Good morning, RVA! It’s 29 °F, and today’s the last day of these cooler temperatures for a while. Tomorrow, things start to warm up—with forecasted temperatures on Monday in the 70s??

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A jillion years later and finally the Whole Foods in the Fan opens today at 9:00 AM. Listen, y’all know how Richmonders are about grocery stores. We love them so much! Honestly, how do we not have a minor league team of some sort called The Richmond Shopping Carts? Or maybe the RVA Produce Aisles (Mascot: A palm tree, but with, like, all kinds of fruit and vegetables hanging off of it). I guarantee that as I write this, at 6:30 AM, there is at least one person in line waiting for the doors to open. I want to high five that person! Anyway, good luck, god speed, and Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken is still open on the other side of the parking lot.

By the way, here’s the full text of RES. 2020-R009 (PDF), which asks the mayor to: “withdraw the existing Navy Hill Development Project ordinances,” complete a “Navy Hill area plan prior to the issuance of any future requests for proposals,” and “initiate a completely new request for proposal process for redevelopment of the land within the Navy Hill Development Project area.” That latter request is combined with a 12-point list of what the new RFP needs to require and does so in a far less restrictive way than the original RFP—even mentioning maybe not replacing the Coliseum at all. Of course, the Mayor hasn’t budged even a little and, at this point, has no intention of pulling his ordinances. That means as early as February 10th we’ll see a vote on all of this and, with any luck, get to move on with our lives!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 31 °F, which, brrr. Today, you can expect highs in the mid 40s, but, no joke, on the long-range forecast we’ve got a few days with temperatures back in the 60s. I think I’ve given up hope for a big snow this year.

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Last night, Mayor Stoney delivered his State of the City address, and you can read through the remarks as prepared here (PDF). It’s a lot of review of what he’s accomplished over the last couple of years plus the new policy and programs he wants to focus on during the final year of this term. He started with housing, and says the city will unveil its own Affordable Housing and Equitable Housing Strategy. This comes hot on the heels of the release of the Partnership for Housing Affordability’s housing framework (which I just got around to reading in full yesterday and have some thoughts for another time), and I hope this city-focused strategy is both informed by the framework and about twice as bold. As per my question yesterday, Stoney did mention public housing, but just to promise to work with RRHA and Council (who appoints the RRHA board) to “change the landscape of public housing in our city.” Also related to neighborhoods, the Mayor announced a goal of creating 10 new parks and mentioned the urban heat island work done by Dr. Climate Scientist Jeremy Hoffman. Over on the youth tip, Stoney announced the creation of an Office of Children and Families, which I would like to learn more about. Finally, he mentioned a “Third-Party Plan Review and Inspections Program that will give developers and property owners the ability to contract directly with qualified, third-party inspection agencies to perform building plan reviews and building inspections in a timely manner.” As we all know, permitting is a thing that developers constantly complain about—it’s kind of like how I constantly complain about sidewalks being closed by…developers. I wonder if I can get a Third Party Closed Sidewalk Inspection Program in next year’s budget 🤔. Stoney closed the speech with a pitch for NoBro, and I desperately want to see a track-changes version of this section before and after Monday night’s shenanigans. I think the framing of his possibly final public NoBro plea is smart: All of the recent changes and new bells-and-whistles aren’t Hail Marys to drag a flagging project across the finish line, they’re the natural outcome of extensive community engagement. Now, whether you believe that frame or not is up to you, and I think smart folks can land on either side. Me personally, someone who is not necessarily a smart folk, think it’s probably somewhere in the middle. Anyway, can you believe we’ll have a mayoral election between now and the next State of the City address? Wild!

Speaking of NoBro, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Mark Robinson talked to Councilmember Trammell after the State of the City address, who said about her plan to vote NO on the downtown arena project, “I’m not changing my vote…No. Never.” So that makes three who’ve publicly said they are NOs and will not change their vote under any circumstance: Hilbert, Larson, and Trammell. Remember: the land sale ordinances required for the project need seven of nine votes to pass Council. 9 - 3 = 6??

