Good Morning, RVA: Disagreements, podcasts, booze news, and court cases
Today’s so beautiful someone should paint a picture of it.
Photo by: …-Wink-…
Good morning, RVA! It’s 56 °F, and while today will be cooler than yesterday, we’re still talking highs in the 70s. Temperate, sunny, very few clouds, just a bit of breeze–today looks pretty great.
Water cooler
I disagree with much of this editorial by the RTD’s editorial board: “Where is Richmond’s money going?. Let me enumerate the ways: 1) Per capita spending by schools is not an accurate means of comparing Richmond to the counties as it ignores capital budgets, 2) Teacher salaries may be higher than Hanover, but have been utterly stagnant for years and years, 3) There are significant educational challenges in Richmond that can be fixed with money, here’s an example: $16M is needed this year to make sure schools have working HVAC systems, 4) I’m generally skeptical about per capita expense comparisons across cities on big, general categories like “public safety” and “health and welfare.” Aside from all that though, this editorial is dead on about unfilled positions; many, many City departments have been operating at less than full strength for awhile and certainly don’t have the money to fill those vacancies this coming year (you may recall that that money was previously used for basic services like leaf collection and snow removal). I’m not sure how we ask those departments to cut costs and do their jobs more efficiently, while simultaneously asking them to do it with fewer folks than is required. What I’m saying, basically, is that I would not want to be the next mayor.
Sarah Lockwood at Richmond Magazine profiled two of my favorite RVA podcasters, Blaine Lay and Chris Payne, the masterminds behind the delightful Two People podcast. Go listen to all of their back episodes, but I’m partial to this one in particular.
Gotta get your weekly booze news from Annie Tobey! Sometimes–with all the alcohol-related news, enough to support at least one column per week–I wonder how our city maintains basic functionality. Then I remember that big, long first paragraph I wrote and go “Ohhhhhhh.”
The WaPo has the details you need on Grimm v. Gloucester County School Board (including a copy of the full opinion), the case dealing with whether Grimm, a transgender student, should be allowed to use the boys bathroom at school.
Clinton and Trump won New York and its feast of delegates. The New York Times has some cool maps which illustrate some pretty stereotypical results: Clinton dominated the Upper East Side, while Sanders crushed in Greenpoint.
Sports!
- Squirrels have now built themselves a four-game losing streak. They finish out the home series with Reading tonight today at 10:35 AM. Then they’ll hit the road until April 29th.
- Nats blanked the Marlins, 7-0, which included this Bryce Harper grand slam.
- Caps and Flyers face off at 7:00 PM.
This morning’s longread
The Mechanics of a Contested Convention
I guess we better learn how this thing works.
Let’s start with the basics. The Republican National Convention will take place July 18-21, 2016 in Cleveland, Ohio. There are 2472 delegates available and a candidate needs 1237 delegates to secure the nomination. There are currently 42 rules that will govern the Convention unless there are any changes before July 18th. These rules can be changed with a majority vote from the Convention’s Rules Committee, filled by delegates from each state. The Rules Committee will play a huge part in the Convention.
This morning’s Instagram
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Ross Catrow
Founder and publisher of RVANews.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.