Good morning, RVA! It's 44 °F, and highs today will hit 70 °F! I've got a feeling we've missed out on any chance for serious snow this winter—I mean, it's almost spring.
Water cooler
Richmond Police are reporting that Keandre N. Robinson, 29, was shot to death on the 2200 block of Creighton Road late Saturday night. Robinson was the ninth person murdered in Richmond in 2020, according to the RPD.
The General Assembly has nearly wrapped this year's legislative session, and so much happened over the weekend that I'll surely miss something. Here's a short, incomplete list of rad stuff that got passed: a bunch of common-sense gun laws, the Virginia Clean Economy Act, redistricting reform (although you need to read this thread from Del. Cia Price about her work to make reform more equitable), a decent hike in the minimum wage, and decriminalization of marijuana. Actually, Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury has a list of 8 big things that passed in the final hours of a historic General Assembly session in Virginia. If you've ever wondered if elections really matter, just look at that list of stuff accomplished in TWO MONTHS after electing a bunch of Democrats. Amazing.
Also at the GA this weekend, Alexis Rodgers from Care in Action was on hand to support Dr. Vanessa Tyson and Meredith Watson—the two women who have accused Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax of sexual assault. You can watch the video of the press conference here. Rodgers called the press conference in response to a recent interview with Sen. Joe Morrissey (yes, that Joe Morrissey) where he promised to deliver a floor speech at the Senate defending Fairfax, stating "I don't believe the women." I don't know if the speech ever happened, but it's a disgusting idea and a waste of everyone's time. It's almost running-for-governor season, and, as Fairfax gears up for his run, there's...just a lot going on. He recently called Mayor Stoney a racist and now has Joe Morrissey backing him up by literally negating #metoo.
On Friday, the Mayor released his FY2021 budget and you can flip through the entire Annual Fiscal Plan here and the Capital Improvement Plan here. For a short summary, you can check out this press release on the City's website. Stoney found $16 million of new money for schools in this year's budget. That's close but short of the $24 million schools asked for—some of that difference may be picked up by the State, I'm not sure. There's a bit more funding for the Eviction Diversion Program and the Affordable Housing Trust. It doesn't look like there's any funding for the Riverfront Plan, so that's a bummer. As for transportation, we already knew about the $30 million in road paving. In addition to that, the Mayor's budget cuts the City's contribution to GRTC by half, from about $16 million down to about $8 million. The budget depends on the regional transportation authority created by HB 1541 to cover that $8 million gap so GRTC can avoid cutting bus service—you can read more of my concerns about this specific thing over on Twitter. Here's what I would love to know: Does GRTC believe that $8 million from the City is enough to keep the bus service we have today running while the new regional authority gets set up and the new regional money starts flowing in?
City Council will meet tonight for their regularly scheduled meeting at 6:00 PM. They've got a short agenda tonight, but of note is ORD. 2019-343, the Airbnb ordinance. At the moment, the ordinance still contains an owner-occupancy clause, stating that "the operator shall occupy a dwelling unit on the lot on which the short-term rental operator's short-term rental is located for an aggregate of at least 185 days each calendar year." This means folks have to live in their Airbnb and can only operate one short-term rental at a time (and, probably for a bunch of other reasons too, it means you can't Airbnb treehouses, tents, or islands). Last time around, Councilmember Gray had this paper continued to get more feedback from folks in her district, but I'm not sure whether or not that happened. Assuming the agenda doesn't change over the course of today, we could have legal Airbnbs soon.
Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense sat down with Councilmembers Lynch and Larson to do an oral history of sorts about the vote against the Mayor's proposed downtown arena project. This is a good idea for a piece! I'd love to see more of this sort of thing—both before and after—interesting Council votes.
C. Suarez Rojas at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a deep look at the plan for redevelopment of Virginia Center Commons 💸. Honestly, sounds pretty rad, especially the suggestion for developers to "develop a safe, aesthetically pleasing street network with an emphasis on pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure." I don't know how people get to VCC on bikes, but I guess if you're already there it'd be nice to have some solid and safe places to ride a bike.
The Virginia Department of Health is reporting two cases of coronavirus in the Commonwealth, both in Northern Virginia. You're washing your hands, right? You should definitely wash your hands.
This morning's patron longread
Pittsburgh Port Authority Bus Alignment
Submitted by Patron Chris. OK, so, unless you went to University of Pittsburgh you likely won't get any of these jokes. BUT, I still enjoyed reading this and now definitely think someone should make a D&D alignment chart of Richmond buses.
Chaotic neutral: P3. Does anyone know when this bus comes? Where it goes? What it does? Not me, and I had to research it. I’ve gotten on the P3 and watched the entire bus empty at Bigelow. One day, I’d like to ride this entire line all the way to the end, just to see where it goes. However, I fear that both ends of this line are some Nightvalean world — that a lone, loose hand may crawl toward me, and maybe the grass would not be grass and the sky would not be sky, but rather an intricately painted canvas held precariously over my head — and I don’t think I have the emotional capacity to handle such a reality. So I will continue on in blissful ignorance.
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