Two significant and regretful changes to announce:
- Sena Magill will be stepping down from City Council effective January 11th for family reasons (here’s the Daily Progress story). Thank you Sena for your excellent service in one of the toughest jobs we know of! And we fondly remember Sena’s generosity, positive outlook, and hard work as a Precinct Captain (as well as her homemade cookies!); Sena is one of a kind! [Note: City Council must appoint a replacement to serve the remainder of her term (through the end of 2023), and the City’s website has a link for people interested in applying for consideration here.]
- Ray Dueser has to step down as Co-chair of Walker Precinct because of his many other obligations. Ray has a long record of service beyond the call of duty, including many years of work to increase volunteer participation in his precinct, well-measured (and often pithy!) comments in committee meetings, and most recently helping with the Bylaws update. You will be missed at Executive Committee meetings, Ray!
“Gov. Glenn Youngkin has proposed significant investments to begin to catch up after decades of underfunding critical mental health care programs. While I applaud the governor for his intentions, I’d be remiss if I didn’t remind him and my colleagues in the General Assembly that these proposed investments should be viewed as the floor, not the ceiling. If our goal is to keep people out of crisis, then we have more work to do. The governor’s plan is a crisis-first response, closely resembling that of Arizona’s. The premise of the plan is centered around regional crisis centers with the idea that these centers would service individuals in need faster, get police officers out of emergency rooms, and take pressure off of ERs and hospitals — all policies that we can agree on and ultimately support. There’s no question that we need this response, but instead of having a “crisis-first mentality” we can do more to fix our broken system now.”
It’s easy to forget the many significant benefits of the Inflation Reduction Act that the Dems pushed through way back in… August (seems like forever ago, no!?). Senator Warner put out a 
Wednesday was the 10th anniversary of the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut in which 20 first graders and 6 school staff members were murdered… one of many mass shootings in our country, and of course a few weeks ago here in Charlottesville.
VA-04 will be holding an unassembled caucus on Tuesday, December 20 and is looking for volunteers to help run the Firehouse Primary.