Good morning, RVA! It's 68 °F, and today looks a lot like yesterday. Expect highs in the mid-to-upper 90s and lots of sunshine. If you're spending time outside, do it early or late, and don't forget to hydrate! Cooler weather returns this weekend.
Water cooler
The Richmond Police Department reports (with the incredibly passive headline "Pedestrian Struck on East Broad Street") that a driver hit and killed a woman on the 1700 block of E. Broad Street during yesterday's rush hour. I ride through there all the time, and it's a busy, fast, and scary intersection that folks often walk through on the way to and from the hospital. That portion of Broad Street is on the High Injury Network and a handful of people have already been injured in the immediate area. We know it's dangerous—and now deadly—but what are we going to do about it?
The General Assembly should be on track to finally pass a state budget today, and the Virginia Mercury's Graham Moomaw has a really thorough breakdown of the compromises made on each side. Given the tenuous state of the Democrats' power in Virginia's government at the moment, I think what we ended up with is not too bad and could have been a lot worse. Many thanks to legislators like Sen. Jennifer McClellan who worked hard to hammer out these compromises while protecting some important priorities.
False alarm! We kind of already knew about the mystery Master Plan resolution introduced for expedited consideration at yesterday's City Council's special meeting. RES. 2022-R035 would include Richmond's public housing neighborhoods in the City's Master Plan as "priority investment neighborhoods," a slight shift from the original idea of including them as "priority growth nodes." The latter thing has a specific meaning in the language of Richmond 300: A priority growth node is "where the City is encouraging the most significant growth in population and development over the next 20 years." You can see how that's not necessarily what we want happening in our public housing neighborhoods, and, in a lot of ways, might even be counter to our equitable housing goals. The former thing, "priority investment neighborhoods," doesn't currently show up in the City's Master Plan, and the Planning Commission now has 120 days to figure it out and get an amendment together. I'm pretty interested in what they come up with. Unrelated but at that same meeting yesterday, Council also passed both the car tax extension (ORD. 2022-156) and direct funding for infant formula (ORD. 2022-154).
This seems complicated, troubling, and not yet fully sussed out, but Melissa Hipolit at WTVR reports that several RPS schools have malfunctioning? broken? fire alarm panels—including Fox Elementary. Hipolit wasn't able to get ahold of the Superintendent, so we don't have RPS's side of the story yet, which I'm sure we'll hear in the coming days.
Peggy Singlemann has some early summer gardening tips for you over at VPM. I love this one, which I've been doing since early March, "As the season progresses, continue to take weekly photos of the landscape and garden to document bloom cycles and locations. In the fall, these photos will guide decisions on what to plant and where to fill in the blooming lulls with flowers, foliage, or fruit interest." Plus, it's always fun to look at befores and afters.
This morning's longread
Bicycles Have Evolved. Have We?
This week, it seemed like every major publication had a review of Jody Rosen's new book, Two Wheels Good: The History and Mystery of the Bicycle. This one, by Jill Lepore in The New Yorker, is a delight on its own and well worth the read.
To ride a bike, Rosen points out, is to come as close to flying by your own power as humans ever will. No part of you touches the ground. You ride on air. Not for nothing were Orville and Wilbur Wright bicycle manufacturers when they first achieved flight, in Kitty Hawk, in 1903. Historically, that kind of freedom has been especially meaningful to girls and women. Bicycling, Susan B. Anthony said in 1896, “has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world.” I’ve always had a sneaking feeling that, somehow, I owe it to feminism to pedal hard, weave through traffic, crave speed, curse at cars. A guy in my neighborhood wears a T-shirt that reads “Cyclopath.” In my mind’s eye, I’m that guy. Instead, I stop at yellow lights and smile at strangers, gushing with good will, giddy just to be out there.
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