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and highs today are back up around 50 °F. Temperatures should creep downwards until this weekend when they return to the 50s with some rain.

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I don’t even know where to begin with yesterday’s NoBro news, and I’m not sure how to tie it all together into a cohesive narrative.

First, and this was news to me, the Mayor committed to “hold RPS funding harmless” should the City move forward with this project and various bits of funding get tied up in decades-long debt repayments. This even extends to buildings in the proposed TIF—Dominion towers included. That’s pretty good for schools, but, of course, we don’t need to just hold RPS funding harmless, we need to dump tens of millions of dollars into their budget every year for the next several years. But that’s a different discussion for another time!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 33 °F, and temperatures will stay in the 50s today. With plenty of sunshine on tap, I hope you find an excuse or two to get outside for a bit.

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This week’s Superintendent’s newsletter is a hefty one, so block out an appropriately hefty amount of time. First and foremost, a reminder that RPS schools are closed today as a huge percentage of teachers (and regular, education-supporting humans), will be down at the Capitol today to rally for more state-level education funding. That rally takes place at 12:00 PM, and you should totally go if you think the state should do their (constitutionally-mandated) part to provide a just level of education funding to our public schools. You should also wear red and consider printing one of these fun signs to bring along. And, should you think school funding is just a Richmond City issue, read this Henrico-focused column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by Jim Livingston, president of the Virginia Education Association—a smart focus considering the audience. Back in the newsletter, Superintendent Kamras goes through some of this year’s budget requests (an additional $39 million dollars—see the below paragraph about how we need more money for more things), talks about the District’s new electric buses, and shares a bunch of other stuff that you should just go read for yourself. HEFTY.

Whoa, did you know that the three public schools of Middlesex County are 100% powered by solar? Sarah Vogelsong at the Virginia Mercury explains how they did it and how the program that made it possible (a “power purchase agreement”) has ended. As you can imagine, Dominion Energy is not too stoked about reopening the PPA program and allowing more folks to reduce their dependency on the electricity monopoly. However, Volgelsong says there are at least a half-dozen bills floating around the General Assembly at the moment that would allow PPAs to continue, and that totally sounds like something the New Dem Majority could get passed. Completely unrelated but intensely fascinating, this sentence: “Dominion Energy has said it has a policy of not speaking with the Virginia Mercury…” 🤔

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and temperatures should make their way up into the mid 50s today. Late this evening you can expect rain which should continue into tomorrow morning. The rest of the weekend looks pretty great, through!

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Well, it’s not entirely unexpected, but Del. Samirah’s middle housing bill died in subcommittee yesterday. Here’s a bit more from Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury. This doesn’t mean that we’re stuck with all the single-family zoning we’ve got in Virginia forever and ever amen. But it does mean that a lot of work needs to be done across the state to start building support for a bill like this. It is, of course, the right thing to do, but it’s a ton of work. Meanwhile, localities, like Richmond, can and should still peruse similar zoning changes locally. The Richmond 300 process is wrapping up, and, if you look at the Future Land Use Map (PDF), you’ll see it recommends allowing duplexes and triplexes in a ton of neighborhoods—mostly the entire city before the final annexation of Chesterfield. It’ll be our job—folks who believe in and advocate for affordable housing, public transportation, and reaching our climate goals—to do the work locally to pass the actual zoning changes that will allow for middle housing. It’s going to be a whole thing, but I’m excited to get started.

