Podcast appearances and mentions of richmond bizsense

Atop the 8 o'clock hour, RICHMOND BIZSENSE reporter Jonathan Spiers calls in to the show, to discuss the latest news regarding the Green City development in Henrico.

Richmond Bizsense's Mike Platania speaks to VPM Host Benjamin Dolle about a potential boom in affordable housing in the Richmond area.

In our 8:30 half hour, we once again talk to Richmond BizSense reporter Jonathan Spiers -- who gives us an update about the Diamond District/new ballpark development.

A former barber shop in the Tuckahoe Shopping Center on Ridge Road has been transformed into a wine shop. Click a Wine Spot focuses on American wines, with retail up front and a wine bar in the back. The wine bar offers a chance to sit down and enjoy wines by the glass, as well as snacks ranging from tostadas to a charcuterie board. Currently, wine tastings take place on Fridays from 4 to 7 p.m., but the schedule of events is expected to expand. * * * Good news for restaurant lovers in Eastern Henrico! Richmond BizSense reports that...Article LinkSupport the Show.

Next up, atop the 8 o'clock hour, we hear from Richmond BizSense reporter Jonathan Spiers -- who calls in to chat with John about the latest news regarding VCU and its President, Michael Rao.

A year after a Richmond BizSense report revealed that backing out of an ill-fated downtown development cost VCU Health $80 million and counting, a state review is calling for significant changes to the health system's leadership structure.

Happy "Friday Eve," listening family!!!  First up among today's interviewees is Richmond BizSense reporter Jonathan Spiers, who calls in to talk to John about the latest news regarding the Diamond District Project (following yesterday's City Council meeting).

With the sudden change in plans by the City to finance the new ballpark, Jonathan Spiers of Richmond BizSense rejoins the show, to talk to John about the news.

With at least general plans for a new Richmond baseball stadium unveiled, Jonathan Spiers, of Richmond BizSense, returns to the show -- for a conversation with John about the design, development location, and construction timetable.

Next up this Monday morning, we check back in for the first time in a while with Richmond BizSense reporter Jonathan Spiers -- who provides an update on VCU's finances and expenditures.

In the wake of John's interview with former Virginia Governor Doug Wilder earlier this week, we welcome Richmond BizSense reporter Jonathan Spiers back to the show.  John and Jonathan have a conversation about the latest news regarding VCU's $100 million financial loss resulting from a failed development project last year, and the two discuss Jonathan's ongoing coverage of the story. (As of this writing, VCU's administration and President Rao have declined requests for an interview about the matter.)

Joining Gary atop the 7 o'clock hour this Monday morning is Jonathan Spiers of Richmond BizSense.  Jonathan and Gary talk about the latest developments with the initiative for a new Richmond ballpark, to replace The Diamond.

Gearharts Fine Chocolates will open a location in the Short Pump Station shopping center at 11301 West Broad Street in early February, Richmond BizSense recently reported. Gearharts operated a store on Libbie Avenue for more than a decade but closed it approximately a year ago. In addition to being a chocolate shop, the new store also will feature a dessert café with cookies, cakes, pastries, coffee and hot chocolate. Tim Gearhart founded the company with co-owner Bill Hamilton in 2001. *** Mission BBQ recently launched its Hometown Heroes Cup Campaign. A portion of the proceeds from each blue cup sold...Article LinkSupport the show

Richmond BizSense reporter Jonathan Spiers makes a return appearance this Wednesday morning, to talk to John about the latest updates regarding the failed VCU Health project (which lost tens upon tens of millions of dollars).

Jonathan Spiers, of Richmond BizSense, returns to the show to talk to John about new details emerging in regard to the failed VCU Health-anchored development.

Good morning, RVA! It's 59 °F, and today looks sunny and wonderful. Expect highs around 80 °F but with a lot less of yesterday's sticky humidity. Looking ahead at this week's exceedingly dry (but lovely!) forecast, and I don't know if yesterday's intermittent sprinkles cut the mustard for all of my outside plants. If I'm late for a meeting or a hangout, it's probably because I'm carrying buckets of water this way and that and lost track of time! Water cooler Cars ruin Carytown. That's just a fact! Cars make Carytown—one of Richmond's densest, most popular urban shopping districts—unsafe and way less fun. This is super apparent when events like the annual Watermelon Festival open Cary Street up to people and everyone loses their minds about how great it is (despite the inevitably sweltering heat). We could make Carytown a place for people, not cars, whenever we wanted—maybe we could even take a baby step (which is way safer on a street without cars) and start with just one Sunday a month. We choose not to do this for some frustrating reason. So if you want to publicly proclaim your frustration while supporting a good cause, you can pick up the 2023 version of the Cars Ruin Carytown T-shirt with proceeds benefiting Richmond City Safe Routes to Schools. As for who holds the levers of power to make this car-free vision an actual reality? I'd say the 1st, 2nd, and 5th District councilmembers, but only if the Carytown Merchants Association gets onboard first. If I had unlimited free time and energy to work on removing cars from Cary Street in any sort of regularly recurring way, I'd start by talking with members of the Merchants Association. While I wait for the City to update their legislative website with last night's Council votes, Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports that they easily passed the Casino 2.0 papers, with only 2nd District's Councilmember Jordan voting against. The General Assembly still needs to sort out their feelings on the matter, but, even with that bit still undecided, I think there's an above average chance Richmonders will see another casino referendum on the ballot this November. Spiers also reports that Council approved the operating agreement for the riverfront amphitheatre, too. From my inbox: the Richmond City Democratic Committee released the (semi-surprising) result of their House District 79 and Senate District 14 straw polls ahead of next week's Primary Election. In the 79th, members picked Rae Cousins over current Councilmember Lambert, and in the 14th they chose Katie Gooch over current State Senator Bagby. Fascinating! RCDC is quick to remind you that “the results of this Straw Poll are not a formal endorsement by the Richmond City Democratic Committee, however, it should be regarded as a sign of enthusiasm from RCDC members, democratic voters and activists throughout Richmond for their respective candidates.” You can show your own signs of enthusiasm by early voting at the registrars office until Saturday at 5:00 PM, and then you can vote at your assigned polling place a week from today. Several months ago, City Council posted the Civilian Review Board staff job, and, somehow, I totally missed it. This position is “responsible for coordinating and analyzing the administrative and operational performance of programs and projects related to the Richmond Civilian Review Board.” Honestly, this is probably a pretty critical role in making sure RIchmond's CRB is as effective as possible and would, I think, require a certain type of person to successfully coordinate between the public, the CRB, the police, and the City. If that's you and you want to take the jump into public service, submit an application this week! Tonight at 6:00 PM, you can join RVA Rapid Transit at Common House (303 W. Broad Street) for their State of Transit 2023 Reception. Stop by, learn about the vision for public transportation in our region, and figure out how you can get involved in pushing us towards that vision. If you really want a gold star, you can read through RVA Rapid Transit's 2023 State of Transit report before you show up. Check out page 18 for a quick commentary on building bus stops that should sound familiar if you read last week's longread on the La Sombrita. You might be shocked by how long it takes to install a bus stop shelter! Tonight's event is free, but you should register over on the Eventbrite. This morning's longread When life threatens to become smaller, this is what I do I love Tressie McMillan Cottom's New York Times email, and in this edition she writes some advice for herself. I feel like when a brilliant, incredible person is like “here's some good advice that I try to follow” it's probably worthwhile for the rest of us regular people to listen. Having an end goal for everything I do has had an unintended effect on my choices: It has started to narrow my vision of what's possible to things that I think I can win at doing. This is why I experiment with living life outside of optimization. My job description has a version of not being the best at a few things but finding joy in doing things I am not very good at doing at all. That's why I sing. I suck at it. I love it. Here is a secret. There is no singing authority. Those cops really are in your imagination and you can evict them at any time. If you'd like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol' Patreon. Picture of the Day Still delicious after all these years.

Jonathan Spiers from Richmond BizSense talks to Gary Hess about his report on VCU Health System paying $73 Million to back out of its lease for an unbuilt downtown development project.  

Good morning, RVA! It's 30 °F, and today looks warmer and, thankfully, less windy than yesterday. You can expect highs in the mid 50s and the start of a nice little warm streak—temperatures tomorrow and Friday will end up in the mid 60s! Water cooler OK! I got Council's budget work session from this past Monday up on the Boring Show and you can listen here. I think if you're only planning on listening to one single budget session (gasp! scoff!), this is the one I would pick for you. CAO Lincoln Saunders put together a really nice presentation overviewing both the operating and capital budgets and did a great job of explaining the Mayor's priority investments. One graphic which caught the praise of several councilmembers was this one breaking the operating budget down into percentages and representing it as “cents out of every dollar.” So, for example, out of every dollar in the City's budget, $0.23 goes towards education, $0.20 goes towards public safety, $.04 towards recreation and culture, and so on. I also heard tell of a “Budget in Brief” document that I want to get my hands on and add to my PDF library. As for notable topics, I think the discussions on assessments, gun violence, and housing are worth a listen. Especially the latter, as the CAO explains why the Mayor decided to fund affordable housing outside of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund (mostly due to restrictions on how ARPA dollars can be spent). I'd love some smart housing person to dig into this new funding plan from the City and let us all know their thoughts and feelings. Jahd Khalil at VPM details a few of the open questions. Anyway, the budget is important stuff and listening to this work session while you do the dishes or fold the laundry will make you a better citizen—plus, at 2x speed it'll only take you about an hour to get through! Richmond BizSense's Mike Platania reports that City Council has given final final for real approval to a new restaurant in Byrd Park on the corner of Idlewood and Stafford. This is great news, because the folks behind the new spot (who also run New York Deli) have worked to bring a restaurant to that location for literal years! Because a restaurant is not an allowed use under the building's current zoning, City Council had to pass an entire ordinance just for this one single property via its Special Use Permit process. That process gives incredible power to, as Platania puts it, a “handful of local residents opposed to the project”, who, with a little organizing, can completely derail or delay something that probably should be allowed by right. The amount of SUPs on Council's agenda each and every week is why zoning is so important and why the City's rewrite of its zoning ordinance is such a huge deal. With the rewrite, we've got the opportunity to start mixing our neighborhood uses together—residential right next to retail! It's how the rest of the world does it, and I bet if folks take a second to think of their favorite places, they are almost certainly neighborhoods where you can walk across the street to something cool—something like a chill corner cafe! Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams writes about a school-name switcheroo pulled by the Hanover County School Board. That County will soon consolidate Henry Clay and John M. Gandy elementary schools, and, back in 2018, the plan was to consolidate the name, too, to just “John M. Gandy.” It was an important decision, because, as MPW writes, the original Gandy “opened in 1950 to accommodate Black Hanover County students during a school segregation era that was long on ‘separate' but short on ‘equal'...The school — named for a longtime Virginia State University president — was the first in Hanover to provide Black students with central heating and indoor plumbing.” Now Hanover's School Board will backtrack on their decision and establish a committee to make naming recommendations for the new consolidated school. To quote MPW again: “Hanover has become the place where consensus goes to die.” Tonight, at 6:00 PM, the Community Foundation for a Greater Richmond and the University of Richmond are hosting a virtual panel exploring “important insights and possible action steps around regional planning for our port and highways, as well as local projects to improve bus routes and bike lanes.” Of course, my actions steps for highways would be “spend less money on highways,” but the other stuff sounds interesting. Panelists include folks from the City, Henrico County, GRTC, Bike Walk RVA, and a reporter—I think you'll recognize a lot of the names! The event is free, but you should register online to get the Zoom link. This morning's longread Miscellany № 99: minting the dollar I found a blog about punctuation, and it is lovely. Like most towns that host a cen­tur­ies-old uni­versity, St An­drews boasts and/or suf­fers eye-wa­ter­ing hous­ing costs, sticky-floored bars be­loved by stu­dents and loathed by loc­als, and at least one quirky, age­less book­shop that looks like it has es­caped from a Terry Pratch­ett novel. Cam­bridge has The Haunted Book­shop; Ox­ford has St Philip's Books; Ed­in­burgh has Arm­chair Books. We came across a fant­astic ex­ample in St An­drews in the form of J&G Innes on South Street, one of the town's main shop­ping streets...But at least as in­ter­est­ing as the shop's com­mer­cial and ar­chi­tec­tural his­tory is this sign above the door: “Here stood the house of BAILIE BELL, who, be­fore 1744, was an eager co-worker with Al­ex­an­der Wilson, the father of Scot­tish type-found­ing, and JOHN BAINE in whose type-foundry in Phil­adelphia the first $ sign was cast in 1797.” If you'd like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol' Patreon. Picture of the Day I'm mad about how the State ruined an entire block of Broad Street and doesn't even really care.

Good morning, RVA! It's 53 °F, and today, after the wet weather moves through, looks like our warmest day of the week. Expect highs in the 60s to go along with a small possibility of rain this morning. I think, after today, we might get enough rain-free days to dry out our soggy landscapes! P.S. You are not imagining it: Karri Peifer at Axios Richmond reports that our average winter temperatures are four degrees warmer than in the 1970s. Water cooler Big news from RPS Superintendent Kamras's daily email: The school district has hired a new Chief Wellness Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Both internal hires, Renesha Parks (previously the Director of Exceptional Education) will serve as the CWO, while Dana Fox (the Director of School Construction) will take over at COO. Congratulations to these bold, brave women who step into important and complicated roles. We'll see what the future holds for them, because I was pretty convinced that the School Board would pull some shenanigans to keep these positions open even longer. Jahd Khalil at VPM reports that the Mayor's administration has finalized the total amount of revenue collected from the City's real estate tax, which clocks in at $21 million over their original estimate. Most of the additional cash will help pay for inclement weather shelters and additional raises for police, fire, and emergency communications staff. Quick aside about the latter: “A press release from the mayor's office said those pay adjustments would be for employees not accounted for in a $17 million increase in first-responder wages in May's budget.” This sort of “Ope! We found more money!” happens every year to some extent, so you shouldn't be too scandalized by this reporting—but it's clearly not the best way to run things. Would last year's budget process have gone any differently with an additional $17 million hanging around? No clue, but it'd be nice to have all the money on the table before we head into budget season. That's why (I think), when the Mayor introduced his plan to issue real estate tax rebates, an additional piece of the assessments puzzle was to “align the city's assessment and budget cycles.” Theoretically that administrative shift might could fix these sorts of year-end money influxes. Richmond BizSense's Jonathan Spiers has some great reporting on the draft details of Those Thee Zoning Changes, specifically the proposed changes to the City's Airbnb regulations: “the recommendations would eliminate a primary residency requirement in which operators must reside at the property being rented for at least half the year. Instead, [Short-Term Rentals] would be permissible in any dwelling in any of the city's zoning districts, but with a distance requirement separating the unit from another STR at a non-primary residence.” This is a hard sentence for my brain to understand, but, I think the intent here is to allow landlords to run multiple Airbnbs but prevent them from buying up entire blocks of housing to use as short-term rentals. This is, of course, anti-housing and will reduce the amount of housing stock in Richmond, but I think it is a compromise I'd be willing to trade for permitting by-right Accessory Dwelling Units everywhere and the entire elimination of parking minimums (the other two zoning changes). You can flip through the City's presentation on these changes here and you can leave a public comment here. We all know the A.P. Hill monument at Hermitage and Laburnum is horrible, creates one of the most dangerous intersections in the city, and will, at some point, come down. When, though? I've been pretty wait-and-see, since legal challenges tend to take forever to lawyer their way through the system, but it does feel like we're getting close. NBC12's Henry Graff reports that the statue could come down as early as next week. Exciting! This morning's longread How Apples Are Ranked I'm almost positive I've linked to this apple guy before, but now he's got his own, very thorough, very funny apple ranking site. Yes, it's mostly a joke, but it's also entirely a real apple ranking site. Thankfully in the early 2000s, due to the emergence of a class of idle yuppies willing to shell out disproportionate amounts of disposable income at organic grocery stores, it became economically viable to invest in the development of what I term “designer apples.” As a result, a dizzying array of new apples hit the shelves and continued to do so year after year. With so many new breeds, the antiquated system of delegating an apple as “good” or “bad” is an unworkable injustice of oversimplification. Society demands an updated rubric for apple evaluation that meets the moment. I have created that rubric. I have no children. This rating scale is my only hope to keep my namesake alive. It is something I hope to be utilized for generations to come and is my only chance at achieving immortality. Therefore I am naming this system: The Frange 100 Point Apple Rating Scale aka the F100. If you'd like to suggest a longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol' Patreon. Picture of the Day Just seconds before runneling.

Senior Reporter for Richmond Bizsense discusses the proposed amphitheater coming to Tredegar Hillside.

