Good morning, RVA! It’s 31 °F, and it’s gently snowing. Probably by the time you read this it’ll have stopped, but right now it’s pretty out there. For the rest of the day you can expect cold temperatures in the 30s with warmer temperatures headed our way for the rest of the week.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,861 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 10 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 410 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 144, Henrico: 161, and Richmond: 105). Since this pandemic began, 680 people have died in the Richmond region. Given yesterday’s notice about VDH data reporting issues, I’m still skeptical of today’s drop in new reported cases—but maybe we’re already quickly sliding down the backside of January’s horrible peak. On the vaccine side of things, our region continues to squeeze every last drop out of the existing vaccine supply as we head into what sounds like a weekslong vaccine shortage. Here’s the total number of vaccine doses administered in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield grouped by week (thanks to Patron Victoria for telling me how to make this happen in Google Sheets!). As you can see, last week the region far exceeded our share of the Governor’s statewide goal of 25,000 shots per day, which works out to around 20,000 shots per week in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield combined. Next up: 40,000 shots per week!—which is what I think Dr. Danny Avula said is our longer-term goal at a recent press conference. Unfortunately, I don’t have a lot of hope in keeping up this pace in the face of the coming vaccine shortage. But, like I said yesterday, it’s comforting to know that once supply does hit, our region has proved it can put vaccine into arms quickly.

Related, I’ve heard lots of folks ask about how the Health District prioritizes such a limited supply of vaccine in the face of such overwhelming demand—over 60,000 people aged 65 and older have filled out the Richmond and Henrico Health District’s vaccine interest form! Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch tuned into a health district press conference yesterday (which you can watch in full on Facebook) featuring Jackie Lawrence, Director of Health Equity at the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts. From Moreno’s piece: “Jackie Lawrence, health equity director for local VDH, said the three main prioritization factors for Richmond and Henrico are age; then race and ethnicity; and finally, who signed up first.” Those folks—the oldest members of our Black and Brown communities—have seen this disease impact their communities the most throughout this pandemic, and, generally, have fewer resources to support them through it.

Last night the Richmond Electoral Board voted to remove Kirk Showalter as the City’s general registrar. Here’s Chris Suarez’s report in the paper, and here’s a real stressful twitter thread with some videos from the meeting. Assuming this decision is final and whatever legal situation Showalter decides to pursue fails, I’m pretty interested to see what kind of practical effects a new registrar could have on elections within the City. Is the goal just to screw up fewer things? Or can the position actually make voting easier and better? I honestly have no idea!

Richmond’s School Board met last night, and, if you want to get into it, here’s the 70-page PDF of public comment—almost all in support of extending Superintendent Jason Kamras’s contract for four years. Val, to whom I’m married, took the time to tally them all up and came up with: Three comments in support of a two-year contract, nine comments in support of renewal with an unspecified time-frame, and 217 comments in support of a four-year contract. Because I can’t help myself, here are two silly graphs of what that looks like: a pie chart and a bar chart.

I’d wondered about what would happen if the General Assembly decides to legalize marijuana, but, like three years down the road. Do we still punish folks for possession despite having broadly acknowledged it shouldn’t be a punishable offense? Mel Leonor at the RTD says gubernatorial candidate and current state senator Jennifer McClellan has a bill for that. Here’s the quote from the Senator: “If we’ve already made the moral decision that possession shouldn’t be a crime, then it’s more equitable to say we’re not going to continue punishing people for it…We should go ahead and end prohibition. There’s consensus in the Senate around that.” I’m dumb about state-level legislative process, but I’m under the impression that the Senate is the more deliberative and slow-to-move of the two bodies. I’m excited to see where this ends up.

Finally, let’s end today with this video of a machine designed to shake off and collect oranges from a street tree. This is amazing, of course, but, also, kind of exactly why we sometimes don’t want to plant fruiting trees in sidewalks.

This morning’s patron longread

The Coup We Are Not Talking About

Submitted by Patron Sam. Facebook and its pals aren’t just doing gross things with your personal data, they’re using it to break our democracy.

First, we go upstream to supply, and we end the data collection operations of commercial surveillance. Upstream, the license to steal works its relentless miracles, employing surveillance strategies to spin the straw of human experience — my fear, their breakfast conversation, your walk in the park — into the gold of proprietary data supplies. We need legal frameworks that interrupt and outlaw the massive-scale extraction of human experience. Laws that stop data collection would end surveillance capitalism’s illegitimate supply chains. The algorithms that recommend, microtarget and manipulate, and the millions of behavioral predictions pushed out by the second cannot exist without the trillions of data points fed to them each day.

If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 28 °F, and today it looks like you should expect rain or freezing rain or icy rain. No snow unfortunately. If you’ve got to leave your house for some reason, please be careful! Sidewalks and streets are bound to be slippery with the temperature hovering around freezing for the entire day. In fact, we’ve got a Winter Weather Advisory until 10:00 AM.

Richmond Public Schools has their first virtual snow day today—you can’t have school, even virtual school, if you can’t deliver meals. Chesterfield Public Schools has cancelled both in person and virtual learning. Henrico will continue with their virtual learning, but teachers who had taught from school buildings will now teach form their homes.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 2,558 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 15 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 372 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 181, Henrico: 92, and Richmond: 99). Since this pandemic began, 679 people have died in the Richmond region. What’s this? A statewide total of new cases in the 2,000s! Haven’t seen that in a while. But, before you get too excited, VDH has the following notice up on their data dashboard: “Surveillance system upgrades occurring on Saturday, January 30, 2021, will affect the data on the COVID-19 Cases & Testing Dashboards on January 31 and February 1, 2021. A decrease in the number of cases and tests reported on January 31, and an increase in the number of cases and tests reported on February 1 is anticipated because of these upgrades.”

