Good morning, RVA! It's 30 °F, and today looks warmer and, thankfully, less windy than yesterday. You can expect highs in the mid 50s and the start of a nice little warm streak—temperatures tomorrow and Friday will end up in the mid 60s!
Water cooler
OK! I got Council’s budget work session from this past Monday up on the Boring Show and you can listen here. I think if you’re only planning on listening to one single budget session (gasp! scoff!), this is the one I would pick for you. CAO Lincoln Saunders put together a really nice presentation overviewing both the operating and capital budgets and did a great job of explaining the Mayor’s priority investments. One graphic which caught the praise of several councilmembers was this one breaking the operating budget down into percentages and representing it as “cents out of every dollar.” So, for example, out of every dollar in the City’s budget, $0.23 goes towards education, $0.20 goes towards public safety, $.04 towards recreation and culture, and so on. I also heard tell of a “Budget in Brief” document that I want to get my hands on and add to my PDF library. As for notable topics, I think the discussions on assessments, gun violence, and housing are worth a listen. Especially the latter, as the CAO explains why the Mayor decided to fund affordable housing outside of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund (mostly due to restrictions on how ARPA dollars can be spent). I’d love some smart housing person to dig into this new funding plan from the City and let us all know their thoughts and feelings. Jahd Khalil at VPM details a few of the open questions. Anyway, the budget is important stuff and listening to this work session while you do the dishes or fold the laundry will make you a better citizen—plus, at 2x speed it’ll only take you about an hour to get through!
Richmond BizSense’s Mike Platania reports that City Council has given final final for real approval to a new restaurant in Byrd Park on the corner of Idlewood and Stafford. This is great news, because the folks behind the new spot (who also run New York Deli) have worked to bring a restaurant to that location for literal years! Because a restaurant is not an allowed use under the building’s current zoning, City Council had to pass an entire ordinance just for this one single property via its Special Use Permit process. That process gives incredible power to, as Platania puts it, a “handful of local residents opposed to the project”, who, with a little organizing, can completely derail or delay something that probably should be allowed by right. The amount of SUPs on Council’s agenda each and every week is why zoning is so important and why the City’s rewrite of its zoning ordinance is such a huge deal. With the rewrite, we’ve got the opportunity to start mixing our neighborhood uses together—residential right next to retail! It’s how the rest of the world does it, and I bet if folks take a second to think of their favorite places, they are almost certainly neighborhoods where you can walk across the street to something cool—something like a chill corner cafe!
Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams writes about a school-name switcheroo pulled by the Hanover County School Board. That County will soon consolidate Henry Clay and John M. Gandy elementary schools, and, back in 2018, the plan was to consolidate the name, too, to just “John M. Gandy.” It was an important decision, because, as MPW writes, the original Gandy “opened in 1950 to accommodate Black Hanover County students during a school segregation era that was long on ‘separate’ but short on ‘equal’...The school — named for a longtime Virginia State University president — was the first in Hanover to provide Black students with central heating and indoor plumbing.” Now Hanover’s School Board will backtrack on their decision and establish a committee to make naming recommendations for the new consolidated school. To quote MPW again: “Hanover has become the place where consensus goes to die.”
Tonight, at 6:00 PM, the Community Foundation for a Greater Richmond and the University of Richmond are hosting a virtual panel exploring “important insights and possible action steps around regional planning for our port and highways, as well as local projects to improve bus routes and bike lanes.” Of course, my actions steps for highways would be “spend less money on highways,” but the other stuff sounds interesting. Panelists include folks from the City, Henrico County, GRTC, Bike Walk RVA, and a reporter—I think you’ll recognize a lot of the names! The event is free, but you should register online to get the Zoom link.
This morning's longread
Miscellany № 99: minting the dollar
I found a blog about punctuation, and it is lovely.
Like most towns that host a centuries-old university, St Andrews boasts and/or suffers eye-watering housing costs, sticky-floored bars beloved by students and loathed by locals, and at least one quirky, ageless bookshop that looks like it has escaped from a Terry Pratchett novel. Cambridge has The Haunted Bookshop; Oxford has St Philip’s Books; Edinburgh has Armchair Books. We came across a fantastic example in St Andrews in the form of J&G Innes on South Street, one of the town’s main shopping streets...But at least as interesting as the shop’s commercial and architectural history is this sign above the door: “Here stood the house of BAILIE BELL, who, before 1744, was an eager co-worker with Alexander Wilson, the father of Scottish type-founding, and JOHN BAINE in whose type-foundry in Philadelphia the first $ sign was cast in 1797.”
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Picture of the Day
I’m mad about how the State ruined an entire block of Broad Street and doesn’t even really care.
