Good morning, RVA: Dogwood Dell play-by-play, three fun zoning changes, and the Senate passes a climate bill

Cooler weather later this week? Do we dare to dream?

Good morning, RVA! It's 72 °F, and today you can expect the same ol’ weather we’ve had for the last couple of weeks: hot, humid, with highs in the 90s. Will we have an unpredictable storm later this evening? There’s nothing on the forecast at the moment, but who can say! Cooler weather arrives in a real and wonderful way this Thursday, so get excited.

Water cooler

Jon Baliles, in the most recent edition of his RVA 5x5 newsletter, has the most comprehensive play-by-play of the Richmond Police Department’s Dogwood Dell fiasco to date—with tons of linked original source material. If you want to dive in, set aside a chunk of time. To get the gist, though, read this incredibly damning paragraph: “So, Chief Smith knew about a mass shooting threat at Dogwood Dell on July 4th, didn’t tell the Mayor until July 5th...didn’t warn the sold-out Diamond baseball game or our surrounding localities, or the police officers at the Dell that night that two men with automatic weapons were allegedly planning on creating mass casualties on a dreadful scale. And yet the Chief saw no reason or need to increase the security plan at all or tell his boss or the neighboring police departments?”

This week and next, the City’s Department of Planning and Development Review will host a few meetings to talk through three fun, citywide zoning changes: revising regulations around short-term rentals (aka Airbnbs), eliminating parking minimums, and permitting accessory dwelling units everywhere. These last two are good, progressive, urbanist ideas that—pending weird details in the legislation and NIMBY cries of despair—will make Richmond a better place to do business and call home. As for the other one, I haven’t seen what Council wants to specifically change about the City’s short-term rental regulations, but I’d guess that there are at least a few councilmembers who want to get rid of the residency requirement. Currently, an Airbnb must also be the owner’s primary residence for at least 185 days of the year. This functionally limits folks to owning just one Airbnb, which is, in my opinion, a good limitation! It helps keeps investors from snatching up what limited housing stock we have and converting it to short-term rentals instead of homes. If folks have some extra cash and aspire to get into the glamorous landlording business, we already have lots of processes and regulations to help them fulfill that dream. The first meeting to discuss all of the changes kicks off tomorrow, in-person at the Main Library (101 E. Franklin Street) at 6:00 PM.

The results are in: Richmond’s new adorable bike-lane street sweeper is named...MF BROOM! That makes me laugh. The City plans to host an actual naming ceremony at some point in the future, which also makes me laugh. Good work everyone, this has been a pleasant distraction from all the other stuff!

Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has the tiniest bit of new news on the Governor’s Lab School program—the whittled down version of his “defund public school / charter schools everywhere” plan. There are almost zero details at the moment, but Virginia State University and Virginia Union University, both HBCUs, have decided to build Lab Schools and take advantage of some of that $100 million in state funding. More details forthcoming? Maybe?

Vox has an explainer of the climate bill passed by the Senate over the weekend, and I really appreciate the framing: “The Inflation Reduction Act would be the biggest thing the US has ever done to tackle climate change.” Amazing! I know every single thing didn’t make it into this bill (e-bikes!), but a lot did, and that’s something to celebrate. I mean, check out this chart from the REPEAT Project which compares the annual change in net U.S. greenhouse gas emissions relative to current policies for the most-likely-to-pass Inflation Reduction Act and the doomed Build Back Better Act (p. 8). That’s pretty good! The House is set to vote on this bill on Friday, and I’m set to figure out how to take advantage of the heat pump rebates/tax credits.

This morning's longread
The Secret Ingredient That Improves Meat Every Time

Oh, just some mayonnaise experiments with which to start your week!

Functionally, we can think of mayonnaise as consisting of three ingredients: Along with fat and water, there is also egg protein. As the mayonnaise on the surface of a piece of meat cooks, its water content eventually evaporates away, breaking the emulsion and leaving behind a thin, evenly distributed layer of fat, as well as a very, very thin coating of egg protein. This extra source of protein and fat can increase browning on naked meat or in watery or low-sugar marinades. This comes in handy when you want to minimize the time a piece of meat spends on the grill or in a pan. Thinner cuts — skirt steak, flank steak, skinnier pork chops — typically have trouble browning before they overcook in the center. A chicken cutlet will cook through on a hot grill or skillet in under four minutes. This isn’t a lot of time to properly brown, but with a thin coat of a mayo-based marinade, it’s easy.

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