Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, and today looks chilly! You can expect highs in the 40s today, so make sure you grab something cozy before you head out the door—a coat, a hot beverage, maybe both!
 

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Take a look at this week’s coronacounts via these all-time graphs of cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID-19 in Virginia, and you’ll see mostly positive trends. While cases have started to rise again, hospitalizations and deaths, at least for now, continue to drop. This is good and expected, I think! We know transmission of coronaviruses seems to increase in the colder months, so the rise in cases tracks, but we’ve also vaccinated a ton of Virginians over the last 11 months which should help keep folks alive and out of the hospital. I hadn’t checked in a while, but 6.2 million people, or 73.5% of the state’s population, have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine. Given the year we just had, I think that’s impressive.
 

Also coronarelated, I totally forgot to mention that the CDC expanded eligibility of booster shots to basically every adult. Before this past weekend, eligibility requirements were loose and confusing, now they’re still loose but way more straightforward. Here’s the gist: Everyone 18 and up who is fully vaccinated is eligible for a booster—two months after a J&J or six months after the second Pfizer or Moderna. So if you got your J&J shot on September 23rd or your mRNA shot on May 23rd, you can walk right on up to any of these events, or get an appointment at a local pharmacy, and get boosted. So easy!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 51 °F and rainy. You can expect the rain to continue through this morning, the clouds to stick around until later this afternoon, and the temperatures to stay pretty consistent until the sun sets.
 

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Chris Saurez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on yet another reason Richmond needs a Civilian Review Board to monitor police behavior. Last month, as police were arresting a woman who “appeared to be homeless” in the Sauer Center, another woman started recording that interaction. From the piece: “[The woman recording the interaction] says police forced her to the ground and left her with cuts, bruises and an injured elbow. Police say she injured herself.” You can watch the video yourself here, which escalates until a police officer says “stop” and takes her phone. Lots of things bother me about this video, and we really need a functioning Marcus Alert system to have folks other than armed police officers available to respond to calls like this.
 

Twitter user @3StripeStrife put up a quick poll about the safety of riding bikes across Richmond’s bridges, and, if you’ve ever done so yourself, you will not be surprised by the results. The poll has an admittedly small n (about 60ish folks), but you know there’s a larger issue when 92% of people says yes to “Does comfort and safety of biking over any of these four bridges influence your decisions in going to activities, businesses, working in or living where you have to cross a bridge.” I agree, I’m one of the 92%, and so I’ve got bridge hot takes! The Nickel Bridge, while beautiful, needs to be replaced. It can’t support bus traffic and the current teensy pedestrian/bike sidewalk is unsafe and terrifying—I always feel like I’m going to fly right over the railing into the river! I think plans to replace this bridge do exist in some form or another. The Mayo Bridge, also terrifying, always shows up on the “super old infrastructure that probably has exceeded its useful lifespan lists.” It carries a ton of traffic, and I’m not sure you could take a lane for bikes without screwing up a very important and frequent bus route (although folks have wanted to put a light rail across that thing for decades, which would take a ton of space away from car traffic). The other two bridges are literal enormous highways because when they were built we thought it’d be amazing to pour thousands of speeding vehicles directly into our downtown, so we built enormous bridges in anticipation of future highways. Fortunately, the highways never materialized, but now we just have these six-lane monsters that are under-used and incredibly unsafe. These two bridges, Belvidere and 9th, aren’t going anywhere, but, luckily, are easy-ish to fix: Take a lane on either side, block it off in its entirety with concrete barricades, and call it a day. The entries and exits for bikes and pedestrians would need some thoughtful consideration, but lessening the amount of Mad Max: Fury Road while riding across these bridges is pretty straightforward. Anyway, the best part of this Twitter poll/thread is that two Councilmembers (Jordan and Addison) agreed to take a ride across these horrible bridges and think on how to make them safer (if they survive the crossings, of course).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, and, as foretold, today will be chilly. Expect highs right around 50 °F today and tomorrow, with maybe a little warmer weather headed our way on Sunday. We’ve got a boots-and-flannel weekend in front of us, for sure!
 

