Good Morning, RVA: Hey, hot stuff
A mega warm Friday is a wonderful way to start the weekend.
Photo by: Chad Horwedel
Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F at the moment and today’s highs are in the upper-70s. Gasp! Sputter! It won’t be as gloomy as yesterday either, which makes for a pretty solid start to the weekend. Good work, Friday!
As for the next couple of days, we’ll probably see some rain on Saturday and cooler temperatures on Sunday.
Water cooler
The Urban Design Committee met yesterday to talk about the BRT among other things (like revisiting the 1992 design standards for Broad Street (PDF)–which are fascinating). They unanimously approved it, you guys! The Planning Commission will get to have their say on November 16th, but from there it’s into legit construction. We should all thank Ned Oliver for attending meetings like this, because I’m sure they are not always a thrilling way to spend an afternoon.
Katy Burnell Evans wins the award for best use of “leaky bowels” in a news story. Unsurprisingly, that phrase describes a Richmond City elementary school. You should read the entire article and feel a bit of hope that rehabilitation of our school facilities is happening but also some depression that it’s going to realistically take awhile (years) and is dependent on budget (tons of it).
A possibly boring aside: at the end of the previous article Councilwoman Robertson is quoted as saying that Council is not looking to raise real estate tax rates to fund construction of a new school that would replace the leaky bowels school. This is true, in fact Council has an agenda item for Monday’s meeting to lower the real estate tax rate. State law kind of requires this: Localities must roll back their tax rate if the taxable base increases, UNLESS they decide not to and hold public hearings to discuss it. I am not a lawyer or an accountant or a Jim Cramer (and I’m not even 100% sure the extra money could be used for school facilities), but now does not seem like the time to turn down more money. Our schools are literally leaking their bowels all over the children. This would technically be “raising taxes” (even though it would be keeping taxes exactly what City residents pay now), so don’t hold your breath!
On the foodie front, Stephanie Ganz has both this week’s food-related news, which will make you hungry, and a list of all the new restaurants that opened in October, which will also make you hungry. Read both and then make poor choices at lunchtime!
Here’s a long thing on Vox about what the Trans-Pacific Partnership really means.
Sports!
- Rams host California (PA) in an exhibition game tonight at 7:00 PM. The regular season begins next week!
- Spiders and New Hampshire kick off at 3:00 PM on Saturday. You can catch this one on the NBC Sports Network.
- Hoos face Miami at 3:00 PM on Saturday on ESPN3. Virginia needs to win three of its next four to go bowling.
- Washington heads north to take on the undefeated Patriots on Sunday at 1:00 PM.
- D.C. United has some work to do against the New York Red Bulls on Sunday in the final game of the semifinals.
This morning’s longread
Adidas to help remove Native American mascots from high schools
Adidas has announced an initiative to help high schools transition away from using Native American mascots, the Associated Press reported Thursday. Around 2,000 schools use Native American mascots, according to the organization Change the Mascot, and Adidas has offered all of them both financial and design resources to help create new mascots in a manner that is not cost prohibitive.
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.