Good morning, RVA: Body-cam footage, a vote on collective bargaining, and 16 really great drone photos

If we make it through today, I think we can expect cooler temperatures
tomorrow.

Good morning, RVA! It's 76 °F, and today looks hot (again) with highs in the mid 90s. Storms might could roll in early this evening, bringing with them cooler temperatures and some relief for my poor, dry outside plants. The rest of this week looks a lot cooler than this past weekend, so get excited!

Water cooler

WRIC got ahold of Richmond Police Department body-cam footage from the night they tear-gassed peaceful protestors during the summer of 2020. I should have given myself a content warning, because I don't think I was ready to watch some of that video this morning—so consider yourself warned. Regardless, it's not a good look for the RPD. Hold tight, because I'm nearly certain that we'll see more of this footage once other reporters start combing through what police made available to the Library of Virginia as part of a legal settlement.

City Council will meet today for their regularly-scheduled meeting, the full agenda of which you can find here. It's a long one, with 37 items on the consent portion of the agenda—mostly special use permits and other ticky-tacky papers. The star of the show tonight, though, is ORD. 2022-221, the new collective bargaining compromise. Since the Mayor and all of City Council have signed on to this paper as patrons, and double since Council held a special meeting last week to introduce it, I don't have any doubts that this ordinance will pass quickly. After tonight's vote, the City will look to hire a Labor Relations Administrator, and employees in those five collective bargaining units (police, fire & emergency, labor & trades, professional, and administrative & technical) could start organizing. Units need signatures from 30% of the employees to hold an election and get their union certified by the LRA human. This sounds like a slowish/methodical process to me, so don't expect any city unions this summer—or maybe even this calendar year. I'm pretty interested in how this all turns out and excited to follow along.

Oh! One more City Council news item: While Council's consent agenda is mostly routine, they will also consider a handful of papers giving more than $600,000 in ARPA money to preschool programs across the city. Megan Pauly at VPM has the details, including the grant recipients: Fulton Montessori School, Greater Richmond SCAN, St. James’s Children’s Center, Friends Association for Children Endowment Fund Inc., the YWCA Richmond, and the YMCA of Greater Richmond. This new funding will help those organizations provide full-day care, which is a no-brainer need for working families.

Jonathan Spiers at RIchmond BizSense reports on a new development coming to Scott's Addition with these weird sentences: "Richmond has a food hall. It has sports bars and beer gardens. It has miniature golf, duckpin bowling and indoor simulator golf. But it doesn’t have all those things under one roof." I...didn't know we needed all of that in one location, but, sure, why not! You're not ever going to catch me arguing against duckpin bowling.

WTVR reports that, over the weekend, a driver made an illegal left turn into a GRTC Pulse bus, injuring six passengers. This happened at the intersection of Broad and Lombardy, a well-known super dangerous intersection that I wish was totally redesigned—especially since that huge apartment building on the corner should be coming on line soon.

Via /r/rva, 16 really wonderful, summer-baked drone photos of people having a good time in the James River. Experience the world vicariously (if you hid from the heat all weekend like I did)!

This morning's patron longread
Hoboken Hasn’t Had a Traffic Death in 4 Years. What’s Right?

While Hoboken is a lot smaller than Richmond, it's not the size of a city that prevents change, it's politics: "It’s this combination of strong political backing from the mayor on down, and Hoboken’s ability to implement changes quickly so residents immediately see and feel result, that likely accounts for Vision Zero success." Richmond could start installing cheap, effective infrastructure at our most dangerous intersections today (Main Street in the Fan comes to mind), but, at the moment, we lack the the political backing to do something like that.

Few drivers park next to crosswalks in Hoboken, because they can’t. Those spots are blocked off with bike racks or planters or storm drains or extra sidewalk space for pedestrians or vertical plastic pylons that deter all but the boldest delivery-truck drivers. Stand at a corner, and you can see what is coming toward you, and drivers can see you too, and you don’t have to step out into the road and risk your life to do it. This is a simple piece of street planning called “daylighting,” and according to Hoboken’s transportation-and-parking director, Ryan Sharp, it’s been among the most popular requests from residents. It’s also one of the major tools that Hoboken has used to make its streets less deadly. The city of 60,000 hasn’t had a single traffic fatality since 2018 and has consistently cut the number of crashes and injuries while — and by — aggressively installing the things that are proven to make cities safer and more efficient for everyone: bike lanes, curb extensions, bus lanes, high-visibility crosswalks, and raised intersections.

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