Good morning, RVA! It's 55 °F, and I’ve got some personal news.

Bittersweet news: This is the last edition of Good Morning, RVA for the foreseeable future! I’ve taken a job with the City’s Office of Strategic Communications and Civic Engagement—which I’m incredibly stoked about—and I think this professional transition marks the perfect time to press pause on this, Richmond’s premiere zoning and rezoning newsletter.

The last time I had to write a post like this it was for dramatic and sad reasons: Closing down RVANews because I couldn’t find a way to financially support a newsroom of multiple people doing good work in an industry that was (and still is!) struggling to figure out how to make ends meet. This time, though, I get to write a see-you-around post (very different from a so-long post) with a much better perspective: Making a proactive choice to do something new. I’m excited to move on, interested in exploring new projects, and, without a doubt, looking forward to getting a little more sleep each morning—because, to answer a Frequently Asked Question, I do (did!) write everything fresh each morning, waking up at 5:15 AM (another FAQ) to make tea and read the news.

I’ve read and written about a lot of news—and a lot of PDFs—over the last eight years, and when I look back, I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. Eight years is a lot of years, and, while I haven’t really kept track, I’ve written somewhere north of 1,800 daily emails, with maybe just one single unplanned absence (when I got my first COVID-19 vaccine). That’s incredible!

As the years piled up, I got less and less interested in “what people want to read” and more and more interested in “what I want to write about.” I think, maybe counterintuitively, that’s what makes (made!) Good Morning, RVA successful. I’ve tried real hard, especially in recent years, to only write about what I find fun and interesting and to write about it in fun and interesting ways. Now, many years down the road in 2024, I write (wrote!) a daily, ad-free email about budgets, zoning, bicycles, and fascinating stories I happen upon (have I told you about the lifecycle of bamboo??). It’s not something that I’d ever have predicted thousands and thousands of people would want to read every morning, and I’m proud of that.

I’m most proud of the work I’ve done to normalize actual news coverage on topics like the combined sewer overflow system, transportation infrastructure, and, of course, budget season. I think Richmonders now expect our local media to cover those sorts of things, and I’ll take a small portion of the credit for creating that culture. I’m also particularly proud of the work I did during COVID-19 and the summer of 2020. I’ve been reading over those entries from four years ago, and it’s both a humbling and affirming experience—Four Years Ago Me really knew how to put together a sentence!

I am also just incredibly proud of you, the audience, who has read about whatever thing I decided to write about each and every morning for eight straight years. What an amazing and supportive group of people! I think I can count on two hands the number of negative emails I got in response to nearly a decade of having (sometimes strong) opinions on (sometimes emotional) local issues. If I’m honest, the part I’ll most miss is that I’ll no longer have people emailing me thoughtful feedback and kind words.

At this point, though, it definitely feels like it’s time for me to move on to something different. Don’t get me wrong: zoning is still, of course, fun, interesting, and incredibly important, especially with the big zoning rewrite coming up. But I’m having a harder and harder time writing about it in fun and interesting ways. One of my hopes is that by stepping away from GMRVA, I will leave space for the next great zoning and rezoning email newsletter writer to step in and start explaining how the City works in new ways. It’s clearly something Richmonders crave, and I’m sure folks would love to hear from someone with a different perspective than my own.

So, that’s it! Thank you so much for reading. If you’re a Patron, you’ve allowed me to keep time and space in my life for this email, and I’m incredibly thankful for that. Finally, an infinite thank you to all of Richmond’s actual reporters who make it their job to sit in endless meetings, interview our community leaders, and lift up issues important to residents. Without y’all Good Morning, RVA would not have existed.

Eight years ago, when writing my previous sign off post, I ended with this, which still feels just as true now as it did in 2016:

Other than that, though, who knows! I don’t want to commit to anything, but you know how sometimes I just can’t not write about buses, or bikes, or education, or City Council…

I don’t know where you’ll find my next thing and what that’ll look like...but you know how I sometimes just can’t not!

Lastly, some logistical bits

Good morning, RVA! It's 60 °F already, and that’s about the temperatures you can expect today, with highs creeping up a tiny bit to 70 °F by lunchtime. At that point it’ll probably start to rain. Deal with it, though, because come tomorrow morning, the sun will come out, and we’ll be headed into a long stretch of really beautiful weather.

Part of the official GMRVA process each morning includes checking the City Auditor’s website for fresh, hot-off-the-presses audits. Today, I found two new documents—the first for this year and the first from the City’s new auditor Riad Ali:

The former—which really, really wants you to know that it is not an actual official audit—lays out what the City has done to clean up their meals tax collection efforts. Flip to page five to see exactly what changes got implemented when, and, importantly, check out final page of recommendations which reads: “The City Auditor’s Office will not issue any additional recommendations as the City is already committed to the process of informing delinquent account holders of their outstanding balance. As requested by City Council, City Administration, and the Director of Finance, the City Auditor’s Office will audit the meals tax program after RVAPay is implemented.”

The latter audit...I have a hard time understanding. I think it’s like a combo meal of mini audits all bundled up into one 39-page PDF so folks don’t have to continually request reports and audits on common topics. Don’t get me wrong, there’s interesting information contained within: Like, scroll to page three for a list of overtime hours by department for the last couple of years. Police, Fire, and the Sheriff account for about 70% of the $29.4 million dollars the City spent on overtime in 2023. See? Interesting stuff.

Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch continues reporting on the shifts and changes to the planned Diamond District development. This morning he’s got news of 700 more homes added to the plan. The development now totals “1,700 homes in Phase 1, the vast majority will be rental units. Twenty-four homes will be for sale, described as 2-over-2 condominiums...One in five residences will be designated affordable for households making $65,000 or less per year. The city also will offer vouchers to assist families making $33,000 or less.” Sounds great. On the not-so-great side: “The latest version of the project also includes more commercial space and nearly double the number of parking spaces to more than 2,000. The size of the grassy park that weaves through the neighborhood will shrink from 11 acres to eight.” I know planners didn’t directly replace acres of green space with acres of parking, and portions of the park most likely got swapped for those 700 new homes and the structured parking that goes with them. I’m ambivalent! I love green space, but I also love increasing the supply of housing. Either way, it’s hard to fit all the puzzle pieces of this plan together, especially as the (financial) picture on the box keeps changing. P.S. Tap through for, what I think is, the latest rendering of the neighborhood.

Dillon Rule at work: Governor Youngkin vetoed the legislation that would have allowed localities to impose a 1% sales tax for school construction and modernization, reports Nathaniel Cline at the Virginia Mercury. Because the State says no, Richmond will, yet again, lose out on needed money for its public schools—which, I suppose, is the point. Frustrating! If you want to get even more mad, read the Governor’s veto statement which ends with “The Commonwealth should pursue a tax policy that unleashes economic development and prioritizes job and wage growth through innovative reforms. These reforms must allow hardworking Virginians to keep more of their money, not less; any proposal that increases the cost of living and the cost of business is not a policy we should pursue.” I’d love for him to come read this aloud inside any one of the RPS facilities in desperate need of replacing.

DPW will close the bridge on Commerce Road near Bellemeade a month earlier than planned, because “a bridge inspection this morning revealed severe deterioration.” Listen, no one’s trying to screw around with failing infrastructure, especially an 84-year-old bridge that was already scheduled for replacement in May. If you’re a frequent user of this bridge, you’ll need to detour via Bellemeade over to Richmond Highway and cut back on either Ruffin Road or Bells Road. Get used to your new route, because the replacement bridge won’t open until late 2025.

Via /r/rva, check out the massively beefy tow truck required to tow a GRTC bus!

I definitely worry about what “an era of constantly broken records,” especially terrifying records like ocean temperatures, will do to how we process information. Literal off-the-charts climate data certainly fill me with existential dread, but, after awhile, I’m nervous that I’ll acclimatize and just sort of stop caring. “This is just how it is now,” I can hear myself saying—just like what I now say about the lack of snow and the brutally hot summers.

For the moment, 2024’s line on the chart is staying well clear of its predecessors, and staring at this continuing crime against nature has me asking myself over and over: if every day is a new record, is any day a new record? This is, quite clearly, an absurd question. The answer is yes. Obviously. A record is a record. But that is what an era of constantly broken records does: it renders everything a bit askew, makes thought processes turn on their axes, makes us all a little bit crazy. And that’s the world now, records falling essentially every day. “The new normal” gets thrown around quite a bit, but it is true that “normal” has a new meaning now, and it is for records to fall. It is normal for the theoretically abnormal to occur. It would be weird and unexpected now if the records stopped falling. That’s the way it will continue to be. It’s not just the oceans, of course. Last year was the warmest year in recorded history, and probably in at least 125,000 years.

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Sorry, can’t stop staring at this flower.

Good morning, RVA! It's 59 °F, and if you can squeak past this morning’s chance of light rain, I think you’ll have a warm and dry day. Expect highs in the upper 70s and lots of clouds. For me, I’m definitely riding my bike in slip ons with one pant leg rolled up—my final form.

The City posted the video from this past Monday’s third budget session, and I’ve gone ahead and put it up on the Boring Show. This is when I make the joke about listening at 2x speed—which, for me, is not a joke and definitely what I actually do, and to hear Councilmembers speak at 1x speed when I see them in real life makes me feel like I’m dodging bullets in The Matrix. Anyway, this week’s episode clocks in at just over three hours, so you’re gonna want to set aside some serious time if you plan on listening. I’ll most likely permit it to pass over and through me during a couple bike rides and laundry foldings—you should do the same! If you’d rather just scroll through some slides, make sure you grab all three decks: the operating budget, the City’s revenue, and its compensation and benefits plan.

Also, later on in the same day, Council held their regularly scheduled meeting and introduced two papers that we mostly already knew about, but I mention them just in case you want to add them to your own legislation tracker. First, ORD. 2024-111 would authorize the City to issue $170 million of general obligation bonds to cover the new ballpark and associated infrastructure. There are a couple related papers, too, that when grouped together enable the City’s new Diamond District financing mechanism. Second, ORD. 2024-110 will accept $100 million from the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality to help fund fixes to our aging sewer system. I’m pretty sure that this is not new money but state money from a previous budget or two we’d already heard about, but, still! It’s exciting to see ordinances accepting a hundred million bucks—especially for sewer repairs.

While we’re talking about Council and their budget process, I found the presentation from the first budget work session about the “Richmond Children and Youth Fiscal Map.” Not only that, but here’s a public link to the fiscal map itself if you want to dig around and see if anything interesting pops out at you. I haven’t spent a ton of time with the tool yet, but I just lost 10 minutes of my morning exploring various services and their funding streams. There is a lot in here!

Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the City’s new Diamond District financing mechanism will “free up money, allowing the city to buy Sports Backers Stadium earlier...VCU, in turn, will use that money to build a new track and field stadium across Hermitage Road.” This is the original plan from a couple yeas back, but VCU had hit pause on their new athletic facilities because the City had delayed buying Sports Backers Stadium. The whole thing sort of stumbled to a halt as economic conditions across the country shifted and the City reevaluated their options. Now, with the newly announced financing plan, both the Diamond District and VCU’s Athletics Village get back on track...but with the City taking on a lot of the financial risk. Is this good or bad? I bet we will hear a lot about it from a lot of folks in the coming weeks. P.S. For context, seven of nine councilmembers have already signed on to the above mentioned ordinance authorizing the new financing.

Via Axios Richmond, this incredibly charming (and viral!) reel of students at Armstrong High School playing Finish the Lyrics. So good!

I loved this piece about “women in films who walk through cities.” It sort of reminds me of my obsession with the way less interesting “sad men who ride buses in the rain and stare out the window.”

To be a Woman and a pedestrian in the city can be combative and exhausting but sometimes it reminds me that I am in charge and that I will propel myself forward, always forward. I love shots of women walking through cities in films. I like that they are alone and alive and, usually, wearing a nice coat. I like that even though they are a part of a bigger story, something grand or trivial, for those seconds they are removed of their storyline, the knots and tangles, and they are simply people, immersing themselves in the city, disappearing for a moment and allowing the noise of the world to eclipse the noise of their lives.

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I sort of can’t believe these fiery tulips are real.

Good morning, RVA! It's 58 °F, and today looks cloudy but with amazing highs right around 80 °F. You can expect cooler temperatures over the next couple of days—with each a little cooler than the last—but nothing that’ll make you break out your big shirts and wool socks. I think we did it! We finally turned the corner, and spring is here to stay!

In accordance with the timeline set out by state law, the Governor has “completed action” on all 1,046 pieces of legislation the General Assembly sent his way. Head over to the State’s legislative website to find the full list of bills he signed, amended, and vetoed.

The budget sits in that middle bucket of amended bills, and Graham Moomaw, Charlie Paullin, and Nathaniel Cline at the Virginia Mercury report that Governor Youngkin has sent the budget back with 233 suggested amendments. That’s a lot of amendments, and I have no idea how successful the General Assembly will be in sorting them all out. Are they designed like dominoes, where if the GA rejects one amendment the rest of them cascade into dust? Is the budget still even balanced? I guess we’ll find out in the coming weeks; legislators return to Richmond on April 17th.

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has the follow up reporting on yesterday’s news about the City rejiggering its financing plans for the new baseball stadium development. Spiers says, “Council members expressed support for the plan to have the city issue its own lower-interest revenue bonds to fund the project’s anchor ballpark for the Richmond Flying Squirrels and initial infrastructure improvements. Doing so is expected to save $215 million in debt costs over the previous plan to issue the bonds through a community development authority (CDA).” I really like this straightforward quote from the City’s DCAO Sharon Ebert (who oversees things like Economic and Community Development, Housing, and Community Wealth Building): “This is much more cost-effective...There is risk; I don’t want to say that there isn’t any risk. Taking this approach does require the city to put its full faith and credit behind the bond if the tax revenues don’t materialize as expected.” Yes! Just say the thing and let the argument for the new financial arrangement stand on its own.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Anna Bryson reports that the RPS School Board voted to approve an extended school year for Woodville Elementary. Woodville will join Fairfield Court Elementary and Cardinal Elementary as the third school in the District with a 200-day school calendar. Superintendent Kamras mentioned this in his excellent budget presentation the other day, and Bryson says the longer calendars have already led to better outcomes: “The two schools that implemented an extended school year in 2023 have already seen improved outcomes, including lowering the rate of chronic absenteeism, which means missing more than 10% of the school year.” I think we’ll have more data on this in a couple of years, but I could definitely see all RPS elementary schools head to the longer calendar—assuming, of course, that the school district can find the funds to cover the additional costs.

The Richmond Flying Squirrels face the Akron RubberDucks in their home opener tonight at 6:35 PM, and you really couldn’t ask for better weather. Unfortunately, I think tonight’s game is sold out (either that or I couldn’t figure out their website). But! Consider this a reminder to Future You to both put an upcoming home game on your calendar and to not freak out when you hear fireworks coming from the Diamond this evening.

Four years ago this week, City Council passed the legislation required for them to move to fully virtual public meetings and public comment. Since then, Council has returned to their chambers but much of the virtual infrastructure set up during the pandemic remains, and that’s great! A lot more than respiratory disease keeps folks from participating in Council meetings—mostly stuff like families, dinner, work, school, and just being freaking tired.

However, I think we still have a lot of work ahead of us to ensure residents stay informed and aware of what their government’s getting up to. Here’s what I wrote back in 2020:

The real, hard work for Council remains, though, and that’s making sure their constituents know what legislation is coming up when. They’ll need to dig deep into their community contacts and look beyond their district email list! It’s no joke a lot of work, but I believe it’s possible to keep people involved—maybe even more so than in pre-virustime!

Council’s email newsletter game certainly has gotten a lot better over the last four years, but there’s still work to be done to keep/get people involved!

Also, remember when sports got cancelled, and, for like a week, we all discovered marble league? It still exists!

Mostly I want to avoid posting military propaganda, which this totally is, but I grew up with The Hunt for Red October and, in the teenage-boy parts of my brain, submarines are the coolest. Just know going in that the Navy doesn’t grant Vanity Fair access to their nuclear submarines for no reason, and you should keep your propaganda detector at defcon four or on red alert or one ping only or whatever.