Related to big numbers, on Saturday almost 5,000 seniors were given their first dose of vaccine at a regional vaccination event at the Raceway. That’s a lot of folks in a single day—especially folks who may have some mobility challenges or may just move a little slower. It should definitely give everyone a little hope that massive events like this are already possible in our region without any additional support from the Virginia National Guard or federal government. Our state and federal leaders have talked about both of those things, so adding them to our mix would only increase (and stabilize) our vaccination capacity. However, no one—local, state, or federal—can run massive vaccination events like this without massive amounts of vaccine. Unless something changes in the immediate future we may just have to sit on this infrastructure, waiting for the shots to show up.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Jessica Nocera reports that after today’s snow day, Chesterfield County Public Schools will return elementary students to in-person learning. 14,000 students will return, while 13,000 have decided to stay virtual. Interestingly, the District’s superintendent originally pitched reopening on April 1st, but, after a meeting with the School Board, that date shifted to February 1st. It’s not clear to me whether the original plan was to return all students on April 1st or just elementary students on April 1st—a big difference. Of course, the context to this entire discussion is that most of Chesterfield’s teachers have not received their first round of vaccine but are still headed back to the classrooms.

Richmond’s School Board meets tonight and will further discuss the Superintendent’s proposed budget (full agenda here). Boardmembers have already asked a bunch of questions about the budget, which the administration has already answered, and that means you get this really fascinating Q&A PDF. For example: “How will we address air conditioning concerns with a year-round calendar? The HVAC investments we are hoping to make this spring and summer (using the federal stimulus) should address these concerns.” or “Will we have a nurse at every school? Yes. The FY22 proposed budget will finally help us achieve our goal of having at least one licensed nurse at every school!” I love this kind of stuff. The first two pages of the aforelinked PDF focus on year-round school, if you’re interested in learning more about the specifics of how that would work. Oh! Also! It’s always a good time to email the entire School Boardand let them know you support extending Superintendent Kamras’s contract for four years (so we can continue to get fascinating PDFs like this).

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has a quick update on Henrico’s GreenCity project (formerly Richmond’s Navy Hill project). The County has officially transferred the Best Products site to their Economic Development Authority, which is the first step in getting the property into the hands of developers. Expect a bunch of slow-trickle, done-deal sounding news about this project for the next, I dunno, year?

Over on /r/rva, Creative Dog Media has put together 14 drone photos from yesterday’s snow day that you should flip through. The overheads of the train station and the Manchester climbing wall! Ack! So good.

Holly Rodriguez, writing for Richmond Magazine, has a profile of Roscoe Burnems—who you may remember as Richmond’s first poet laureate. I like this quote from Burnems, “Richmond is getting known for these beautiful murals on display across the city, and I want to add a literary component to that.”

This morning’s longread

The Pandemic Has Erased Entire Categories of Friendship

I think a lot about how just before the pandemic I’d finally become a regular at a coffee shop—to the point where they made my coffee when they saw me come in. I miss those people!

Understandably, much of the energy directed toward the problems of pandemic social life has been spent on keeping people tied to their families and closest friends. These other relationships have withered largely unremarked on after the places that hosted them closed. The pandemic has evaporated entire categories of friendship, and by doing so, depleted the joys that make up a human life—and buoy human health. But that does present an opportunity. In the coming months, as we begin to add people back into our lives, we’ll now know what it’s like to be without them.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 23 °F, and today’s forecast is cold! Expect highs in the mid 30s and even colder temperatures this evening. This weekend you can expect more of the same with a possible real-deal snow storm on Sunday. Fingers crossed!

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 5,121 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 80 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 521 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 197, Henrico: 175, and Richmond: 149). Since this pandemic began, 668 people have died in the Richmond region. While VDH continues to report a large number of deaths each and every day, the seven-day average of new cases across the Commonwealth is under 5,000 (which, remember, would have been horrifying just a couple of months ago) and the seven-day average of new hospitalizations has almost dropped below 100 (again, shocking at any time before December). Here’s this week’s stacked graph of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, which I do think shows us past a peak and now hanging out on a plateau. You can see similar plateauy trends in the local case count graph, too. Virginia’s not alone in these trends, either: Check out yesterday’s graphs from the COVID Tracking Project that show the entire country coming off a scary peak in cases. So, where we are is not great, where we’re going looks better.

Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has the details on the region’s plan to vaccinate over 7,000 people aged 75 and older this weekend. If you’ll allow it, let me quote a couple sentence that make me feel feelings: “The odds of getting a shot to protect Talbot against the virus dwindled once Virginia, alongside other states, learned of a federal supply shortage. Renewing her faith was the Richmond and Henrico health districts, along with surrounding counties, announcing on Thursday a push to vaccinate 7,000 adults ages 65 and up in the next three days. The events would prioritize those 75-plus.” It’s definitely a bittersweet situation. Vaccinating thousands and thousands of older people—people who are way more likely to die from this disease—over the course of one weekend is incredible. At the same time, though, tens of thousands of folks will just have to wait until the supply of the vaccine increases. For a lot of seniors, that’s a scary and frustrating prospect. If you or someone you know and love is over 65 and lives in Richmond or Henrico, please fill out this online vaccine interest form.

Duron Chavis, who probably sounds familiar from his work with resiliency gardens, has a new series of videos made in conjunction with the ICA called Black Space Matters. From the YouTube description box: “In our new series Black Space Matters, urban farmer Duron Chavis interviews local community leaders, digging into the themes of food insecurity and urban farming explored in his Resiliency Garden project for the exhibition, Commonwealth. Over the course of five episodes (released weekly every Thursday), Chavis talks with stakeholders in the Richmond area that engage in food justice, environmental racism, Black space, and various modes of creativity, care, and healing.” Check out this first episode to hear Duron talk with Rob Jones, Executive Director of Groundwork RVA.