In this episode of the Vint podcast, Billy discusses the now LIVE Napa Valley 2018 collection and dives into the wines featured in our first Winemakers box (2:05) that complement our latest offering. Billy also gives some tips on choosing wine for Thanksgiving (9:30) - you may be surprised at his recommendations (List below)!Co-Founder and CEO Nick King provides an internal update (16:28) on our latest press (check out our features in Decanter and Richmond BizSense ) and shares about our week as an (almost full) team getting to work together in Richmond. Billy Galanko, Head of Wine at VintThanksgiving Wine RecommendationsWhite Wines:RieslingRationale: Riesling and its various forms are the perfect pair with almost any food. A juicy ripe balance to white meat turkey and acid freshness to cut through the richness of dark mean, stuffing, and mashed potatoes.Recommended Region(s): Germany, Austria, TasmaniaRecommended Producer/Wine: Fritz Haag (Trocke, Kabinett, Spatlese)AlbariñoRationale: Crisp, lean, and fresh with floral citrus fruit, white blossom, minerality, and a touch of salinity from the sea. A perfect companion for turkey, ham, stuffing, and green beans. Recommended Region(s): Spain (region: Galicia)Recommended Producer/Wine: Lusco Do MinoVinho VerdeRationale: Spritzy and fresh. Vinho Verde's tend to be bright and fresh with ripe apple and stonefruit flavors, low alcohol with a touch of residual, making them the perfect Thanksgiving companion.Recommended Region(s): Portugal (Vinho Verde)Recommended Producer/Wine: Quinta de AzavedoRed Wines:BeaujolaisRationale: Red fruit, fresh drinking, with balanced acidity and minerality. Expressions can range from bright and easy-drinking to rich and complex. Pairing with everything from mashed potatoes, to turkey, to mac and cheese.Recommended Region(s): BeaujolaisRecommended Producer/Wine: Marcel LapierreGrenache/GarnachaRationale: Ripe red fruit cranberry and cherry, licorice, and minerality. A perfect complement to turkey and cranberry sauce.Recommended Region(s): Spain, Southern Rhone - FranceRecommended Producer/Wine: “Care” Bodegas Anadas Care Garnacha NativaZweigelt / BlaufrankischRationale: Ripe red and black fruits, bright fresh acid, stony minerality and medium tannins, can range from easy-drinking to complex. A crowd-pleaser for wine drinkers of all levels and a great pairing for the gamut of Thanksgiving dishes.Recommended Region(s): AustriaRecommended Producer/Wine: MoricBUY THE VINT NAPA VALLEY WINEMAKERS BOX

Good morning, RVA! It's 68 °F, and cooler temperatures are here! Today, you can expect highs in the mid 80s—which I don't know if I'd call “cool,” but it's something.Water coolerYesterday, the Virginia Department of Health and the Virginia Department of Education announced their mask guidance for the 2021–2022 school year. Here's the important bit: School divisions will be given “the ability to implement local mask policies based on community level conditions and public health recommendations.” Basically, it's up to the individual school districts, which should sound familiar because it mirrors last year's guidance for returning to in-person school. VDH does, however, recommend that unvaccinated individuals remain masked (which, at this point, means allllll elementary school students), and also points to this CDC list of reasons why districts may want to require masks regardless of vaccination status. Richmond Public Schools, via the superintendent's email, has already announced that they'll “be maintaining [their] 100% mask-wearing policy for all students, staff, and visitors.” I haven't yet seen announcements from Henrico or Chesterfield. If I were to prognosticate a little, I would guess that not every school district in the region will follow RPS's lead. I think we'll probably even have a majority of regional school districts only requiring masks for unvaccinated individuals, with vaccination status checks left up the honor system. We'll have to see how this plays out at some of these school districts in areas with lower vaccine uptake—especially as the Delta variant spreads and we learn more about it. Also, for context, via the VDH dashboard, the percentages of 12–15 year olds and 16–17 year olds vaccinated in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield respectively are: 33.4%, 42.0%; 47.5%, 63.1%; and 42.5%, 54.3%. This data would have looked nicer in a table.Take a minutes and read this piece from Mark Robinson in the Richmond Times-Dispatch highlighting the nine winners of RRHA's Tomorrow's Promise scholarships. These nine students will each receive $4,000 dollars toward their college degrees, and, for at least one, they'll be the first person in their family to go to college!Ian M. Stewart at VPM reports on a zoning update in Chesterfield—a chicken zoning update! Later this summer, the Chesterfield Board of Supervisors will vote on a change to the zoning code that allows backyard chickens, increasing the minimum area per chicken from five square feet to eight square feet. I know I'm all about denser development, but this kind of chicken-based sprawl seems OK.It's Thursday, and that means I have missed most of a Richmond-based Duke's Mayonnaise week. Richmond BizSense's Noah Daboul has the details, and I have the sads. Sounds like a handful of local restaurants have put together some tomato- and mayo-based menu items, which are my favorite kind of menu items. Also, as part of this promotion, Duke's and Sauer will donate $10,000 to Shalom Farms, a local farm that works on improving food access.This morning's longreadLife in the Stacks: A Love Letter to BrowsingSome of this piece is a little too “kids these days with their dang cellular telephones!,” but I really vibe with the idea that we're losing something when we give up browsing and let the algorithm serve up whatever it thinks best.The aisles of the Blockbuster were themed, though less aggressively, less knowingly than the rows that march relentlessly down the Netflix home page. A particular shelf didn't remember if you had selected one of its videos before and thus didn't try to push a similar title at you. The real-world tiles didn't proactively rearrange themselves in anticipation of your unique wants. In lieu of tailored algorithms, there were a few shelves given over to staff recommendations. These challenged you to ignore the new-release walls, decorated by market forces, and defer to the taste of an authority (or, at least, a part-time employee majoring in film).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 69 °F, and today looks hot and humid with sticky highs in the 90s. Hold on tight, though, because (slightly) cooler weather shows up tomorrow.Water coolerA quick update on two papers floating around during yesterday's Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meeting! First, the Richmond 300 amendments resolution (RES. 2021-R026) which I say bad things about was recommended for continuance, and, second, Councilmember Jones's resolution to ask the CAO for a report on how to evenly distribute affordable housing across council districts (RES. 2021-R043) was recommended for approval. Stoked on the latter, and wondering if the former is in the process of death by a thousand continuations. Introduced back in April, RES. 2021-R026 is now one of the older items on Council's agenda. Shoutout to current Methuselatic Ordinance titleholder, ORD. 2019–275, which was introduced way back in October…of 2019!There's not a ton of new information in this article by VPM's Alan Rodriguez about the School Board's decision to issue their own RFP for a George Wythe replacement. However, I do think it's worth reading to squeeze out a little more of the situation's flavor. With School Board now having drawn a end-of-August line in the sand for issuing an RFP, how do we react when the RPS administration fails to meet that possibly (probably?) unrealistic deadline? Or what do we do if the administration somehow crushes it out of the park and pulls off getting an RFP out the door in the next 41 days—while also reopening in-person school for the first time in over 400 days?Look at this great news: Jessica Nocera in the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Henrico County will give Church Road, way out by Short Pump and 295, a road diet! Not only will the County reduce the number of lanes, thereby slowing traffic, but they'll use the newly created extra space to install bike lanes. Check out these incredible results from their public engagement process: “71% of respondents overwhelmingly favored the final option.”Rich Griset in Style Weekly has an update on all of the the updates going on at a lot of the city's museums. The VMFA, Virginia Museum of History & Culture, Science Museum of Virginia, and the Valentine are all in the midst of expansions, renovations, and reorganizations. I'm glad these museums survived the last year and are even in a place to expand.I've spent the last 18 months aging in place and have lost track of the number of new arcades/barcades in Scott's Addition. So it is new news to me that DawnStar Video Games and Arcade will open not one but two mini pinball rooms. One, the Starcade will feature “brighter, more nostalgic machines” while the other, the Mooncade, will host “darker, horror themed machines.” Honestly, I love everything about this article by Noah Daboul in Richmond BizSense, especially the header image.This morning's longreadThe new real estate normalThis is what a housing crisis looks like!They'd seen more than 50 houses in the past three months, and the only thing that had changed about their housing search in Boise was that the prices continued to rise. They'd gone from looking at homes listed for a maximum of $400,000, to stretching their budget up to $450,000, to now considering spending $500,000 or more. “It's on the far, far end of our range,” Craig said. “We'd be looking at five times our old house payment.” “We need somewhere to live,” Heidi said. “If we keep going like this for another few months, we might be looking at the same places for $600,000. What choice do we have?”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 72 °F, and today you can expect highs in the mid 90s with Feels Likes above and beyond 100 °F. We're deep in dangerous heat territory, and if you've got to go outside, be smart about it! We've got at least a couple more days before temperatures cool down.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 165, 7, and 6, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 15.4 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: 2.1; Henrico: 10.1, and Chesterfield: 3.1). Since this pandemic began, 1,358 people have died in the Richmond region. 46.6%, 58.2%, and 54.8% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.The big COVID-19 news this morning is that a WHO official urged the public to continue wearing masks indoors—even if fully vaccinated—as a precaution against the delta variant of COVID-19. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health quickly followed suit and issued the same recommendation for its residents. I've seen this new variant-related mask recommendation framed a couple of ways in the media, mostly as “we don't know enough about the delta variant, and wearing masks helps keep you—even if you're vaccinated—from spreading this highly transmissible variant to folks who may be unvaccinated.” But I've also seen the actual quote from the WHO official, taken out of whatever context it may have originally been in, and it reads way more intense: “People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves…Vaccine alone won't stop community transmission.” According to the NYT, yesterday the CDC “pointed to [its] existing guidance and gave no indication it would change.” So, here we are again with seemingly conflicting mask guidance, and I don't love it! To give you some context on the local spread of the delta variant, the VDH Variants of Concern dashboard reports 48 total cases in Virginia, with zero in Richmond, 14 in Henrico, and three in Chesterfield.Kenya Hunter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Richmond Public Schools “anticipates a 14 percentage point boost in its graduation rate, with Latino students and economically disadvantaged students seeing the most significant gains.” This year, according to preliminary figures, 85.7% of students will graduate on time, compared to 71.6% last year. That's a lot of dang percentage points to increase, and I wonder what it all means given the year students just had. Will those numbers hold for next year? Was something about virtual learning better for high school students? Or maybe, as RPS's Chief Academic Officer Tracy Epp, says “This is the culmination of three years—we're seeing that we're finally gaining traction, based on the past three years of our efforts.”Quick City Council update: Last night Council passed all of the Jackson Ward street dedication ordinances. DPW will now get to hanging up some new signage!I'm fascinated by ghost kitchens, and Richmond BizSense's Mike Platania reports that Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick will bring one to Broad Street near Arthur Ashe Boulevard. If I'm being honest with myself, I'm mostly fascinated by the generic, keyword-heavy names that some delivery-only restaurants using ghost kitchens come up with. Mine would be called “Wings are Good.”Twitter user Doug Allen made this super useful map of all (?) the Richmond-area bike shops. I know bike shops are like tacos—everyone has a favorite spot—but, if you don't already have a favorite of your own, check out the map and try one out near you. I definitely prefer taking my bike(s) to the shop and having them actually fix a thing rather than watching a YouTube and getting frustrated that my brain can't understand simple machines for some reason.Brent Baldwin at Style Weekly talked to Chris Haynie, cofounder of Happy Trees Agricultural Supply, about how to grow marijuana in your house. Honestly, sounds waaaaay too complicated for me. I do love this quote, though, which makes me feel like I could at least keep a plant alive as an ornamental, “Cannabis is not some crazy plant that aliens gave us from some other world, it grows like a pepper, man. It's a fast-flowering annual.”The Washington Post has a nice article from a couple weeks back about how Virginia is crushing it when it comes to expanding passenger rail. It'll still take the better part of a decade to realize some of the planned improvements, but I'm pretty stoked to take the train everywhere when I'm retired.This morning's longreadWhy ‘tiny forests' are popping up in big citiesI live in a very shady, tree-filled neighborhood—which we know is because where I live was never redlined and has seen decades of investment in its trees and other infrastructure. Many neighborhoods near me—in fact, the one just across the street—haven't had the benefit of all that investment and of all those trees and sits sweltering and shadeless in 100 °F heat. I wonder if strategic tiny forests could be part of the solution?The small-footprint projects are based on the work of Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki, who, beginning in the 1970s, pioneered a method of planting young indigenous species close together to quickly regenerate forests on degraded land. Miyawaki, who extensively studied and catalogued the vegetation of Japan, surveyed forests near potential Tiny Forest sites for a mixture of their main species. “The planting should center on the primary trees of the location, and following the laws of the natural forest,” he wrote in a 2006 essay upon accepting the Blue Planet award. Competing for light, the saplings grow quickly, explained Miyawaki's collaborator Kazue Fujiwara. According to Fujiwara, the method can work anywhere, even in plots as small as one meter wide, though she said a minimum of three meters is easier to plant a mix of species.If you'd like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol' Patreon.Picture of the DayTake-out bike is back!