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Yesterday, VPM announced that it has acquired Style Weekly. This is fascinating! From the release: “In the coming weeks, VPM plans to resume publication of arts and culture feature stories and the calendar of events on StyleWeekly.com and its Facebook, Instagram and Twitter channels as it evaluates the future of the print publication.” I wonder if they’ll mirror stories on both the VPM site and the Style Weekly site or if Style Weekly will live on its own tiny media island. Will they bring back the same editors, reporters, and freelancers? So many questions!
 

Wyatt Gordon at the Virginia Mercury looks into the bus operator shortage that’s impacting public transit service in Richmond and, basically, everywhere else in Virginia. In fact, GRTC plans on cutting a bunch of service in December because they just don’t have enough operators to drive enough buses—this despite an $8,500 hiring bonus. So what can we do? David Bragdon, head of the national transit advocacy nonprofit TransitCenter, gets it right: “There is not really a lack of bus operators…There’s just a lack of labor at the wages employers are willing to offer, so raising pay has to be part of the answer to the perceived shortage.” If our region wanted to solve this problem, it would mean localities increasing their transit funding—without expanding service—to pay higher operator salaries. That’ll be a tough sell to the mayor and county managers, though.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 53 °F, and we have one, final warm day before rain moves in tonight, bringing with it much colder temperatures. Today you can expect highs in the mid 70s and maybe some clouds, tomorrow you can look forward to highs around 50 °F. The sun sets right before 5:00 PM today, so if you want to enjoy this weather, get out there early!
 

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“State proposes ban on riding bikes past Capitol,” reports Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury. This headline does such an excellent job at highlighting the absolute absurdity of the Department of General Service’s plan to permanently sever Richmond’s bike network by making Bank Street—the primary east-west connector for people on bikes—forever impassable. The Director of DGS, Joe Damico, who plans to disrupt all east-west bike traffic for the rest of time, “defended the proposed dismount area as a sensible safety measure, noting that he had occasionally seen near collisions between bicycles and pedestrians in the area.” To rephrase what’s happening here: The State wants to permanently ban riding bikes on a long-standing piece of Richmond’s bike network because one man never once saw an actual problem. If this shortsighted, unsafe plan makes you furious, please email your state legislators today, and tell them you would like the Department of General Services to include on Bank Street “a 10-foot-wide path with no requirement to dismount—an approach…in keeping with accepted design standards for bike lanes.” Don’t feel like you have to write a Federalist Paper about it either—you can literally just copy/paste the previous sentence. The important thing here is just to raise the issue to your elected representatives. You can find your legislators and their email addresses using this tool. It’s time for civics!
 

Today, Richmond’s City Council will hold a work session to hammer out the details of the legislative requests they’ll make at this year’s General Assembly plus potential changes they’d like made to the City’s charter. Both of those documents, and this one of legislation that are not recommended to include in the request, are really interesting windows into Council’s priorities (if a little over my head). Flip through the PDFs and you will see a bunch of topics that come up in this email regularly, like an ask for millions of dollars to rebuild our sewer system and school buildings, tweaking Council’s influence over future master plans, and giving localities the authority to do inclusive zoning. Don’t hold your breath on the new Republican-heavy General Assembly moving on any of these things, but it is nice to have them written down in a public document I suppose.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 37 °F, and today looks absolutely lovely. You can expect sunshine, highs in the 70s, bikes, long walks in the park, naps in the hammock, and a quiet evening on the porch.
 

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I’ve got good news if you or a member of your family still needs a COVID-19 vaccine but making an appointment seems like a huge drag. As of yesterday, anyone can walk up to any of the vaccination clinics hosted by the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts and get vaccinated without an appointment—this includes boosters and kids aged 5–11. Here’s the huge list of events taking place over the next couple of weeks, should you need it.
 

