. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 102, 173, and 135, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 14. We’re back in medium across the board, and, even with case count numbers not the most reliable, the hospital admissions number has started to trend downward. All good news (but if you wanted to keep your mask on in crowded space, I totally wouldn’t fault you)! Related, Katelyn Jetelina put together a great post dispelling the most recent crop of covidmyths, if mythbusting is your thing. While I’m not sure that reading a post like this would change the mind of a longtime COVID-denier, I do think it’s useful for reasonable folks who hear a weird thing on the internet and then go “hmmmm, that seems troubling.”
 

Patrick Wilson and Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch continue to report on the Governor’s decision to scuttle a Ford Motor Co. battery plant—and its thousands of jobs—in the southern part of the state. Yesterday, they reported that Ford had finalized the Pittsylvania location before Governor Youngkin pulled out of the deal, twisting the knife a little deeper for Southside residents and contradicting the Governor’s previous statements that, no, he’d pulled Virginia from consideration first. Then, just a couple hours later, a Ford spokesperson contradicted that contradiction, saying “the company had not made a site selection decision on its plans for an electric vehicle battery plant in partnership with a Chinese company.” What a mess. Sometimes, when you get too cute with playing politics it has real consequences for actual people. We’ll now have to wait and see if the Governor can clean this up and bring another company (and its jobs) to the folks living out that way—although, after this debacle, I’m note sure other companies will beat down the door to work with the Commonwealth.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F, and today you can expect more of these warmer temperatures with highs in the mid 60s. We may see a few showers sprinkled about here or there, so keep an eye out. Other than that, enjoy!
 

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Here’s a fascinating email I got from Councilmember Robertson’s office about a “community agreement” reached with Carolina Express Convenience Store. Tap through to read the terms of the agreement, which are pretty intense, and I’m kind of surprised the City or the State or the Whoever has the authority to enforce some of these. Specifics aside, I’m pretty sure that this announcement is related to RES. 2022-R073, patroned by the Councilmember, which passed back in December and asked the City to start a rezoning process which would sort of ban convenience stores in large swaths of Richmond. At the time I thought it was bad legislation and a misuse of the process; we shouldn’t rewrite our citywide zoning ordinance to solve specific issues at a specific store. Turns out, I still think this! Now, though, I wonder that since the specific problems have been addressed, will the City just kind of forget about this far-reaching resolution?
 

Tonight at 6:00 PM, the City’s Charter Review Commission will meet for the first time to begin conducting a comprehensive review of Richmond’s Charter. Our Charter, a long and tediously wonderful document, lays out the nuts and bolts of how our city functions—stuff like its roles and responsibilities, the structure of our government, and how we elect our representatives. Do you hate the popularly-elected mayoral system and how it pits City Council against the Mayor in an unhelpful way? Do you wish we had fewer City Council districts and maybe even a couple at-large Councilmembers? The Charter is what you’d need to update to make any of those changes. Unfortunately, because we live in Virginia and the State doesn’t trust cities to do much of anything on their own, all changes to the Charter have to be approved by the General Assembly. That really puts a damper—and a limit—on the types of changes we can make. That said, this is still a useful and helpful process, and one that you can totally participate in: All of the Commission meetings, including tonight’s, are open to the public, and they’ll soon lay out their public engagement timeline which should include a survey, a website, and public input sessions. It’s been a good, long while since we’ve taken a look at the current Charter and made a list of what we’d like to fix, and I’m pretty excited about kicking off this process.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F, and today you can expect dry skies and highs in the 60s. I think we might could even see the sun later this afternoon! If you can, take the mid-week opportunity to walk, roll, or ride around your neighborhood in the unseasonably warm weather (not thinking too, too hard about what it all means).
 

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Caroline Coleburn at WTVR reports on a new study conducted by the Science Museum of Virginia which shows that “going for a walk in a quiet, green space has better mental health and physiological outcomes than going for a walk in a busy, gray or loud environment.” For anyone who’s walked along Broad Street versus, say, Floyd Avenue, those results shouldn’t be too shocking. Sort of related: This story reminded me that the Science Museum’s cool new park, which used to be a horrible, hot parking lot, is now open for folks to explore. I rolled through there the other night, and it’s beautiful. The new park (plus the Museum’s ProtoPath) already make up my preferred way to get from points north to Robinson, and its going to really shine once spring hits and the plant life starts to do its thing.
 

Charlie Paullin at the Virginia Mercury reports that, as foretold, Democrats in a Virginia Senate committee killed a bunch of bills that would have decoupled the Commonwealth from California’s Clean Car standards. States can choose one of two options to follow for vehicle emissions: California’s or the EPA’s. California’s requirements are more climate-friendly and would require, among other things, that “all new vehicles sold be zero-emission starting in 2035.” That’s right around the corner! I’m thankful for the slim majority Democrats hold in the Senate, and this is just one example of the backstop they provide against Republican’s anti-climate agenda. Remember: There are probably similar bills floating around that will pass through and out of the Republican-controlled House, but they’ll most likely die a similar death when they crossover to the Senate. Of course, nothing’s truly dead until the session adjourns!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 42 °F, and you’ll probably see some rain this morning. Temperatures will eek up into the 50s this afternoon but things should get significant warmer over the next couple of days. Richmond in the winter: Weirdly warm, wet, and cloudy!
 

