Good morning, RVA! It's 34 °F, and it looks like today will continue this weekend’s springlike temperatures. Enjoy highs in the 60s while we wait for warmer weather over the next couple of days. We’ve got a couple chances for rain this week, so make sure you find the time to get outside!
Water cooler
Whoa, you are definitely going to want to set aside some time this morning to read 5th District Councilmember Stephanie Lynch’s take on the whole George Wythe situation in her newsletter and accompanying memo. The memo in particular has a great timeline of the decisions made up to this point and a bunch of facts, figures, and tables illustrating how the plan to build a 2,000-seat George Wythe replacement is supported by several studies and comparable schools-building projects across the Commonwealth. First, I obviously love this kind of comprehensive explanatory work—especially from a sitting City Council member. Second, Lynch’s position is pretty thoughtful and interesting. From the newsletter: “I have voted two months in a row to transfer funds to the School Board so that we can move forward with the hopes that we can come to a compromise of 1,800 seats. I have offered many other compromise solutions as well to address concerns of financial mismanagement, (to include hiring a third-party auditor), as well as other solutions (see memo attached). As it stands, we are pushing forward with scheduled engagement sessions with community members (see schedule below) and students on what they would like to see in their new George Wythe High School - a vision that should be fully funded and supported with the resources it needs and deserves.“ So she’s clearly against building a smaller school that risks opening at capacity on day one, but she’s also willing to transfer the money to School Board (and has voted to do so). Fascinating!
Related, Councilmember Jordan also addressed George Wythe in her newsletter, saying, “As has been widely covered in the media, ORD. 2021-308, the paper to authorize transferal of $7 million for planning and design of a new George Wythe High School, failed to pass Monday. After voting “no” previously, I was one of the four to vote “yes.” I believe the additional public discourse and importantly, the opportunity for Council and School Board to meet in person, was worthwhile and hopefully will result in a community driven and collaborative construction process for a new and right-sized George Wythe High School. The paper can be revived at our next Council meeting, where it will again need six votes to pass. I encourage everyone following and engaging on school construction to continue paying attention, and to reach out to Council and School Board with your views.”
I can’t remember the last time we had so many councilmembers expressing their views on legislation outside of the speechifying time at City Council meetings. I love it!
Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury has an update on the slow goings of the state’s medical-marijuana-to-recreational-marijuana conversion. I thought for sure Virginia’s Republicans would find a way to open up retail sales this year and start raking in all of that new tax revenue—but I was wrong! We’re still stuck with this half measure that no one loves and is kind of the worst of both worlds. Masters reports that the most progress we’ll see this year is making medical marijuana cards a little easier to get.
Budget reminder: Today at 1:00 PM City Council will meet for their 6th budget meeting (and I still need to get their 5th meeting up on The Boring Show—they’ve lapped me!). You can find the full agenda here, but definitely make sure you tune in to the back half of the meeting when Director of Public Works Bobby Vincent will give a presentation on transportation and drainage!
Via r/rva this awesome 1970 video of Broad Street, Church Hill, and Downtown. You’ll recognize a lot of these spots, and it’s wild how little some of these places have changed in 50 years. The back half of the video shows some sort of protest or demonstration outside of a storefront, and now I need to know the details.
Also via /r/rva, an example of the wonderful power of the internet used for good! Someone asks, “I need help finding a very specific building in the Churchill area. I don't know what it is now but I know it used to be a school in the 50's, its a brick building that has steps leading to a door and directly above it there is another door that you cant get to from the outside.” Within the same day, someone responds: 21st & T. Amazing.
This morning's longread
The Invention of ‘Jaywalking’
Every couple of years I have to share when someone new discovers how the auto industry invited the term “jaywalking” and subsequently made all of our streets unsafe for people.
In 1925, fully one-third of all traffic deaths were children, and half of those kids were killed on their home blocks...Basically, car drivers were seen as selfish cretins who sociopathically risked slaughtering their fellow Americans just so they could arrive at a destination more quickly. Few pedestrians respected cars. Cities installed crosswalks, but people ignored them. When police officers in Kansas city tried to keep women out of the street, “women used their parasols on the policemen,” as one safety expert reported. Public opinion against cars became so sulphurous that, after years of car sales increasing, in 1924 sales went down by 12%. So the auto industry realized it needed to fight back. It did so using an incredibly clever gambit: By convincing pedestrians that traffic accidents were their fault.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
