Good morning, RVA! It's 48 °F and drizzly. Today, after the rain moves out and on its way, you can expect cloudy skies and highs in the mid 60s. Tomorrow looks real wet, so plan accordingly. And I know it’s only Tuesday, but next week is shaping up to be an absolutely stunner—something to look forward to!
Water cooler
This coming Monday, City Council will consider RES. 2024-R007, which will tweak some of Council’s existing rules and procedures. The PDF describing all of those potential modifications is a 33-page document with track-changes turned on, and last week I just could not. So I am very thankful for Jesse Perry at RVA Dirt for summarizing most of what Council will consider on Monday. And, like Perry, I think it’s worth noodling on how the proposed changes to public comments at City Council will work.
For those new to Council meetings: Each week there are a set number of slots for folks to give public comments that do not have anything to do with any particular agenda item. To get on that list, you email the City Clerk, let them know you’re interested, and give them a really brief description of what you’d like to comment on. For example, here’s the list of speakers for this coming Monday’s meeting. It’s a fun part of the City Council Ritual and an opportunity to address the full body on topics they haven’t yet, but maybe should!, consider. The quality of the comments varies greatly from week to week, but they’re usually interesting, thoughtful, and give councilmembers something to think about.
The proposed legislation would make two decent-sized changes to the existing process. First, if you bail on your public comment slot without cancelling ahead of time, you’re banned from public comment for 90 days. This seems fair to me. It’s just common courtesy, and allows for more folks to have their say. Second, commenters would be required to provide “a detailed and complete description of what their topic will be that provides the Clerk with an understanding of which City agency the comments pertain to or affects” (sections in bold are new, added language). It’s not clear to me what happens if the commenter does not provide a “detailed and complete” description of their topic, and I hope that a subjective definition of “detailed and complete” is not used to prevent folks from giving their comments. Honestly, I think the Clerk probably just wants to make sure the right City staff are in the room, and sometimes it’s hard to figure that out from the one-sentences descriptions. I wonder if there’s a way to clean that language up so the Clerk has what they need and we’ve not added any unnecessary friction to the public comment process?
Council will consider this paper on Monday, so, if you’ve got thoughts or feelings, send them to your person (and their liaison!) this week.
Jack Jacobs at Richmond BizSense reports on the never-ending saga of Richmond’s Public Safety Building: “After initially pondering construction of a new School of Dentistry on the site of the city-owned Public Safety Building, VCU says it is now planning the project on another downtown parcel that’s already controlled by the university.” So with that potential use off the table, what will now happen to the always-a-bridesmaid-never-a-bride Public Safety Building? Who can say! Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that “it is unclear what the city will do with a vacant plot at the heart of the city. A spokesperson for Richmond did not respond to a request for comment Monday.” Stay tuned, I suppose (but I hope it’s housing).
I’m required to link to this article by Jonathan Spiers, also in Richmond BizSense, about the upcoming zoning ordinance rewrite—this is, after all, Richmond’s premier daily zoning and rezoning email newsletter! I think y’all mostly know everything Spiers covers, but it is a good reminder that if you’re interested in serving on the Zoning Advisory Council (which is a pretty serious commitment), you have until March 19th to apply.
Mayor Stoney is now a father! His daughter, Sunday Washington Stoney, was born this weekend. From the very brief and very sweet release: “Brandy and I are excited to share that we welcomed our daughter, Sunday Washington Stoney, into the world this past weekend. We feel very blessed and are overwhelmed with love for our baby girl! Lastly, we would like to thank the incredible teams at the Virginia Women’s Center and St. Mary’s Hospital for their exceptional support and care."
It’s Super Tuesday, and, honestly, I’d nearly forgotten. The day is worth mentioning, though, mostly because a lot of schools have closed. Folks you run into will have had to scramble for childcare and may be a little more frazzled than normal this morning. Also, you might see some kids up to no good—using their day off to get outside and explore the world. I’m very jealous of them.
As for the political aspect of Super Tuesday, it gets a big shrug emoji from me. To be clear, that is absolutely not how I will feel in November when I fill out my mail-in ballot for Joe Biden the instant it arrives. But an uncontested Democratic race, a rainy morning, and other more exciting things to focus on...I hope you won’t fault me for a lack of excitement!
This morning's longread
The Supreme Court Must Be Stopped
I saw this headline and was kind of like, “OK, The Nation, eye roll.” But, after reading the whole thing, I dunno! What if we did stop treating the Supreme Court a little less like robed royalty and, instead, a little more like how we treat every other political figure in the United States? In Mystal’s words: “The first step toward stopping the Supreme Court’s political actions is to treat the justices as political actors and subject them to all of the scrutiny, pressure, and protest normal political actors face every day.“
I think of the Supreme Court the way Batman thinks of Superman: an extremely powerful being who is untethered from the laws of physics and therefore must always be considered a threat to free society. Batman never falls for Kal-El’s space-copaganda and always has a plan to protect himself and his city just in case Clark gets super mad one day. We must regard the Supreme Court with that level of skepticism. These people are not our friends; they are not here to help, and at any moment they can take from us that which we should value most: our ability to democratically govern ourselves. The court has been taking that away from us, fairly consistently, for the past 24 years, ever since it anointed George W. Bush as president in 2000 despite the fact that Bush lost the popular vote and likely would have lost the electoral count had all the votes (both undervotes and overvotes) been recounted in Florida. We failed to punish the court for its overreach then, and that failure has only emboldened the court to become what it is today.
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Picture of the Day
I’m starting to become a connoisseur of convention center architecture.
