Podcast appearances and mentions of kate masters

Patch and Matt are joined by two legends of the Junior Reds in its original guise.  Claire Banks along with her husband John were responsible for the Junior Reds developing into a safe haven for young City fans and along with further volunteers such as Kate Masters it flourished and holds a place in many City fans hearts today.  This week the club announced that young City fans would once again be referred to as Junior Reds and the membership option to go with it...

Good morning, RVA! It's 64 °F, and today looks like another hot and humid day with a chance for storms later this afternoon. You can expect delightfully cooler temperatures the next couple of days, though!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 143, 30, and 10.1, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 11.7 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: -0.1; Henrico: 3.3, and Chesterfield: 8.6). Since this pandemic began, 1,340 people have died in the Richmond region. 45.1%, 56.4%, and 52.8% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. For what it's worth, I have no idea what's going on with Richmond's case numbers. The VDH dashboard has reported a very small negative number of new cases for the past several days, and now we have a negative seven-day average of new cases. I suspect it'll sort itself out later this week.Well, we're still a full percent short of President Biden's goal of getting 70% of adults with at least on dose of a vaccine. I think, given the recent rates, we'll be super close 10 days from now. Let's check in next Thursday or Friday. Related, an interesting thing has happened with the graph of new people with at least one dose in Virginia: It has flattened out. Finally, here's the graph of our region as a whole inching closer and closer towards (mostly) Biden's goal.As expected, the University of Richmond announced that they will require students to get COVID vaccinated before returning to campus this fall. A couple of interesting differences between UR's policy and VCU's: UR will require the vaccine only once one receives FDA approval (remember, they're all currently authorized for emergency use), and UR will also require faculty and staff to get jabbed.Whoa! Huge news! The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Michael Paul Williams won the PULITZER PRIZE. Williams won it for commentary, and for his “penetrating and historically insightful columns that led Richmond, a former capital of the Confederacy, through the painful and complicated process of dismantling the city's monuments to white supremacy.” You should definitely tap through and read the the reactions from around the RTD newsroom—and especially the reaction from Williams himself. You should also definitely read through the list of columnsthat won him the PULITZER PRIZE in commentary in a year when literally everyone had lots of commentary to say.City Council meets tonight and will consider a handful of interesting papers I've mentioned over the last couple of weeks. Most sit on the Consent Agenda, but the regular agenda holds RES. 2021-R034, the casino resolution, and a handful of papers about earmarking portions of the American Rescue Plan money. I can't see a world where the casino paper faces even the slightest opposition from councilmembers (but can totally see a lonnnnng line of public commenters). Tune in tonight at 6:00 PM…if you dare!Possibly related to those ARP money papers, Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the City will consider buying a hotel to serve as an emergency shelter. Robinson also says Council will consider a handful of other creative options like partnering with VUU to convert a motel they own and plan to redevelop or repurposing an old elementary school. I don't know enough about the physical needs for an emergency shelter, but I do like the idea of exploring all of the resources available to the City. Better than collectively shrugging and throwing up our hands!Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury reports on the staffing issues facing daycare programs across the state. This stuck out to me: “Statewide, nearly 10 percent of Virginia's 6,047 licensed child care facilities were still closed as of May 28, according to data from the Virginia Department of Social Services. But even when centers reopen, they may be doing so with less capacity.” I have to imagine that the impending summer plus a lack of childcare options will have a pretty wide-reaching impact on employment opportunities for folks.Richmond Public School will host a Regional Community Conversation for the West End tonight from 6:00–7:00 PM. They'll discuss the plans for fall reopening and have some doctors from the Children's Hospital of Richmond to answer any of your burning kid-COVID questions. Zoom info here.Today at 10:00 AM the Richmond Police Department will report out and analyze crime data for the first half of 2021. In Chief Smith's words: “We'll share the information on crime trends and discuss our collaborative efforts with the public as we focus on a successful second half of 2021 and beyond.” You can either wait until reporters write it up for tomorrow's news or tune in and watch for yourself on the RPD facebook.Via /r/rva, a video of a blue heron stabbing a fish out of the river and then flying away with it. Nature!This morning's longreadWe're Gonna Carry That Weight a Long TimeHere's a kind of meandering essay about the stuff we accumulate and the mark we leave on the planet through all of that stuff. It's something I think about a lot!Like Woolf, Landy discovered that losing everything he owned was a negotiation with memory. His artist's archive—the record of a lifetime's work—was broken up. The most difficult thing to destroy was a sheepskin coat that had belonged to his father, which he saved until the very end. Despite this, the experience was “a huge rush,” he later recalled. And yet by eviscerating the material evidence of his entire life, he was guaranteeing that he'd be remembered in a particular way. “I kind of knew that as it was going on,” Landy said, “that I would always be known as that person who destroyed all his worldly belongings.” And in any case, “destroyed” is really just a euphemism. The remains of Landy's things ended in landfill, to begin a new, patient existence among the 16 million metric tons of household waste that enters UK landfill every year.If you'd like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol' Patreon.Picture of the Day

What attracts the hunter to these young women?  In a quiet tourist resort, a killer is hunting vulnerable young women and murdering them. A body part is taken each time. Dr. Darrell Defoe, a profiler and former marine, and Dr. Kate Masters, a forensic scientist, try to find the link connecting these very different young women and their fatal attraction to the murderer. The brilliant killer leaves red herrings to try to foil them as they try to trace him.  Defoe has admired Kate Masters from a distance for several years, but she wants no man and buries herself in her work. He also fears commitment. Will this case bring them closer?  Inspector Raymond Chase leads the investigation but is tormented by secrets from his past. Can the team find the killer before the task is completed and the murderer vanishes from the area?  This romantic suspense and crime novel will intrigue the reader with its many twist and turns and red herrings. You can follow Toni Bolton on Amazon as well as TwitterTwitter @dawnbolton2queenzoaya@gmail.com if you are interested in sharing your short storiesSupport the show (http://paypal.me/QueenZoaya)

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F, and today’s weather looks a lot like yesterday’s. Expect highs in the 90s and a chance for thunderstorms later in the day. Stay cool, stay dry, and stay safe.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 611 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 16 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 90 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 35, Henrico: 29, and Richmond: 26). Since this pandemic began, 1,286 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state sits at 999. Whoa, what’s this? A barely three-digit seven-day average of new reported cases! The last time that happened was way back on October 20th. This, for some brains-are-weird reason, feels like real progress to me. The number of deaths is still pretty high, though. I know I’ve done the flu-comparison math before, but I think it’s helpful to revisit it. According to the CDC, Virginia had an “influenza/pneumonia” death rate of 11 per 100,000 people back in 2019. If you take today’s seven-day average of COVID-19 deaths (14.4), multiply it by 365 (5,256), and then divided it by 85.35 (the state’s population divided by 100,000), you get 61.58. According to this quick and shoddy math, that’s a coronadeath rate about 5.6 times higher than that of the 2019 flu. That year, 1,100 people died from “influenza/pneumonia”, which is about three people per day, if you want to look at it that way.Huge vaccine news in the New York Times: “The Food and Drug Administration is preparing to authorize use of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine in adolescents 12 to 15 years old by early next week.” Dang that was fast! I have no idea how many 12–15 year olds exist in Virginia or in our region, but I’m sure it’s thousands and thousands—and I’m sure many of them are stoked to get vaccinated (including the one I live with). The NYT also says to expect a similar announcement from Moderna soon. Get excited for another, smaller flurry of vaccine news and for some interesting reporting on what adolescent vaccination means for this fall’s school year.I haven’t yet listened to (or posted to The Boring Show) yesterday’s two budget sessions, but will do so today. Also, looking at the City’s legislative calendar, I see they’ve added another budget session today at 3:00 PM. The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Chris Suarez did listen in yesterday and reports that Council agreed on raises for all city employees and did it in a way that has support from the Mayor’s administration. Given how employee salary conversations have gone over the past couple weeks with this group, a compromise acceptable by both sides seems like a big win. Other updates from yesterday: The Civilian Review Board will get funded at about $200,000 and the Affordable Housing Trust Find will have to wait until the American Rescue Plan money rolls in. One note about the CRB: I don’t know if that $200,000 is funding for half a year or a full year, but neither number is close to the “about 1% of the police budget” number we’d kicked around late last year. For context, RPD has a proposed FY22 budget of $95 million.RPS’s school board also met yesterday to discuss, among other things, their recent takeover of school building procurement and construction. This, from the RTD’s Kenya Hunter seems ominous: “Still, Kamras has moved forward to comply with the Board’s directive, proposing three positions to beef up the school system’s procurement department, including a director of school construction, a construction project manager, and a construction procurement manager. City Hall already approved the Board’s budget request prior to the move; it’s unclear from which pot the money to pay for those positions would come.” Emphasis mine and a thing I keep asking to the, like, four other people I know who follow School Board, City Council, and budget season.Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports on a couple of rezonings y’all might be interested in. I predict that 17th Street between Broad and Dock Street is headed for a dramatic transformation over the next couple of years—new development, street redesigns, and potential investment in a big-deal museum are all headed that way.I don’t know why, but I found this photo essay—by VPM’s Alex Scribner—from the Safe Space market up on Lakeside very soothing. It’s nice to see people out doing things together in a COVID-responsible way, I think! Also, I’m super into pickles, so now I need go find some Dayum this is my Jam dills.I love this deadpan headline from Kate Masters in the Virginia Mercury: “More Virginians are foraging for ramps. Many are poisoning themselves by picking the wrong plant..” To summarize, do not eat false hellebore, which, “in the most severe cases, it’s led to hospitalizations, with symptoms including vomiting, cardiac arrhythmias, dangerously low blood pressure and even seizures.” Also fascinating, from the Wikipedia, “The plant was used by some tribes to elect a new leader. All the candidates would eat the root, and the last to start vomiting would become the new leader.” So, yeah, maybe don’t put it in your pasta.Northside members of the RPS community, tonight at 6:00 PM you can join a Northside-specific version of the District’s Reopen With Love 2.0 conversations. Tap the previous link for call-in info!This morning’s longreadWhat the “Infrastructure” Fight Is Really AboutInfrastructure week comes and goes so fast and we never seem to get any infrastructure out of it. This piece in Politico explains that, kind of, but is also just a really interesting look at how infrastructure changed American history.Together, twin revolutions in transportation and information (inspired by the U.S. Post Office, which subsidized the delivery of newspapers and magazines, and after 1848, the telegraph) drew disparate communities into closer connection with one another and with an emerging market economy that relied on credit, surplus production and trade. America evolved quickly from an agrarian republic into a capitalist democracy. It was a world that many Americans welcomed—but which equally as many dreaded and resisted.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the Day

Good morning, RVA! It’s 42 °F, and the excellent weather continues. Today you can expect highs in the mid 70s! Whaaaaat! I spent several hours yesterday working outside in the sunshine, and I feel recharged and ready to do it again today.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,537 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 107 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 201 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 90, Henrico: 68, and Richmond: 43). Since this pandemic began, 1,129 people have died in the Richmond region. The Governor did a bit of a victory-lap press conference yesterday on reopening schools to in-person learning. Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has the details, including: “the number of school districts offering only virtual learning [across the state] has decreased from a couple of dozen at the start of the year to fewer than 12.”Also, buried near the bottom of the aforelinked article is the first mention I’ve seen locally of a timeline for vaccinating children—the Governor said vaccine trials for kids won’t wrap up until “late this year.” This is something I’ve been wondering about but haven’t spent time looking into. “Late this year” seems like a long time from now. Newly energized (probably from sitting in the sun yesterday), I started poking around on the internet a bit and found out you can just sign your tiny human up for a Pfizer clinical trial! Wild!Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury reports that the Virginia Department of Health may abandon PrepMod, the vaccine appointment scheduling, tracking, reporting, do-everything software. From the piece: “Dr. Danny Avula, the state’s vaccine coordinator, said PrepMod’s developers have been unable to fix recurring problems with the system, which have left it unworkable for many local health departments. State leaders have openly acknowledged those challenges since mid-February, when Avula announced they had given the company a deadline of Feb. 24 to address the issues. As of Tuesday, no solution had been offered for the system, which the state began to unroll on Jan. 21.” Locally, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts have moved back to using VAMS, which has its own issues—some of which of have been fixed, though. Software is hard!Yesterday, the City held one of two citywide virtual meetings on the “Process & Precedents” of the resort casino, and I need to apologize for not writing about it. I guess I failed to put it on my “cool and interesting things going on” calendar and totally forgot—big fail! Today, though, the City will host the same meeting again, but it’s at 12:00 PM. If you’ve got time, you can join the Microsoft Teams call here. Additionally, they’ve posted three questionnaires on the resort casino website for folks to comment on (using the same system/software as they did to collect feedback on the Equity Agenda). The questionnaires are very much written from the pro-casino perspective, which is fine given the Mayor’s administration is supportive of putting some sort of casino somewhere in the city. I do think that some of the stated community benefits and funding benefits are either unclear or aspirational—and folks should be aware of that while leaving their comments. For example, I think “stimulates additional development” is aspirational. The entire point of a casino is to suck people in and never let them out back into the neighborhood where they could enjoy shops, parks, and other neighborhoody-stuff. Maybe stimulates additional development of parking lots and highway off ramps? Anyway, as you did for the Equity Agenda, take six minutes today and leave some comments or questions on these three documents. I think the next step in this process is on March 23rd, when the City will release video(s) about the proposals.The disparity between Richmond and Henrico feels on full display in this article about the County’s budget by the RTD’s Jessica Nocera. The County Manager introduced a budget that’s 9.4% bigger than last year’s and, like the City’s, includes a focus on increasing pay for government workers. It just seems like an embarrassment of riches over there—and it doesn’t even include any funds the County will end up with as a result of Biden’s American Rescue Plan.Today, also in the RTD, Michael Paul Williams writes about the dorm-naming situation at the University of Richmond and the effort led by Black students to remove the names of racists from their campus buildings entirely. Let me quote three great sentences from MPW: “Naming a building for someone is an expression of veneration and endorsement. But the Black freedom fighter is not ennobled by a pairing with a white supremacist; the enslaved dream the opposite of attachment to the enslaver…UR’s plan places undue burden on Black students who already are struggling at an institution that only in recent years embraced diversity.”This morning’s longreadMeet the NFL linebacker turning his love of Magic: The Gathering into a businessTotally unrelated to anything, but this is charming.You could draw a comparison to deck building and watching film. You build a deck, you try it out, you play it against other decks, and you get your final product. When you start a week of practice, you watch film on your day off, you study how they played the week before, you study tendencies, you watch their play action, you start to develop game plan, and by the time you get to game day, you have a complete plan for how you want to attack the team. I think from a studying standpoint, it did help. It gave me the ability to sit down and organize my thoughts.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayI need to remember to come take this same picture once spring has sprung!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, and the rain is back. Today you can expect temperatures to stay right about where they are and a pretty good chance of rain throughout the day and into tomorrow. We might catch some sun and warmer temperatures—like, temperatures in the 70s!—later in the weekend, though.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,036 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 156 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 186 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 67, Henrico: 88, and Richmond: 31). Since this pandemic began, 881 people have died in the Richmond region. Like I said earlier this week, VDH’s death data reporting issue has completely broken my Deaths Due to COVID-19 in Virginia chart, which you can see in this week’s stacked graph of new reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. The good news that I take from these graphs, though, is that it looks like the number of people hospitalized every day across the state has finally started to fall off the plateau we’d been stuck on since early December. Locally, the number of new cases matches what we’re seeing statewide: rapidly falling case counts. However! While the trends for all these numbers are good (deaths excepted, because who even knows what’s going on there), the levels are still real high! Yesterday, the seven-day average of new cases in Virginia was two times higher than it was back on August 25th. So please continue to be careful, wear your mask, keep your distance, work from home if you can, and, if you’re eligible, take the first vaccination appointment offered to you.Two things to note in this vaccine update by Sabrina Moreno in the Richmond Times-Dispatch! First, she makes an interesting point about younger Latinos bearing more of the burden of this disease and how the focus on vaccinating seniors might actually be the source of some inequity. Second, Moreno reports that next week, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts will receive 3,880 more doses of vaccine—a 62% increase!In the General Assembly, bills can die quickly and in interesting ways. Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury says that last night the marijuana legalization bill hit an impasseand “at least one lawmaker privately doubted the legislation would pass. Others, however, remained optimistic even as they acknowledged negotiations had grown tense, suggesting a vote was possible as early as Friday.” This is a bummer. It sounds like the House and the Senate can’t agree on whether to legalize now, before regulations and a marketplace can get stood up, or legalize in 2024 after the GA has had time to figure out the details of how everything works. Unfortunately, the part-time, lightning-fast nature of our state legislature doesn’t give folks enough time to work through these complex issues, and, as a result, we end up taking a long time to figure out some of the more complex bills. It’s not great, and Black and Brown people will suffer the consequences of disproportionate enforcement of the current marijuana laws until the GA gets themselves sorted.With the above caveat about bills dying in mind, Kate Masters, also at the Virginia Mercury, reports that the bill requiring Virginia school districts to “provide in-person instruction by this summer” has passed both the House and the Senate. It now heads to the Governor for his signature. I don’t know that this bill has a huge impact on any of the local school districts' plans, as I think all of them are either back in-person now or plan to be by the opening of the fall school year. Of course, who even knows what the fall looks like when it comes to coronavirus, vaccination, and community spread.The RTD’s Michael Paul Williams writes about the University of Richmond’s decision to rename one of their dorms from Freeman Hall to Mitchell-Freeman Hall. Both were contemporaries and newspapermen, Freeman white and Mitchell Black. The choice to keep Freeman’s name at all—especially considering his pretty blatant, public, and racist views—is an interesting one. Here’s a quote from UR’s page about the dorm: “We will recount the history of both Freeman and Mitchell at Mitchell-Freeman Hall, documenting Freeman’s achievements and dedication to the University, while also openly recognizing his racist beliefs and advocacy for segregation and eugenics. That is part of telling the full and true story. In addition, we will shine a spotlight on how Mitchell did not allow Freeman’s mistaken assertions about African Americans and segregation to go unchecked — and how he embodied personally the kind of intellectual and professional achievement that Freeman believed impossible for Black people.”Duron Chavis and the ICA released the fourth episode of Black Space Matters, a video series where Chavis interviews local community leaders about food insecurity, creativity, and resiliency. On this episode Chavis talks with Michael Carter Jr., a food justice advocate and fifth-generation farmer at Carter Farms.Finally, here’s a picture of First Lady Dr. Jill Biden hanging out at Brewer’s Cafe over on the Southside!This morning’s patron longreadHockey Has a Gigantic-Goalie ProblemSubmitted by Patron Susan. Worth it just for the title, but this piece is fascinating even if you haven’t thought about hockey since Sega’s most excellent NHL ‘94.The extra two inches he’d lost from his pads, it turns out, hardly mattered. And to the extent that his splayed legs provided the shooter with an opening—“the five-hole”—he found a way to close it. His leg pads might need to be narrower, but nothing restricted their length. If he had them manufactured longer, and left them loosely attached at the top, in butterfly position, the upper part of his pads, instead of protecting his legs, would rest horizontally on the ice—and fill the five-hole. The goalies had lost the width battle and won a bigger one. And they were not yet done.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayI bought a huge box of old matchbooks off of eBay because I felt like Kroger-brand matches weren’t cozy enough?

