Good morning, RVA! It's 42 °F, and today stays cool with highs in the mid 60s. You can expect clear skies for the next couple of days, and you should definitely plan a couple of ways to take advantage of them because sure looks like rain will move into the region on Friday (and possibly Sunday, too).
Water cooler
Last night, City Council voted unanimously to eliminate parking minimums across all of Richmond (ORD. 2023-101)! This is amazing news and is entirely the result of advocates like you, reader of this email newsletter, working to push councilmembers to build a more progressive and climate-friendly future for our city. I think Twitter user @DFRSH757 gets it right, saying, “Make no mistake this is a big step. No half-measures or special carve outs. Proud of council for being bold. Creating an affordable, accessible, & climate-conscious city takes 1000 cuts but this a big important cut.” I couldn’t agree more! The biggest impact of last night’s vote may not be the policy itself, but Council publicly showing they are willing to take bold steps without futzing around the edges, requesting endless expensive studies, or watering down legislation at the last minute. With the rewrite of the City’s zoning ordinance on the horizon, these are promising steps in the right direction. Also, while they were busy making big parking moves, Council passed two other ordinances I had my eyes on: ORD. 2023-057 to unprohibit a roundabout at Laburnum and Hermitage and ORD. 2023-123 to purchase Mayo Island. All in all it was a great night for the GMRVA Legislation Tracker!
Also Council-related, today the City’s Chief of Fire and Emergency Services will give a presentation to Council’s Public Safety committee about “fire safety and school inspections.” For background: VPM’s Connor Scribner and Megan Pauly have done most of the reporting on Richmond Public Schools’ long list of fire code violations over the last seven years. One chart that stuck out to me from their comprehensive work was RFD documented inspections rate of Richmond schools from 2015 to 2022, which shows a steady decline until very recently (after the Fox Elementary School fire, the inspection rate has thankfully jumped back up to 100%). It’ll be interesting to hear what the Chief has to say this afternoon, because, while most of the public focus has been on RPS and their litany of violations, VPM also reports that “city fire officials said they'd been unaware of issues with inconsistent school inspections and follow-ups until the 2021 city audit” and “Richmond Fire Chief Melvin Carter attributed previous failures in the department's follow-ups to violations to ‘critical’ staffing shortages.” Sounds like a failure in process and staffing. Again, thankfully, the RFD has staffed up since then, and now hopefully Chief Carter has the tools he needs to work with RPS to make sure our City’s school buildings are safer.
Also also Council-related, Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports that the City has officially finalized a deal with the Diamond District developer last night. The much-needed replacement for the Diamond will now, fingers crossed, open in 2026—still a year after Major League Baseball’s new-stadium deadline. That makes me nervous, but I continue to believe it’d be stupid and unnecessary for MLB to up and move the Squirrels while actual construction of a brand new stadium was ongoing. I imagine we’ll get some sort of statement from the Squirrels or MLB in the next couple of days, so stay tuned and stay hopeful.
Ned Oliver at Axios Richmond reports that the DMV has unveiled a new design for driver’s licenses. Cool, sure, but more interesting to me is this final sentence: “DMV spokeswoman Jessica Cowardin says the agency plans to roll out digital IDs later this year.“ Yes! Some states, including Maryland, let you put a safe and secure digital version of your ID in your Apple Wallet. I’ve been wanting this for a while, and, I don’t know about you, but I’m excited to live in the longforetold physical-wallet-free future!
Via /r/rva, here’s an amazing news report about Short Pump from 1991. Be careful what you ask for, I guess!
This morning's patron longread
The Surprising Thing A.I. Engineers Will Tell You if You Let Them
Submitted by Patron Blake. I’m still reading almost every AI-related thing that comes across my inbox, because I’m still entirely fascinated by the topic. This piece in the New York Times looks at three different ways countries across the world are attempting to regulate AI, with none of them really getting at some of the core issues.
Among the many unique experiences of reporting on A.I. is this: In a young industry flooded with hype and money, person after person tells me that they are desperate to be regulated, even if it slows them down. In fact, especially if it slows them down. What they tell me is obvious to anyone watching. Competition is forcing them to go too fast and cut too many corners. This technology is too important to be left to a race between Microsoft, Google, Meta and a few other firms. But no one company can slow down to a safe pace without risking irrelevancy. That’s where the government comes in — or so they hope.
If you’d like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
Picture of the Day
Lazy river.
