Good morning, RVA! It's 33 °F, and, once things get going today, it looks cold and rainy. Highs should trend upward for the rest of the week, though.
Water cooler
I'm sure y'all saw this already, but VPM reports that "an Arlington judge ordered on Friday that schools can continue requiring students to wear face masks - for now." I'm sure the Governor and his team will appeal this temporary decision and we'll have to keep hearing about this—possibly through the end of the school year (137 days from now). I enjoyed this email sent to Henrico County Public School families following the court's decision: "...HCPS will strictly adhere to our universal mask requirement except during mealtime, when students are outdoors (with appropriate physical distancing), or when they participate in designated athletic activities. Recent accommodations made in place of mask use, based on parent choice and the executive order, will end immediately. Students are expected to adhere to the universal masking requirement, and anyone who refuses to wear a mask will face disciplinary action in accordance with the Code of Student Conduct for disruption of the school day." Emphasis theirs!
Today, both the City's Planning Commission and Council's Organizational Development committee meet and will take up a few papers that we've been tracking for a bit. First, Planning Commission will consider the W. Broad Street rezoning (ORD. 2022-017). Rezonings, as you know, have to jump through a bunch of different hoops before they get implemented, the last of which is City Council passing this ordinance after Planning Commission has their way with it. You can flip through a presentation on the rezoning here; you're probably looking for pages 17 and 20 which will let you see the current and future zoning maps. The proposal will replace a quilt of different zoning district running mostly along Broad and down Hamilton with TOD-1. The residential neighborhoods south of Broad stay residential, so folks shouldn't (but probably will anyway) fire off angry emails about parking and high-rises blotting out the sun. I imagine since this rezoning tightly aligns with the City's master plan, it will easily pass Planning Commission. Then, later this evening, Council's Org Dev committee will take up both the City employee union papers: ORD. 2021-345 and ORD. 2021-346. The former would authorize collective bargaining for a whole set of City employees (including police) while the later just for employees in the Departments of Public Utilities and Public Works. I don't have a great sense of how Council feels about this issue, but I think if you looked hard enough you could probably find five votes for authorizing collective bargaining across the board.
Chesterfieldians! Exciting public transit news: The County has launched a survey about bringing bus service to Midlothian Turnpike from the City limits out past Huguenot Road. If you live, work, or play in that part of town, please take 15 minutes and fill it out! Honestly, I have a hard time finding the words for how surprising and exciting it is that the County continues to make progress on expanding their (teensy) bus network. It was not that long ago when Chesterfield had zero bus line and no intention changing that—despite owning a 50% stake in GRTC. Sure, it's slow goings over there, but goings nonetheless.
Remember the archeologist and historian who'd help shift the public history of the Governor's Mansion to include the stories and lives of the enslaved people who built and staffed it? We'll, Ben Paviour at VPM reports that she's resigned. Paviour also has an update on the room that was maybe going to be an educational space but then possibly a family room but maybe not that either: "On Saturday, after the publication of the story and over two weeks after VPM first inquired about [the historian's] observations, Porter clarified that the former educational space was not being used as a family room." Mmmhmm.
I don't know what this means, but I sure feel like it means something: A subdivision at Laburnum and Nine Mile sold for $154.4 million, and Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports that "the overall price tag is the largest ever paid for a multifamily property in Henrico County and the largest such deal in the region as a whole in recent memory." It makes me look at the current (lack of) frequency of the #7A/B bus and wonder if the County has plans to make that a more reasonable means of getting into town.
This morning's longread
America’s Gambling Addiction Is Metastasizing
This doom-and-gloom piece in The Atlantic is not directly about cities that decide to open up casinos, but it's not not about that either.
For society as a whole, if such a thing exists anymore, there are benefits as well as costs to legal gambling. The chief benefit is that there’s a lot of money to be made, for governments and businesses both. The primary cost is that many unlucky and vulnerable people are destroyed. American society has accepted that trade-off—big money now for social crisis later—on any number of fronts: in its banking sector, in its housing markets, in its health-care industry. The rise of gambling is simply one example of our boundless desire for risk.
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