Good morning, RVA: Shrinking the BigTIF?, affordable housing framework, and women in charge

Good morning, RVA! It’s 22 °F, and highs today will barely make their way into the 40s. That’s cold! But, no joke, the forecasted high on Saturday is 68 °F. On one hand, I’m sad that climate change is slowly dissolving winter, but, on the other hand, I’m going to ride the heck out of my bike this weekend.

Water cooler

Well here is some fascinating combined NoBro and General Assembly news: Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says that Del. Jeff Bourne has introduced legislation to dedicate a portion of the typically inaccessible state sales tax to paying down potential NoBro bonds 💸. You can read the full text of HB 1345 here. Robinson says that the area the City could receive the additional revenue from is a box bounded by Leigh, Franklin, 3rd, and 10th, which, theoretically, would allow the NoBro team to reduce the size of the BigTIF back into a plain ol’ regular TIF. I’m super ambivalent about this! No amount of new revenue changes the fact that the process leading up to this project was super bad, and, additionally, I remain unconvinced that a new arena is a smart use of extremely valuable downtown land. That said, the vast majority of the property in this new box is exempt from real estate tax, and this bill would open up a new source of revenue to help offset some of that tax exemptness. Part of me wonders if this is as close to a PILOT (Payment In Lieu of Taxes) from the State as we’re ever going to get? To intelligently evaluate this new proposal, here’s what I’d like to know: 1) Just how much revenue is the State willing to part with, 2) By how much will it allow us to shrink the BigTIF, and 3) how does this slice of sales tax compare to the amount of real estate tax the City misses out on due to the presence of state government downtown. While I definitely can imagine a world where these numbers work out really well in Richmond’s favor, I don’t have a lot of hope for that given how the State typically treats its host city. Also, and this is important, assuming HB 1345 dramatically changes the financing of NoBro, more community engagement must happen. Reminding y’all about a billion more public meetings is certainly the last thing I want to do, but I just don’t see how we can totally change the most basic financial underpinnings of this massive project and not go back to Richmonders, the advisory councils, and elected officials, and ask them to reevaluate the deal. Without a good-faith commitment to a public reevaluation process, I’ll be extremely (and probably loudly) disappointed. P.S. This certainly has the vibe of a last-minute Hail Mary.

Here’s a big regional affordable housing update: The Partnership for Housing Affordability will officially launch the Richmond Regional Housing Framework next Wednesday, January 15th, at the Eastern Henrico Recreation Center (1440 N. Laburnum Avenue) from 8:30–10:30 AM. This event is free, open to the public, and at a tough time for normal people to attend, but, if you are interested and available make sure you register ahead of time. I’ve got high hopes for this framework! With any luck, it’ll lay down a shared foundation so lawmakers in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield can start building complementary policies that address our affordable housing issues and work together, pulling the same direction, instead of either pretending like we’ve got no housing issues at all or charging off in one of a thousand unhelpful directions. Surely a many-paged PDF will exist at some point next week, and I’m excited to share it with you.

Governor Ralph Northam delivered his State of the Commonwealth address last night, and you can read through the text as prepared for delivery here (PDF). As foretold, the 11-point Virginia 2020 Planformed the outline for this speech. Although there is one small sentence that didn’t make it into that list but would have a big impact on conversations in Richmond: “And while we’re at it, we need to let localities decide what to do with the Confederate monuments in their community. They know the right thing to do.”

A good reminder from Mayor Stoney of all the firsts happening now that the New Democratic Majority are all officially sworn in and given their assigned seats down at the Capitol: “Congrats to all the firsts: first woman and Jewish speaker, first woman and African American majority leader, first woman and African American president pro tempore and first woman clerk. Change has already begun.” Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury has a bit more.

Brookland Park Market is another new spot coming to Brookland Park Boulevard, says Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense. One of the owners describes it as a “Union Market-type thing.” I have immense empathy for saying something casual out loud to a reporter only to have it become the headlining quote.

Today, at 2:00 PM, City Council’s Education and Human Services committee will meet and hear a presentation from Superintendent Kamras about the School District’s progress on the adopted facilities plan. The presentation slides are available for you to flip through (PDF) and are pretty interesting. Check out the current state of buildings by school type, the graphs of projected enrollment on either side of the river, and the costs of each phase of the plan. That last one is important to keep in mind, because, at some point in the relatively near future, the City needs to come up with a new $200 million to pay for Phase II of this plan.

Reminder! Tonight the wandering NoBro public hearing sets up shop at Pine Camp (4901 Old Brook Road). You’ve got four more of hearings, including this one, to tell the folks in charge what you think of the project. If you can’t make any of these, there will most certainly be a public hearing at actual Council, too, whenever they decide to take up the necessary NoBro ordinances. Opportunities for public comment abound! Take advantage of them!

This morning’s patron longread

Deceased GOP Strategist’s Daughter Makes Files Public That Republicans Wanted Sealed

Submitted by Patron Casey. The guy behind some of the terribly racist and gerrymandered Republican redistricting maps died and his daughter found his old hard drives. You can just read through the entire contents of them all right here! Wild.

Stephanie then reconnected with her mother, Kathleen, and visited her parents' apartment in North Carolina, where she found four external hard drives and a clear plastic bag containing 18 USB thumb drives in her father’s room. Stephanie says her mother encouraged her to take the devices. It turned out they were filled with photos of Stephanie with her children and other personal items — as well as files from her father’s work as a redistricting consultant for Republicans. While looking for an attorney to represent her mother in 2018, Stephanie says she connected with the North Carolina chapter of Common Cause, an advocacy group that had brought a lawsuit against Republican state officials to overturn political maps Thomas Hofeller helped draw. After mentioning the hard drives to Common Cause, Stephanie received a court order to turn them over as potential evidence for the lawsuit. She did so in March after making a copy of some of the files for herself.

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