I mentioned this a couple days/weeks ago, but delays with the Census look like they will impact Virginia’s redistricting process. Mel Leonor at the RTD has some of the confusing details, which includes this suboptimal path forward: “If lawmakers run in the current districts, the state would have two options: ask delegates to run again under new maps in a 2022 special election and then again in 2023, or keep the districts as they are until the next regularly scheduled House elections in 2023.”

Michael Town, Executive Director of the Virginia League of Conservation Voters, has a guest column in the Virginia Mercury about the intersection of conservation and transportation. Electrifying our current vehicle fleet is good, but we just need fewer people driving. The only way to make that a reality is to work on building (and rebuilding) our cities (and suburbs!) to make that a legitimate possibility for folks.

A while back Evergreen Enterprises donated a bunch of heat lamps to the City for local restaurants and restaurant-adjacent businesses who want to stay open while providing a safer, out-of-doors, warmer place for patrons to hang. If you own a business in the City of Richmond and have permanent outdoor seating or an outdoor waiting area, you should fill out this form. I’m glad this opportunity exists, but it’s just the smallest of crumbs when it comes to fast-acting policy the City could implement to make Richmond safer during this pandemic. We never saw safer/slower streets policies and we never saw a push to get rid of parking in favor of space for people (parklet program aside). So much low-hanging fruit we never even attempted to grab.

This morning’s longread

Searching for Bernie

AI jokes! It’s been a while since I’ve linked to Janelle Shane’s AI Weirdness blog, but this post made me laugh. She uses an AI that generates images paired with a different AI that judges the accuracy of images to create…malformed horrors?

I wrote earlier about DALL-E, an image generating algorithm recently developed by OpenAI. One part of DALL-E’s success is another algorithm called CLIP, which is essentially an art critic. Show CLIP a picture and a phrase, and it’ll return a score telling you how well it thinks the picture matches the phrase. You can see how that might be useful if you wanted to tell the difference between, say, a pizza and a calzone - you’d show it a picture of something and compare the scores for “this is a pizza” and “this is a calzone”. How you come up with the pictures and captions is up to you - CLIP is merely the judge. But if you have a way to generate images, you can use CLIP to tell whether you’re getting closer to or farther from whatever you’re trying to generate

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 26 °F, and it snowed! Kind of! There’s a winter weather advisory in effect until 8:00 AM, so take your time and watch for slippery roads and sidewalks. However, it’s looking more and more like we might get another chance for real snow on Sunday. Fingers crossed!

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 5,227 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 54 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 522 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 216, Henrico: 198, and Richmond: 108). Since this pandemic began, 662 people have died in the Richmond region. Yesterday, at the Governor’s COVID-19 briefing, we learned three interesting things. First, he’ll extend the restrictions on gatherings and the 12:00–5:00 AM curfew (that I had honestly forgotten all about) through the end of February. Second, Virginia should expect a 16% increase in its supply of vaccine from the feds, not 5% like I said yesterday. That’s about 17,000 additional doses and is, in fact, more than enough to vaccinate one Siegel Center of people—but still clearly not a overabundance of additional vaccine. Sounds like we should continue to expect austerity levels of vaccine for at least the next several weeks. Third, the Governor directed local health districts to allocate the limited supply of vaccine that they do have in the following way: 50% going to people aged 65 and older; and 50% going to the entire rest of Phase 1b (frontline essential workers, folks with underlying conditions or disabilities that increase the severity of COVID-19, and people living in certain congregate settings). Personal opinion here, taken together, the second and third thing will result in a lot of very anxious people. The governor has told a vast swath of Virginians, something like 50% of the entire state!, that they are eligible for vaccination as part of Phase 1b. Simultaneously, he’s halved the number of doses available for those folks, doses which were already in extremely short supply. We’re left in a situation where a huge number of people are eligible but will almost certainly be unable to access the vaccine. Hence a lot of very anxious people. Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a few more details from the press conference.

Yesterday, the City announced that the Mayor himself has tested positive for the coronavirus. It’s gotta be weird to give a quote about your own personal health situation in a press release, but here’s what Mayor Stoney had to say: “Since the coronavirus first started to spread in our region roughly a year ago, over 12,000 residents in our city have been infected with COVID-19. Today, I count myself as one of them…While I do not feel 100 percent, I am thankful that my symptoms are currently manageable and will continue to work from my home to ensure the continuity of city government.” Understandably, the Mayor will postpone his State of the City address until Thursday, February 11th.

Tyler Thrasher at WRIC reports that RRHA held a community meeting on the next steps of redeveloping Creighton Court. I want to learn more about this! It sounds like folks in this initial phase will need to relocate (to somewhere?) so that the existing structures can be torn down and replaced and will then move back in “by 2023.” I’m all for replacing our aging public housing, but we need to get the details right—which has been a constant struggle over the past…forever.

Graham Moomaw at the Virginia Mercury reports that the Virginia Senate voted to censure Chesterfield’s Senator Amanda Chase yesterday. While it’s embarrassing, I don’t think I really understand what practical impact “censure” has on a sitting senator—especially in this present political moment where it could even be viewed as a badge of honor by certain folks. The move to strip away her committee assignments, which already happened, seems like it has more impact on her day-to-day. Anyway, embarrassing for Chase, embarrassing for Chesterfield, and embarrassing for the Commonwealth.

At any other time I’d be stoked on this news from the RTD’s John O’Connor who reports that the A-10 men’s basketball tournament “looks as though it’s headed to VCU’s Siegel Center and the University of Richmond’s Robins Center.” College basketball tournaments are a ton of fun, and I think, under normal circumstances, Richmond would make a fantastic host. Now though, I won’t be able to attend one in my own dang city featuring my own dang teams, and folks that do attend will bring with them increased risk of spreading COVID-19 to our neighbors and communities.

This morning’s longread

Op-Ed: Let’s Show Confidence In Mr. Kamras!

