Good morning, RVA! It's 49 °F, and we've got another chilly, dreary day ahead of us. Today you can expect highs around 60 °F and a chance of rain here or there. Don't worry, typical October weather—aka Richmond At It's Best—returns tomorrow, and the weekend ahead of us looks amazing.
Water cooler
Richmond's School Board met last night, and now we wait for reporters to try and cover what happened at the middle-of-the-night meeting—boardmembers were still voting on motions at 11:30 PM, well past the Hour of Good Decisions. However, from what I can gather from The Tweets, it looks like the Board solidly passed Boardmember Doerr’s resolution to reject the Governor’s anti-trans policies. All members voted in favor except for 4th District Member Jonathan Young, who is clearly and actually a Republican. That's something that the 4th District, which went for Biden in 2020, should remember when he runs for City Council next go around. The Board also got back into their discussion about scrapping the District's curriculum, but I couldn't really follow what happened. I'm going to wait patiently for our education reporters to get some sleep and submit their stories to their editors.
VPM's Connor Scribner, who clearly has the best name for a journalist, reports on City Council's competing plans to lower the real estate tax. Councilmember Trammell and Nye have introduced a paper to lower the rate from $1.20 per $100 of your home's assessed value to $1.16 per $100 (ORD. 2022-271), and Trammell has introduced her own paper to lower the rate all the way down to $1.10 (ORD. 2022-278). I disagree with both, but the latter is reckless. I've written about why these across-the-board cuts are a bad idea, but Councilmember Addison puts it really well: "Every penny [of the real estate tax rate] is about $3.4 to $3.5 million of revenue that would be lost to the future budget...One of the challenges with a tax-rate reduction is that our revenues and our forecasted revenues derive how we are going to do our capital budget. And so, when you change the tax rate, therefore it changes our ability to borrow." So even with the smaller, four-cent reduction, we cut $14 million dollars from the City's budget and impact our ability to pay for current and future capital projects—parks, side walks, bike lanes, community centers, paving, all kinds of things. Which $14 million of projects and services would these two councilmembers suggest cutting? And what do Richmonders get in return? Not much! The math is pretty straight forward: If your home is assessed at $292,000, then (($292,000/$100) * $.04 tax reduction) / 12 months = ... $9.73 in tax savings per month. That's just not the kind of impact we're looking for. Like I keep saying, these across-the-board cuts are lazy and don't really provide any sort of relief for the folks who need it most. City Council needs to get creative and find new ways—ways allowed by state law, which are precious few—to help folks who can't afford rising assessments without putting the city's future at risk.
Ooo, high drama at the City's Planning Commission! Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the Planning Commission approved the landscaping plans for MDP Circle, disregarding the Urban Design Committee's recommendation to reject the proposed plans. Is trees-and-shrubbery the best use of the space? No. Will trees-and-shrubbery get the horrible fencing down before the end of the year? Yes. I'll take it, and will now start actively looking for the City to kick off a real engagement process on what to do with Monument Avenue. While I know a deep and thoughtful public engagement process is what's called for, I did like this extremely simple and effective solution a GMRVA reader sent me: "I think that the city should spend the 100k and plant the biggest oak tree they can find. Maintenance problems? Nope. Shade? Yup. Long term visual interest? Yup. Keeps the plaza open for rallies, and Easter, and whatever anyone else wants? Yup. Iconic? Yup. Uncontroversial? Yup."
Richmond BizSense's Jack Jacobs reports that Short Pump Town Center will apply for an open-container ABC license, meaning you could grab a drink and walk around the mall with it—like you were in Savannah or New Orleans or some other similarly cosmopolitan place. I'm pretty sure the mall will take advantage of ABC's "commercial lifestyle center" license (#12 on this list), which is something that I've long thought the Carytown Merchant's Association should look into. An open-container Carytown is not exactly what the license intends, but it's at least worth looking into! If they'd close the street to vehicle traffic, now then it'd be a slam dunk...
This morning's longread
The Politics of Adobe Could Reshape Far West Texas
I learned a ton about adobe as a building material from this piece in Texas Monthly. I also learned that any old neighborhood is at risk for gentrification—well, had it further confirmed I guess.
To make adobe bricks, take screened earth and shovel it into a wheelbarrow. Add water and mix into a satisfying sludge. Add horse manure, straw, or macerated cactus as strengtheners. Set a clean form on level ground and pour the mixture into the form, forcing mud into the corners and scraping the extra off the top. When it’s well packed, lift the form. Leave these bricks to dry for three or four days, then turn them on their ends to dry another couple of weeks. After that, build something. For generations, adobe houses were made of mud bricks with mud mortar, covered by mud plaster, lime plaster, or whitewash.
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Picture of the Day
A good line of sight.