A while back I talked about housing choice vouchers and HB 6 which would prevent landlords from denying an applicant because they’ll pay their rent with a voucher. If that’s something you’d like to support, the Virginia Housing Alliance has put together an easy way for you to let your elected representatives down at the General Assembly know. I know Good Morning, RVA is typically very Richmond City focused, but affordable housing is definitely an issue the entire region needs to tackle. Take a look at this (depressing) map of affordable housing vs. life expectancy in the Regional Housing Framework. While the city proper hosts the majority of housing choice vouchers, there are still tons of folks using vouchers in Chesterfield and Henrico. We need more of that across the entire region! So, please, if you’re a county resident and in support of HB 6, let your electeds know!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 22 °F, and today you can expect highs in the mid 40s and clouds in the sky. Temperatures could hit 50 °F tomorrow.

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Down at the General Assembly, the Land Use Subcommittee of the Counties, Cities, and Towns Committee (which meets at 8:00 AM in “300-A Subcommittee Room” should anyone find themselves in a testifying mood) will hear Del. Samirah’s middle housing bill, HB 152. This bill would require localities to allow duplexes anywhere currently zoned for single family homes. If we’re serious about affordable housing, if we’re serious about public transportation, if we’re serious about combating climate change, we have got to come up with ways for more people to live closer together. Del. Samirah’s bill does exactly this, and it lines up nicely with Richmond 300’s vision for our neighborhoods. I’m very supportive!

Locally, but still housing-related, Richmond Magazine’s Rodrigo Arriaza has an interview with Housing Opportunities Made Equal’s Heather Mullins Crislip. HOME and Crislip have been deeply involved in fair housing work in our region for a while now, and that includes our ongoing eviction crisis and the recently released regional affordable housing framework.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 16 °F, but highs today will head up out of the frozone and into the mid 40s. Expect plenty of sunshine as temperatures continue to warm throughout the week.

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I know it’s only January, but last night marked the official kickoff for the 2020 Budget Season! Over at the School Board meeting, Superintendent Kamras introduced his FY2021 budget (PDF), and, I swear y’all, it is the most readable and approachable budget document I think I’ve ever seen. They’ve got proposed expenditures broken down by categories from the strategic plan (Dreams4RPS (PDF)), which is so smart. For example, RPS wants to spend $489,000 more on adding six social workers, which falls under Priority 3, Safe and Loving School Cultures. Honestly, right away I feel a weird sense of protective ownership in this budget (??) since we all collectively spent so much time working on the strategic plan a couple summers ago. However, it all comes down to money and the extremely tiny amounts of it we have available, so what’s the total cost? $39 million more dollars. That’s a lot, but it should surprise exactly zero humans as RPS has been exceedingly clear and upfront with their budget needs moving forward over the next couple of years. The School District plans to pick up $18 million more from the State, should the Governor’s budget pass as is, so that leaves $21 million on the City’s tab. It’s been awhile, but do you remember how I kept talking about restoring the real estate tax to pre-Recession era levels because schools—not to mention transit or public housing—needed tens of millions of dollars of immediate investment? Well, City Council decided not to do that, so here we are with a big, not-unexpected request from Richmond Public Schools. I’m very interested to see how the Mayor and City Council deals with it. BUCKLE UP IT IS BUDGET SEASON.

Schools don’t have a monopoly on budgets, and GRTC’s CEO introduced a FY20–22 Capital Blueprint (PDF). This budget document is…not as heartwarming as RPS’s—but that’s a high, high bar. C. Suarez Rojas at the Richmond Times-Dispatch breaks down some of the details, which include articulated buses and a Park and Ride for the Pulse.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 16 °F, but highs today will head up out of the frozone and into the mid 40s. Expect plenty of sunshine as temperatures continue to warm throughout the week.