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and today looks gross. Expect cold weather, rain, and then 1–4 inches of snow overnight. Plus some ice on top of that? NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says “freezing drizzle” could continue into tomorrow morning, and the National Weather Service at Wakefield say a second round of storms on Friday night “will bring the potential for significant icing.” Winter weather approaches! Stay dry, stay warm, and stay inside if you can.Water coolerEarly yesterday morning, Richmond Police officers responded to a report of a shooting at the 2100 block of Harwood Street. They arrived and found Sylvester Washington, a man in his 40s, shot to death.As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 3,203 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 34 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 426 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 255, Henrico: 102, and Richmond: 69). Since this pandemic began, 717 people have died in the Richmond region.We’re up, we’re down, we’re up, we’re down—it’s hard to tell what’s going on from the daily VDH data dump. We’ll look at the stacked graphs tomorrow, but the local numbers, driven in part by an increase in cases in Chesterfield, aren’t tracking with statewide counts. If you want to get deeper into the local data—way, way down—check out this Weekly Case Report from the Richmond and Henrico Health District(PDF). There is a lot of really interesting information in this PDF. To just pick one: Case rate per 100,000 people in Richmond and Henrico compared to Virginia (5,843; 5,931; 6,219). Some of this data is available on the VDH dashboard, some of it’s not, all of it’s worth scrolling through. Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says, “Richmond, Henrico among first in Va. to release equity data for recent cases, vaccinations.”Of course, and unfortunately, the data say a predictable thing: Black and Brown communities who are more impacted by this disease are not receiving more of the vaccine (page 17 of the data report). Moreno goes into some of the reasons why, how—due to racism—these communities lack access to healthcare, transportation, and sick leave. Important context for this conversation is that 42.1% of folks vaccinated in Richmond and Henrico since the week of December 15th have not reported their race. If we had better data would it show an increased or decreased disparity? I have no idea, but it sounds like we should have more complete data in the coming weeks: “Richmond and Henrico have shifted to having a volunteer base dedicated solely to data entry at events, emphasizing its importance to providers and learning how to quickly pull in the data that’s coming from separate sources.”The Virginia Mercury’s Kate Masters has a great piece about how technology platforms are thwarting local efforts to quickly and efficiently administer vaccine. To date, local health districts have not been given a tool to create vaccination clinics open to a certain set of people. Want to open up vaccination to folks over the age of 75 living on Richmond’s Southside? Prepare for a lot of manual labor to make that happen—as one health district employee said “It’s been a Herculean effort, but Herculean is not scalable.” I think Masters’s article pairs really well with this Twitter thread from Dan Hon about why the NYT’s recent “this guy built a vaccine website for $50!” article is harmful and irresponsible. Read them both, and then sit quietly with your anger!One final vaccine thing: Governor Northam, along with his pals Governor Hogan and Mayor Bowser, requested “increased federal support in administering the COVID-19 vaccines to essential federal employees.” Specifically, they want “a dedicated allocation of vaccine and associated supplies to support the vaccination of essential federal workers, contractors, and Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA) employees within the National Capital Region.” Part of this, I’m sure, is to get the feds to cough up additional vaccine, but part of it is an implicit acknowledgement that transit workers are super important to the functioning of a city. I’m excited about what this could mean locally! Currently, transit workers are prioritized for vaccination in Phase 1b Group 7 (below folks like veterinarians or people that work manufacturing jobs). I think that current prioritization points to a rural/suburban bias, and having the Governor escalate D.C.’s transit workers to a top priority maybe creates some wiggle room to do so in Virginia’s cities.Mel Leonor at the RTD has an exhaustive recap of where we are with legalization of marijuana. There are a lot of moving pieces, and it seems like folks from the Senate and the House still have a ways to go before they get on the same page. And remember! Bills die in frequent and interesting ways! You shouldn’t get too attached to any specific path forward for this legislation.If you’re not following along live, you should really read impeachment.fyi' s coverage of yesterday’s impeachment trial. One of the quotes that sticks with me is from Rep. Castro: “On January 6, President Trump left everyone in this capitol for dead.” CSPAN has seven hours of video, if you really want to commit.This morning’s longreadHow the empty bags and wrappers got thereI loved this pandemic piece from local writer Kelly Gerow.This is not new for me. The idea of alone time — true alone time, not just “everyone is asleep but me” time, that a lot of overworked parents stretch into the too-late hours — is so decadent and rare that I naturally associate it with indulging in unhealthy foods. My first night alone since having children happened only the year before, and I started the day with a giant buttermilk biscuit with bacon, egg and cheese, had expensive chicken salad and crackers for lunch, and ate out of a quart of ice cream for the rest of the day. The next day I ordered Pad Thai with an appetizer of fried tofu for dinner and a giant slice of peanut butter and chocolate pie from an amazing bakery that we save for special occasions. Half of the pie was left on the morning my husband came back, and before he arrived, I ate it for breakfast to ensure I wouldn’t have to share it. That was a great weekend.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayBolt scooters out front of 1301 Roseneath Road.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 31 °F, and today we see the sun! It might take until later this afternoon, but we’re gonna see that thing and feel good about it. Expect highs in the mid 40s, the snow to melt, and the opportunity to enjoy a really great cup of coffee/tea/beverage of your choice.Water coolerYesterday afternoon, police officers were called to the 1500 block of Mechanicsville Turnpike and found Jaquon Mitchell, a man in this 30s, shot to death. According to the RPD’s homicide list, this is the second murder of 2021.As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,740 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 43 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 395 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 155, Henrico: 160, and Richmond: 80). Since this pandemic began, 683 people have died in the Richmond region. That’s three straight days with new reported cases in the 2,000s, and the seven-day average of the same metric fell below 4,000 for the first time since January 1st. We’ve got a similar decreasing trend in hospitalizations: We haven’t seen the seven-day average of new hospitalizations under 100 since the last day of 2020. Additionally, the seven-day average of deaths, which, remember, does lag behind the rest of the metrics, appears to have at least plateaued. These all seem like good signs of progress? Decreasing cases + increasing vaccinations = the world I want to live in right now. I am still a little nervous that Data Reporting Issues will return to dash any hopes that my spreadsheet has generated, but I’m going to allow myself to feel optimistic this morning!Michael Paul Williams at the Richmond Times-Dispatch writes about Black History Month and what it means to look back at 2020 through the lens of history. To quote a bit: “To call February’s Black History Month a ‘celebration’ always felt a bit off, but never more so than this year. Trumpism, resurgent white nationalism, insurrection and the disparate toll of COVID-19 on people of color highlight the folly of treating Black history like a footnote. You can’t understand this moment until you accept that America’s treatment of its Black citizens represents a profound failure of democracy. America’s shallow pool of knowledge of this story has just enough depth to drown us.”The City’s Economic Development Authority has approved a $120,000 grant to local restaurant delivery company ChopChop—think GrubHub, but local. From the press release: “The grant will allow ChopChop to create the Richmond Rate Reduction Program. The Richmond Rate Reduction Program reduces delivery fees charged to local restaurants from 20% to 7% for a three-month period.” A 13% reduction in fees charged to restaurants seems like maybe a noticeable amount? I have no idea! I do know, however, that this $120,000 runs out after three months, so we’ll see if ChopChop will keep their new, lower rates moving forward (which is definitely their “long-term objective”). Also, neither here nor there, this administration loves restaurants. I love restaurants, too, and I desperately miss them, but they love them, like, a lot a lot.Wyatt Gordon, writing for Style Weekly looks at how Feed More and Richmond Public Schools have worked (and continue to work!) to address hunger in our city. I love this quote from Doug Pick, Feed More’s chief executive, "This pandemic has made really clear the haves and have nots of our country…We are a really well-run logistics business with a big heart, but hunger is not the problem—it’s poverty.”General Assembly update! Keep in mind that bills die horrible deaths at many, many points along the path to becoming a law. Try not to get too stoked or upset about any of these things, because who knows when they could radically change or flameout entirely. First, for the Virginia Mercury, Ned Oliver covers the progress on marijuana legalization. Check out this exchange between Sen. Jennifer McClellan and Sen. Creigh Deeds: “Sen. Creigh Deeds, D-Bath, noted lawmakers have already decriminalized marijuana, which reduced the penalty for possession of an ounce or less from a misdemeanor punishable by jail time to a $25 civil infraction…‘At least where I live, law enforcement don’t feel incentivized to write the tickets and they’re not writing the tickets,’ Deeds said. McClellan responded, ‘With all due respect, I think that might be different in other parts of the state.’”

