Good morning, RVA! It’s 68 °F, and today we’ve got a mixed bag: hot temperatures in the upper 80s, a pretty good chance for rain this evening, and a cold front moving through after the sun goes down. Cooler weather will stick around for a while, too, so keep an eye on your plants if you already started moving them outside!
 

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Apologies for the delay, but I finally got around to posting City Council’s fourth Budget Work Session over on the Boring Show. I haven’t listened yet, but the agenda covered real estate revenue projections, responses to some of the questions councilmembers have so far, and a discussion of Council’s own amendments to the Mayor’s proposed budget. All interesting and worth your time—at least if you’re listening along at 2x speed. Also, and I missed this when looking at the agenda earlier this week, but City Council held a closed session afterward for “discussion, consideration, and interviewing of a prospective candidate for employment as a City Attorney.” Sounds like we could maybe hear news on that hire soon.
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Michael Martz reports on Medicaid unwinding, the process of Medicaid reevaluating the eligibility of alllllll its current members—something it hasn’t done since the start of the pandemic. Martz says about 14% of the program’s current participants in Virginia are no longer eligible (about 308,000 people) and will now have to find health insurance elsewhere. Stressful stuff! Even more stressful, the State estimates 80,000 additional people will lose coverage just because they don’t have updated contact information on file and won’t get their renewal notices. What a horrible way to lose health insurance! You can learn more over on the CommonHelp website, and please remind anyone you know that is a Medicaid member to get their information updated ASAP!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 55 °F, and today looks legitimately hot. You should expect sunshine and temperatures in the upper 80s—maybe even in the 90s if, for some reason, you’re standing on a sea of baking asphalt. Regardless, sounds like a wonderful day to lay in a hammock or get some work done on a porch. Enjoy, and stay hydrated!
 

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I’ve written about how much I love the City’s plan to eliminate parking minimums for months now (ORD. 2023–101, which will hit Planning Commission’s agenda on April 17th). It’ll make life easier for small businesses, decrease the amount of valuable space used to store cars, and, hopefully, make a little more room for desperately needed housing. So far I haven’t seen a massive wave of opposition from the typical set of folks, which I’m still kind of holding my breath over. However, this entirely positive article about the proposal by Em Holter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch makes me wonder if maybe we just won’t see major organized opposition materialize after all. Honestly, that’d be a pretty big vibe shift for Richmond!
 

Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams writes about the Governor’s clandestine decision to make it harder for folks to have their voting rights restored. The Governor’s current policy, in which he individually considers each and every person with a felony conviction, “has roots in the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1901–02, which occurred during an era in which Southern Democrats reasserted white dominance that had weakened during the Reconstruction era.“ You’re going to want to tap through and read a shocking quote from a delegate at that Convention speaking on behalf of this very same, horrible policy now supported by our current governor 120 years later.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 55 ºF, and today looks amazing. Upgrade all of yesterday’s forecasted temperatures by a handful of degrees, because, starting today, you can expect highs in the 80s for the next little while. In fact, tomorrow may be just plain hot. Remember, it’s never too early to hydrate!
 

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VPM reports that “the state medical examiner on Monday ruled Irvo Otieno’s death a homicide.“ I’m not sure what the next steps are in this process, but 10 total people have been indicted on second-degree murder charges, including seven Henrico County sheriff’s deputies. I’m still processing this whole situation, but I’m surprised about the lack of public protests and the lack of reporting on and about the Sheriff’s Office.
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Michael Martz reports that the Governor will not call a special election to fill Lamont Bagby’s now-vacant House of Delegates seat. Tap through to read a bunch of thoughts from various people on whether or not this is a good decision. While I kind of wanted to see how many electoral dominoes we could knock over in a single year, I think I mostly agree with the elections folks who feel overwhelmed and ready to focus on June’s primaries. It’ll be the first time the Commonwealth votes in these newly drawn districts, which, while exciting for me, is probably incredibly stressful for people running the elections. Early voting in these elections starts in just 31 days!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 43 °F, and warmer weather is here! Today you can expect highs in the 70s, tomorrow will feature highs near 80 °F, and, depending on how things shake out, we might see some upper 80s on Thursday. That sounds lovely, and I hope you have some plans already in the works to take advantage of the stellar weather.
 

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Today, City Council will meet for their fourth budget work session at 1:00 PM, an Organizational Development committee meeting at 4:00 PM, and their own Special Meeting at 5:30 PM. I’ll get the budget work session up on The Boring Show later this week, of course, but if you have time the Org Dev meeting might be worth tuning into live as they’ll hear report outs from all other Council committees in addition to the ominously-named Audit Committee. Closing out their day at the Special Meeting, Council will consider a single paper, ORD. 2023–080, which will allocate $1.75 million to community college scholarships for RPS students. That’s a long day, and I hope Council brought snacks and remember to hydrate.
 

Related, Patrick Larsen at VPM reports on a $200,000 budget amendment submitted by 2nd District Councilmember Jordan to fund a study on decarbonizing the City’s Department of Public Utilities. I don’t know how it works in other cities, but in Richmond, we buy our natural gas from the City itself and all that revenue goes to support the day-to-day operations of the Department of Public Utilities. When gas prices go up (or gas usage goes down), DPU has to increase its consumer rates to keep paying its bills. You can see how this situation doesn’t give DPU (or the City’s leadership) a whole lot of incentive to move away from natural gas entirely and on to renewable energy sources. Honestly, though: Too bad! The planet’s on fire and of all entities, our local governments should not be involved in the sale—and expansion!—of non-renewable energy sources. Doomsaying aside, how to make this transition is a huge and complicated question, and I’m not sure anyone really wants to think too hard about it , so I appreciate this budget amendment and hope that the study gets funded. Working through how our city functions in a future/present where natural gas is not a tenable energy solution is well worth $200,000.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F right now, but later today we’ll see highs in the 70s! Do keep an eye out for a bit of rain later this evening, though—something I’m going to pretend won’t happen because these bikes won’t ride themselves. This weekend a brief cold(ish) front moves through, bringing with it rain and gusty winds, so prepare to batten if need be. Next week looks really beautiful, and I think we’ll get a small taste of it this weekend. Enjoy!
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have low CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 0, 71, and 30, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 3.3. Most of the country and nearly the entirety of the Commonwealth sits at a low COVID-19 Community Level (just three Virginia counties are in the yellow), and it’s been that way for a bunch of a weeks in a row now. Three years into this thing, and it’s time to get rid of these recurring COVID-19 updates—or at least move them to monthly. I think that’s a big deal and a good sign of where we are in the lifespan of this pandemic. Of course, should case rates spike and hospitals start to fill up as a result of some newly unleashed variant, I may change my mind, but, for now, this sort of data-centric update is no longer needed! That makes me feel some sort of hard-to-identify emotion!
 

Ian M. Stewart at VPM reports on last week’s Crash Analysis Studio hosted by Strong Towns and has some of the recommendations that resulted. The number one recommendation, which will surprise literally zero readers of this email, is to narrow the road immediately using temporary materials (like those big orange barrels). This will both slow drivers and shorten the crossing distance for pedestrians, making it safer for everyone. See! It’s not just a random guy with a newsletter that thinks these things but also experts from national advocacy organizations who work on these problems daily. Richmond could implement quick and temporary changes like this immediately after someone is hurt or killed on our streets—to help prevent future crashes—but, for some reason, we’re stubbornly unwilling to do so.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 40 °F, and today you can expect weather a lot like yesterday—highs around 60 °F, sunshine, and plenty of signs of spring popping up all around. I don’t know about you, but my hostas are excited to be alive. Temperatures start to warm up tomorrow and will continue to do so through the end of next week.
 

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Jahd Khalil at VPM reports on the City’s 2022 Office of Community Wealth Building Impact Report, which you can download as PDF and read directly if you’d like. OCWB exists to elevate Richmonders out of poverty and they do so through a handful of interesting initiatives (including a small and nascent basic income program!). Each year they’re required by City Council to draft a report of what they’ve been up to, and the main takeaway from this year is that poverty fell 1.5%. That probably doesn’t seem like a lot, but, as OCWB’s director puts it “it’s been moving in the right direction.” Take a minute and scroll through the actual PDF report though, because there are a lot of interesting stats and tables that are worth your time. Like: Since 2012, poverty among Black and Latino Richmonders has fallen 12% and 48% (?!) respectively.
 

Tyler Lane at WTVR continues his reporting on deaths in the City’s jail. Since March 2022, five people have died in the jail, with three of them confirmed to be the result of a fentanyl overdose.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and today you can expect mostly clear skies and highs right around 60 °F. While not epically warm, beautiful summer weather, it is pretty excellent flannel weather—and we’ve only got a finite number of those kind of days left this spring!
 

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The (unofficial) results are in, and, as expected, Lamont Bagby won yesterday’s special election for Virginia’s 9th Senate District seat. He crushed Republican challenger Stephen Imholt with almost 90% of the vote. You can read a short statement from the Senator-elect and Rep. McClellen, whose seat he filled, here. I’m not sure when he’ll get sworn in, but if it’s anytime soon, I guess we’d have Yet Another Special Election to fill his vacant House of Delegates seat? And if a local elected official, like, say, a member of Henrico’s Board of Supervisors, runs in that election, maybe some of us would have the opportunity for even more voting later this summer? It’s sort of chaotic and I love it, but remember: All of these jokers are back up for reelection this November. That’s when we all get really serious about casting a ballot for whatever Democrats we can to continue protecting the health and safety of Virginians for the next couple of years.
 