But I am hard-pressed to think of another mission as daunting as testing a teenager's mettle underwater with a nuclear reactor in back and thermonuclear warheads in front. Beyond their duties, the Gen Z'ers--and the millennials who supervise them--must contend with a life that is practically monastic. They are completely removed from meaningful connectivity, including social media. Their only contact with the outside world involves infrequent (and heavily monitored) emails with family when the sub is at a depth and a posture that permit it. There is also little privacy beyond the confines of a draped bunk that can feel like a coffin. Deprived of many other creature comforts, sailors can avail themselves of exercise gear, which is spread around the boat, including treadmills and free weights--but not when the sub is running silent so as to evade detection.

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The stream restoration in Pine Camp is going so well. I’m super impressed at how they’ve turned a very dangerous pit of erosion into something that still looks like a fun place to explore hidden away in the forest.

Good morning, RVA! It's 41 °F, and today looks absolutely lovely. Expect clear skies for most of the day and, after lunch, highs in the 70s. Other than some rain Thursday evening, this week’s weather look great. I hope I’ll see you out there!

Reminder! We’ve got a partial eclipse (of the heart) today! The astronomical party starts at 2:02 PM and runs through 4:31 PM, but peaks right at 3:19 PM. Schools have changed schedules, business will have rescheduled meetings, and people will probably stare up into the sun while driving their cars. Enjoy, because the next eclipse visible from the Commonwealth will take place on May 11th, 2078.

City Council will hold Budget Session #3 today at 12:30 PM, and you can stream the meeting from the City’s website. From the recently updated budget meeting schedule, it looks like Council will hear an overview of the Mayor’s proposed budget (both operating and capital) and then discuss “revenues from estimated interest income.” Just like how last week’s budget session was an excellent way to grok the RPS budget, I imagine today’s budget session will be your best best at understanding—at least at a high level—this year’s proposed budget.

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports on a potential change to the financing of the Diamond District redevelopment plan: “In a proposal that will be presented to City Council today, administrators are recommending that the city issue its own revenue bonds to fund the stadium and infrastructure for the development’s first phase, rather than having bonds issued through a community development authority (CDA)...The city would assume more risk with the approach. It would be responsible for repaying the general obligation bond debt should the developer default or the project not succeed in paying for itself over time through incremental financing of tax revenues generated by the development.” Stressful! But, on the positive side, interest rates for the City are about half of what they would be for the CDA, and the City’s CAO says Richmond’s current debt capacity would not be impacted (that’s the amount of money the City can borrow). Also, I keep thinking about this sentence I read in the Richmond Times-Dispatch over the weekend: “Currently, the Squirrels pay the city $200,000 a year and VCU pays $134,000. Both are expected to pay significantly more at the new stadium — possibly more than $3 million for the Squirrels and $500,000 for VCU.” Who knows if that’s true, but maybe that extra $3.2 million—plus any incremental tax revenue—covers the bond payments? Municipal finance: Who can say!

Anyway, I’m interested to see how Council reacts, because the lower level of financial risk was one of the big differences between this project and Navy Hill.

Remember a couple weeks ago when Governor Youngkin stumped around the state standing behind a podium that said “THE BACKWARD BUDGET”? Well, today, at 1:00 PM, he’ll reveal what he thinks is a compromise, and this one also has a proper-noun name: the Common Ground Budget (TBD if it’s stylized in all-caps or not). Stay tuned for more details tomorrow—including whether or not the Governor found a way to wriggle out of rejoining the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative.

OK, this post on Mastodon from Taber, a person I’ve know on the internet for forever, absolutely blew my mind: “do appreciate about Virginia how it’s the only state that stamps car license tags in a serif typeface.” Not only that, but this incredibly comprehensive but very early-90s-looking website purports that Virginia’s license plate is the only fully-seriffed license plate seen in any western country. That’s pretty neat, but there’s probably a reason for this, right? Like readability? The aforelinked website continues, with a disapproving tone, “The serif style of the alphas is different, with characters inconsistent in form and weight from one character to the next.“ I dunno, I think I’d miss our inconsistent form and weight if it were gone.

Northsiders! The James River Association will host a cool, tree-related volunteer opportunity this coming Friday, April 12th, at the North Avenue Library. They need about 35 people, for both a morning and an afternoon shift, to come out and help plant trees around the library and expand the neighborhood’s tree canopy. You know what they say: The best time to plant a tree next to the local library was 30 years ago, but the second best time is this coming Friday, April 12th!

I switched to a paid Kagi account a couple months ago and haven’t once looked back. Even if none of Kagi’s advanced features speak to you (like prioritizing certain websites, building custom search “lenses,” and AI whatevers), I guarantee that using an ad-free, user-focused search engine will make your day better. It’s definitely worth the $10 per month!

For some additional reading, here’s a Cory Doctorow post about Google Search’s decay in which he writes about switching to Kagi, and here’s the Daring Fireball post that got me to first give it a try.

After more than three months of using it, I am pleased to report that it is worth every penny and that I will probably not ever switch back to Google unless Kagi becomes significantly worse or Google reverses years of annoying interface and search decisions that have prioritized ads, sponsored results, spammy affiliate content, and AI-generated results. Besides not having ads itself, Kagi also “will actively down-rank sites with lots of ads and trackers in the results and promote sites with little or no advertising.” The nicest thing I can say about Kagi is that it has fully faded into the background of my life, and that I do not really realize or think about the fact that I am using Kagi. I mean this in a good way.

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Weird shadows from our last eclipse back in 2017.

Good morning, RVA! It's 39 °F, and temperatures bottom out today and tomorrow (as much as they can “bottom out” in the middle of spring, I guess). You should expect highs in the 50s, some sunshine to warm things up a bit, and a forced return to your sock drawer. Sunday, things start to warm up again, and then, by this coming Tuesday, we’re back to the springtime 70s. We’ve got plenty to enjoy before then though, so throw on an additional layer and spend a bit of time outside with these sunny skies!

