Good morning, RVA! It's 72 °F, and today looks wet! Expect cooler temperatures, a pretty good chance of rain this morning, and plenty of humidity. At this point, I'm pretty stoked for any weather that's not dangerous and oppressive heat!
Water cooler
Today, City Council's Governmental Operations committee will meet and hear, what looks to be, an interesting presentation from the Department of Public Utilities about their planned rate increases. I don't know why I find this stuff interesting, but I do! Flip through the aforelinked PDF and be entertained by how much our natural gas, water, and stormwater costs and how each of those things are getting more expensive. I think most interesting to me is slide five, which says consumers are using less water and natural gas, but most of DPU's costs are basically fixed—which means, necessarily, that the cost per unit of those things will likely increase. First, we should do everything we can to continue moving away from using natural gas. Second, do most cities own the natural gas utility? I feel like there are weird incentives at play for the City to keep using and promoting natural gas as long as possible because it is the local natural gas company!
Unrelated, Gov Ops will also take a look at ORD. 2022-219, the new noise ordinance, which will prohibit folks from (loudly) protesting near health care facilities. That includes places that perform abortions, which was at least part of the impetus for this change. From the Ordinance: "No person shall operate a device or otherwise create sound which, when measured from any point on the property of a health care facility, exceeds 65 dBA between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. or 55 dBA between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 am." For context, 60 dBA is the volume of a normal conversation (but keep in mind the decibel scale is not linear!). Note that this new ordinance does totally delete and replace the old noise ordinance, so there may be other changes buried in the dark recesses of the text. I really wish, when wholesale legislative replacement like this happens, that there was an easy way to diff the old and new text. Or maybe the City's attorney could be required to provide a summary of the changes? I dunno, I'm sure the three other people that read ordinance PDFs also wish the current process were a bit better.
Axios Richmond's Karri Peifer points out that in a recent mosaic of Richmond's CEOs put together by Richmond BizSense—22 CEOs in total—all are men and 21 are white. I really encourage you to tap through the first link and experience the overwhelmingly rich, white, and male matrix for yourself. The one Black man on the list, Dynex Capital's Byron Boston, says "I find it difficult in this day and age, in a country that's very diverse, that this is what [Richmond's CEOs] look like."
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Eric Kolenich has a short update on the fate of the A.P. Hill monument, which is that, basically, court stuff is in progress. Here's a really interesting bit, though: "This month, a group of people claiming to be indirect descendants of Hill objected to the city’s decision to give away the statue. Hill has no direct descendants; his children had no children of their own."
Meg Schiffres at VPM reports on the Fonticello Food Forest that makes up a fun part of Carter Jones Park on the Southside. How cool is this: While volunteers maintain the garden, "all the plants in the food forest are open for public gleaning." I love the idea of public gleaning!
Richard Hayes at RVAHub has some really nice photos of Carytown that he took as part of RVA Photographers Collective's latest assignment. This sounds like something I need to learn more about and get involved in!
This morning's longread
The Haves and the Have-Yachts
This article about the massively wealthy and their massively unnecessary superyachts will make you barf. It's like a 1%er trainwreck that I couldn't look away from or stop reading.
In any case, an airplane is just transportation. A big ship is a floating manse, with a hierarchy written right into the nomenclature. If it has a crew working aboard, it’s a yacht. If it’s more than ninety-eight feet, it’s a superyacht. After that, definitions are debated, but people generally agree that anything more than two hundred and thirty feet is a megayacht, and more than two hundred and ninety-five is a gigayacht. The world contains about fifty-four hundred superyachts, and about a hundred gigayachts. For the moment, a gigayacht is the most expensive item that our species has figured out how to own.
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