Good morning, RVA! It’s 59 °F, and, look out!, highs today will hit 76 °F. Yeah, it’s November, but, whatever! Expect clear skies until tomorrow when some rain shows up.

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Whoa, Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a big update on the proposed Coliseum redevelopment plan. The TIF is now a BigTIF. First: Take all of the words that follow with a grain of salt as we still have not seen the official proposal from the Mayor’s office and are working from Robinson’s early FOIA and comments made to him by four unnamed members of City Council. Next, some background: To pay for all of the many things the Mayor included in his RFP for the redevelopment of the entire neighborhood around the Coliseum, developers have proposed a TIF district (that’s a Tax Increment Financing district). It works like this: The City begins to redevelop a district and just the increase in tax revenue from that district (which ostensible comes from all the new stuff being built) goes towards paying off the redevelopment. So technically the City is not paying for anything out of its general fund, but there is, of course, an opportunity cost of what could have been done with any organic increase in tax revenue from the District. The original size of the Coliseum TIF covered just the area of redevelopment, then it was expanded to included Dominion’s new towers a bit further south, now the new BigTIF captures half of Downtown, Monroe Ward, and Jackson Ward. I don’t know how big TIFs typically are in other American cities, but, dang, this is a massive expansion and would dedicate all new tax revenue in most of Richmond’s downtown toward a single neighborhood and do so for a long, long time. I understand that the North of Broad area (aka NoBro) has an extremely limited tax base due to all of the land owned by VCU, the City, and the State, but I have a hard time seeing how tax revenue generated in the newly rezoned Monroe Ward, or the currently exploding Arts District, needs to be linked to an arena and the surrounding neighborhood for decades. To be fair, we don’t yet know what the new revenue in the BigTIF will pay for—more affordable housing, better transit, new schools, all things I love and am in favor of. The most important question, though, is could we do more of those things I love if we forgot about replacing the Coliseum, let Downtown grow organically, and dumped all of the tax revenue into the general fund? I don’t know the answer to that question.

Here’s another piece by Mark Robinson in the paper, that is…something to keep an eye on. I guess?

Good morning, RVA! It’s 59 °F, and, look out!, highs today will hit 76 °F. Yeah, it’s November, but, whatever! Expect clear skies until tomorrow when some rain shows up.

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Whoa, Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a big update on the proposed Coliseum redevelopment plan. The TIF is now a BigTIF. First: Take all of the words that follow with a grain of salt as we still have not seen the official proposal from the Mayor’s office and are working from Robinson’s early FOIA and comments made to him by four unnamed members of City Council. Next, some background: To pay for all of the many things the Mayor included in his RFP for the redevelopment of the entire neighborhood around the Coliseum, developers have proposed a TIF district (that’s a Tax Increment Financing district). It works like this: The City begins to redevelop a district and just the increase in tax revenue from that district (which ostensible comes from all the new stuff being built) goes towards paying off the redevelopment. So technically the City is not paying for anything out of its general fund, but there is, of course, an opportunity cost of what could have been done with any organic increase in tax revenue from the District. The original size of the Coliseum TIF covered just the area of redevelopment, then it was expanded to included Dominion’s new towers a bit further south, now the new BigTIF captures half of Downtown, Monroe Ward, and Jackson Ward. I don’t know how big TIFs typically are in other American cities, but, dang, this is a massive expansion and would dedicate all new tax revenue in most of Richmond’s downtown toward a single neighborhood and do so for a long, long time. I understand that the North of Broad area (aka NoBro) has an extremely limited tax base due to all of the land owned by VCU, the City, and the State, but I have a hard time seeing how tax revenue generated in the newly rezoned Monroe Ward, or the currently exploding Arts District, needs to be linked to an arena and the surrounding neighborhood for decades. To be fair, we don’t yet know what the new revenue in the BigTIF will pay for—more affordable housing, better transit, new schools, all things I love and am in favor of. The most important question, though, is could we do more of those things I love if we forgot about replacing the Coliseum, let Downtown grow organically, and dumped all of the tax revenue into the general fund? I don’t know the answer to that question.