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I know it’s only January, but last night marked the official kickoff for the 2020 Budget Season! Over at the School Board meeting, Superintendent Kamras introduced his FY2021 budget (PDF), and, I swear y’all, it is the most readable and approachable budget document I think I’ve ever seen. They’ve got proposed expenditures broken down by categories from the strategic plan (Dreams4RPS (PDF)), which is so smart. For example, RPS wants to spend $489,000 more on adding six social workers, which falls under Priority 3, Safe and Loving School Cultures. Honestly, right away I feel a weird sense of protective ownership in this budget (??) since we all collectively spent so much time working on the strategic plan a couple summers ago. However, it all comes down to money and the extremely tiny amounts of it we have available, so what’s the total cost? $39 million more dollars. That’s a lot, but it should surprise exactly zero humans as RPS has been exceedingly clear and upfront with their budget needs moving forward over the next couple of years. The School District plans to pick up $18 million more from the State, should the Governor’s budget pass as is, so that leaves $21 million on the City’s tab. It’s been awhile, but do you remember how I kept talking about restoring the real estate tax to pre-Recession era levels because schools—not to mention transit or public housing—needed tens of millions of dollars of immediate investment? Well, City Council decided not to do that, so here we are with a big, not-unexpected request from Richmond Public Schools. I’m very interested to see how the Mayor and City Council deals with it. BUCKLE UP IT IS BUDGET SEASON.

Schools don’t have a monopoly on budgets, and GRTC’s CEO introduced a FY20–22 Capital Blueprint (PDF). This budget document is…not as heartwarming as RPS’s—but that’s a high, high bar. C. Suarez Rojas at the Richmond Times-Dispatch breaks down some of the details, which include articulated buses and a Park and Ride for the Pulse.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 13 °F, and that is a no-joke winter temperature! For most of today, you can expect highs at or just above freezing. Things will warm up a bit throughout the week.

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Friday night, a driver hit and killed Grayland A. Brooks, 62, on the sidewalk of the 2300 block of Chamberlayne Avenue. This fatal crash occurred just a couple blocks north of where a person was hit and killed on the 900 block of Chamberlayne Parkway this past November. Chamberlayne, particularly the section south of Brookland Park Boulevard, is incredibly fast, incredibly dangerous, and needs immediate redesigning. What will the City do now that two people have died along this stretch of road? Improve the lighting? Slow traffic? Will they study the area? Anything at all?

Police are still looking for the driver, who fled the scene in a silver four-door 2001–2005 Lexus LS 430.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 24 °F, and that’s a wintry temperature! Today you can expect highs right around 40, which is much more wintry than this past week. Colder temperatures continue through the weekend with a chance of rain on Saturday.

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Richmond Police are reporting a murder on the 1700 block of Bellevue Avenue. Wednesday night, officers arrived at the scene and found Robert M. Willoughby, 86, “suffering from obvious signs of trauma.” He was pronounced dead at the scene.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 55 °F with a bit of clouds and that is exactly what you should expect for the rest of the day. Enjoy!

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This is pretty incredible: Yesterday, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA. Ned Oliver and Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury have all of the fantastic details. Tap the link for some cheers, tears, good quotes, and grumbly Republicans.

Here’s a column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by HOME’s Heather Mullins Crislip and Better Housing Coalition’s Greta Harris about the importance of affordable housing, specifically through housing choice vouchers. Now, I’m going to talk about some housing policy, and that is not my field of expertise. Please, if you are an expert and I get something wrong, yell at me! So, HCVs allow folks to live in market-rate apartments by using vouchers to supplement what they can afford to pay on their own. Unfortunately, the amount of folks who rely on HCVs vastly outnumbers the amount of landlords willing to accept HCVs. It’s pretty bad: The recently released Regional Housing Framework (PDF) says fewer than one in five apartment communities in the region accept vouchers. To address this need, Del. Jeff Bourne has introduced HB 6 which would add “source of income” as a protected class under Virginia’s Fair Housing Act. Should it pass, this bill would “prevent a landlord from denying an applicant simply because they will pay with a rental voucher…it also would not require a landlord to accept less than market rate for their apartment.” Which, is why the Housing Framework’s Solution 6-B is so important: Implement Small Area Fair Market Rents (p. 20). Currently, HCVs cover the difference between rent and 30% of the tenant’s income, and a SAFMR policy would allow those rents to be calculated by ZIP code rather than by the entire region. Which means more folks able to afford living in more places across the region. Now I gotta read some more about who’s responsible for getting a policy like that created. Housing, y’all! It’s a whole thing—rather, it’s a whole, huge set of things!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 55 °F with a bit of clouds and that is exactly what you should expect for the rest of the day. Enjoy!

