Good morning, RVA! It's 66 °F, and today looks charming and wonderful from start to finish, with highs in the mid 80s and lots of sunshine. The three-day forecast says we’ve got a couple more days of this, so make some plans to get out there and enjoy it! Maybe explore a part of the James River Park that you’ve never experienced before?
Water cooler
Yesterday’s longread highlighted the success of Denver’s municipal e-bike subsidy program, which I think is fascinating and something Richmond should learn from and implement instantly. Folks from PlanRVA, one of our regional planning bodies, then pointed me to a pretty cool map they maintain that catalogs e-bike financial incentive programs across the country. So far, PlanRVA has marked 111 programs, in various states of implementation, with the average rebate value just over $800. This seems like another great resource for folks wanting to advocate for Richmond to create its own e-bike incentive program!
Michael Martz and David Ress at the Richmond Times-Dispatch report that state budget negotiations appear to have broken down just days ahead of the new fiscal year. Since Virginia operates on a biennial budget, which the General Assembly passed last year, you don’t need to worry about a government shutdown. However, any changes or updates—like tax rebates or state employee raises—are on hold until legislators figure out a compromise. The Governor, who doesn’t seem interested in rolling up his sleeves and getting involved in the negotiation work, said of his original, unrealistic proposal, “I put a reasonable budget in front of them...They should just send back to me what I sent to them and let's get this done.”
City Council’s Governmental Operations committee will meet today, which is one of the funner committees and gets to consider early versions of some of the meta ordinances and resolutions floating around. Today they’ll look at the possibility of creating a Public Utilities and Services Commission via ORD. 2023-188. The success of this new commission, should full Council give it a stamp of approval, totally depends on a million different execution details, but I’m still optimistic! We’ve got to start unhooking our city from its methane gas addiction, and this commission seems like a decent step in that direction. Also, get stoked, because the Director of the Department of Public Utilities, April Bingham, will give a presentation titled “Combined Sewer System Program Update.” Check out slide four for a really easy-to-understand graphic of how a Combined Sewer System works and slide six for a list of planned improvement projects—including the CSO Outfall 004 Improvement Project that I mentioned a little while back. Then, to bring you back down to a less exciting reality, slide nine will remind you that to implement DPU’s entire plan to renovate, rebuild, and rejigger our sewer system will cost well over a billion dollars. That’s federal-sized money, and the improvements we need to handle increasingly severe weather caused by climate change can’t happen with out it.
Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams responds to the recent ProPublica story about Richmond Public Schools and, basically, is tired of everyone’s BS. Me too, MPW, me too.
For people who can’t stop taking pictures of plants—a group in which I include myself—the Upper & Middle James Riparian Consortium want to create a Native Riparian Plant Guide and they need your photos! This sounds like an excellent excuse to get down to the river during this stretch of excellent weather and shoot a bunch of photos. The James River Association has all the details, including the list of trees and plants they’d like pictures of.
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the Charter! The Richmond City Charter Review Commission will meet again tonight, from 6:00–7:30 PM, in the 5th Floor Conference Room of City Hall (900 E. Broad Street). Tonight is a make-up for last week when the virtual meeting technology failed due to “inclement storm-related power, internet, and connectivity complications.” So, if you’ve still got thoughts and feelings on how to restructure Richmond’s government and haven’t yet shared them, this is a bonus public meeting just for you. If you’d like, you can flip through the meeting slides ahead of time to get up to speed.
This morning's longread
Republicans serve up red meat for a reason
I need to read a column like this every once in a while to remind myself that, generally, Republican legislators don’t have plans or policies. What they do is infuriating and continues to breaks important parts of our country’s systems and supports, but they don’t act this way because they think they have the answers to the pressing problems facing most folks. No, they want to keep, consolidate, and grow their own power. It’s helpful, for me at least, to remember that when reading whatever headline about their most recent ghoulish thing.
You get the picture. In the face of a real crisis, the would-be leaders of the United States have no real plan. You can go down the list of issues. What do the Republican presidential candidates have to say about gun violence and mass shootings? Well Haley, at least, says that we need to end “gun-free zones” and consider the use of “clear bulletproof tape” in schools. Beyond that, she and her rivals have had nothing substantive to say. Child poverty? Nothing. Mental health care? Very little in the way of actual policies. Ask the Republican presidential candidates about the “woke mind virus” or gender-affirming care, on the other hand, and you’ll hear an endless stream of comment and condemnation, all to the deafening applause of Republican voters.
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Picture of the Day
It rained like ten minutes after this photo. Still pretty, though.