Here’s another piece by Mark Robinson in the paper, that is…something to keep an eye on. I guess?

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, and highs today should climb up into the mid 60s. You might not even need your raddest fall coat today!

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If you read one article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch this morning, read this one about the change in police procedure and reduction in violent crimes in the City’s major public housing neighborhoods. Then please tell me what you think. Correlation != causation, and increased police presence is not always a good thing—or even something a neighborhood necessarily wants. This is definitely not my lived experience, and I don’t really feel comfortable spouting off about it (unlike every other thing), but would love to learn more.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and the rest of today looks pretty great. Get ready for highs in the 60s, some sun, some clouds, and all the reasons in the world to wear your coolest fall jacket.

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Two small City Council updates for this fine Monday. First, Council will have a special meeting at 4:00 PM to “set out Council’s assignments of the projected Fiscal Year 2018 year-end General Fund surplus.” While the surplus was north of $10 million, Council rules stipulate that 50% go toward the rainy day fund and 40% go towards infrastructure projects (can someone point me to this ordinance or resolution?). Get excited, because now’s the time when we watch our elected officials get really intense over loose change while they’re simultaneously about to pass an ordinance to maintain the oppressive Recession-era real estate tax cuts. Roll back those tax cuts to pre-Recession levels and suddenly we can actually, you know, pay for things. Second, today’s the regularly scheduled quarterly meeting of the Education Compact Team, and you can find the agenda here. Looks like they’ll discuss the plan for state-level advocacy, local funding models (e.g. property tax???), and the RPS strategic plan.

This stat, from a Mark Bowes report in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, is hard to believe: “Every day last year at least one gun on average was reported stolen from someone’s car or truck in the Richmond metropolitan area.” What?! Why are people keeping guns in their cars?? Don’t do that! Personal opinion: Guns are terrible. Factual statement: If you can’t be bothered to safely and securely store your deadly weapon you shouldn’t have one.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, and temperatures will stay right about there as rain moves into the area this morning and continues throughout the day. A Gloomy Gus day to start the weekend of sure!

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Michael Paul Williams, at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, writes today about Henrico’s Brookland District Special election 💸. By now y’all should be super familiar with the Courtney Lynch Saga and how Democratic control of the Board of Supervisors—and, presumably progressive policies like affordable housing and public transportation—hangs on the result of this upcoming special election. Williams, however, makes a decent case that the tide has turned in Henrico and that some of the progressive work we currently see in the County can’t be rolled back. As someone who’s astounded by the shift left the Board of Supervisors has made in the last couple years, I am reaaaaally interested in how this one plays out. We’ll see what’s what in a couple of weeks, I guess.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and I am finally back in Richmond! It’s chilly today as highs will stay in the mid 50s. Bundle up and spend some time walking around in the fall air, because tomorrow the rain arrives.

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I’m old enough to remember when Richmond’s urban chicken ordinance was all anyone could talk about. The Governmental Operations committee of City Council will meet today at 12:00 PM, and on their agenda is ORD. 2018–272 (PDF). This ordinance will increase the number of chickens you can keep in your urban backyard from four to six. The rationale for the increase: Apparently when you buy chickens they come in a package of six (a “clutch”)? I had no idea! More seriously and more importantly, ORD. 2018–241 (PDF) (patroned by Councilmembers Robertson, Agelasto, and Addison) will require the CAO to present a “homeless strategic plan” to Council every two years. A lot of this plan would focus on zoning(!) and land use.

Robert Zullo at the Virginia Mercury has a thorough (commentary) piece listing out a bunch of reasons why the Atlantic Coast Pipeline is a bad idea. This type of thing is one of the reasons I’m glad the Virginia Mercury exists.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 50 °F, and today you should expect plenty of sunshine to go along with temperatures near 60 °F. I believe they call this sort of weather “crisp.”

