Parking Fees, ParentSquare, and Surveillance
Cheers RVA!
Today will be hot and humid with a high of 95 and a low of 74, with a chance of scattered thunderstorms in the evening. A heat advisory is in effect until 8:00 pm.
the juice:
New parking fees in Richmond have gone into effect:
An increase of parking meter fees by $.50, from $2.00 to $2.50 per hour.
An increase in the penalty for exceeding a metered time limit, from $25 to $30.
An increase, from $40 to $50 for other parking violations
The increases are part of the 2026 Fiscal Year budget which City Council approved in May.
the pulp:
A discussion by City Council regarding residency requirements for top officials has been delayed again to July 28, via the Richmonder.
R. Anthony Harris from RVAMag offers commentary on a recent national marketing survey that ranked Richmond as the #34 most desirable city to live in America, contrasting the multitude of new investment with challenges the city still faces:
What makes it worse is how little we talk about it publicly. Rankings get front-page treatment; the hard parts stay in group chats and whispered bar-top conversations. Richmond, for all its creativity and promise, has a habit of skipping uncomfortable truths when we’re busy selling the polished ones.
Richmond Public Schools is switching its parent communication app from Remind to ParentSquare, according to WRIC. Parents and guardians will need to create a new account as data from the old application will not be transferred. Superintendent Jason Kamras has joked, “You don’t want to be square, so sign up for ParentSquare.”
the dive:
At least 50 immigration-related searches were conducted by federal authorities in five Virginia counties including Chesterfield and Fairfax via the Flock Safety System of automatic license plate readers last year, according to VPM.
Virginia has over 1k Flock cameras across the state that track motorists to assist authorities in criminal investigations and locating missing persons.
Flock’s safety policy prohibits agencies from using the data for immigration purposes, but the CEO of the company Garrett Langley has said, “compliance is up to the local agencies.”
While the surveillance system is referred to as “license-plate readers”, the company notes it’s technology captures a fingerprint of vehicles but does not include facial recognition:
The company says the AI-powered tool captures a vehicle's "fingerprint" – attributes like make, model and color as well as other features like decals or bumper stickers, roof racks and even temporary paper plates. All these can be used to find a vehicle in the data.
The spokesman for the police department in Fairfax county Capt. Jesse Katzman explained who has access to the data:
"We share our license plate reader system with 13 other agencies. The Federal Government may have task force officers who may have the ability to search the system directly," said Katzman.
"While this may look like [the searches] are coming from Fairfax, it is not a Fairfax County officer doing the inquiry. I can tell you that because each one of these is not our case numbers or event numbers. Those have nothing to do with us," he said.
Currently Richmond has 97 of the cameras, while Henrico has 87.
Read the full article here.
the vibe:
Creativedogmedia captured this shot from 300’ in Glen Allen over the weekend:
Have a bright day RVA!
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