Amy Wentz has a pro-Kamras op-ed in RVA Mag. Read this piece to understand what folks are using to argue against extending the Superintendent’s contract for four years and how a lot of those arguments are misleading at best.

We say that we want systemic and structural change, but to do so, we must understand and commit to doing this work for the long haul. Mr. Kamras came on board in February of 2018. That’s only one complete instructional year to assess before the pandemic hit and we were forced into a virtual environment. This is how we sound: “FIX OUR SCHOOLS! But you can’t adjust the curriculum, you can’t adjust teacher schedules, you can’t hire your own staff, you can’t adjust the calendar.” The way we fix schools is to be honest in our assessments. If you can’t even give credit where it’s due and have to inflate the facts to make your points, it’s a disservice to students. Let’s identify what we are getting wrong, and work with our school board to put the right measures in place to hold our Superintendent accountable. We can’t just continue to throw the whole thing away every few years.

If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, and you can expect some fog or rain this morning followed by mid-day temperatures around 50 °F. We might could see a little snow overnight and into tomorrow, but don’t get your hopes up for anything major. However, NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says we could be in for more snow on Sunday.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 4,707 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 93 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 583 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 230, Henrico: 249, and Richmond: 104). Since this pandemic began, 655 people have died in the Richmond region. Setting aside the typically brutal Tuesday death report and the worrisome level of new reported cases locally, today is all about the vaccine. The Washington Post reports that President Biden has ordered an additional 200 million doses of vaccine, giving the United States enough supply to fully vaccinate 300 million people “by this summer.” Those doses won’t show up until the end of June, so, unfortunately, they won’t do anything to alleviate our current national (which means local, too) vaccine shortage. However, on a call with governors this week, the Biden administration said the existing allocation to states would go up by about five percent for the next three weeks. If Virginia requested 300,000 a couple weeks back, received 105,000, then a 5% increase means we can expect about 5,000 more doses for the entire Commonwealth. I mean, it’s not nothing, but it’s also not even a single Siegel Center full of people. I expect we’ll hear more about this from Governor Northam today at his 2:00 PM press briefing to “provide an update on the Commonwealth’s response to COVID-19 and vaccination program,” which you can watch live on VPM’s YouTube channel. I’m hoping we’ll learn how the Governor intends to address the vaccine shortage, and what he’ll do after massively expanding Phase 1b only to immediately learn that there’s not nearly enough vaccine for the original, un-expanded Phase 1b let alone a group of people that includes almost half of Virginia. Locally, the Chesterfield County Board of Supervisors sent this letter to the Governor about their county’s struggle with distributing the vaccine. To be frank and fully-disclosed, I’m not sure how to talk about this particular thing given my actual job at the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts. So, until I mentally untie that ethical knot, I will just say that everyone is working incredibly hard. You can find additional context to what’s going on in the rest of the region in this press release from January 5th and this Richmond Times-Dispatch story from January 15th.

The RTD’s Michael Paul Williams writes about DGS’s new fence around Marcus-David Peters circle, saying: “With no removal date in sight, the state’s action Monday represents less the impending removal of Lee from his pedestal than the clearance of a popular circle informally renamed after Marcus-David Peters, who was killed by Richmond police in 2018. As quickly as that fence went up, it’s clear that the state could have waited until it had the court’s OK to remove the statue.” I guess I’m on a rollercoaster of emotions here. First I thought the large trucks and construction crews had rolled up to remove the statue, then I thought the fence went up because removal work was set to begin immediately, but now we’ve ended up in a worst-of-both-worlds place with both a racist statue and a huge, ugly fence designed just to keep people out?

Related, Beth Almore, who you may recognize as the Black cellist frequently seen at MDP Circle, has written an open letter about what she’d like to see the space become moving forward. I especially love this part: “…we would like a community-approved Black curator appointed to ensure that the story of over-policing and disproportionate extrajudicial executions remains at the center of the narrative this space tells…Any efforts to remove signs and symbols which interrogate and speak out against extrajudicial executions from the center of the narrative are not acceptable. We feel—strongly—that the space has already been reimagined, by thousands of community members.”

We’ll I’m surprised! Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports that several councilmembers actually ended up submitting amendments to Richmond 300. At the time, I think I predicted Council would quietly move on from their complaints about the City’s new master plan after it passed. Shows what I know! If we’re going to take planning seriously, though, we should run serious engagement and outreach efforts for each of these amendments—just like we did for the Master Plan as a whole.

Today, City Council’s Governmental Operations committee will meet and discuss RES. 2020-R056, which asks for a study on the cost savings from having a bunch of City employees work remotely. I really like the intent behind this resolution, although the Mayor’s administration opposes it because they don’t love how the resolution is written and don’t track (or have the staff to track) some of the things requested. I’m not smart enough to know how to better write this resolution, but a thoughtful look at how continued work-from-home policies might make the City more efficient seems like a good idea?

This morning’s longread

The Big Thaw: How Russia Could Dominate a Warming World

I thought this long piece in ProPublica was fascinating. I never think about how things like “food production” turn out to be national security issues.

A great transformation is underway in the eastern half of Russia. For centuries the vast majority of the land has been impossible to farm; only the southernmost stretches along the Chinese and Mongolian borders, including around Dimitrovo, have been temperate enough to offer workable soil. But as the climate has begun to warm, the land — and the prospect for cultivating it — has begun to improve. Twenty years ago, Dima says, the spring thaw came in May, but now the ground is bare by April; rainstorms now come stronger and wetter. Across Eastern Russia, wild forests, swamps and grasslands are slowly being transformed into orderly grids of soybeans, corn and wheat. It’s a process that is likely to accelerate: Russia hopes to seize on the warming temperatures and longer growing seasons brought by climate change to refashion itself as one of the planet’s largest producers of food.

