Good morning, RVA! It's 77 °F, and you can expect today’s highs to hit 91ish. Should be a bright, maybe cloudy, day. Enjoy!
Water cooler
The City’s Department of Budget and Strategic Planning along with Richmond Public Schools finance staff have “completed a preliminary reconciliation of all RPS managed capital projects through the end of the 2018 fiscal year.” The result? About $10 million in remaining funds spread across a couple of accounts. It’s hard to tell from the aforelinked City release, but if you read this Justin Mattingly piece in the Richmond Times-Dispatch 💸, it definitely sounds like money that just...kind of got lost in a spreadsheet somewhere. Superintendent Kamras says “I’m happy to have it, but we didn’t have it on our books...This is new to us.” 😳. I mean, no matter how you look at it, it’s not great to have your books off by seven digits. That said, I’m glad the new administration is steadily and publicly wading through all these embarrassing issues the previous set of leaders—all of them: superintendent, School Board, City Council, and mayor (some of whom are still around!)—left behind.
Michael Paul Williams in the RTD has a reflective piece before this weekend’s anniversary of Charlottesvillle 💸, it’s got good quotes from state Senator Jennifer McClellan, Mayor Stoney, and an excellent one from Jonathan Zur—“Bryan Stevenson argues that the foundational step toward achieving justice is proximity. In the Richmond region, it is very easy to not be proximate to those who have different lived experiences. People can then assume that their experience is the dominant or only experience.”
Do we value women? I don’t know more details about this situation than what’s in the story, but when a man pleads guilty to sexual assault and gets zero jail time, it does not feel like we value women.
Theron Giddens writing for Richmond Magazine says “the state is projecting a drop in [opiod] overdose deaths for the first time since 2012.” Some of the drop can be attributed to the availability of naloxone (branded as Narcan), which blocks the effects of opioids and can save a person’s life during an overdose. Did you know that the Richmond City Health District will not only teach you how to administer Narcan but they will give you some for free? You could save a person’s life!
Sarafina Sackey at RVA Mag has the word on Girl Develop It RVA, a local chapter of a national group with a goal “to build a strong foundation for women to accomplish their personal goals using technology.” learn more on the Girl Develop It website.
This seems cool: Virginia will use a portion of their Volkswagen settlement money to build fast-charging stations for electric vehicles.
Finally, in bittersweet news, Alix Bryan of WTVR has decided to move on to pursue hopes and dreams other than doing really excellent journalism about buses, bike lanes, and other things near and dear to my heart. I’m always excited for folks when they move on to a next big thing, but Richmond will definitely miss Bryan’s reporting. So...who’s on deck?