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Justin Mattingly at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has an article about Richmond’s compliance with the Every Student Succeeds Act (the thing that replaces No Child Left Behind). If I’m being honest, I really don’t understand what it all means, and reading more on the Virginia Department of Education’s website certainly didn’t clear anything up. My confused and uninformed take: I will focus on accreditation, which I understand, and will try not to get too caught up in whatever state-level machinations are happening behind the scenes.

Michael Martz, also at the RTD, has an update on the state’s Medicaid expansion which focuses on the work requirement 💸. Republicans are cheesed at the number and type of exemptions to the requirement: “[Delegate Chris] Jones questioned why, for example, the proposal would grant a general exemption to the requirement for victims of domestic violence, whom he said generally want to get back into the workforce for stability.” Unless something has changed or I am mistaken, if for some reason you fail to clock in 80 hours per month of “work” (which is defined as a couple different types of things) you can lose your benefits entirely. If that’s not how this works, someone please let me know, because the last thing we should be doing to folks going through trauma in their lives is taking away their health care.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 46 °F, and temperatures today should climb back up into the low 70s. Enjoy the relative warmth, because cooler weather returns tomorrow!

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Richmond Police are reporting that Rolando D. Williams, Jr., 24, was shot to death yesterday afternoon near the 400 block of Melmark Court on the City’s Southside. According to the RPD’s website, this is the 40th murder in 2018.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and highs today will hover around the low 60s. It’ll take awhile to get there, so make sure you leave the house wearing plenty of layers.

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Y’all! Last week, I forgot to mention that I’m in Pittsburgh through Wednesday for Rail~volution, a transit conference just as nerdy as it sounds. This impacts your life because Good Morning, RVA will switch into Lite Mode™ until I get back to Richmond. Take note!

Justin Mattingly at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a long and thorough piece about where we stand on school funding, new taxes, and Paul Goldman’s continued attempts to run the City via ballot referendum 💸. That last one, in particular, bothers me—the City’s Charter is not the place to cram all of these aspirational thoughts and feelings about schools or Coliseums.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F and highs today should stay in the mid 60s. Expect some rain tomorrow and then a chilly but sunny weekend.

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Today, the paper is FULL of thoughts and opinions on Superintendent Kamras’s announcement that he’d like to see the cuts to property taxes in the City rolled back to pre-recession levels. Everyone’s got a take! Important context before you dig in: If you own a home, your annual tax bill would increase by its assessed value divide by 1,000—aka just take off the last three zeros. For example, my family would pay $288 more each year to help generate the roughly $24 million budget increase. OK, with that in mind, first, Justin Mattingly and Mark Robinson talked to every member of City Council 💸, and, as you’d probably guess, most of them are not stoked on the idea. However, two Councilmembers didn’t instantly dismiss any sort of tax increase, which, I guess, is as close as we’re gonna get to elected folks supporting new revenue to pay for the many systemically underinvested City services. Those two were: Cynthia Newbille and Mike Jones from the 7th and 9th Districts, respectively. Second, Michael Paul Williams tells Kamras to stay in his lane 💸, but includes some pretty good, pro-tax quotes from UR associate proffesor Julian Hayter. And third, the Editorial board runs simultaneous, contradictory editorials with the first saying, “For decades, elected officials in Richmond treated school upkeep and maintenance like a political hot potato, passing it off as fast as possible. The city now owns a collection of school buildings that are literally in tatters.” and the second saying, “We understand Richmond city schools face greater socioeconomic challenges than either Chesterfield or Henrico, and we recognize that meeting those challenges might require extra funding — but how much more? As it stands, RPS spends about 40 percent more per student than adjoining counties and about 20 percent more than Norfolk. Those extra dollars certainly aren’t correlating to student achievement. What will spending more money accomplish?” Idk, maybe the District could spend the extra money on the school buildings that are literally in tatters? Overall, I am unsurprised yet disappointed that very few of our leaders will acknowledge (at least publicly) that to get better schools, affordable housing, and transportation we’re going to have to pay for it—and the property tax is 100% the way we do that. I realize that not everyone can afford to do so, but I am able, willing, and excited to pay a couple hundred more dollars each year to begin undoing the decades of disinvestment and start building a better Richmond. Are you?

