Good morning, RVA! It's 71 °F, and today looks cloudy and humid. Expect highs near 90 °F and maybe some rain this afternoon or evening. Cooler weather moves in tomorrow, which I’m excited about. I think screen-porch season is right around the corner!
Water cooler
Over the weekend, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Chris Suarez reported on the region’s rising property assessments. On average, property values increased by 12.4% in Chesterfield, 11.2% in Richmond, and 10.6% in Henrico. The two Zip Codes that saw the largest percentage increase, however, were on the City’s Southside. Richmond’s Assessor says lack of supply and rising rents have contributed to the increase in housing costs. Richmond’s 8th District Councilmember, Reva Trammell, wants to drop the City’s real-estate tax rate in response to these new assessments, and, I get it. Folks who have owned their homes forever—especially older folks—have seen non-trivial increases to their real estate tax bill over the last couple of years. For some people, that could definitely break their budget. However, once you lower the real estate tax rate it never, ever goes up again, and, at some point in the future, Richmond may need that additional real estate tax revenue. I think what I’d like to see is twofold: 1) Continue to use a portion of this new, additional revenue to build more and more affordable housing, 2) Have someone put together a detailed analysis on how switching to a Land Value Tax would impact folks with lower incomes who are bearing a disproportionate burden of the rising assessments. Given the lack of local authority to provide tax relief to specific people, I think we need to be creative in our solutions here. And I’m not convinced that a flat, 4-cent reduction in the real estate tax would actually do anything for the people who need relief most.
The RPS School Board meets this evening for the first time since they called an emergency meeting to discuss the District’s SOL scores—but then failed to take any actions. You can find their very full agenda here. Despite lots of things to get through, I imagine the Board will spend the majority of their time on the academics and curriculum updates—67- and 41-page presentations respectively. Flipping through those two exhaustive PDFs, which you should definitely do, and I’m overwhelmed by the amount of information! I bet Boardmembers will be too, and I’m interested in how they react and the types of questions they ask when presented with reams of data.
While we’re talking Richmond government, Council will also meet tonight with kind of a nothingburger agenda. Unless I’m missing something, it looks like mostly Special Use Permits, items continued until a future meeting, and a couple papers that have been floating around on the agenda for months and months. Probably the most interesting thing to note is that they’ll officially strike the ranked-choice voting paper from the agenda (ORD. 2022-119).
AXIOS Richmond has a neat summary of a new report about the costs of commuting: “The average cost of commuting in Richmond this year is $2,202...that’s less than the national average, but the year-over-year increase — 41% — was greater here.” If you cut that by commuting via bikes, public transportation, and carpooling half the time you could afford a pretty nice new bike...every single year!
Nathaniel Cline at the Virginia Mercury reports that only 10% of commonwealth’s school districts have adopted the Virginia Department of Education’s model policies for transgender and nonbinary students—despite it being law! Democrats in the General Assembly may consider “including some incentives or penalties” to encourage School Boards to adopt the policies, but that sounds like a dead end to me given the current make up of the GA. I am worried about what other laws local School Boards may just decide not to follow in the future.
Do you know a motivated high schooler who wants to spend time “researching issues affecting teens in the City of Richmond and planning, promoting, and facilitating a series of sessions to bring youth together to discuss solutions to the issues faced by teens”? Maybe gently nudge them to submit an application to the Mayor’s Youth Academy? You can learn more about the program over on the City’s website, and applications are due by 5:00 PM on Wednesday, September 16th.
This morning's longread
Killing Invasive Species Is Now a Competitive Sport
I’d have happily read twice as many words about people’s attempts to control the invasive lionfish populations in America. I wouldn’t have guessed that about myself!
Lionfish can be dangerous: their spines contain one of the most powerful neurotoxins in the aquatic world; their Mohawk is venomous, as are the two spikes on their pelvic fins and the three by their anal glands. Like most lionfish hunters, Bowman has been stung repeatedly—at least thirty times, she told me. She wears gloves when she dives, but that makes little difference. “You can tell me you have a puncture-proof glove, blah blah blah,” she said. “But I’m gonna laugh at you.” In rare cases, the venom can cause paralysis in humans. Being stung, Bowman said, “feels like your bones and joints are pushing out...” She keeps four Vicodin in her dive bag.
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