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This is pretty incredible: Yesterday, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA. Ned Oliver and Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury have all of the fantastic details. Tap the link for some cheers, tears, good quotes, and grumbly Republicans.

Here’s a column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by HOME’s Heather Mullins Crislip and Better Housing Coalition’s Greta Harris about the importance of affordable housing, specifically through housing choice vouchers. Now, I’m going to talk about some housing policy, and that is not my field of expertise. Please, if you are an expert and I get something wrong, yell at me! So, HCVs allow folks to live in market-rate apartments by using vouchers to supplement what they can afford to pay on their own. Unfortunately, the amount of folks who rely on HCVs vastly outnumbers the amount of landlords willing to accept HCVs. It’s pretty bad: The recently released Regional Housing Framework (PDF) says fewer than one in five apartment communities in the region accept vouchers. To address this need, Del. Jeff Bourne has introduced HB 6 which would add “source of income” as a protected class under Virginia’s Fair Housing Act. Should it pass, this bill would “prevent a landlord from denying an applicant simply because they will pay with a rental voucher…it also would not require a landlord to accept less than market rate for their apartment.” Which, is why the Housing Framework’s Solution 6-B is so important: Implement Small Area Fair Market Rents (p. 20). Currently, HCVs cover the difference between rent and 30% of the tenant’s income, and a SAFMR policy would allow those rents to be calculated by ZIP code rather than by the entire region. Which means more folks able to afford living in more places across the region. Now I gotta read some more about who’s responsible for getting a policy like that created. Housing, y’all! It’s a whole thing—rather, it’s a whole, huge set of things!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 46 °F, and you should expect highs in the mid 50s today along with maybe just the slightest chance of rain. I keep looking at the long range forecast for the approach of actual winter, and I can’t find it. Maybe next week!

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ERA update! Today, the House of Delegates will hold their vote on the Equal Rights Amendment. Everyone’s moving so fast with this, and that’s incredible! Now I’m really looking forward to reading the raft of articles by constitutional scholars about what happens next. Like, maybe this? Who knows!

The Partnership for Housing Affordability has released their Richmond Regional Housing Framework, and you can download a PDF summary here. First, the region decides to work together on transportation, and now they’ve decide they’ll work together on housing? What next? Education?? Anyway, this framework has been a long time coming and you should take the time to read through it. The very first recommended solution in the document, a document setting the affordable housing strategy for the entire region, is to change zoning to allow for “more multifamily development on parcels currently zoned for low-density uses.” Like I wrote yesterday, I am honestly excited to have the conversations locally, and, I guess, regionally, about how to gently increase density through duplexes, triplexes, and accessory dwelling units. Maybe with the folks behind the Partnership for Housing Affordability supporting them, elected leaders will be a bit bolder with their policies and their votes. Anyway, read through this whole thing, because it’s not just about density. It’s got strategies and recommendations for public housing, manufactured home communities, Housing Choice Vouchers, all kinds of things. I’ll dig in more soon, but I now await the Housing People to let me know what they think!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, and boy did it rain overnight—and might could keep raining for a while. However, things should dry up later this afternoon with temperatures sticking right around 50 °F.

