Good morning, RVA! It's 66 °F, and today you can pretty much expect a repeat of yesterday: Warm, humid, and a chance for pouring rain. Grab that rain jacket before you head out the door and be prepared to get sweaty inside of it as you walk around (the absolutely worst!).
Water cooler
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Ali Rockett has a great update on City Council's work to create a Civilian Review Board. Rockett reports that, "The governmental operations standing committee on Wednesday delayed until next month a paper introduced by Mayor Levar Stoney’s administration after members of a council-appointed task force, as well as members of the public, criticized the proposal, saying it ignored recommendations from the task force." Tap through for a really helpful comparing and contrasting of the Mayor's CRB proposal and Council's own CRB Task Force's proposal. Again, I'll be really disappointed if Council put alllllll that work into coming up with their own proposal just to toss it out in favor of what the Mayor's put together. Council at least owes the public a good-faith effort to find a compromise between the two approaches.
Governor Youngkin has called the General Assembly back for a special session to finish up the Commonwealth's budget on April 4th. He did so officially via this proclamation and unofficially via this basketball ad. Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury reports that, "Youngkin indicated he had not yet taken his case to Senate Democrats in private talks. But he seemed enthusiastic about his ad, which he told reporters was 'pretty good.' Asked about the strategy behind the unusual move of running an ad about pending budget talks, Youngkin said that, as an outsider, he came into office with different ideas about how to communicate." I guess one of those different ideas is to just not communicate to the legislators whose votes are required to pass his budget?
I definitely missed this opportunity to tell y'all about a chance to get involved in Henrico's update to their Comprehensive Plan, for which I apologize; Think Richmond 300 but for Henrico County. But that doesn't mean you can't poke around on the Comp Plan's website, and look through this awesome treasure trove of planning-related documents, including the old comprehensive plan, a Transportation Existing Conditions report, and this awesome Draft Bike Lane Map. Tap through to that bike lane map and imagine a Henrico with shared-use paths stretching as far as the eye can see. Big whoa.
Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports on some new apartments planned for Six Points in Highland Park. What caught my eye: The project "would involve income-based apartments, with at least half of them rented to households at or below 50 percent of the area median income. The rest of the primarily one- and two-bedroom units would range in rent from 40 to 80 percent AMI." That's pretty deep affordability as far as things go these days. More of this!
I feel like I've been writing about food halls for years, but Richmond's first just opened?? Richmond BizSense's Mike Platania reports that Hatch Local's location at 400 Hull Street is now ready for business with seven different vendor stalls serving up all kinds of food hall fare. I like the food hall concept and will definitely figure out a way to take the bus over there for lunch or beers at some point!
Tonight at 7:00 PM you've got a cool opportunity to join STAY RVA for a virtual panel on "School and Community Violence: Ruminations, Revelations, and Remedies." They've put together a great list of panelists: Ram Bhagat, RPS Manager for School Culture & Climate; Iman Shabazz, CEO of Maximum Impact, LLC; 9th District School Board Member Nicole Jones; Robert Dortch, founder of the Dortch Group; and Jackie Lawrence, Director of Health Equity at the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts. That's a smart group of folks! Tickets are free, and you can register over on their Eventbrite.
As you can probably tell from years of plant-related Pictures of the Day, I spend a lot of time thinking about house plants, yard plants, and garden plants. It's a challenging, slow hobby, with a pace unlike just about anything else in our current world—I love it! If you don't have the time, resources, or space (although house plants can be charming and small!) but still want to dig around in the dirt, consider one of these volunteer opportunities at Maymont. I bet you'd learn a ton and would definitely sate whatever need you have to bring order to the natural world.
This morning's patron longread
Progress on infrastructure spending can mean more deaths, decrepit bridges
Submitted by Patron Suzanne. Now that Congress has passed the federal infrastructure bill, states have the opportunity to fund tons and tons of transportation and infrastructure projects. That's great! Unfortunately, the Department of Transportation doesn't have the authority to force states to spend money in ways that make our roads safer and keep our planet from catching on fire. That's not great.
The highway administration concluded it had no legal authority to approve or disapprove a state’s goals, saying they were free to “establish targets that have performance holding steady or, declining targets.” On safety measures, states can set targets that call for more deaths and injuries than in previous years, then they only have to meet four of the five goals for “significant progress.” On those terms, 22 states made progress on safety when grading themselves against an average of the past five years, but only eight logged actual safety improvements across four or more of the measures
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