Good morning, RVA! It's 60 °F, and today's weather forecast looks wonderful. Expect highs in the upper 70s and low humidity. It's a great Wednesday to get outside!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 137, 22, and 5.6, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 18.9 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: 2.7; Henrico: 9.6, and Chesterfield: 6.6). Since this pandemic began, 1,353 people have died in the Richmond region. 45.9%, 57.3%, and 53.8% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.OK, the VDH dashboard caught up with the Governor, and, as of yesterday morning, now reports that 70.0% of Virginians 18 and older have received at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine. Unfortunately, America as a whole has not caught up, and yesterday the president's team announced that the U.S. will not hit his 70% goal by July 4th. Like I've said many times over the last couple of weeks, this particular goal is fairly arbitrary anyway, and, even now, we're pretty dang close (65.4% of Americans have received at least one dose). We'll get there—and we'll get even further—but it'll take more time and a lot of hard work.The Governor announced that he wants to replace the 134-year-old time capsule embedded in the plinth of the Robert E. Lee statue with something less racist. Check out this article from October 26, 1887 in the Richmond Dispatch which describes some of the things included in the Very Lost Cause Time Capsule currently embedded in the monument: some Virginia Confederate buttons, a battle-flag and square and compass made from the tree over Stonewall Jackson's grave, and a $100,000 Confederate bond. The coolest part of this whole thing, is that you can submit an artifact for consideration for the new, less-racist time capsule by filling out a form on the aforelinked website. Your item should, of course, represent Virginia, and I personally think it would be more interesting if it represented this present moment, as well. Maybe a vaccine card? Something Marcus-David Peters related? A tear gas canister that the RPD used against protestors around the Lee Monument itself? And, in case you were wondering like I was, “On March 22, 2021, Historic Jamestown, an entity of Preservation Virginia, conducted a scan of the pedestal and identified a void in the base where the time capsule is likely housed. The Department of General Services analyzed the results of the scan and concluded that the time capsule can be removed and replaced without damaging the fidelity of the structure.” So just because the Governor wants to replace the time capsule does NOT mean that he'll (necessarily) be taking down the plinth to do so.Pulitzer Prize Winning Columnist Michael Paul Williams ties together two issues from the last couple of days—the Gilpin Court pool and the Chesterfield School Board's Critical Race Theory statement—as examples of regional failures. I don't think those things are quite the same magnitude. The former is systemic and needs about a billion dollars to really address while the latter was an individual choice made by a handful of elected officials. But, as Williams says, the message sent by both of these failures to our communities is pretty clear.Noah Daboul at Richmond BizSense has this wild story about a 3D-printed house over on the city's Southside. Instead of plastic filament, this giant 3D printer uses concrete and “almost looks like if you're squeezing a tube of toothpaste.” Amazing. Double amazing is that this home will hit the market at a generally affordable $200,000. Science!This might be boring, but City Council's Governmental Operations committee meets today and will consider ORD. 2021–180, which would extend the deadline the Civilian Review Board Taskforce has to submit their recommendations to Council until August 30th. It also asks that the task force present a status report to the Gov Ops committee on July 28th. Both of those dates are right around the corner, which makes me think Council is ready to move on to the next step of the CRB process.Cool civic opportunity alert! Richmond City Council is looking for seven members (and four non-voting alternate members) to serve on the Participatory Budgeting Steering Commission. Participatory Budgeting is when you, the public, participate in spending a portion of the City's budget on whatever you see fit. This commission would shepherd that process from start to finish, which seems like rewarding work. You can fill out an application here and read through the PB ordinance here (ORD. 2020–256) to learn more about the process (I recommend skipping to the very-readable Background section at the bottom). You've got until July 1st to fill out your application!This morning's longreadHype House and the Los Angeles TikTok Mansion Gold RushThis was published pre-pandemic, and now I simply must know what all these TikTok houses did when things began to shut down.In 2014 members of an early collab channel called Our Second Life lived and worked together in what they called the 02L Mansion. The next year, nearly all the top talent on Vine moved into a large apartment complex at 1600 Vine Street. Soon after, YouTuber mansions were popping up all over the city. The Vlog Squad shacked up in Studio City, while Team 10, Jake Paul's infamous YouTuber collective, rented a giant house in West Hollywood before eventually decamping to a mansion in Calabasas. Another group of YouTubers rented a $12 million mansion in the Hollywood Hills and deemed it the Clout House. Now, the TikTokers have arrived — and everything about TikTok happens faster than it does anywhere else.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 71 °F, and who's excited for more of the same?? Today you can expect highs in the 80s and a chance for downpours. NBC12's Andrew Freiden says we could catch a break this weekend, 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: 198, 31, and 7.7, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 19.4 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: 3.9; Henrico: 6.6, and Chesterfield: 9). Since this pandemic began, 1,331 people have died in the Richmond region. 44.7%, 55.9%, and 52.3% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. This week's stacked chart is really something to look at—across the board you'll see the lowest levels of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths pretty much since this pandemic began. I know a lot of folks are holding their breath until fall—when things took a turn last year—but, for now, the data is down and things are looking up!Biden Goal update! With 68.5% of adults in Virginia with at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and one day to go, we're definitely going to miss my projection of hitting 70% on June 12th. Honestly, at the current rate, hitting July 4th might turn out to be a photo-finish. Either way, this is a dumb thing to be so focused on! Vaccinating the rest of these folks will take long, slow, methodical work—like over the course of this entire year. Shouting about the president's fairly arbitrary goal won't get us there any faster (I will continue to shout about it for reasons I don't really understand!).Y'all! Richmond 300, like, the plan itself, has won a major award! The American Planning Association announced that Richmond 300 won the Daniel Burnham Award for a Comprehensive Plan, making it the #1 comprehensive plan in the country. As one friend put it, this is like winning the master plan Heisman. Congratulations to all of the City staff who worked so hard on Richmond 300, and congratulations to many of you who also served on committees, attended meetings, and submitted public comments. Let me quote a bit from the APA writeup: “Expansive community engagement, unlike any seen in the city's history, led to the creation of Richmond 300: A Guide For Growth…Recognizing the city's history of racist policies that left many residents distrustful of the planning process, Richmond's planning team took special care to ensure all Richmonders can see their influence Richmond 300….After extensive outreach—including the formation and training of a community engagement team to help reach Latinx, Black, and low-income residents—planners succeeded in helping to elevate voices that had gone unheard for decades.”Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch covered yesterday's Urban Design Committee meeting, which, after a bunch of discussion, approved removal of nine Confederate monument remnants. Sounds like the plans will now move to the Planning Commission and then to full Council before the end of the month (assuming things don't get caught up along the way).Richmond BizSense's Mike Platania reports that Torchy's Tacos will open up a shop in the new Carytown Exchange shopping center in 2022. I know they now have tons of other locations, but time was that friends who went to SXSW would rant and rave about a trip to Torchy's.I don't think there's any new information here, but how weird is it to see a virginia.gov website with a marijuana leaf as its logo? Also, I know we already all know this, but some of these rules are farcical, and I have to believe that next year's General Assembly will try to speed up the 2024 commercial sales timeline. I mean this is what we have to live with for three years: “Beginning on July 1, adults 21 and over can grow up to four marijuana plants per household (not per person), for personal use,” but “It will remain illegal to sell marijuana seeds, clones, flower, or any other part of the marijuana plant in Virginia before 2024. Although there are some states that already have legalized marijuana sales, it remains federally illegal to move marijuana across state lines.” I guess if you can apparate a marijuana plant into your house, you're good to go!This morning's longreadGrowing up queer in AppalachiaAnother great essay in Scalawag, this one from back in 2017 around the time North Carolina was kicking around its transgender / bathroom legislation.I visit often, but I never moved back home. In large part I stayed away for the same reason anyone from the rural South does: to find work. That said, I'm not the only person from our small school who came out and moved to New York. There's a reason it's a classic. Lots of us left, or tried to. Some of us have been forced back into the closet. Some were able to stay put and strike a balance, but not nearly enough. I have a very typical queer Southern expatriate chip on my shoulder: furious at what happened to me there, furious at what still happens to my people, furious that anyone else would use their suffering as a rhetorical cudgel to distract from the exact same shit happening in their own backyards. Guilty for leaving them behind.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 70 °F, and it looks rainy out there, y'all. You can continue to expect a chance of rain, on and off, for most of the day. Saturday and Sunday, though, look beautiful if rather hot. This weekend, enjoy some time outside, stay hydrated, and get some rest.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 229, 31, and 9.1, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 28.7 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: 7.3; Henrico: 5.9, and Chesterfield: 15.6). Since this pandemic began, 1,329 people have died in the Richmond region. 43.8%, 54.8%, and 51.1% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Here's this week's stacked chart of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, and you can, finally, really, totally, see a drop off in COVID-19-related deaths across the state. These are truly low numbers that we haven't seen since last July. Now, with the power of a ton of folks being vaccinated, I'm hoping we'll see those number fall even lower and stay there.Speaking of the power of vaccines! I know that's a lot of numbers up there to throw at you before you've had a sufficient amount of coffee, but I do want to point out that both Henrico and Chesterfield now have more than 50% of their population with at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Possibly related, or at least worth bringing up in that conversation, Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on the low vaccine uptake among Black Richmonders who, at this point, make up the largest share of positive COVID-19 cases—75% of the city's cases from April to May. It's complicated stuff why a person may or may not choose to get vaccinated, and I encourage you to tap that link and read through some of the reasons.Whittney Evans at VPM scored an interview with Richmond Police's Chief Smith, which you should definitely read in its entirety. Actually, give the audio at the top of the page a listen so you can get a feel for the tone, which sounds a lot less defensive than the text reads. Evans asks if RPD has made any new policy changes since last summer's protests, to which Chief Smith responds: “A few…You're gonna have to give me a chance to go back and pull some of those. We changed the chemical munitions policy. The way chemical munitions are used and when they are used…You're asking very specific questions that you did not prepare me to go get—I would have to get the policy.” I have a lot of thoughts on that, both policywise and PRwise. Mostly about that latter though: The Chief is the face of the Police Department and one of the top four or five public figures in the entire City. Part of that job is being prepared, taking interviews, and building trust with the public. Again, please listen to the audio to get a feel for the Chief's tone—but that you need the audio to clarify these pretty bad quotes is not great. I'm thankful that VPM decided to include the audio (and RPD should be, too).The RTD's Michael Phillips reports that the Washington Football Team will bring its summer training camp back to Richmond, but with one big change: “the city will not be asked to make a $500,000 contribution to the team for its appearance. Instead, the team will rent out the Leigh Street facility for the week at a cost of $100,000.” Not having to pay the richest NFL team in the country, but having them pay us seems like the right order of things.Mike Platania reports in Richmond BizSense that Leek & Thistle will open down in the Bottom this weekend. This spot will sell mostly frozen to-go meals that you reheat at home, and it's another one of those pandemic-inspired changes that I'm interested to see if/how it sticks around. For whatever reason, maybe a year of not going to restaurants, but picking up a frozen meal seems way more appealing to me now than it did in 2019.This is an actual headline in the actual New York Times newspaper website: “U.S. Finds No Evidence of Alien Technology in Flying Objects, but Can't Rule It Out, Either.” OK.For anyone keeping track, Sunday is the five-year anniversary of me shutting down RVANews. It makes me sad to think about, but I love doing what I'm doing now. It is wild, though, to think that some readers of this newsletter have never even heard of RVANews!This morning's longreadOur Digital Pasts Weren't Supposed to Be Weaponized Like ThisI specifically remember having conversations a decade ago about how leaked nudes or embarrassing social media missteps wouldn't be a thing in the 2020s. How could they with whole generations of people growing up on the internet while documenting and sharing more and more of their lives publicly? Turns out, I was way, way wrong.Ms. Ball thought so too. She lost that long-ago Congressional race and is now a media commentator and the author of a book about the new political age. She said in a recent interview that she thought her so-called scandal would be a temporary blip before society adjusted and “that people would grow more accepting” of photos or problematic comments from the past. “It's the polar opposite,” she said. “It's more reactionary and judgmental than it's ever been.” Why haven't repeated calls to replace digital shaming with empathy and compassion resonated? Or at the very least, why hasn't a fear of mutually assured destruction set in?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 67 °F, and you should expect highs in the mid 70s and a chance of rain throughout today. We may even see some severe weather this afternoon or evening. Keep an ear out!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 243, 41, and 15.3, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 32.9 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: 4.9; Henrico: 12.3, and Chesterfield: 15.7). Since this pandemic began, 1,329 people have died in the Richmond region. 42.8%, 53.3%, and 49.8% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.Because I can't not look at the number every day, 67.3% of adults in Virginia have received at least one dose of the vaccine. The New York Times can't not look at these numbers either and has put together this fascinating table of “How long it would take each state to reach 70 percent of adults with one dose at the current vaccination pace.” Virginia: 13 days (which puts us four days past my estimate of June 12th). Alabama and Mississippi: More than a year. 40 states (plus D.C. and Puerto Rico) have not yet hit Biden's 70% goal, and out of the ten that are projected to take the longest to get there, six are in the South and eight have Republican governors. The 12 states that have already hit the goal: California, Maryland, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Rhode Island, New Jersey, Maine, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Hawaii, and Vermont (just four Republican governors).Also in vaccine world, Ian M. Stewart at VPM has some details on the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts' pivot away from large, stationary vaccination events toward smaller, mobile events. As a person involved in this pivot, I, of course, think it's a smart move! Go to where the people are! To keep a nice balance, though, the Health District will maintain a few stable walk-up vaccination events, like the one at George Wythe High School, throughout the summer.VPM's Lyndon German has a really nice story about what Studio Two Three did over the last 18 months to support our community during both the pandemic and the George Floyd protests. I love that we've finally got just enough distance from last year that we can start to reflect on these small, wonderful stories of Richmonders doing Richmond things. I hope to read a million more of these in the coming weeks and months.Related to my ongoing thread about if and how things change as we emerge from the pandemic, the Richmond Times-Dispatch's Gregory J. Gilligan reports on Kings Dominion's challenge in finding enough workers to open for a full season. As a result, KD has upped wages from $9.25 per hour to $13 per hour, which is a pretty dramatic 40% increase. I kind of hate the term “labor shortage,” because it makes it seem like folks who need jobs were snapped out of existence by Thanos, when what's really happening is people are no longer willing to work hard jobs—across many sectors—while making an unlivable wage. What I want to i know now is if $13 per hour is enough and if these wage increases will stick around past this transitional year.Michael Schwartz at Richmond BizSense has the list of local companies on the Fortune 500 list. You'll, of course, recognize all of the companies on this list—either as massive employers or as sponsors of literally every event in town.I'll link to this Graham Moomaw piece in the Virginia Mercury about the state of right-to-work repeal in Virginia mostly because it's an important thing to know about…but also because the pic of McAuliffe at the top is great and just asking to be memed.It's Thursday and that means the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts are hosting a free COVID-19 community testing event at the East Henrico Health Department (1400 N Laburnum Ave) from 2:00–4:00 PM. Just walk on up and get tested—no insurance required.This morning's longreadThe internet is flat.I'm really interested in this idea of Twitter having a main character each day (and the goal is to never be it). I've got a couple more articles in this space queued up, and they make me feel like we should just shut it all down.All of these questions reflect the nuances of a situation. And all of these questions are also irrelevant, because the ecosystem in which the broader conversation is conducted flattens them all into nothingness. She is either a KKK queen or an unfairly maligned cancel culture victim or some complicated muddled mix of the two, which isn't interesting enough to hold a headline and so is usually discarded in favor of one of the binary options. And so Kemper becomes the momentary main character of Twitter. Within minutes, it ends up not being about Kemper at all. She's just the latest place filler in peoples' larger cultural war.If you'd like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol' Patreon.Picture of the DayComing soon.