Exciting City Council news: At this past Monday’s meeting, Council introduced the ordinance to get rid of parking minimums throughout the city (ORD. 2023–101)! This is the first of The Three Zoning Changes to make it into actual ordnance form, and Planning Commission will get the first crack at it in just a couple of weeks at their April 17th meeting. I’m hopeful that the extensive public engagement the City has already done up to this point will make this an easy vote for Planning Commissioners and, eventually, City Councilmembers.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, and temperatures should warm up to around 60 °F by this afternoon. We may see some rain this evening, too. If today’s damp and chillyish weather is not your cup of tea, worry not! The next couple of days look dry and sunny, and I definitely see some highs in the 80s later on in the 10-day forecast.
 

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Yesterday, three elementary school students and three teachers were shot and killed in a mass shooting in Nashville. When faced with this specific repeated tragedy, I have a hard time putting words to what’s happening despite it recurring with a horrible frequency. Instead of reading a half dozen news sites and pull-to-refreshing timelines all day, I’ve started to wait for certain people in our community to lay out their thoughts—people with a better capacity for empathy and thoughtfulness than myself. RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras is one of those people, and you can read his response to this most recent school shooting in last night’s email. To quote a bit: “Above all else, I believe that strong, healthy, loving relationships at school and at home are the greatest safeguard we can offer our students and staff. That’s why we’ve made significant investments in counselors, social workers, and psychologists over the past several years, and implemented community circles and a social-emotional learning curriculum. But our students need even more support, particularly post-pandemic. Towards that end, here’s one very concrete thing you can do to help them: Demand that the General Assembly lift the cap on funding for support staff in our schools.” Given the lack of compassion from our federal and state Republican lawmakers and their complete unwillingness to move a single inch on commonsense gun safety legislation, one of the only avenues available to addressing violence in school is to provide schools with adequate funding. To that end, take three minutes this morning, email the legislators on the General Assembly’s budget committees (listed out for you in Kamras’s email), and ask them to lift the cap on school support staff and fund the Senate’s version of the budget.
 

Today, believe it or not, is an Election Day. Residents of the current 9th Senate District can vote for Rep. McClellan’s replacement until 7:00 PM. Del. Lamont Bagby is the Democratic candidate, and you can find out if you live in the 9th District here and find your polling place here. While the demographics of the district likely guarantee a Bagby victory, the previous paragraph should be enough to motivate you to get out and vote at some point today.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 49 °F, and today we’ve got highs right around 70 °F. There’s a decent chance of rain this morning, but the afternoon looks lovely. I definitely plan on spending some time out on the porch listening to the world go by.
 

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Rev. Al Sharpton will deliver the eulogy at Irvo Otieno’s funeral this coming Wednesday. According to the RTD, civil rights attorney Ben Crump will issue a “national call for justice for the 28-year-old, whose death echoes that of George Floyd nearly three years ago."
 

Richmond Connects—the City’s first update to its transportation plan in a good, long while—is inching closer to announcing its Near-term Action Plan, a list of projects that the City will look to fund over the next five or 10 years. That sentence is exciting and depressing, because while five to 10 years definitely counts as “near-term” in Transportation World it certainly feels like forever in Regular Life World. I’ll now set aside for another day my rant about how Richmond refuses to implement pilot/temporary infrastructure projects which would take much fewer than five years to fund and implement. Anyway, while we wait on the Near-term Action Plan’s prioritized list of projects, check out these neat maps of Richmond‘s “Super Needs”. From the Richmond Connect’s website: Super Needs are “the needs that communities of concern consistently raised as needing to be addressed first. ​These Super Needs will be given priority during the development of recommendations.” If you’re personally familiar with any of these areas, you’ll definitely find yourself nodding along and muttering “yes! yes!” to lots of the needs. Turns out, residents are experts about where they feel unsafe in their own neighborhoods, and this list of Super Needs is an example of what you get when you ask (and listen) to them.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 63 °F this morning, and, by this afternoon, we’ll see even warmer temperatures—potentially right around 80 °F! Don’t get too attached, though, because a cool front will move through and quickly drop temperatures back into the 50s around the time the sun sets. Warm temperatures return on Saturday and Sunday, the latter looking particularly lovely for a long bike ride. I hope you find some time to get out there and enjoy it—I know I will!
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have low CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 0, 85, and 25, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 4.3. It’s another week in the green for our region, and, in fact, I think this is the first time in a long time (maybe ever?) that every locality across the entire commonwealth has a low COVID-19 Community Level. If you zoom way out to the national level you’ll see a similar trend, too, with probably less than a dozen counties with a high level and just a bowlful of them with a medium level. Who knows what the future holds, and if this trend will stick, but if the last three years has taught me anything, it’s that you just kind of need to roll with the current situation—and our current situation features a whole lot less disease than it did a year ago!
 

Richmond BizSense’s Jonathan Spiers reports on new plans for the old Public Safety Building. The City reclaimed ownership of the property earlier this year after a developer failed to come through on their proposal, and now it sounds like VCU will swoop in and build a $415 million complex for a VCU Dentistry Center instead. Spiers asks the first question I had, but has no answer: “The memo does not provide more details about the project, such as whether VCU would buy the Public Safety Building property from the city. University ownership would take the 3-acre property off the city’s tax rolls, as VCU is exempt from paying city real estate taxes.“ The decrepit remains of the Public Safety Building are bad, but I’m not sure hurriedly removing yet another entire block of property from Richmond’s tax rolls forever is the best option moving forward.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 49 °F, and today’s temperatures will almost reach 80 °F! You can expect similarly warm temperatures for the next four days, and I hope you’ll find at least a couple of chances to get out there and enjoy it. Maybe plan a trip to one of Richmond’s parks that you’ve never visited and spend an afternoon exploring?
 

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I’ve got two City Council items to kick off your morning! First, I posted this past Monday’s budget work session over on the Boring Show for your listening pleasure. It’s a long one and I’m only about an hour into it, but the discussion focuses, at least in part, on how the City can become an “employer of choice.” It’s really interesting stuff, and I recommend you queue it up at 2x speed next time you’ve got three baskets of laundry to fold. Second, Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee will meet today (full agenda here) and will consider ORD. 2023–057, which would unprohibit a roundabout at the intersection of Hermitage Road and Laburnum Avenue, repealing one of the most dripping-with-NIMBYism ordinances passed in recent(ish) memory. To be clear, I don’t know that a roundabout is the best and safest solution for this massive intersection now that the monument no longer sits in the middle obscuring views from every which way. I’d probably prefer a protected intersection. However, I think it’s incredibly smart to get the bad 2009 ordinance off the books so that this generation of grumpy neighbors—or maybe even the same grumpy neighbors from 2009 that still live in the area—can’t use it to oppose whatever the City eventually propose to make this intersection safer for everyone. P.S. The Committee will also have a discussion on “future Housing Plan to include Richmond 300 growth nodes with transit corridors and a system similar to Arlington’s Revitalization Zones.” I’m interested and would like to learn more!
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch has the news that Governor Youngkin appointed two high-level officials. David Ress reports that Gerald Lackey, former “vice president of business optimization at GAF, the world’s largest roofing manufacturer,” will serve as the DMV commissioner. And Anna Bryson reports that Lisa Coons, former chief academic officer of the Tennessee Department of Education, will take over as the new State Superintendent of Public Instruction. I think the latter probably has more opportunity to make headlines than the former, but you never know!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F, and we did it! Today’s highs will settle in somewhere around the mid 60s, and then, for the next four days, we’ll have highs in the 70s. While we’re still a couple of weeks away from a safe last-frost date, I think I’m mentally declaring victory on winter and officially moving on to spring.
 

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I’ve written a lot about the chaotic laundry list of Council-proposed amendments to Richmond 300 (which, fingers crossed, seems to have died a fiery death at this week’s Planning Commission meeting). One change that escaped that list and made it into its own, separate amendment is a recommendation to set aside some time and space in the master plan for our public housing neighborhoods. They’re called “priority neighborhoods” in a new proposed chapter of Richmond 300 and include Gilpin, Creighton, Fairfield, Mosby, Whitcomb, Hillside, Blackwell, and Highland Grove. The first six on that list are existing public housing neighborhoods and the last two stand on the sites of former public housing, now redeveloped to varying degrees of failure and success. This new chapter proposes a “priority neighborhood program” to, basically, create small area plans for each of these eight neighborhoods. It sounds like a lot of important and needed work that’ll require some very thoughtful and thorough community engagement (especially given all the other plans currently in the works). Definitely give the aforelinked PDF a read—it’s only 16 pages, and I think you’ll learn a lot about the past and present of Richmond’s public housing neighborhoods. If you’ve got thoughts and feelings, you can leave them on the document via this Konveio before April 15th.
 

A small update on Irvo Otieno’s death at the hands of Henrico County sheriff deputies: Whittney Evans at VPM reports that “a Dinwiddie grand jury indicted 10 people Tuesday afternoon in the death of a man last week at Central State Hospital while in police custody.“
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, and my grumpiness about the cold continues. But! Looking at the 10-day forecast and I think, after this morning, we’re done with the cold, cold weather. Today, you can expect highs in the mid 60s and some sunshine. By the time this weekend rolls around, we might even see temperatures in the 80s. Spring! It has sprung!
 

