Good morning, RVA! It's 33 °F, and today’s colder than the last couple of days with highs in the upper 40s.
Water cooler
Remember Richmond 300? The City’s master planning process? Well, they’ve released a draft version of their Insights Report (PDF)—if you like maps and stats about Richmond, this is definitely the PDF for you. Head to page 22 for a look at affordable housing, page 26 for the goods on transportation, page 29 for Vision Zero, and page 38 has a neat tree-cover map. The coolest thing about this draft is just that: It’s a draft. Sprinkled throughout are notes and reminders, which is neat to see. And since this is a (very) public process, you can contribute your own notes and reminders! If you find mistakes or just have some suggestions to make the report better fill out this excel spreadsheet (is there really no better way for public feedback than a spreadsheet??) and send it to
Just a couple days out, and people have thoughts and feelings on the Mayor’s budget. The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Justin Mattingly says the School Board is disappointed with what the Mayor delivered. You can—and should—read the Superintendent and School Board’s Statement directly as it sounds a little less intense than how it’s framed in Mattingly’s piece. Read the final sentence in his article, though, which is a quote from Mayor Stoney, and you’ll catch the vibe that Stoney was not super happy to find the School District sitting on a pile of cash last year.
Additionally, Mark Robinson, also at the RTD, dips into the capital portion of the budget. As you could probably guess, there’s not a lot of money floating around to buy or build new things, and almost all of it that is available is sunk into schools. If I were to guess at this point, knowing exactly nothing about how City Council feels about the proposed budget, I would say that most of the discussion will center around this capital portion. Budget work sessions begin on Monday, so we’ll find out more then!
David Streever at RVA Mag has a great piece on the economic impact the Richmond Black Restaurant Experience has had in its short existence: Black-owned restaurants participating have seen 17 new hires over the last year. Sure, I don’t know if that’s attributable to the week-long event, but it’s still good news. Aside from the economic stuff, you really need to read this piece for the many, many excellent quotes in there about race and restaurants in Richmond.
Yesterday, the Richmond Airport announced nonstop flights to Nashville on Allegiant beginning June 14th.
Ahead of the federal government’s plan to cut millions of dollars from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s budget, the New York Times has a piece about the threat this poses to civil rights and the ability of minority communities to find fair housing loans. Richmond’s own Housing Opportunities Made Equal gets a shout out for their work on mortgage companies’ racist lending practices.
Sports!
- #8 Rams meet #9 Dayton today at 12:00 PM on NBC Sports.
- #7 Spiders match up against #10 Duquesne at 6:00 PM tonight on NCB Sports.
- #7 Hokies blew a huge lead and lost to #10 Notre Dame, 65-71.
- #1 Wahoos will face the #9 Cardinals today at 12:00 PM on ESPN.
This morning's longread
A Finder, No Longer a Keeper
I love these weird, well-written personal essays. Keep it up, writers!
My whole theory about the jewelry finding is this — and I wish I could live my life by these same rules, because they work: if I’m looking for the jewelry, I don’t find it. So no, I don’t walk around with my head down, checking out the gutters. But if I’m confident about my intuition, and trust that the jewelry will come to me, it always does. At times I’m on more of a roll than others, but my dry spells don’t bother me. Almost everything I pick up is broken, which is probably why it’s on the ground, with a split clasp, or a lost earring back, or it’s smashed because a car ran over it, or once in a while it’s as though a beaded necklace exploded on the street. Then I’ve got to put down my bags and pick up the pieces, one by one, as swiftly as possible. One time I pulled from my purse a pair of tweezers to retrieve the most beautiful blue beads embedded in a sidewalk outside Alice Tully Hall, Lincoln Center.
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