Good morning, RVA! It's 53 °F, and today looks lovely—in fact, NBC12's Andrew Freiden say today's your best day of the week weatherwise. Expect highs in the 80s, low humidity, and not a bit of rain. Looks like severe weather could be in the forecast later this week, though, so organize your out-of-doors calendar accordingly.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 347, 45, and 17.6, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 44.6 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: 6.6; Henrico: 18, and Chesterfield: 20). Since this pandemic began, 1,329 people have died in the Richmond region. 43.5%, 54.3%, and 50.7% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.Over in vaccine world, we are so, so close to reaching President Biden's goal of 70% of adults with at least one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine by July 4th. Right now, according to the VDH dashboard, 67.0% of Virginians 18 and and older have had their first jab. I'd said to mark your calendars for June 12th, but we may cross the 70% threshold even sooner. As per always, data reporting issues continue to ruin my pretty little graphs and have made unclear, at least to me, the picture of how many new people are getting vaccinated each day in the Commonwealth. That number's not falling off a cliff though, so that's something. Locally—defined as Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield—I don't think we'll hit Biden's goal by the 4th, but we'll be close. Check out our creeping progress towards (mostly) that goal on this chart. I can't find daily, 18+ vaccination data for localities on VDH's dashboard, so this is what I've got!Over the weekend, Jessica Nocera at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported on the now-faltered effort to create a Civilian Review Board in Henrico County. Disappointing stuff: “For now, [Supervisor] Nelson said if there is a different Board of Supervisors in a few years, maybe the civilian review board would come back for consideration.” Nelson had led the effort to create the County's CRB, but met a lack of support from the police and, more importantly, from the rest of the Board of Supervisors. Rather than push forward and end up with something with no actual power or authority to, you know, review the police, Nelson has decided to hang it up until he's joined by a few more progressive boardmembers. Local elections, y'all! So important.Also in the RTD, Chris Suarez reports that Richmond's bike share system may finally expand beyond its 17ish stations. I mean, sure, that sounds awesome. Although, it's sounded awesome for a bunch of years now, and somehow we have fewer stations than we did when the system launched. When it comes to Richmond's bike share system, I'm in definite believe-it-when-I-see-it mode . Suarez says we should have some opportunities to weigh in on the locations for the new stations soon and that the City will look in to providing RRHA residents with free memberships. Free bus fares plus free bike share memberships (and an expanded bike share network) would really open up some transportation options for folks with lower-incomes. I'm excited to see if we can make all of these pieces work together in a cohesive system.Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense asks a big question that I also have: “What's next for Bow Tie Cinemas site after failed pitch to become a casino?” While the owners don't have an answer yet, the property is zoned TOD-1 which allows for all sorts of fun things that would be more interesting than the expansive parking lot currently in place. I'm hopeful!I don't know quite what to make from this chart of endorsements Ned Oliver put together in the Virginia Mercury, but I just spent too long playing with it this morning. I think one of the interesting things to me is how there's no solidified McAuliffe ticket.Northsiders and park lovers! The Bryan Park Bike Races return tonight after a one-year COVID hiatus. This means that from 5:30–8:00 PM on Tuesdays throughout the summer you should expect to see portions of the park's paths closed off and people on bikes zipping around in a circle. If you've got a planned Tuesday evening stroll or roll, adjust accordingly! This is the 47th season of these races, which is incredible.This morning's longreadI'm Not Scared to Reenter Society. I'm Just Not Sure I Want To.I'm way into the title of this piece.You could admit that you'd accomplished nothing today, this week, all year. Having gotten through another day was a perfectly respectable achievement. I considered it a pass-fail year, and anything you had to do to get through it—indulging inappropriate crushes, strictly temporary addictions, really bad TV—was an acceptable cost of psychological survival. Being “unable to deal” was a legitimate excuse for failing to answer emails, missing deadlines, or declining invitations. Everyone recognized that the situation was simply too much to be borne without occasionally going to pieces. This has, in fact, always been the case; we were just finally allowed to admit it.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 68 °F, and today you can expect too-hot highs in the 90s for much of the day. Later this evening we could see some severe thunderstorms roll through, but it won’t do much to cool things off. Temperatures return to springlike this weekend, so, until then, accept the sweat and stay hydrated!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths as: 418, 39, and 13.6, respectively. VDH reports a seven-day average of 44.6 new cases in and around Richmond (Richmond: 6.6; Henrico: 18.0, and Chesterfield: 20.0). Since this pandemic began, 1,322 people have died in the Richmond region. 42.5%, 52.9%, and 49.4% of the population in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. I rewrote the top of this email! What do you think? I may keep tweaking it over the next couple of weeks—thrilling stuff!Yesterday, Moderna announced that it plans to submit some new data to the FDA and will seek Emergency Use Authorization for its COVID-19 vaccine for kids ages 12 through 17 in early June. The Washington Post has more details. This would be big news, even though we have loads of Pfizer laying around for this age group; the Pfizer vaccine is just so challenging to work with. Expanded authorization of Moderna would make things easier for folks on the ground who are still out there planning vaccination events and jabbing arms.I didn’t expect this! The Roanoke Times reports that “students, faculty and staff at Virginia’s community colleges will not be required to be vaccinated to be on campus this fall.” Hmmm, I wonder that that means.Whoa, Ali Rockett and Chris Suarez in the Richmond Times-Dispatch have an entire piece today, titled “Mayor Levar Stoney wrote an opinion piece for The New York Times reflecting on last summer. Here’s what he left out:,” point-by-pointing fives specifics the Mayor included in his recent column. I think I agree with most of these fives things and, if it had been me after this past summer in Richmond, I definitely would not have written a national opinion piece with the same tone. That said, it was just that: an opinion piece. The Mayor doesn’t have to mention his current tussles with the Civilian Review Board or the ongoing investigation about the cost of tearing down the monuments. He can tell his story how he wants, which most certainly casts himself as this summer’s hero. You can disagree with his telling of events, but I do think the NYT piece probably accomplished the Mayor’s political goals and raised his profile—especially among Virginians outside of Richmond. I do appreciate the local journalists who put this together to provide a more complete picture for readers of what happened a year ago.Richmond Together has put out a thoughtful candidate questionnaire for the Commonwealth’s Attorney race, and you can read the responses from incumbent Colette McEachin and challenger Tom Barbour. Have I ever read a candidate questionnaire for Commonwealth’s Attorney before? I’m not sure. If you haven’t either, take the opportunity to do so today—especially if you’re not even sure what the Commonwealth’s Attorney does. This questionnaire and the responses will give you a good idea for some of the roles and responsibilities one of these two candidates will have once elected.VPM’s Roberto Roldan reports on the Valentine Museum’s struggle to come to terms with the racist history of its namesake, sculptor Edward Valentine. I like local scholar Ana Edwards’s quote in this piece, "They all started off as institutions born into, if not the Confederacy per se, certainly the white supremacist South…That’s where they come from, that’s where their money comes from, that’s where their sensibility comes from.”Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports on “the start of construction of a 36-home section at Armstrong Renaissance, the massive redevelopment of the 22-acre site along North 31st Street in Richmond’s East End.” Armstrong Renaissance is by far my favorite new development in the entire city—it’s beautiful, mixed-income, and has a lovely blend of density all set just a few feet from a decent bus line. I mean, check out these totals for the entire development: “130 income-based rental units, 90 apartments for seniors, and the 36 for-sale homes for both lower-income and market-rate buyers.” Sounds great, now do this everywhere.Today the City’s Governmental Operations committee will meet and take up a deeply nerdy ordinance that will officially change the logo of the City from the brassy skyline, James River, and bridge situation, to the more contemporary silhouette of the bateau boatman (ORD. 2021–128). This doesn’t really impact anything or any one, as the new logo is already in use, I just think it’s neat reading the in-ordinance text descriptions of the old and new logos.This morning’s longreadThe Dark Side of Congo’s Cobalt RushCobalt is in probably two or three things you’re touching right now or can see from where you’re sitting.The man stopped digging in his yard. Instead, he cut through the floor of his house, which he was renting, and dug to about thirty feet, carting out ore at night. Zanga Muteba, a baker who then lived in Kasulo, told me, “All of us, at that time, we knew nothing.” But one evening he and some neighbors heard telltale clanging noises coming from the man’s house. Rushing inside, they discovered that the man had carved out a series of underground galleries, following the vein of cobalt as it meandered under his neighbors’ houses. When the man’s landlord got wind of these modifications, they had an argument, and the man fled. “He had already made a lot of money,” Muteba told me. Judging from the amount of ore the man had dug out, he had probably made more than ten thousand dollars—in Congo, a small fortune. According to the World Bank, in 2018 three-quarters of the country’s population lived on less than two dollars a day.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayAn adventure is afoot!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and highs today will stick around in the 80s. Tomorrow though, tomorrow you should expect unseasonably hot temperatures and all kinds of reasons to stay inside. If you want to get out and around, today’s your day!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 76 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 10 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 12 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 4, Henrico: 7, and Richmond: 1). Since this pandemic began, 1,320 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state sits at 378. Whoa! Look at these new numbers! Fewer than 100 new reported cases across the Commonwealth and single digit case counts in all three local jurisdictions. The last time my spreadsheet says that happened was over a year ago, on March 27th, just three days after I started tracking local numbers. What great news—let’s hope it continues!Over in vaccine world, I can’t remember if I mentioned it or not, but the VDH vaccine dashboard now reports that over 50% of Virginians have received at least one dose of the vaccine (53.2%). And, maybe even more exciting if you’re into tracking progress towards quasi-arbitrary goals, 65.7% of adults have had at least one dose. With 40 days remaining, I think we’ll hit Biden’s 70% goal with time to spare. That’s more great news that I hope continues!Today, the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a ton of retrospective stories from Richmonders reflecting on the year that’s passed since George Floyd was murdered by a police officer. Make sure you carve out some time today to work your way through them all, but, especially, these from Kalia Harris who helped organize mutual aid, artist Jowarnise Caston, Henrico Supervisor Tyrone Nelson, and I’ll just quote the one from the Richmond Police Department in its entirety: “Thank you for reaching out about this opportunity. RPD courteously declines to participate in this story at this time.”OK! City Council met last night and did some work. Hilariously, I totally forget they’d planned on passing the budget—which they totally did! So much for being in love with budget season, am I right? Chris Suarez at the RTD has the budget details, none of which have really changed since last we spoke. Aside from the budget papers, It looks like the resolution kicking off the process to get rid of parking minimums passed—which should get retail and restaurant owners excited. The two other papers I’ve got my eye on, those embarrassing Richmond 300 amendments and requesting that money from the ARP end up in the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, both got continued until later meetings.Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense sat down with Kevin Vonck, the new, bow-tied acting director of Richmond’s planning department. Here’s Vonck on…zoning(!): “Obviously, there are some areas of the city where we do need the zoning to catch up and reflect the market demand and development that’s occurring. We deal with a number of special-use permits because the market will maybe be ahead of where the zoning is at, and now that we have Richmond 300 in place, we have some guidance in terms of what the future land use should be in some of these areas.” He ends his interview with maybe the best description of Richmond I’ve ever read: “a cool place to end up.”In a press release yesterday, the City, Virginia Union University, and RRHA announced a “first-of-its kind partnership and 20-year commitment to support and empower residents of the Gilpin Community.” Specifically, VUU will offer STEM programming targeted at middle schoolers through their Community Mentoring Initiative alongside some new workforce training programs. The housing authority will identify and enroll folks while the City will chip in $100,000 to help pay for the new program. I like this quote from the Mayor, who calls it “a great example of being a good neighbor.” This is not the first time VUU has stepped in to help support Richmond’s youth. Remember when they started giving 50 RPS students full rides a couple years back?There’s a bunch of bicycle stories in the new issue of Richmond Magazine! If you’ve only got time to read one, because you’re so busy riding a bike of your own, make it this one by Eileen Mellon about the Urban Cycling Group.Bittersweet news, VPM’s Roberto Roldan is leaving to take a job in Louisville, which, honestly, sounds wonderful. Roldan is a great city reporter and was a crucial voice during last summer’s protests against police violence. I’ll miss his reporting! VPM has posted the job to replace him, so, if you want to be Richmond’s Next Great City Reporter, get after it!The New York Times has a really shocking rendering of Tulsa before the 1921 Race Massacre. Included are some really horrifying pictures of streets (that look a lot like Richmond’s older streets) after a mob of white people burned the buildings to the ground.This morning’s longread‘The Fledglings Are Out!’Whoa. To be able to write like this as a young person!This diary chronicles the turning of my world, from spring to winter, at home, in the wild, in my head. It travels from the west of Northern Ireland in County Fermanagh to the east in County Down. It records the uprooting of a home, a change of county and landscape, and at times the de-rooting of my senses and my mind. I’m Dara, a boy, an acorn. Mum used to call me lon dubh (which is Irish for blackbird) when I was baby, and sometimes she still does. I have the heart of a naturalist, the head of a would-be scientist, and bones of someone who is already wearied by the apathy and destruction wielded against the natural world. The outpourings on these pages express my connection to wildlife, try to explain the way I see the world, and describe how we weather the storms as a family.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayIt took a decade, but now my blueberry bush has some decent berries on it.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, and today looks lovely. Expect highs around 80 and some sunshine. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says we need rain, which some of my plants would agree with, but, dang, it’s just so pleasant out.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 272 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 11 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 39 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 15, Henrico: 12, and Richmond: 11). Since this pandemic began, 1,309 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state sits at 496. OK, OK, grain of salt with these numbers. While, the VDH dashboard is officially back online, I am skeptical of any and all numbers reported by said dashboard for the next couple of days. I imagine it’s hard for staff to enter in new data during extended periods of server maintenance.Now that the coronanumbers are flowing agin, I’ve got this week’s vaccine graphs for you to flip through. First, the number of new people each day in Virginia with at least one dose continues to decrease. I don’t think this graph yet reflects the change in eligibility that allowed kids 12–15 to get their first Pfizer doses, so stay tuned for at least a tiny bump. I feel like, at some point, this graph should start to flatten out in a long-tail way, right? Second, here’s the graph showing the number of doses administered in our region by week, and you can see that it’s a pretty decent reflection of the previous graph. Finally, here’s our region’s progress towards my own fairly arbitrary goal of 75% of total people with at least one dose. I think sometime this week I’ll update this graph to reflect President Biden’s goal of having 70% of adults with at least one dose by July 4th.City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee will meet today and consider at least two interesting papers. First, RES. 2021-R027, patroned by Councilmember Addison, would initiate a change to the City’s zoning ordinance that would eliminate parking minimums. Whoa! Parking minimums are just what they sound like, a minimum, required number or parking spaces specified by the zoning ordinance that changes depending on the type of thing. It gets real specific. For example a church or other place of worship needs one off-street parking space per eight seats in the main auditorium; or an art gallery, library or museum must have 10 plus one per 300 square feet of floor area in excess of 2,000 square feet; or a bowling alley must have five per lane. You get the idea. You can easily imagine how these parking requirements make it really hard to start a new business when you’ve got to invest money into paying for parking spaces that you—or your customers—may not even want. Of course, nothing in this zoning change would prohibit business owners from buying and building parking for their customers, it just wouldn’t require it.The other interesting paper in front of LUHT is less exciting. RES. 2021-R026 would direct the City’s Planning Commission to prepare an amendment to the newly-adopted Master Plan that addresses each of the issues raised in an eight-page document put together by Council. Planning Commission would then be required to hold a single public hearing on this chonky franken-amendment. I’m embarrassed by this. We just went through a yearslong process to craft a community vision for Richmond 300. There were dozens and dozens of meetings, feedbacks, and revisions. To request a single amendment with a single public hearing reflecting the messy set of changes laid out in this eight-page wish list is lazy, opaque, and definitely not in the best interest of our City. I think Planning Commission could spend an entire year working their way through this document and still not make significant, cohesive progress. Good luck, Planning Commission, you’re going to need it.Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense says Planning Commission voted to recommend the rezoning of the Southern States silos, which seems good. One thing I’d like to learn more about is how the proposed development plans on preserving (or improving!) access to the river down that way. I know a lot of folks fish, bike, and walk through there currently.Good news: The RPS School Board adopted a budget last night! Superintendent Kamras also answered my open question about where the money would come from to pay for the new staff to manage procurement and construction of school facilities. Check out page two of his presentation from last night: “State funding allocation increase by about $5 million more than was originally anticipated when the Board approved its FY22 budget in February. The Administration proposes using this additional funding to…fund the three Board-approved New School Construction positions.” Mystery solved! However, bad news: Five members of the Board—the same five who voted to take control of construction and procurement—voted against amending last night’s agenda to discuss the letter Mayor Stoney and City Council sent them about sharing those construction and procurement duties. From the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Kenya Hunter, here’s 1st District rep Liz Doerr on that decision: “I think it’s extremely unfortunate that my colleagues do not want to discuss the construction of George Wythe…I want the public to be aware, this means we are transparently not discussing George Wythe and a major decision that needs to be made by June 1st.” It’s not a good look for the School Board to refuse to even discuss a potential compromise with City Council and the Mayor. Not great.This morning’s patron longreadBlack homeowner had a white friend stand in for third appraisal. Her home value doubled.Submitted by Patron Brian. This piece is from Indianapolis, but surely representative of cities across the country. Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia, based right here in Richmond, tackles this sort of housing discrimination in our part of the world.During the early months of the coronavirus pandemic last year, the first two appraisers who visited her home in the historic Flanner House Homes neighborhood, just west of downtown, valued it at $125,000 and $110,000, respectively. But that third appraisal went differently. To get that one, Duffy, who is African American, communicated with the appraiser strictly via email, stripped her home of all signs of her racial and cultural identity and had the white husband of a friend stand in for her during the appraiser’s visit. The home’s new value: $259,000.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 52 °F, and today’s highs will float around in the 60s. The sun will poke it’s head out of the clouds at some point this morning, and the next couple of days look like they’ll bring warmer weather.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 600 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 17 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 67 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 36, Henrico: 23, and Richmond: 8). Since this pandemic began, 1,295 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state sits at 699.Over in vaccine world, I’ve got three things to share. First, remember that today the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will meet and most likely vote on authorizing the Pfizer vaccine for kids 12–15 years old. I’d bet VDH will move quickly following ACIP’s vote, so get ready parents, caregivers, teens, and tweens. Second, the New York Times asked a bunch of epidemiologists what they’re doing out in the world now that they’re fully vaccinated. Hiking with friends? Totally. Attending a wedding or a funeral? Not so much. Keep in mind that even though they have big science brains, epidemiologists are (mostly) people, too, and will have some of the same issues with reemerging into the world after a year of hibernation as the rest of us. Finally, also in the New York Times, a look at this “third group” of folks—people who aren’t necessarily vaccine hesitant, don’t have any of the classic barriers to access, but still haven’t gotten an appointment yet…because. That sounds snarky, but it’s not. People are busy living life and finding time to make it out to a pharmacy or one of the region’s vaccination sites is a lot of work for some folks. This quote sums it up: “I know you’re trying to find out the reason people aren’t doing it…I’m going to tell you. People are trying to take care of their household. You don’t have much time in the day.”Yesterday, the Governor declared a state of emergency due to the cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline system. This feels like an extremely Mad Max headline. From the Governor’s remarks it doesn’t sound like folks in Virginia should expect any sort of long-term impacts or extreme fuel shortages, although I’ve already seen some reports of price gouging at local gas stations (which is illegal) as people run out to top off their tanks. If you want to know more about the specifics, Krebs on Security has a fascinating/terrifying look at DarkSide, the group behind the attack. And because I can’t help myself: It’s hard to cyberattack a bicycle. You can follow the Colonial Pipeline’s crisis PR blog here, for a bit of morning schadenfreude.The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Michael Paul Williams weighs in on the School Board’s recent decision to take over school facility procurement and construction. Even if you’re tired of thinking about it and the impact this whole thing is having on the George Wythe community, Williams' piece is worth reading! A couple years back he was pro-schools running their own construction process, but, after the mostly successful construction of three new schools, he’s mellowed a bit on that. Here’s the rub and the truest of true sentences: “The reality is, schools don’t get built in this town without political support. Until the Richmond School Board has taxing power — everyone, hold your breath at the count of three! — the mayor and City Council will maintain a grip on the purse strings.”Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense has the details on the sale of the Mowbray Paint Co. building on Arthur Ashe Boulevard. There’s one world where this building becomes a restaurant, brewery, or other space for people. There’s another world where it becomes a bank or pharmacy with a focus on drive-through service. If we want that corridor to feel like a thriving neighborhood, we have limit the amount of car-focused businesses! Those business can and should exist, but probably not fronting a thoroughfare we want to see become a second city center.I haven’t listened yet, but I posted the audio from Council’s formal meeting to approve RPS’s budget over on The Boring Show.This morning’s patron longreadIn Defense of Liberal ConspiratorsSubmitted by Patron Alix. I keep reading unrelated things about labor movements—and this wide-ranging longread is one!The book A Lot of People Are Saying, from 2019, epitomizes the genre. Authors Nancy Rosenblum and Russell Muirhead describe what they call the “new conspiracism,” or “conspiracy without theory.” In their schema, classic conspiracism’s evidentiary basis (picture dozens of JFK assassination aficionados poring over photographs of the grassy knoll) has been abandoned in favor of pure affect; hypotheses and suppositions gain purchase through repetition, not proof. Digital networks drown internet users in dubious information designed less to persuade than to overwhelm, as social networks circulate and recirculate sensational claims. Those who know how to game algorithms amass enormous followings, and those with the most “engaging” content always win, accuracy be damned.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 45 °F, and after this morning’s clouds clear, today looks pretty great. Expect highs in the 70s, some sunshine, and a chance to spend some time outside in a garden.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 336 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 7 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 36 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 16, Henrico: 15, and Richmond: 5). Since this pandemic began, 1,295 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state sits at 723. I say don’t get too distracted by today’s extremely low number of new reported cases (just 14 new reported hospitalizations and 7 new reported deaths, too). Keep your eyes on those seven day averages, which, thankfully, also continue to decrease.Last night, the FDA authorized the Pfizer vaccine for emergency use in kids 12–15. Amazing! The next step here is for the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices to give Pfizer For Kids the go ahead, and then pharmacies, pediatricians, and health departments across the country can start vaccinating tweens and teens. ACIP has a meeting scheduled for Wednesday, which you can watch live if you really want! I’d expect a similar announcement from the FDA about Moderna, too, in the coming weeks. I also wanted to mention two round numbers that our stupid human brains, for some reason, are designed to care about: over 4 million Virginians have received at least one dose of the vaccine and over 3 million Virginians are fully vaccinated.I’ve got the teensiest of budget news: City Council met last night and approved the Richmond Public Schools budget. Kenya Hunter at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has the details. Hunter reports that Councilmember Lynch has the same question I have about this version of the school budget and recent push for schools to run the facilities procurement and construction process: “Fifth District Councilwoman Stephanie Lynch sparked the discussion by asking whether the schools’ proposal would need to be revised to pay for people to oversee construction.” I don’t see the answer in this RTD piece—but it seems like an important thing to know? Right? If Schools needs to hire approx 10 new people, that seems like a hefty budget increase (or a hefty cut from somewhere else). Anyway, I’ll go listen back to The Boring Show once I get it online later today and try to dig up some answers that way.Michael Martz, also at the RTD, has an update on the American Rescue Plan money headed to Virginia. Our state’s independent city system, which is unique in the nation, means weird things happen when we compare our data to other cities' data. Usually it means we make top lists like the Most Number of Tattoo Parlors Per Capita (small denominator). I also suspect it has at least something to do with why five of Virginia’s cities made the top ten list of highest rate of eviction judgments in that NYT evictions piece a while back. It also means that Virginia’s cities get two ARP payments from the federal government: One for being a city and one for being a county. That means Richmond will see something like $155 million over the next couple of years! City Council will most likely have a some meetings after they pass this year’s budget to discuss how to spend that sweet, sweet ARP money—so keep an eye out. Despite wanting to take a holistic look at how a once-in-a-generation influx of cash could impact Richmond, several councilmembers have already earmarked bits and pieces of ARP money for projects here and there. We’ll see how big-picture they can stay once all this money eventually drops in their laps.Richmond BizSense’s Jonathan Spiers reports on a new plan for apartments at 17th and E. Grace Street aka the former Weiman’s Bakery property (which also includes a bunch of surface-level parking lots). The developer plans to build 145 apartments, commercial store fronts, and only 85 parking spaces. I think that’s not even a sarcastic “only”! Just a little over half a parking space per unit seems pretty good for Richmond. I’d love for folks to share with me examples of developers making it work with even less parking.The Virginia GOP has settled on Glenn Youngkin as their gubernatorial nominee, and Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury has a bit of a bio piece on him. Youngkin has basically no political experience, no voting record, and tons of personal wealth to contribute—all things the statewide Republican Party feels like they need to be competitive. Here’s all you need to know about Youngkin: “He launched his campaign with a focus on election security and has refused to say whether he believes President Joe Biden won the election legitimately.” Shameful.This morning’s longreadA current list of my top problems in pressthinkI’ve followed Jay Rosen for yeas now, and his thoughts on how media works (or should work) are fascinating—and usually dead on. Read this piece on some of the problems he sees for media in the immediate post-Trump world.By anti-democratic I mean willing to destroy democratic institutions to prevail in the contest for power. This is true, not only of individual politicians, but of the party as a whole. As (Republican) and Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson writes, “For the activist base of the Republican Party, affirming that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential contest has become a qualification for membership in good standing.” A qualification for membership. Journalists had adapted to the old system by developing a “both sides” model of news coverage. It locates the duties of a non-partisan press in the middle between roughly similar parties with competing philosophies. That mental model still undergirds almost all activity in political journalism. But it is falling apart.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 44 °F, and you can expect slightly cooler temperatures today. At some point, it’ll probably rain, but the weekend weather looks thoroughly rad. I expect to spend a good chunk of my time riding bikes around the region.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 856 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 17 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 80 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 38, Henrico: 21, and Richmond: 21). Since this pandemic began, 1,293 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state sits at 865. This week’s stacked chart of new reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths really illustrates the—and this is the only word I can think of so I keep using it—precipitous drop off of new cases. It’s incredible, and we saw almost the same exact drop off last year, just in June not May. I’d love some analysis on this (someone should plot the new reported cases graph against temperature)! As for the rest of the charts, we know from the last 12 months that hospitalizations usually lag a couple weeks behind cases, so maybe we’ll start to see those number dip from their weekslong stay on atop the around-60-per-day plateau. Finally, here’s this week’s local graph of new reported cases, which, thankfully, matches the statewide trends.Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that yesterday Governor Northam announced he “hopes to lift emergency restrictions on public gatherings and social distancing by June 15th.” Importantly, this does not include guidelines around wearing masks! The Governor also “warned that progress in ending public restrictions and, potentially, the state of emergency depends on adult Virginians getting vaccinations to help achieve President Joe Biden’s new goal of having 70% of the population vaccinated by July 4 to achieve herd immunity against the disease.” Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t think this kind of governmental finger-wagging does anything to motivate folks on the fence about getting vaccinated. In fact, most of those people are probably out living their (terrifying) carefree, maskless, indoor-gathering lives regardless of the current restrictions. I keep thinking about these three buckets of unvaccinated people: those with real and legitimate reasons to be hesitant toward vaccines, those with barriers preventing them from accessing the vaccine, and those who are just kind of living life and—maybe because they’re young and healthy—haven’t really made the effort to go find a vaccination appointment. I don’t have a sense for how big each of these buckets are, but making it dead simple to get vaccinated addresses at least two of those groups and should be the focus of the next phase of our vaccination campaign. It’ll be way slower than queueing up thousands of people at the Raceway each and every day, but I think that’s OK. You can watch a recording of the Governor’s announcements over on VPM’s YouTube.Dang, in a press release, the City announced that Jay Brown, director of the Office of Budget & Strategic Planning will leave to take a job as a Deputy County Administrator for Hanover County. Brown has been a constant and helpful presence during budget seasons for as long as I’ve been paying attention, and I’ll miss his voice (even though I’ve only ever heard it sped up 2x). In the same release, the City also announced that the Mayor has appointed Mona Adkins-Easley as the new director of the Department of Human Resources, Sheila D. White as the new director of the Department of Finance, and Jason P. May as the interim director of the Office of Budget & Strategic Planning. The first two on that list were already serving as interim directors for those same positions. I wish someone would make an org chart for the City that highlighted vacant or interim-filled leadership positions. I feel like that would be a useful graphic.Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reminds me that even more apartments are headed to the VUU / Chamberlayne area—these over by the post office. Now we just need to fill in some retail and improve pedestrian connections over to the eastern side of Chamberlayne. Honestly, maybe we need a pedestrian bridge over that way? It’d be expensive and impossible to get the City to approve, but crossing there on foot or by bike is horrible.I did not know there was a Democratic gubernatorial debate last night! Somehow I keep missing these things, but, of course, reporters do not. The RTD’s Mel Leonor has the deep-into-the-night updates from the debate for you this morning. If you scroll down to the bottom of this page on WCYB’s site you can find the full recording from last night. Maybe queue it up over the weekend!Via /r/rva: “In dire need of a good burrito.” Aren’t we all?This morning’s longreadHere’s just how much people have stopped talking about Trump on Facebook and TwitterI know even mentioning how little we mention him gives him power, but, seriously, there are some days when I forget Donald Trump even exists.Now, that danger is seemingly less immediate, and there’s a debate about whether Trump should be brought back, or if social media companies should have indefinitely banned him at all. Proponents of the ban argue that if Trump is brought back onto the platforms, he could stoke civil unrest. And they point to how much misinformation on social media has declined after companies banned Trump and his allies — by as much as 73 percent, according to a January analysis by Zignal and reported by the Washington Post.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DaySelf-portrait in the woods.