If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 38 °F, and, disappointingly, our window for snow later this week seems to be closing. Today, though, you can expect more clouds and highs in the 60s. Hmph.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 6,172 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 3 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 665 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 299, Henrico: 235, and Richmond: 131). Since this pandemic began, 647 people have died in the Richmond region. Yesterday I said we were past a peak, and today we’ve got new case counts over 6,000. I don’t know what it means—especially when you look at the numbers locally. We’ve only ever had four total days with over 600 combined new reported cases in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield. Outside of the massive increase two weeks ago this is an extraordinarily bad number of new cases. I hate saying it, but: Stay tuned. Over on the vaccine side of things, last week saw 17,742 vaccines administer in the region. That’s just a vaccination event or two shy of Ross’s Stupid-Math Goal of 20,000 new vaccines per week (which is our proportional share by population of the Governor’s 25,000 vaccines per day goal for the entire state). Given the national shortage of vaccines, I’d expect this number to decline for the next…who knows how long. But, all things considered, it looks and sounds like our region is doing well when it comes to administering vaccine: Our numbers are pretty strong only one month into vaccination, and, anecdotally, I’ve heard almost 100% positive experiences from folks who have attended the mass vaccination clinics at either the Raceway or at the Arthur Ashe Center. I know the lack of supply is frustrating–forcing people to fight for prioritization on a confusingly broad prioritization scale—but folks are working hard to get the region vaccinated in spite of those challenges. Also, and unrelated, I tried my very hardest to group the vaccination data by week, but failed. Maybe some Google Wizard out there knows how to do that without creating another sheet for me to update?

Get excited, y’all! Yesterday, City Council released the Fiscal Year 2022 budget season calendar! Things kick off with the Mayor submitting his budget to Council on March 5th at 3:00 PM. That’s followed by five work sessions (my favorite part), three amendment work sessions, a public hearing or two, and a May 31st deadline for adoption. The work sessions in particular are excellent opportunities to both hear how Council (especially a New Council) works and to listen to each City department talk through their priorities for the coming year and beyond. I love it, and you can learn so much about our City’s government by listening in. Until I figure out a better way to share this information, here’s all of the budget dates copy/pasted out of an email and into a public Google Doc. Keep in mind, once we really get into it, these dates can shift if Council gets behind schedule—which, honestly, hasn’t really been a problem since Councilmember Newbille started running the show.

The Lee statue still exists this morning, but the State’s Department of General Services installed fencing around Marcus-David Peters Circle to “ensure the safety of visitors and workers as part of DGS’s plan to prepare the site for the removal of the Lee statue.” Additionally, they said, “As we await the resolution of legal challenges that have delayed the statue’s removal, DGS wants to be prepared to act quickly upon a final determination. The fencing is not intended to be permanent.” Richard Hayes at RVAHub has a few good pictures of what the new temporary fencing looks like.

Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense says CoStar has purchased their downtown building from WestRock for $130 million. I mention this because of the article’s final sentence about the adjacent property CoStar owns: “CoStar has not announced or filed any plans for the Tredegar Street parcel, though sources have said it is eyeing a new office tower for the site.” While the parcel, I think, is outside of the now-dead proposed NavyHill BigTIF, this hint of a new tower does show that an arena isn’t necessary to spur large development elsewhere Downtown.

Yesterday’s picture of the day featured a storm drain with a manhole cover painted bright pink. I wondered aloud why and what that meant, mostly to goad the very excellent @rvah2o Twitter account into unraveling the mystery for me. It worked, turns out! “Pink means the drain and pipe below has recently been cleansed and is squeaky clean! However, as of last week, we asked for a little less pink, and future ‘cleaned’ markings will be a small pink or green dot and a little less like a Rorschach test.”

This morning’s patron longread

Indian Bent Trees: History or Legend

Submitted by Patron JChap. I can’t vouch for the accuracy of this site, especially since the sidebar contains an ad for Pet Portraits by Jill, but this explanation of bent tress is fascinating. I know I’ve seen some trees like this locally, right?

In the woods near my home is an unusual tree. At some point in its long life the tree was bent into a distinctive L-shape. The trunk is almost perfectly horizontal and nearly touches the ground, running almost five feet before making an abrupt 90 degree turn towards the heavens. It’s a perfect place for two people to sit back and observe the forest hillside and all its goings on. But it is much more than a handy bench – it is an ancient form of communication and a little-understood piece of Native American cultural history

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 37 °F, and you can probably expect clouds, rain, and slightly warmer temperatures for the rest of the day. Keep an eye on Thursday, though: It’s our first, best chance for actual snow.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 3,792 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand -1 (???) new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 438 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 164, Henrico: 180, and Richmond: 94). Since this pandemic began, 647 people have died in the Richmond region. I think we’re past a peak. Case counts are lower than at any point this month and the rate of new hospitalizations (which is still extremely high) has started to level off. Maybe we’ve suffered through all of the new cases that spawned from the end-of-year holidays? Maybe the nauseatingly high numbers from a couple weeks back really were a data reporting issue? Whatever the case, things seem to be cooling off a bit. Unrelated, for now at least, both UR and VCU have opened up their spring semesters (last Tuesday for the former, today for the latter). You can follow each school’s COIVD dashboard, if that’s your thing: coronaspiders go here and coronarams go here. Keep in mind that VCU has decided to start the semester virtually while UR has partially returned to in-person learning. I guess we’ll see how that goes, as Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the UR has already “sent a letter to students Friday warning that parties and other violations of COVID-19 safety protocols could jeopardize in-person learning this semester.” As some public schools continue their own debate on returning to in-person instruction, keep your eye on VDH’s COVID-19 Outbreaks by Selected Exposure Settings dashboard. You can filter this list down by locality or facility type (like K–12) and see all the outbreaks currently in progress. Keep in mind, though, that “outbreak” has a specific meaning(PDF) and does not include cases of students or staff who get infected outside of a school setting.