Good morning, RVA! It’s 28 °F, and our warmish winter continues. Today you can expect highs near 50 °F, but, alas, we’ll have a bit of rain move into the area this afternoon. Maybe we’ll see a bit more on Saturday, but, by Sunday, we should pick right back up where we left off with clear(er) skies and temperatures that make me go hmmmm. Enjoy!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 5,294 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 74 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 388 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 146, Henrico: 133, and Richmond: 109). Since this pandemic began, 621 people have died in the Richmond region. As you can see, our mini-trend of three days below 5,000 new cases reported did not continue. Here’s the stacked graph of statewide new reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, and here’s the graph of the seven-day average of cases in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield. All of these graphs are discouraging. It really seems like our statewide strategy is to ramp up vaccination and just hold on tight for the next several horrifying months.To whit, the Governor held a press conference yesterday where he announced moving folks aged 65 and up and people with “certain conditions or disabilities that increase their risk of severe illness from COVID-19” into Phase 1b of the vaccination distribution plan. Tap that previous link for a list of the conditions we’re talking about here. Cancer, obesity, smoking—it’s a lot of folks. In fact, Sabrina Moreno and Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch say now about half of all Virginians fall into Phase 1b.Additionally, the Governor told public schools that they need to start putting together a plan for reopening to in-person learning. Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury has the details, and you can read through VDH’s interim guidance in this PDF. I’ve only skimmed that document, but it sounds like they’re flipping the CDC’s core indicators and prioritizing a school’s ability to implement mitigation measures (social distancing, masks-wearing, that sort of thing) over the amount of coronavirus in the community. I still believe that schools aren’t a major driver in the spread of disease, but I also believe we can’t have school without teachers! Remember that article by Eliot Haspel? If we can’t keep teachers and staff safe and healthy outside of school, we’re gonna have a hard time doing school at all.As far as I can tell, the Governor did not announce any new restrictions or guidance to help slow the spread of COVID-19.Ronald E. Carrington at the Richmond Free Press has an update on the RPS school board’s discussion over extending Superintendent Jason Kamras’s contract: “According to the sources, the School Board is aware that Mr. Kamras will not accept a two-year contract and, if one is offered, he would leave the district…Sources close to the board said board member Kenya Gibson, 3rd District, initiated an effort to restrict the contract term.” It is totally incomprehensible to me that a single member of the school board—let alone four—would even consider screwing around with Kamras’s contract in such a way. Especially after the job he’s done over the last couple of years unearthing and repairing decades of broken systems, rebuilding trust with communities (or just building from scratch in a lot of cases), and leading the entire region in his response to the pandemic. @amyinthe8th put it well on Twitter: “Our students need consistency, something our Boards rarely give superintendents. We are constantly in transition mode, making it hard to ever achieve progress.” The School Board needs to stop playing political games, extend Kamras’s contract by four years, and get back to work.Readers! I think it’s probably time to once again fire up your email clients and let your school board rep know that they need to vote to extend Kamras’s contract by four years and avoid throwing the District into turmoil. This advocacy action applies to folks without children in Richmond Public Schools, too! The quality and consistency of our public school system is something everyone cares about and something everyone can have a say in. This next thing is stupid but true: Business owners and homeowners have outsized power in local politics. If either of those describe you, you should definitely email your school board rep. Also, from reading the piece in the Richmond Free Press, it sounds like 4th District’s Jonathan Young is the swing vote, so folks living in the 4th need to be especially vocal.You can find all of the School Board’s contact information here, and I’m sure they’d love to hear from you.What is even happening this weekend?? The City has declared a state of emergency, and City Council has a special meeting at 1:00 PM to discuss “plans to protect public safety.” The Richmond Police Department will close a bunch of streetsbeginning Sunday, January 17th at 6:00 AM through 6:00 PM on January 18th (ostensibly Lobby Day). The RTD’s Chris Suarez got this quote from the Governor: “I’ve just heard the intelligence…that all 50 capitals in this country are potentially under attack this weekend and during inauguration…We take those seriously. We’re going to be prepared.” I think I’d recommend everyone staying as far from Downtown as possible until…late next week? Or maybe just wait until 2022?Via /r/rva: Trains can be really long!FYI, if you need it: Today, from 1:00–3:00 PM, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts will host a free community testing event at the Eastern Henrico Health Department (1400 N. Laburnum Avenue).Logistical note! Monday is a holiday, which means I will be taking the morning off—and, whew, after the week that was, I need it. Together, we’ll resume our endless march forward on Tuesday! Have a great weekend, get some rest, and stay hydrated.This morning’s longreadThe Dark Reality of Betting Against QAnonThis is genius. Q is so completely and utterly wrong, you can reliably make money by just betting against whatever they say.Cage began scanning PredictIt for QAnon theories and betting against them. He’d look for anything weird—usually something like suspiciously high odds that a Democrat would be indicted. Then he researched to make sure he hadn’t missed something in the news cycle. “If I saw conspiracy-theory chatter in the comments section of Google News articles, that was a plus for me,” Cage said. When he couldn’t find any legitimate news on the bet, he’d dive into QAnon YouTube channels or message boards. If he determined that people were following a QAnon theory, he’d bet against them. Cage has made money every time QAnon has been wrong—which they have been on every bet he’s made so far, he told me. He’s put about $800 in and made around $400 in profits.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 45 °F, and while today’s temperatures could hit 60 °F you should expect big rain this evening and into tomorrow morning. After that though, the weather looks pretty pleasant for a first weekend in December.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,023↘️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 34↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 171↘️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 68, Henrico: 66, and Richmond: 37). Since this pandemic began, 477 people have died in the Richmond region. Here’s this week’s stacked graph of statewide new reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. While it looks like we’ve passed a peak of new cases and are headed back down the other side, I think I’ll wait until the middle of next week to see where we are. The long holiday weekend just screws with the data process so much that who knows what reality looks like at the moment. Do take a minute, though, and look at the troubling number of hospitalizations—we’re not too far off from where we were all the way back in April. Locally, we’re seeing a reflection of the same statewide trends in case counts: up, up, up, and then down a bit. I’d wait on declaring us past the peak until next week on these, too.Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury has a good piece today about what’s driving the recent spread in COVID-19 and how the case investigation process works to help answer those questions. I’m fascinated by the work case investigators do. They’re literal detectives, like something you’d find in Busytown—but, I guess, some sort of bizarro, disease-ridden Busytown. Anyway, if you ever get a call from someone at the local health district investigating a coronacase, please pick up the call and do your best to be helpful!Oh no, this press release from the Mayor’s office is terrifying: “Acting Chief Administrative Officer Lenora Reid has been hospitalized after suffering a medical event earlier this week. She is currently recovering but unable to fulfill her duties at this time.” Having to deal with a medical emergency along with everything else going on in the world sounds absolutely horrible. Mayor Stoney will call Council together for a special meeting on Monday to consider a resolution appointing his Chief of Staff Lincoln Saunders as Acting CAO.In his email yesterday, RPS Superintendent Kamras said he’ll recommend that the district remain fully virtual for the second semester. Kamras lays out three reasons for this decision: 1) With case counts rising he’s concerned for the health and safety of students, staff, and families—while acknowledging that in-school transmission rates are low; 2) In a survey RPS sent out a while back, 80% of staff and 63% of families (70% of Black families) said they’d prefer to remain fully virtual; and 3) There are a bunch of logistical challenges to opening to in-person instruction while still providing services for families that choose to remain virtual. Kamras then points out some of the very real impacts this choice will have on RPS students and families over the next semester and beyond. This entire email is worth your time, and, as always, I’m incredibly envious of the empathetic way in which Kamras communicates these tough decisions.I continue to noodle on the City’s process to bring a resort casino to town. I think it’s helpful to clarify that before a potential November referendum, the City must select a preferred casino operator and location for said casino. This could be the Pamunkey Indian Tribe and the land they now own off Commerce Road or this could be an entirely new operator and new location—like Downtown where the Coliseum now sits. I don’t really want a resort casino anywhere and that includes using one as a replacement for the now-failed downtown arena project. I’m not the only one who thinks this way, either! A member of the Good Morning, RVA Slack (to which all patrons have access!), pointed out that the City has, as part of the Richmond 300 process, already asked a few folks about a downtown casino. Turns out, those folks were not stoked on the idea of plopping a casino down north of Broad Street (PDF, p. 12). Additionally, and kind of tangentially, compare and contrast the language used by Superintendent Kamras when talking about exploring year-round school to what the City uses on their Casino page. Here’s Kamras: “For example, we’re looking into whether a year-round calendar might be financially possible and whether that’s something our teachers and families would be interested in pursuing. Note that we won’t make any decisions on this until late winter or early spring, as we of course want to gather a great deal of feedback.” And here’s the City: “To begin the competitive selection process for the operator and site for this resort casino, the administration needs your input. CLICK HERE to take this survey to make sure the Request for Qualifications/Proposals reflects your goals for a new economic development initiative.” As @Kate_Howell_PHD said on Twitter, “Moving around small pieces in a decided plan isn’t community engagement.”Here’s this month’s unemployment insurance claims graph, the shape of which I still find fascinating. The total number of claims has dropped about 26% from the end of October to the end of November. However, at 80,911 total claims, we’re still seeing more than three times the number of weekly claims than we were back in March. 80,000 is a lot of folks.The Washington Post says President-elect Biden will tap Dr. Fauci as his chief medical advisor, which feels reassuring to me. Biden also says he’ll ask Americans to wear masks for the first 100 days he’s in office. I don’t know if he’s planing (or has the authority to implement) a national mask mandate, but, personally, I think we’ll be wearing masks a lot longer than just through the spring. Get yer COVID test! Get yer COVID test, here! Today from 1:00–3:00 PM at the Eastern Henrico Health Department (1400 N. Laburnum Avenue), the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts will host a free, drive-through COVID-19 testing event.This morning’s longreadVerdigris: The Color of Oxidation, Statues, and ImpermanenceI continue to love these color essays in The Paris Review. I guess I should just start reading that whole magazine?And Farrow & Ball names are very, very good. Some are whimsical and child-like (like Mole’s Breath or Mouse’s Back), some are charmingly old-fashioned (Lamp Room Gray or Wavet, an “old Dorset term for a spider’s web”); a few are winter vegetables (Cabbage White, Brassica, Broccoli Brown), a few are obviously fancy (Manor House Gray, Mahogany), and many are simply obscure (Incarnadine, Dutch Orange, and Verdigris). Reading through the list reminds me of when I was a child, browsing J. Crew catalogues for overpriced sweaters, wondering what kind of woman would wear a “harvest grape” cashmere shell or a “dusty cobblestone” merino turtleneck. It has the same preppy, old money allure. A person who would paint their bedroom Brinjal (“a sophisticated aubergine”) probably spent their childhood in a house with a drawing room, summering in some coastal region I’ve never heard of, and capering about in child-size loafers. They’re a competent sailor. They have never applied for Obamacare.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 27 °F, and dang that’s cold! Things will warm up over the course of the day, but if you have to take out the dog or are heading on an early-morning bike ride make sure you bundle up. We haven’t bundled in ages! Later today you can expect sunshine and temperatures in the 50s with rain returning tomorrow and Saturday.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,417↘️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 20↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 251↘️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 120, Henrico: 82, and Richmond: 49). Since this pandemic began, 468 people have died in the Richmond region. VDH’s Current Pandemic Status map has all six regions of the Commonwealth “at substantial activity”, something I’ve never seen before. All six regions are experiencing a “high” burden of disease and five out of six are seeing an “increasing” trend. Yet, yesterday, the Governor gave his coronavirus briefing with nary a word of increased restrictions. Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch covered the briefing, at which the Governor said, “I continue to closely monitor the numbers, and we’ll evaluate whether further mitigation steps are necessary.” OK, but, like, the metrics created by the State have already topped out. Unless we change the y-axis they can’t get any worse—and by that I mean they can’t cross another threshold into something like “at really, really substantial activity.” But I guess the Gov will continue to closely monitor how off-the-charts things get? Personally, I don’t really want to find out how off-the-charts things can get in southwestern Virginia, where Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury reports that Ballad Health “one of the region’s largest hospital systems…had 45 available beds as of Wednesdays, only 13 or 14 of them ICU beds.” This is dire: “The system has a refrigerated morgue truck parked outside its Johnson City hospital in neighboring Tennessee…A second has been ordered for Kingsport, just a few miles away from the Virginia state line.” For most of us, that’s terrifying. For a select few of us though—mostly health care workers—it’s still terrifying in a general way but less so in a specific, personal way as some amount of the COVID-19 vaccine will exist before the end of the year. Vaccine! It’s really happening! So it sounds like we will we close out 2020 not with a bang but with…vaccines and refrigerated morgue trucks?John O’Connor at the RTD has some more reporting on the proposed GreenCity arena development in Henrico County. You’ll recognize the vast majority of this language from previous reporting on the Richmond version of this project: private operator, permanent tenant, minor league hockey, minor league basketball, A-10 tournament, neutral-site games. We’ve heard it all before, and this phase of a massive economic development project often feels more like throwing spaghetti at a wall rather than hearing about actual planning details. Richard Meagher at the RVA Politics blog calls it the fanfare stage, saying, “So far we are following the blueprint of these kinds of deals, so we are currently in the ‘fanfare’ stage with big announcements, lots of promises of jobs and ‘economic impact,’ and various pictures of ‘vaportecture.’” Expect more fanefare over the next little while, but probably not on the scale of Richmond’s Navy Hill attempt. In my experience, Henrico likes to do less of their business in public and then move rapidly once they figure out which direction they’re headed (aka if they’ve got the votes).Related, Marc Cheatham at the Cheats Movement has some good thoughts on the proposed/upcoming casino referendum. To quote Marc a bit: “Given the city’s challenges, I don’t think a casino should be a priority—or is in the best interest of Richmond. With that, I also know the culture of Richmond. The city has earned the reputation of not having the confidence and capability to do large economic projects. This is a reputation that will need to be shed. I don’t believe a casino is the right vehicle to challenge this reputation, but, if my prediction is correct, a casino won’t float by the grassroots community or city council. Richmond will find a way to be Richmond and not move forward.” I’m equal parts bummed and reassured by that.This is charming: Tamica Jean-Charles at the RTD says Frank Pichel is selling “Charlie Brown-style” Christmas trees to benefit the Anna Julia Cooper Episcopal School in the East End. Pichel harvests the scraggly, Pinus virginiana from his land in Nelson County, which you can then buy to add something a little different to your holiday decorations this year. I love this. Follow your heart when it comes to holiday decoration, I say.Take advantage of a big, free COVID-19 testing event today from 1:00–4:00 PM at The Diamond parking lot. Plenty of space to spread out, plenty of crisp fall/wintery weather to enjoy, plenty of reasons to get tested if you think you may have caught the coronavirus while traveling over the holiday weekend.This morning’s longreadEight New Yorkers on Partying During COVIDThis piece is simultaneously amazing and enraging. It makes me feel at once doomed and also full of empathy for the shared human desire to just spend time with other people.But, like, we’re pretty doomed, I think.“The underground aspect of it adds to the fun. It’s irresponsible, and humans get something out of doing irresponsible things,” said Jessica, a 31-year-old product manager who spent all night at an illicit indoor club in Bushwick in September. “Still, I felt guilty the entire time I was there.” Jessica was not a COVID denier, and she knew she was putting herself and others at risk, she had her own justification for going out. As did revelers across the city every night since June. They had antibodies, the transmission rate was low, they had a post-party isolation plan, it was their 25th birthday, or they desperately needed a night of normalcy.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F and rainy. You should expect the rain to continue for most of the day and for temperatures to drop straight on through the night. I know it’s a little too early, but, dang, this weekend’s weather forecast looks pretty nice. Despite the great weather, make sure you stay out of the river, though. All of this rain has sent the James into an angry tizzy, and it’ll take a few of days for the river to return to its normal, tizzy-free levels.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,585↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 15↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 188↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 88, Henrico: 59, and Richmond: 41). Since this pandemic began, 441 people have died in the Richmond region. These are big numbers, both statewide and locally. Yesterday, VDH reported 90 new hospitalizations, bringing the seven-day average of new hospitalizations in Virginia to 68, the highest seven-day average since June 5th. The COVID Tracking Project has an ominous thread on yesterday’s nationwide numbers that’s worth scrolling through. 38 states reported over 1,000 cases; the death toll reached 1,562, the highest since May 14th; and on “a per capita basis, more people are now dying across the Midwest than even at the peak of the summer surge in the South.” I continue to wait for our elected leaders to make the call to tighten policies. The New York Times has a piece tracking state-level polices, and, while I don’t like the term “reversing,” just a handful of states have either paused their reopening efforts or adjusted course. The Virginia Mercury’s Kate Masters, reporting from the Governor’s last COVID-19 briefing until after Thanksgiving (!?), says “[the Governor] said he won’t impose any new restrictions, unlike neighboring Washington, Maryland, and North Carolina.” We’ll see, I guess.Election results! While the 3rd and 8th City Council District races have sorted themselves out, we still don’t quite know the results of the 2nd District election because of vote-counting weirdness coming out of the registrar’s office. While it doesn’t sound like Shenanigans™, it’s still frustrating to see any sort of confusion when it comes to tabulating results for local elections. At the moment, though, it looks like Katherine Jordan will be our next 2nd District representative. Also, I love how magnanimous both Candidate Spinks and Candidate Jordan have been throughout this process. Here’s Spinks’s statement, in which he says “One of the reasons I was so honored to appear with Katherine Jordan on the ballot was because of our shared commitment to ensuring our community’s voices are heard…I want to make myself very clear, I will fully respect any outcome, including the current figures, as soon as voters can be assured that results have been accurately calculated.” And here is Jordan’s reaction to that statement: “I support [Spinks] and any candidate asking for clarification and transparency in their race results. If our results flip, I will fully support him as our City Council representative.” Should the current election results hold, 15 of our 19 elected representatives will be women.While I’m most disappointed by Amy Wentz’s loss in the 8th District, I love seeing her move quickly on 8 Action Steps Forward for Change in the 8th District. I’m going to list them all here because I think they form a great model that folks should reproduce across the city: 1) Create a working group to “build an advocacy plan around education, infrastructure, growth, housing, transportation, and health & safety”; 2) Host a class on city civics; 3) Commit to watching City Council and Council committee meetings; 4) Attend all 8th District meetings to “ensure our representative is providing a plan to address the neglect and needs of our neighborhoods”; 5) Read the current budget and capital improvement plan; 6) Join or start a neighborhood association near you; 7) Start working on increasing voter turnout now; and 8) Stay connected to Amy and others working on change in the 8th District. This is, of course, a lot of work for the people organizing all of this. But! An informed, engaged, and connected citizenry can wield a lot of power—regardless of who sits on the dais. I’m looking forward to following Amy’s experiment over the next couple of years and hope others across the city pick it up, too.Daniel Moritz-Rabson at VPM has a story up about the Richmond Police Department seizing protestors' phones and…just keeping them? Specifically, the police snatched the phones of folks who spent a large portion of the summer documenting police behavior for the rest of us on Twitter. Seems bad. Here’s a quote from Ashley Shapiro, senior assistant public defender for the Richmond Public Defender’s Office: “They’re not allowed to just take your phone. That is illegal. There has to be probable cause to seize it. There has to be probable cause to search it. It can’t just be you’re at a protest and we’re taking your phone. And it can’t just be in an unlawful assembly and taking your phone.”This morning’s longreadTrump Is Trying to Overturn the Election, but I’m Not Panicking—YetThe tone of this is excellent, and it did make me feel better about the political chaos we’re living through at the moment.It feels smart to consider that he might have a secret plan to retain that job, despite being voted out of it. Trump is the Michael Myers of our politics: He can’t be defeated, because the horror movie franchise makes too much money to ever end. And yet, despite all this, I have gone to bed every night since Friday confident that President-elect Biden will become President Biden. I’ve come to this peace over the objection of my amygdala, which is the part of the brain that screams in fear and anxiety and tries to overpower rational thought. Here’s what I tell myself in order to help me sleep at night. Perhaps these are conversations others can have to achieve my level of forced serenity.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Today’s Patreon-fueled shout-out comes from an anonymous supporter who wants to say again - "We keep each other safe. Wear a mask, wash your hands, and keep your distance."*There are another 1,435 new cases of COVID-19 in Virginia today, and the seven-day daily average for new cases is 1,437. The seven-day average for positive tests has increased to 6.2 percent, up from 6.1 percent yesterday. There are another 31 new cases in the Blue Ridge Health District with 12 from Albemarle, nine from Charlottesville, and three each in Fluvanna, Greene and Louisa counties. There’s one new case in Nelson. A person from Greene County has died of COVID, the fourth fatality in that locality. That brings the death count to 78 in the district. No new fatalities had been reported since October 23. The University of Virginia’s COVID dashboard lists 41 active cases, with 24 of them students. Since August 17, there have been 1,148 COVID cases associated with UVA. *Virginia Governor Ralph Northam made several announcements yesterday about how some of the state’s remaining CARES Act funding will be spent. Seven million will go to the Federation of Virginia Food Banks for the purchase of food, $60 million will go to a municipal energy relief program to help people who have not been able to pay their bills, $22 million for private higher education institutions, and $25 million in Medicaid for day support programs for adults with developmental disabilities. However, the House of Delegates in the Virginia General Assembly declined to vote yesterday on a suggested budget amendment from Northam that would have provided more money to the energy relief program. Northam also suggested dozens of changes to how other portions of the CARES Act should be used. Delegate Mark Sickles of Fairfax made a motion to “pass by” on the amendment for the day. “This amendment from the Governor strikes a lot of language that the committee introduced to better direct in our view the coronavirus relief funds,” Sickles said. “When we came into session on August 18 there was $1.3 billion dollar of CRF funding that had not been spent and it needs to be spent by December 30.”Sickles said the House version of the bill directed more money to frontline medical workers and hospitals, but Northam’s amendment would have taken that away. “The governor eliminated our language and we like our language and we think that it’s our role as the legislative branch to direct these funds,” Sickles said. (read the budget amendments)For more on this, read Kate Masters article today in the Virginia Mercury.  The House also “passed by” on an amendment that would have altered the fee structure related to nutrient credits which are used to help improve water quality in Virginia. Delegate David Bulova represents Fairfax.“Whether you know about nutrient credit banks or not, they actually play a really critical role in our ability to meet stormwater management requirements as well as Chesapeake Bay restoration targets,” Bulova said. “They do that by leveraging capital from the private sector and in fact we can take a little bit of a point of pride here in that Virginia’s program was recognized several years as a national model for how to achieve water quality standards and do that in a cost effective way.”Bulova said the Department of Environmental Quality’s stormwater management program is underfunded, but there was concern that the Governor’s approach was not ready. Other amendments include $1 million to fund a third-party investigation into racism at the Virginia Military Institute. That item passed 52 to 46.  Governor Northam will hold a press conference at 1 p.m. to give an update on Virginia’s COVID-19 response. *There are many meetings today, and for a full review check out the Week Ahead newsletter. One of the most anticipated meetings is the Charlottesville’s City Council and Planning Commission joint session this evening. They’ll consider a rezoning on Nassau Street and get an update on the draft affordable housing plan that’s been put together by the consultant hired to complete the city’s Comprehensive Plan. This week there will be many opportunities to participate in virtual meetings about the initiatives, but tonight’s discussion between Council and the Commission might give a brief glimpse into what decision-makers are thinking. (meeting page) (draft affordable housing plan page)A subcommittee of the city’s Housing Advisory Committee discussed the draft affordable housing plan at their meeting on November 4 and have sent their thoughts to City Council and the Planning Commission. The letter from the policy subcommittee  expresses support for the plan but also asks that the document include strategies for wealth creation and economic mobility.“The plan should explicitly acknowledge that housing affordability for many households is an income problem,” reads the letter which also said the plan should better address the high cost of land and how that can be mitigated. They also made suggestions on policies for how the $10 million in annual funding for affordable housing called for in the plan.  (read the recommendations)The Nelson County Board of Supervisors meets at 6 p.m. and one item includes a decision for a rezoning to allow Wild Man Dan Bed and Breakfast to expand its brewery operations  (meeting packet)The Charlottesville Economic Development Authority meets at 4 p.m. and will get an update on the city’s COVID response.  There will also be an update on the performance agreement between CEDA and Piedmont Housing for tax increment financing for the first phase of Friendship Court. For those details, take a look or listen to a longer story and podcast I produced from the October 19, 2020 City Council meeting where the agreement was approved by elected officials.The Albemarle Planning Commission meets at 6 p.m. They’ll have public hearings on reviews to two conservation areas known as Agricultural-Forest Districts as well as a public hearing on a change to zoning involving recycling centers. (meeting info)*While not a government meeting, here’s another event that might be interesting. The Albemarle Charlottesville Historical Society will have another installment of their Ask a Genealogist series with Dr. Shelley Murphy. She’s the Descendant Project Researcher at the University of Virginia. Visit the Jefferson Madison Regional Library’s website to register and learn more. (JMRL page) This is a public episode. Get access to private episodes at communityengagement.substack.com/subscribe