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It’s been 53 days since a driver hit and killed a VCU student on Main Street, right in the middle of the Monroe Park campus. Since then, the Richmond Police Department has stepped up enforcement of speeding all over town, but, at least to my knowledge, nothing has been done to actually slow drivers down on this specific stretch of Main Street. What would a quick, temporary intervention—one that actually slows drivers and keeps people safe—even look like though? Is something like that even possible? You can find out for yourself this coming Friday at 12:15 PM as Strong Towns, a national advocacy organization focused on land use patterns, hosts a Crash Analysis Studio to look at the specifics of this crash and this street and suggest how the City could make things safer. The virtual discussion between technical and non-technical experts will “analyze the the multiple factors that caused the crash and, subsequently, identify what can be done to reduce the frequency of and trauma of future crashes.” I’m very excited about this and hope you can attend! The event is free, but you’ll want to register online beforehand.
 

Last week, VAPLAN released their 2023 VAPLAN Scorecard which ranks our state legislators on a scale of Most Progressive to Least Progressive. Because the General Assembly is a confusing, chaotic mess, the ranking system is also a little bit confusing and chaotic, and I recommend you read the accompanying newsletter to get a feel for how the spreadsheet works. To spoil it a bit, the most progressive legislators of this past session were: Delegates Marcus Simon, Cia Price, Elizabeth Guzman, Jeffrey Bourne, Sam Rasoul, and Don Scott, along with Senators Scott Surovell, Jennifer McClellan, Adam Ebbin, Mamie Locke, Creigh Deeds, and Jennifer Boysko. Take a minute and poke around in the spreadsheet and see what you can uncover. For example, maybe even more interesting than the top and bottom are the folks in the middle—the least progressive Democrats or the most progressive Republicans. P.S. This is also an excellent tool for just looking back to see how all of the legislators voted on important progressive issues—data that simply leaves my mind the instant the GA session ends. I’m thankful that someone has written it all down!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, and my grumpiness about the cold continues. But! Looking at the 10-day forecast and I think, after this morning, we’re done with the cold, cold weather. Today, you can expect highs in the mid 60s and some sunshine. By the time this weekend rolls around, we might even see temperatures in the 80s. Spring! It has sprung!
 

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It’s been 53 days since a driver hit and killed a VCU student on Main Street, right in the middle of the Monroe Park campus. Since then, the Richmond Police Department has stepped up enforcement of speeding all over town, but, at least to my knowledge, nothing has been done to actually slow drivers down on this specific stretch of Main Street. What would a quick, temporary intervention—one that actually slows drivers and keeps people safe—even look like though? Is something like that even possible? You can find out for yourself this coming Friday at 12:15 PM as Strong Towns, a national advocacy organization focused on land use patterns, hosts a Crash Analysis Studio to look at the specifics of this crash and this street and suggest how the City could make things safer. The virtual discussion between technical and non-technical experts will “analyze the the multiple factors that caused the crash and, subsequently, identify what can be done to reduce the frequency of and trauma of future crashes.” I’m very excited about this and hope you can attend! The event is free, but you’ll want to register online beforehand.
 

Last week, VAPLAN released their 2023 VAPLAN Scorecard which ranks our state legislators on a scale of Most Progressive to Least Progressive. Because the General Assembly is a confusing, chaotic mess, the ranking system is also a little bit confusing and chaotic, and I recommend you read the accompanying newsletter to get a feel for how the spreadsheet works. To spoil it a bit, the most progressive legislators of this past session were: Delegates Marcus Simon, Cia Price, Elizabeth Guzman, Jeffrey Bourne, Sam Rasoul, and Don Scott, along with Senators Scott Surovell, Jennifer McClellan, Adam Ebbin, Mamie Locke, Creigh Deeds, and Jennifer Boysko. Take a minute and poke around in the spreadsheet and see what you can uncover. For example, maybe even more interesting than the top and bottom are the folks in the middle—the least progressive Democrats or the most progressive Republicans. P.S. This is also an excellent tool for just looking back to see how all of the legislators voted on important progressive issues—data that simply leaves my mind the instant the GA session ends. I’m thankful that someone has written it all down!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 27 °F, and I’m grumpy about it. Highs today, though, should hit somewhere in the 50s and that’s not so bad. Looking ahead, after one more slightly sub-freezing night tonight, it looks like we’ve got a week of warmer weather ahead of us—maybe even temperatures in the 80s as we approach the weekend!
 

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The Richmond Police Department’s Crash Team reports that a driver hit and killed a person crossing N. Belvidere Street at W. Leigh Street. From the release: On Friday “at approximately 2:54 a.m., officers were called to the intersection of North Belvidere Street and West Leigh Street for the report of a collision. Officers arrived and found an adult male down and injured in the left travel lane of the northbound lanes of North Belvidere after being struck by a vehicle in the intersection.” RPD hasn’t shared any other information about this crash, but I have no doubt that speed was a factor. I cross this section of Belvidere every day on my ride home from work (a block south of here because the Leigh Street intersection is too wide and intense). I regularly see people driving well over the posted speed limit—especially in the left lane as they try to both beat the lights and avoid turning traffic in the right lane. The width of the street—across the bridge and onto the southernmost part of Chamberlayne Avenue—really makes it feel like you’re driving on a highway, not through a dense residential neighborhood. This is the second person killed by a driver on or near VCU’s campus this year. Both of these fatal crashes took place on the City’s High Injury Street Network, where we know for a fact—with data—the most serious and deadly crashes occur.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 27 °F, and I’m grumpy about it. Highs today, though, should hit somewhere in the 50s and that’s not so bad. Looking ahead, after one more slightly sub-freezing night tonight, it looks like we’ve got a week of warmer weather ahead of us—maybe even temperatures in the 80s as we approach the weekend!
 

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The Richmond Police Department’s Crash Team reports that a driver hit and killed a person crossing N. Belvidere Street at W. Leigh Street. From the release: On Friday “at approximately 2:54 a.m., officers were called to the intersection of North Belvidere Street and West Leigh Street for the report of a collision. Officers arrived and found an adult male down and injured in the left travel lane of the northbound lanes of North Belvidere after being struck by a vehicle in the intersection.” RPD hasn’t shared any other information about this crash, but I have no doubt that speed was a factor. I cross this section of Belvidere every day on my ride home from work (a block south of here because the Leigh Street intersection is too wide and intense). I regularly see people driving well over the posted speed limit—especially in the left lane as they try to both beat the lights and avoid turning traffic in the right lane. The width of the street—across the bridge and onto the southernmost part of Chamberlayne Avenue—really makes it feel like you’re driving on a highway, not through a dense residential neighborhood. This is the second person killed by a driver on or near VCU’s campus this year. Both of these fatal crashes took place on the City’s High Injury Street Network, where we know for a fact—with data—the most serious and deadly crashes occur.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 50 °F, and today we’ve got another afternoon ahead of us with welcomed highs in the mid 60s. Keep an eye out for gusty wind and possibly a bit of rain late this evening. As for the rest of the weekend, temperatures slowly drop back into the regular, springtime range with highs in the 40s on Sunday. I think you’ll have plenty of opportunities to get out and enjoy the world over the next couple of days, so I say you make some plans and do it!
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have low CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 0, 74, and 34, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 1.7. Richmond’s data is still clearly broken, but if we take Henrico as a proxy for the region, we’re still seeing some of the lowest COVID-19 case rates since last fall. While it’s not time to hang the ol’ Mission Accomplished banner—we saw a huge spike in cases last year starting at the end of April—maybe we can cautiously unfurl the banner over in a corner and, like, start getting it ready.
 

Richmond’s City Council announced yesterday that the City Attorney has resigned, effective immediately, after police charged him with drunk driving last week. Council will “meet in the coming days to outline a process as it moves forward with appointing a new City Attorney.” I’m super interested to see who they end up hiring because the Attorney is such a weird and powerful position in Richmond’s oddly designed governmental structure. They’re the attorney for the whole city—for both the Mayor and City Council—which can sometimes put them in the incredibly interesting place of deciding a conflict between our legislative and executive branches. You can see how this could get awkward if the Mayor wants to do a thing but Council claims he doesn’t have the authority. It’s often the Attorney that wades in at that point and makes the final call. I can’t remember the last time this came up, as the Mayor and Council seem to be mostly on the same page lately, but when it happens I think it’s fascinating.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 29 °F right now, but, by this afternoon, we’ll see temperatures in the mid 60s. Today, tomorrow, and Saturday all look incredible, and I’m already starting to pencil in Forest Time on my calendar. I hope you can find the time to enjoy it, too.
 

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Seven Henrico County Sheriff’s deputies have been charged with second-degree murder. Earlier this month, the deputies were transferring a person suffering a mental health crisis to a hospital and, in the process, held him down “on the floor for 12 minutes while he was shackled and handcuffed, eventually ‘smothering him to death.’” Mark Bowes at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has more details (content warning: graphic descriptions of violence committed by law enforcement officers). This situation reads like a horrific combination of the murders of George Floyd and Marcus-David Peters. Clearly the policies and reforms we’ve put in place since those two deaths are not nearly enough to keep people safe—especially people in need of help.
 

Big, big news for users of the Capital Trail: “The Four Mile Creek Trailhead will soon have restroom facilities and water. Construction will start on the water and sewer approximately on March 20th, 2023, and last an estimated 90 days.” Chugs a full Nalgene of water in celebration. If you’re unfamiliar, Four Mile Creek is a typical turnaround spot for folks looking to put in a 35ish-mile round trip bike ride from Richmond. It’s also an excellent place to drive out, park your car, and experience some of the Capital Trail segments east of the City (which are really beautiful). I’m glad Henrico County has decided to run water out there—dehydrated bikers, walkers, and rollers thank you from the bottom of our empty water bottles!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, and today looks warmer and, thankfully, less windy than yesterday. You can expect highs in the mid 50s and the start of a nice little warm streak—temperatures tomorrow and Friday will end up in the mid 60s!
 