Yesterday, GRTC announced they’ve won a big $750,000 grant from the Federal Transit Administration to help kick off some very important land use planning. Specifically, the money will “plan for Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) on Chamberlayne Avenue in advance of GRTC’s future North/South Pulse Bus Rapid Transit Line.” I imagine the final product will look something like 2017’s Pulse Corridor Plan, which helped the City figure our the proper land use and zoning around Broad Street ahead of actually building the Pulse. Spend six seconds driving down Chamberlayne Avenue and you’ll see a corridor with industrial sections that need drastic upzoning and sleepy sections of old single-family-home street-car suburbs. It’s a complex corridor and will need a thoughtful planning process to figure out the best way to build great transit that’s supported by great neighborhoods.

Also, did you catch that GRTC called this north-south BRT the “Pulse” too? I think that’s the first time I’ve seen “Pulse” used when referring to this new potential line. That makes the most sense to me; we don’t need to have cute names for each and every bus rapid transit line we build. We will, however, need some sort of way to differentiate these lines eventually—by color or number or something. Cardinal direction won’t work when we have a bunch of these things running diagonally across the region.

Also also, it’ll be interesting to see how this planning process takes advantage of (or runs up against) the upcoming zoning ordinance rewrite.

Virginia Tech is out here throwing cold water on my plans to spend the back half of April taking hundreds of photos of cicadas from Brood XIX as they crawl out from wherever it is they’ve been for the last 13 years. Apparently we may be a little too far north which “makes it difficult to predict where Brood XIX cicadas will emerge.” Tap through to see a comparison photo between regular, annual cicadas (still cool) and the periodic variety (way more mysterious). The former are black and green, while the latter are more reddish in color.

John Murden at South Richmond News has a picture of Richmond’s oldest frame house. Built in the late 1750s it sits at what is now 5613 Kildare Drive. First, that’s way further west than I would have expected for this sort of Richmond history! Second, it’s kind of wild that houses from 300 years ago just look like houses from today. I guess we’ve kind of settled on what a “house” looks like?

Friends of the Richmond Public Library will host their annual spring book sale today through Sunday down at the Main Library (101 E. Franklin Street). Stop by this weekend and find something new to throw on top of that ever-growing stack of books on your nightstand. Proceeds benefit Richmond Public Library programming, which is broad and vast and important to our communities!

If you’re looking for recommendations, two books I just finished:

Reading through my COVID-19 update from April 5th, 2022, I was reminded that today, in 2024, you can still monitor the COVID-19 levels in wastewater across the country via this nice page on the CDC’s website. In fact, nationally, the wastewater viral activity level for COVID-19 is low for the first time since last summer. Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that there’s no COVID-19 swirling around in your specific community, but it does mean that it’s probably safer—at least as far as coronaviruses go—to travel across the country for an eclipse than it has been in a while. Honestly, the biggest risk to your safety if you’re eclipsebound is probably the long drive across America’s highway system.

Earlier this week, Karri Peifer at Axios Richmond wrote a throw-away line about Virginia’s different regions, listing them out as: “Richmond, NoVa, Hampton Roads, Charlottesville, Roanoke and whatever the hell is west of Roanoke.” In response, Cardinal News, an independent news site the that covers Southwest and Southside Virginia, wrote this really nice piece explaining exactly whatever the hell is west of Roanoke and why it’s a lovely and important part of the Commonwealth.

I understand why it’s easy to dismiss the western part of the state. We’re a long way away from Richmond — and lots of other places. Roanoke is closer to two other state capitals than it is to our own, and the numbers go up from there. By the time you get out to Ewing in western Lee County, you’re closer to nine other state capitals than our own. Distance creates different perspectives: A study a few years ago by two geographers found that, based on commuting patterns, the western part of the state was economically disconnected from the rest of Virginia — we tend to look south to North Carolina or west to Tennessee. It’s not just our rivers that run west and south; so do our people. The whole controversy over whether the Wizards and Capitals would move to Virginia meant very little out here. Those aren’t the teams we root for.

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What an excellent logo and paint job on this bike!

Good morning, RVA! It's 40 °F, and whoa it rained hard up here on the Northside last night. Today, you can expect highs in the mid 50s, so I hope you didn’t pack away all your flannels and big shirts (what my house inexplicably calls sweatshirts). I think we should see the sun at some points both today and tomorrow, so maybe by this weekend things’ll have dried out enough that all the mountain bike trails will be open and ready to shred!

As foretold, I spent my bus trips yesterday with an absolute must-listen episode of The Boring Show. No joke, City Council’s second budget work session, which features a presentation about the Children’s Funding Project and then Superintendent Kamras walking through his proposed budget for Richmond Public Schools, is really something anyone interested in supporting RPS and our city’s kids should give a listen.

First, the Children’s Funding Project! Earlier this week, I’d forgotten I’d written about the Children’s Funding Project back in October. Back then, at one of Council’s Education and Human Services committee meetings, they’d teased a “fiscal map” that would lay out the funding streams for any and all things supporting children. They’ve now completed that map, and it seems like a really cool tool for doing deeper analysis which you then hope leads to better and more-informed decision making. Unfortunately, I can’t find a link to the tool at the moment, but you can watch a demo of it here (staring around the seven minute mark).