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I did a new thing yesterday and sent out some bonus GMRVA content in the form of a superlong explainer on HB 1541. That’s Del. Delores McQuinn’s bill which would (finally!) provide the Richmond region a couple buckets of dedicated transportation funding—even a bucket specifically for public transit (kind of). I love doing this sort of longer-format, more in-depth writing, but, turns out, it takes a lot of time. If you’d like to see more of it, you can join my Patreon to give me actual money. Please do! Related, Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch talked to the elected leaders involved and got a bunch of victory-lap quotes from all across the region 💸. It’s wild seeing such regional agreement on anything, let alone transportation. Martz also drops this bomb like it’s totally no big deal: “if legislation becomes law on July 1, Henrico said it would become a full member of the GRTC board of directors.” Whoa, huge if true. It really does continue to be a very exciting time for transit in the Richmond region. But! That doesn’t mean we can’t make HB 1541 better! In fact, if we don’t make a couple of changes to the bill as written, the region risks maintaining our unacceptable transit status quo for the foreseeable future. Tap that first link to see what should change and how you can get involved. This is a massive opportunity and we need to get it right. At this point, however, it’s not right. I do believe we can get it there, though.

I…don’t know what to make of this headline from Ned Oliver and Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury: “As Virginia Democrats advance new gun restrictions, militias organize, promising to resist.” The lede is even more bananas: “Opponents of new gun laws in Virginia are organizing militias in the state, but promise they’re not planning to use the new paramilitary organizations to launch a violent insurrection against the government.” And then, you gotta love this follow up sentence a couple of paragraphs down: “However organizers in King William either would not or could not say when pressed to describe a scenario in which they believed a militia might be useful in the context of the current gun debate.” Amazing. Later on in the piece, House Minority Leader Todd Gilbert gives these back-to-back quotes that try and minimize what all of these Bullet Bills are up to across the state while also using ominously threatening language towards Democrats: “They’re not arming up for an insurrection…They’re just trying to establish a legal definition that could perhaps offer them some protection,” and then he says, “I hope that the governor and Virginia Democrats are paying attention to what they’re provoking.” Anyway, writing about the honest fear I feel towards these pro-gun-violence folks is exactly what they want and probably advances their gross agenda—I will try to keep that in mind. Instead, scroll halfway down that Virginia Mercury piece and see all of the gun safety legislations that made it out of committee: a “one-handgun-a-month law, expand background checks on gun sales, establish a red flag law giving authorities power to temporarily take guns from people deemed dangerous and give local governments the ability to ban guns in public buildings, parks and at political rallies and other public events.” This is real progress.

Alert! This is an unannounced and unscheduled appearance in your inbox!

What’s the deal? Here’s the deal: One of my 2020 goals is to expand the scope of Good Morning, RVA by including more thoughtful, deeper coverage of topics I find interesting. This could take the form of an interview with a fascinating person over on the GMRVA podcast feed, a long explainer on a complex topic, or something else entirely. The idea is for my work to grow a bit beyond the morning update and become a more useful resource to readers. With that in mind, here’s the first of what I hope to be multiple…bonus contents? Still working on the name.

This is literally some of my favorite stuff to do, but does take a long time to put together. If you’d like to see more of this sort of thing, please become a GMRVA Patron.

Strap in, because this is 2,500 about legislation, taxes, and transportation. If you’d like to read in the comfort of your web browser, you may do so here.
 

BONUS: Explaining HB 1541, the dedicated regional transit funding bill

Good morning, RVA! It’s 51 °F, and you can expect highs in the 60s and a persistent chance of rain throughout the day. More of the same tomorrow.