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OK! I got Council’s budget work session from this past Monday up on the Boring Show and you can listen here. I think if you’re only planning on listening to one single budget session (gasp! scoff!), this is the one I would pick for you. CAO Lincoln Saunders put together a really nice presentation overviewing both the operating and capital budgets and did a great job of explaining the Mayor’s priority investments. One graphic which caught the praise of several councilmembers was this one breaking the operating budget down into percentages and representing it as “cents out of every dollar.” So, for example, out of every dollar in the City’s budget, $0.23 goes towards education, $0.20 goes towards public safety, $.04 towards recreation and culture, and so on. I also heard tell of a “Budget in Brief” document that I want to get my hands on and add to my PDF library. As for notable topics, I think the discussions on assessments, gun violence, and housing are worth a listen. Especially the latter, as the CAO explains why the Mayor decided to fund affordable housing outside of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund (mostly due to restrictions on how ARPA dollars can be spent). I’d love some smart housing person to dig into this new funding plan from the City and let us all know their thoughts and feelings. Jahd Khalil at VPM details a few of the open questions. Anyway, the budget is important stuff and listening to this work session while you do the dishes or fold the laundry will make you a better citizen—plus, at 2x speed it’ll only take you about an hour to get through!
 

Richmond BizSense’s Mike Platania reports that City Council has given final final for real approval to a new restaurant in Byrd Park on the corner of Idlewood and Stafford. This is great news, because the folks behind the new spot (who also run New York Deli) have worked to bring a restaurant to that location for literal years! Because a restaurant is not an allowed use under the building’s current zoning, City Council had to pass an entire ordinance just for this one single property via its Special Use Permit process. That process gives incredible power to, as Platania puts it, a “handful of local residents opposed to the project”, who, with a little organizing, can completely derail or delay something that probably should be allowed by right. The amount of SUPs on Council’s agenda each and every week is why zoning is so important and why the City’s rewrite of its zoning ordinance is such a huge deal. With the rewrite, we’ve got the opportunity to start mixing our neighborhood uses together—residential right next to retail! It’s how the rest of the world does it, and I bet if folks take a second to think of their favorite places, they are almost certainly neighborhoods where you can walk across the street to something cool—something like a chill corner cafe!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 32 °F, and todays highs will land somewhere in the upper 40s. If you’re out and about today, bundle up and watch out for the wind—especially this afternoon. We’ll get blown around by 15mph breezes most of the day but could see some gusts twice that! Also, if you’ve got tender spring plants outside, keep an eye on them because overnight temperatures could dip below freezing.
 

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How many traffic signals would you guess that the City’s Department of Public Works maintains and operates? I’m horrible at estimating these sorts of things, and I guessed somewhere between 10 and 5,000. Turns out, I was right on the money, because its 480—with 285 north of the river and 115 south of the river. This month, DPW has started to retime each and every one of those traffic signals as part of a $1.8 million project funded through the federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality program. Signal retiming is cool, and, while not solidly built infrastructure protecting our soft human bodies from deadly speeding vehicles, it can still slow traffic way down. Drivers will travel at Whatever-It-Takes mph if the signals on, say, Broad Street, are timed so you can ride a wave of green lights all the way Downtown. Smart signal retiming lowers that mph to a speed where people don’t die if someone makes a mistake and crashes their car.
 

Extremely related, Lyndon German at the Richmond Times-Dispatch checks in on the City’s Vision Zero work—the work to bring to zero the number of people who die or are seriously injured on our streets. German reports that the Richmond Police Department has upped enforcement on “aggressive, impaired, and inattentive driving” throughout the City, increasing the number of traffic-related violations by 17% over last year. Enforcing the existing laws (if you can do so equitably) is definitely one tool to get to Vision Zero, and technology solutions like the one in the previous paragraph are an important piece of the puzzle, too. I still think, in addition to these other initiatives, Richmond needs to start experimenting with quick-and-cheap pilot infrastructure projects that actually change the way our streets work and make them slower and safer for people.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, and you can expect some rain this morning and highs right around 50 °F as the day progresses. Looking ahead at the 10-day forecast, though, and I do see some warmer temperatures and sunny days later this week. Not trying to jinx it, but, at this point, the coming weekend looks really lovely.
 

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City Council will hold their second budget work session today at 12:30 PM, the first since the mayor introduced his proposed budget last week. You can watch them get into it live via the City’s website or wait until I get the audio up on the Boring show later this week. Immediately following the budget session, Council will move into their Informal Meeting to discuss a personnel matter and then head right on into their regularly-scheduled meeting. Sounds like a lot, but!, because Council recognizes their own limitations and, more importantly, the finiteness of time, they’ve continued almost everything on their agenda to a later date—giving themselves a budget buffer should they run over during this afternoon’s meeting. Smart thinking (or maybe it’s just that no one should sit in six or more hours of continuous meetings with the same eight people).
 

Last week the 2nd and 5th District Councilmembers hosted a combined public meeting to discuss Those Three Zoning Changes (eliminating parking minimums, allowing ADUs, and tweaking the rules for AirBnbs). Over the weekend, Councilmember Jordan sent out a PDF of the City’s presentation in her Second District Newsletter, and, honestly, I think it’s one of the better slide decks I’ve seen on complicated zoning issues. I love how City staff broke up each zoning change into “what is the context,” what changes are we proposing,” and “what are the benefits.” So smart and easy to understand! Presentation formatting aside, I’ve said for however long we’ve been kicking around These Three Zoning Changes that I support getting rid of parking minimums and permitting ADUs everywhere, but the lack of a residency requirement in the Airbnb tweaks made me nervous—nervous that someone could buy up ten homes in a neighborhood, just for Airbnbs, and remove a ton of housing off the market. However! It looks like the Department of Planning and Development Review has come up with a compromise to retain the residency requirement in residential zones and remove it in mixed-used zones. So: you’d only be able to Airbnb the home that you live in a neighborhood like Ginter Park, but you could buy a bunch of condos in Scott’s Addition and run a small Airbnb empire. I’m not smart enough to think through all of the impacts this change will have, but I’m glad to see a compromise in the direction of “we need more places for people to actually live”.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, and chillier days are upon us! Today you can expect highs right around 50 °F and a decent chance of rain at some point this evening. It’s pretty much the same for Saturday and Sunday—although maybe expect a bit more wet weather toward the end of the weekend. Enjoy the next couple of days, and if you feel like staying inside curled around a warm beverage of your choosing, I wouldn’t blame you!
 

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The Richmond Police Department are reporting three murders that took place over the last five days. On Sunday, Tyshawn Wyatt, 25, was shot and killed on the 1400 block of Harwood Street; on Monday, Tyrek Brandon, 21, was shot and killed on the zero block of E. 16th Street; and on Thursday, Asha Hite, 39, was shot and killed on the 1100 block of Hollister Avenue. All three of these fatal shootings happened on the City’s Southside but not in the same neighborhood. RPD reports 14 homicides thus far in 2023, up four from this time last year.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and highs today might hit 60 °F. Tomorrow (Friday!) looks colder, wetter, and less pleasant all around, so you might want to take advantage of what we’ve got today. Looking at the extended forecast, by the way, and four of the next nine days have lows sitting just below freezing. March: Winter is…kind of coming back?
 

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Yesterday afternoon, Governor Youngkin announced “the upcoming release of $30 million in Learning Recovery Grants to parents to be used for qualifying education services intended to address the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ educational progress and well-being.” I’ve read the press release, like, six times and still don’t really understand what all is actually happening. Here’s the vaguest of gists: Families making less than 300% of the Federal Poverty Level could (will?) receive $3,000 to spend on “vetted and approved education services they need to address the negative effects the pandemic has had on their educational progress and well-being.” All other qualifying students, which I assume means families making more than three times the FPL, will receive $1,500. Obviously folks will have a million questions about this initiative—especially what’s a “vetted service,” who are “qualifying students,” and where is this money coming from. Unfortunately, all we’re told in the release is that we’ll get a website (aka a “parent-friendly, accessible, and secure online service”) at some point. If I try to set aside my bias, look past some of the weird language in the press release, and squint a little, these Learning Recovery Grants sort of seems like a child tax credit—something I’m very supportive of! Of course, it could be something entirely different and nefarious, and, for now, we’ll just have to wait for the Administration to release more details or for reporters to dig in to really understand what the Governor has planned.
 

Homeward has released its 2023 Winter Point-In-Time Count of people experiencing homelessness in our region, and, overall, they recorded “690 people experiencing homelessness, which is 1% lower than the PIT count in January 2022.” However, while the total number of folks stayed mostly the same, Homeward found a “121% increase in the number of people who were staying in unsheltered conditions…the largest number of people staying outdoors, in cars, and other places not meant for human habitation in the past 15 years.” Jahd Khalil at VPM has some more details and talked with some of the folks at Homeward about what’s driving this year’s numbers. Unsurprising to anyone reading this newsletter, the region’s lack of deeply affordable housing is one of the big reasons for the higher rates of unsheltered homelessness.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 34 °F, and that’s colder than its been in a while! Get used to it, because NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says we can expect that “cold weather returns for two weeks or longer.” 1) Dang, I was just getting used to not having to maximum bundle myself with coats and gloves and scarves just to ride my bike around town, and 2) Dang, I hope all of my outdoor plants make it through until April.
 

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Reminder! You can listen to all of the budget-related public meetings up to this point—including the Mayor’s budget presentation this past Monday—over on the Boring Show. While the meeting format will change for this year’s budget season, I still think listening to our elected officials is one of the best ways to get to know how they think and what they care about. For example, here is 8th District Councilmember Trammell responding to the Mayor’s request that each councilmember limit their budget priorities to five for the operating budget and three for the capital budget. City Council will hold their next budget work session on Monday, March 13th.
 