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 66 °F, and rain is in our future. Today you can expect steadily—but slightly—increase temperatures, rain, and maybe even some thunderstorms. Keep an eye on the sky!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 761 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 14 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 95 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 42, Henrico: 34, and Richmond: 19). Since this pandemic began, 1,280 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state sits at 1,015. The Commonwealth’s cases keep dropping—although I do wonder if I need to start looking at that number regionally and dig into the difference between rural/urban/conservative/liberal parts of Virginia. Hospitalization rates have basically plateaued around 60ish per day, which matches the same numbers we saw back in November.Over in Virginia’s vaccine world, you can see the slowdown of new folks choosing to get vaccinated continues. We’ll see a bump on this graph once a vaccine gets approved for kids ages 12–15, but, other than that, I think this chart will slowly long-tail its way into the sunset over the next several months. Locally, though, we’re still vaccinating a ton of people each week, and we’re still making progress towards whatever it means to have 75% of our region vaccinated. However, that goal, according to this article in The New York Times, might not be realistic or achievable. Definitely a transitional time in vaccine world.The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Sabrina Moreno has some follow-up reporting on the mass shooting that took place last week in The Belt Atlantic apartments, just across the street from George Wythe High School on the city’s Southside. Here’s a sobering quote: “In the past year, 40 RPS students have been shot.” There’s only but so much local government can do to directly address gun violence—the State and federal government, obviously, have much more authority to pass laws limiting the easy access to guns and their flow through our communities. Until those particular folks find the courage to take even the smallest step, we’ll need to keep investing locally in the people and programs that address the trauma caused by gun violence—Moreno mentions a few examples in her piece.I’ve now listened to all of Council’s budget amendment sessions to date, and last week was…a lot. As far as I can tell, Council has yet to make a ton of progress on anything other than 1) discussions on the double-bonus police and fire raises, which they decided not to do, and 2) discussions on how they hadn’t made a ton of progress on anything other than the double-bonus police and fire raises. Today on their calendar, they have a special meeting, the Organizational Development committee meeting, and the fourth budget amendment work session—and they could have budget discussion at all of these meetings! It’s a lot to get your hands around as a citizen (or, I imagine, even as a councilmember). Stay tuned to see if they make more progress this week. P.S. Honestly, they kind of have no choice: The state-mandated deadlines for passing at least portions of the budget quickly approach. For example, Council must pass the RPS budget by May 15th.Unrelated to the budget, but closely related to my heart, the City’s Planning Commission will hear a presentation on the Greater Scott’s Addition Rezoning. No slides up on the website yet, but you can listen live today at 1:30 PM.Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has the details on 52 new apartments proposed for a site just off Chamberlayne near the Tabol brewery. There’s a ton of new residential construction in this part of the city, and I think we’re starting see some connections building to the different pieces of the neighborhood. I know we’re all distracted by the casino and possible replacement for the Diamond, but I’d love to see some intentional focus brought to getting more pieces of the VUU / Chamberlayne Neighborhood Plan implemented.The RTD reposted this fascinating story from the Roanoke Times about bringing back chestnut trees. I had no idea we lost chestnut trees to a horrible blight 150 years ago. Now I must find and read a book on the subject!This morning’s longreadNASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter to Begin New Demonstration PhaseOK, maybe this mission briefing for Ingenuity is a little boring, but we put a drone on mars! And are flying it around up there! So cool.The operations demonstration will begin in about two weeks with the helicopter’s sixth flight. Until then, Ingenuity will be in a transitional phase that includes its fourth and fifth forays into Mars’ crimson skies. Flight four will send the rotorcraft about 436 feet (133 meters) south to collect aerial imagery of a potential new landing zone before returning to land at Wright Brothers Field, the name for the Martian airfield on which Ingenuity’s first flight took place. This 873-foot (266-meter) roundtrip effort would surpass the range, speed, and duration marks achieved on the third flight. Ingenuity was programmed to execute a fourth flight Friday, with a takeoff to take place at 10:46 a.m. EDT (7:46 a.m. PDT, 12:30 p.m. local Mars time) and first data to be returned at 1:39 p.m. EDT (10:39 a.m. PDT). The fifth flight would send Ingenuity on a one-way mission, landing at the new site. If Ingenuity remains healthy after those flights, the next phase can begin.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 41 °F, and today looks wonderful. Expect sunshine, highs right around 70 °F, and even warmer temperatures over the next few days.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 884 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 16 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 112 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 50, Henrico: 51, and Richmond: 11). Since this pandemic began, 1,268 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state sits at 1,154, which is certainly a precipitous drop! Is this vaccines?? If so, great, because according to a new dashboard released by VDH, 81.8% of all COVID-19 cases in Virginia are now the B.1.1.7 variant. I don’t think I know enough about each individual variant to distinguish between the five of them currently tracked by that dashboard, and I hope I never need to!Over in vaccine world, I’ve got this week’s graph of statewide vaccine doses administered alongside Virginia’s total vaccine supply. Both numbers took a hit last week, which maybe we can blame on the J&J pause. Or, maybe, we’ve already vaccinated most of the folks who really, really want to be vaccinated? Here’s a new chart showing the number of new people each day in Virginia that have at least one dose of the vaccine. That number peaked in the beginning of April and has slowly decreased since then—no appreciable spike even after all Virginians became eligible on April 18th. Locally, though, we’re still steadily marching towards the goal of having 75% of our population vaccinated. As of yesterday (and barring typos), 376,205 people in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield had at least one dose. That’s 55.3% of the regional goal!Over the weekend the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommended that the Johnson & Johnson vaccine be unpaused and cleared for use by all adults. The CDC, FDA, and then VDH, all followed that guidance and lifted their pause as well, with Dr. Danny Avula saying, “The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) will follow that guidance and instruct providers across the Commonwealth that they are free to resume administering the Johnson & Johnson vaccine immediately.”The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Kenya Hunter reports on this past week’s protest at City Hall over the RPS School Board’s decision to take over procurement and construction of their school buildings. That decision might delay the construction of a replacement for George Wythe High School and the Wythe community, including current students, are not pleased. I still don’t see a great way out of this morass, but I am appreciative that the Superintendent is moving as quickly as he can given what’s been asked of him.I’ve got a jumbled mass of small-but-interesting City Council updates for you to parse through. First, I got the fifth Council budget work session and first amendment work session posted to The Boring Show. As promised, the amendment work sessions is very interesting and worth your time. Two main themes I see emerging from Council’s conversations as they try to advance their priorities within a very tight financial window: The Affordable Housing Trust Fund needs more cash and the Gallagher compensation study for City employees (which I’d do an entire post on if I had a second) is a huge priority for the Mayor but less directly so for some members of Council. Additionally/interestingly, the coming American Rescue Plan funds, possibly over $100 million, loom quietly over this entire discussion. Personal opinion, but I wouldn’t count on ARP money to fund any specific thing until we know exactly what it can and cannot be used for. Second, Council will meet today for their second amendment work session, an informal session, and a regular session. The informal session in particular has a pretty interesting agenda, with plans to discuss the American Rescue Plan funds, recruiting a new city attorney, and the “Monuments Disposition and Collaborative Process Update.” Finally, Council will meet tonight for their regular meeting, and you can find their full agenda here. Of note to readers of this email, ORD. 2021–078, which will accept money for the red pulse lanes. Also interesting, ORD. 2021–088, which accepts $90,000 of coffee and cookies from Aramark Services, Inc. for Department of Fire and Emergency Services personnel. How much coffee and cookies is $90,000 dollars worth, I wonder.Now that the first wave of Richmond’s parklets are up and running, Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has pictures of each! Whoa, look at that one out front of Nile in Church Hill—now that’s what I’m talking about. Plants everywhere! I have to believe that now folks can see a parklet with their own eyes, they’re much more likely to advocate for one in their neighborhood.This morning’s longreadWhat happened to the dining room table?This is probably a too-long piece about this history and transformation of the dining room, but, guess, what? Fascinating!My mom is selling our dining room table. I’ve only eaten at it a handful of times in my life because my sisters and I surely would’ve made a mess of it when we were kids. Instead, our family ate in the kitchen, which also doubled as a place to do homework, or to watch something on TV when the living room wasn’t the right vibe. Over the years, our dining table became a dumping ground for assorted crap: bills, flyers from school, Amazon packages. What was the point anymore?If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayA golden-hour picture of my garbage bike.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 48 °F, and this morning looks rainy. Keep an eye on the sky until about 2:00 PM when things should start to clear up.Water coolerAli Rockett and Reed Williams in the Richmond Times-Dispatch report on the eight people killed in Richmond last week—including two teenagers and three young adults. I’m thankful for Rockett and Williams’s coverage, because, over the years, it’s gotten harder and harder to understand who in our City is getting killed. I’m often confused by the press releases I get from the Richmond Police department when someone has been killed. Some deaths are labeled as homicides, some are labeled as death investigations, and I haven’t put together a good system to track those death investigations to see if they end up classified as homicides. I’ll often get a release announcing arrests of suspects for homicides that I hadn’t previously heard about. So, with all of that in mind, I’m going stop covering Richmond’s murders in the top section of this email. I don’t believe that what I’m doing now paints an accurate picture of murders (or violence) in the city. You can always find the RPD’s list of homicide victims here. For what it’s worth, what I think would be really useful would be regular data analysis on all gun violence in Richmond.As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,305 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 17 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 156 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 46, Henrico: 81, and Richmond: 29). Since this pandemic began, 1,259 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state sits at 1,512. We’ve had a seven-day average of new cases over 1,500 for the last seven days. Is the seven-day average of seven-day averages a thing (1,536)?Despite the disruptions in the supply of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Virginia—and our region—continues to vaccinate more and more folks each week. Here’s the graph of weekly doses administered in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield, and you can see we’ve blown past the governor’s second goal of around 37,000 doses per week—almost doubling it. And here’s the graph of our region’s steady march toward the mostly-made-up goal of having 75% of the population vaccinated. We’re still early on in the vaccine campaign, but what will be really interesting/telling is to watch the hospitalization and death numbers if we areheaded into another peak of cases. If the vaccines can keep vulnerable folks out of the hospital while case counts increase, then I think we could quietly pump our fists in the air a bit. Over two million Virginians (24.6%) are full vaccinated and almost 40% have received at least one dose. We’re getting there!Tonight, the RPS School Board meets at 6:00 PM and you may want to tune in. Check out these Capital Plan Recommendations that Superintendent Kamras will present tonight, specifically pages six and seven. Remember last week when the School Board voted to take over school building procurement and construction from the City? Well, after a bit of research, Kamras’s administration found that Chesterfield County Public Schools, Henrico County Public Schools, and Norfolk Public Schools do not handle their own procurement of new buildings. Chesterfield and Norfolk don’t do construction either. The admin estimates RPS will need to hire 15 new folks at a cost of $3 million. Gasp! Additionally, as a result of the Board’s resolution, the City has stopped working on the RFP for a new building to replace George Wythe—but RPS doesn’t have staff yet to pick up that work. So the project sits in limbo. Not great. With the budget out of the Mayor’s hands, I think Council would need to submit a budget amendment to fund these new spots—or RPS would have to go through some process unknown to me to cut funding from elsewhere in their own budget. I hate this whole situation, and don’t see a great way out of it given all of the egos and personalities involved. Tune in tonight, I guess.Speaking of budget amendments, City Council will have their fifth budget work session today, and they’ll focus on an analysis of the CIP. Perhaps more exciting, their budget amendments, which they’ll discuss on Wednesday, have dropped! This document lays out each proposed amendment (both increases and decreases) by councilmember. While it’ll give you an idea for what’s out there, it doesn’t do a great job at telling the broader story of which amendments have larger support among Council. Basically, don’t take a given member’s lack of amendment as a lack of support for a program or department—they’ll often collaborate on these things. A couple takeaways: Funding for the Civilian Review Board looks like it will happen, but it’s unclear how much (it won’t be the more than $1 million requested, that’s for sure); some folks want police and fire to get a raise, and it’s unclear to me whether that’s inline or out of line with the existing compensation stuff that the mayor’s budget made a priority; increasing the Affordable Housing Trust Fund contribution has a lot of support; and the public defenders office might could see an increase. Over on the cuts side, you’ve got suggested cuts to police, tax relief for seniors, fleet funding, and the non-departmental budget (aka when the City funds non-profits and other organizations). Also of note, Councilmember Jones proposed cutting every line item in the budget that received an increase by 34% of that increase. I’m not a fan of across the board cuts like this because I don’t think they’re equitable. We’ll learn more about how all of these things fit together and what has councilwide support on Wednesday. Exciting!I’ve got two more Council/legislative updates (but they’re quick!). First, the Ms. Bee’s parklet did need to go to the Planning Commission for approval. It’s on their Consent Agenda today, so, fingers crossed, that shouldn’t be a big deal. Second, Planning Commission will also consider these changes to the City’s parklet programwhich, I assume, will make it easier and cheaper for businesses to install parklets.You’re going to want to budget some time this week to work your way through all of the RTD’s The JXN Project: Contextualizing the origins of Jackson Ward. The JXN Project celebrates the 150th anniversary of Jackson Ward (this past weekend!), and the folks behind that work—Enjoli Moon and Sesha Joi Pritchett-Moon—partnered with the RTD to put together a handful of really nice stories about the painful and resilient history of the neighborhood.Richmond BizSense’s Michael Schwartz reports that Dominion will not build a second office tower downtown. I forget how the second Dominion tower was wrapped up into the eventual success of Navy Hill, but I’m glad it’s not something we were counting on in the immediate future.This morning’s patron longreadHow Lil Nas X Flipped Conservatives’ Culture-War PlaybookI love Lil Nas X.That doesn’t mean that Lil Nas X is a sorry pop star — he’s quite an outstanding one by the genre’s own standards, displaying the same easy charm, sharp aesthetic eye and knowledge of the cultural moment that fueled icons from Jimi Hendrix to Madonna to Beyoncé. The rap world has not been historically friendly to LGBTQ people, to say the very least, making it even more impressive that he managed to somehow leap in a single bound the barriers of acceptance both there and in the world of country music. Pop needs figures like him as catalysts, if for nothing else than to keep its world from becoming stale, self-reflexive, decadent.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayDoes a more charming Little Free Library exist?

