Good morning, RVA! It's 58 °F, and it rained! The storms have moved through, though, and now we've got a pleasant fall day ahead of us. Expect highs in the mid 60s, some clouds, and dry weather for at least the next couple of days.
Water cooler
One quick coronaupdate this morning for iPhone users: iOS 15.1 came out yesterday, and that means you can now store your vaccination card in the Wallet app. Just fill out this form on vaccinate.virginia.gov, and you'll end up with a QR code and a link that'll automatically load up your information as a fun card in Wallet.app. I think once you get boosted, you can even update it with that information, too. Neat!
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Chris Suarez has the update from last night's final City Council meeting on the Mayor's proposed ARPA spending plan, and it sounds like Council approved the whole shebang. You can find more details on the City's ARPA page, but the big-ticket investments are parks, trails, and community centers; the Affordable Housing Trust Fund; stormwater infrastructure; and a new Healthy Equity Trust Fund. While the full spending plan is approved, this huge bucket of money will be allocated over two years. Someone should definitely set up a spreadsheet or a Trello or something to track progress on all these rad projects. In particular, I can't wait for some of the new trails!
Whoa there is a lot in this piece from Jessica Nocera in the RTD about how Chesterfield County Public Schools' unnecessary and mostly imaginary battle against Critical Race Theory does in fact have a chilling effect on folks in the County working against systemic racism. It's not hard to see how a policy banning CRT-related professional development has already led to the District rejecting a principal's request to take diversity, equity, and inclusion training from VCU. Not great—both scary and embarrassing. Side note: I really love the way Nocera reports this story without a lot of both-sidesism (or as NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen calls it, The View From Nowhere).
Tonight at 5:00 PM, Council's Public Safety Committee will meet and hear recommendations presented by the Civilian Review Board Task Force. As a fun pregame to tonight's meeting, you can read the Task Force's recommendations yourself, one of which is "that the CRB will have its own department to avoid conflicts of interest; this is aligned with the recommendations of the City Attorney’s Office. As such, we recommend creating a department or office of 'Community Oversight and Police Accountability' independent from other City departments or offices." I don't know a ton about how CRBs should work, but that is exactly why we tasked a taskforce to come up with recommendations! If you'd like to holler at your councilmember in support of the Task Force's recommendations—including the creation of an Office of Community Oversight and Police Accountability—you can find the big list of councilmember contact information here. One final note, and I'll assume that it was not intentional, but it does not seem particularly even-handed to schedule the Richmond Police Department to present on "Police Staffing and Morale" immediately before the CRB Task Force gives their presentation on police accountability.
Well, I guess it's official. VPM's Ben Paviour reports that "The Virginia Redistricting Commission has missed a final deadline to draw new state legislative maps, kicking the process to the Virginia Supreme Court." Paviour helpfully lays out the next steps and timeline for the judges to get these maps drawn.
This coming Thursday, October 28th, the Community Foundation will host a free, online panel focused on Everyday Nonprofit Advocacy. We've got a lot of issues to tackle in Richmond, and a ton of them are systemic issues requiring big-time policy changes to make our city a better place to live. Nonprofit advocacy (and regular-person advocacy!) plays a big role in that, and I deeply agree with this bit from the event description: "the community needs leaders who engage decisions makers well."
Maybe systems-change work is too daunting or exhausting to think about—that's fine! How about this, then: Richmond Public Schools needs volunteers to provide no-contact grocery delivery to RPS families. That's about as finite and concrete of a task as you can get.
This morning's longread
Could removing parking requirements help revitalize Virginia’s cities?
I thought I'd move this extensive piece from Wyatt Gordon at the Virginia Mercury down to the longread section—it's packed with the impacts of free parking on a city like Richmond. Luckily, at least one of our councilmembers wants to make some incremental changes to the currently broken system.
“People see the language of the resolution and worry I’m getting rid of parking,” said Addison, “But eliminating parking minimums just means we’re not putting a burden on business owners and developers to provide and build more parking than they actually need. Parking minimums are a big barrier to housing affordability and people choosing other modes of mobility. Eliminating those outdated calculations on how much parking establishments need gets us closer to a market for shared parking that works better for everybody.”
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