Good morning, RVA! It's 80 °F already, and that’s unpleasant. Today you can expect highs right around 100 °F—which is about 10 degrees warmer than today’s average high and brings with it an Excessive Heat Warning. Same deal from yesterday applies: Stay shut inside your home, if you can, make smart choices, and remember to hydrate. Cooler temperatures move in next week!
Water cooler
Remember how Richmond’s Electoral Board eliminated all the early in-person voting locations other than their extremely hard-to-reach office at the end of Laburnum Avenue? Seems they may try to walk that back a bit, as the City Attorney says the Board doesn’t even have the authority (Twitter) to do that sort of thing. Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury has all the details, including the juicy bit that Governor Youngkin’s office also thinks the Board may have overstepped. Yesterday, I didn’t think there was much to be done about the Board’s decision, but, today’s a new day, and, after the flurry of lawyer letters, press conferences, and social media posts, the Board may have had a slight change of heart: They announced they’ll meet on August 4th at 10:00 AM to (re)discuss satellite voting locations. P.S. I think this is the first major public move by the City’s new attorney, and I’m into it!
This morning, City Council’s Education and Human Services committee sent out a public memorandum to the City’s CAO outlining “clear recommendations to City Administration directly adressing increased challenges facing unhoused Richmond families, children, and vulnerable populations.” I think this memorandum—basically an open letter to the Mayor’s Administration from a Council committee with “the support of the full body of Council”—is fascinating and certainly not a tool you see councilmembers use frequently. The Committee sets out two recommendations that they’d like to see implemented immediately, three they’d like to work on in the near future, and reminds the Administration that they’ve got a full report due on September 14th. Council could definitely go about most of these things (other than the immediate actions) by passing an official resolution, so using this quicker, more public avenue is pretty interesting. Go read the whole thing for yourself, but I think there’s tension here between the Council and the Mayor and it probably involves how existing funding is being allocated among current partner organizations. The Committee asks that the Administration attend the September 5th Organizational Development committee meeting to “update Council on steps taken.”
VPM’s Lyndon German reports on highway funding in Henrico and Hanover Counties. Content warning: You may boil over in a rage as you read about the orders-of-magnitude difference in spending between highway widenings and human-scale infrastructure like sidewalks. They’re not even comparable, and a “multimillion-dollar sidewalk” (just $1.85 million) should not balance spending “$200 to $300 million” on building more interchanges on Broad Street. You could build 115 miles of sidewalk for $300 million—heck, even with the $100 million price range for the interchanges you could lay down 38 miles of new sidewalk. And don’t even get me started on how Hanover County officials are quoted saying “we’ve gotten a lot more requests and needs for pedestrian improvements than we can anticipate funding,” when they’re looking to spend more than $25 million on widening Pole Green Road. Gah! If anyone wants a fun project, I think it’d be incredibly useful to have a couple bar charts comparing regional and local spending on highways and road widenings vs. pedestrian, bike, and public transit projects. We have to start putting these conversations in context, because our regional infrastructure spending priorities are out of whack!
Yesterday, former president Donald Trump was indicted, but not in the way everyone thought he’d be. That makes three indictments, with a fourth pending. If you’re confused about all the different ways Trump broke the law and are having trouble keeping them all straight, I recommend subscribing to the indictment.fyi email as a straightforward and less doomscrolly way to stay up-to-date. You’ll get, at maximum, one email per day with everything you need to know, and I think that’s exactly the right amount of Donald Trump in my life at this point in time.
Reminder! NASCAR comes to town this weekend. If you live on the Northside, that means loud sounds floating on the evening air like a chorus of cicadas—but with a horrifying environmental impact. Honestly, and I have no idea why, the endless vehicular drone sort of comforts me at this point? Race days also mean traffic along Laburnum, so plan any trips out that way accordingly.
This morning's longread
How I Survived a Wedding in a Jungle That Tried to Eat Me Alive
This charming tale of human-versus-nature will definitely make you smile (or shudder) at least twice.
Luis, shirt off, smile forced, can’t resist. “Only 20 more minutes!” Rage boils up my throat, but before it can release, Ashley, our gummy bear of light and positivity, beats me to it. She wheels on the group with bulging eyes and clenched fists and screams, “You can’t do this to people!” followed by a shriek that would appall a howler monkey. Who is she yelling at? Luis? Angela and Suley for bringing her? Perhaps she’s yelling at the jungle itself. But the jungle can do whatever it wants to people. As far as the ticks and the scorpions and the fer-de-lance are concerned, we’re just another soft-skinned mammal. Another body to swallow in the mud. Another city to devour.
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Picture of the Day
Perfect.