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, and a bit cooler. Expect highs in the mid 60s today and for most of the weekend. I think we’ll avoid any rain, so spend some time outside if you can. It’ll be hard, but NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says to wait a couple more weeks before putting in your vegetable garden.Water coolerThe Richmond Police Department reports a murder on the 500 block of N. 30th Street. At 1:10 PM this past Sunday, officers were called to the scene and found Albert Harvey Jr., a man in his 30s, shot to death.As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,415 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 19 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 160 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 67, Henrico: 52, and Richmond: 41). Since this pandemic began, 1,251 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state sits at 1,506. Here is this week’s stacked graph of new reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths—with one major change. I set the y-axis on the new reported cases graph back to this summer’s value (a max of 2,000), and, whoa, eye-opening. I think our brains see a year’s worth of coronacases, flattened by this winter’s massive peak and think we’ve made a lot of progress. Looking at the data this way, though, at least for me, really put things in perspective. Here’s the graph of combined new reported cases in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield scaled the same way. If you’ve been putting off getting your vaccine, look at these graphs and then go pre-register on vaccinate.virginia.gov today. OK?Sounds like it’s more and more likely that we’ll all need at least a booster shot of our coronavirus vaccine, and possibly a yearly vaccination to pair with the flu shot. It’s unclear, at least this week, what that means for J&Jers as the FDA decide whether or not to unpause use of the one-shot vaccine. Yesterday, Dr. Fauci said “[the pause was] an indication that the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration take safety very seriously. I hope they make the conclusion of this quickly, and get back on track…and I believe they will.” Locally, Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a nice recap of what’s going on in Richmond and Henrico—vaccinewise—that’s worth reading as we head into the weekend.Huge news! The City, Capital Region Land Conservancy, the Conservation Fund, and the James River Association announced that CRLC will acquire 3011 and 3021 Dock Street and, ultimately, transfer that property to the City. You might know 3011 and 3021Dock Street as the properties adjacent to Great Shiplock Park—aka the section of the Capital Trail currently plopped down on the street and protected by jersey barriers. Once all the legal stuff gets worked out later this summer, we’ll end up with a fully public, fully connected riverfront and Capital Trail. I’m not a Richmond Riverfront Master Plan expert, but I don’t think the Downriver portion of the plan even considered this space since it was privately owned—it’s marked as a combination of “development” and “new open space” in the PDF. I’m stoked about this, and excited to see what happens out that way. Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense has more details.If you’re taking the bus this morning, be prepare for delays. GRTC’s Twitter account reports “many routes are currently not on the road this morning,” and that routes 1, 2, 3, 4, 18, 20, 29, 82, 86, 88, and 95 are impacted in one way or another. Yikes, that’s a lot of routes!Remember back in 2011 when VCU’s men’s basketball team made it all the way to the Final Four? Shocking, amazing stuff. Here’s a fun oral history of that handful of weekends ten years ago. Definitely set aside some time this weekend to flip through the stories and photos from a once-in-a-lifetime moment.This morning’s patron longreadThe Fast and the FamilySubmitted by Patron Sean. Maybe the Fast and the Furious franchise is less about fast cars and more about feelings and family??You might even forget about the hijacking plot because what actually matters to the story is whether Dom will accept Brian into his circle of trust. Cars are the literal vehicle through which they negotiate their relationship. Because it’s a series about cars, right? Fast cars. Furious even! Even the cars have feelings, or are feelings. Before Brian utters his first line, he revs his engine. The action genre negotiates male friendship through objects (read: usually women), but The Fast and the Furious tweaks this dynamic. Racing isn’t where characters displace their affection, it’s where they prove it.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayShow-off azaleas.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 51 °F, and, once again, today looks beautiful. Expect highs near 80 °F accompanied by maybe a few more clouds than yesterday. Sounds like a day worth enjoying.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,023 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 31 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 154 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 51, Henrico: 61, and Richmond: 42). Since this pandemic began, 1,232 people have died in the Richmond region. Case counts across the state are on a downward trend—at least over the last five or so days. Plateau or nah? You can question the local case count similarly, I think. Check out the graph of the combined 7-day average of new reported cases in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield. Hmmm…definite notes of plateau.Over on the vaccine side of the house, parts of Virginia are already in Phase 2: Everybody Else. As of yesterday, the Chesapeake, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach Health Districts have all moved in to Phase 2. Actually, looking at this map, there area bunch of Health Districts already in Phase 2. We’ll get there soon, y’all—hold tight. And until then, remain vigilant, wear a mask, keep your distance, and work from home if you can!Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has an update on something I wrote about yesterday and reports that University of Richmond’s board of trustees has decided to pump the brakes on leaving racists' names on two campus buildings. This comes after the faculty senate voted to censure the rector of the board of trustees. This all feels so predictable and avoidable, doesn’t it? I wonder if the board underestimated the amount of blowback they’d get or if they didn’t even consider it.Related, the RTD’s Chris Suarez sat through yesterday’s Council meeting and reports on how Council will move forward on disposing of the Confederate monuments. Well, kind of. In a very Council way, they couldn’t decide if they wanted to go through the disposal process themselves or if they wanted the Mayor’s administration to handle it instead. Or maybe the Mayor’s administration could do most of the work but keep Council in the loop? TBD! To Council’s credit, though, they have lost a ton of staff recently, and, with the budget season ramped fully up, I doubt Confederate monument disposal is high on anyone’s list.Jonathan Spiers in Richmond BizSense has the details on these perpendicular-to-the-street townhomes proposed for a site in Highland Park. Every one comes with a spiral staircase to access the shared lawn! I’m fascinated by this concept (the perpendicular townhomes, not the spiral staircases) and interested in if we start seeing more of these pop up. Converting a big lot in a single-family neighborhood into 12 homes is definitely one way to do some mild density.Tonight you’ve got two ways to learn more about the candidates running to represent you in various ways. First, the University of Richmond School of Law will host a virtual policy platform discussion with the Commonwealth’s Attorney candidates today at 12:00 PM, featuring both incumbent Colette McEachin and challenger Tom Barbour. Second, Virginia State University will host the first televised Democratic gubernatorial debate tonight at 7:00 PM, featuring Lee Carter, Jennifer Carroll Foy, Justin Fairfax, Terry McAuliffe, and Jennifer McClellan. I’m familiar with this entire cast of characters (some for better reasons than others), but I’m really interested to see them all on stage together—some very different vibes across the group.The New York Times has a nerdy but important update from the Senate after the parliamentarian issued new guidance about the budget reconciliation process: “The guidance could substantially weaken the filibuster by allowing the majority party to use budget reconciliation—a powerful tool that allows measures related to taxes and spending to pass on a majority vote—multiple times in a single fiscal year.” For this newsletter, that means there’s a possibility for the Senate to pass Biden’s big infrastructure bill with a simple majority! Bring on that federal public transit funding!This morning’s longreadOne weird trick to fix our broken child care systemAnne Helen Petersen! Here she is writing for Vox about publicly funded child care.Early childhood care is, as one policy expert put it to me, a total market failure, and has been, whether we realized it or not, for decades. How do you fix a fundamentally broken system? It’s not as simple as blowing it up and starting over. The failure is so textured, so tied up in ideas of gender and race, of women and work, of “choice” and “kids are best cared for at home,” solutions thus far have largely been piecemeal: Add an incentive here, cut a cost there, even take the big step of establishing universal pre-K. Some of these reforms have meaningfully changed kids’ (and parents’) lives, but the entire process feels, as Lea Austin, executive director of UC Berkeley’s Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, put it to me, “like pouring water into a bucket with a hole in the bottom.”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 53 °F and foggy. Later today, though, you should enjoy the warm, cloudy, dryish weather by taking a quick walk around your neighborhood. Again, if we can dodge some of the rain, this weekend has a high excellent weather potential!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,470 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 6 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 155 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 51, Henrico: 71, and Richmond: 33). Since this pandemic began, 1,193 people have died in the Richmond region. New reported cases across the state continue to tick upwards, mirroring similar trends across the country. This national graph of daily reported cases looks a heckuva lot like the same graph we’ve got in Virginia, which, bleh. Weathering a springtime peak so soon after coming off that horrible winter mountaintop feels…undoable.I haven’t been following it super closely, but sounds like AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine will head our way at some point in the nearish future. This would be the fourth vaccine in our vaccination toolbox, and, despite safety concerns in Europe and a recent confusion over accurate efficacy numbers, the AZ vaccine prevents 100% of severe disease due to COVID-19. Not the best rollout, for sure, but, hey, I’m all for getting an additional supply of vaccine in Virginia. Sounds like the FDA will consider Emergency Use Authorization for AstraZeneca in the coming months. Also, here’s a really nice explainer on how this particular vaccine works from the New York Times.OK, big casino news today. In a release sent out last night, the Mayor’s office announced that they’ve narrowed the field of resort casino proposals to three: Bally’s Richmond Casino, Live! Casino & Hotel Richmond, and One Casino + Resort. For those of you who, like me, can’t track these generic casino-y names, that’s: The one behind the Target at Forest Hill and Chippenham, the one in the Movieland parking lot, and the one out by the port. The three proposals cut “did not advance due to factors such as lack of site control, concerns about the feasibility of financial projections, lack of organizational experience and/or deficiency of the proposal.” The City has put videos for each proposal up on their YouTube channel if that’s your thing: Bally’s, Live!, and One. Come for the sales pitch, stay for the royalty-free muzak. VPM’s Roberto Roldan has two quick reactions that are both worth reading. The first from the Pamunkey Tribe whose proposal didn’t make the final listand the second from Councilmember Jordan. As for the former, the Pamunkey Tribe brings up good points about the timing of cutting proposals before public engagement has wrapped up, “The timing of the decision, which comes before the public comment period has even concluded, seriously undermines confidence in the selection process and suggests a pre-determined outcome has been reached. The timing of this decision also suggests that public and community input will not be seriously considered in this process.” As for the latter, I whole heartedly agree with the Councilmember that the Movieland parking lot is the most terrifying of the three options. Here’s Jordan, “I am a hard ‘no’ on any gaming at the Bow Tie Cinemas site. My constituents don’t want it, the thriving greater Scott’s Addition doesn’t need it, and gaming and college sports just don’t mix. I welcome the developers to look at other non-gaming investments in our city.”The City’s Education and Human Services committee will have a special meeting today at 3:00 PM—something you don’t see a ton from City Council committees. Committee Chair Stephanie Lynch has brought a bunch of guests speakers together to “review different models of Homeless Services throughout the state.” If you’re interested, you can tune in here and check out the full (but short) agenda here. I think this is a clever and good use of a committee chairship, and I’d love to see more of it!Rezoning news! Despite the headline and the one developer who’s bummed they can’t build sprawly, car-centric stuff like drive-in restaurants by-right, it seems like a lot of folks are stoked on the potential Greater Scott’s Addition rezoning. Jonathan Spiers from Richmond BizSense has the details. Unlike that specific developer, I do think it’s important to get this rezoning done as quickly and as completely as possible. Build a one-story, drive-in fast food restaurant now, and it (and it’s parking lot) sits there for decades.Yesterday, the Governor officially signed legislation banning capital punishment in Virginia (SB 1165 and HB 2263). The aforelinked press release from the Governor’s office has a good picture of the Virginia State Penitentiary which used to sit right on Belvidere Street across from Oregon Hill. Executions took place on site for over 200 years.The Richmond and Henrico Health Districts will host a community COVID-19 testing event today at Diversity Richmond (1407 Sherwood Avenue), from 10:00 AM–12:00 PM. Remember, if you can’t make today’s event, you can always check out this big, long list of testing providers.This morning’s longreadThe Secret Life of the White HouseOooo an inside look at the White House staff. Fascinating!The residence staff will tell you that they avoid discussing politics at work, yet in recent years that pact has frayed, as it has elsewhere in America. Tensions surface more than in the past, prompted at times by knowledge of their colleagues’ Facebook posts. “Most people know more or less where people stand,” the residence worker told me. About half of the lifers are people of color, which raises questions about how they tolerated working for Trump. “We have to be impressed with the idea that a bunch of Black and brown people can survive this daily onslaught,” Jason told me. “It speaks to their diligence and loyalty to the house itself—they are not really there for the person.” But they were not impervious to the tone of the Administration. Under Trump, Jason said, Black and brown lifers noted that white people on staff were “saying some real shit . . . meaning they’re comfortable to say what they want to say.”If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DaySprouting for spring.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 38 °F and bleh. Today you can expect highs in the low 40s and a chance of cold rain until the sun goes down. Probably best to stay inside if you can and hold your outside plans until tomorrow (which looks pretty nice at the moment).Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,130 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 41 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 96 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 46, Henrico: 33, and Richmond: 17). Since this pandemic began, 1,174 people have died in the Richmond region. As the seven-day average of new reported cases creeps lower and lower—1,325 this morning—it is important to remain vigilant! UVA’s model, which, admittedly hasn’t been updated in a week, notes that “News has been encouraging lately. Case rates are declining and the vaccine seems to be having an early impact. However, new variants and pandemic fatigue create additional risks. If new variants become widespread as residents loosen prevention measures, Virginia may see another peak, with cases peaking at 40,532 per week during the week ending July 4, 2021.” For context, our seven-day average of new cases the last week of January—the darkest of times—peaked at 6,149 or 43,043 cases per week. So please, wear a mask, keep your distance, work from home, and get vaccinated if you can.Speaking of getting vaccinated if you can, as of yesterday over one million Virginians are now fully vaccinated! That’s about an eighth of the entire population, and 21.1% of the state has received at least one dose. The Governor and First Lady also joined the list of the fully vaccinated, and got their one-and-done dose of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.Whoa, OK, late last night, like almost today, the RPS School Board voted for a traditional calendar for this coming school year. NBC 12’s Brent Solomon has the details. I thought for sure the Board would punt the decision a couple weeks down the road—which they did decide to do early in the meeting (which is when I stopped watching). Apparently, two-and-a-half hours after reading 56 pages of public comments, they changed their minds and ended up voting for the traditional calendar to allow more time, in Solomon’s words, “to collect data and get the public’s input” on year-round school. This random post on /r/rva says Superintendent Kamras pushed the board to make a decision either way last night so families and staff could know the plan for next year.It’s not until next month, but the City’s Urban Design Committee will consider a new parklet out front of Ms. Bee’s Juice Bar on Brookland Park Boulevard. It’s charming, and it’s made out of hexagons! Tap through to page 29 to see what the final, pretty rad, design would look like. We still don’t have any parklets that take advantage of the City’s parklet ordinance—which probably tells you something about the efficacy of the ordinance—but I’m glad Venture Richmond has started to push on this. Once we have even just a few successful parklets, I think we’ll start to see them popping up in a neighborhood near you.Today the Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee will consider RES. 2021-R017, which will declare a public necessity to rezone to TOD-1 the area “north and south of West Broad Street from Interstate Route I-195 west to the City’s corporate boundary with Henrico County.” I don’t imagine that “north and south of W. Broad Street” penetrates very far off of actual W. Broad Street itself, but, still, increasing the density of the Pulse Corridor makes a ton of sense. That hellscape of parking lots and low-slung strip malls needs some in-filling like whoa. Anyway, as y’all know by now, passing this resolution is the first step in actually doing a rezoning, so I’ll for sure be keeping an eye on it throughout the rest of the process. You should probably prepare yourself for some gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over “shade” and “crime.”Patrick Larson at VPM reports that Swansboro Park on the Southside now has 50 new trees due to the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s Greening Southside Richmond project. Trees are amazing and do all sorts of things to improve a neighborhood: look sweet, reduce the urban heat island effect, filter runoff, and, of course, provide shade. The best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago, the second best time is right now! I love this saying and think about it constantly.Music to my ears! Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense writes that “a proposed 254-unit apartment building would replace a parking lot in Jackson Ward.” This is that terrible parking lot on the north-east corner of 2nd and Marshall that just so happens to be adjacent to really great transit and flush with good restaurants. It’s already kind of in process, but 2nd Street is about to blow up!This morning’s longreadFirst comprehensive study of indoor pot farm emissions uncovers a giant climate hot spotUnsurprisingly, everything we do has an impact on the environment.Regardless of location, the top two factors contributing to carbon emissions from indoor cannabis growing are climate control (cannabis plants need stable temperature and humidity but regular turnover of fresh air) and high-intensity grow lights. “While it is well known that lights are energy intensive, maintaining a comfortable environment for the plants is just as intensive if not more,” says Quinn. Another surprising source of emissions: “Bottled carbon dioxide is added to indoor grow spaces for increased plant growth and accounts for 11–25% of cannabis emissions, depending on location,” says study team member Hailey Summers, a graduate student at Colorado State University. The emissions don’t come from the CO2 itself (which is a byproduct of other industrial processes and would otherwise be released into the atmosphere) but from compressing it into liquid form and bottling it.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayBirds, man.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F, but today—and the next several days—looks amazing. Expect highs in the 70s until at least Friday and lows no lower than somewhere in the 50s. With the sun setting after 6:00 PM, there’s a real and good opportunity to knock off of work a bit early and spend some time outside. Do it!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 892 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 87 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 90 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 37, Henrico: 33, and Richmond: 20). Since this pandemic began, 1,125 people have died in the Richmond region. Whoa, a triple digit case count. Haven’t seen one of those since the end of October.Yesterday, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts, along with the Chesterfield and Chickahominy Health Districts, announced that they’ve expanded vaccine eligibility to more folks in Phase 1b. For Richmond, Henrico, and Chickahominy that’s all of Phase 1b, for Chesterfield that’s just frontline essential workers groups one through six. So, to put it all in one place: Eligible folks in Richmond and Henrico now include people over the age of 65, frontline essential workers from all 11 groups, and people aged 16–64 with underlying conditions or disabilities that increase their risk of severe illness from COVID-19. That’s a lot of humans—almost half of all Virginians! Additionally, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts included “food service” folks in 1b (previously part of 1c), which includes restaurant staff—both front and back of house. That’s a big deal, I think! Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has some of the details, including the rationale for shifting restaurant workers up into 1b: “…tight workspaces among restaurant workers—where social distancing from customers without masks is almost impossible, create a high-risk environment for COVID-19. Most food service workers are uninsured or underinsured and lack paid sick leave…many areas of Richmond and Henrico are underserved by grocery stores, restaurants are often important points of access to food for lower-income communities.” At the moment, and, with any luck, for the foreseeable future, vaccine supply is plentiful, but, should it become constrained again, you can read how the Richmond and Henrico Health District will equitably prioritize vaccine doses across all of these newly eligible folks. Your next step, should you want to be vaccinated: Fill out the statewide pre-registration form so you can get in the system!Last night City Council approved ORD. 2020–261, which modifies the City’s zoning ordinance to allow for emergency, transitional, and permanent supportive housing to be built by right in more places. Roberto Roldan at VPM puts it well: “Right now, when someone wants to open a homeless shelter or transitional housing they have to go through a special permitting process. Even if they pass that hurdle, Richmond City Council can also block the development. Allowing these types of emergency and supportive housing ‘by right’ would eliminate those barriers….The goal of the legislation is to stop the game of hot potato city officials have been playing with homeless services for years.” Roldan’s whole piece is worth reading, if just to remind yourself of how much gross hot potato our local legislative body has played with some of the most vulnerable Richmonders.Everyone should take 30 minutes and read through this RVA Recovery Budget Investment Proposal (PDF) document from the folks at Richmond Together. They’ve put together a vision for how to equitably invest in specific services and programs over the next two years to rebuild and recover from the impacts the pandemic has had locally. In their words: “We are pleased to present this comprehensive investment proposal, designed to address many of the most severe consequences of the current crises and to also lay the groundwork for progress that helps Richmond begin to address long-standing racial and economic disparities.” Y’all, I do not know the last time I saw a local document like this that laid out specific strategies to address inequity, how much it would cost to implement those strategies, and then also where that money would come from. Some of the strategies I dig: A COVID recovery special fund for the Health District to manage, expanding the Mayor’s Youth Academy, increasing the City’s contribution to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, supporting child care providers in financial jeopardy, and free municipal wifi. Some of the funding mechanisms that I find clever: a continued hiring freeze, a 3% one-time reduction in the Richmond Police Department’s budget, and “a Racial Equity Tax Increment Financing Zone along Monument Avenue so that increased property tax revenues resulting from planned reimagining of Monument Avenue area may fund Racial Equity and Community Wealth Building activities.” Importantly: “We do not rule out potential tax increases in the future, but believe the need for them can be offset in whole or in part by successful implementation of other measures.” I’ll take it. Anyway, read this document and the accompanying explainer in Style Weeklyand think about it often as we move through budget season.Scooter alert! Richmond BizSense’s Jack Jacobs says Lime scooters have hit the ground in Richmond. Unfortunately they don’t have plans yet to bring in dockless bikes, but it sounds like that’s not completely off the table. The operational area for this particular scooter fleet is constrained to south of 95, parts of Church Hill, parts of Forest Hill, and most of Manchester. Two thoughts: First, I think Bolt is the only scooter company to allow free range of the entire city; Second, surely a way exists to just have one scooter app on my phone? Do I really need a fleet of apps just to take the scooter nearest me?Jonathan Spiers, also at Richmond BizSense, has an update on the Short Pump Town Center planning charrett. Look at all the stuff they can fit into what’s now just surface parking! Incredible. If you really want to, you can watch the full hourlong presentation over on YouTube.Last week I posted a picture of a nandina plant and captioned it with “Never-wake-up berries?”, which is a weak Blue Lagoon(1980) joke. Turns out nandina are never-wake-up berries…but for birds! The folks at Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden pointed me towards this post from their Dirty Dozen series which explains how nandina is not only poisonous but an invasive non-native. What the heck! Time to break out the shovel, do some digging, and open up some space in my back yard—this stuff is everywhere.This morning’s patron longreadButtigieg Says US DOT Should Support ‘Right-Sizing’ City AsphaltSubmitted by Patron Brantley. I’m not going to count my road depavings before they hatch, but it’s wild to hear Secretary Mayor Pete even mention getting rid of some asphalt.Under current DOT formulas, states receive federal dollars based on factors like their total lane miles and the total vehicle miles travelled by drivers each year — a system that all but guarantees that when communities spend those dollars, they’ll prioritize expansion over simple maintenance (much less asphalt subtraction) wherever possible, regardless of the harm done to vulnerable communities by urban heat island effects, pollution, traffic violence, and the countless other impacts of overbuilding our road network. Between 2009 to 2014 (the last year for which final data is available), states spent about $120 billion on road repair and roughly the same amount on road construction, despite the fact that it should have taken an estimated $231.4 billion every year simply to bring the car-focused streets we already had up to par — a problem that hasn’t gotten any better in the years since.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayEven up here on the Northside!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and highs today will hit in the 40s. Temperatures increase tomorrow, and the rest of the week looks pretty nice—and dry. Enjoy accordingly!