Taikein Cooper, Theresa Kennedy, Bryce Robertson, and Thad Williams have a column in the paper about extending RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras’s contract for four years—a contract which ends this coming June. Y’all know the gist, but I’ll quote this part just to remind you: “A change in leadership, whether by board action or Kamras finding employment elsewhere, in turn would consume the rest of this term. We can’t expose our kids to that risk right now. Now is the time for persistent implementation of a long-term strategy.” Our neighboring county got this right last year when their School Board extended Superintendent Amy Cashwell’s contract. Two years into a four-year contract and the Board decided to make it six (extending the contract all the way to 2024) so that “Cashwell and her administration can focus on navigating the school system through the challenges of the pandemic and heightened attention around issues of racial justice.” The right and obvious move! A move that we can and should make on this side of the city-county line!

City Council will meet today for their regularly scheduled meeting, and, for the first time that I can remember, there’s nothing on the regular agenda (PDF). My head wants to write “should be a short meeting,” but my heart knows that the agenda is basically never finalized and councilmembers can always find a way to extend these meetings deep into the evening. Two items of note from the informal meeting immediately preceding: 1) Amy Popovich from the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts will give an update on vaccination and 2) Reggie Gordon (DCAO for Human Services) and Sharon Ebert (DCAO for Economic Development) will give a “homelessness update.” I don’t see presentations for either hanging out on legistar yet, but I bet they’ll exist tomorrow.

Related to the DCAO’s presentation on homelessness, Homeward released “new, verified data on the number of people serviced in 2020 by coordinated shelter programs and the Homeless Crisis Line.” This past year, emergency shelters served 2,927 people and the the HCL handled over 52,000 calls. 128,000 “shelter bed nights were recorded.”

From a couple of days back, Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has an update on the planned slavery memorial in Shockoe Bottom. You can read through the property disputes if you want, but mostly I’m interested in reminding myself about the renderings of what this project could look like. Adding a bunch of public green space to that part of town would really change the entire neighborhood for the better. Fingers crossed that the City and the Loving family can figure out their beef.

Finally, could today be the day the Robert E. Lee statue gets removed from its plinth? I dunno, but there is a lot of big equipment out there this morning.

This morning’s patron longread

Stop Keeping Score

Submitted by Patron Susan. A good January reminder for those of us putting together goals, resolutions, and themes for 2021.

Relying on external rewards lowers satisfaction. You will like your job less if your primary motivation is prestige or money. You will appreciate your relationships less if you choose your friends and partners based on their social standing. You will relish your vacation less if you choose the destination for how it will look on social media. The scorecard approach to life also feeds right into a known human tendency that drives us away from happiness: People often have trouble finding lasting satisfaction from worldly rewards, because as soon as we acquire something, our desire resets and we are looking to the next reward. Check one box, and another one immediately appears. And, of course, it’s always a bigger box.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F, and today you can expect more of the same: Highs in the 50s and lots of sunshine. Temperatures will drop a bit over the weekend, possibly giving you the opportunity wrap up in a cozy scarf.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 4,013 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 79 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 359 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 157, Henrico: 120, and Richmond: 82). Since this pandemic began, 638 people have died in the Richmond region. This is the fewest number of new cases reported in a single day since January 4th. However, here’s the stacked chart of new reported cases, hospitalizations, and deaths, which convincingly shows how bad things are at the moment. Remember how scared you were about ending up in the hospital this past spring? Yeah, that, but with, like, 25% more people ending up in the hospital every day. Today, in January 2021, 50% more people die each day now than back in May 2020. Locally, too, we’re seeing the same skyrocketing trend with case. It’s boring to write and to read, but: Wear a mask, keep your distance, and if you can work from home, do so.

Turning to vaccines, I think we should prepare ourselves for a nontrivial period of very limited supply. VPM’s Alan Rodriguez attended a press conference at yesterday’s mass vaccination clinic for our region’s teachers and cops, and reports the Commonwealth expects 105,000 doses from the federal government next week. Dr. Danny Avula says those doses will be allotted by a “geographical distribution based on population.” If I understand that right: Our region is about 11% of the state’s population, 11% of 105,000 doses is 11,550. That’s…not a lot. It’s not even enough to hit my Stupid-Math Goal of about 20,000 vaccinations per week. Not great, and please keep this in mind if you find yourself eligible but unable to get a vaccination appointment.

On a lighter note, Dr. Fauci returned to the White House briefing room and had this to say: “‘The idea that you can get up here and talk about what you know—what the evidence, what the science is—and know that’s it, let the science speak,’ Dr. Fauci said, pausing for a second. ‘It is somewhat of a liberating feeling.’” Honestly, though, it’s pretty dark how good this simple and obvious statement makes me feel.

Wyatt Gordon at the Virginia Mercury says the Bicycles Safety Act (HB 2262 / SB 1263) moved through the Senate’s Transportation committee on an 11–4 vote. Gordon explains, “The Bicycle Safety Act…would require drivers to fully change lanes to pass people biking, allow cyclists to ride two abreast in a lane, and permit people on bicycles to treat stop signs as yield signs.” I love bicycle laws, but, after years of watching these sorts of things unexpectedly die for General Assembly reasons I don’t ever understand, I will temper my expectations.

Duron Chavis is back with his Resiliency Garden Initiative, which puts free, raised-bed gardens in the backyards (or communities) of folks experiencing food insecurity. If you never have to think about where your next meal comes from and you can afford it, consider donating $100 to cover the cost of a garden for someone else. Last year they distributed 300 garden boxes!

I hadn’t thought about how a switchover in presidential administrations would impact the State’s Redistricting Commission, but changes in Census deadlines could slow our work locally. Graham Moomaw, also writing for the Virginia Mercury, has the details and a few updates on that commission’s progress.