Michelle Hankerson at the Virginia Mercury says the State has picked a redistricting nerd to redraw Virginia’s racially gerrymandered districts. Bernard Grofman redrew Virginia’s 3rd District back in 2015.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 51 °F, and, while bright and sunshiney, highs today may not even hit 60 °F. It took awhile, but fall is officially here.

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Yesterday afternoon, RPS Superintendent Kamras sent out a middle-of-the-week email, which always means big news. This email, about schools funding, was no exception! First, he announced the MarchForMore, a march on the Capitol on December 8th for more state-level education funding. He wants the state, at the very minimum, to cough up “1) an increase in the percentage of Virginia Lottery proceeds that come to schools; 2) an increase in the “at-risk add-on” for students who grow up in poverty and face other challenges; and 3) a special pot of money for school divisions currently under a Memorandum of Understanding with the VDOE (such as RPS).” With this part, Mayor Stoney is onboard (at least generally—I’m not sure whether he supports Kamras’s specific requests), and it’s nice to see him follow through on his campaign promise to be an advocate for the City at the General Assembly. Second, and more dramatic, Kamras called for rolling property tax cuts back to pre-recession levels: moving the rate from $1.20 per $100 of assessed value to $1.30. He says this would raise $20 million annually, and he’d like “2/3 of this new revenue for operating costs and 1/3 to finance debt for new school construction.” Property tax is the single largest slice of the City’s revenue pie and is the only slice big enough to catch up on our massive underinvestments in transportation, housing, and, of course, schools. So I’m not hear to argue against increasing the property tax, but…maybe we should increase it even more and not dedicate the entire thing to schools? I know it seems like I hate children when I say that, but we’ve got pressing needs on a lot of fronts and, personal opinion, we could get really broad support for a more robust increase in the tax if it was’t all going strictly to schools. Quibbles aside, I’m really glad to see one of our City’s leaders proposing and pushing for bold policy—of course, dudeman doesn’t have to worry about re-election like some of the other folks in town which makes his mid-week email proclamations a bit easier.

City Council committees have some seriously interesting agendas lately. Today the Finance and Economic Development committee will meet at 3:00 PM and consider all sorts of housing-related papers. Top of the list is Councilmember Gray’s ordinance to create tax deferrals for folks whose property values have increased significantly (ORD. 2018–236). I’ve talked about this before and how the lack of an income cap concerns me. Additionally, do property tax deferrals even help prevent gentrification? The abstract of this PDF which I have not yet read in full says not really, “We find some evidence that property tax pressure can trigger involuntary moves by homeowners, but no evidence that such displacement is more common in gentrifying neighborhoods than elsewhere, nor that property tax limitation protects long-term homeowners in gentrifying neighborhoods. We do find evidence that gentrification directly displaces renters.” Also on deck is ORD. 2018–238 which would send proceeds from tax-delinquent property sales into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and a $16 million bond issuance from RRHA (RES. 2018-R093) to pay for multifamily rental housing at 1125 Commerce Road.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 59 °F, and today we’ve got highs right around 70 °F and lots of sunshine on deck. Enjoy!

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Richmond Police are reporting a murder that occurred Monday evening on the 600 block of Westover Hills Boulevard. Officers arrived and found Lee M. Hudson, Jr., 19, shot to death.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F now, but you better bring some layers with you because temperatures will drop into the 50s today. Time to break out those flannels! Finally!