Yesterday, City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee up and voted to send RES. 2021-R026, the laundry list of Richmond 300 amendments, to full Council with a recommendation to approve. This will be the first time since April that the poorly-thought-out resolution has done anything other than bounce around between Council and committee. To be clear, since I’ve been writing about this for over 200 days now and it’s easy to forget what’s happening, RES. 2021-R026 is not even actual amendments. It’s a resolution asking the Planning Commission to take this eight-page list of conflicting and confusing bullets and do the massive amount of work to turn them into a cohesive set of actual master plan amendments. Don’t take my word for it: Back in July, Maritza Pechin, who ran the entire Richmond 300 process and now serves as the Deputy Director of the Office of Equitable Development, put together this incredibly comprehensive memo outlining why most of Council’s bullets are either already in the plan, out of scope for a master plan, or a fundamental change that deserve a more serious community engagement process than a single, sloppy list submitted to the Planning Commission. Setting aside that there were literal years for City Council to get involved in building the master plan with their constituents, councilmembers can, today, draft thoughtful, specific amendments to the master plan and then work with the City on running the appropriate community engagement around those amendments. It’d take awhile to arrive at some sort of consensus, sure, but would it take fewer than 200 days? Maybe!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F, and you can expect a sunny, cool day with temperatures right around 60 °F. Stay tuned for tomorrow, though, when we’ll see highs back up in the 70s!
 

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Plateau or nah? Take a look at this week’s all-time graphs of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in Virginia and see what you think. Even if cases have started to level out, we’re not seeing that same thing in the hospitalization or deaths graphs (or we’re waiting on those to catch up). The New York Time’s nationwide graphs are not as optimistic as all that, showing an increase in cases and a definite plateauing in hospitalizations. However, I feel pretty good about Virginia’s statewide vaccine numbers: 63.8% of the population is fully vaccinated, 72.2% have had at least one dose, and 85.6% of adults have received at least one dose. Over on the kid side of things, just a couple weeks in to vaccinating children aged 5–11, and 12.4% have gotten their first dose. Is that a lot? I can’t tell, but knocking out an eighth of eligible children in that age range in just a couple of weeks seems like progress.
 

Jack Jacobs at Richmond BizSense reports that our newish Central Virginia Transit Authority will “earmark around $108 million toward the Fall Line trail, a proposed 43-mile walking and biking trail that would connect Petersburg to Ashland.” That’s a huge chunk of money! Last we checked in on the funding of the Fall Line (via this excellent PDF), only $73 million of the $234 million total cost had been committed. This new money puts the trail well on its way to full funded. With at least some of the money in hand, I wonder when we’ll start seeing segments of this trail on the ground and completed?
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 43 °F, and today looks chilly with highs in the 50s for most of the day. Expect temperatures possibly below freezing tonight!
 

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Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that “it has never been more expensive to be a renter in Richmond.” I know I say this every week, but we need to build more and denser homes in all of our neighborhoods. Here’s Robinson again, “Fueling the trend is surging demand for apartments in the region, coupled with a historically low vacancy rate that has left tenants with fewer options to choose from and, in turn, given property managers more leverage to hike costs…” Keep this—and the teachers, nurses, and civil servants—in mind next time a project ends up in front of the Planning Commission and people turn out in droves to complain about shade, neighborhood character, and parking.
 