Related, Ned Oliver at Axios Richmond has a fun, high-level, emoji-based look at the Mayor’s proposed FY24 budget. If, like me, you’re saving the massive budget PDFs for the weekend, this short list can tide you over until then.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and cooler(ish) weather starts to move in today. You can expect highs “only” around 60 °F, and temperatures may dip below freezing for just a bit this evening—let’s hope its not cold enough to kill all of the springtime plants who are very confused about it still being the first week of March. Other than that, today still looks sunny and wonderful, so I hope you can find time to enjoy the out-of-doors at some point.
 

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The Mayor introduced his FY23 budget to City Council yesterday afternoon, and you can watch his presentation over on the City’s legislative website (or you can soon listen over on the Boring Show). Dive straight in, first hand, if you want, and download the FY24 Annual Fiscal Plan (aka the operating budget) and the FY24 Capital Improvement Plan to your PDF library. However, if scrolling through a 485-page document is not your thing, the Mayor’s “transmittal letter” to Council (p. 6) provides a good overview of the highlights. Top of mind for me this morning, although I haven’t had a chance to dig in fully yet, is RPS funding. The School Board passed a budget asking for about $29 million in additional funding, and the Mayor has proposed a $21 million increase. How that $8 million gap gets filled, I don’t know, but this stat from the Mayor blows my mind: The City’s “contribution to RPS…is $69,921,277 more than the FY 2017 funding level and represents a 46.1 percent increase in RPS funding during my tenure as Mayor.” That’s a huge increase over just a handful of years! Regardless of that massive financial support, it’s not enough, and I don’t think we’re done discussing school funding. I’m pretty sure that State’s budget will shortchange the district a whole bunch of cash, further increasing that funding gap and requiring either more support from City Council or more cuts from RPS. Which means: Prepare yourself for some stressful public meetings in the near future. While funding Richmond Public Schools is the City’s largest expense, there are a million and one other details to dig into (like the decision to basically flat-fund GRTC and how they City will support the Affordable Housing Trust Fund) that I’m sure we’ll hear about in the coming weeks. For now, though, just download those PDFs and get to scrolling!
 

Remember how City Council updated the scooter ordinance to incentivize companies to start deploying scooters on the Southside (ORD. 2023–029)? At the time, neither of our two existing vendors, Bird and Lime, had a single scooter south of the river. Since then, Spin has started dropping their bright orange scooters around town, and Reader Andrew sent me this picture of a tiny flock parked over at Semmes and 34th. Most of Spin’s Southside fleet hugs the area around the James, but, still, it’s at least something to provide better connectivity to that part of town. Of note: As of this morning, neither Bird nor Lime have expanded their coverage to the Southside (at least according to a quick look at their apps).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, and today looks a lot like yesterday—which was amazing! Expect sunshine, highs in the mid 60s, and every reason in the world to take a stroll around the neighborhood. Temperatures start to drop and look a little more March-like as the week goes on, and, by the end of the week, we’ll probably see highs just in the 40s.
 

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OK! Today is one of City Council’s biggest days of the year! At 1:30 PM, the Mayor’s administration will present the new Capital Improvement Plan to the Planning Commission, and at 3:00 PM the Mayor himself will present his fresh and shiny proposed budget to City Council. You can, of course, tune in live over on the City’s legislative website. This budget season, Councilmember Jones, in his first budget season as City Council president, has decided to switch up the process a bit. Instead of having each City department come and present on the year that was (which, honestly, was one of my favorite parts of budget season), he’ll have the CAO give presentations on the portions of the budget that apply to each department. The idea is that more concise presentations will leave more time for Council to have their own debates and discussions. I’m a little bummed because I loved the presentations, but this New Way is probably a good idea. You can listen to Councilmember Jones describe the new process himself over on the Boring Show, which I got up and running over the weekend. If you’re not familiar, get excited because the Boring Show is a podcast of the audio from budget-related public meetings. It’s a useful tool for time-shifting budget season and keeping up with the hours of meetings while cooking dinner, folding laundry, or commuting to work (especially if you listen at 2x speed). So far I’ve uploaded February 27th’s initial Council budget work session (where Jones describes the above new process) and March 2nd’s Education and Human Services committee featuring Superintendent Kamras and the RPS budget. Subscribe here and learn more than you ever wanted to know about how the City works!
 

Related, the Planning Commission meets today to not only receive the proposed Capital Improvement Plan (which, remember, is the City’s multi-year plan on how to spend money on stuff…like buildings, vehicles, parks, that sort of thing) but also to discuss a handful of zoning amendments related to the Diamond District. Instead of creating an entirely new “baseball stadium zoning district,” the Department of Planning and Development Review wants to make a few tweaks to the existing TOD-1 zoning district. You can flip through their presentation here and should probably pencil in the March 14th community meeting on your calendar to learn more details.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 45 °F, and today’s temperature graph is weird. For most of the day, you can expect temperatures in the 50s, then, after the sun sets, things heat up. By the wee hours of tomorrow morning we’ll see temperatures in the mid 60s! Bizarre! You should definitely prepare for storms to roll through alongside the weirdly warm weather today, but, after that, the rest of the weekend looks real lovely.
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield now have low CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 0, 127, and 52, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 7. Regardless of the continued weirdness with Richmond’s case rate, the entire region is back in the gentle green of a low COVID-19 Community Level. This is great news! While it doesn’t mean that the world around you is disease-free and you should start licking doorknobs, it does mean that the amount of COVID-19 floating around in our neighborhoods continues to trend downward. To keep it that way, make sure you get your booster if you haven’t already, keep an ear out for an annual COVID-19 vaccine recommendation this fall, and keep your tongue off of doorknobs.
 

VPM’s Jahd Khalil reports on some interesting public comments at this past Monday’s City Council meeting. The advocacy group RISC (Richmonders Involved to Strengthen our Communities) showed up and pointed out that the City is using ARPA money to fund affordable housing instead of allocating revenue from expiring real estate tax exemptions to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, the dedicated funding stream set aside for this very thing. The City confirmed this through a spokesperson who said, “The Mayor and the City Council decided for FY22 and FY23 to use $20 M in ARPA funding to increase the amount of funds available to fund affordable housing development and rehabilitation in lieu of using the dedicated source of funding.” I’m no lawyer and I’m not trying to seem ungrateful for the $20 million the City dedicated toward affordable housing, but Council did pass ORD. 2020–214 two years ago and it does require all of that expiring real estate tax exemption revenue to go straight into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. I think I’m with RISC and would like to see the existing $20 million already pledged by the Mayor and Council, plus the legally required contribution to the trust fund. I’d also love to hear the City Attorney weigh in—if only so we can know what to expect for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund and its dedicated funding stream in the future.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 54 °F, and it’s rainy. But! Looks like things should dry out and warm up as the day goes on, with temperatures topping out around 70 °F. Take advantage of it, because tomorrow looks cooler and wetter and a lot more like a cozy-on-the-couch movie night.
 

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Ooo political intrigue! Nathaniel Cline at the Virginia Mercury reports that Virginia’s superintendent of public instruction, Jillian Balow, has resigned. WRIC’s Dean Mirshahi has Balow’s resignation letter. Fascinating stuff. Was Balow pushed out because of the $200 million education budget snafu? Was she not intense enough in supporting the Administration’s attempts to defund public schools? Was she too intense? Is she just tired of it all? Balow doesn’t give a reason for her resignation, so we probably won’t know much until we can contrast her tenure with that of whoever the Governor picks as her replacement.
 

RVAgreen 2050’s March newsletter is out, and you should take a minute or two to give it a read. Of note, the Department of Environmental Quality wants public comments on the potential repeal of the Carbon Budget Trading Program—aka shortsightedly removing Virginia from the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. You can and should leave a public comment in support of the Commonwealth staying in this important program! Not sure what to say? Just crib from Mayor Stoney’s comment: “As Mayor of the City of Richmond, we cannot escape the environmental impacts of climate change that are taking shape in cities across the country like mine, that’s why I’m proud of the work that has gone into developing the RVAgreen 2050 plan… However, local governments alone cannot solve the climate crisis. The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) is a common sense, market-based, cost-effective, and critically important program that cuts harmful carbon pollution while delivering a multitude of benefits to communities across Virginia… I urge the Members of the Air Pollution Control Board to continue Virginia’s participation in RGGI.” Make sure you delete the stuff about being mayor of Richmond though…
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, but today you can expect another warm day with highs in the mid 60s. I think, if it were me, I’d get outside this afternoon, because tomorrow and Friday look damp. I know it’s early, but the weekend ahead of us looks pretty nice!
 

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It’s here! Richmond’s official 2023 budget schedule is out and available for you to carefully transcribe over into your own personal calendar. Big, important dates to keep in mind: The Mayor needs to submit his proposed budget no later than March 6th, Council will hold a public hearing on the Mayor’s budget on March 27th, amendments drop on April 12th, and on May 8th Council hopes to wrap up the entire process. Of course, other than a few state-required deadlines, this entire schedule can shift, shrink, or expand as Council tries to make sense of the Mayor’s proposals and put their own stamp on the City’s fiscal priorities. Get excited, because it truly is the most wonderful time of the year (for a very small subset of very nerdy people)!
 

