Good morning, RVA: Executive troll, a real DOT??, and community RFPs

Getting our City’s transportation decisions handled by folks who believe we
can and must “infrastructure our way out of this” would be huge.

Good morning, RVA! It's 38 °F, and highs todays are back up in the 60s. Nice, but I’ve still got my eye on Saturday, which NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says could top the all-time record of 75 °F. Are these summery temperatures normal, and, year after year, I just forget that December in Richmond means T-shirts and slip-ons? To answer that question, I’ve been looking around for a good average historical temperature website and stumbled across this brightly-colored PDF from the National Weather Service. Turns out we should not expect great bike-riding weather in December, but, generally, highs in the 50s and maybe even a snowy day.

Water cooler

The Governor Northam farewell tour announcements continue, and yesterday’s included...spoiling Governor-elect Youngkin’s tax proposals, specifically eliminating the grocery tax? Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has more details, including the key difference between the Governor and Governor-elect’s proposals: Northam only wants to eliminate the state’s portion of the grocery tax. Northam is quick to point out that the gap this creates in education funding—$262 million per year—will be filled with other revenue. The portion of the grocery tax that funds transportation, though? Big shrug emoji from the governor on that one, “The Northam administration says the transportation funding will be covered by new federal infrastructure investments in the package President Joe Biden signed in November.“ OK, I sure hope so. I also hope we don’t run out of all this budget surplus in a few years and then regret these funding cuts. Honestly, is Northam trolling Youngkin? Is he trolling us? I’m really feeling my lack of experience with statewide politics this morning. When did this become a state government email? What happened to rezoning and sewers??

Continuing on this dark, new path of state government news, the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a good column by Narissa Turner from the Virginia Conservation Network about Youngkin’s plans to pull Virginia out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Turner puts it like this, “Here’s the good news: It appears Youngkin’s pledge is illegal. Pulling out of RGGI by executive action is an unprecedented overstep of power by the governor-elect.“ Again, I sure hope so.

City Council’s Governmental Operations committee meets today for their regularly-scheduled meeting and you can take a look at their agenda here. First, they’ll look over the redistricting criteria I mentioned earlier this week (RES. 2021-R084). This redistricting process is moving fast—probably because the City is already late and won’t hit a state-mandated deadline—so if you want to weigh in on the criteria, today’s GovOps meeting is one of your few chances to do so. You can learn a little more from this release the City sent last night. Second, ORD. 2021-348 would formally create the Office of Sustainability and place it under the Department of Economic and Community Development (instead of having it float around somewhere inside of the Department of Public Utilities). Seems great. Third, and whoa-est of all, RES. 2021-R068, submitted by Councilmember Addison, would ask the Mayor to include funds in his upcoming budget for a new, standalone Department of Mobility and Multimodal Transportation! It is, of course, a non-binding resolution asking the mayor to do a thing—so we’ll see if the resolution first get Council’s support and then if the mayor decides to do anything about it. Still, though! Getting our City’s transportation decisions handled by folks who believe we can and must “infrastructure our way out of this” would be a huge step forward.

Michael Schwartz at Richmond BizSense reports that “Southside-based nonprofit HandUp Community Resource Center was selected in recent weeks to convert the former Bank of America branch at 1307 E. Brookland Park Blvd. into a community pharmacy.” I’ve written about the community RFP process for the old Six Points Bank of America building before, and this is the outcome of that process! Exciting stuff, and sounds like the new “Six Points Health Hub” will open this coming summer. It’s complicated—and you need an organization like the Maggie Walker Community Land Trust involved to make it happen—but I’d like to see more of these community RFPs for buildings and spaces that anchor neighborhoods.

Reminder! The first meeting of the River City Middle School Rezoning Committee is tonight at 6:00 PM. You can tune in to the livestream here.

This morning's longread
Half a Billion in Bitcoin, Lost in the Dump

I don’t think this story is true, but you will definitely recognize its protagonist as a certain kind of man you probably have to interact with in your life.

Around the time that his bitcoin became worth six million dollars, he confessed to Hafina. She was shocked to learn of the potential windfall, and encouraged him to go to the dump to see if anything could be done. When he told the manager there that he’d accidentally thrown away about four million pounds, he got a lot of head shakes, but eventually the manager took him to an elevated spot to survey the site: the mounds of churned earth, the depot where trash was mixed with soil, the grassed-over areas of retired landfill. Howells’s heart sank: he saw ten to fifteen soccer pitches’ worth of garbage. How could he possibly sift through it all?

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