Good morning, RVA! It's 39 °F, and today looks a lot like yesterday—which was amazing! Expect sunshine, highs in the mid 60s, and every reason in the world to take a stroll around the neighborhood. Temperatures start to drop and look a little more March-like as the week goes on, and, by the end of the week, we'll probably see highs just in the 40s.
Water cooler
OK! Today is one of City Council's biggest days of the year! At 1:30 PM, the Mayor's administration will present the new Capital Improvement Plan to the Planning Commission, and at 3:00 PM the Mayor himself will present his fresh and shiny proposed budget to City Council. You can, of course, tune in live over on the City's legislative website. This budget season, Councilmember Jones, in his first budget season as City Council president, has decided to switch up the process a bit. Instead of having each City department come and present on the year that was (which, honestly, was one of my favorite parts of budget season), he'll have the CAO give presentations on the portions of the budget that apply to each department. The idea is that more concise presentations will leave more time for Council to have their own debates and discussions. I'm a little bummed because I loved the presentations, but this New Way is probably a good idea. You can listen to Councilmember Jones describe the new process himself over on the Boring Show, which I got up and running over the weekend. If you're not familiar, get excited because the Boring Show is a podcast of the audio from budget-related public meetings. It's a useful tool for time-shifting budget season and keeping up with the hours of meetings while cooking dinner, folding laundry, or commuting to work (especially if you listen at 2x speed). So far I've uploaded February 27th's initial Council budget work session (where Jones describes the above new process) and March 2nd's Education and Human Services committee featuring Superintendent Kamras and the RPS budget. Subscribe here and learn more than you ever wanted to know about how the City works!
Related, the Planning Commission meets today to not only receive the proposed Capital Improvement Plan (which, remember, is the City's multi-year plan on how to spend money on stuff...like buildings, vehicles, parks, that sort of thing) but also to discuss a handful of zoning amendments related to the Diamond District. Instead of creating an entirely new "baseball stadium zoning district," the Department of Planning and Development Review wants to make a few tweaks to the existing TOD-1 zoning district. You can flip through their presentation here and should probably pencil in the March 14th community meeting on your calendar to learn more details.
The Virginia Public Access Project has a neat infofeature that shows each of our state legislators' “batting average” for this past legislative session—aka what percentage of the bills they introduced actually passed. As a whole, the General Assembly passed 43% of the introduced bills. The legislators ending the session with the best records were Sen. Janet Howell (D) with a perfect 3 for 3 and Sen. Todd Pillion (R) clearing an impressive 12 of 14. Sen. Amanda Chase (R) whiffed on a all 19 of her bills, and Del. Dave LaRock (R) struck out each of his 17. Interestingly, Del. Todd Gilbert (R) was the only legislator to submit nothing (excluding "commending and memorializing resolutions, bills carried over from 2022 and the budget bill"). So what can you learn from this data set? I actually have no idea, but it's fun to poke around in.
D. Hunter Reardon at Richmond Magazine reports that Friends of Pump House have landed $500,000 in federal money to help renovate the spooky, gothic structure. Built in 1883, the Pump House is one of those things that I forget is there and then stumble across it every once in a while and am reminded that Richmond's nooks and crannies are full of weird old things.
The Richmond Black Restaurant Experience started yesterday and continues on through this coming Sunday, March 12th. This year, you can eat at one of almost 50 different Black-owned restaurants, with some of the proceeds benefiting the Urban League of Greater Richmond Young Professionals. Talk about an easy way to rationalize increasing your eating-out budget this week!
It's Richmond Invasive Species Awareness Week, which you probably had already heard about—unless you live under a rock that's been consumed by a slow-moving living tidal wave of English Ivy. Tap through the previous link for a bunch of ways you can help rid our parks of some of the most destructive invasive species. If you're interested, make sure you sign up over on HandsOn Greater Richmond’s website.
This morning's longread
Accessibility: Try, then Listen
I found this widely applicable and thoughtful advice in, of all places, a blog by a developer working on an Apple Watch app. My mind immediately goes to street infrastructure (of course), where localities could install temporary infrastructure like barrels or cones, let folks experience the change, and then, as the author puts it, "seek to understand the 'why' of what they are experiencing not just the 'what'."
It is essential to not let the feeling of being unsure about the best approach to mean that you don’t take any approach at all. Rather I just get started and try. Get something built that users can react to and use. Then, the second step is to not be complacent and feel like you have “checked the box”. Instead, you open up avenues for feedback and when folks take the time to reach out, then listen. Seek to understand the ‘why’ of what they are experiencing not just the ‘what’. Is there a fundamental disconnect between your own mental model of how something is being used? Can you find a way to accommodate for a wider audience? Did you just plain miss something that you can straightforwardly fix? Excellent…then start the cycle again and try to fix it.
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Picture of the Day
A beautiful natural gradient and the unnecessarily dangerous grill of a passing truck.