Lyndon German at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has an update on the City’s Marcus Alert System, which aims to support people during a mental health crisis with mental health professionals—instead of with police. Some stats from the piece: “Richmond’s Crisis Response Team responded to 227 calls for service from August to December 2022. Those calls of service resulted in a 91% crisis diversion rate, 21 temporary detention orders and two arrests in relation to a domestic matter.” I don’t know enough to say whether that’s good or bad, but I’m glad to see that the program is not stuck in a pile of organizational mud somewhere. You can learn more about Richmond’s implementation of the Marcus Alert over on the City’s website, and, if you know someone experiencing a mental health crisis you can call 988 or, if the situation is immediately dangerous, 911. Both numbers will take steps to try and ensure the proper response.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, and today looks sunny and wonderful with highs in the 70s. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says it’s his Verified Best Weather Day of the Week™ and that it caps off the “third warmest Meteorological Winter in Richmond’s history.” If I weren’t headed to VCU’s final home game of the season, I’d spend the evening out getting lost in the woods. I hope you find the time today to get out there and enjoy it!
 

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This past Sunday, Henrico County Supervisor Tyrone Nelson hit a person riding their bike with his car. From NBC12’s report: “The Henrico Police Department says Tyrone Nelson failed to give a three-foot distance when trying to pass the cyclist in the 6500 block of Osborne Turnpike around 11:45 a.m.” This block of Osborne Turnpike is just 1.5 miles from where a driver hit and killed Jonah Holland while she was riding her bike this past August. There’s no doubt that this stretch of road is dangerous, but how many people need to get hurt or killed before the County does anything about it? If an elected official, someone who has the actual power to make this street safer, can hit someone with their car and just move on with life…I don’t know. Depressing.
 

Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has some electoral next steps now that we’ve got this past weekend’s firehouse primaries behind us. First up, the special election on March 28th, and then the Democratic primary on June 20th (which gears up for the big November election). Also this is the first reporting I’ve read that confirms soon-to-be Senator Bagby (from the now-old 9th Senate District) will run in the new 14th Senate District in that June 20th primary.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 38 °F, and today looks like a cool, cloudy day. Expect highs in the mid 50s with a chance for rain late this evening, and, while the 10-day forecast doesn’t hold any temperatures in the 80s, I do see some upper 60s / low 70s in our future.
 

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The results of yesterday’s firehouse primary for the (old) 9th Senate District seat are in, and Del. Lamont Bagby won with a commanding 72% of the vote. Alexsis Rodgers and Del. Dawn Adams rounded out the rest of the ballot with 21% and 7%, respectively. According to WRIC, Bagby will face Republican Stephen Imholt in the March 28th special election. Imholt has an incredibly up-hill battle ahead of him. The new Senate District representing Richmond is pretty compact, extremely Democratic, and unlikely to elect a Republican. It sounds exhausting to run a campaign for a seat that will only exist for a couple of months, especially when the new district that seat represents voted 76–20 for McAuliffe in the last gubernatorial election.
 

City Council will host their first budget work session of the 2023 season today at 2:00 PM! They’ll focus exclusively on setting priorities—both for the operating and the capital budgets. That means this afternoon is a great time to tune in, take a few notes, and hear about the City’s needs through Council’s lens. Remember, the Mayor creates the first draft of the budget, and while City Council can adjust it in whatever way they like, they’ve got to find the votes to make that happen. I can’t even remember a time when Council proposed and passed even moderately-sized changes to the Mayor’s budget—someone correct me if I’m wrong though. Then, after budget chats, we’ve got the the informal and formal City Council meetings, with light agendas of their own. The Regular Agenda is completely empty, and the two papers I’m watching have both been continued (RES. 2023-R011 and ORD. 2022–375).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 60 °F, and you can expect the day to warm up just a bit by this afternoon. Tomorrow, though, temperatures sink like a stone with lows near freezing and highs 20 degrees cooler than today—plus some rain, too. Wild! Megan Wise at NBC12 reports that yesterday’s high hit 83 °F, obliterating the all-time daily high and tying the all-time overall high for February set back in the 30s.
 

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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 65, 92, and 38, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 10.4. First, these numbers don’t scream “data issues” to me like they have for the past two weeks. Second, I think next week we might officially dip back into the cool, green waters of a low COVID-19 Community Level. While we wait for that, wash your hands for 30 seconds and read Katelyn Jetelina’s piece on this year’s norovirus season.
 

OK! We now have voting locations for this coming Sunday’s special election to fill Jennifer McClellan’s now vacant State Senate seat. Important note: You can vote in this weekend’s election if you live in the old 9th Senate District, aka Jennifer McClellan previously represented you in the Senate. If you’ve been redistricted into the new 9th Senate District from elsewhere you’ll have to sit this one out. It’s confusing, but, luckily, you can use this Who’s My Legislator tool to find both your old and new districts. If you’re a big fan of voting in elections, get excited because primaries for alllll of the General Assembly seats kick off this summer ahead of a very big and very important November election.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F right now (before the sun comes up) and today’s high will top out somewhere in the mid 80s. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says (Twitter), “We’re going to SMASH Today’s record of 75°. It won’t even be close. And probably will get to the all-time February record of 83°, which happened twice in the early 1930s.” Things do cool off in a big way tomorrow, but today looks like an absolute stunner. Enjoy!
 

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Anna Bryson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that RPS Chief of Staff, Michelle Hudascko has resigned. To quote a bit from Hudascko’s resignation letter: “…the hostile and toxic work environment that some members of the RPS School Board have created and actively perpetuate on a daily basis is a deep disservice to RPS students and families…The frequent actions that some Board Members take to dismantle progress and intentionally set the Administration up to fail, along with the mean-spirited personal attacks, threats, and unfounded accusations have made doing this work nearly impossible. Our students are the ones paying the price.” I couldn’t agree more, and it’s not like Hudascko is an outlier, either. Tyler Lane at WTVR put together the list of recent high-level resignations which include: Chief Operating Officer, Chief Academic Officer, and the Director of Safety and Security. In a pretty clear sign of their brokenness and dysfunction, the RPS Board couldn’t come to consensus on a statement for media.
 

Alright, it’s election dominos time! Now that Representative-elect McClellan is off to Washington, we need to go through another whole round of primaries and special elections to fill her State Senate seat. Sen. Louise Lucas has set March 28th as the special election date, and the Democratic Party of Virginia has set February 26—this Sunday!—as the primary election date. Candidates have until 7:00 PM tomorrow to declare—stressful! At this point, I know we’ll see Alexsis Rodgers, Lamont Bagby, and Dawn Adams on the ballot, but, even with the incredibly short timelines, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few more names pop up over the next 36 hours. Voting locations to come, stay tuned, and make a plan to vote!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 43 °F, and today you can expect highs in the mid 60s—chilly, really, when compared to tomorrow’s potentially record-breaking temperatures. But that’s tomorrow! For today, enjoy warmer-than-average temperatures that don’t induce existential dread.
 

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She did it! With a landslide 74% of the vote, Jennifer McClellan will be the first Black woman to represent Virginia in Congress! NBCNews’s Ryan Nobles says (Twitter) she joins the Jennifers Wexton and Kiggans as part of the Commonwealth’s Jennifer Delegation—the only Jennifers in the country to represent a state in the House. Exciting stuff—both for McClellan and for us, who now continue to have excellent elected representation at the federal level. You can read McClellan’s victory speech here.
 

City Council’s Governmental Operations committee meets today (full agenda here) and will consider one paper of note: RES. 2023-R011. This resolution asks the City and its attorney to start figuring out how to acquire Evergreen and East End Cemetery from the now defunct EnRichmond Foundation. Years ago, the City gifted these two historically Black cemeteries to the Foundation. Ostensibly they did so for maintenance and upkeep reasons, but the relationship between EnRichmond and the long-operating Friends of East End group (who’d been maintenancing and upkeeping on their own for quite a while) has, from the beginning, been fraught to say the least. Returning the properties to City ownership seems like the right first step, and formalizing some agreement with and support for the Friends of East End to continue their work seems like a solid next step.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, and today looks great. You can expect sunshine and highs right around 70 °F. Temperatures later this week might even climb into the 80s, which sounds wonderful (unless you’re a fruit tree who’s sure to be ruined by an inevitable March deep freeze (Twitter)).
 

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It’s Election Day in Virginia’s 4th Congressional District! If you haven’t yet voted through one of the Commonwealth’s many early voting mechanisms (thank you, Democrats!), you can still head to your standard polling place and cast a ballot in person. Heck, you can even register to vote today and cast a provisional ballot. Amazing!You’ve got no excuses, so get out there and vote!
 

Related: Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Del. Jeff Bourne will “not seek re-election in the new 78th House District or join an already crowded Democratic field of contenders to represent the new 14th Senate District.” Bourne has been a staple in Richmond politics since he got elected to school board a bunch of years ago, and it’ll be weird not having him around. Tap through for the tiniest bit of speculation on Bourne’s next political moves, but I think we’ll probably just have to wait and see to know anything meaningful.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and that’s about today’s high. You can expect rain throughout most of the day and then falling temperatures this evening. The long weekend ahead of us looks dry and cool (but still a little too warm for February), and I hope you find the time either to sit quietly and enjoy the ambient sounds of your neighborhood or to catch up on your favorite plot-driven zombie show.
 

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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 15, 133, and 98, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 12.9. Again this week we have a case rate in Richmond that’s an order of magnitude smaller than rates in the surrounding counties, and again I’m not really sure what to make of it. 15 is certainly more believable than “zero”, which was Richmond’s number last week, so that’s something. If you zoom out a bit on the CDC’s COVID-19 map, you’ll see almost the entire country washed in the pleasant green of a low Community Level—maybe that’ll be our future in Central Virginia soon! In the meantime, as we wait for that green, read this piece from Your Local Epidemiologist’s Katelyn Jetelina about the real science behind the fungal zombies in The Last of Us.
 

