Good morning, RVA! It's 20 °F, and today looks sunny and cold. Expect highs just under 40 °F and an ocean of puffer coats stretching as far as the eye can see.
Water cooler
As foretold by the agenda, Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch confirms that City Council continued the NoBro Ordinances until their January meeting. That gives the Navy Hill Development Advisory Commission time to finish up, incoming Councilmember Stephanie Lynch time to get up to speed, and an independent consultant hired by Council time to study the proposal. Robinson says the consultant “once hired, will have 90 days to complete its work.” So, if that consultant were hired today and took the full 90 days to do their study, the soonest Council could vote on NoBro would be at their February 24th meeting. Also folks from Richmond For All took to the steps of City Hall before the meeting for a demonstration against evictions and the North of Broad project. Doing some zoom-and-enhance on the photos, I see Councilmember Gray, School Board Rep Gibson, and even former Councilmember Marty Jewell hanging out in the background. As for regular biz, Council passed Mayor Stoney’s ORD. 2018-289, which requires folks to report lost or stolen firearms.
Marc Cheatham over at the Cheats Movement had journalist David Streever and Councilmember-elect Stephanie Lynch on his podcast, and it’s definitely worth a listen. It’s absolutely fascinating to hear from Streever about what he heard at the polls as 5th District folks talked about their local priorities: Schools and streets! Love it. It’s also absolutely fascinating to hear from Lynch on her views about NoBro, the 5th District, movies, music, and more. We’ve spent years getting used to City Council’s collective voice, and it’s always fun (for me at least) when that voice changes. I’m excited to see how adding Lynch and removing Agelasto impacts the general vibe of Council. It all starts next month!
Micheal Paul Williams talks Confederate monuments in his most recent column in the RTD 💸. With the flood of new Democrats into the General Assembly, do we finally have the opportunity to give control of these monuments to racism back the localities? Maybe! Will the localities ask for that control? MPW is skeptical, but I’m more optimistic. Councilmember Jones says interest in the resolution he submitted last year asking for local control has picked up, and we’ve got an entirely new person on Council starting next month! Honestly, there’s no reason not to pass this resolution tomorrow. It’s a non-binding resolution asking the state to do a thing—it’s not passing out pickaxes and hard hats to willing volunteers (although, that maybe sounds like a good idea, too).
Remember: Henrico’s arena project is not comparable to Richmond’s arena project, and you probably shouldn’t jump to make comparisons between the two. But, I know, I know, it is so hard not to! C. Suarez Rojas at the RTD says the Henrico Board of Supervisors has picked Virginia Center Commons as the preferred location for their indoor arena. At $50 million; 4,500 seats; 12 basketball courts; and financed through regular-type bonds—Henrico’s not out here trying to attract Lizzo or Bruce Springsteen or whoever. They want more of that sweet, sweet sports tourism money from stuff like high school basketball tournaments and international pickle ball championships. One note for Henrico: Time to start planning and budgeting for adding (or extending) a bus line up to VCC!
Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury looks at the three-page joke report Virginia’s Republican legislators released following the mass shooting in Virginia Beach. Here’s the entirety of the report’s recommendations: “Staff determined that inconclusive evidence exists to develop recommendations.” Super helpful. When the GA meets this winter to pass gun violence legislations, Democrats shouldn’t even think about making a single compromise with these lazy, gun-worshipping yahoos. If they’re unwilling to contribute seriously to the process of making Virginia safer, than that should be fine by the majority.
Impeachment hearings begin today, at 10:00 AM, which you can watch over on C-SPAN. Two good resources for following along with the Impeachment of President Donald Trump: impeachment.guide and impeachment.fyi. The former is a more serious resource, while the latter has more of a GMRVA tone.
This morning's patron longread
The Day the Dinosaurs Died
Submitted by Patron Casey. I absolutely loved this dinosaur longread! I don’t know about you but, these days, reading about the near destruction of all life on the entire planet feels like such an escape.
One of the central mysteries of paleontology is the so-called “three-metre problem.” In a century and a half of assiduous searching, almost no dinosaur remains have been found in the layers three metres, or about nine feet, below the KT boundary, a depth representing many thousands of years. Consequently, numerous paleontologists have argued that the dinosaurs were on the way to extinction long before the asteroid struck, owing perhaps to the volcanic eruptions and climate change. Other scientists have countered that the three-metre problem merely reflects how hard it is to find fossils. Sooner or later, they’ve contended, a scientist will discover dinosaurs much closer to the moment of destruction. Locked in the KT boundary are the answers to our questions about one of the most significant events in the history of life on the planet. If one looks at the Earth as a kind of living organism, as many biologists do, you could say that it was shot by a bullet and almost died. Deciphering what happened on the day of destruction is crucial not only to solving the three-metre problem but also to explaining our own genesis as a species.
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