Good morning, RVA! It's 37 °F, and today’s highs will hit the upper 50s. This morning looks pretty chill, but there’s an ever-increasing chance of rain this afternoon stretching into tomorrow.
Water cooler
City Council meets tonight for their regularly scheduled meeting when they will decide the fate of the Mayor’s proposed downtown arena project...or maybe they won’t! I honestly have no idea what will happen tonight. Here’s what I do know, though: All of the NoBro-related ordinance are on the agenda as “to be stricken,” which, I think, requires an act of Council to un-to-be-stricken them. I also know, from working with Council on 2018’s bus network redesign, that you can learn a lot about how Councilfolk are leaning at the informal meeting (which starts at 4:00 PM). Finally, I know that Council Chambers are gonna be packed, so if you want a seat you should probably get there early—or you can watch online via this website. We’ll all know a lot more this time tomorrow. I feel bad for ORD. 2019-243, the City’s Airbnb ordinance, which is also on the Regular Agenda for tonight’s meeting. It feels like the City’s been working on this particular piece of legislation forever, and now Council will—most likely—either continue it or debate it after spending all of their brain capacity on NoBro.
Speaking of the Airbnb ordinance, Karri Peifer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has an excellent history of the thing 💸 and why some folks—folks who operate illegal short-term rentals today—dislike the proposed legislation. It continues to blow my mind that these property-owning people willingly go on the record about doing a crime and have absolutely zero concerns that they could face a consequence for that.
Samuel Northrop, also at the RTD, has a really interesting story about the City, the Schools, and storm water fees 💸. I either didn’t know or had forgotten that the School District owes the City over $3 million in back stormwater fees—fees that the previous school administration refused to pay. I mean, I get it, the School District kind of is the City, and it’s weird to pay bills to yourself. Complicating things is the fact that it’s maybe unclear who actually owns the school buildings, and as Superintendent Kamras says, “I’m not a lawyer, but it appears to me that either we own the properties or we don’t, and if we own them, then we pay stormwater and we can negotiate the sale of them; or we don’t own them, in which case we can’t negotiate the sale and we don’t pay stormwater.” While this certainly is an issue to get figured out, put this in context: $3 million over several years is not a ton of money—the School District (and the City) only needs to fight over bite-sized scraps because we’ve spent decades disinvesting in critical services, both at the local and state level.
Ooo look at this: Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury says an assault weapons ban bill has made it out of the House Public Safety Committee and will head to the floor this week. Moomaw says the House must decide this bill’s fate super quickly since crossover is on Tuesday. You can read the full text of HB 961 here.
Love the perspective in this picture of one of the Big Huge Rings via /r/rva. Way to get down in the weeds!
Bong Joon-ho’s Parasite won Best Picture at the 92nd Academy Awards, which is pretty neat as its the first non-English film to do so. I haven’t seen it yet, but I thought The Host was pretty incredible. Wikipedia continues to be my preferred source for the list of all the winners from last night’s award show.
This morning's patron longread
Tiny Fate, Texas Wants to Solve All Our Infrastructure Woes
Submitted by Patron Suzanne. The story of a tiny town in Texas has lessons for Richmond’s downtown—regardless of what happens with NoBro.
This path forward, if the city can manage it, entails actively pursuing high-quality, compact downtown development that pays its bills—now and in the long run—as a proof of concept, a way to demonstrate to residents that this path can lead to a desirable, prosperous community. It would be a gamble on the proposition that most people, in North Texas or elsewhere, aren’t unshakably anti-walkability or anti-urbanism. It would be a bet that the right kind of strong neighborhood will change some hearts and minds. Fate’s plan to attract new residents to the city—people looking for something different than what Richardson or other nearby towns have to offer—might just work in the long run.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.