Good morning, RVA! It's 73 °F, and today looks like another hot day in Central Virginia—maybe not surface-of-the-sun hot but probably wrong-side-of-Mercury hot. Highs will hover just below 100 °F, while the Feels Likes will almost certainly hit triple digits. Stay inside if you can, hydrate and wear a hat if you can’t, and wait for the relief that’ll show up this weekend. Just a couple more days to go!
Water cooler
Yesterday, City Council held a special meeting to introduce a new resolution to “express support for the dedication of revenue from the proposed destination resort and casino to fund a Child Care and Education Trust Fund and the construction of certain early childhood care centers.” I was bleh about it then, and I’m bleh about it now, but, in the intervening time, the City sent out both a press release and an FAQ about how they’ll invest the Casino 2.0 revenue should they get voter approval this November. First an important correction/update: Yesterday, I complained that I thought revenue from a Southside casino should be used on Southside projects, and it sounds like, at least to an extent, it will. The Casino 2.0 developers will give the City an upfront payment of $26.5 million, and the Mayor’s proposing to allocate $14 million of it toward constructing new child care centers at T.B. Smith and Southside Community Centers, both on the city’s Southside. $8 million would go to Parks and Rec projects across the city and the remaining $4.5 million would seed the Child Care and Education Trust Fund. We are definitely in the midst of a childcare crisis, and I’m certainly not against pouring money into local solutions that help families find and afford childcare. However, this is still not an either-or situation! I do not need to vote yes on a predatory casino to be supportive of establishing a childcare trust fund! If this is a good idea, and it sounds like it probably is, we can and should find other ways to fund it. Is the Mayor’s proposal to cut the real estate tax by two cents still on the table? Maybe keep the tax where it is and dedicate that revenue to the trust fund? Listen, I’m not a budgetologist, but I do know that a proposed casino that’s already been voted down by voters once is not the only source of cash under the sun. Allan-Charles Chipman puts it better in today’s Michael Paul Williams column, saying “...for developers to get what they need, they can come to the bargaining table and get millions of our money in incentives, but for Southside to get child care they have to go to the blackjack table.”
The City’s Department of Public Works announced they’ll start work this week on new bike lanes along Carnation Street from Hioaks Road to Midlothian Turnpike. The Southside, after a couple of years of hard work and focus, now has the foundation of a pretty nice bike lane network! It’s not perfect or complete, but, unlike just a couple of years ago, you can now get to actual places by bike using actual bike infrastructure. Shout out to Councilmember Mike Jones for really making this a priority and to the Mayor and DPW for making it happen.
Wow, read this story by VPM’s Whitney Evans about a developer in Church Hill who ignored the City’s Commission on Architectural Review and razed two 100-year-old storefronts. The penalty? $200. I don’t think the City has any recourse here, but clearly there should be some steeper, non-fine penalties for just blatantly ignoring requirements, processes, and commissions!
Here’s a bad sentence from the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s David Ress: “In the rush to end this year’s state budget impasse, General Assembly negotiators dropped a $100 million promise to help fund Richmond’s 34-year effort to make sure heavy rains don’t overwhelm its sewers and start carrying sewage into the James River.” That’s the money the Governor promised the City for updates to our sewer system that will help prevent Combined Sewer Overflow events (one of this newsletter’s favorite topics). Honestly, I think this is a big Hanlon’s razor situation, as Ress reports that the $100 million “seems to have been lost in the shuffle” to get to this year’s super-late budget compromise. I expect this money to eventually find its way back in the budget, but this snafu shows there can be real consequences to farting around with the budget outside of the normal and established process!
Richmond Magazine’s Bird Cox opens her piece about pawpaw season with “Gasp! Someone posted on Instagram or Reddit that they found a ripe pawpaw. This must mean that we’ve got … maybe a week or two to find some for ourselves.“ This exact thought went through my head just minutes ago when I saw someone post a picture of a pawpaw over on /r/rva. Pawpaws are the largest native fruit in North American but have the shortest, most elusive season—just a couple weeks in September. So if you’re interested, get down to the James River Park System and see if you can find a few to take home today.
This morning's patron longread
Vultures Prevent Tens of Millions of Metric Tons of Carbon Emissions Each Year
Submitted by Patron Roslyn. Did you know that vultures’ volunteer road-cleaning services keep millions of tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere? That’s pretty neat! Did you also know that this past weekend was International Vulture Awareness Day? Tap through to read a bit more about the big birds with a bad rap and learn why they’re worth learning more about.
Decaying animal bodies release greenhouse gases, including carbon dioxide and methane. But most of these emissions can be prevented if vultures get to the remains first, a new study in Ecosystem Services shows. It calculates that an individual vulture eats between 0.2 and one kilogram (kg) of carcass per day, depending on the vulture species. Left uneaten, each kg of naturally decomposing carcass emits about 0.86 kg of CO2 equivalent. This estimate assumes that carcasses not eaten by vultures are left to decay. But many carcasses are composted or buried by humans, which result in more emissions than natural decay, so vulture consumption can avert even more emissions when replacing those methods. The avoided emissions may not sound like much, but multiply those estimates by the estimated 134 million to 140 million vultures around the world, and the number becomes more impressive: tens of millions of metric tons of emissions avoided per year.
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
I stopped by the new roller rink at the Hotchkiss Community Center the other day, and it is beautiful!