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,124 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 231 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 127 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 48, Henrico: 59, and Richmond: 20). Since this pandemic began, 1,002 people have died in the Richmond region. As VDH finishes up recording all of the winter COVID-19 deaths, we’ve surpassed a thousand deaths locally. In fact, these “new” reported deaths in Virginia are so substantial that they’re having an impact on national death reporting figures. Compare this national number of deaths reported graph to this one excluding Virginia. Anyway, I think we are almost through seeing these huge new daily death numbers—look at the graph of Deaths by Date of Death for today vs. the same graph from a week ago. You can see that the huge missing gap of data is almost entirely filled in at this point. I do wonder, though, if our collective behavior would have changed if we had known the actual number of people dying every day.Here’s this week’s updated graph of the amount of vaccine administered locally. After missing Ross’s Stupid Math Goal of 20,000 doses administered two weeks ago, the region crushed it last week and put over 33,000 shots in arms. Good job, region! Now, I think it is time to update the Stupid Math Goal to come in line with the Governor’s actual goal of 50,000 jabs across the state per day. That works out to—using back-of-the-envelop population proportion math (aka Stupid Math)—be about 37,000 doses administer each week in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield combined. I’ll update the chart accordingly.Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports that City Council “adopted three ordinances authorizing the sale of the city’s Public Safety Building property and adopt[ed] a development agreement with Capital City Partners, which is planning a 20-story, VCU Health-anchored tower and mixed-use office complex on the bulk of the 3-acre property at 500 N. 10th St.” Seems good to build city-type stuff in the center of our city, right? I still am concerned about what will happen to the remains of the GRTC transfer place, which Spiers says would be relocated to “the surface parking lot across Ninth from the building.” We can do better than “relocated to a surface parking lot,” and I’m looking forward to seeing some details on the plans for humanely sheltering folks that still need to make transfers at the plaza.VPM’s Alan Rodriguez stayed up late to follow along with the Richmond School Board meeting last night and reports that the Board voted 6–2 to “return about 800 students to in-person instruction after spring break in April.” Rodriguez also says that the Board will vote on the year-round school calendar on March 15th. I tuned in for a bit of the meeting and caught several boardmembers commenting on the flawed design of the year-round school survey or its lack of reach. What I’d like to see now is how those board members will engage their constituency over the next 13 days to fill in those gaps—and not in a rhetorical way! I think someone should look into and track what, over the next two weeks, each of the nine members do to engage the people that elected them. Honestly, this is the type of open-government / transparency project I think we need more of in Richmond. Caregivers and families can still fill out the year-round school survey here.The Virginia Mercury’s Sarah Vogelsong recaps the long, and ultimately futile, journey of the electric school bus bill. Even if you don’t care about schools, school buses, or electric vehicles, this piece is a great look at how politics and lobbying work in Virginia. I mean, this sentence: “Sources with knowledge of the deliberations said some House members had been wary of letting the bill die completely while there was still time for the Senate to retaliate by killing House bills that remained alive…”Marc Cheatham, of the Cheats Movement blog, says Hamilton Glass, one of Richmond’s well-known muralists, is featured in the YouTube Originals “Black Renaissance: The Art and Soul of Our Stories.” Add it to your queue!This morning’s longreadA Simple Rule of Thumb for Knowing When the Pandemic Is OverI don’t know if any of the metrics for “when the pandemic is over” make sense, but it’s something I hadn’t really thought about before. I bet we end up with different states declaring victory at different times using different criteria. Still though, worth thinking about as we continue to see case counts drop.“The question is not when do we eliminate the virus in the country,” said Paul Offit, the director of the Vaccine Education Center and an expert in virology and immunology at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Rather, it’s when do we have the virus sufficiently under control? “We’ll have a much, much lower case count, hospitalization count, death count,” Offit said. “What is that number that people are comfortable with?” In his view, “the doors will open” when the country gets to fewer than 5,000 new cases a day, and fewer than 100 deaths. That latter threshold, of 100 COVID-19 deaths a day, was repeated by other experts, following the logic that it approximates the nation’s average death toll from influenza.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayDon’t worry, tree, spring is almost here.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F, and today you should expect warmer temperatures and plenty of wind. Maybe by the end of the day we’ll all feel a little less soggy and ready to head into tomorrow, which looks to be the best-weather day of the week.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,155 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 155 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 187 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 68, Henrico: 55, and Richmond: 64). Since this pandemic began, 797 people have died in the Richmond region. First, a data reporting note on the huge number of deaths reported both statewide and locally: “VDH is now processing 2021 death certificates related to the post-holiday surge of COVID-19 cases. As a result, a larger number of deaths is expected to be added by report date. To observe the trends in COVID-19 deaths most effectively, please review the chart that shows deaths by date of death on the cases dashboard.” That graph is wild (you need to select “Deaths” from the map above and then scroll down to see the trend graph, or just tap here), and you can clearly see the missing chunk of data VDH will now backfill. Keep this in mind, because Friday’s stacked chart of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths is gonna look real broken. Second, and this is good news, the seven-day average of new reported cases across the state has dropped below 2,000 for the first time since November 19th.Due to the limited supply of vaccine and last week’s inclement weather, the region failed to hit my Stupid Math Goal of administering 20,000 vaccines per week. It got close, though, and that’s impressive. I’m still not sure it’s useful, but here’s the same graph with number of statewide doses received overlaid on top of it. I think the biggest takeaway from this second graph is that some of the doses delayed due to weather showed up this week: Virginia reported receiving over 300,000 doses in the last couple of days.Resort casino applications were due to the City by 3:00 PM yesterday, and Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch says “at least four” folks submitted proposals. Martz says the City will release the full list of names and proposals in the next week or so, but until then, we’ve got his list of four to noodle on: the Movieland Parking Lot Proposal (by The Cordish Companies), the Weren’t They Gonna Build Amazon Here Proposal (by Bally’s Corp.), the Casino By The Port Proposal (by Urban One), and the Pamunkey Indian Tribe Proposal (by the Pamunkey Indian Tribe, but “four miles south of the property it originally proposed”). As you can imagine, I’m excited to get my hands on some of these PDFs. As for next steps, Martz says a City panel will evaluate the proposals and then make recommendations to Mayor Stoney, then Council will vote on the recommendation, and then you and I will vote in a fall referendum. More thoughts and feelings after I’ve seen some more details on each of the proposals.Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury reports that the General Assembly has sent legislation abolishing the death penalty to the Governor for his signature. Should Northam sign the bill, which it sounds like he will, Oliver says Virginia will be “the first state in the South and the 23rd in the nation to end capital punishment.”RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras’s newsletter from yesterday is worth checking out if you have questions about the year-round school proposal. He’s got a good summary of the proposed changes, some links to studies on the benefits of a year-round calendar, and then a bunch of FAQs. If you haven’t already, RPS parents/caregivers can fill out this surveyand teachers/staff can fill out this survey. Unrelated to the calendar, I hadn’t realized that RPS will try and offer both in-person and virtual instruction next year: “Our goal is to open fully in-person next school year, while also offering a virtual pathway for families who would prefer that option.”Doug Allen on Twitter reminds me that it’s been almost a month since the Department of General Services put up that horrible fencing around MDP Circle, yet the statue of Robert E. Lee still stands. What gives? I feel duped and embarrassed for not listening to folks who know better. I should have know, I mean when was the last time great things happened because the State decided to fence off public space?Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has the details on Henrico’s Short Pump Town Center planning sessions. I love that the County is already thinking about how to repurpose some of the vast sea of parking surrounding the mall: “…county planning director Joe Emerson said the nearly 20-year-old outdoor mall does provide opportunities for reimagining to keep it up with the times. The mall’s expansive parking lots could provide for infill development, and additions to the mall.” Yes! The County has a couple virtual events scheduled this week for folks to learn more and weigh in, too.Can it be?? Last night City Council struck former-Councilmember Kim Gray’s, ORD. 2018–236, finally ending its reign as Richmond’s Most-Continued Ordinance. Gray introduced ORD. 2018–236 on September 10th, 2018 a full 897 days ago! It hadn’t even taken a trip to a Council committee for 460 days. It just sat on the agenda, getting continued over, and over, and over again. Goodbye, long-familiar friend! Joking aside, it’s bad in all sorts of ways to have shriveled and rotting legislation cluttering up agendas, and I’m glad to see this go. Now the (dis)honor of Most-Continued Ordinance belongs to Councilmember Addison’s ORD. 2019–275, which would establish a technology zone program. It was introduced on October 14, 2019—498 days ago.This morning’s patron longreadThe Mushrooms Will Survive UsSubmitted by Patron Gretchen. I guess I need to get a mushroom kit now??In a world where the construction industry produces more than one-tenth of all greenhouse gases, fungi may become a sustainable building material; mycelium grow obscenely quickly and can be coaxed to take the shape of architectural molds. So far, tinkering researchers have managed to guide it into the form of compostable bricks and rather organic-looking chairs. Some fashion designers are also experimenting with mushroom leather.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayIf we had one, this would be my family logo.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, and the rest of this morning looks rainy—but not super rainy and temperatures should hop above freezing by this afternoon. Surfaces are slick, so don’t overconfidently stride around, slip, and hurt yourself. As for this weekend, I think we should see the sun for a good chunk of the time.Because, when it comes to winter weather, we are nothing if not an overcautious region, most things are closed or disrupted this morning. Check various website before heading out!Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,304 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 15 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 242 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 65, Henrico: 100, and Richmond: 77). Since this pandemic began, 722 people have died in the Richmond region. Here’s this week’s stacked graph of new reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. This set of charts really illustrates how the hospitalizations due to COVID-19 numbers are just doing their own thing at the moment. I still haven’t read or seen anything about why that might be. Locally, here’s the combined casecount graph for Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield. You can see that cases in all three localities have now started to trend downward. Jessica Nocera at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the recent spike in cases in Chesterfield is a result of data reporting issues—which helps explain why that locality hasn’t followed the slow decline in reported cases seen in Richmond and Henrico. These data reporting issues can have a real impact: Just look at how much of Nocera’s article is focused on school reopening. Without good data, it’s hard for folks, organizations, and institutions to make good decisions.The winter weather’s not just closing local schools, the freezing-cold temperatures in the Midwest and icy weather on the East Coast have delayed Virginia’s vaccine shipments. We’ve already seen local vaccination events postponed this week due to weather, and now I guess we’ll wait to see if this shipping delay pushes even more events. Logistics! A heckuva thing!Get excited: GRTC has some new information up about their Regional Public Transportation Plan. As required by the legislation that created our new regional transportation authority (the Central Virginia Transportation Authority), GRTC outlines two options for how our region can spend that bucket of new money that’s specifically designated for public transportation. Option #1: The Ridership Concept, focuses on adding more frequent, more useful service to our major corridors. Option #2: The Coverage Concept (PDF), focuses on providing less-frequent service to as many places as possible. Whoadang, both of these concepts are a lot to take in!The Ridership Concept increases the frequency on the #1 Chamberlayne bus to every 10 minutes, ups the frequency on the #7 Nine Mile bus to every 15 minutes, adds a 30-minute bus to Brook & Parham, and (finally!) extends the #1A alll the way out to Chesterfield Towne Center. The Coverage Concept gets us a bus out to the Towne Center, a new hourly route to the Chesterfield Government Center, and an hourly route up to Virginia Center Commons. I encourage you to scroll around the aforelinked maps to really take in all of the changes and expansions.Both of these concepts come with trade offs. As we’ve discussed as recently as yesterday(!), a bus to all the new development at VCC is great, but an hourly bus is not that useful for folks who don’t want to spend tons of time waiting around on either end of their trip. The Ridership Concept creates more useful transit, that more folks would use, that would then, theoretically, convince our regional leaders to spend even more on public transit. The Coverage Concept, on the other hand, just plain serves more people: 13% more people in poverty and 21% more minority residents would be within a quarter mile of some transit service with the Coverage Concept. Would that “some transit service” be useful enough to actually use to get to work, school, healthcare, or anything else? Probably only as a last resort. You can easily see a world where regional leaders start to complain about how no one rides these not-incredibly-useful buses and then begin to talk about cutting the new service entirely.After you look through the maps and have a think on it, you can fill out this survey. You can also attend a public meeting on the concepts on March 4th at 5:00 PM. According to GRTC: “Based on the feedback received from Phase 1, GRTC will present a proposed regional transit network for feedback. This is where specific routes will be presented and we encourage the public and current riders to share their reactions to the map!”Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports that Movieland’s owners are building a drive-in movie theatre in its parking lot. This part, about the particulars, is fascinating: "For the screen we’d be stacking some shipping containers up and building a screen on the front of it…We’d then build a construction trailer for the projector.” I don’t hate it! Movieland will give this new concept a go through “drive-in season” this year, which I didn’t know was a specific season, and then they’ll see if it makes sense to leave it up permanently.Episode four of Black Space Matters is out! This week Duron Chavis hosts Silly Genius, a Richmond-based artist and founder of All City Art Club. I’ve written about Silly Genius before and the work All City Art Club is doing to bring more public art to often overlooked neighborhoods—with a focus on the Southside. You can check out some of that art over on the @allcity.artclub instagram.This morning’s patron longreadWhat If We Never Reach Herd Immunity?Submitted by Patron Susan. I think this article was meant to Bum You Out, but, I dunno! Learning about the science of vaccines makes me feel less unmoored.Think of immunity from vaccines not as an on-off switch but as a dampener on the virus’s ability to replicate inside you. There are four important thresholds, from easiest to hardest to achieve: protection against severe symptoms, protection against any symptoms, protection against transmission, and protection against infection. Most of the topline efficacy numbers for vaccines are against symptoms; to prevent transmission, though, which is key for herd immunity, the vaccine needs to tamp down viral replication even further. That’s why vaccine efficacy against transmission is expected to be lower than efficacy against symptoms—exactly how much lower is still unclear.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayStop…being so icy.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 29 °F and gross out there. It’s raining or sleeting or snowing or some combination of all three, and the forecast says you should expect that to continue until at least tomorrow. We are still under a Winter Storm Warning until 7:00 AM tomorrow, and the National Weather Service at Wakefield says “a crippling ice accumulation is expected across the hardest hit areas from the previous system.”As you’d expect, all the normal thing are closed: schools, local governments, and VCU. The City has even posted a list of steep streets preemptively closed due to potential ice build up. Basically, this is serious biz, you shouldn’t leave your home if you don’t have to, and, if you must, plan to take it way, way slow.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,284 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 38 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 289 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 102, Henrico: 126, and Richmond: 61). Since this pandemic began, 723 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day averages of both cases and deaths continues to fall while the seven-day average of hospitalizations continues to stay pretty flat. I continue to not know what that means.Yesterday, the Governor did announce the new statewide COVID-19 vaccine call center, which you can reach at 1.877.VAX.IN.VA (1.877.829.4682). The new call center can answer basic vaccine questions and help you or a loved one fill out the new statewide pre-registration form. Local health district call centers do still exist, though, so if you’ve got a burning question about a specific local thing, you may want to start there (the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts call center number is 804.205.3501). Ana Ley, a reporter with the Virginian Pilot, says 69 of the 750 call center staff speak Spanish, and, as of this morning, it does look like the new pre-registration form has been translated into Spanish by an actual human, rather than relying on the Google Translate bot. One other update: The search to see if you’re in the State’s system is no longer case sensitive. Iterative progress!Unfortunately, today’s gross weather has cancelled a bunch of regional vaccination events, too. If you had an appointment today, check out this page on the Richmond and Henrico Health District’s website and this page on the Chesterfield Health District’s website to learn more about when you should expect to have your appointment rescheduled.I don’t know what to make of this blossoming relationship between Councilmember Jones, who’s running for the 69th House District seat, and the City’s 8th District Councilmember Trammell. Here they are out front of the CVS on Walmsley demanding that that location begin vaccinating individuals, reports Sabrina Moreno and Chris Suarez in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Unpopular opinion, maybe, but the Walmsley location (4715 Walmsley Boulevard) is pretty tough to get to unless you have a car. Yeah, it sits right on the #86 bus line, but that bus only comes once an hour—which means lots of waiting either before or after vaccination appointments for seniors. The Forest Hill location (5001 Forest Hill Avenue), is, undeniably, in a more affluent neighborhood, but at least it’s accessible by a 30-minute bus route and a 15-minute bus route (the #20 and #2). Plus it’s within walking distance from the apartments along Westover Hills Boulevard near George Wythe High School. As Councilmember Trammell says, “We represent some of the poorest of the poor…They don’t have cars, they can’t drive. They’re elderly. They don’t want to cross the river.” At some point, I’d love to see our City’s leadership, planners, advocates, everybody, move past the idea that bus service just existing is good enough. Critical and essential services should be located along and accessible by useful bus service.Density! Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports that City Council has granted a special use permit for a co-housing project on Arthur Ashe Boulevard. This project will bring 148 homes to what is currently a parking lot. Co-housing means shared living space, but it also means rent around $800 per month. Also! Check out this amazing quote from an actual REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER: "I worry that the parking decks that I’m building will become an albatross around my neck in 15 years…With Uber, Lyft, and scooters—whatever it is, there’s a lot of pressure being taken off the need to own a car. All these neighborhoods are walkable; everything is going in that direction.” Yes, yes it is!Assuming folks have power this evening, here’s a Zoom worth hopping on to: STAY RVA’s monthly STAY CHAT will host Genevieve Siegel-Hawley and Danny Greene for a discussion on “the history, the legacy, and the current state of segregation/integration in our schools.” The event is free, but you need to go sign up on the Eventbrite. If you have time, your optional homework ahead of the chat is to listen to this episode of the Revisionist History podcast about Brown v. Board of Education.This morning’s longreadThe Nightmare ShareThis is a story about a horrible roommate, but, really, it’s a story about a housing crisis.New York roommate stories often begin with a kind of claustrophobic, reluctant symbiosis: Two people, linked solely by necessity, now also have to share the same bathroom. Here, finding a place to live is so notoriously difficult, the hunt so mythologically cutthroat, that the parties tend also to be united in desperation. Agreements are forged hastily via text message, in the DMs of third-party apps, as last-minute promises. Owners, renters, subletters, sub-subletters, Airbnb hosts, and Craigslist couch surfers alike learn to size one another up in relation to their own needs; how red the flags appear often depends on how broke you are.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DayForeshadowing.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 37 °F, and today you can expect highs right around 50 °F. Looks like temperatures will drop heading into the rest of the week, so this might be your best walk-around-the-block day for awhile. Keep your eye on Thursday, though, which could bring more ice and rain.Water coolerAs of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,539 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 4 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 253 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 142, Henrico: 77, and Richmond: 34). Since this pandemic began, 721 people have died in the Richmond region. We’re just coming off of a long holiday weekend, so don’t get too, too excited about a new daily case count floating around 1,500. But! I think you cango ahead and get excited that the seven-day average of new reported cases has dropped to under 3,000. I mean, December 6th was the last time that happened!In vaccine land, we crossed a huge milestone over the long weekend: more than one million Virginians have received their first dose of the vaccine. According to the VDH data dashboard, that’s 12.1% of the Commonwealth’s population—a double digit number! I’m pretty stoked about that. Locally, here’s a graph of what vaccine distribution has looked like over the past couple of weeks (we’re in the beginning of week eight right now, which is why those bars are so short (and, yes, I know I need to work on my x-axis labels)). I’m pretty impressed that our little region has hit the Stupid Math Goal of 20,000 vaccines administer per week for each of the last three weeks. That’s in spite of a serious, national vaccine shortage. Also, and I don’t know how useful this is, but here’s that same graph with the total number of doses that state has received layered on top. I think it is mostly not useful, and I’m going to keep noodling on it.OK, some in-person instruction stuff is quickly brewing at the General Assembly. First, remember that Governor Northam declared that all K–12 school districts should offer some sort of in-person instruction by March 15th (with some caveats that make really unclear the intensity of the italics around “should”). Actually, even before that, Sen. Dunnavant (R-Henrico) introduced a one-line bill (SB 1303) stating “That each local school division in the Commonwealth shall make virtual and in-person learning available to all students by choice of the student’s parent or guardian.” The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Mel Leonor has the update from yesterday, which has Democrats introducing new legislation along those same lines: “The new legislation Democratic leaders will introduce Monday, if enacted, will allow school districts to offer virtual learning only to students whose parents request it. It will also allow individual schools to go fully virtual only if the risk of transmission within the particular school building is high. Otherwise, it mandates that they remain open.” This new legislation would reflect the CDC’s recently-updated guidance about reopening schools which says a lot of things, but, mainly: “Schools that are open for in-person instruction (either fully open or hybrid) may decide to remain open even at high (red) levels of community transmission.” I know this guidance and proposed legislation will make a lot of folks in our region uncomfortable—especially the teachers and staff. With many teachers still receiving their first dose of the vaccine, and unclear data about how much the vaccine prevents transmission of the virus to friends and family, I imagine a lot of teachers will just not?So, how do you open schools without teachers? The same Sen. Dunnavant says you should create a Teacher Reserve Corp of unpaid “retired educators, military veterans, college students hoping to become teachers and people licensed to teach outside of Virginia’s K-12 public education system.” VPM’s Alan Rodriguez has the head-scratching details. I’m no expert, but I feel like we can come up with a better path forward on schools than legislating in-person learning and then sending in waves of unpaid volunteers to do the teaching?Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense says 12 apartments and a bunch of street-front retail space will replace a parking lot on Brookland Park Boulevard. I know that neighborhood has already seen (and continues to see) a bunch of new development, but this feels big! I don’t think that we have a whole lot of tools for it, unfortunately, but this would be the perfect place for the government to step in and incentivize some affordable housing.Quick downtown development update: City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee and the City’s Planning Commission both meet today and will take a look at some papers related to the sale and redevelopment of the Public Safety Building. Full agendas here and here, respectively. Maybe more interesting for friends of this electronic zoning and rezoning newsletter, Planning Commission could/will kick of the rezoning of Greater Scott’s Addition by passing a resolution “to declare an intent to amend the official zoning map.” This declaration of intent is the first—and required—step in the rezoning process. If you we’re surprised not to have heard gasping NIMBY concerns about height and density, don’t worry, we just haven’t gotten to that stage of the process yet. Also, Dan on Twitter suggested we call “Greater Scott’s Addition” the “Diamond District,” and I think that might be awesome?The Richmond and Henrico Health Districts will host a free community COVID-19 testing event today at Diversity Richmond (1407 Sherwood Avenue) from 10:00 AM–12:00 PM. Help keep the Commonwealth’s coronanumbers trending in the right direction, and go get tested!This morning’s patron longreadThe Californians Are Coming. So Is Their Housing Crisis.Submitted by Patron Lisa. Lots in this article stood out to me, but, mostly, it’s that our broken independent city system puts us at a deep disadvantage when trying to tackle regional problems like housing and displacement.The problem is that opposition to new housing also has bipartisan agreement. Blue cities full of people who say they want a more equitable society consistently vote to push housing costs onto others. They will vote for higher taxes to fund social programs, but also make sure that whatever affordable housing does get built is built far away from them. Red suburbs full of people who say regulation should be minimal and property rights protected insist that their local governments legislate a million little rules that dictate what can be built where. What does it mean to respect property rights? In zoning fights, it gets fuzzy.If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.Picture of the DaySome serious TMNT action over there.

