Good morning, RVA! It's 38 °F, but the rest of today looks amazing. Expect highs in the 70s and, if you have a virtual meeting this afternoon, at least one person taking the call from their patio. This entire week looks warm and wonderful, with a possible chance for rain on Thursday. Enjoy!
Water cooler
Today’s the day! Crews will begin repaving Broad Street and won’t stop until some time later this summer. This will be intense! From the release: “Paving will be a 24-hour operation, starting at 6 p.m. on Sundays and ending at 6 p.m. on Fridays and there will be some complete street closures.” If you’ve got to get around downtown—regardless of your mode of transportation—build in some extra time, especially these first couple of days as folks sort out what the heck is going on. As you can imagine, this paving project majorly impacts the bus system, Pulse included. GRTC has a list of detours and temporary stops up on their website, and the good news that Grace & 2nd, Grace & Adams, and Grace & Monroe will function as temporary stops for the Pulse. Good luck everyone, and remember to be a extra patient with the people in your life who may have to figure out new travel routines this week!
City Council has a packed schedule this afternoon, with a budget session focusing on parks and the City’s revenue, an informal meeting, and then a formal meeting that includes a public hearing on the proposed redistricting map. Even with all that other stuff going on, I want to point out two things from the regular part of Council’s regular meeting. First, they’ll (theoretically) consider the confusing laundry list of amendments to Richmond 300—RES. 2021-R026, which, by the way, was introduced 350 days ago. I imagine they’ll just continue this once again, but I did want to flag it. Second, Councilmember Jordan will introduce an ordinance to implement ranked-choice voting for the 2024 City Council Elections. I am very excited about this and pretty sure ranked-choice voting would have altered the outcome of at least a couple recent local elections. However, I don’t have a good sense for how some of the more...established...members of Council will feel about this sizable change in process. There might be a bit of an advocacy lift required to get them to consider it seriously. Jordan says that the Governmental Operations committee will discuss the paper on April 27th, so tune in then to get a lay of the land.
Megan Pauly at VPM reports on a clash between the City’s auditor and its CAO over a report issued by the former about school construction costs. I am not smart enough to know anything about the changing landscape of school construction costs given pandemic and inflation and everything else, but this piece links to a lot of good information if you want to dig in. For me, the most interesting part of this story is how different communication mediums carry with them different contexts. An email from the CAO to the auditor asking for more/different information to be included in a report? Seems fine. A text message, though? Stressful.
Whoa, shocking: Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports that “after years of seemingly sitting on its holdings in the neighborhood, Douglas Development is starting work on the first of what it says will be more projects to come along a stretch of East Broad Street” This is big news! A bunch of core buildings on Broad are owned/hoarded by Douglas Development, and to get them back into use will do a lot for the corridor. I’m interested in how this specific development at 2nd and Broad will impact the bus stop there—one of the busiest in the entire city. Looking at the photo provided by BizSense, I can already see that, because they’ve closed the sidewalk, folks transferring from a Broad Street bus to any northbound bus are forced to walk in the street. Booooo!
Here’s how the Governor’s team titled their press release announcing the repeal of Northam’s restriction on single-use plastics at state agencies: “Governor Glenn Youngkin Signs Executive Order Recognizing the Value of Recycling and Waste Reduction.” I’m still, somehow, shocked by such blatant, breezy doublethink!
This morning's longread
The Ultra-Introverts Who Live Nocturnally
I have no interest in a nocturnal lifestyle, but I can definitely see its appeal. I think if I were to go ultra-introverted, I’d move to a remote forest cabin on a creek somewhere.
Some find the inconveniences and health risks to be acceptable trade-offs for a lifestyle that they say has made them immeasurably happier. “There’s a sense of timelessness,” I heard from one woman who asked not to be named, not wanting to insult people she’d spent time with before going nocturnal. “It feels like you’re in a free-floating abyss.” The night gives you freedom—from expectations, from obligations, and from distractions. It allows you to just be. “The daytime forces all these identity possibilities on you,” Rufus told me. “The nighttime, with its silence and its darkness and its solitude, helps you settle more into who you really are.”
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