The RTD Editorial Board weighs in on Sen. Amanda Chase and tells her to either “shape up” or resign so she can focus on “promoting her brand and…running for governor.” I wonder what happens to these local Republican legislators who supported and celebrated the insurrection should the Senate move on convicting Donald Trump. Will that give local legislators “permission” to toss those traitors out of the General Assembly?

I know I’m always down here, at the bottom of the email, writing about how the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts are hosting a free community COVID-19 testing event. In fact, there’s one today at the Eastern Henrico Health Department (1400 N. Laburnum Avenue) from 1:00–3:00 PM. But, I realize same-day notice doesn’t work for a lot of folks (including the people running the events), so please consider registering online for an appointment at a future clinic.

This morning’s patron longread

QAnon Is Destroying the GOP From Within

Submitted by Patron Alix. This piece by Sen. Ben Sasse is an interesting look from within the Republican Party at what lies ahead. Of course, Sasse can’t help himself and dispenses false equivalencies like tickets out of a skee-ball machine. We will see in the coming weeks which path the GOP decides to take, I guess.

The violence that Americans witnessed—and that might recur in the coming days—is not a protest gone awry or the work of “a few bad apples.” It is the blossoming of a rotten seed that took root in the Republican Party some time ago and has been nourished by treachery, poor political judgment, and cowardice. When Trump leaves office, my party faces a choice: We can dedicate ourselves to defending the Constitution and perpetuating our best American institutions and traditions, or we can be a party of conspiracy theories, cable-news fantasies, and the ruin that comes with them. We can be the party of Eisenhower, or the party of the conspiracist Alex Jones. We can applaud Officer Goodman or side with the mob he outwitted. We cannot do both.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 32 °F, and my weather app has lied to me, saying that it’s snowing right now. Today you can expect pretty much the opposite: Highs in the 50s and sunshine. Good New Day weather, for sure.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 4,515 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 63 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 496 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 200, Henrico: 189, and Richmond: 107). Since this pandemic began, 634 people have died in the Richmond region. I’m still confused about the statewide case counts! The average number of new cases over the last two days is 4,521. The average number of new cases over last Monday through Friday was 4,756. Over the long weekend, though? 7,972. That seems weird, right? You definitely don’t see the same weekend spike in either the hospitalization or death numbers. Anyway, none of that really matters, at least not like this 23-page PDF the Biden Administration (!) released detailing the National Strategy for the COVID-19 Response and Pandemic Preparedness. The strategy is organized into seven broad goals, including Goal #2: “Mount a safe, effective, comprehensive vaccination campaign.” I’m cautiously excited about this supporting strategy: “the federal government—in partnership with state and local governments—will create…federally run community vaccination events.” Aside from needing straight up more vaccine, we also need more pathways for folks to get vaccinated—and that can’t just be asking local governments, health departments, and organizations to magically do more. Also, lots of folks will have opinions on Goal #5, to “Safely reopen schools, businesses, and travel, while protecting workers,” in which it specifically states that “The United States is committed to ensuring that students and educators are able to resume safe, in-person learning as quickly as possible, with the goal of getting a majority of K–8 schools safely open in 100 days.” For context, 100 days from now is May 1st, just 48 calendar days before the end of the 2021 school year. Anyway, it’s a good PDF and worth reading and tracking over the next couple of months. The New York Times has a summary if it’s a little too early in the morning for strategy documents.

You’ll want to read this story in the RTD by Sabrina Moreno about a pharmacy in Chesterfield that would have conducted a vaccination clinic for more than 400 realtors and credit union workers had either 1) Moreno not started asking questions or 2) more vaccine been on hand. The Chesterfield Health District, like most of the Commonwealth, has moved into Phase 1b of their vaccination rollout, which includes frontline essential workers, folks aged over 65, and people with underlying conditions or disabilities that increase the risk of severe illness from COVID-19. I suppose you could argue that some of those 400 employees fall into the latter two categories. There’s also some statements from those involved about how maybe these 400 people would volunteer at future vaccination events, thereby making them a higher priority to vaccinate. Although: “…in a Tuesday email obtained by The Times-Dispatch, Joyner Fine Properties President John Stone did not once mention volunteer opportunities and called the event a ‘part of our outgoing efforts to support your safety and well-being as an essentially designated business.’” I’ve got a lot of feeling about this. To be clear, this is just me speaking as Ross the Person, but individuals and institutions need to think real hard before taking advantage of opportunities like this. Our actual frontline workers—bus operators, grocery store workers, teachers, and EMS—still haven’t had the chance to get vaccinated. Given the extremely limited supply of vaccine, folks need to take a minute and consider the implications of jumping to the front of the line.

Today, Council’s Finance and Economic Development Committee will meet to discuss, among other things, ORD.2020–256 which would establish a Participatory Budgeting Steering Commission. Participatory Budgeting, or PB, is just what it sounds like: You, Jane Q. Citizen, participate in budgeting a chunk of the City’s money on small, local capital projects across the city. We’re always talking about how the City’s budget illustrates its priorities. Well, PB puts those priorities right into the public’s hands. The main goal of this specific ordinance is to formalize the commission that will set up and oversee the process. If you’re interested in that sort of wonkery, I recommend opening up the actual ordinance PDF and reading through the staff report beginning on page nine. If you’re interested but not “read through the actual ordinance PDF” interested, sit tight. Once finalized, the PB process should be open and accessible to the public—especially those that don’t want to read staff reports on legislation.

Nerdy but cool: Henrico’s running a broadband survey where you can complete an internet speed test to help them track gaps in the County’s high-speed internet coverage. WRIC says its part of a county effort to bring broadband into communities not currently served!

Do the two, totally unrelated Cobra-based restaurants need to go fight it out in the All-Valley Karate Championships? I don’t know how much more of this our streets can handle!

