Good morning, RVA! It's 56 °F, and today looks absolutely beautiful. Expect some sunshine, highs near 70 °F, and lots of good small talk about how it’s so warm yet nearly November.
Water cooler
The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Mark Robinson asked two questions to the remaining seven candidates for City Council’s 5th District seat: “What do you view as the biggest issue facing residents of the 5th District, and what do you plan on doing about it?” and “If elected, do you plan to vote for or against the Navy Hill plan? Explain.” The answers to the second question are fascinating, with every candidate a No except for Thad Williamson who’s a Conditional No (he says “There are too many unanswered questions to be a yes. And there is too much potential opportunity to be a no.“). If you’d like to learn more about the 5th District candidates you can, of course, find thorough answers to a bunch of different questions from a bunch of different topics—beyond NoBro and into environment, neighborhoods, public safety, transportation, and youth & families—over on the Richmond Mayorathon website.
Speaking of NoBro, City Council will hold their....fourth? I think?...Navy Hill Development Proposal Work Session today from 3:00–5:00 PM. I couldn’t find the agenda, but, as always, I’ll get the audio up on The Boring Show whenever it drops.
Michael Paul Williams has a follow up on last week’s news that 52 of families from Creighton Court faced possible eviction 💸—Williams says that number is now down to 25 after folks payed off some of their outstanding rent. He also says, and I agree, that our conversations around public housing are only going to get harder and more painful as we look for the future of housing in Richmond. I don’t know what that future is, but it’s not the current stock of 70-year-old apartments crammed in between highways and in the awkward corners of our city.
On November 5th, which is NEXT WEEK, Virginians will head to the polls to vote for each and every member of the General Assembly. Put that on your calendar if it’s not already! If you need it, here’s an easy reason to get out and vote: Ned Oliver has a good piece over at the Virginia Mercury on the role healthcare has played during this election season.
Paula Peters Chambers, writing for Richmond Magazine, has a quick profile of Thomas Jefferson High School’s new principal. I’m into reading more about who’s leading our City’s public schools—especially with all of the schools-related momentum we’ve got at the moment.
C. Suarez Rojas at the RTD, sat down with GRTC’s new CEO, Julie Timm, and talked to her about her plans for the transit agency’s immediate future 💸. There’s a lot of good, practical ideas in here, like: basing GRTC’s funding requests off of what they actually spend instead of last year’s budget and getting Henrico on board to more fully participate in regional transportation planning. Sounds boring when we all want to hear are things like “frequent service in the evenings!” and “a bus to the airport that doesn’t take a zillion hours!” or whatever. But! These structural changes are, honestly, pretty big and would go a long way toward putting our regional transportation system in a stable place for bigger, bolder expansions.
Something for your calendar: This coming Wednesday, October 30th, from 5:30–7:30 PM, you can come hang at another Urbanism Happy Hour. Last month, we talked about everyone’s favorite topic—scooters—and had a lot of fun. This month we’ll hear about the Richmond Complete Streets Coalition’s Vision Zero Scorecard—something I’ve helped put together in my role at RVA Rapid Transit. It’s been almost two years to the day since the Mayor signed the Vision Zero Pledge and committed to reducing traffic injuries and fatalities in Richmond to zero by 2030. How is the City doing in that effort? What could they do better? Where do folks who want safer streets need to apply pressure? Come find out on Wednesday!
This morning's patron longread
In the Land of Self-Defeat
Submitted by Patron Arden. Dang, this was real depressing. Pair this with the aforelinked Virginia Mercury piece about expanding Medicaid and then really, really put the November 5th election on your calendar.
Since coming back, I’ve realized that it is true that people here think life here has taken a turn for the worse. What’s also true, though, is that many here seem determined to get rid of the last institutions trying to help them, to keep people with educations out, and to retreat from community life and concentrate on taking care of themselves and their own families. It’s an attitude that is against taxes, immigrants and government, but also against helping your neighbor. Most Americans live in cities, but our political system gives rural areas like Van Buren outsize voting power. My time here makes me believe that the impeachment scandal will not hurt Mr. Trump — and that Democrats who promise to make the lives of people like my neighbors better might actually help him. I realized this after a fight over, of all things, our local library.
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