Second, I really, really hope y’all will go listen to Kamras’s budget presentation. It’s excellent. He lays out the District’s needs, highlights the ~$10 million gap between his budget and the mayor’s, and then clearly explains why that’s the State’s fault. I specifically appreciate his explanation of the “LCI,” or Local Composite Index, which is a formula Virginia uses to judge what percentage of school funding a locality can afford. Because we live in a hellscape where the General Assembly and the Governor punish Virginia’s small, independent cities, the newly-updated LCI formula says Richmond can afford a larger percentage of school funding than Henrico, Chesterfield, or Hanover. This obviously does not match anything close to reality, and those recent changes to the LCI have cost Richmond Public Schools somewhere between $10–20 million dollars. That’s why the responsibility for RPS’s budget gap belongs with the state. Anyway, give the whole thing a listen; Kamras’s portion starts around the 45 minute mark.

Council’s next budget session, their third, will take place on eclipse day (this coming Monday). Make sure you bring your shades!

Today, the Urban Design Committee will consider UDC 2024-10, the location, character, and extent review for the James River Branch Trail. This project is SO cool. It’s a unique rail-to-trail conversion that, yes, will create two miles of new paved multi-use trail in the city, but, more importantly, it will serve as a solid piece of transportation infrastructure. First, check out the trail map. The James River Branch Trail will cut across the Southside (almost like a radial bus route) and connect Hull Street Road and Midlothian Turnpike in a totally safe, car-free way. Second, scroll through these engineer diagrams (if you dare), and see how the trail has a bunch of spurs connecting it to nearby neighborhoods and streets. Don’t think about this trail like the Capital Trail which runs alongside a major thoroughfare. Instead think of it as a bike and pedestrian major thoroughfare with its own (car-free!) off and on ramps. Third, crossing Hull and Midlo on foot or by bike is objectively terrifying, so read through this “Evaluation on Uncontrolled Pedestrian Crossings” memo. It’s still a little car-brained for me, but it does show that they’ve thought through how to make these major street crossings safer. I mean, check out these recommendations for the Midlothian crossing:

That’s all good stuff, and I’m so excited for whenever this project starts to get off the ground.

Here’s a depressing couple of sentences from Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense: “The planned redevelopment of an entire block of Scott’s Addition could be on ice for the next 16 years after a recent court ruling. Last week a Richmond Circuit judge ruled that North Carolina-based developer Hem + Spire has the right to renew its lease on a 51-space parking lot at 3210 W. Marshall St., potentially keeping the lease active through 2040.” Vomit. But! Platania reports that it’s unclear what Hem + Spire will actually do with their lease, and I have to think the various pressures to build more housing on such a big lot will ultimately force some other solution than sixteen more years of surface parking.

Bleh, via /r/rva: “Who wants to splash around in the pollen puddle?” Unfortunately, the pollening is upon us, and everything outside is coated in a fine yellow horrible dust.

I think everyone should read Octavia Butler’s Parable books, which were written in the 90s. So when she talks about looking at the neglected problems around her and giving them “30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters,” she’s envisioning our world right now. And, I tell you what, she’s spooky / terrifyingly accurate in a lot of ways.

“SO DO YOU REALLY believe that in the future we’re going to have the kind of trouble you write about in your books?” a student asked me as I was signing books after a talk. The young man was referring to the troubles I’d described in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, novels that take place in a near future of increasing drug addiction and illiteracy, marked by the popularity of prisons and the unpopularity of public schools, the vast and growing gap between the rich and everyone else, and the whole nasty family of problems brought on by global warming. “I didn’t make up the problems,” I pointed out. ‘All I did was look around at the problems we’re neglecting now and give them about 30 years to grow into full-fledged disasters.’

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Azaleas at their peak look like alien plants.

Good morning, RVA! It's 54 °F, and rain is headed our way. You should expect wet weather for most of the morning and maybe even into the afternoon. Temperatures look great, though, with highs in the mid 70s. Soak it up, because, starting tomorrow, we’ve got about a week of highs in the 50s before we again see temperatures that start with a seven.

VPM’s Patrick Larsen has an update on DPU’s Combined Sewer Overflow work at Gillies Creek. Look at this amazing stat: “In 2019, the sewer outfall there overflowed 43 times. The city’s installing a new sewer pipe and relocating the outfall point to increase capacity — and take advantage of unused sewer system space. When construction is completed this fall, officials expect that under the same rainfall conditions, overflows will be cut from 43 to five.” This particular project is part of the important work to limit the amount of actual poopy sewage that ends up in the river during extreme rain events—which are only getting more and more frequent. And while this work is good and important and should be a priority for the City, the General Assembly has legislated Richmond into doing it and doing it along a pretty unrealistic timeline. Not only that, but the GA and Governor have subsequently failed to properly fund the City, so meeting that timeline doesn’t feel entirely possible. Larsen reports that the Commonwealth’s current proposed budget allocates $50 million towards Richmond’s sewers, but that lawmakers rejected an amendment to add another $100 million (which would have made up for the money “forgotten” in last year’s budget).

Liana Hardy at the Henrico Citizen reports on Henrico County’s proposed budget for schools and who among HCPS’s staff qualifies for an additional one-step pay increases. In: Licensed instructional staff and bus drivers. Out: Instructional assistants, custodians, administrators, front office staff, nurses, and teachers without licenses. I think all the folks on the Out List will still qualify for a 4.8% county-wide pay raise but will miss out on this additional 2.4% bump, and that probably feels bad. I don’t have enough context to know if the licensed teachers and bus drivers have fallen far enough out of line with the rest of the District’s staff to warrant their own additional raise, but, regardless, it’s cool to see folks in Henrico out there advocating for more.