Good morning, RVA! It’s 66 °F, and we’ve got hurricane remnants moving through the region today. Expect temperatures to stay right about where they are, rain, and some real-deal wind this afternoon. Stay safe!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,345↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 16↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 136↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 53, Henrico: 48, and Richmond: 35). Since this pandemic began, 422 people have died in the Richmond region. The COVID Tracking Project has an interesting post up about the widening gap between hospitalizations and deaths in America as a result of COVID-19. Many, many people are still dying each day (1,025 yesterday), but, compared to the dark, New York-driven spring, fewer people who are hospitalized do end up dying. From the post: “This pattern in the data we compile is borne out by a recent finding that in one large New York healthcare system, patients hospitalized with COVID-19 had a greater than 25 percent chance of dying at the beginning of the pandemic. By August, COVID-19 patients admitted to the same hospital system had a less than eight percent chance of dying.” That same study credits new treatments and less burden on hospitals for keeping folks alive…and the fact that hospitalizations are up among younger people who are just more likely to survive. Positives and negatives.Make sure you take time to read this great piece by Kate Master in the Virginia Mercury about school reopening. Masters lays out how confusing and stressful these decisions are for local school boards who, ultimately, have full authority to make whatever reopening decisions they want. Part of that stress comes from a lack of data (which we’re slowly starting to piece together), part of it from a lack of statewide mandates from the Governor, and part of it from a federal government that’s often up to no good. A lot of things I write about are complicated, but school reopening is complicated.Related: In a press briefing yesterday, Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras said: “With increasing infection rates and the direction things seem to be heading, not just locally, but nationally, I am not optimistic, at this point, that we would be able to come back in person…We will continue to track the data, seek input from our families, and from our teachers. But, the number one priority is the health and safety of our students, our staff, and our families. So we’ll be watching this very, very closely.” Kamras goes on to say “Richmond is not Henrico and it is not Chesterfield…We are very different places.” which I think just perfectly illustrates everything Kate Masters wrote in her piece linked above.Yesterday, the Governor signed into law a dozen or so bills focused on police reform. You can read his press release—which amazingly contains direct links to LIS (that’s the State’s bill tracking website) for each and every bill that he signed. Gotta love that! As per always, I’m bad at state government, so I don’t know which of these bills should have gone further and which are solid, progressive reforms. I will point out, though, HB 5055 and SB 5035 which “permit civilian review boards the authority to issue subpoenas and make binding disciplinary decisions.” Hopefully these new laws will clear up any of the legal gray area we had locally about the power of the Civilian Review Board Richmond (and maybe Henrico!) is trying to stand up. Speaking of, I wonder what’s up with our Civilian Review Board Task Force…Quick follow up: RPD did end up arresting and charging four people at this week’s march in solidarity with folks in Philly. Police charged one person with “obstructing free passage,” another with “obstruction of justice, carrying a concealed weapon and pedestrian in the roadway,” a third with “inciting a riot and throwing a missile at an occupied vehicle,” and the fourth with “assault on a law enforcement officer.” I wish it were easier to track these charges and see if anything comes of them. I get names and mugshots emailed to me instantly, but I never hear if these charges are dropped, people are convicted, or what. Related, and more seriously, I’d like this information for murder suspects, too.One final police-related bit of follow up, the Richmond Times-Dispatch has an editorial calling for the RPD’s newly-formed External Advisory Committee to release the names of its members and open its meetings up to the media. I wrote similar things earlier this week, but, after hearing from a member of the committee, I think I may have been too flip. While I do think that the Richmond Police Department have burnt up too much public trust over the past few months to allow this committee to remain unnamed, I deeply appreciate how much work a volunteer committee like this is for regular folks. It’s possible to appreciate and value the people who want to get involved and make Richmond a better, safer place, while simultaneously recognizing that, in this particular situation, those people should probably be willing to be part of a truly public-facing group.Today at 2:00 PM, ChamberRVA will host a Shared Values Summit featuring Bill Martin from the Valentine, Christy Coleman previously from the American Civil War Museum and now the ED of the Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation, prolific Richmond artist Hamilton Glass, and the president and vice president of the Tulsa Regional Chamber of Commerce (who will talk about their work in reparations for the Tulsa massacre). This is a solid group of folks and might could be a good way to spend your rainy afternoon. Tickets are $25.Heads up: If you’d planned on heading over to the Richmond and Henrico Health District’s community testing event today, it is canceled on account of hurricane remnants. However! If you need a COVID-19 test you should get one, and you can check out this big list of places offering them—to folks with or without insurance.Via /r/rva: “In honor of the upcoming election, my fiancé made (Abigail) Spamburgers and (Nick) Fritos. Don’t forget to vote!”This morning’s longreadThe Vast Bay Leaf ConspiracyThis definitely seems like something I’d have already shared as a longread before, but a quick Google suggests that I have not! Even if I have, I’m happy to share it again because what even are bay leaves??What does a bay leaf taste like? Nothing. What does a bay leaf smell like? Nothing. What does a bay leaf look like? A leaf. How does a bay leaf behave? It behaves as a leaf would, if you took a leaf from the tree outside of your apartment building and put it into your soup. People say, “Boil a bay leaf in some water and then taste the water if you want to know what a bay leaf tastes like.” No.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 67 °F, and, while it may get a tiny bit warmer later this afternoon, this is pretty much what we’ve got for the rest of the day. Expect rain to roll in, set up shop, and stick around until some point tomorrow.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 845↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 45↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 97↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 35, Henrico: 41, and Richmond: 21). Since this pandemic began, 349 people have died in the Richmond region. Yesterday’s caveat about the new death numbers still applies, and this note still appears at the top of VDH’s data dashboard: “Regarding the death data for Wednesday, September 16, 2020, there is an existing data backlog. VDH is working diligently to identify COVID-19 related deaths using vital record death certificate information.” I haven’t written about testing in a while, but the number of daily testing encounters has steadily declined over the last month and a half. I wonder if that’s a result of testing availability, testing fatigue among Virginians, or something else entirely. I haven’t heard much about folks having a hard time finding a test—in fact, here’s a big list of places you can go get tested. However, I can easily see, as the pandemic wears on, folks less willing to go get brainswabbed if they’re experiencing some COVID-19 symptoms.Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch digs into the most recent fundraising numbers for the mayoral race. If you want, you can check out the VPAP profiles for Mayor Stoney, Councilmember Gray, and Candidate Rodgers yourself. Unsurprisingly, Stoney significantly outraised and outspent his competition. The 2016 race was about a million dollar race, something that still blows my mind, and, with just a handful of weeks left to go, Stoney has raised more than half that for his reelection campaign. Robinson also pulled each candidate’s major donors—and all three candidates have major, major donors. Just this reporting period, the Mayor collected $10,000 each from a homebuilder and an Altria-related group, Gray landed a $30,000 donation from a local realtor, and Rodgers saw a Charlottesville couple give her campaign $25,000. Rodgers is way out in front on donations of $100 or less this period with 505—nearly triple her competitors. Lots of small donations is good, but you probably can’t win without a few large donations floating the majority of your boat. For example, just two donations (0.3%) accounted for 41% of all the money raised this period by Candidate Rodgers. Again, Richmond’s mayoral race is a million dollar race, and you can get there in a lot of different ways—but 10,000 $100 donations sounds like of work. And that’s why (among other reasons) I’ll never run for office!I didn’t explicitly highlight this, but in the announcement of the City’s new Office of Equitable Transit and Mobility, the Mayor came out in support of zero-fares for GRTC bus service. Chris Suarez at the RTD says that now all three candidates mentioned above—Stoney, Gray, and Rodgers—support zero-fares. And it’s not just folks running for office talking about this: The GRTC board just heard a presentation on the impact of zero-fares at their board meeting earlier this week (you can flip through those slides here (PDF)). I’m a zero-fare convert, mostly because I think that the pandemic presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experiment with going fare-free across the entire bus system. If not now, probably never. Of course, ditching fares does come with some risks. Mayoral candidates can talk a big game now, but, when it comes to funding GRTC in their budgets, will they put in enough cash to keep fares free AND expand bus service? It’s absolutely unacceptable to make our currently inequitable transit system free and call it a day. Additionally, are these candidates willing to continue to increase funding to GRTC to keep up with the inevitable ridership that’ll come with getting rid of fares? It’s a fun campaign platform for candidates, but this is a big decision that will have long-term impacts on Richmonders trying to get to work, school, healthy food, all kinds of things.The Virginia Mercury’s Kate Masters says that the State Corporation Commission “agreed to extend an existing moratorium on utility disconnections until Oct. 5.” That sounds like good news, but I would not want to have my utilities cut off with colder temperatures just around the corner. Apparently the General Assembly is working through how to use their special-session budget update to address this issue for folks who have unpaid bills. Fingers crossed.Related to yesterday’s news about the Pizza Hut on Patterson closing down, several folks sent in the Used to Be a Pizza Hut blog. So what used to be a Pizza Hut? Mostly other restaurants, but some pharmacies, liquor stores, and even a church or two. Do we have any used-to-be Pizza Huts in town? I feel like surely.Did you read that part about coronavirus testing up at the top of this email? Because if you’re experiencing COVID-19 symptoms and would like to get tested, the Henrico and Richmond City Health Districts will host a free community testing event today at the Robinson Theatre (2903 Q Street) from 9:00–11:00 AM. Rain or shine (most likely rain)! No excuses!This morning’s longread“Fixer Upper” Is Over, But Waco’s Transformation Is Just BeginningWell, I have now learned a lot about “Chip and Jo.” Also, because this is the sort of thing I do when I read an article about a place I’ve never been, if you have a second, go pull up The Silos in Waco on a satellite map and just look at all the surface parking lots scattered around their downtown. No wonder there’s plenty of opportunities to fixer-upper the place.Like so many small cities across America, Waco had lost its downtown core and the economic vibrancy that once accompanied it. (Unlike most small cities, the process had been catalyzed by a 1953 tornado that killed 114 people and razed 196 buildings.) And in the ’90s, it lost its reputation to the deadly 1993 standoff between federal agents and Branch Davidian cult leader David Koresh, who had established a compound near town. As the two-person engine of an entire small industry and economic boom, the Gaineses have cleaved history in two: Before Chip and Jo, and After. The Old Waco, and the New.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 68 °F, and today’s weather looks pretty OK. Expect highs in the 80s and a chance of rain—particularly later this afternoon.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 861↘️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 11↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 164↘️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 61, Henrico: 82, and Richmond: 21). Since this pandemic began, 310 people have died in the Richmond region. Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch looks at the extreme racial disparity in those local coronanumbers, saying “The impact has become painfully apparent in Richmond, where more than 80% of coronavirus cases are Black or Latino, and Latinos have nearly three times the number of cases than white Richmonders despite being only 7% of the city’s population. Black Richmonders account for more than 60% of the city’s deaths.” Checking in on higher education, yesterday, Notre Dame and Michigan State joined UNC in hastily abandoning their in-person instruction plans. The former plans on going remote for just two weeks while the latter sounds like they plan to stay virtual for the entire fall semester. This spring, UVA led the state in early plans to send students home, so maybe keep an eye on Charlottesville for similar plans this fall. At this point, though, the Commonwealth’s major public universities are full-speed ahead and have yet to report any major COVID-19 outbreaks.The RTD’s Michael Martz has a story about gas taxes, which, I know, is about as interesting as it sounds. As you can imagine, and despite the apparent shock and disbelief from the Virginia Petroleum & Convenience Marketers Association, the time that all of Virginia shut down for months and did not leave their homes has resulted in lower than expected gas tax revenues. Wild, right? I link to this story mostly to remind you that the General Assembly created the Central Virginia Transportation Authority this past winter, and that it is, in part, funded through a wholesale fuels tax. Richmond and Henrico both halved their local contribution to GRTC with the expectation that the CVTA would use its new revenues to backfill those cuts. With CVTA revenues uncertain due to the impact of the coronavirus, I’m extremely nervous about what that means for public transportation funding in the Richmond region. Will the localities restore some of GRTC’s funding? Will they move to cut bus service and force me to write tens of thousands of angry words? I have no idea, but this coming budget season will be intense.If you’re interested in the rule-setting portion of the GA’s special session, you can read this piece by Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury. It feels like something I should care about, but, for whatever reason, I have a hard time getting excited about partisan arguments over process at the state level. Give me local process arguments any day, though!The Richmond Public Library has a COVID-19 Community Needs Survey that you should fill out if you’re a fan of the library—and if you’re not a fan of the library maybe you should do some serious introspection. It’ll take you just a couple of minutes and will help guide the library’s plans to reopen early next month.Quick reminder to check in on the Big List of 2020 Candidate Events. There are at least seven events spread across a bunch of candidates over the coming week—each one an opportunity to learn more about the folks that will end up leading our city out of a crisis.I missed this yesterday, which kind of speaks to how far we’ve left to go, but, on August 18th, America celebrated 100 years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment and women’s right to vote. It’s a good and short amendment, and I’ll quote it here in its entirety: “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.” The New York Times has cool piece up called “Suffrage at 100: A Visual History” that’s got all sorts of neat pictures and memorabilia and is definitely worth your time. Guess what, though? There are no pictures of men working to win the right to vote because we’ve always had it—since even before cameras existed. 100 years is not that long ago!I think the roll call vote from last night’s Democratic National Convention is worth watching. Rather than boringly zooming into a sea of people standing inside of an arena only to watch them holler into a microphone, this year’s coronaconvention cut together 57 short clips shot in each of the 50 states and seven territories. It’s like the Olympic’s Parade of Nations but for America. I love it! P.S. You’ll definitely want to check out Rhode Island, which kind of stole the show—the Calamari Comeback State of Rhode Island!This morning’s longreadThe Unraveling of AmericaI didn’t agree with some of the specifics of this piece, but it was too dark not to share!The American cult of the individual denies not just community but the very idea of society. No one owes anything to anyone. All must be prepared to fight for everything: education, shelter, food, medical care. What every prosperous and successful democracy deems to be fundamental rights — universal health care, equal access to quality public education, a social safety net for the weak, elderly, and infirmed — America dismisses as socialist indulgences, as if so many signs of weakness. How can the rest of the world expect America to lead on global threats — climate change, the extinction crisis, pandemics — when the country no longer has a sense of benign purpose, or collective well-being, even within its own national community?If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 77 °F, and, wow, big surprise, we’re headed into another day with temperatures in the upper 90s and lots of humidity. Enjoy!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 958↘️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 3↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 74↘️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 28, Henrico: 29, and Richmond: 17). Since this pandemic began, 280 people have died in the Richmond region. I’m interested to hear what the Governor will have to say this week and what actions he may take as the Commonwealth continues to see about 1,000 new coronavirus cases each day. On Saturday, he said “We will be watching the public health data closely over the weekend—if the numbers don’t come down, we may have to take additional steps to blunt the spread of this virus.” The numbers, particularly in Eastern Virginia, do not look to have appreciably come down. I still think that he’ll be extremely hesitant to move even a single region fully back to Phase Two, and, if I were to guess, I’d say he’ll modify Phase Three in some of the most impacted regions by re-banning indoor dining and reducing the number of people allowed at public gatherings. Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury has the details on the statewide picture. I guess we’ll learn more today or tomorrow, and, until then, make sure you stay home if you can, mask up and keep your distance if you cannot.This past weekend saw two nights of protests return to the streets of downtown Richmond and VCU-adjacent parts of the Fan. I don’t want to speak for any of the folks involved, but the vibe on Saturday was weird and different. Literal White Supremacists with assault rifles led the march for a portion of the night, I saw video of an angry white man shoot his gun into the street to intimidate someone (content warning: n-word), police again used chemical weapons on crowds, and members of the press were manhandled by the Richmond Police Department. You should read the recap in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by Sabrina Moreno and Ali Sullivan as Moreno was one of the reporters thrown to the ground by police. As Saturday night’s crowd made its way through the City, protestors shattered dozens of windows along Grace Street causing, according to VCU President Rao, over $100,000 of damage. Sunday night was, again, weird and different. After the previous night of property damage and scary gun violence, to an outside observer it felt like the RPD were much more on edge. Police harassed, detained, or arrested four people who have been involved in covering the protests for the last 60 days. The Commonwealth Times’s Eduardo Acevedo was harassed despite loudly and prominently showing his press pass. The CT’s Andrew Ringle was detained and handcuffed. @GoadGatsby—who, while not press, has provided the most consistent coverage of the last 60 days—was arrested and released. And @socialistdogmom—also not officially press but has covered recent events in Richmond and has a long history of covering city government in Charlottesville—was arrested and, at least as of this moment, has not yet been released. As you can imagine, I feel very protective of folks who are not quite press but still fill important roles in helping people stay informed about what’s going on in their city. With City Council set to vote on some of the police-reform legislation tonight(more on that below), this weekend’s protests have left me feeling confused and unmoored.City Council does in fact meet tonight for their regularly-scheduled meeting and has a few items of note on their agenda. First, RES. 2020-R044 expresses Council’s support for the semi-new Department of Public Works policy to always provide a safe, alternative path through when sidewalks and bike lanes are closed due to construction. It took a long, long time to get to the point where DPW had a policy like this for which Council could even express its support. So if public praise is what it takes to get more of these sorts of policies, I’ll take it. Second, ORD. 2019–320 would reduce the speed limit on Patterson Avenue between Willow Lawn Drive and Pepper Avenue from 35 miles per hour to 25 miles per hour. Third, ORD. 2020–153—a rare Trammell-patroned paper—would rename Jefferson Davis Highway within the city limits to “Richmond Highway.” Fourth, Council will appoint a bunch of new folks to the Housing Authority board—which, whew, that situation is a whole thing that hopefully new blood on the board will help with. Finally, Council, as part of their regular agenda, will consider four of the five police reform papers (all of them but the resolution asking the Richmond Police Department to stop using chemical and less-lethal weapons (RES. 2020-R048)). Since those papers are on the regular agenda, Council will hold a public hearing for each one, and that means you’ll have the opportunity to speak (virtually) on each one. If that sounds like how you’d like to spend your Monday night, make sure you let the clerk know before 10:00 AM today (cityclerksoffice@richmondgov.com)!Related to policing, late last week Richmond Public Schools hosted a student-led conversation about policing in schools, which you can watch on Facebook. After that conversation, Superintendent Kamras announced that he’ll recommend that the School Board “remove police officers from our schools and request that the City Council allocate the related funding for mental health professionals.” An important bit of context as we start having community conversations about police in schools: School Resource Officers (SROs) are the actual police in schools, paid for by the actual Richmond Police Department; School Safety Officers (SSOs) are not actual police and are paid for through the RPS budget. As far as I understand it, SROs are only in schools to do law-enforcement, not day-to-day school discipline.Also on the schools tip, last week both Henrico and Chesterfield opted to start school with an all-virtual option. That leaves Hanover County as the only local jurisdiction to have students in school buildings at the start of the year.Karri Peifer at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a good a piece about how it’s nearly impossible to make a restaurant work during coronatimes. The Governor can open indoor dining all he wants, but for restaurant owners like Emilia Sparatta, this is still a core truth: "With our business being down almost 90%, it’s just not worth the risk to our staff and families to stay open…How do you pay your employees what they’re worth like that? It’s just not possible.”Survey time! The Richmond Memorial Health Foundation is looking for folks that identify as LGBTQIA+, particularly persons of color, to participate in this survey around the unique health challenges they face. If you want to go further than a survey there are some options for interviews and focus groups, too. RMHF does a lot of health-related philanthropy in the region, and this survey will help “inform the potential development of services, programs, and resources for the LGBTQIA+ community.”This morning’s longreadLove the FigWhoa, I learned so many charming things about figs.The produce section of the grocery store is a botanical disaster. Most people know that a tomato is technically a fruit, but so is an eggplant, a cucumber, and a spaghetti squash. A banana, which grows from a flower with a single ovary, is actually a berry, while a strawberry, which grows from a flower with several ovaries, isn’t a berry at all but an aggregate fruit. The most confusing classification, though, will start showing up on American shelves this month. Shoppers will find mission figs with the grapes, kiwis, and other fruit, but a clever botanist would sell them at the florist, with the fresh-cut roses. Although many people dismiss figs as a geriatric delicacy or the sticky stuff inside bad cookies, they are, in fact, something awesome: enclosed flowers that bloom modestly inward, unlike the flamboyant showoffs on other plants. Bite a fig in half and you’ll discover a core of tiny blossoms.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and you’ve got another hot and humid day lined up in front of you. Summer in Richmond continues!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 801↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 9↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 121↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 62, Henrico: 34, and Richmond: 25). Since this pandemic began, 272 people have died in the Richmond region. Yesterday, the Governor did hold a coronavirus press conference in light of the increasing number of reported positive COVID-19 cases across the state—especially in the eastern part of the Commonwealth. Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury has one recap which focuses on the the lack of specificity and transparency in the public VDH datasets and another with the details on the Governor’s plan to combat rising case counts by getting the Virginia ABC and the Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services to conduct unannounced mask inspections at businesses. The ABC will also ban alcohol sales after 11:00 PM. I dunno, y’all. Is enforcement really the best and most equitable way to get people to practice safe public health behavior? When we talk about Vision Zero and making streets safer, it’s implementing actual, physical changes to a street that shifts behavior—not setting up a speed trap for a weekend. In fact, lots of groups have dropped “enforcement” from their Vision Zero strategies entirely. I’m not convinced that deploying a couple hundred inspectors to enforce the mask and social distancing requirements will actually shift folks' coronabehavior, and I’m concerned about which businesses and people will be on the receiving end of that enforcement. I think we probably need to do the equivalent of making actual, physical changes to a street and close bars and indoor dining for a while.Richmond’s School Board met last night and, after hearing hours of public comment, voted 8–1 to move forward with Plan E—an entirely virtual first semester for all students. The Board could change course if the public health picture improves, but, for now, it looks like kids across the city are stuck at home (and I mean that in the best possible way) for the rest of the calendar year. It also looks like longer-term childcare will become an even more critical need for families whose work situations just will not allow them to stay home to help facilitate online learning. If you want, you can read the 122-page document (PDF) of alllllll the public comments and maybe check out a quick refresher of the key elements of virtual instruction on page nine of this PDF. This is a big freaking deal, and, while I think I’m still convinced that in-person school for our youngest students is probably a good idea, I’m impressed that the School Board was able to make this decision quickly and decisively. At least now we all know what to expect in the City come September. We’ll now get to see how Richmond’s path forward impacts what Henrico and Chesterfield decide to do. That school reopening is not a decision made regionally blows my mind!Also on the regional schools tip, last night the Hanover County School Board voted to finally rename Lee-Davis High School and Stonewall Jackson Middle School. C. Suarez Rojas at the RTD has the details. What great news, and it only took a million years and the extremely persistent work by advocates in Hanover—including a bunch of former and current students. There’s obviously a lot of work left to be done—the vote was a 4–3 split after all—but, for now, congratulations to the folks who’ve waited literal decades for this moment.I’m thankful that the RTD’s Ali Rockett has explained the videos floating around of Mayor Stoney talking with police about the time an RPD officer drove their vehicle into protestors. I desperately hate car culture and am extremely disappointed that anyone, especially an elected official, can think that driving a vehicle into people is totally fine. It doesn’t matter if the crowd of protestors “moved in front” of the police officer’s SUV; if there’s a couple dozen people in front of you, maybe just wait a second and don’t drive your car over there? And maybe especially don’t drive it up onto the sidewalk? I’m sure there are political and electoral hot takes to be made from this video, and you’re free to make them, but I’m going to sit here and seethe about traffic violence instead.Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense says the City has bought back a piece of the Canal Walk from developers. I’m into it! This is public space and should belong to the public.Oooo look at this exciting picture via /r/rva: City crews are getting ready to stripe the bike lanes on Malvern! Somehow, after a bunch of years of work, we’re close to having an actual bike network in Richmond. That’s exciting.This morning’s longreadWhy the term “BIPOC” is so complicated, explained by linguistsI absolutely love linguists! The context, history, and evolution of language is one of my most favorite things to learn about.But Ross also explained that in the decades since those minority women’s groups came together to form their alliance, the term “women of color” has been flattened and lost its political meaning. “Unfortunately, so many times people of color hear the term ‘people of color’ from other white people that they think white people created it,” she said, “instead of understanding that we self-made ourselves. This is a term that has a lot of power for us. But we’ve done a poor-ass job of communicating that history so that people understand that power.”If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and today looks a lot like yesterday which looks a lot like tomorrow and the next couple of days. I can handle the heat and humidity and am just happy for clear skies.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 432↘️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 14↗️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 80↘️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 25, Henrico: 37, and Richmond: 18). Since this pandemic began, 219 people have died in the Richmond region. For the past two weeks, the number of new reported cases in Virginia has remained relatively stable, as testing (however you choose to define that) has continued to increase. I haven’t had the time, but I’d love to break down the number of new reported cases by region. I wonder if some regions are seeing cases increase at a similar rate to regions seeing a drop in cases? Kind of like what was happening across the country for several weeks, as the Northeast cooled off while the South and West heated up? Maybe over the weekend! One last bit of virus news, Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury says the Governor will “discontinue his twice-weekly briefings, citing a rise in testing and a decreasing percentage of results that come back positive.” OK. I don’t get it. More communication is always better than less, and I just can’t understand why our elected officials—and this applies locally, too—have decided to dip out during a time of crisis.I think, for the most part, for the first time in 27? 28? days, there were no major protests in Richmond last night. The word “major” is doing a lot of work in that sentence, because the Richmond Times-Dispatch says 50 folks were at the Lee Circle until 12:00 AM, and WTVR says 15 folks were arrested for conducting a sit-in out front of the Commonwealth Attorney’s home. Both of those things would be ultra headline news at any other moment in time but not this morning!There’s a lot of eviction related news lately, and I’m having a hard time understanding exactly what’s going on. The Virginia Supreme Court’s statewide moratorium on evictions lifts on Monday, and, while Governor Northam did not ask the Court to extend the moratorium, he is “asking chief circuit court judges around the state to bar evictions until July 20,” says Justin Mattingly in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The Governor will also make available $50 million of federal CARES Act money to fund a new program to help people pay their rents and mortgages beginning on…Monday. The same day the ban on evictions lifts. That’s not a whole lot of time to get a statewide eviction program up and running! Also, a couple days ago, Mayor Stoney announced that he’ll dedicate $6 million, or 30% of the City’s entire CARES Act money, to “support both households currently facing evictions pending in the courts as well as those at risk of eviction due to economic challenges arising form COVID-19.” The City says 1,900 households currently face a pending eviction. I’m honestly unsure how to reconcile the Governor’s choice not to extend the eviction moratorium with his quotes like this: “We don’t want anybody getting evicted at any time, but especially not at this difficult time.”I listened to the absolutely fascinating Governmental Operations committee meeting yesterday so you didn’t have to (but you still totally can). The meeting, run by Chair Andreas Addison, focused on the process for removing our Confederate monuments and if there was any possible way to take them down before jumping through the State’s required and paternalistic hoops. The City Attorney, again, says no despite the various states of emergency and clear public safety hazard posed by the multi-ton statues. Well, to be clear, the Attorney said that there’s no way to remove the statues without opening up either the City, the City Council, the Mayor, or even the contractors paid to take the monuments down to risk of lawsuit. The Attorney also said that both the City’s Planning Commission and the Commission of Architectural Review will have to sign off on bringing the statues down. For those following at home, according to the City Attorney, here’s what needs to happen before anyone can head out to Monument Avenue with a crane: Council must introduce legislation on July 1st saying they want to take the monuments down, they’ve got to then schedule a public hearing 30 days from the date notice of the hearing is published in the paper, Planning Commission has to approve of removal, the Commission of Architectural Review has to approval of removal, if necessary City Council may need to override either of those decisions, the public hearing needs to happen, Council then can vote on removing the monuments, then the monuments need to sit there for 30 days so the City can entertain offers from museums and battlefields and such. That’s a boring list of things, but I hope it makes clear that without new legal guidance from the City Attorney (or some other lawyer, including the Commonwealth’s Attorney and the Attorney General), absolutely nothing is happening any time soon. Honestly, I’m frustrated by how this entire conversation was framed—starting from no—and would have much preferred something along the lines of “Please, Attorney, tell me how to do what I want to do and the risks associated with it.” Councilmember Jones eventually asked what was the worst possible thing that could happen if we took the monuments down immediately, and the Attorney said a judge may order them to go back up. O…K? I mean, they’re up now? Like, the worst possible consequence is the one we are living with today? While Council will look for additional legal advice, they’re also going to ask the state to consider shortening their required process, which, sure.According to the Virginia Employment Commission’s weekly press release, around 400,000 folks filed for unemployment insurance the week ending June 20th. That’s just under two entire City of Richmonds of people without jobs.VPM’s Alan Rodriguez has this great profile of the student journalists at the Commonwealth Times who’ve provided absolutely essential coverage of Richmond’s nightly protests. You will recognize the names in this piece—Andrew Ringle, Hannah Eason, Eduardo Acevedo—because I’m constantly linking to their work. I’m impressed and thankful for their commitment, especially since they haven’t been paid since March!This morning’s patron longreadTake Back the Streets From the AutomobileSubmitted by Patron Lisa. Richmond, too, has seen its share of biking massively increase since the pandemic sent everyone home to shelter in place—just try to get an appointment at a local bike shop for small repairs! I do worry, though, that we missed our moment, and, with Phase Three on the horizon, we’re about to head back to our car-centric lives having made absolutely zero changes to the way we prioritize our public spaces.All over the world, forward-looking cities large and small have already jumped into action. In Medellin, the innovative Colombian city nestled in the Andes, workers are seizing traffic lanes and slapping down yellow paint to signify a change: Cars have been evicted and the lanes are now reserved for bicyclists. In Kampala, the capital of Uganda, the authorities have closed streets, encouraged cycling, and sped the construction of new bike lanes and walkways. In European cities, “corona cycleways” have become the new norm.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and that’s about the high for today. We’ve got a chance of rain today and maybe every day for the rest of this week. I’m…not looking forward to spending even more time indoors.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 705 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 7 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 53 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 29, Henrico: 26, and Richmond: 17). Since this pandemic began, 160 people have died in the Richmond region. Despite the relatively low number of new cases in the City, Richmond saw more new cases reported over the weekend than ever before (147). In good data news, VDH has update their dashboard to now show percent positivity by health district (tap on “Testing” and then you can select a locality from the drop down). Remember: 7-day positivity rate has become the go-to metric for the governor in his phased recovery plan, and now we’ve got the ability to see that metric change over time. Richmond’s 7-day positivity rate is 25.8% and has increased each of the last eight days. Chesterfield’s remains mostly flat around 11%, and Henrico’s sits at 13.7% having increased from 10.7% since May 12th. Turns out, jurisdictions are different, and the availability of more and more data continues to highlight the inequitable effects the coronavirus. To whit, over the weekend, Sabrina Moreno and Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch looked at the disparate impact COVID-19 has on Black and Latino communities: “Hispanic Virginians make up almost 30% of cases despite being only 9% of the state population. Black residents are 16% of cases, and almost 20% of the population, but in Richmond, make up 16 of the 18 deaths. One is Hispanic and one is not reported.” Additionally, Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury continues her excellent healthdata reporting and has a good piece on how the Commonwealth still fails to meet the governor’s stated metrics for safely moving into recovery. Masters’s piece will also give you some insight into how the data available from VDH has changed, sometimes abruptly, over the last couple of months—much to the dismay of spreadsheetidemiologists and local policy makers alike.The City’s Planning Commission meets today to hear a presentation on Richmond 300, and you can take a peek at the slides beforehand. First, the draft of the plan drops on May 26th! That’s pretty exciting. Second, you should gird yourself for a bunch of topic- and geography-focused (virtual) meetings in June. Also, if you scroll down a bit in that PDF, you can see the results of the Planning for a Post-Pandemic Society survey I linked to a couple weeks back. Of particular interest to me is page 11 which shows responses to “Which features do you think individuals will want their neighborhoods to have in a post-pandemic society?” Top four answers: Sidewalks, a public park within a short walk, a commercial area within a short walk, and bike lanes. People want safe, easy ways to get to the things they need to live a thriving life—without a car! To prepare for this—while addressing folks' health and safety needs—the City can and should pilot dozens of miles of slow/open streets all over the place. Honestly, the City should have done this months ago, but, for whatever reason, it has not. In fact, when places like Ashland are piloting open streets and talking about making them permanent, it feels like our City’s leadership actively does not want this sort of thing to happen. You should ask them why not (rvamayor@richmondgov.com and City Council contact information).Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense says City Council will take the next baby steps forward in figuring out what to do with the area around the Coliseum, aka NoBro, aka the ex-Navy Hill project. At tomorrow’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meeting Council will consider RES. 2020-R034, which would declare a handful of downtown properties as surplus—something they’ve got to do before issuing Requests for Proposal for future development. I’d like to pause a moment to remind Council that they very much wanted to complete a small area plan for that neighborhood before the City issued any new RFPs. Spiers points out that a plan is mentioned in the resolution’s notes, but, regardless, I wanted to say it out loud while making a concerned face. Probably the biggest single misstep of the entire Navy Hill situation was the lack of public engagement at the RFP-stage of the process. Let’s not go through that whole thing again, OK? Side note: There’s a lot of interesting stuff on the Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee’s agenda for tomorrow, and you can see what I’m tracking on this public Trello board.That Graduate Together 2020 video you may have seen floating around featured Richmond’s own National Teacher of the Year Rodney Robinson! It also featured other people you may have heard of like “Barack Obama” and “LeBron James”—neither of those people are from Richmond, though. Robinson says some of his words got cut for airtime, but you can read the entirety of his segment over on his Twitter.Employment note! The Virginia Department of Health is hiring 1,300 contact tracers. I honestly have no idea what’s involved in contact tracing, but it does sound kind of like being a disease detective? VDH wants interested folks to contact one of the staffing agencies found in this PDF.This morning’s longreadF*ck the Bread. The Bread Is Over.This is some good, good writing.I call my mother. “I can’t find bread flour or yeast anywhere.” “F*ck the bread,” says my mother. “The bread is over.” In fairy tales, form is your function and function is your form. If you don’t spin the straw into gold or inherit the kingdom or devour all the oxen or find the flour or get the professorship, you drop out of the fairy tale, and fall over its edge into an endless, blank forest where there is no other function for you, no alternative career. The future for the sons who don’t inherit the kingdom is vanishment. What happens when your skills are no longer needed for the sake of the fairy tale? A great gust comes and carries you away.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 40 °F, and today looks like a great day to get outside and move your body around. Expect highs right around 70 °F and lots of sunshine. Take advantage of the opportunity!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 730 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 41 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 90 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 48, Henrico: 23, and Richmond: 19). Locally, this is the third most new reported positive cases in a single day, and that finally got me to put together this chart of the seven-day average of new reported positive cases in Richmond, Chesterfield, and Henrico. As you can see, Chesterfield continues to report more new cases each day, Richmond’s either mostly flat or has a slightly increasing number of new cases, and Henrico is still coming down off its early peak. Statewide, reported deaths shot way up. Doctors and statisticians will hate how I use these numbers—so, grain of salt—but the CDC reports leading causes of deaths for each state, and in Virginia cancer killed 15,064 people in 2017 (the most recent data they’ve got). That’s an average of 41 people per day. Looking at it that way, yesterday, COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in the Commonwealth. Also, not that it matters anymore, VDH reported under 5,000 tests yesterday, and the average number of tests reported over the last six days (for dumb data reasons) is either 6,886 or 7,216—depending on how you define “test.” Both of those numbers are significantly less than 10,000. I’m interested in what the Governor will say at his regularly-scheduled 2:00 PM briefing today, the final one before the May 15th plunge into Phase One.In potentially huge news locally, Justing Mattingly at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says Mayor Stoney “is expressing reservations about whether Friday is the right time for officials to start easing restrictions in the city” and that “Richmond is considering asking Northam for an exemption similar to what Northern Virginia received.” Heck yes, Mayor! I’m having…an unplanned emotional reaction…to finally reading about an elected official who I feel like has their focus on the health and safety of me, my family, and my neighbors. Yes, that’s for sure how normal people talk about feelings—as “unplanned emotional reactions.” Anyway, as I hinted at yesterday, I don’t think there’s much weight in the Governor’s continued “my restrictions are a floor not a ceiling” rhetoric. At the moment he appears way more focused on, in his words, “Uniformity across the region is critical to a successful strategy, rather than having restrictions piecemeal across towns and counties.” Here again is Mayor Stoney with the A+ response: "I understand that the governor wants everybody to be on the same page in the region to do so, but I think this is once again where being an independent city in this state kind of penalizes you…We’re different than the counties. That’s just the bottom line.” Super different than the counties in priorities: Both county managers from Henrico and Chesterfield say they plan on going ahead with the May 15th move into Phase One.I don’t really know what to make of this piece of reporting by Kate Masters in the Virginia Mercury about the State sharing names and addresses of individuals with COVID-19 with 911 dispatch centers. Masters gets into some of the localities' super legit privacy concerns and how VDH seems to be using the same section of the State Code to authorize this use of data while preventing other uses. I’m definitely not against using our personal data to allow for robust contact tracing—in fact, I think it’s critical to me ever getting out of this dang house again. But what we need is a plan, put together by health and data experts, to get this thing done. Not just “release the data to call centers and let localities decide how to handle it properly.”/r/rva has posts from a ton of folks who were out taking pictures of yesterday’s flyover plus this video. Yes, there was a flyover yesterday! Honestly, I don’t really know what a flyover does during coronatimes. Are we, like, full of morale now? How about hazard pay for the people working in grocery stores? That’d pump up my morale jams for sure. But, because I am still a small child, I can’t be but so cynical when looking at pictures of huge, fast machines.This morning’s patron longreadThe Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was DyingSubmitted by Patron Kimberly. Here’s a depressing piece about how, like almost all things in America, race is such an enormous factor in the impact of COVID-19.The racial contract is not partisan—it guides staunch conservatives and sensitive liberals alike—but it works most effectively when it remains imperceptible to its beneficiaries. As long as it is invisible, members of society can proceed as though the provisions of the social contract apply equally to everyone. But when an injustice pushes the racial contract into the open, it forces people to choose whether to embrace, contest, or deny its existence. Video evidence of unjustified shootings of black people is so jarring in part because it exposes the terms of the racial contract so vividly. But as the process in the Arbery case shows, the racial contract most often operates unnoticed, relying on Americans to have an implicit understanding of who is bound by the rules, and who is exempt from them.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 51 °F, and so long, excellent weather. Today you can expect highs in the mid 50s and rain later this afternoon. Rad weather maybe returns on Thursday?Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 821 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 24 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 26 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 0, Henrico: 10, and Richmond: 16). Today is Tuesday, so you can probably expect a spike in those numbers. At the Governor’s press conference yesterday, he announced that, despite whatever the data may say, he expects Virginia to move into Phase One of recovery by May 15th. Here’s Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury: “The announcement comes before a 14-day downward trend in new COVID-19 cases or a decline in hospitalization numbers — metrics Northam previously said the state would need to meet before loosening the business and social distancing restrictions that have become the new normal for Virginians since March.“ This is incredibly frustrating. What was the point of announcing all of those data-based guidelines if Northam just had his sights set on May 15th anyway? What happens if the data don’t cooperate and get in line for his new two-week deadline? Northam’s also switching his messaging to “safer at home” instead of “stay at home,” but, as always, safer at home for whom? Phase One sends employees at “restaurants, recreation, and personal care business such as hair salons and spas”—mostly working-class people—back to work. Folks who are privileged enough to have good insurance and can work from home are encouraged to continue doing so. Here’s a quote from the Governor, take a second and think about who the “you” in this quote is: “Here’s the bottom line…You’ll be able to get your hair cut, but you’ll need an appointment. It means you can go out to eat again, but restaurants will use less of their seating to spread people out. Phase One means more retail establishments can be open, but they’ll have to operate at lower capacity.” At some point we substituted “flatten the curve” for “the healthcare systems will not be overwhelmed,” and those two things are not at all the same. We wanted to do the former to prevent the latter, but just because we’ve managed to keep our hospitals up and running doesn’t mean that the virus has vanished. In fact, the Commonwealth is still short on testing, more and more Virginian’s are reporting positive every day, and new hospitalizations are not going down. Plus, do we even really understand the impacts of COVID-19 yet? This sentence, again from Kate Masters, shouldn’t make any Virginians feel great: “The new guidelines align Virginia more closely with southern neighbors, including Tennessee and Georgia, than with other regional partners including Maryland and Washington, D.C.” Great.Here, instead, is some guidance from Mayor Stoney: Stay home! You can also read the memo the Mayor sent to Council the other day (PDF). It’s got lots of good info, including a breakdown of Richmond’s COVID-19 data by race. As of May 1st, 14 out of 15 Richmonders who have died as a result of the virus are Black.As previously mentioned, Virginia lags and has lagged for weeks and weeks in testing. Megan Pauly at VPM submitted a bunch of FOIA requests and found at least one possible reason: The supply chain for testing swabs is an absolute cluster. Tap that link, read it in full, and then let the feelings of despair wash over you.RVAHub has a quick story about The Pick-Up, a new contactless pick-up service for all of the shops at Willow Lawn. This totally reminds me of olde-tyme, as-seen-on-TV Wild West general stores, where you could roll in and they’d have your entire order ready for you. This is the kind of thing I could see existing after The Time of Coronavirus.Tonight you’ve got another opportunity to join a virtual urbanism happy hour, this one focuses on regional bike and pedestrian initiatives. On the Zoom: Todd Eure from Henrico County, Louise Lockett Gordon from Bike Walk RVA, and Chet Parsons from Plan RVA. This is a way-smart group of folks, and you have a great opportunity to ask them about what the region is doing to make walking and biking safer for everyone. I’m sure they’ll be talking the Ashland to Petersburg Trail, but, also, Henrico People!, get in there and ask about sidewalks and paths in your neighborhood!This morning’s longreadHow Long Will a Vaccine Really Take?Over the weekend, the NYT had this neat / depressing / realistic look at what goes in to manufacturing a vaccine and how long each phase takes. Turns out, a long time! This seems obvious, but we never say it outloud: Lots of viruses we’re extremely familiar with don’t have vaccines.“The manufacturing task is insurmountable,” Mr. Samant said. “I get sleepless nights thinking about it.” Consider just one seemingly simple step: putting the vaccine into vials. Manufacturers need to procure billions of vials, and billions of stoppers to seal them. Sophisticated machines are needed to fill them precisely, and each vial is inspected on a high-speed line. Then vials are stored, shipped and released to the public using a chain of temperature-controlled facilities and trucks. At each of these stages, producers are already stretched to meet existing demands, Mr. Samant said.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and today looks pretty wonderful. Enjoy highs in the mid-to-upper 70s and lots of sunshine. Spend some time on the stoop!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 940 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 44 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 57 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 8, Henrico: 28, and Richmond: 21). As you might have noticed, I’ve switched from highlighting the total number of reported positive cases and deaths to new reported positive cases and deaths. Now that the cumulative numbers are sufficiently large (18,671 total reported positive cases in Virginia) my brain has a hard time telling even basic things like if more people are getting sick each day. I hope writing about this different set of numbers will help with that. For those keeping track at home: The number of new reported positive cases continues to go up, so has the number of reported tests, but hospitalizations have stayed mostly flat with a slight increase. Over the weekend, VDH also started posting “total people tested” in addition to “unique people tested” since, presumably, folks can get tested multiple times. These two numbers, unfortunately, aren’t comparable so for now at least I’ll keep making my charts using the original numbers. Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury reports that state officials say “…the new methodology will make it easier for the state to calculate the total percentage of COVID-19 tests that come back positive. That metric is considered important in evaluating the severity of outbreaks in different areas and — once more widespread testing is available — whether the virus appears to be accelerating or abating.” I wish the State would have started with this methodology, or at least announced a change of methodology when they announced the goals they’re looking to meet to lift some of the social-distancing restrictions. Now it just looks like a way to increase the denominator in that percent-positive calculation.Lots of local budget conversations today for you, yes you, to participate in! First, if you want to weigh in on the $24 million of cuts Richmond Public Schools needs to make, you can send a public comment to speakers@rvaschools.net by 1:00 PM today. Here’s a table of proposed cuts(PDF) if you’d like to advocate for protecting anything in particular. Personally, I’ll be sending a note of support for the middle school STEM academies, one of which is at Henderson, my neighborhood middle school. Second, City Council will host another budget amendment session today. So far they’ve had a discussion on exactly one budget amendment, submitted by Councilmember Lynch. Unless something dramatic happens, like a quarantine-fueled outburst of productivity from one or several councilmembers, it looks like we’re headed toward adopting the Mayor’s budget pretty much as is. If you like the Mayor’s budget, that’s fine! If you feel like he could have done a better job—or if you’re a councilmember that’s spent some time criticizing that budget—there’s not a ton of time left to make improvements. If you’d like to weigh in, you can send an email to cityclerksoffice@richmondgov.com by 10:00 AM (note the earlier time). Maybe ask Council to preserve the $900,000 of new sidewalk money that could have done some real good on The Southside: Where the Sidewalk Ends.Oh! One other quick Richmond Public Schools thing: It’s Teacher Appreciation Week. If there’s a teacher in your life that you know and love, you can shoot a short video proclaiming their greatness and send it to outreach@rvaschools.net. Honestly, this is a great idea for any teacher in your life, regardless of what school system they teach in. Just send them a quick thank you note, video, email, or text. It’s a weird time, and teachers—as much as anyone—are doing their best!Sabrina Moreno at the RTD has a good piece about a new mural on Hull Street of Black women—by artist Austin Miles based on work by Kristal Brown. Of the need for work like this, Brown says, “It was something that I felt like we needed to talk about, particularly in Richmond, where the city is still very much divided…There were many times I wanted to say, ‘Me too.’…It makes you know that it’s not just you.”Today is May 4th. Alongside many, many Star Wars jokes, you will find all of the Star Wars movies streaming on Disney+. Sounds like it’s time to force my family into watching several dozen hours of Star Warsmovies over the next couple days!This morning’s longreadMy Restaurant Was My Life for 20 Years. Does the World Need It Anymore?While I do think, at least in Richmond, restaurants have sucked up a lot of the air in the room when we talk about service-related businesses, this excellent piece in the NYT feels applicable to any small business recently shuttered by the coronavirus.The concerns before coronavirus are still universal: The restaurant as we know it is no longer viable on its own. You can’t have tipped employees making $45 an hour while line cooks make $15. You can’t buy a $3 can of cheap beer at a dive bar in the East Village if the “dive bar” is actually paying $18,000 a month in rent, $30,000 a month in payroll; it would have to cost $10. I can’t keep hosing down the sauté corner myself just to have enough money to repair the ripped awning. Prune is in the East Village because I’ve lived in the East Village for more than 30 years. I moved here because it was where you could get an apartment for $450 a month. In 1999, when I opened Prune, I still woke each morning to roosters crowing from the rooftop of the tenement building down the block, which is now a steel-and-glass tower. A less-than-500-square-foot studio apartment rents for $3,810 a month.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and rainy. But! Later today the rain should stop and the temperatures should head all the way up into the mid 70s. If things work out, we could have some good porch-sitting weather this evening.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 10,998 positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth, and 372 people in Virginia have died as a result of the virus. VDH reports 1,379 cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 402, Henrico: 718, and Richmond: 259). The data bad news from yesterday: 732 new positive cases marks the most ever reported in a single day. The data good news from yesterday: 3,740 tests is the second most ever reported in a single day. Now we just need to keep it up and, like, quadruple the number of tests we’re doing. Here’s the chart of new cases and new tests that I keep updating, and here’s the chart of the seven-day rolling average of new tests per 100,000 people that I stole from the NYT. Again and always, I don’t think any of these data indicate the true number of folks infected with the coronavirus. They’re just lots of context for folks who don’t know how to process any other way than building spreadsheets.On the testing tip, the Richmond Times-Dispatch says the Health District will provide walk-up testing in three of Richmond’s public housing neighborhoods: Hillside Court, Gilpin Court, and Creighton Court. This is great to see, and I hope folks take advantage of it. More of this everywhere!Remember however many virusweeks ago when the Governor announced that he had signed a contract with a private company to wrangle the supply chain and get healthcare workers in Virginia the gear they need? Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury has the details on that contract, and, whoa, what a weird world we are living in. What states must go through to get critical supplies—simultaneously battling each other and the worst parts of capitalism—seems…suboptimal.The Virginia Employment Commission’s weekly update continues to show massive numbers of new folks filing for unemployment—but massively fewer than the last couple of weeks. 82,729 people submitted initial claims for unemployment insurance for the week ending in April 18th, but that’s “a decrease of 21,890 claimants from the previous week.” This particular graph shows how the Commonwealth has passed a clear peak in new claims filed while the number people continuing to file for unemployment insurance keeps climbing (297,993). Since this crisis began, food service workers have made up 20.2% of all initial unemployment claims. That’s wild, and I’d love to see how the occupations groups of folks filing has changed as we’ve progressed through the stay-at-home order. As with a lot of pandemic-related things, these numbers would be way more interesting if they weren’t about actual folks’ livelihood.I enjoyed this piece by Louise Lockett Gordon over at Bike Walk RVA about what the coronavirus has revealed about biking and walking in the region. I can’t agree with this more: “In this moment, opening neighborhood streets to biking/walking activity only can be done on a less grand scale, simply affording people nearby the opportunity to be active in a car-free environment.” The City should follow Oakland’s lead and close 10% of its streets to through traffic. That doesn’t mean emergency vehicles and residents no longer have access, it just means prioritizing our neighborhood streets for people to have safe places to move around outside of their home. This type of open/slow street policy is one of the easiest and cheapest things the City could do to make Richmonders’ lives better during the coronacrisis, and I’m not sure why we haven’t done this yesterday!Parks & Rec in Richmond announced that the Manchester Climbing Wall is now closed. I don’t know why people would want to put their sweaty virushands right where other folks’ sweaty virushands have been, but sure. Also, Parks closed Chimborazo Park to cars, which is maybe as close to a slow street as we’ve gotten!Roberto Roldan at VPM reports on something I’d not even thought of: Collecting signatures to get on the ballot while adhering to social-distancing requirements is…hard?…impossible? While getting on the ballot locally doesn’t require a huge number of signatures—just 125 for City Council—I can see how the tried-and-true ways of gathering signatures like attending large events or door knocking just aren’t going to work. I’m not opening my door for anyone these days, I tell you what.My pal Nicholas Smith resumed his Virginia General Assembly newsletter right before the GA’s reconvened sessions yesterday. He had a lot of questions that are now answered, but you should still tap through to read his thoughts on the Land Value Tax. Richmond now has access to another (progressive) form of tax! This is rare and wonderful and we should totally get to implementing it as soon as possible. I doubt “hey let’s do a new tax” is on any councilmember’s agenda—especially right before elections—but maybe we start putting the pieces together next year?At 10:00 AM this morning, ChamberRVA will host a virtual town hall with the Director of the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts, Dr. Danny Avula. I’m sure Dr. Avula is incredibly busy at the moment, so this is a rare opportunity to see him in a setting other than giving coronavirus updates from behind a podium.This morning’s longreadThe Hunt for Planet NineNerds on an adventure is one of my favorite genres of story.If the planet they’re looking for exists, it is likely six times the mass of Earth, with an atmosphere made of hydrogen and helium covering its rock-and-ice core. What makes it hard to find is its likely location: at least 400 times further away from the sun than our own planet, and 15 to 20 times further out than Pluto. As a theorist Batygin feels that he’s already mathematically proven its existence. But it’s generally accepted that for a planet to be considered discovered in the field of astronomy, the theory must also be accompanied by a photograph. This is where the Subaru telescope comes in. They know that Planet Nine is somewhere in between the constellation Orion and Taurus, but that’s about as exact as they can get, and they’ll need good weather to locate it.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 46 °F, and today looks cooler, cloudier, and rainier than yesterday. You can expect highs in the mid 60s and a chance of rain this afternoon that’ll carry into tomorrow morning.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 10,266 positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth, and 349 people in Virginia have died as a result of the virus. VDH reports 1,290 cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 356, Henrico: 684, and Richmond: 250). Yesterday, the VDH reported the second highest amount of new cases since this crisis began, yet reported just 2,424 tests. For whatever reason, we’re still unable to get over that invisible 2,500 tests per day barrier. The State is now averaging 22 deaths per day (that’s a seven-day rolling average), and we’re about to see how accurate the Institute for Heath Metrics and Evaluation’s models for Virginia are. They forecast tomorrow as our viruspeak when it comes to the number of people who die from COVID-19. Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says the Richmond/Henrico Health Districts have started free, walk-up testing, although it sounds like you’ll need to call the health district to set up an appointment (804.205.3501).In the RTD’s coverage of the Governor’s regularly-scheduled press briefing, they say that three people have died while 22 residents and 13 employees have tested positive for COVID-19 at a Hanover retirement community. After reading about the horrible situation at the Canterbury Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center in Henrico over the last couple of weeks, the response from this community in Hanover seems fairly cavalier: “The facility said all associates are to wear masks, and that on Tuesday there was a second sanitation done of all common areas at the Hanover retirement community.” Compare that to the response the RTD describes at a different senior community in Henrico: “The senior living community said it is continuing visitation restrictions. Anyone entering the retirement community has to be screened for potential exposure to the virus, Cedarfield said, adding that’s been the community’s practice for the past several weeks. Group events and programs continue to be canceled, dining venues remain closed and residents must remain in their apartments, cottages or rooms unless they have to leave the community for a trip that’s essential to their health and well-being, Cedarfield said. All staff must wear personal protective equipment when delivering direct care to residents.”The General Assembly met apart and socially distanced yesterday. The Senate convened in the Science Museum, while the House gathered under a tent on the Capitol grounds. From afar, both looked like two of the most boring wedding receptions imaginable. However, I appreciate the work that went into setting up this extremely atypical reconvened session. Our state government needs to do stuff during this emergency, yet the virus is no joke. Check out this picture Ned Oliver took of Sen. George Barker—who recently had heart surgery—encased in a protective plexiglass box. Over at the Virginia Mercury, Oliver, Kate Masters, and Robert Zullo recap the session which included, among other things, delaying the the minimum wage increase by four months—pushing back the start date to May 2021.Also of note at the GA, for me at least, the Governor’s amendments to HB 1541, the bill creating the Central Virginia Transportation Authority, were all accepted. This means that if our region’s localities want access to that sweet, sweet new revenue for transportation projects they’ll need to fund GRTC at no less than 50% of last year’s budget. 50% < 100%, but, as originally written, the bill would have allowed localities to decrease their GRTC funding to 50% of this year’s budget. Given the stark financial realities presented by the coronavirus, that would have been catastrophic to the future of public transit in our region. It’s, of course, unclear how much money the CVTA will generate for GRTC or for other cool transportation projects like the Ashland to Petersburg Trail, especially since the whole thing is built upon new sales and gas taxes—which, who knows what those will look like later this year or even ever again. But, honestly, our region is extremely lucky to have a newsource of revenue to support our existing public transit. Many cities across the country are about to have some hard decisions to make around what essential services to provide with extremely limited funds, and we’re lucky to have an additional tool in the toolbox. So, in Richmond, not the best, but, certainly not the worst.Via /r/rva, a charming illustration of Richmond’s skyline.This morning’s longreadConfronting Power and PrivilegeTransportation-related, but a good piece to read for anyone who’s thinking about how the coronavirus can change the way we think about the world.Specifically, I questioned then, and continue to question today, whether the preexisting inequities laid bare by this momentary pandemic are forcing those in power to truly confront the timeless vestiges of colonialism, white supremacy, and racism. In my gut, the answer to that question is a clear no. But I hope that as this thing continues and we continue to lose lives of people of color — particularly black people — at a disproportionately high rate, that people with power start to think about how they can do things differently. I especially hope that is the case in the field in which I’m lucky enough to work: transportation.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 48 °F, and today’s way cooler than yesterday. Expect highs below 60 °F and probably some dang clouds. Rain returns tomorrow.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 5,747 positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth, and 149 people in Virginia have died as a result of the virus. VDH reports 806 cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 211, Henrico: 397, and Richmond: 167). The aforelinked VDH website now has a bunch of new coronagraphs that you can take a look at—mostly breaking things down by demographics and geography. For what it’s worth, I still think this graph combining the daily number of new reported positive cases (blue) and the number of new tests (pink) is one of the more helpful ones. Virginia continues to see more reported positive cases each day while the number of tests reported remain flat (or, in recent days, has actually decreased). On the same graph, you can also see how testing impacts positive cases—when tests go up, so do the number of positive cases (duh).Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury has some details on how UVA’s new coronavirus model works. You can check out the scientists' presentation (PDF) which features some graphs of positive cases, hospitalizations, and ventilations assuming four different social distancing scenarios. In their best case models, Virginia is, through intense social distancing, able to “pause” the spread of the virus. That means no growth in new cases, but, as discussed in the previous paragraph, we’re not quite there yet. Masters says that in that best case scenario, “Virginia would see a later, lower peak between mid-July to late August with around 15,000 confirmed cases. The surge would exceed hospital capacity in some regions around the same time, though researchers pointed out that continued social distancing could postpone that by one to two and a half months.” Note that we’re not doing all of this social distancing business so we can happily return to pre-coronavirus Normal Life in June. We’re doing it so that our cities and counties can have time to prepare for (and possibly avert) the collapse of our healthcare system. We’ve got some time to build up those resources though: As the scientists' presentation cheerfully points out, “under current conditions, Virginia as a whole will have sufficient medical resources for at least the next couple of months.”City Council had their first budget work session yesterday and heard this presentation (PDF) from the City’s Budget Director. Here’s the bad news: At the moment, the City expects a $38.5 million loss in revenue compared to the budget submitted just a month ago. I know so very little about how municipal finance works, but even these new vomit-inducing projections seem optimistic. For example: They’re looking at a 5% sales tax reduction, 10% for meals tax, 10% for lodging tax, and 10% for the admissions tax. The City Assessor thinks that the real estate tax will drop 5.4% or $17.3 million, the largest chunk of the loss. To balance the budget, the Mayor proposes, among other things, to cut proposed salary increases, eliminate vacancy funding, pull $900,000 for new sidewalks, and decrease by $10.3 million the amount of new funding that was headed to RPS. It doesn’t sound like any existing jobs are on the chopping block. Basically, this is mostly last year’s budget. In their discussion after the presentation, Council had concerns about the projections and wondered whether they should plan for a more pessimistic future. They’ll meet again this coming Monday, April 20th, to figure that out!Beginning in May, the Commonwealth will expand access to Virtual Virginia—something that, since I am not a teacher, I did not know existed. Sounds cool, I guess! Here’s a thing: I am a parent of a public school student, and I’m doing my dang best to make sure he both literally survives a pandemic and gets some booklearning along the way. At the moment though, I feel absolutely overwhelmed with resources. I know Virtual Virginia is not For Me but For Teachers, but the thought of another arrow in my already-packed-full quiver of videos to make my son sit through is…exhausting.The Richmond Times-Dispatch published a column from Mayor Stoney in support of universal vote-by-mail in Virginia. We took a couple steps towards vote-by-mail at this year’s General Assembly session in the form of both no-excuse absentee voting and a permanent absentee voter list (HB 207). Unfortunately, I think both of those things don’t take effect until July 1, 2021 (someone correct me if I’m wrong, please!). There’s no doubt in my mind that Virginians will need a way to vote from home this year. I mean, read that quote from the UVA scientists again about seeing a peak in coronavirus cases in late August, and then think about how folks are going to feel about voting in person come November.Mel Leonor, also at the RTD, has the boring news that the House of Delegates will hold their outdoor meeting on the Capitol grounds. BORING. How about hosting the House on Brown’s Island? Way more fun, right? Maybe you even get a singer/songwriter to come in and play a set or two on the stage during breaks?Remember 1,000 virusyears ago when the New Dem Majority passed a bunch of cool bills, including one that would have Virginia join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (charmingly pronounced “Reggie”)? Those were the days! Sarah Vogelsong at the Virginia Mercury has the exciting details on how the Commonwealth will jump into this regional cap-and-invest program.This morning’s longreadMy Childhood in a CultThis is a serious piece about a serious thing, but I couldn’t help reading these lines about the banality of cult life and think about the similar out-of-place banality of quarantine life.To people who grew up in more ordinary circumstances, my childhood sounds exotic, scandalous, and fascinating. Cults are fascinating—but one thing the Manson Family and the Lyman Family have in common is the banality of daily life inside these worlds. If you live in a large group of people, there are always dishes to wash and heaps of laundry to hang up to dry. The travel plans for Venus took place against a backdrop of these everyday chores. As I like to say when I tell people about my background, “It wasn’t all acid and orgies.” (Acid was used by adults, as a tool for spiritual growth. To my knowledge, there were no orgies.)If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F and windy and rainy. We’re under a tornado watch until 12:00 PM today, so please stay inside if you can and keep an eye on your weather service of choice for further alerts.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 5,274 positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth, and 141 people in Virginia have died as a result of the virus. VDH reports 759 cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 209, Henrico: 379, and Richmond: 154) VDH also has this notice to pair with this morning’s numbers: “The count of new cases on Sunday, April 12 may be underestimated. The report on Monday, April 13 will return to normal procedures, including all cases identified by 5 pm the previous day. This effort will enable VDH to provide more detailed data on COVID-19 in Virginia moving forward.” If you look at the graph of the number of new cases reported each day you can see what they’re talking about and how yesterday saw a big dip in positive cases. As for the number of tests results reported over the weekend, Virginia still seems unable to report more than 2,500 per day—which has been the case since about April 4th. I haven’t updated my spreadsheet with data from over the weekend, but the Commonwealth is near the very bottom of all states in tests results reported per capita and about middle of the pack in total tests. I’ll try and get that graph updated and share it with y’all tomorrow. But! Maybe there’s relief on the way, though, as Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury says Virginia has signed a contract with McKinsey & Company to “procure more personal protective equipment and testing supplies.”The Governor signed one million bills into laws yesterday, including but not limited to, the Virginia Clean Energy Act, repeal of voter ID, making Election Day a state holiday, protections for LGBTQ folks (the Virginia Values Act), a bucketful of gun laws, and legislation allowing localities to teardown their Confederate monuments. He only vetoed one bill, the weird one about milk labeling. Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury has the details on the six “big-ticket bills Northam wants to amend” and that does include pushing the minimum wage start date to May 1st 2021, five months further into the future. I’m not an economist, and I know economists have a lot of opinions they’re about to share with me on this, but seems like we could use an increase in the minimum wage sooner rather than later? Finally, @rjmarr on Twitter reminds us of how exactly a bill becomes a law in the State of Virginia—a good refresher!Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says the Governor also has a plan to “delay a ban on electronic skill games for a year, tax their profits and use the money for a COVID-19 response fund to help small businesses, protect people’s housing and support nursing homes and other health care providers.” So wait a second, we’re pushing back the minimum wage increase while taxing “electronic skill games,” something that’d primarily impact people with lower incomes? What if—and I know this is some real out-of-the-box thinking here—what if we taxed people with a lot of money a little bit more??