Richmond’s Planning Commission will meet today, and you can find the full agenda here. Two items of note: ORD. 2021–308 and ORD. 2021–311. The former is the mayor’s ordinance to transfer money around so that the School Board can actually pay to design the schools they’ve bullied their way into building. Since it’s a transfer of funds between buckets in the City’s capital budget, the Planning Commission needs to sign off. I don’t think any of the commissioners will want to get in between the mayor/Council and the School Board on this one, so I imagine it passes quickly without much discussion. The later ordinance officially hands over the entirety of Bank Street to the State so that General Assembly can continue to block pedestrian and bicycle through-traffic with that incredibly silly gate and those ridiculously huge cement balls. I want to be mad at the City for rolling over on this one, but I’m not sure what they could—when the General Assembly demands you give them a street, you give them the street. To the City’s credit, the staff report on this ordinance closes with, “However, under the current directive, the City would not retain an easement to ensure that pedestrian and bicycle access would be retained across the conveyed right-of-way to maintain adequate circulation of pedestrians and cyclists in the area. Bank Street is currently improved with bike lanes in both directions. It serves as the main connection for cyclists between the Capital Trail and the Franklin Street bikeway via the 17th Street bikeway, the Farmer’s Market pedestrian plaza, and the East Franklin Street bike lanes. Therefore, Planning & Development Review staff finds that pedestrian and bicycle access should not be impeded along Bank Street.” Maybe Planning Commission or City Council could sneak something into the deed retaining a bike-ped easement? I have no idea, but I’m interested in today’s conversation about it.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 63 °F, and it’s a little rainy out there. Expect that to continue through the morning but then dry out before we get too far into the day. This evening—and the weekend—look lovely, if a bit chillier than the last couple of magical November days.
 

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Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Governor-elect Youngkin has rustled up a bunch of old governors to advise his transition: Bob McDonnell, Jim Gilmore, George Allen, and Doug Wilder (who is 90!). My take on this is that looping in these Coca-Cola Classic Conservatives—from a more moderate time—helps Youngkin distance himself from the Trump wing of the party. Yet, buried in Leonor’s piece is this critical bit of information: His transition steering committee “will be co-chaired by Sen. Steve Newman, R-Lynchburg, and Kay Coles James, a former Virginia health secretary under Allen, who served as director of the Office of Personnel Management under President George W. Bush and is outgoing president of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank.” Oh, the same Heritage Foundation that’s out there convincing state legislators across the country to prevent our children from learning about how racism has been built into America’s systems since day one? Gotcha. The decision to include Wilder in the transition grabbed up all the headlines, but the big news, to me, is Youngkin’s quiet alignment with a Trumpian organization that denies climate change, pushes Trump’s Big Lie of voter fraud, and believes we solved racism in the 1960s.
 

Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury reports on how Virginia’s Republicans might change the Commonwealth’s new marijuana legalization plans. It’s all depressingly predictable: Republicans are excited to speed along retail marijuana sales (a good thing that’d generate a bunch of cash for all involved), but want to make sure that those lucrative licenses end up in the hands of well-resourced, established medical-marijuana business owners (a bad thing that does nothing to undo the decades of inconsistent and racist enforcement of our previous marijuana laws). Oliver puts it this way: “It’s unlikely GOP lawmakers would share that concern given their general opposition to equity programs.” That’s obvious, I know, but it still shocks me to read it so plainly put. I mean, if you’re generally opposed to equity, what are you generally in support of? It’s wild to me that, somehow, we’ve normalized Republicans’ position of increasing racial inequity in Virginia.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 46 °F, and we’ve got another incredibly pleasant day ahead of us. Expect highs in the mid 70s (!) and tons of sunshine. This evening, if you’re not watching the sun set from a porch somewhere, you’re doing it wrong.
 

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Kenya Hunter and Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch report on the latest turn in the work to replace George Wythe High School. I’m not sure I’ve got my mind totally wrapped around what’s happening and why, but I’ll do my best to lay out the pieces.
 

