Good morning, RVA! It's 48 °F, and today's highs in the mid 70s are pretty OK. There's a slight chance for rain later this evening, but, other than that, we've got a warm and dry Monday to start the week.
Water cooler
Police are reporting that the second person shot in Mosby Court last week has died. On Wednesday, March 29th, police arrived to the 1900 block of Accommodation Street and found Mikkaisha D. Smoot, 16, shot. She was taken to a hospital where she would succumb to her injuries on March 31st. Taliek K. Brown was also fatally shot during this incident. These are the 17th and 18th homicides of 2017.
City Council will slog through another budget work session on the way to their May 31st deadline. On the docket today is the Department of Economic & Community Development and a review of the Capital Improvement Plan. The fun begins at 1:00 PM and then Council will roll straight into their Organizational Development Standing Committee meeting at 4:00 PM. You can listen to the first two budget work sessions here and here. Have I told you that I love these meetings?
Katy Burnell Evans at the RTD talks to some local and regional folks about how Trump's proposed budget would impact Virginia's public housing. As public housing ages and crumbles into dust, we've not built enough affordable housing to replace it—for example, under Trump's plan Norfolk would have just 400 housing vouchers for 17,000 families that now receive federal housing help.
The Age Wave is coming and Susan Winiecki will tell you all about it in Richmond Magazine. This piece is filled with some pretty incredible stats, like: the number of people over 65 in the region will double by 2030! Two of the biggest issues impacting folks as the age? Affordable housing (see above) and transportation (see inside my heart). Aging in place—living a full life without needing to drive all around town—is just on of the reasons Richmond needs a efficient, reliable, and regional transportation system. I love the article's closing quote from E. Ayn Welleford of the Greater Richmomd Age Wave Coalition: "Transportation is all about keeping our community engaged, livable, stable and well."
I did not know Mochi was a thing? It's available at Whole Foods, though, if you need a way to eat ice cream other than "straight out of the tub."
There's a new episode of the Sam and Ross Like Things podcast for you to listen to! On this episode we welcome a special guest and talk about something someone else likes for a change. As always, you can subscribe here.
The New York Times has a long piece about the psychological experiments ride hailing services do to squeeze more performance out of their drivers—with some cool interactive charts. Fascinating / scary / expected.
Sports!
- Kickers fell to the New York Red Bull's II, 0-3.
- Nats open their season against the Marlins at 1:05 PM today.
This morning's longread
Transparency, relevance, and above all, humility
Richmond Cycling Corps's Craig Dodson talks about how the two fatal shootings in Mosby Court last week impact the East End youth he serves.
We are on call. Always. It's why I now live above our programming HQ in Fairmount. At 1:15am Wednesday, I awoke to rapid and heavy gunfire just blocks away, but was unable to immediately identify the exact direction. Right away, I began calling our youth to check in and see if they were ok, to see if Fairfield Court had been hit. Six hours later, and a flood of information regarding the shooting began to surface. Three shot. Two of them teenagers from Mosby Court. We know why the shootings happened, and we also knew the ripple effect such trauma would have on nearly every student at Armstrong High, including RCC youth