This show gives you, the Owner/Founder Executive the chance to see how somebody else did it - innovate within an established market. Jay Carpenter and his co-founder, Alexis Carpenter, had a need, which led to an idea that took them to starting Handley Watches. Jay shares the journey. He gives us his “WHY”. He told us what he didn’t know and had to find out. Jay will let us in on how they did it - from day one. Handley Watches gives us a blend of the old and the new, so that we can move, work and play without the weight of connection dragging us down and back. This interview took place as part of my weekly radio show, Catalytic Conversations, with IBGR.Network every Friday at 2 pm EST. Drop by any time. Join the IBGR.community or download the IBGR app to get the full show notes. Resources: Handley Watches, Visit the Handley Watches website to sign up for their updates and receive 10% off your purchase! Handley Watches FB Page, “Richmond Couple Finds Time To Launch Wristwatch Brand”, Richmond BizSense, August 27, 2020. “5 Obvious Mistakes First-Time Founders Make That Sink Their Startups” by Megan Holstein, entrepreneurshandbook.com, Medium, Dec. 2020. “Decoding Quantum Thinking: What It Feels Like To Think Free”, by Kashyap Vyas, July 20, 2019. “Disaster Preparation and Recovery For Any Size Business”, by Wendy Dickinson, Ascend Coaching Solutions, 2020. “Why Design Thinking Works”, by Jeanne Liedtka, HBR, October 2018. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/ascendcoachingsolutions/message