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Tonight, at the RPS School Board meeting, the 2023 budget season officially kicks off with the Superintendent’s presentation of his proposed budget. This is definitely a PDF you’ll want to flip through—especially the first section which includes a really nice primer on how budgets work in Richmond. This year, Superintendent Kamras has proposed a $35.3 million increase over last year’s budget with the vast majority of that (about 66%) going towards teacher and staff pay increases. Slides eight and nine of the presentation detail the specifics and point out that if this year’s raises get funded, teachers will have seen their pay increase 30% since 2018—jumping the average salary from $52,000 to $68,000. Seems like a worthy expense, especially in the middle of a nationwide teacher shortage. As for how to find the money to pay for those raises, slide 16 gets down to business and breaks out where the School District hopes to find the $35.3 million in new spending: Mostly from an anticipated $6 million increase from the state and a new $28.3 million ask from the City. That’s a nontrivial number, so we’ll have to see what ultimately ends up in the City’s budget. Next steps are for the School Board to hold some public meetings, make some tweaks, vote on this budget, and send it to the Mayor (something they failed to do last year). Then the mayor will introduce his budget at some point in March, which gets tweaked by Council for final approval in June. Welcome to budget season! The most wonderful time of the year!
 

School Board sure has a busy night ahead of them, because alongside all of that fun budget stuff, there’s also interesting presentations on proposed tweaks to the District’s cell phone policy and their 2023 list of legislative advocacy priorities. About the latter, I don’t know that any of these, especially the funding-related ones, will find favor with the current Governor—he wants to defund public schools, not give them more money. But, maybe some of the investments in mental health will sneak through. If you’d like to advocate for fully funding public schools and the other RPS priorities, keep an eye on their Advocacy Hub to find resources for getting involved.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and, depending when you read this email, last night’s rain my just now be starting to tail off. You can expect highs in the 50s along with some welcomed sunshine today, with more of the same over the long weekend. I hope you find some time to rest, relax, get involved, and get outside!
 

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As of last night, Richmond is at a medium COVID-19 Community Level, while Henrico and Chesterfield continue to have high CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 122, 353, and 262, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 17.4. Looking at the map of Virginia on the CDC’s Community Level Site, I don’t think you should necessarily read Richmond’s drop from high to medium as a sign that less disease is floating around in our communities. Nearly the entire state is painted orange and hospital numbers for our region are generally trending upward. If you’ve got (crowded) places to be, think about the risks you’re willing to take and how you can mitigate those a bit by wearing a mask, staying outside if you can, and getting your bivalent booster if you haven’t already.
 

WTVR’s Tyler Lane reports that another person has died at the Richmond City Jail, the third person in as many months and the fourth person in the past year. We’ve seen the jail and the sheriff (who runs the jail) in the headlines a handful of times recently—and none of those stories have been positive. In fact, I think last time I wrote about the jail it was when the sheriff had used a lie detector on her employees to find out who talked to the press. Ridiculous! I don’t think we’re done with this story, and I appreciate Lane’s continued reporting. I’d guess we’ll continue to hear from him on this over the next year.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and today is probably the warmest day of the week with highs right around 60 °F. We may see some sprinkles here and there, and possibly some real rain this evening, but I say get out there and enjoy the warmer weather this afternoon if you can!
 

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If you wish, you may read the text of Governor Youngkin’s State of the Commonwealth address or watch a video of it over on WTVR’s YouTube. I haven’t tapped through myself because I think it’d just make me angry, and I’ve got a lot more important things to do this morning. For a good selection of some of the in-the-moment Democratic responses, you can scroll back through VAPLAN’s Twitter timeline. You can also read David Ress’s summary in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which contains this salty quote from Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw about the likelihood of the Governor’s wishlist making it through the Senate: “The speech should have started ‘once upon a time.’” P.S. Just a quick reminder that many of the bills you’ll read about in the coming days have absolutely zero chance of becoming actual law. In the moment, it’s sometimes hard to know which proposed legislation is a political stunt to improve a legislator’s election-year resume and which is something to get emotionally invested in. So when you read a headline that fills you with a furious rage—and you will read many!—take a minute to think about where we are in the bill-becomes-a-law process and, importantly, what Senate Democrats have to say about it.
 

Keeping in mind the previous sentence, Roger Chelsey at the Virginia Mercury has a nice column about the Governor’s no-good plan to defund public schools. I liked this bit in particular: “Even if some public schools are failing to educate students, the state should first provide more than the bare minimum of resources before consigning them to the trash heap. The unofficial GOP mantra of ‘low taxes above all else’ has consequences – especially for education.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 29 °F, and today you can expect highs just on the cooler side of 50 °F. The skies stay cloudy but dry today as we’re waiting on a bit of rain tomorrow evening and still gearing up for a sunny weekend. It feels like winter in Richmond!
 

