Gray Montrose

👇🏻 This is also how DEQ works:

The New Corner Store: How Vape Shops Took Over Richmond - @rvamag.bsky.social

rvamag.com/news-headlin...

Ahem, Varina

There are just… so many things I can say about large corporate food chains and their:

Nutrition
Labor practices
Effect on local small businesses
Support of car culture (😷)
Supply chain and animal cruelty

So just… 🍆 right off, we will keep our locals.

(Shout out to Tortilleria Mixteca ❤️)

What the heck @axios.com @karripeifer.bsky.social

We have such an amazing food culture in #RVA and all you want to talk about is Taco Bell?

There’s a damn reason we don’t have more fast food chains in the city and please go away with your unmarked sponsored content.

👏 👏 local office is not like state office

Local officeholders need to have a detailed understanding of land use and financial policy.

There’s a reason big industrial developers 🎯 smaller, rural localities without the expertise to fight back.

These are the kinds of bad deals that earn folks a rube reputation.

Henrico is laughing all the way to the bank for how little they paid to drown a thousand acres of Cumberland County and suck water out for their own data centers…

Meanwhile Cumberland gets a landfill because bills gotta be paid.

“Cowards” and “You just voted for money” were among the chants of a few dozen crowd members after Monday night’s four-plus-hour public hearing.”

And yet they’re charging Henrico 🥜 for that big reservoir.

Cumberland County approves landfill project over community opposition - @cardinalnews.org

“McGuire said he will continue to push for an increase on the city’s parks and rec department budget, and a “robust” action plan to get back to 40% tree canopy coverage.”

Roanoke put a number on it.

Henrico? 🙉

‘Microclimates' make some parts of your cities hotter. - @cardinalnews.org

It just really bothers me on a visceral level that we subsidize churches — with zero guardrails — acting just like the private market.

Makes me feel real itchy that churches are trying to act like developers, when they get to keep more of the profits based on a possibly mythical public benefit.

Does it matter for tax purposes if profits from owning a strip mall go toward the minister’s salary?

Does it matter if owning a strip mall tax-free directly harms the city’s ability to provide public services?

That’s the VCU argument.

I guess I could understand it if the church was providing some kind of public benefit, like (meaningfully) affordable housing that was subject to strict regulation, where profits get plowed directly into maintenance and services.

But I don’t think I get it when profits go toward other things.

Serious question for anyone that does tax things:

Why do churches get to make money off of being slum, er landlords?

Do churches evict people?

How do they get to be tax exempt for doing the exact same thing as the private market?

Del. Michael Jones’s plan to build affordable housing at his church hits a hurdle A plan to turn a church parking lot into affordable housing in Chesterfield County has hit a hurdle.

“Del. Jones’s church… bought and renovated an old movie theatre located at 11000 Hull Street as a second property 16 years ago. There are 8 acres behind the church and a strip mall with storefronts that pay rent.”

Why do churches get to be landlords?

Del. Jones’s plan hits a hurdle @wric.com

Some days the world is a lot and then I go outside and my rooster is snuggling with his girl while she lays an egg.

Nora and Flora having a solidarity snugg.

Ok. We can do this.

Robert Reich Thinks the Baby Boomers Blew It

“Who in the world needs corporate Democrats when you have a Republican Party that is pretty good at representing big corporations, even though it now has a facade of populism?”

🛎️ 🛎️ 🛎️

Robert Reich Thinks the Baby Boomers Blew It @nytimes.com

But they always bring snacks…

Mountain Valley Pipeline weighs possible expansion, new Virginia compressor station The company’s plan, called “MVP Boost,” would boost the pipeline’s natural gas capacity by 25% and could employ a new compressor station near the border of Montgomery and Roanoke counties.

“Developers of the Mountain Valley Pipeline are considering a plan to increase the amount of natural gas the existing pipeline can carry by further compressing its gas, an idea that could include building a compressor station near the border of Montgomery and Roanoke counties”

Norfolk Botanical Garden workers vote to form a union, the latest in a growing wave of labor wins in Virginia Workers in Norfolk become the second botanical garden in the state to unionize in as many years.

“Once certified, Norfolk workers will join IAM Local 10 based in Richmond. It’s the same branch Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden workers in Henrico County joined after unionizing in 2024.”

Definitely don’t want to hear from actual teachers if you’re thinking about education policy.

Noooope.

A cop pushing the Chuck E Cheese mascot out the door in front of children because that’s America right now (and Florida daily).

I can’t think of something that sums up the state of the country right now more than Florida Man’s answer to American Gothic.

Police handcuffing Chuck E Cheese…in costume…in front of kids…next to a sign that says “Where a Kid Can Be a Kid”… in the state capital.
www.tallahassee.com/story/news/l...

So if we were to maybe use the old marriage regime,

Snatch my diploma away at the last minute on bull 🚢 claims of conduct violations?

Breach of promise!

Or the new:

99% there and nothing to show for it?

Substantial performance doctrine.

Either way, not what they’re doing

Now we’re like… ok, that’s a bit silly.

If you have a kid with someone, you should support them whether there was a 💍 or not. Etc etc.

It’s this tipping point of boom! You are! Versus ahhhh, not quite… that tends to clog up the courts and create a lot of injustice.

Ahem, universities.

Legal history nerd out:

It used to be this way for marriage. That nothing counted up until the ring was on the finger.

And we had a whole legal ecosystem about breach of promise, which some claim as the origin of the engagement ring — literal collateral on the promise.

Fair point, well made

Williams: In withholding degree, VCU is on the wrong side of history and free speech This case of the degree held hostage has become far more damaging to VCU's reputation than any protest on behalf of Palestinians, given its tone-deaf response to what's being described as genocide by ...

It has always seemed 😵‍💫 that you can spend tens of thousands of dollars and years of your life in pursuit of a degree that can be taken away at any point.

No “substantial performance” for college, apparently

By withholding degree, VCU is on the wrong side of history
@richmond.com

The obstreperousness multiplied…

To the 243 people in Henrico who made a different choice, let’s talk about how this 💩 does not happen with one Graham Sojourner Montrose as your Henrico Circuit Court Clerk.

“Masks? No sir. No ID? Also no.
Disrupting proceedings? Get 🌈 “

@vademocrats.bsky.social oughta start playing the bottom-up game too.

Local elections matter. They are your next generation.

Invest in locals, watch them, don’t leave them to flounder, drown, never come back.

That’s a waste.

But I don’t need to tell the EEM, they’ve been doing this longtime.

👆🏻 this is how you make the dollars count less

This is how you get industry out of the game.

Headed in the right direction, DLCC, I like it

Pay attention to our rural communities that are close-knit, have small networks, and have solvable issues at the local, state, and national level.

Recruit candidates from local and state elections

Train them, support them, cut them if they can’t maintain community support