Yesterday, City Council hosted their second budget work session, and you can listen to the audio here. I haven’t had a chance to yet, but, given today’s expected weather, I’ll probably spend a bit of time on a bus listening along while starting out the window with a melancholic expression on my face like I’m in romance film from the 90s.

The City’s Office of Sustainability has a neat volunteer opportunity for someone who wants to get more deeply involved in Richmond’s important sustainability work: Joining the Sustainability & Resilience Commission (formerly the Green City Commission). They’ve got one vacancy to fill, and they’re looking for someone who can “join bi-monthly meetings and provide support between these meetings such as volunteering at events, advocating for policy change, distributing outreach material, among others (typically less than 3 hours total per month).” You can apply through the City’s standard Boards and Commissions process.

RIC Today is running a neat contest, asking folks to write poetry using only the words found in their email from this morning. Your poem can take whatever form you desire, must be 75 words or less, and you can submit it via this form.

Here’s my quick go at a haiku:

91%

Check out this charming paragraph I wrote on April 3rd, 2020:

For whatever reason, American society has decided to try to carry on life as best it can by moving every possible in-person encounter to a video conference call hosted by Zoom. I don’t know how everyone simultaneously decided on using Zoom as a platform, but it happened. Now, Zoom is both a noun and a verb I say regularly in my professional life when just two weeks ago it only applied to dogs running around in cute circles.”

This is still true, of course, and, despite having mostly emerged from the pandemic, the amount of time I spend in virtual meetings while also sitting inside a work-related building would boggle 2020 Ross’s mind.

Submitted by Patron Lisa. I think people—normal people, not just the bike and bus bois—are starting to accept that cars make neighborhoods dangerous. It’s almost (but not quite!) a noncontroversial thing to say out loud at a party at this point, and that feels like a big change from even just five years ago. Still extremely (although ever less so!) controversial to bring up at your next dinner party: That we can successfully deprioritize cars in our neighborhoods—even in America.

“Cities with high bicycling rates tend to be safer for both bicyclists and all road users,” Ferenchak explained. They find that denser urban environments, where streets are bustling and compact, are safer. “More compact cities were significantly associated with better road safety outcomes.” The study noted that pedestrian fatalities in paired comparison cities (the non-cycling cities) were 193.8% higher than in high-bicycling cities, Yet, beneath the surface lies a troubling truth — available bicycle infrastructure and hence more safety is not always distributed equitably and there are consequences. “Areas with lower incomes and larger non-White populations see more road fatalities,” the study revealed

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Apple blossoms! These things smell SO good!

Good morning, RVA! It's 51 °F, and today looks cloudy but amazing. Expect highs in the mid 70s, no reason at all to wear socks, and a near perfect opportunity late in the afternoon to sit on the stoop and watch the day end. Tomorrow, rain returns and cooler weather follows immediately.

Richmond Police are reporting that an officer shot and killed an individual on the 1900 block of Cedar Street earlier this week. Here’s some information describing the incident, quoted directly from the RPD press release: “Yesterday at approximately 4:58 a.m., officers were called to the 1900 block of Cedar Street for the report of a disturbance with an armed person. Officers arrived on the scene within minutes and located the male suspect, [Kenneth] Sharp. After a brief encounter during which Sharp produced a firearm, Sharp was shot. He was transported to a local hospital where he later succumbed to his injuries.“ Police Chief Rick Edwards has said in the past that, following fatal shootings by police officers, his department would produce and release a “Critical Incident Briefing video” featuring audio and video from the investigation—from sources like body cameras and 911 calls. RPD hopes to release the briefing video for this incident within the next two weeks.

A week late, I finally got around to listening to Mayor Stoney’s budget presentation while in the shower yesterday. The Mayor does a good job with his remarks, and I think it might be the easiest way to get yourself oriented towards the budget’s big-picture items. Related: The City hasn’t posted the video from yesterday’s second City Council Budget Work Session, but, when they do, I’ll make sure to get it up on The Boring Show as quick as I can.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Luca Powell reports that the USPS’s Office of Inspector General has released the promised audit of Richmond’s mail processing facility out in Sandston, and...it’s not great news. You can download and read the surprisingly concise PDF (weighing in at only 35 pages!) for yourself here. The audit makes 10 recommendations (look for the red headers), and they range from fairly mail-specific like “record omitted trips in the data system” to general good biz advice like “train all management personnel in the Richmond region to understand and perform their roles and responsibilities.” I guess USPS will now attempt to implement these recommendations, and, with Sen. Kaine still on the case, I hope they take them seriously!

Megan Marconyak, also at the RTD, embarks upon an ambitious project: Each week she’ll share the best thing she ate in a column appropriately titled “Best thing I ate this week in Richmond.” I feel like she’ll have to eat a stunning number of new things each week to sustain this column, and I wish her the best! For me, this project would just be a lot of posts about this Cheesy Baked Pasta With Sausage and Ricotta from the NYT that I make constantly. Or maybe, like, lemon Oreos and Kroger-brand Pink Grapefruit Seltzer?

Over on Mastodon, all-purpose internet wizard Waldo Jaquith has put together a really fun bot that posts actual personalized license plates that the Department of Motor Vehicles has rejected for being too inappropriate. Beware that some of the plates are actually inappropriate or offensive, but most are just silly: BOOTY, MESSYB, and TRSTS8N (Val rightly wondered if TRSTGD would have made it through the filters?). I love this sort of project, which takes publicly available data and makes it easier for the public to access—especially if it does so with a little personality.

