Good morning, RVA! It's 44 °F, and today you can expect more of these warmer temperatures with highs in the mid 60s. We may see a few showers sprinkled about here or there, so keep an eye out. Other than that, enjoy!
Water cooler
Here’s a fascinating email I got from Councilmember Robertson’s office about a “community agreement” reached with Carolina Express Convenience Store. Tap through to read the terms of the agreement, which are pretty intense, and I’m kind of surprised the City or the State or the Whoever has the authority to enforce some of these. Specifics aside, I’m pretty sure that this announcement is related to RES. 2022-R073, patroned by the Councilmember, which passed back in December and asked the City to start a rezoning process which would sort of ban convenience stores in large swaths of Richmond. At the time I thought it was bad legislation and a misuse of the process; we shouldn’t rewrite our citywide zoning ordinance to solve specific issues at a specific store. Turns out, I still think this! Now, though, I wonder that since the specific problems have been addressed, will the City just kind of forget about this far-reaching resolution?
Tonight at 6:00 PM, the City’s Charter Review Commission will meet for the first time to begin conducting a comprehensive review of Richmond’s Charter. Our Charter, a long and tediously wonderful document, lays out the nuts and bolts of how our city functions—stuff like its roles and responsibilities, the structure of our government, and how we elect our representatives. Do you hate the popularly-elected mayoral system and how it pits City Council against the Mayor in an unhelpful way? Do you wish we had fewer City Council districts and maybe even a couple at-large Councilmembers? The Charter is what you’d need to update to make any of those changes. Unfortunately, because we live in Virginia and the State doesn’t trust cities to do much of anything on their own, all changes to the Charter have to be approved by the General Assembly. That really puts a damper—and a limit—on the types of changes we can make. That said, this is still a useful and helpful process, and one that you can totally participate in: All of the Commission meetings, including tonight’s, are open to the public, and they’ll soon lay out their public engagement timeline which should include a survey, a website, and public input sessions. It’s been a good, long while since we’ve taken a look at the current Charter and made a list of what we’d like to fix, and I’m pretty excited about kicking off this process.
A quick update on the scramble to fill Jennifer McClellan’s seat (assuming McClellan wins the upcoming general election on February 21st): Former mayoral candidate Alexsis Rodgers has officially announced her campaign for the State Senate (Twitter).
This morning in Axios Richmond, Karri Peifer does a good job of pointing out racial disparities in electric vehicle charger locations. As you might have guessed, Richmond’s white neighborhoods are way more likely to have access to a charger—2.69 times as likely as majority-nonwhite neighborhoods. If we’re going to quickly transition our entire transportation sector off of gasoline, which we definitely should, we’ll need a ton more chargers and they’ll need to be equitably located. I think this is something the City could get creative about in the coming years.
Next Thursday, January 26th, you can join the Partnership for Housing Affordability for their annual State of Housing in the Richmond Region event. Attendees will hear from keynote speaker Jenny Schuetz, author of _Fixer Upper: How to Repair America's Broken Housing Systems_, who will “provide national perspectives on how the Richmond region can meet the challenges of today by offering practical solutions to make housing more accessible.” You might also see a few elected officials and policy makers on the schedule as the Partnership unveils new data on the region’s housing needs—which will almost certainly either bum you out or inspire you to action (depending on your mindset at the moment). The event is free, but registration ends today!
This morning's longread
More brief thoughts on the end of Twitter apps
More of a shortread from Manton Reece, creator of Micro.blog, on the in-progress demise of Twitter. Make sure you tap through on the links in this piece, too—they’re all worth your time. P.S. If you haven’t put any thought into moving the internet-based content you create to a place you yourself own, there’s no better time than now!
Everyone had a different last straw with Twitter. It helped to have a villain in Elon Musk who could be blamed for every bad decision in the growing narrative of Twitter acquisition chaos. But one problem with pinning everything on Elon is that it leaves open the possibility that maybe Twitter would be fine if the company was led by a different CEO who continued the Twitter API status quo. I don’t think so. Twitter wasn’t going to last forever because massive ad-based silos will always be at odds with the open web. Twitter’s recent implosion greatly accelerated what would need to happen regardless.
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Picture of the Day
Tree graffiti.
