Good morning, RVA! It's 58 °F, and our streak of warm-but-wet weather continues. Today you can expect highs near 70 °F with a good chance of wind and rain throughout the day. Honestly, sort of seems like a great day to stay inside, if you can. Cooler weather returns tomorrow!
Water cooler
Remember last week when the Richmond Crusade for Voters put out a press release that called for the RPS School Board to fire Superintendent Kamras? At the time, I said ignoring the impact COVID-19 has had on our school district was unfair, School Board Chair Stephanie Rizzi cautioned against putting all the blame for every challenge facing RPS on to one person, and City Council’s Education and Human Services committee agreed with her (in a public statement). Now, it sounds like RCV’s membership may also have some concerns with the group’s original sentiments. Here’s the full text of a new press release I found in my inbox yesterday:
On February 19, 2024, the Richmond Crusade for Voters Board of Directors voted to publish its opinion that RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras be removed from office. However, the membership of the Crusade for Voters is continuing to review and discuss this matter.
Wanna read something gross? Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the Governor has proposed $322 million in toll relief in Hampton Roads that he hopes will convince Sen. Louise Lucas to include his big arena plans in the Senate’s version of the budget. Gross because I bet it works, but also because toll relief just encourages more driving while, simultaneously, we can’t find the money to support public transportation. WMATA faces a massive budget shortfall that will most likely lead to a 12.5% fare increase for riders come July.
Richmond BizSense’s Jonathan Spiers reports on the City’s unveiling of their master plan for the Shockoe slavery commemorative site. Dubbed The Shockoe Project, “the plan calls for the 62,000-square-foot museum to be located at the north end of the Shockoe Bottom African Burial Ground, a grassy area north of Broad Street between Interstate 95 and the train tracks. The grounds site also would include a memorial, a walking path and a 2,200-square-foot retail and restaurant pavilion fronting Broad Street.” I know we’ve all seen a couple rounds of renderings for this project, and it sort of seems like we’re stuck in an infinite loop of meetings, plans, and sweeping images of what could one day be. But! There is, in fact, a lot of actual money actually allocated—like $38 million of it. So something will happen, but it’s likely going to take a long, long time: The aforelinked Shockoe Project website says construction on the first phase will start this fall, but it’ll take until at least 2037 to wrap the whole entire thing. Here’s the PDF of the actual master plan, and you’ll probably want to flip to the Design chapter (which starts on page 75).
Hey, check this out! You can watch Jason Roop’s City Council Pre-Show (which needs a clever name—I’ll noodle on it) over on the City’s legislative website. Tap through to see an amazing intro animation and tune, and then a quick interview with Councilmember Addison about the 1st District, his newly-launched mayoral campaign, and some of his perspective on Richmond’s governance after working closely with the City for the past bunch of years. Make sure you stick around for the lighting-round questions at the end, too. Roop then gets a hold of Councilmember Newbille to talk through the legislation that would move those historically Black cemeteries under City ownership. Good stuff, and I’m excited to see the show evolve (Rappin’ with Roop? I’ll keep thinking).
Robin Schwartzkopf at RIC Today has a nice primer on the planned rewrite of the City’s zoning ordinance. Love to see it!
FYI, if you’ve gotten deep into following the City’s Cultural Heritage Stewardship Plan as it works it’s way through The Process, maybe stop by one of two open houses they’ll host today:
- Main Library (101 E. Franklin Street), from 11:00 AM – 1:00 PM
- Hickory Hill Community Center (3000 E. Belt Boulevard), from 5:00 – 7:00 PM
This plan will try its best to help the City balance historic preservation with a desperate need to build more homes for more humans, and, I think, with the right amount of thoughtfulness, it could have a pretty big impact. We’ll see. If you stop by today, let me know how it went!
This morning's patron longread
Will America ever stop building more highways?
Submitted by Patron Benjamin. Betteridge’s Law of headlines would say that, no, no we are not ever going to stop building more highways. But, even in just the last ten years, I’ve started to see more successful opposition to big highway expansion projects across the country and more normal people question why we spend millions and millions of dollars to build the new and bigger highways that are killing our planet. Weirdly, I have a small amount of hope! That said, our own regional planning body, right here in Richmond, wants to spend $100 million of public funds on widening I-64. So, like, we’ve still got some work to do.
But experts argue that expansion projects do little to reduce traffic congestion — and add to the country’s climate problems. Almost 30 percent of U.S. carbon emissions come from transportation — most of it from cars and trucks. While interstate highways make up only around 1 percent of the nation’s roads, they carry around a quarter of its traffic. “We continue to spend significant amounts of money at the federal level and at the state level expanding our highway networks,” said Tony Dutzik, a senior policy analyst with Frontier Group. “Given the climate issues that we are already facing — and the fact that we are already building out a massive highway network around the country — I think it’s legitimate to ask whether that’s the right set of priorities.”
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
A good, soaking rain.
