Good morning, RVA! It's 27 °F, and today you can expect chilly highs in the mid 40s. After lows drop back down into the 20s tonight we should head back into normal springtime temperatures. Good luck, outside plants!
Water cooler
The Virginia Progressive Legislative Alert Network has put together their fifth annual VAPLAN scorecard which ranks all of the General Assembly’s legislators from most progressive (Del. Marcus Simon) to least progressive (Del. Todd Gilbert and Del. Thomas Wright, Jr.). The GA’s senators are more moderate bunch, with Sen. Creigh Deeds the most progressive and Sen. Stephen Newman the least progressive, both of which would end up somewhere in the middle of the pack in the House. Measuring “progressiveness” is hard to do consistently, so make sure you read through VAPLAN’s explainer and caveats about how to use and interpret the data. I wish something like this exited for our local legislators! I do a bad job of remembering/tracking how our councilpeople and school board members vote on things—even big-ticket, high-profile items. This would be a good spreadsheet project for someone to take on!
Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense continues his series on the issues at the City’s permitting office, this time talking to 1st District’s Andreas Addison about the Councilperson’s own issues getting a permit for a development in Scott’s addition. You gotta love how Addison lays out the connections between permitting, land use, affordable housing, and Richmond’s master plan. Really great stuff that’s worth reading.
City Council will host its fourth budget session this afternoon, and will focus on an analysis of the mayor’s operating budget. Should be interesting (at least for some of us), and I promise to get the audio up on The Boring Show as quick as I can. Council will then move directly to their regularly-scheduled meeting, and will consider, among other things, ORD. 2021-308. That ordinance would give the School Board the money they need to start designing a replacement for George Wythe High School. At last week’s combined City Council and School Board meeting, I got the sense that Council may be a little more willing than they have in the past to hand over the money to School Board—despite the majority being pretty set against the Board’s plan to build a smaller facility. Tune in tonight to see which way they go and if they find a path forward.
Speaking of George Wythe, if you’re a member of the Wythe community you’ve got lots of opportunities to attend a public meeting to help determine “the design, focus, and overall objectives and purpose of the new school, including whether it will be themed as an Arts High School or STEM/STEAM High School.” Those meetings kick off tonight at Lucille Brown Middle School from 6:00–7:00 PM. Check out the full slate of meetings (and community walks, which sound fun) here.
I always listen to Peggy Singlemann, Director of Park Operations and Horticulture at Maymont, and she says to pump the brakes on planting this year’s garden until April. Despite an incredibly warm spring thus far, this week’s cold weather proves her right, I think. Don’t worry, though, there’s plenty of other garden work to be done while we wait for April to show up.
This morning's longread
It’s huge, expensive, and years late—but the SLS rocket is finally here
While the current era of NASA-developed space flight is disappointingly similar to 1960s technology, I’m still glad it exists. Are we really going to count on Elon Musk to do all our rocket stuff from here on out?? Remember when he shot a car into space?
Frankly, it is hard to know how to feel about this rocket. Certainly, one cannot help but be awed by a rocket that is as tall as a US football field is long. Designing, building, and testing such a large and complex machine represents a significant engineering achievement. But it's impossible to have a rational discussion about the Space Launch System rocket and its payload, the Orion spacecraft, without considering its enormous expense, ongoing delays, and looming obsolescence. One thing seems clear: although this fully stacked SLS rocket and Orion crew capsule have set the stage for the uncrewed Artemis I test launch later this year, the rollout does not mark the end of the beginning for this launch system. Rather, it's the beginning of the end. This is probably the last gasp of the Apollo era of NASA that has gripped the space agency for six decades.
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