Good morning, RVA: CSO updates, Budget Work Session #2, and a poetry contest

Good Morning, RVA!

Good morning, RVA! It's 54 °F, and rain is headed our way. You should expect wet weather for most of the morning and maybe even into the afternoon. Temperatures look great, though, with highs in the mid 70s. Soak it up, because, starting tomorrow, we’ve got about a week of highs in the 50s before we again see temperatures that start with a seven.

Water cooler

VPM’s Patrick Larsen has an update on DPU’s Combined Sewer Overflow work at Gillies Creek. Look at this amazing stat: “In 2019, the sewer outfall there overflowed 43 times. The city’s installing a new sewer pipe and relocating the outfall point to increase capacity — and take advantage of unused sewer system space. When construction is completed this fall, officials expect that under the same rainfall conditions, overflows will be cut from 43 to five.” This particular project is part of the important work to limit the amount of actual poopy sewage that ends up in the river during extreme rain events—which are only getting more and more frequent. And while this work is good and important and should be a priority for the City, the General Assembly has legislated Richmond into doing it and doing it along a pretty unrealistic timeline. Not only that, but the GA and Governor have subsequently failed to properly fund the City, so meeting that timeline doesn’t feel entirely possible. Larsen reports that the Commonwealth’s current proposed budget allocates $50 million towards Richmond’s sewers, but that lawmakers rejected an amendment to add another $100 million (which would have made up for the money “forgotten” in last year’s budget).

---

Liana Hardy at the Henrico Citizen reports on Henrico County’s proposed budget for schools and who among HCPS’s staff qualifies for an additional one-step pay increases. In: Licensed instructional staff and bus drivers. Out: Instructional assistants, custodians, administrators, front office staff, nurses, and teachers without licenses. I think all the folks on the Out List will still qualify for a 4.8% county-wide pay raise but will miss out on this additional 2.4% bump, and that probably feels bad. I don’t have enough context to know if the licensed teachers and bus drivers have fallen far enough out of line with the rest of the District’s staff to warrant their own additional raise, but, regardless, it’s cool to see folks in Henrico out there advocating for more.

---

Yesterday, City Council hosted their second budget work session, and you can listen to the audio here. I haven’t had a chance to yet, but, given today’s expected weather, I’ll probably spend a bit of time on a bus listening along while starting out the window with a melancholic expression on my face like I’m in romance film from the 90s.

---

The City’s Office of Sustainability has a neat volunteer opportunity for someone who wants to get more deeply involved in Richmond’s important sustainability work: Joining the Sustainability & Resilience Commission (formerly the Green City Commission). They’ve got one vacancy to fill, and they’re looking for someone who can “join bi-monthly meetings and provide support between these meetings such as volunteering at events, advocating for policy change, distributing outreach material, among others (typically less than 3 hours total per month).” You can apply through the City’s standard Boards and Commissions process.

---

RIC Today is running a neat contest, asking folks to write poetry using only the words found in their email from this morning. Your poem can take whatever form you desire, must be 75 words or less, and you can submit it via this form.

Here’s my quick go at a haiku:

91% chance of precipitation Sunrise and Sunset

A look back

Check out this charming paragraph I wrote on April 3rd, 2020:

For whatever reason, American society has decided to try to carry on life as best it can by moving every possible in-person encounter to a video conference call hosted by Zoom. I don’t know how everyone simultaneously decided on using Zoom as a platform, but it happened. Now, Zoom is both a noun and a verb I say regularly in my professional life when just two weeks ago it only applied to dogs running around in cute circles.”

This is still true, of course, and, despite having mostly emerged from the pandemic, the amount of time I spend in virtual meetings while also sitting inside a work-related building would boggle 2020 Ross’s mind.

This morning's patron longread

Study shows bicycle-friendly cities are safer for all road users even drivers

Submitted by Patron Lisa. I think people—normal people, not just the bike and bus bois—are starting to accept that cars make neighborhoods dangerous. It’s almost (but not quite!) a noncontroversial thing to say out loud at a party at this point, and that feels like a big change from even just five years ago. Still extremely (although ever less so!) controversial to bring up at your next dinner party: That we can successfully deprioritize cars in our neighborhoods—even in America.

“Cities with high bicycling rates tend to be safer for both bicyclists and all road users,” Ferenchak explained. They find that denser urban environments, where streets are bustling and compact, are safer. “More compact cities were significantly associated with better road safety outcomes.” The study noted that pedestrian fatalities in paired comparison cities (the non-cycling cities) were 193.8% higher than in high-bicycling cities, Yet, beneath the surface lies a troubling truth — available bicycle infrastructure and hence more safety is not always distributed equitably and there are consequences. “Areas with lower incomes and larger non-White populations see more road fatalities,” the study revealed

If you’d like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Picture of the Day

Apple blossoms! These things smell SO good!