Good morning, RVA! It's 44 °F, and, whoa, that was a lot of rain last night. I hope everyone made it through the night intact and unscathed. If so, today you can expect temperatures in the mid 50s, cloudy skies, and a persistent wind throughout most of the day. Henrico and Chesterfield public schools will open two hours late, so keep an eye out for different traffic patterns, kids unexpectedly wandering around, and frustrated parents scrambling to find child care.
Water cooler
Get excited nerds and state-level civic-minded humans, because the General Assembly will kick off their 2024 session today! This year, an even year, means the GA will meet for a long session which, lol, is just 60, short days. 60 days! To tackle all of the Commonwealth’s legislative and budgetary needs? Ridiculous! Honestly, it’s definitely too much for any one person to wrap their brains fully around, so I appreciate this piece by Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury that lays out 13 things to keep an eye on this session (none of which is the pizza). Also today, at 4:00 PM, Governor Youngkin will deliver his State of the Commonwealth address, described by the press release as when he will “outline his agenda to unleash opportunity for Virginia.” I don’t know why every initiative needs to sound like it’s ripped out of an X-Men comic, but, here we are, unleashing stuff on a Wednesday afternoon.
This morning, Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams weighs in on the City’s issues with collecting meals taxes from restaurants; you know things are serious when the Pulitzer Prize winner writes about it. Even if you’re already tired of this story, tap through and read to the end for a fun twist. Williams uses this current meals tax debacle to support the Charter Review Commission’s recommendation to move Richmond away from its strong mayor form of government. Here’s the quote: “As Richmond prepares to embark upon another mayoral election, it’s time to reconsider this two decade-old strong mayor system that too often prioritizes political goals over optimum municipal operation.” I love optimum municipal operation! Unfortunately, Council has likely pushed back making any big changes to the Charter until after the November election (and by “making,” I mean “politely asking the General Assembly to please allow us to change how we govern ourselves”). Once the new Council get settled, through, I’d love to see some movement on figuring out what’s next for our local government, because I’m with MPW, what we’ve got now could definitely be better.
Ohhhhhhhhh man: Ivy Main at the Virginia Mercury reports that someone has introduced a bill at this year’s GA that would allow localities to ban gas-powered leaf blowers! Could it be? Could my long, loud personal nightmare be coming to an end?? Probably not, because I’m not super optimistic about this bill’s chances of surviving the bill-becomes-a-law process. But! I’m really thankful to see someone doing something about the scourge of gas-powered leaf blowers.
Cool job alert! The City of Richmond is looking for a Sustainability Manager that “helps lead the City's sustainability programs and strategically develops, plans, and implements City and community-wide initiatives that support equitable sustainability and resilience priorities, as identified in RVAgreen 2050.” Surely at least a handful of folks out there would be a good fit for this role—can’t hurt to apply, right? The job posting closes on January 26th, so you’ve got plenty of time to get your application together. P.S. I found this posting in the RVAgreen 2050 newsletter, which I enjoy reading each month and which you can subscribe to here.
Operational note for folks who support this newsletter through the GMRVA Patreon: Make sure you update your payment information in their system when it changes or expires. This month, for whatever reason, saw a huge increase in the number of declined credit cards—enough that I felt like I should say something about it!
This morning's longread
A Theory of the Modern Exclamation Point!
Some great thoughts from Anne Helen Petersen about the usage of exclamation points in (mostly) workplace communication. Also, there’s a sentence about Henry James in here that made me feel seen.
When we talk about exclamation points, people often think we’re talking about tone. But what goes unsaid is that tone is the performance of niceness or seriousness. It is the work of matching sentence structure to gender norms, industry norms, workplace norms, and generational norms. It is switching norms dozens if not hundreds of times a day, as you shift from text to email, from group chat to professional Teams Message. And we are doing this Tone Work exponentially more than at any point in history.
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Picture of the Day
Ugh, Past Me needs to but the lid back on the Benadryl better.