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City Council will meet today at 6:00 PM for their regularly scheduled meeting, and you can download the lengthy agenda here (PDF). Tonight, they’ll consider ORD. 2019–328, a special use permit that would allow the Salvation Army to repurpose a building at 1900 Chamberlayne Parkway for a 100-bed homeless shelter (and also provide a bunch of wrap-around services). I think that’s great, and Kelly King Horne, the executive director of Homeward, who would know better than probably anyone in the entire region, says that the new facility completely aligns (PDF) with the City’s homeless services strategies. 3rd District Councilmember Hilbert, however, has been vocally opposed to the project, yet will “recuse himself” from tonight’s vote, says Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. In my opinion, this is a great location, adjacent to frequent transit, and I hope Council passes ORD. 2019–328 tonight (as of this moment it sits on the Consent Agenda). Also on tonight’s agenda is ORD. 2019–352 (PDF), Councilmember Gray’s anti-density ordinance which not only prevents new some housing in the City (most of it near transit and bike infrastructure!) but runs counter to the vibe of the City’s ongoing master planning process. I’ve been writing about this particular issue since back in June when it was RES. 2019-R025, and, seven months later, it’s still a bad idea. Richmond needs more, denser housing and we should not prevent that across the City because one Councilmember wants to prevent one specific development on Monument Avenue. Take a minute to read Doug Allen’s thread on Twitter for a few great talking points on why this ordinance takes Richmond in the wrong direction, and then take another minute to email your City Council rep saying as much.

Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury writes about the Equal Rights Amendment’s journey though the General Assembly and its New Democratic Majority. Oliver says we could see a vote on the ERA in the Senate as soon as this Wednesday, and, assuming it passes, it’ll head over to the House of Delegates. After that it goes to the Archivist of the United States, and then…who knows! Honestly, “who knows!” probably means “interminable court battle,” but still, Virginia will make history on this one—and soon!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 22 °F, and highs today will barely make their way into the 40s. That’s cold! But, no joke, the forecasted high on Saturday is 68 °F. On one hand, I’m sad that climate change is slowly dissolving winter, but, on the other hand, I’m going to ride the heck out of my bike this weekend.

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Well here is some fascinating combined NoBro and General Assembly news: Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says that Del. Jeff Bourne has introduced legislation to dedicate a portion of the typically inaccessible state sales tax to paying down potential NoBro bonds 💸. You can read the full text of HB 1345 here. Robinson says that the area the City could receive the additional revenue from is a box bounded by Leigh, Franklin, 3rd, and 10th, which, theoretically, would allow the NoBro team to reduce the size of the BigTIF back into a plain ol’ regular TIF. I’m super ambivalent about this! No amount of new revenue changes the fact that the process leading up to this project was super bad, and, additionally, I remain unconvinced that a new arena is a smart use of extremely valuable downtown land. That said, the vast majority of the property in this new box is exempt from real estate tax, and this bill would open up a new source of revenue to help offset some of that tax exemptness. Part of me wonders if this is as close to a PILOT (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) from the State as we’re ever going to get? To intelligently evaluate this new proposal, here’s what I’d like to know: 1) Just how much revenue is the State willing to part with, 2) By how much will it allow us to shrink the BigTIF, and 3) how does this slice of sales tax compare to the amount of real estate tax the City misses out on due to the presence of state government downtown. While I definitely can imagine a world where these numbers work out really well in Richmond’s favor, I don’t have a lot of hope for that given how the State typically treats its host city. Also, and this is important, assuming HB 1345 dramatically changes the financing of NoBro, more community engagement must happen. Reminding y’all about a billion more public meetings is certainly the last thing I want to do, but I just don’t see how we can totally change the most basic financial underpinnings of this massive project and not go back to Richmonders, the advisory councils, and elected officials, and ask them to reevaluate the deal. Without a good-faith commitment to a public reevaluation process, I’ll be extremely (and probably loudly) disappointed. P.S. This certainly has the vibe of a last-minute Hail Mary.

Here’s a big regional affordable housing update: The Partnership for Housing Affordability will officially launch the Richmond Regional Housing Framework next Wednesday, January 15th, at the Eastern Henrico Recreation Center (1440 N. Laburnum Avenue) from 8:30–10:30 AM. This event is free, open to the public, and at a tough time for normal people to attend, but, if you are interested and available make sure you register ahead of time. I’ve got high hopes for this framework! With any luck, it’ll lay down a shared foundation so lawmakers in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield can start building complementary policies that address our affordable housing issues and work together, pulling the same direction, instead of either pretending like we’ve got no housing issues at all or charging off in one of a thousand unhelpful directions. Surely a many-paged PDF will exist at some point next week, and I’m excited to share it with you.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 29 °F, and it looks like yesterday’s rain has moved on out leaving us with highs near 50 °F and lots of sunshine. Careful outside early this morning as there may be a thin sheet of slippery frost on everything (he says with first-hand experience nearly tumbling down his back stairs).