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City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee will meet today at 1:00 PM in City Hall, and they have a packed agenda: The ordinance banning the Brook Road bike lane (ORD. 2018–194), renaming Boulevard to Arthur Ashe Boulevard (ORD. 2018–228), the dockless bike and scooter ordinance (ORD. 2018–262), and a handful of affordable-housing-related ordinances from Councilmember Robertson. That’s a lot of things to work through, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them get continued down the road a bit. Here’s my list of micro hot takes: the anti-bike lane ordinance is terrible, let’s go ahead and rename the Boulevard, the scooter ordinance needs a few tweaks (but scooters are rad), and we probably should wrap our collective minds around a regional affordable housing strategy before passing all of these one-off laws (not that I’m specifically against any of them).

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and today’s a bit warmer with highs near 80 °F. The rest of this week, though, we’re looking at temperatures in the 50s and 60s.

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Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch writes about Ramon Byrd, the first resident to move out of Creighton Court as part of RRHA’s ongoing plan to break up and rebuild public housing in the East End. Byrd will move into one of just 24 available units as construction of hundreds more on the old Armstrong High School site continues. There are 504 units in Creighton Court. However you do the math, there remains a ton of work left to make sure that everyone living in the neighborhood at the moment has a place to live before Creighton is torn down. Of course I can’t not mention how important transit is when we’re talking about housing for folks with very low incomes. If we build more and more affordable housing further and further away from the City (where land is cheaper) but increase a family’s transportation costs, have we really built affordable housing?

As the region’s premiere zoning and rezoning email provider, I must inform you that the City’s Planning Commission will consider a stack of papers to begin rezoning Monroe Ward in accordance with the Pulse Corridor Plan. You can see the list of papers here (PDF); they’re the ones in all-caps for some reason. Of note to people interested in nerdy zoning concepts is CPCR 2018–087 which removes the “inclined plane” requirement in the neighborhood. This requirement manages building heights by drawing an imaginary, diagonal line up and away from the center of the street and says every building must be below this line. An unintended consequence is that you can build taller buildings if you build them farther from the street—which makes for bad pedestrian environments. I have drawn an exceedingly professional diagram to illustrate this concept. The idea, of course, behind this rezoning is to allow for denser and more transit-oriented development in neighborhoods close to the Pulse. Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has a human-readable explanation of the changes.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and today we’ve got some sun and highs in the mid 80s. Of note: Rain from Hurricane Michael moves into the area tomorrow evening.

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Police are reporting a murder in the City’s East End. Monday night, officers arrived to the area near Accommodation and Coalter Streets and encountered a person driving a shooting victim to the hospital. The victim would later die from his injuries.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and today the temperatures start to drop a wee bit in preparation for a plunge on Friday. Expect highs in the low 80s, some clouds, and a small chance of rain this afternoon.

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Yesterday, I wondered what reasons members of City Council would come up with to vote against Councilmember Jones’s RES. 2018-R073, a non-binding resolution that would request from the state city authority over Confederate monuments. In their 3–6 vote killing the resolution, Councilmembers first argued that we need to lobby the State for increased school funding, not for local control over monuments. To that, Superintendent Jason Kamras said, “Council, please don’t use RPS funding as reason to not support monument proposal by @thedrmikejones. 1) If we don’t stand up for what’s right, what are we telling kids about our values? 2) Nothing’s been stopping you from introducing paper before tonight to increase $ 4 RPS…” Dang! Then some Councilmembers said that since the Monument Avenue Commission only recommended taking down the Jeff Davis statue, that it’d be improper to ask the State for the authority to take them all down. Please keep in mind that this resolution said absolutely nothing about taking any monuments down at any time, just that the City would like to ask the state for authority over them. It was almost a resolution about absolutely nothing, yet only Councilmembers Jones, Newbille, and Robertson voted for taking the SMALLEST POSSIBLE step away from white supremacy. This was an easy one to get right, but a majority of City Council got it wrong.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 73 °F, and highs in the mid to upper 80s mean fall is still around the corner. You can expect more of the same until this weekend when temperatures should drop like whoa.