On Monday night, the RPS School Board voted to move $2 million “earmarked for several projects, including structural repairs and new generators, fire alarm systems and roofs for at least 10 different schools” to instead pay to begin design work on a replacement for George Wythe High School. First, the replacement school the Board wants to build is smaller than either the Mayor and Superintendent would like, and, second, it’s not clear to me that the Board even has the authority to move money around like that. Also on Monday night, the Mayor introduced ORD. 2021–308, which would transfer about $7.3 million from the City’s Capital Improvement Program budget for “School Planning & Construction” to “School Modernization - George Wythe High School.” The City would then pay out that money to the School District monthly to cover design costs for the new school.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, but today you can expect sunny skies and highs in the mid 70s. Get out there and squeeze the last remaining drops of summer out of the empty, pulpy rind of 2021.
 

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It’s been a while, so here are the all-time graphs of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in Virginia. You can see in all three that we’re still steadily sliding down the backside of this summer’s delta peak, which feels great. Honestly, I almost feel like I did during those blissful three weeks of early summer, where it looked like we’d have this whole thing wrapped up by fall. I’ve learned my lesson and now I’m optimistic but wary—fool me once, etc—especially when the New York Times has this to say on their global State of the Virus page: “Cases are rising again in Europe, where pandemic restrictions have been relaxed and temperatures have dropped.” Relaxed restrictions and dropping temperatures is totally us just a couple of weeks from now!
 

As foretold, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Chris Suarez reports that City Council passed the ordinance necessary to maintain the City’s real estate tax rate at $1.20 with Councilmembers Trammell and Jones voting against. I think this is the first time, that I can remember, that more than one councilmember joined in on a vote to decrease the tax rate—which, again, I think is absolutely bonkers. Yes, assessments have increased and that has resulted in increased revenue, but in what world does it make sense to reduce the real estate tax rate to keep the City’s budget flat?? Is anyone living in the Richmond right now looking around and saying “Yep, we’re done here, this is the best we can do!” If rising taxes for lower-income home owners is a concern, let’s certainly address that with thoughtful and clever legislation. But once the tax rate goes down, it’s never going back up—and in five, ten, fifteen years from now, when these members of Council have moved on, we may desperately need that additional revenue.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and today looks lovely. Expect highs in the upper 60s and lots of sunshine. The rest of this week looks warm and wonderful, too—enjoy!
 

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Richmond’s City Council will meet today for their regularly scheduled meeting, and you can find the entire agenda here. The annual ordinance the City must pass to keep the real estate tax rate at $1.20 sits on the regular agenda and should easily pass. Of note, Councilmember Trammel’s competing paper, ORD. 2021–286, which would lower the real estate tax to $1.135, also appears on the regular agenda. I think it’s fascinatingly inconsistent that someone who was pro-Casino because of the non-gambling investment it would bring to Richmond would simultaneously submit a paper that would strip a huge amount of revenue from the city’s budget. Council’s Finance and Economic Development committee has recommended that Trammell’s paper be stricken.
 

It’s infrastructure week! After laying some fresh pavement, Richmond’s Department of Public Works will begin installing new bike lanes across the city. Specifically, you’ll see new infrastructure pop up on: Brookland Parkway, Marshall Street from 29th to 21st, Walmsley Boulevard (from the city line to Belmont), and Warwick Road (from Hull to Richmond Highway). This is great news, and quick work by DPW in moving from public engagement, to paving, to bike laning. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait on the proposed Colorado Avenue bike lane as that street was removed from the paving schedule. Double unfortunately, “based on feedback received, DPW will not move forward with the proposed bike lane project on Grove Avenue [from Shadwell to Seneca] at this time.” That’s a bummer. You can see the polarized results from this past summer’s public engagement process on page 19 of this PDF. About the same number of respondents super hated and strongly supported the very fast, wide, and dangerous existing conditions. In the end, though, slightly more respondents opposed replacing the parking lane with a bike lane, and parking wins again. Idk, wild idea here, what if we removed a travel lane and kept the parking—just like Brook Road? That seems to have worked just fine.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 42 °F, and today you can expect chilly temperatures in the 50s—my weather app is even alerting me to a frost advisory through 9:00 AM tomorrow. Fall has certainly arrived!
 

