Category: Infrastructure
-
Homelessness in Petersburg – Part 2
by James C. Sherlock I wrote yesterday about the excellent investigative reporting by the Progress-Index about the knock-on effects of the renewal of fire and building code enforcement in Petersburg. My position is that Petersburg must enforce its codes for public safety and the livability of the city. But I also recognize the need to provide…
-
Petersburg Resumes Important Actions Against City Code Violators — Homeless Needs Increase
by James C. Sherlock Sometimes absolutely necessary actions have more than one outcome. Such is the case in Petersburg. Joyce Chu of Petersburg’s indispensable Progress- Index last evening initiated a multi-part series on the impacts of the city’s closure due to safety violations of two motels used by otherwise homeless people. Her first article makes…
-
Sinking the Newest Sea Level Rise Exaggerations
by Steve Haner So, let me get this straight. If we willingly keep paying the carbon tax on our electric bills, then thousands of parcels of prime Virginia waterfront won’t slip beneath the waves? Was that the point of these parallel prophecies of doom in the September 12 Richmond Times-Dispatch and Virginia Mercury?
-
“Richmond Real” and the City’s Limited Pool Hours for Kids
by James C. Sherlock On June 9, the Richmond Times Dispatch (RTD) offered a story on Mayor Stoney’s new slogan for the City of Richmond: “Richmond Real.” The RTD piece offered a positive account of the new marketing slogan devised under what Richmond Free Press (RFP) has called a “secretive” project led by the West…
-
$93 Million for Virginia Trails
The Bacon Family has just returned from a nine-day hiking trip to Montana. We were not surprised that the trails at Glacier National Park, with its rivers and lakes and snow-capped peaks, were world-class spectacular. But we were pleasantly surprised by the quality of the trails around Missoula, where we enjoyed two days of walking…
-
America’s Petroleum Refining Capacity in the News – What is Going On?
By James C. Sherlock This is a note about perhaps the highest profile national inflation issue, the price of gasoline and diesel. The President is demanding more supply from U.S. refineries. Headlines like this one blare at us today: Biden threatens oil companies with ’emergency powers’ if they don’t boost supply amid inflation spike. The…
-
Commonwealth Set for Major Broadband Expansion
by Dick Hall-Sizemore One of the issues underlined by the pandemic was the need for all areas of the state to have access to broadband internet. Without access to broadband, kids (and adults) in rural areas cannot take advantage of courses offered online. To the extent that more people will be working remotely, rural areas…
-
The Defense Production Act as a Political Tool to Boost Solar Farms
by James C. Sherlock We have had multiple discussions, good ones, on the issues surrounding solar farms in Virginia. Jim Bacon wrote an excellent column about it in February of 2021 titled “The Political Economy of Solar Farms.” It was good then and prescient as of yesterday. He wrote another one two days earlier. From that…
-
Home Price Volatility and Virginia Property Taxes
by James C. Sherlock Housing prices have more than doubled since 2012, reflecting shortages of supply and the resulting speculation. The increasing slope of those curves above is not comforting. Prices have soared over 20% in a year. Mortgage rates are up. What could possibly happen next? Most can figure that out. But this article is…
-
Storm-Related Flood Mitigation – A Louisiana Example for Virginia
by James C. Sherlock I have worked for at least ten years — many of those with now-Attorney General Miyares when he was my delegate — to get Virginia to step up to the Louisiana model for flood control. Louisiana. The Louisiana model is a state-federal partnership in which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers…
-
Talking Out of Both Sides of Their Mouths
by Dick Hall-Sizemore While perusing today’s edition of the Roanoke Times, I ran across an article that astounded me. It concerned a meeting recently in Southwest Virginia about the Coalfields Expressway. I remembered hearing about this proposed highway many, many years ago and thought that it had been dismissed as a pipe dream. It turns…
-
Planning for Telecommuting’s Effects on Virginia
By James C. Sherlock I think that we don’t yet realize the full impact of the revolution being wrought by the telecommuting that accelerated during COVID. I am sure I don’t. But Virginians, and our state and local governments, must try to figure it out. We are moving towards a world in which white collar…
-
Does This Highway Need to be Widened to Six Lanes?
by Dick Hall-Sizemore There is a campaign underway to expand a stretch of I-64 from Richmond to James City County. Currently, the Interstate highway is a four-lane divided highway. The proposal is to add an additional lane in each direction. The Department of Transportation estimates the cost of the project at $750 million. The first…
-
Virginia’s Greens Need an Epiphany
by James C. Sherlock Headlines from the war in Ukraine have raised exponentially the interest in natural gas and the extreme price volatility caused by supply constraints. It is perhaps useful to understand the uses of natural gas, the prices Virginians pay relative to West Virginians, the decline of production in Virginia, and the costs…
-
Infrastructure Bill, Meet Richmond’s United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
by James C. Sherlock The President and members of Congress have celebrated the enactment of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Act into law. In Virginia and the other states (Maryland, North Carolina, South Carolina, West Virginia) of the federal Fourth Circuit, good luck with that. The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit just published two…