Jahd Khalil at VPM has an exciting report that the City has hired a Labor Relations Administrator and that three buckets of city employees have filed for union elections. The collective bargaining enabling legislation passed last year allows five separate groups of employees to join a union, and, yesterday, workers in the Administrative and Technical unit, Professionals unit, and Labor and Trades unit all voted to do so. This is great news, and, while it took a little longer than expected, I’m glad to see the City make progress on this promise.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 57 °F, and today, the 16th of February, you can expect highs in the mid 70s. Seems warm, a little…too warm. In fact, NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says we could even get close to catching the all-time high of 78 °F (Twitter). Get out there and enjoy it today, because rain moves in tomorrow and brings with it cooler temperatures (but still not what I’d consider “winter weather”).
 

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As the General Assembly session winds down, Kim Bobo, executive director of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, has a look at three bills that “were killed (or appear dead)” and a nice reflection on public policy advocacy in Virginia. I liked this bit, which tells you why contacting your legislators is so important, even when your priorities don’t seem like they have any legislative hope at all: “Even though we may not see all the fruits of our labor this season, our work is not in vain. We are building the support and understanding on these and other issues, which is needed to advance them down the line. Next year is not an election year. The session will be longer. And we are long-distance runners, not sprinters.”
 

A while back, the Capital Region Land Conservancy bought a piece of property down by Great Shiplock Park from private owners, finally connecting some of the downriver parts of our riverfront. One of the benefits of this transaction, other than fulfilling some of the goals set out in Richmond’s Riverfront Plan, is that it allows for rerouting the Capital Trail off of horrible Dock Street and over somewhere closer to the river (and away from traffic). Cat Anthony, the executive director of the Virginia Capital Trail Foundation, has some new-to-me timing-news in their most recent email newsletter: “It has been exciting to learn more about the James River Association’s Education Center and the realignment of the Capital Trail off the street and onto the parcel of property along Dock Street. This development is between mile marker 50 and 51. Expect construction to begin in the Spring and we hope to see the new alignment of the Capital Trail and completion of the center by the end of Summer 2024.“ Summer of 2024 is right around the corner, and I can’t wait to check out this new section of trail!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 57 °F, and today, the 16th of February, you can expect highs in the mid 70s. Seems warm, a little…too warm. In fact, NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says we could even get close to catching the all-time high of 78 °F (Twitter). Get out there and enjoy it today, because rain moves in tomorrow and brings with it cooler temperatures (but still not what I’d consider “winter weather”).
 

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As the General Assembly session winds down, Kim Bobo, executive director of the Virginia Interfaith Center for Public Policy, has a look at three bills that “were killed (or appear dead)” and a nice reflection on public policy advocacy in Virginia. I liked this bit, which tells you why contacting your legislators is so important, even when your priorities don’t seem like they have any legislative hope at all: “Even though we may not see all the fruits of our labor this season, our work is not in vain. We are building the support and understanding on these and other issues, which is needed to advance them down the line. Next year is not an election year. The session will be longer. And we are long-distance runners, not sprinters.”
 

A while back, the Capital Region Land Conservancy bought a piece of property down by Great Shiplock Park from private owners, finally connecting some of the downriver parts of our riverfront. One of the benefits of this transaction, other than fulfilling some of the goals set out in Richmond’s Riverfront Plan, is that it allows for rerouting the Capital Trail off of horrible Dock Street and over somewhere closer to the river (and away from traffic). Cat Anthony, the executive director of the Virginia Capital Trail Foundation, has some new-to-me timing-news in their most recent email newsletter: “It has been exciting to learn more about the James River Association’s Education Center and the realignment of the Capital Trail off the street and onto the parcel of property along Dock Street. This development is between mile marker 50 and 51. Expect construction to begin in the Spring and we hope to see the new alignment of the Capital Trail and completion of the center by the end of Summer 2024.“ Summer of 2024 is right around the corner, and I can’t wait to check out this new section of trail!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 46 °F, and today you can expect highs in the 70s! Sure! You can look forward to even warmer temperatures tomorrow and then for rain to move in on Friday. I’ll wait until the end of the month to pull the data, but surely this has been a record-breakingly warm February, right?
 

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I appreciate the directness in last night’s email from RPS Superintendent Kamras: “It’s crunch time for the state budget and we need your advocacy. Here’s the very short story: the Senate version of the budget is MUCH better for RPS and school divisions across the Commonwealth. Below are the Senators and Delegates who are meeting to hash out the final budget. Please deluge them with calls and emails advocating for the Senate’s budget.” Tap through the previous link to see the entire list of folks you should contact or copy/paste this list of comma-separated email addresses directly into your email client for easy deluging. Remember, keep it short, professional, and just tell them you support the Senate’s version of the budget. Related, the RPS School Board will host their own budget work session tonight at 6:00 PM at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School. There’s no public comment period on the agenda, so you can show up to observe, if you really want, or you can just stream the meeting over on RPS’s YouTube.
 

Thad Green at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Henrico County will consider issuing real estate tax rebates to homeowners again. I continue to think it’s smart to issue rebates while assessments continue to rise alongside the (maybe fake?) specter of recession. The alternative of lowering the real estate tax—assuming you don’t want to just pay for more things—could put a jurisdiction in a real bind should the economy start to crumble. Richmond is, of course, in a way different place: With assessments still rising but with massively greater infrastructure, maintenance, and service needs. Given all that, it’ll be interesting to see if the Mayor includes something similar in his proposed budget this year.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F, but we’re on track for another warm day with highs in the 60s. Stick around, because temperatures tomorrow and Thursday could creep up into the 70s—totally normal middle-of-February stuff! While today looks dry, rain will move in before the weekend, if that impacts your plans over the next couple of days.
 

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Today is last day you can register to vote or update your existing voter information before the February 21st special congressional election. You can check your registration status on the Department of Elections website. Technically, that first sentence was a lie, because, thanks to Democrats, you can still “register after this date, through Election Day, and vote using a provisional ballot.” But, as someone with a lot of anxiety about The Rules in unfamiliar situations, I’d recommend avoiding the provisional ballot entirely if you can and just taking care of your registration business today.
 

Jack Jacobs at Richmond BizSense reports that Hustler Hollywood, the sex toy shop across from the Science Museum on Broad Street, is now open. Listen, I’m not against sex toy shops across from science museums, but surely we could do better than a small, single-story building surrounded by a parking lot fronting our biggest street! Maybe we could tear this building down (which had a previous life as a Pizza Hut), put ten stories of apartments in its place, and then open a Hustler Hollywood in the ground floor retail space?
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F now, but, later today, you’ll find highs right around 60 °F. You can expect a continuation of these unseasonably warm temperatures straight on through to at least Friday—and probably even beyond. I think our chances for a decent snow this year have started to quickly approach zero.
 

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City Council will meet today for their regularly-scheduled meeting, and you can find the full agenda here. Two of the papers I have my eyes on—expanding scooter fleets (ORD. 2023–029) and the Climate Equity Action Plan (RES. 2023-R005)—sit on the consent agenda, which usually means smooth sailing without even a chance for councilmembers to discuss or speechify. That’s good news, especially for the climate plan, because we need to just go ahead and get started on that thing. Also of note for budgetwatchers like myself, at their informal meeting, Council will have a discussion on “Council Budget Priorities Survey.” I’d love to see the results of this survey and/or hear this discussion!
 

Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports that the folks behind Shyndigz, the cake place, have plans to build a hotel just down the street from their current spot. They’ll eventually move their existing location over that way and end up with a combination cake shop, courtyard, and hotel situation. Sounds great, but even more delicious is this quote about the amount of parking required for the development: “The only thing that we’re hearing so far, and we knew we would, is parking. But it was really interesting. We did a census with our staff and we found out that 65 percent of our employees either walk, ride their bike or bus to work. That surprised me and is really cool…There’s not as much need as there used to be in the past for parking.“ Turns out! Just another data point to support the City’s plan to get rid of required parking minimums for new developments!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F now, but, later today, you’ll find highs right around 60 °F. You can expect a continuation of these unseasonably warm temperatures straight on through to at least Friday—and probably even beyond. I think our chances for a decent snow this year have started to quickly approach zero.
 

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City Council will meet today for their regularly-scheduled meeting, and you can find the full agenda here. Two of the papers I have my eyes on—expanding scooter fleets (ORD. 2023–029) and the Climate Equity Action Plan (RES. 2023-R005)—sit on the consent agenda, which usually means smooth sailing without even a chance for councilmembers to discuss or speechify. That’s good news, especially for the climate plan, because we need to just go ahead and get started on that thing. Also of note for budgetwatchers like myself, at their informal meeting, Council will have a discussion on “Council Budget Priorities Survey.” I’d love to see the results of this survey and/or hear this discussion!
 

Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports that the folks behind Shyndigz, the cake place, have plans to build a hotel just down the street from their current spot. They’ll eventually move their existing location over that way and end up with a combination cake shop, courtyard, and hotel situation. Sounds great, but even more delicious is this quote about the amount of parking required for the development: “The only thing that we’re hearing so far, and we knew we would, is parking. But it was really interesting. We did a census with our staff and we found out that 65 percent of our employees either walk, ride their bike or bus to work. That surprised me and is really cool…There’s not as much need as there used to be in the past for parking.“ Turns out! Just another data point to support the City’s plan to get rid of required parking minimums for new developments!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 59 °F, and you can, once again, expect unseasonably warm weather as we spend a lot of the afternoon in the upper 60s. Temperatures sink like a stone over the next two days, though, and the highs on Sunday will hover right around 40 °F. Winter is coming (back)!
 