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F, and highs today will hit 65 °F at some point this afternoon. Expect the warm and sunny weather to continue through the weekend. Enjoy in the most safe and responsible way you can!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,706 positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth, and 41 people in Virginia have died as a result of the virus. VDH reports 212 cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 73, Henrico: 87, and Richmond: 52). Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says that 16 people have now died from COVID-19 at the Canterbury Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center in western Henrico. Just awful—a significant portion of the state’s deaths in one building.If you, like me, have a morbid fascination with virusdata, Alejandro Alvarez, the digital editor at WTOP, has put together this absolutely beautiful coronavirus spreadsheet tracker for Virginia, D.C., and Maryland. If you’re looking for a dark data dashboard to start your day, you probably won’t find anything better than this.The Virginia Employment Commission released this week’s unemployment insurance claims numbers, and they continue to shock me: 111,497 people filed claims, up from 46,277 last week. For sobering context, around this time last year about 2,700 people filed unemployment claims. I mean, look at this absolutely horrifying graph. We’re in truly unprecedented times, and hundreds of thousands of people will need serious assistance from the state and federal governments as soon as possible. Given the number of orange alert boxes on the VEC’s website, it seems like getting that assistance to the people who need it has maybe hit some technical and logistical roadblocks.It only took a pandemic, but the Washington NFL team has agreed to allow the City to eliminate their 2019 and 2020 cash contributions for the Washington Training Camp. That’s great news; the 2019 contribution alone totaled $161,000. The Mayor also announced the Economic Development Authority has created a small business loan program that will offer “interest-free emergency loans of up to $20,000 to small businesses within the city limits.” If you’re a small business owner you should get your stuff in order, because applications for that loan program open on April 6th and will be considered in the ordered they are submitted. That sounds stressful! Take the weekend to prepare, OK?? Mark Robinson at the RTD has more detail about how to qualify. As for the source of the loan money, Mayor Stoney said that cash saved from the Washington Training Camp deal will directly fund this new small business loan program.Alright, y’all. City Council met yesterday for less than four minutes to introduce legislation that will allow them to meet virtually until September (ORD. 2020–093). This ordinance applies not only to City Council, but to a whole slew of public bodies and should get a bunch of the various boards and commissions meeting again, too. Of note: Public bodies wishing to have public comment must allow folks to submit those comments electronically before the meeting. They can, additionally, decide to allow “telephonic or other electronic communication means during the course of the meeting”—which, honestly, sounds terrible. This is definitely step zero in setting up a process for remote, asynchronously civic engagement! However, if you take four minutes and listen the audio from yesterday’s meeting, you’ll see (well, hear, rather) that Council still has a ways to go in figuring out the technical bits. While you could hear Councilmembers Newbille, Grey, and Trammell—who were all sitting in actual Council Chambers—everyone else who dialed in was but a whisper. Council will hold a public hearing on this paper next week on April 9th.For whatever reason, American society has decided to try to carry on life as best it can by moving every possible in-person encounter to a video conference call hosted by Zoom. I don’t know how everyone simultaneously decided on using Zoom as a platform, but it happened. Now, Zoom is both a noun and a verb I say regularly in my professional life when just two weeks ago it only applied to dogs running around in cute circles. So—whether you wanted to or not—you probably know about Zoom, but do you know about ZoomBombing? Nefarious folks have scraped up public Zoom invites and popped into meetings uninvited spraying hate, grief, and offensive material. Bummer yet predictable, I guess. UR has put together this very helpful page of tips for how anyone hosting Zooms can make those meeting a bit more secure. Take note! Especially those of you meeting with kids!This morning’s patron longread‘White-Collar Quarantine’ Over Virus Spotlights Class DivideSubmitted by Patron Blake. It’s a trope at this point, but coronavirus has certainly revealed who the essential workers are and it’s not Richard Florida’s creative class. Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury has a piece on what this looks like locally.In some respects, the pandemic is an equalizer: It can afflict princes and paupers alike, and no one who hopes to stay healthy is exempt from the strictures of social distancing. But the American response to the virus is laying bare class divides that are often camouflaged — in access to health care, child care, education, living space, even internet bandwidth. In New York, well-off city dwellers have abandoned cramped apartments for spacious second homes. In Texas, the rich are shelling out hundreds of thousands of dollars to build safe rooms and bunkers. And across the country, there is a creeping consciousness that despite talk of national unity, not everyone is equal in times of emergency.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