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City Council will meet tonight for their regularly scheduled meeting at 6:00 PM. Big on the agenda tonight: RES. 2018-R073, Councilmember Jones’s resolution to ask the General Assembly to give the City the authority to take down Confederate monuments. This resolution is the barest minimum of progress towards removing our huge, offensive statues and really should pass Council unanimously—mostly because it doesn’t do much of anything. This is a non-binding resolution to ask the State to do a thing (which they probably will not do) and says absolutely nothing about whether or not we should actually do the work of taking down these monuments. I’m looking forward to hearing what reasons the Councilmembers who decided to vote against this resolution come up with. Also of note on the agenda: Free GRTC fares on Election Day, tax incentives for the developer of 400 Hull Street Road in Manchester, and an interesting ordinance from Councilmember Robinson that looks to clarify what we mean by “affordable housing.” I’ll let the housing folks tell me if that last one is a good idea or not.

It’s becoming weekly advice, but you should read Superintendent Kamras’s email after a hard week for Richmond Public Schools and a hard week for America in general. I want to quote a few sentences that are about schools but, I think, apply to the larger moment as well: “The brutal facts are clear: RPS is a system in crisis. We have a moral obligation to be honest about the injustices, inequities, and inefficiencies gripping our division. But we also have a moral obligation to be undeterred in our commitment to confronting and defeating them. We must not remain mired in despair and defeatism. Our children expect us to stand up and lead with courage and an unwavering sense of possibility. And that’s exactly what we will do.”

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 75 °F, and…that’s today’s high. Expect a cloudy sky and these cooler temperatures to persist throughout the day and at least through Saturday.

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Richmond Times-Dispatch Special Correspondent Vanessa Remmers has a wonderful story about kids, soccer, and Southside Richmond’s Latinx community. Great photos by Daniel Sangjib Min, too. If, after reading about this rad program, you want to donate to Richmond Conexiones, the nonprofit dedicated to organizing these Southside soccer camps, you can do so at the very bottom of this page.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and what the what, highs are back up in the 90s today. Tomorrow, though, things begin to cool down for real.

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A reader went to City Council’s General Assembly legislative agenda workshop yesterday and sent along the agenda (PDF)! Highlights include: requests for a commission to find funding for public housing and tweaking the State legislation to allow Richmond to do inclusionary zoning; asks for improved education funding, transportation funding, and a state contribution to the local affordable housing trust fund; plus a handful of common-sense gun violence reforms. These are all great potential policies and ideas, but, until there’s actual political pressure from actual constituents, they’re likely to stay theoretical ideas on an agenda PDF. Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a meeting recap with a few quotes and strategy suggestions from Sen. McClellan.

Related, the Mayor launched a new ad/marketing campaign called Change for RVA Schools to remind folks that every time you eat food from a restaurant within the City limits, you contribute meals tax money toward building new schools. You can watch a very professional-looking video here. The fact that there (finally) seems to be a coordinated effort to improve Richmond Public Schools—one with a bunch of folks involved, for example the Change for RVA Schools website is hosted by the local tourism group—is really good news. Of course there is hard policy and political work ahead, but that work would be waaaaay harder without a broad coalition of folks at the ready.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 70 °F, and temperatures are back up near 90 °F. You thought the cool, soothing balm of fall had arrived? THINK AGAIN.

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The Virginia Department of Education has released on-time graduation rates for school divisions and specific schools, and you can download the numbers in two huge Excel files. Richmond City has the lowest overall on-time graduation rate in the state, which you can read more about in this Justin Mattingly piece in the RTD. The data is a bit overwhelming, so I want to focus on one detail: I had a more spreadsheet-inclined friend point out to me that Hispanic students (there were 177 of them in the class of 2018) have an on-time graduation rate of just 38.4%, compared to 75.4% district wide. Out of those students, 74% attend Huguenot High School (which itself has a lower on-time graduation rate than the rest of the division). When Genevieve Siegel-Hawley talks about repeating a cycle of segregated schools with bad outcomes for students (PDF), this is the kind of thing that I start thinking about.