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The General Assembly’s 2020 session kicks off today! What should you expect? Well, yesterday, the Governor and a bunch of the various legislative leaders announced the pretty solid, yet flaccidly-named Virginia 2020 Plan, highlighting 11 priorities they want to tackle over the next 60 days. I’ll just list all 11 points for you here: Pass the Equal Rights Amendment, restore women’s reproductive rights, expand affordable housing, ban discrimination in housing and employment, raise the minimum wage, make voting easier, reform criminal justice, advance common-sense gun safety measures, fight climate change and protect natural resources, increase education funding, and expand transit and broadband. Hey! That’s a pretty good list and even mentions transit! The gov will deliver his State of the Commonwealth address tonight at 7:00 PM, and I am sure he will dig into each of these a bit further. For folks who want to know how to get involved but are, justifiably, intimidated by the whole process, Del. Cia Price from Newport News has an excellent GA primer thread on Twitter.

The city announced that their new eviction diversion program “has diverted 76 evictions and is on track to meet its goal to divert 300–500 evictions in its first year.” For some context, according to the NYT piece about Richmond’s nation-leading eviction rate, the City saw 5,803 eviction judgments in 2016. So we’re making big progress, for sure, but there’s still a lot of big work left to do.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 29 °F, and it looks like yesterday’s rain has moved on out leaving us with highs near 50 °F and lots of sunshine. Careful outside early this morning as there may be a thin sheet of slippery frost on everything (he says with first-hand experience nearly tumbling down his back stairs).

Water cooler

The General Assembly’s 2020 session kicks off today! What should you expect? Well, yesterday, the Governor and a bunch of the various legislative leaders announced the pretty solid, yet flaccidly-named Virginia 2020 Plan, highlighting 11 priorities they want to tackle over the next 60 days. I’ll just list all 11 points for you here: Pass the Equal Rights Amendment, restore women’s reproductive rights, expand affordable housing, ban discrimination in housing and employment, raise the minimum wage, make voting easier, reform criminal justice, advance common-sense gun safety measures, fight climate change and protect natural resources, increase education funding, and expand transit and broadband. Hey! That’s a pretty good list and even mentions transit! The gov will deliver his State of the Commonwealth address tonight at 7:00 PM, and I am sure he will dig into each of these a bit further. For folks who want to know how to get involved but are, justifiably, intimidated by the whole process, Del. Cia Price from Newport News has an excellent GA primer thread on Twitter.

The city announced that their new eviction diversion program “has diverted 76 evictions and is on track to meet its goal to divert 300–500 evictions in its first year.” For some context, according to the NYT piece about Richmond’s nation-leading eviction rate, the City saw 5,803 eviction judgments in 2016. So we’re making big progress, for sure, but there’s still a lot of big work left to do.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 32 °F, and today, January 6th, looks like another delightful fall day. Expect highs in the mid 50s and lots of sunshine. The long range forecast suggests we may see temperatures in the 70s this weekend? OK, sure.

Water cooler

Richmond Police are reporting, what I think is, the first murder of 2020. On the morning of January 3rd, officers arrived to the a hotel on the 2600 block of Chamberlayne Avenue and found William O. Hurt shot to death.

Ali Rockett from the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a recap of last year’s deadly violence in Richmond 💸. In 2019, 66 people were killed. This is pretty close to the average number of killings over the previous three years (2016: 61; 2017: 78; 2018: 58). The three years previous to that saw an average of 40 people killed. I’d love to read something on what changed—either culturally, structurally, or even something with how the police report murders.