The past few years have been rough on farmers. Changing economics, weather and other factors have caused family-run farms — especially those in the dairy industry, — to sell land or the complete farm to make ends meet. Even in Frederick County, the number of dairy farms are dwindling. In 1950, there were 1,369. As of Aug. 7, there were 60, according to the story reported by Kate Masters and Allen Etzler. Masters and Etzler spoke to the next generation of farmers. The ones who are taking over the farms left in the county. Etzler joined producer Heather Mongilio to talk about reporting the story and what he took away. Then, Ben Sowers, co-owner of South Mountain Creamery, talks to Mongilio about taking over his family farm with his sister and his hopes for his children and his sister’s children. Mongilio and county reporter Steve Bohnel also recap the latest on the two teenage brothers charged in the assault and death of a 59-year-old Mount Airy man at The Great Frederick Fair. And finally, education and new food reporter Katryna Perera stops by to talk about a restaurant she described as an “Indian Chipotle”.

[Editor’s Note: Frederick County Public Schools was invited to take part in this podcast discussion, but no representative was made available. A request for written comment went unanswered.] School has yet to start for the students at Parkway Elementary School, but it is the parents, and some kids, that have butterflies over the upcoming school year.  Due to low teacher staffing, Frederick County Public Schools had to choose between classrooms with one teacher to approximately 30 kids or multi-grade classrooms. The schools went with the latter.  At Parkway, there are only nine teachers this year, down from 12 the previous one.  Producer Heather Mongilio spoke with education reporter Katryna Perera about what multi-grade classrooms are and why parents feel uneasy about the decision.  Then three parents of Parkway students join Mongilio to talk about how the decision will affect them.  Representatives from Frederick County Public Schools were unable to comment by deadline Monday. Finally, features reporter Kate Masters joins Mongilio to speak about TLC's "90 Day Fiancé," which features a Frederick resident. Masters and Mongilio also speak about Burger King's Impossible Whopper and whether people can tell the difference between a beef and a plant-based burger.