Also, this reminds me to remind you that if you’re still wandering through the post-Twitter social media wilderness, looking for a home for your microblog-type content, you can sign up for a Mastodon account over on rva.fyi. There are a million and one different places to create a Mastodon account—mastodon.social being the biggest—so no pressure!

Via Richard Hayes at RVA Hub, this incredible picture of someone flying(?) into the raging James River to rescue folks trapped slightly off frame. You can see a few more pics over @sandys_dad’s instagram. Whoa, what a dramatic day down by the River!

You’re definitely going to want to tap through and check out the exquisitely precise art “carved” onto leaves by WWI soldiers stuck in a trench for endless days. Beautiful and incredible!

Like many soldiers, Hodeau spent hours huddled in these muddy channels. In order to kill time, perhaps, or lift his spirits, he gathered leaves from an oak tree — elongated, striated, forest green — and used a form of relief carving to inscribe the names of his daughters, Andrée and Eléonore, as well as the word “souvenir” and what looks like “Argonne”...As unique as his objects may seem, Hodeau was not alone in carving leaves. The art form flourished during World War I as a way to enhance letters home with a unique lightweight enclosure. Soldiers used a needle or knife to whittle between the oak and chestnut veins, leaving only words or, sometimes, an image.

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Urban views.

Good morning, RVA! It's 49 °F, and, while we’ve got a decent chance for rain this afternoon, the temperatures look downright amazing. Expect highs in the 70s for today and the next two days until more seasonable weather moves back in. You know, despite the rain, I’m really feeling Richmond’s current weather patterns, mostly because my yard is absolutely exploding with springtime action: hostas, apple blossoms, red buds, coreopsis, and clematis—every dang thing!

Happy, April 1st! Just a quick reminder that some of the things you see on the internet today may be fake—although brands spending their time making up entirely fake product lines seems like a less successful marketing strategy these days. You can, of course, be assured that the thrilling content below about budgets, legislation, and potholes is as real as real gets!

City Council will hold their second budget session today at 1:00 PM and will focus on the Richmond Public Schools portion of the budget and the “Children’s Funding Project” (which I’m not exactly sure to what that refers). RPS accounts for an enormous chunk of the budget, $529 million out of $1 billion, so this seems like a great place for City Council to start.

Also, this is the first time the City of Richmond has ever dropped a billion-with-a-B budget—up about $180 million from just three years ago. If you want to scroll through it yourself, and you should!, you can download the entire proposed budget, both operating and capital, here.

I’ve got two thrilling roads updates for you this morning.

First, starting today, the City will embark upon a “3-week Pothole Blitz” and will attempt to work through a backlog of 439 service requests for pothole repairs. Those request get pulled directly from the City’s 3-1-1 system, so if you have a favorite/hated pothole make sure you actually submit a 3-1-1 ticket. You can do that via RVA311.com or through the RVA311 app. The latter is probably a little easier, and now I just need to work on trying to replace my initial reaction of “complain about this infrastructure online” with “submit a 3-1-1 ticket first (and then maybe complain about it online).”

Second, starting tomorrow, VDOT will close the ramp from southbound Chamberlayne Avenue onto eastbound I-95 as they work to rejigger that entire interchange. Part of me is like, finally, because the current merge right there is absolutely bonkers unsafe. The (much safer) detour will route folks over to Brook Road and up through Gilpin Court, and I do wonder if morning bus service on the #1 will get caught up in rush hour traffic. We’ll see tomorrow, but keep it in mind if you’ve got somewhere to be and need to move through that part of town.

A bunch of folks at VPM report that Governor Youngkin has officially vetoed the legislation that would have set up a legal retail market for marijuana in Virginia. They headline the story with “Gov. Glenn Youngkin smokes cannabis, minimum wage bills,” which, great work headline writers. Did the governor whip out his red veto pen (or is it a stamp, maybe?) on this legislation as retaliation for the scrapping of GlennDome? Probably not, but I do think he kept the possibility of signing this bill around as a potential bargaining chip for his pro stadium deal. Now, with both the deal and the bill dead, we’ll most likely have to wait until the next time Democrats control both the General Assembly and the Executive Mansion before we can pass some legislation to sort out the commonwealth’s existing messy weed gray areas.

This past Friday, Chesterfield County kicked off its own Restaurant Week and includes enough locally-owned restaurants that you’re bound to find something new-to-you and worth trying out. You could, of course, just default to La Milpa for a guaranteed excellent meal, but maybe do that and pick something new to try off the aforelinked list of spots. As with most restaurant weeks, you eat for a good cause as your meal will support the Chesterfield Food Bank Outreach Center.

Katelyn Jetelina, who you may remember as Your Local Epidemiologist, writes about the mifepristone case recently heard by the Supreme Court. She details why the publisher of the studies used to bring this case forward had them retracted just a couple months ago. Tap through to see some truly heinous—and dangerous!—manipulation of a y-axis.

After these concerns were raised, SAGE asked for a review of the articles post-publication. They had two subject matter experts and one independent statistical reviewer take a look. Then SAGE retracted the paper based on three major factors: Methodological and statistical concerns. Specifically, “unjustified or incorrect factual assumptions,” “material errors,” and “misleading presentations” of data that “demonstrate a lack of scientific rigor and invalidate the authors’ conclusions in whole or in part.” Ethical considerations. The authors were members of three pro-life advocacy organizations, despite declaring no conflicts of interest in the study. More ethical considerations. The peer reviewer (who is supposed to be an unbiased third party) didn’t disclose their conflict of interest— that they know the authors personally. SAGE did not publish the experts’ peer review, which is normal practice. However, given the stakes of this case, it could be coming.

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City Hall in the morning light.