Good morning, RVA! It's 31 °F, and we’ve got clouds and temperatures in the upper 40s on the way. There’s a small, but persistent, chance for rain most of the day, so keep an eye out.
Water cooler
Tonight, the RPS School Board will meet and theoretically vote on one of 10 (!) different school zoning options for the city’s Northside. If, for some reason, you are a regular human and can’t keep 10 different school zoning maps in your head, here’s Proposals W, X, Y, Z (PDF) and here’s Options 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. A public hearing on the six new options will immediately precede the vote. Dang y’all, the process that got us to tonight with these 10 options has been, in my opinion, super bad. In Richmond, I often think elected officials use “process” as an excuse to defer, disrupt, and delay good legislation and hard decisions—in fact, I said as much when the School Board refused to vote on Proposals W, X, Y, and Z a couple weeks back. But this? This is legit, actual bad process, and I have absolutely zero idea what will happen tonight. Surely the Board won’t vote for any of the six new options that folks have had less than a week to parse through, right? And, if they were unwilling to vote for Option X (the option that pairs Barack Obama, Ginter Park, and Linwood Holton Elementary schools) last week, what’s changed since then to change their minds? If I were to make a prediction, I’d bet on whichever of the options is the most status-quoy. I’m rarely right, though, and there is, of course, still an opportunity to weigh in if you feel strongly. You can find all of the School Board reps emails here—have at it! Stay tuned, we’ll learn more tonight.
Related—especially to rezoning Proposal X, the one that pairs schools together—Justin Mattingly at the Richmond Times has an excellent piece on school pairing in Charlotte 💸. They did it! It worked! The city still stands!
The RTD’s Mark Robinson says Councilmember Gray has proposed adding a new monument to Monument Avenue that honors the 14 members of the U.S. Colored Troops that received a Medal of Honor after a Civil War battle in Henrico. Part of me is like “Yeah!,” but part of me is like “More Civil War monuments?” Not to take anything away from this particular idea, but surely we have people worth memorializing that are not related to the Civil War? Maybe even some women?
The City’s Planning Commission meets today with two interesting agenda items (PDF). First, they’ll consider declaring an intent to rezone the area around and downstream from Libby Hill to create a “viewshed protection overlay district.” This is, supposedly, the view that reminded William Byrd II of the Thames in Richmond Hill, England, and so our city is named Richmond. You can see the impacted parcels on this map (PDF), which does include Tobacco Row and parts of Rocketts Landing. City staff hasn’t decided on a final zoning to recommend, but will, among other things, limit the height of buildings downriver to preserve the view. Second, the Planning Commission will take up the Brown’s Island Improvement Plan (PDF)—which I mentioned a while back.
NoBro update! The Navy Hill Development Advisory Commission, hot off a meeting this past Saturday, will host their very first public hearing tonight at 6:00 PM at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School (1000 Mosby Street). Can’t make tonight’s public hearing, maybe because you’ll be at another public hearing across town? Fear not! The Commission will also hold a public hearing tomorrow, the day after, and the day after that. On Friday, though, they rest. We’re nearing the end of this particular portion of the NoBro process, so if you’ve got thoughts and opinions, now is the time to deploy them! Rodrigo Arriaza at Richmond Magazine has a recap from this past Saturday’s meeting if you need some of the current context.
This morning's longread
What Does Trump’s Inner Party Believe?
The Weekly Sift continues to be one of the most informative and thought-provoking things I read each week. I like the model, too: Two emails each week—a longread like this and a news roundup.
Like a lot of liberals, I have spent more time than I care to admit thinking about Trump supporters. Who are they? What do they want? What are they thinking? And most of all: How can they possibly support this man? One reason this task is so difficult is that the Trumpist message is not meant for me. St. Paul was an apostle to the gentiles, but there is no Trumpist apostle to the liberals. No one in the administration is out there translating for me, explaining what parts of the message to take seriously and what parts to ignore. No one is trying to resolve the apparent contradictions, or to make the case that my goals can be achieved by his methods.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.