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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 0 (?!), 164, and 122, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 11.3. OK, clearly some data reporting issues going on here. Despite whatever the CDC website says, there is no way that Richmond has averaged zero COVID-19 cases over the last seven days. Fortunately, which seems like the wrong word here, the hospital admissions rate itself is enough to push all three localities into the medium level. I plan on continuing to treat things like we’re at a medium level, mostly by wearing a mask in large public gatherings and staying home when I’m sick. One additional piece of coronanews from this week, Katelyn Jetelina at Your Local Epidemiologist has a nice piece about the practical impacts of President Biden ending the Public Health Emergency in May. I think, for most folks, especially those with health insurance, this change won’t be too huge of an upheaval. Unfortunately, the un- or underinsured—as always—face a lot of stressful unknowns and question marks.
 

The City of Richmond has plans for new bike lanes on either side of the Nickel Bridge, and they would like your feedback on the proposed designs. Check out the far right column of this PDF for what they’ve got drawn up for south of the bridge extending all the way to Hill Top Drive, which gets you almost down to Midlothian Turnpike. None of these designs include physical protection—like flexible posts or barriers—and the southern most section is just sharrows which doesn’t even count as infrastructure. And in this PDF (again, far right column), you can see the plans for north of the bridge all the way up and around to the end of Blanton Avenue. Again, no physical barriers proposed for any of the sections. I think y’all know what to do: Take four minutes this morning and fill out the City’s survey, and, when you do, make sure you request physically protected bike lanes as part of this project!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 59 °F, and you can, once again, expect unseasonably warm weather as we spend a lot of the afternoon in the upper 60s. Temperatures sink like a stone over the next two days, though, and the highs on Sunday will hover right around 40 °F. Winter is coming (back)!
 

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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 0 (?!), 164, and 122, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 11.3. OK, clearly some data reporting issues going on here. Despite whatever the CDC website says, there is no way that Richmond has averaged zero COVID-19 cases over the last seven days. Fortunately, which seems like the wrong word here, the hospital admissions rate itself is enough to push all three localities into the medium level. I plan on continuing to treat things like we’re at a medium level, mostly by wearing a mask in large public gatherings and staying home when I’m sick. One additional piece of coronanews from this week, Katelyn Jetelina at Your Local Epidemiologist has a nice piece about the practical impacts of President Biden ending the Public Health Emergency in May. I think, for most folks, especially those with health insurance, this change won’t be too huge of an upheaval. Unfortunately, the un- or underinsured—as always—face a lot of stressful unknowns and question marks.
 

The City of Richmond has plans for new bike lanes on either side of the Nickel Bridge, and they would like your feedback on the proposed designs. Check out the far right column of this PDF for what they’ve got drawn up for south of the bridge extending all the way to Hill Top Drive, which gets you almost down to Midlothian Turnpike. None of these designs include physical protection—like flexible posts or barriers—and the southern most section is just sharrows which doesn’t even count as infrastructure. And in this PDF (again, far right column), you can see the plans for north of the bridge all the way up and around to the end of Blanton Avenue. Again, no physical barriers proposed for any of the sections. I think y’all know what to do: Take four minutes this morning and fill out the City’s survey, and, when you do, make sure you request physically protected bike lanes as part of this project!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 48 °F, but you can expect highs in the 70s?? I don’t know what’s going on out there, but yesterday evening was exceedingly pleasant and it looks like we’ll have an even warmer, cloudier version of that today.
 

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch has put together a nice, high-level, topic-based overview of where a bunch of legislation stands after this week’s crossover in the General Assembly. Crossover is the fun name given to when bills that made it out of the Senate head over to the House of Delegates, and bills that made it out of the House of Delegates make their way over to the Senate. If your bill didn’t cross over, it’s dead. It’s certainly not smooth sailing from here on out, of course—your bill could still die in a thousand different ways—but crossover marks a good moment to look at what legislation is actually left standing. It’s a pretty thin list, honestly, and even thinner when you filter down to stuff that has a real chance at becoming legislation, given the split in control of the House and Senate.
 

Related, Ned Oliver at Axios Richmond reports on one bill that looks destined to become a law: “a rare gun safety compromise with a bill that would give gun owners a $300 tax credit to by gun safes.” The Republican-controlled House, which, as Oliver puts it, “looked less kindly on proposals that didn’t involve cash transfers to gun owners,” passed their version of the bill 99–1.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 48 °F, but you can expect highs in the 70s?? I don’t know what’s going on out there, but yesterday evening was exceedingly pleasant and it looks like we’ll have an even warmer, cloudier version of that today.
 

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch has put together a nice, high-level, topic-based overview of where a bunch of legislation stands after this week’s crossover in the General Assembly. Crossover is the fun name given to when bills that made it out of the Senate head over to the House of Delegates, and bills that made it out of the House of Delegates make their way over to the Senate. If your bill didn’t cross over, it’s dead. It’s certainly not smooth sailing from here on out, of course—your bill could still die in a thousand different ways—but crossover marks a good moment to look at what legislation is actually left standing. It’s a pretty thin list, honestly, and even thinner when you filter down to stuff that has a real chance at becoming legislation, given the split in control of the House and Senate.
 

Related, Ned Oliver at Axios Richmond reports on one bill that looks destined to become a law: “a rare gun safety compromise with a bill that would give gun owners a $300 tax credit to by gun safes.” The Republican-controlled House, which, as Oliver puts it, “looked less kindly on proposals that didn’t involve cash transfers to gun owners,” passed their version of the bill 99–1.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, and today we’ve got some delightfully unexpectedly highs near 70 °F alongside some bright and sunny skies. I know I’ve said this a lot recently, but if ever there was a day to get outside and have a blast, today is that day. I hope you can find the time to make it happen!
 

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RVAGreen 2050’s February newsletter is worth your time and very action oriented. Specifically: Next week, City Council will hear RES. 2023-R005, which would have them adopt RVAGreen’s Climate Equity Action Plan as the official sustainability plan for the City of Richmond. That’s something definitely worth supporting, and you should take two minutes this morning to drop your councilmember an email about it. If you’d like a sort of ground-floor summary of all the above links, check out this really clever eight-page “Council summary” document, which I think is just the best idea. If City Council can understand a document, so can you!
 

Ian M. Stewart at VPM reports on Henrico’s $320,000 takeaway from a federal Safe Streets and Roads for All grant program (Richmond took home about $760,000 from the same grant). Tap through, scroll down, and see with your own eyes a picture of how a locality can quickly create temporary, cheap infrastructure to slow drivers down and make our streets safer. I’m not saying Henrico has it all figured out—just try taking the bus to Short Pump and then walking to your destination —but I appreciate their willingness to at least experiment with infrastructure pilot programs like the one pictured here.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, but today’s highs will almost hit 60 °F. At the moment, it looks like we’ve got a bunch of rain moving in over the weekend, so if you’ve got neighborhoods to walk, trails to ride, or other outside-stuff to get done, do it now!
 

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Every once in a while I get suckered in to reading a PolitiFact piece that reports on the validity of some claim one of our elected officials made in public. It’s nice and good journalism work—the research behind the fact-checking is always interesting—but I don’t think it does anything. First, at this moment in time, there are almost zero consequences for politicians who lie to their constituents. Second, fact-checking misspoken statistics from random committee meetings feels laughably like emptying a swimming pool with an eye dropper when you’ve got an entire political party devoted to legislating away free and fair elections. Anyway, this morning I’m glad I did read Warren Fiske from VPM’s piece about State Senator Obenshain’s claim that more Virginia children die from fentanyl than from guns. This sounds false and, turns out, is false. Fiske reports that “from the start of 2017 through September 2022…355 minors died from guns and 51 from fentanyl.” What the Senator was likely referring to is that overall, across all age groups, more people in Virginia do actually die from fentanyl than guns: “State records show 7,718 fentanyl deaths from the start of 2017 through September 2022, compared to 6,874 gun-related deaths.” I constantly underestimate (or even forget about) the magnitude of Virginia’s opioid epidemic, and that’s the real takeaway from this meandering paragraph!
 

Why did the owner of Ruby Scoops move her “New Orleans-style snowball” shop to Carytown? Here’s her quote from a piece by Jack Jacobs in Richmond BizSense: “We’re excited to be in a neighborhood with a lot of walkability.” I’m always linking to this, that, and the other thing about why Richmond should build more spaces that are safe and pleasant for people (instead of cars). But, really, people don’t need a million articles to know what kinds of spaces they want to spend time in! Folks can just tell, like in Carytown, when you get the right mix of infrastructure, land use, and zoning.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and today you can welcome back the warmer weather. We’ve got dry skies, highs in the mid 50s, and, deep in the extended forecast, I can even see some highs in the mid 60s! I don’t know about you, but I’m already looking forward to spending some (warmer) time outside on the bike later this week.
 

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Remember last week when the Governor’s administration had to announce that due to some careless technical difficulties, they’d shorted public schools $201 million? Turns out the issue stemmed from a broken and cryptic spreadsheet, which I think is just fascinating. Waldo Jaquith put together a short blog post describing the issue, and put up a Google Sheet version of the spreadsheet in question for those of us who can’t help but make salty comments about poorly built spreadsheets. From Jaquith, “No doubt this started as some small, simple file, many years ago, put together by somebody at the Department of Education for internal purposes, shared informally with some municipalities, but gradually shared more broadly and standardized on. And then it grew and grew, without the necessary resources provided to support it that were commensurate with its newfound importance. Surely most other state agencies are vulnerable to similar failures with similar impacts due to the same problem.”
 

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.