Tristan Poffenberger's "American Ninja Warrior" dream ended not with a bang but a splash during the Baltimore city finals.  The 19-year-old finished 14th in the qualifying round, also in Baltimore, but the third obstacle in the city final proved too challenging. Poffenberger is one of the handful of Frederick County residents to take on the obstacle courses over the years.  And he told Frederick Uncut producer Heather Mongilio and Sports Editor Josh Smith that he hopes to come back next year.  Poffenberger spoke with Mongilio and Smith about his two runs and what it took to get on the show. Poffenberger also shares his story about growing up with parents who had trouble with substance use and how that led to "American Ninja Warrior." Later, features reporter Kate Masters joins Mongilio to discuss how Frederick's city ordinance makes it difficult for breweries and distilleries to have entertainment. 

Connie Ray, program manager of the Frederick Food Security Network, and Hood College student Heidi Gonzalez Ramirez spent Monday morning digging holes. The two were helping to build a greenhouse that will be used as part of the Frederick Food Security Network. The network uses produce from community gardens around the city, including those at The Frederick News-Post, to help provide fresh fruit and vegetables to those living in food deserts. Ray and Ramirez joined Frederick Uncut producer Heather Mongilio to talk about the Frederick Food Security Network, community gardens and a new cold storage room through a grant from the Rotary Club of Carroll Creek. Later, features reporter Kate Masters joins Mongilio to talk about her two-part series on statues in Frederick. Masters wrote about fashion designer Claire McCardell, whom people can thank for ballet flats and pockets on dresses. A statue honoring McCardell is planned. This week in 72 Hours, Masters looks at other well-known statues around the area, including trying to figure out what the statue outside Frederick City Hall is called.

Walking in downtown Frederick, vacant buildings are likely on only a few people's minds.  People stop at the local restaurants, peruse merchandise in store windows or grab a drink at one of the bars.  But people stop their downtown stroll at 3rd Street, where a patch of vacant storefronts discourages people from continuing down Market Street, city Alderman Ben MacShane said.  MacShane and Frederick Uncut producer Heather Mongilio walked around downtown Frederick looking at buildings that quickly gained new tenants and those that have sat empty for a year or longer.  During the tour, MacShane talked about a proposed ordinance that would create a registry for vacant buildings.  Later in the episode, features reporter Kate Masters joins Mongilio to talk about the upcoming edition of 72 Hours. 

Man landed on the moon nearly 50 years ago. Mike Menzel, then 9, watch as Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong walked on the moon's surface. He was a child of the Space Age, he told reporter Hannah Himes, and the moon landing helped inspire him to go into a space-related career."As I said, I was a child of the space program," he said. "I wanted to be, when I was growing up, I knew I wanted to be an astronomer or an astronaut or some kind of engineer that designed spacecraft[s]."Menzel now works for NASA. Himes spoke with Frederick Uncut producer Heather Mongilio about interviewing Menzel. Her story will come out later this week. Later in the episode, Mongilio toured the new Mission of Mercy mobile dental clinic and spoke with Dental Director Roslyn Kellum. Then, sports reporter Greg Swatek joins Mongilio to speak about the late Don Boyer, longtime track and field coach at Middletown High School. Swatek will talk more about Boyer on The Frederick News-Post's podcast, The Final Score. Features reporter Kate Masters then joins Mongilio in the studio to talk about 72 Hours. You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Google Play

A physician on the Golden Mile wants to bring a shuttle to the area to help people get better access to health care and to basic needs. The Golden Mile circulator, yet to be named, will be paid for by Dr. Julio Menocal, who owns a practice on Baughmans Lane. The shuttle will likely start in November and run twice a day. Menocal first started thinking about a shuttle system about five years ago. He will meeting with members of the Golden Mile Alliance and county staff this month about his plans. Menocal spoke with producer Heather Mongilio about bringing a shuttle to the area, why it is needed and what gave him the idea. Later in the episode, features reporter Kate Masters joins Mongilio to talk about the upcoming issue of 72 Hours. Masters spoke about a cat cafe coming to Frederick, as well as new legal changes that allow distilleries to sell cocktails.

A large crowd filled Carroll Creek Linear Park on Saturday, with many on hand dressed in rainbow colors as they celebrated Frederick Pride.Frederick Pride, an annual event, celebrates acceptance and inclusivity for those who identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community. This year was also the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York City’s Greenwich Village.Frederick Pride is a day of celebration, but the LGBTQ+ community in Frederick continues to face issues. Kris Fair, chair at The Frederick Center, joined Frederick Uncut producer Heather Mongilio and city editor Allen Etzler to discuss how attitudes toward those in the LGBTQ+ community have changed since the first Frederick Pride, then called Picnic in the Park to protect those who attended.Although there have been great strides, Fair said the Frederick community still has more work to do.“I would argue that nobody in this country, no city in this country, no matter how diverse, is there yet as far as truly protecting LGBTQ people,” Fair said. “So it’s our job to go out and find better and more affirming ways of doing it.”Later in the episode, features reporter Kate Masters speaks with Mongilio about a burlesque studio in Boonsboro and whether that would be possible in Frederick.You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts and Google Play

Linking Youth with New Experiences (LYNX) at Frederick High School connects students with opportunities, such as internships or learning new skills that they might not have with traditional high school education.  LYNX celebrated its second year, and education reporter Katryna Perera attended both the ceremony and a classroom experience where she spoke with students, Frederick County Public Schools Superintendent Terry Alban and the chef leading students through how to cook a three-course meal.  Frederick Uncut host Heather Mongilio and Perera welcomed LYNX advocate Beth Sands into the studio to hear more about the program. "Every student at Frederick High School is a LYNX student," Sands said. "They don't have to apply to be a LYNX student. The minute they walk into those doors as freshmen, they're LYNX students." Later in the episode, Mongilio speaks with features reporter Kate Masters about her story on a guitar shop in downtown Frederick, as well as what is coming up in the latest edition of 72 Hours.

The Frederick News-Post’s arts and culture publication, 72 Hours, is undergoing a redesign. The layout will incorporate a cleaner look with more white space and art. There will be new columns, including an advice column and a music section, and the food review section is getting a new name. Features editor Mallory Panuska, features reporter Kate Masters and page designer Katlynn Almansor join Frederick Uncut producer Heather Mongilio in the studio where they discussed the new design of the publication. Masters also spoke about the first piece in a series looking at the arts scene in Frederick and some of the obstacles local artists face in creating art downtown. Her story will be the cover of the edition coming out Thursday. Later, city editor Allen Etzler joins Mongilio in the studio to recap some of the news of the week, including a look at flood coverage, an partnership with local law enforcement and the FBI to catch sexual predators and the results of a point-in-time survey on homelessness.

After more than a year of public hearings and heated debate, the Brunswick City Council voted to send a letter of support for an affordable housing project on the Railroad Square site. Verdant Development Group will still need to submit a site plan and take other steps — including presenting to the city’s Planning Commission — before the project would be brought back before the council for full approval. Understanding the full story of the Railroad Square development requires going back more than a year. This week, Frederick Uncut producers Heather Mongilio and Wyatt Massey speak with reporter Kate Masters, who was covering Brunswick when the development was introduced. Members of the Brunswick community were concerned the affordable housing development would increase crime in the area or hurt local property values, according to Masters. Later in the episode, Mongilio and Massey discuss the recent updates on the project and how feelings among community members have shifted as the project has been updated. At a public gathering the day before the City Council meeting, several residents who said they were opposed to the project when it was first introduced said they were more willing to see the project move through the planning stages.

Frederick County continues to face an opioid crisis that has ripped apart communities across the nation. More than 47,600 people died across the country in 2017 from an opioid-related overdose, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse. In Frederick County in 2018, there were 55 fatal opioid-related overdoses and 279 non-fatal overdoses. Last week, the Frederick County Sheriff’s Office, Frederick County Health Department and Frederick County Chamber of Commerce held a joint summit to raise awareness of the opioid problem. On this week’s episode, producer Heather Mongilio went to the summit and spoke with some of the leaders there. Jay Hessler, a coordinator for the health department’s local addiction authority, said the summit brought awareness as well as empowerment for those who may be struggling Later in the episode, features reporter Kate Masters joins to discuss the upcoming edition of 72 Hours.

Fred Berney proposed to his wife Ellen approximately a week after they met at a dance. The two have been married for more than 50 years, and owned a video business together. But in 2014, Ellen was diagnosed with spatial Alzheimer’s Disease. She has trouble drawing two intersecting rectangles, finding buttons on a remote, reading and knitting. While her eyesight is fine, her brain cannot see. Ellen had to stop working due to her diagnosis, and, every day, Fred faces a dilemma. If he works at the video company, he confines his wife to a chair in front of the television. If he takes care of Ellen, he cannot complete projects and is unable to bring in money. But the Berneys are not alone. Financial hardships are common among seniors as they face more health problems and limited incomes. Producer and host Heather Mongilio spoke with the Berneys at their Walkersville residence about how they met and their current financial strains. Then producer Wyatt Massey and features reporter Kate Masters join Mongilio in the studio to preview this week’s issue of 72 Hours.

Paula Poundstone, Toad the Wet Sprocket, and David Sedaris - just some of the acts to look forward to during the 2018-2019 season at the Weinberg Center. Host Colin McGuire and News-Post reporter Kate Masters sat down with Barbara Hiller, the marketing manager for the Weinberg, to discuss the year’s lineup and some of the shows she’s looking forward to the most. Some were expected (Maria Bamford, for instance) and some, like the Portland Cello Project, were not. But they’re all very different from Hiller’s former career as the director of marketing for the Mid-Maryland Musculoskeletal Institute. Hiller also had some great responses to some very silly questions, including the three people, living or dead, she’d most like to have dinner with. Two of her responses — Eleanor Roosevelt and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson — would make for some pretty interesting conversation.

On this very special episode of the Frederick Playlist podcast, guest hosts Chris Sands and Kate Masters interview DoubleMotorcycle. Stick around because at the end, you'll hear their latest single, "Pyramid," in its entirety. 

When a person's heart or breathing stops and the cause is reversible, immediate cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) offers a chance of life. However, when a person is dying—for example, from organ failure, frailty, or advanced cancer—and his or her heart stops as a final part of a dying process, CPR will not prevent death and may do harm. But conversations around that distinction are difficult. In a this podcast, we explore the ways in which these conversations go wrong, and give some practical advice on carrying them out better. Joining Helen Macdonald are Zoe Fritz, consultant acute physician, and Wellcome Fellow, David Pitcher, former president of the Resuscitation Council, and Kate Masters, whose mothers death led to a change in the law around DNACPR orders. Read the articles discussed in this podcast: Emergency care and resuscitation plans http://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.j876 Resuscitation policy should focus on the patient, not the decision http://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.j813 My mum's care means that decisions not to resuscitate must now be discussed with patients http://www.bmj.com/content/356/bmj.j1084

Hosts Chris Sands and Kate Masters are joined by Tyler Hegamyer and Braeden Bumpers, co-owners of McClintock Distilling, located along Carroll Creek in downtown Frederick.