Good morning, RVA! It's 51 °F, and today you can expect highs in the 70s—not even the upper 70s, just the regular 70s! While things do warm up a bit over the next couple of days, this weekend looks simply stunning. Have a blast, spend some time recovering from the week that was, and stay hydrated.
Water cooler
Last night’s 3rd District meeting about the parklet and bump outs on Brookland Park Boulevard was a mess. The Director of Public Works made some pretty terrible statements given his role in our City’s transportation infrastructure, people got angry, and Councilmember Lambert had a head-shaking hot-mic moment. All of it makes me feel demoralized, ashamed, and left wondering why it is so hard to make progress in Richmond. Here’s an enormous thread from @BossRVA if you want a full recap of the meeting, but below are my generally unprocessed and unsorted thoughts from last night:
- The absolute worst moment came when Director of Public Works Bobby Vincent said something along the lines of “we are not going to infrastructure our way out of speeding in Richmond.” Turns out, the ONLY way to slow speeds on our too-fast, unsafe streets is by installing physical infrastructure to force drivers to slow down. We should all be super concerned that the man in charge of our streets’ infrastructure doesn’t believe in street infrastructure.
- This is why, for the last five or six years, folks have asked the City to create a standalone Department of Transportation. No one, not a single person, would argue with the excellent job DPW has done to improve trash pick-up, bulk & brush, mowing, and, of course, filling pot holes over the Mayor’s first term. Things were a literal mess when Vincent showed up and are much, much better now. However, none of those things makes me think that DPW should be in charge of making our streets safer for people—especially now! What we got from the Mayor’s administration instead of a Department of Transportation that would have full authority over things like bump outs, is the Office of Equitable Transit and Mobility. It’s really clear after this week that OETM was either not consulted on this decision, has no sway over the Department of Public Works, or, worst-case, didn’t care.
- That brings me to my next point: DPW works for the Mayor. Don’t get me wrong, this whole situation seems to have been instigated entirely by Councilmember Lambert, but it’s still City staff that made the decision to stop the already-approved parklet and rip out the bump outs. How his Department of Public Works functions across the city is something the Mayor is responsible for.
- It kind of goes without saying at this point, but halting the parklet and digging out the bump outs and then having a public meeting is the exact opposite of how the timeline for these things should go.
- At some point in the evening it seemed like Councilmember Lambert and the owner of the parklet had reached a verbal agreement to move the parklet across the street. How does that even work, though? Would UDC and the Planning Commission need to...unpass their existing approvals for the parklet? Would they have to reconsider the whole thing again? I am deeply disturbed by the idea that if a councilperson is unhappy with how a public process turned out they can just lean on certain members of City staff to kill or restart a project—it’s a really awful precedent to set.
- Finally, here’s Councilmember Lambert’s hot-mic moment in which she seems to suggest that the only people upset are those who didn’t vote for her.
Because I can’t not, here’s an extremely apropos Letter to the Editor from a Henrico resident basically proving the point that you have to build physical infrastructure—not paint or flashing lights—to slow down drivers.
In more positive City news, Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Mayor Stoney has appointed Kevin J. Vonck as the new director of the Department of Planning and Development Review. Vonck was hired last year as a deputy director, and the folks I know who have to interact with that department on the regular are all pretty stoked on this.
Look at this cool news: Local climate scientist, the Science Museum’s own Dr. Jeremy Hoffman, will serve as a lead author for the Fifth National Climate Assessment. The NCA5, as it’s abbreviated, is a national version of the UN’s IPCC report that just came out this past summer, and Hoffman will oversee the drafting of the Southeast-region portion of the report. I think it’s really rad to have a Richmonder head up something like this—it never hurts to have someone local on a body drafting up documents of state or national importance!
Via /r/rva, this really beautiful 360° pictures taken directly above Mayo Island. This really gives you a different sense for development/preservation along the riverbank. Somehow it’s embedded into Google Maps Street View? How does technology even work these days!
If you’re looking to spend the lovely weekend outside listening to music in one of Richmond’s beautiful neighborhoods, maybe stop by the 2nd Street Festival, which kicks off tomorrow at 11:30 AM.
This morning's longread
The Moon Is Leaving Us
The moon is getting farther and father away from Earth and this space reporter has some feelings about it.
The moon is drifting away from us. Each year, our moon moves distinctly, inexorably farther from Earth—just a tiny bit, about an inch and a half, a nearly imperceptible change. There is no stopping this slow ebbing, no way to turn back the clock. The forces of gravity are invisible and unshakable, and no matter what we do or how we feel about them, they will keep nudging the moon along. Over many millions of years, we’ll continue to grow apart.
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