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It’s the second Wednesday in January, and that means today the General Assembly will kick off its 2023 session! The General Assembly, it’ll have you know, is the oldest continuously operating law-making body in the Western Hemisphere, and, as such, is weird and doesn’t really care what you think about it. For example, since it’s an odd-numbered year, the GA will meet for just “30 days,” because our legislative process predates America and we still think our legislators need to hurry back home and take care of the farm. The delightful weirdness begins in earnest at 12:00 PM, and you can probably find all sorts of interesting resources—including some streaming video—over on VirginiaGeneralAssembly.gov. At 4:00 PM, Governor Youngkin will deliver a State of the Commonwealth address to both houses of the GA and will “outline his Day Two Agenda for Virginia.” You can probably expect tax cuts, defunding public schools, undoing climate policy, and further restricting abortion to all make the talking points.
 

That previous, dystopian sentence bums me out, but I am feeling decidedly un-bummed by the news that it seems Democrat Aaron Rouse won the 7th Senate District special election last night. Should the results hold, this gives Democrats a decidedly Morrissey-proof majority in the Senate and strengthens their brick wall against policies Senator Morrissey may be willing to cross the aisle to support—like restricting abortion and defunding public schools. I guess Rouse is due to get to work in Richmond this morning? The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Andrew Cain says results will be finalized on Friday, so I’m not sure how seating him in the Senate works. Regardless, busy week for that guy!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 28 °F, and today looks chilly and cloudy with highs in the upper 40s. Expect more of this until Thursday when things warm up a bit. I know its early to already be thinking about the weekend, but I think we might get a good dose of sunshine on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
 

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Congratulations to LaTesha S. Holmes, City Council’s new Chief of Staff! Council officially appointed Holmes yesterday, and she starts in her new role one week from today. I think this is great news. The Chief of Staff position has sat unfilled for two years now, and I’m excited to finally have a full-time person in that role—and doubly excited to have it filled by someone who comes from outside City of Richmond government. City Councilmembers are woefully part-time public employees and having strong and efficient Council staff can really impact how the body works as a whole. Stay tuned, because with budget season right around the corner, we’re all about to get a front row seat to this new-look Council, with their new leadership and new staff. Fun stuff!
 

Not Richmond-related, but Virginia Beach residents will vote in a special election for Virginia’s 7th Senate District today. Democrat Aaron Rouse faces Republican Kevin Adams, and Ryan Murphy, writing for VPM, says it’s “the most expensive special election in Virginia Senate history and more expensive than 85% of the state Senate races held in 2019.” Why so much cash flowing into this race? Should Rouse win, it’d give Democrats a two-seat, Joe-Morrissey-proof majority in the Virginia Senate, severely diluting that man’s power and assuring the Democrat’s brick wall against any shenanigans—specifically around abortion or public school funding. Not having to think about Morrissey for an entire General Assembly session would certainly lower my personal stress levels.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 38 °F, and today looks chilly with highs topping out around 50 °F sometime later this afternoon. You can also expect the sun to come out and, with any luck, dry up all of yesterday’s soggy rain. Look forward to more of the same—with maybe some more clouds—for the rest of the week.
 

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City Council meets today for their first real, full meeting of 2023, and you can find the agenda here. It’s a pretty full agenda—31 total items—but all of them live on the Consent portion. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen an empty Regular Agenda. Also Council-related, check out this overview of the City’s budget put together by Steve Skinner, City Council’s public information officer. It’s filled with lots of neat facts to tide you over until we officially kick off this year’s budget season—which should be sometime soon with the superintendent’s presentation of needs to the RPS School Board. Of course, last year, getting the School Board to actually approve their budget so the Mayor could introduce his budget, was a whole situation. I’m looking forward to less situations this year, to be honest!
 

Megan Pauly at VPM has a good explainer on Governor Youngkin’s newest plan to defund public schools, this time through a program he’s calling “education savings accounts.” Here’s just a couple of the quotes from the experts Pauly talked to: “Voucher programs [like the education savings accounts] give money to private schools and private education providers that can discriminate, and pick and choose which students they want to admit, pick and choose whether they’re going to discipline students for things like their sexual orientation, and pick and choose whether they’re going to offer things like special education to students who need it” and “Chad Stewart, Virginia Education Association’s policy analyst, points out that the funds families could receive through an ESA account would cover a fraction of the cost of most private schools in the state.“ and “Rob Shand, a professor of education policy at American University, has studied voucher programs in other states and said they tend to most greatly benefit more affluent families.“ So whatever blah-blah-blah you may hear about this or similar programs, remember that the consistent goal of this administration—and Republicans nationwide—is the systematic dismantling of our public schools. I still don’t think Virginia’s Senate has even the smallest interest in this sort of thing (although someone did remind me that it’s difficult to predict what Sen. Morrissey will do with any given bill).