The Richmond and Henrico Health Districts will host a free community testing event today at Regency Square (1420 N. Parham Road) from 10:00 AM–12:00 PM. If you’re in need of a COVID-19 test through the health districts, you can now register online!

This morning’s longread

What Joe Biden Can’t Bring Himself to Say

Here’s an honest piece from one year ago about Biden’s stutter that felt good to read today.

After trying and failing at speech therapy in kinder­garten, Biden waged a personal war on his stutter in his bedroom as a young teen. He’d hold a flashlight to his face in front of his bedroom mirror and recite Yeats and Emerson with attention to rhythm, searching for that elusive control. He still knows the lines by heart: “Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing it their duty to accept the views, which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon, have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries, when they wrote these books.” Biden performs the passage for me with total fluency, knowing where and when to pause, knowing how many words he can say before needing a breath. This is what stutterers learn to do: reclaim control of their airflow; think in full phrases, not individual words. I ask Biden what his moment of dread used to be in that essay.

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 33 °F, and today you can expect highs in 40s. Lots of sunshine today—but that’s to be expected when a new day is dawning.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 4,526 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 59 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 602 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 256, Henrico: 233, and Richmond: 113). Since this pandemic began, 630 people have died in the Richmond region. So, like, was there a data reporting issue or not? After skyrocketing case counts over the weekend, yesterday’s numbers have us back on that 4,000–5,000 plateau we’d been chilling on for minute. We’ll know more tomorrow, but I’m mostly going to set that question aside—partly because I’m nervous about the answer and partly because today is a new day. Instead, let’s turn to this story by Sabrina Moreno in the Richmond Times-Dispatch which fills me with hope. Moreno visited one of the region’s mass vaccination clinics, and I just want to highlight a few parts of the story (which you should definitely read in its entirety). First, about 1,000 people we’re vaccinated in a single day—at one clinic in one locality run by the Health District. That’s about a third of Ross’s Stupid-Math Daily Vaccination Goal (2,720), and, of course, doesn’t include any of the vaccinations administered elsewhere in the region or by hospitals or by the federal CVS/Walgreens partnership. Second, they vaccinated 24 people every 15 minutes. I will divide those numbers for you: That’s 1.6 people every minute! Third, I think this quote from one of the nurses in charge of running these clinics is important: “I finish every week with the goal of making sure that there’s [no vaccine] sitting in the freezer because it needs to be in people’s arms and not in my freezers…And we’ve done that.” All of that fills me with hope. While we should be realistic about the potential of a coming vaccine shortage, I feel better knowing that our region is already building the systems we need to get as much vaccine into people’s arms as we can.

I tuned in to the public comment portion of last night’s RPS board meeting and heard overwhelming support for extending Superintendent Kamras’s contract for four years. Don’t believe me? You can read through all 30 pages of it right here (PDF). If you contacted your board member, thank you. However, you’re not off the hook yet! I think another round of emails in support of a four-year contract might be necessary ahead of the next meeting. Stay tuned. Also on the schools tip, Jessica Nocera at the RTD says Chesterfield will push back it’s scheduled vaccination of teachers “after receiving only 750 doses instead of an estimated 4,000 shots.” This is the local impact of a vaccine shortage at the federal level and is undoubtably frustrating and heartbreaking for Chesterfield teachers. Additionally, the County will not push back their date to return to in-person instruction. Apparently they’d set this date before vaccination was even a possibility, but, dang, the messaging around that is tough.

Whoa. Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense says Mark Olinger, Richmond’s Director of Planning and Development Review, resigned on Friday. A deputy director will serve in the interim. I mean, nothing against Olinger, but it’s hard not to get excited about the prospect of bringing in some amazing new talent when an important job like this opens up. Anyone know a young, progressive, pro-density, anti-car planner that wants to work at a mid-sized city with a lot of heart?

GRTC had their regularly scheduled board meeting yesterday, and you can watch the recording of the entire meeting here. Mostly I wanted to point y’all to the board packet(PDF) which includes the operating report that’s packed with all sorts of stats, graphs, and tables if you want to dig in. Usually I just scroll to the ridership report, which you can find on page 27. Ridership is, of course, down compared to last year (-6.74% overall), but continues to track with seasonal trends. I’ll be real interested to compare this April’s numbers to last April’s, the first full month of the pandemic.

I haven’t had time to read through it all yet, but the regional Partnership for Housing Affordability released an update to the Richmond Regional Housing Frameworkthat marks out progress made toward each its goals and solutions. For example, under Goal 4b “Transform Richmond’s aging public housing communities with resident-oriented rehabilitation and replacement”, you’ll find “RRHA has been carrying out the relocation of all seniors living in the Fay Towers site to three separate developments. 77 residents were relocated to Highland Park Senior Apartments, 72 to Jackson Place, and 51 will be moved into the Baker School project.” Now I just need a housing expert to parse through all of this and write up the what’s what!

Four years ago today, I wrote this email and linked to this Vox story about how 23% of people felt sad that Donald Trump was about to be sworn in as president. Just 23%! What a sweet summer child I was four years ago! Anyway, today is a new day, and coverage of the inaugural ceremonies begins at 10:30 AM with the actual swearing in and ending of our long national nightmare at 12:00 PM. Inauguration ceremonies and events will continue throughout the day, and Biden will even sign a stack of executive orders before dinner. It’s a new day!

This morning’s longread

Trump Is on the Verge of Losing Everything

Schadenfreude.

At noon on January 20, Trump will be in desperate shape. His business is floundering, his partners are fleeing, his loans are delinquent, prosecutors will be coming after him, and the legal impunity he enjoyed through his office will be gone. He will be walking naked into a cold and friendless world. What appeared to be a brilliant strategy for escaping consequences was merely a tactic for putting them off. The bill is coming due.

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