Good morning, RVA! It's 31 °F now, but highs today will approach 60 °F? Sure! Expect winds to continue so keep your hatches battened and your hats held on to.
Water cooler
Richmond Police are reporting that Timothy Vest, 33, was fatally shot on the 3900 block of Hull Street Road. He would later die of his injuries.
Justin Mattingly at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Samantha Rinchetti at RVA Mag, and Raquel Rocha-Turner at Richmond Magazine all have perspectives on yesterday’s #NationalSchoolWalkout in protest of gun violence. The first is a good, regional look at yesterday’s events, the second focuses on Douglas Freeman High School in Henrico County, and the third is a student perspective from Richmond Community High School in the city. Read each piece, and then, as suggested by @Morr_Ruth on Twitter, go track down your own high school’s social media from yesterday.
City Council’s Finance Committee meets today and will consider a couple interesting topics. First, while Councilmember Agelasto’s cigarette tax ordinance (ORD. 2018-031) is on the agenda, I hear that it will be continued so some language can get updated. RES. 2018-R021 expresses Council’s opposition to extending the current agreement around the Washington Training Camp—that is unless the NFL team wants to pay for “all debt service and operating costs associated with the primary practice fields and related facilities.” This resolution has seven co-patrons. Finally, ORD. 2018-101 (PDF) would modify the City’s existing agreement with Stone Brewing and allow them to tear down the Intermediate Terminal Warehouse No. 3 (the old building set up on piers above Wharf Street) and build a new structure. Did y’all know about this? It seems like kind of a big deal? Some questions that come to mind for which I’ll try and find the answers: Does this building have historic value? Is it worth saving? What does the Riverfront Plan have to say about the building? Would this impact the ongoing rejiggering of Dock and Main Streets? I think these are all answerable questions, so stay tuned.
The Governor has called a special General Assembly session on April 11th during which he hopes legislators will find it in their hearts to pass a state budget. Jeff Schapiro has a long and thorough piece in the RTD that’ll give you some context and a good feel for all of the different moving pieces. Again, at issue here is Medicaid expansion to hundreds of thousands of Virginians.
Speaking of the General Assembly, Saraya Wintersmith at Richmond Magazine has a list of bills considered by the 2018 session that impacted women. Some passed and await the governor’s signature—like tax exemptions for pads, tampons, and menstrual cups. Others—like expanding the definitions of a hate crime to include gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation—were killed in committee.
A programming note! I’ve got to catch an obscenely early flight tomorrow, so we won’t speak again until Monday. Have a great weekend!
Sports!
- Y’all, I’m so nervous about the Hokies NCAA tournament game against Alabama that I got the date wrong yesterday. Virginia Tech takes on the Tide tonight at 9:20 PM on TNT. Ahhhh!
This morning's longread
The Man Who Knew Too Little
What an interesting idea. Of course, there are very few people who can afford to buy a piece of isolated property to live on so they can avoid the news of the world.
Right after the election, Erik Hagerman decided he’d take a break from reading about the hoopla of politics. Donald Trump’s victory shook him. Badly. And so Mr. Hagerman developed his own eccentric experiment, one that was part silent protest, part coping mechanism, part extreme self-care plan. He swore that he would avoid learning about anything that happened to America after Nov. 8, 2016.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.