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Appointments for families trying to get their 5–11 year olds the COVID-19 vaccine officially exist! It looks like chain pharmacies will open up appointments this weekend, and, as of right now, there are still a few appointments remaining at the Raceway for this weekend, too. Next week, though, is flush with plenty of options and opportunities to go get your kid jabbed—even as late into the day as 7:45 PM. You’ll most likely have no problems finding a date and time that works for you.
 

Meg Schiffres at VPM has a council-district breakdown of the Casino vote, which is fascinating. Heavily against: 1st, 2nd, and 4th Districts; Split decision: 3rd, 5th, and 7th Districts; Heavily in favor: 6th, 8th, and 9th districts. If this would have been a mayoral election, where the Casino needed to win five council districts, it would have passed, winning the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, with the 3rd barely providing the swing vote (by just 45 votes according to VPAP’s admittedly incomplete vote tallies!). As foretold, Chris Suarez and Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch have a piece focusing on the racial breakdown of the referendum vote, reporting that “every precinct with a majority white population received more votes against the casino than for it.” They’ve also got the Mayor’s statement: “While I believe this was a $565 million opportunity lost to create well-paying jobs, expand opportunity, keep taxes low and increase revenue to meet the needs of our growing city, I am proud of the transparent and public process we went through to listen to our residents and put this opportunity before our voters.” However, I think the best quote I’ve read this morning belongs to former Richmond BizSense reporter, J. Elias O’Neal, who told VPM, "The key to crucial economic development endeavors is investing in neighborhoods by maintaining and providing key services and public investment, something the city has neglected to do in the Southside for decades.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 42 °F, and today you can expect chilly temperatures in the 50s—my weather app is even alerting me to a frost advisory through 9:00 AM tomorrow. Fall has certainly arrived!
 

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Appointments for families trying to get their 5–11 year olds the COVID-19 vaccine officially exist! It looks like chain pharmacies will open up appointments this weekend, and, as of right now, there are still a few appointments remaining at the Raceway for this weekend, too. Next week, though, is flush with plenty of options and opportunities to go get your kid jabbed—even as late into the day as 7:45 PM. You’ll most likely have no problems finding a date and time that works for you.
 

Meg Schiffres at VPM has a council-district breakdown of the Casino vote, which is fascinating. Heavily against: 1st, 2nd, and 4th Districts; Split decision: 3rd, 5th, and 7th Districts; Heavily in favor: 6th, 8th, and 9th districts. If this would have been a mayoral election, where the Casino needed to win five council districts, it would have passed, winning the 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, with the 3rd barely providing the swing vote (by just 45 votes according to VPAP’s admittedly incomplete vote tallies!). As foretold, Chris Suarez and Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch have a piece focusing on the racial breakdown of the referendum vote, reporting that “every precinct with a majority white population received more votes against the casino than for it.” They’ve also got the Mayor’s statement: “While I believe this was a $565 million opportunity lost to create well-paying jobs, expand opportunity, keep taxes low and increase revenue to meet the needs of our growing city, I am proud of the transparent and public process we went through to listen to our residents and put this opportunity before our voters.” However, I think the best quote I’ve read this morning belongs to former Richmond BizSense reporter, J. Elias O’Neal, who told VPM, "The key to crucial economic development endeavors is investing in neighborhoods by maintaining and providing key services and public investment, something the city has neglected to do in the Southside for decades.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, and I think the rain is on its way out of the region. Once that happens, you can expect drier times with highs in the mid-50s and cooler-than-expected temperatures for the next couple of days.
 

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Yesterday, a CDC’s advisory committee and the CDC proper both signed off on the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for kids aged 5–11! This means pharmacies, pediatricians, and other healthcare providers will start jabbing kids as soon as today. If you’ve been waiting and waiting (and waiting) to get the younger members of your family vaccinated, get thee to a pharmacy website or call up your healthcare provider to see if they’ve got appointments available! And remember, Kid Pfizer still requires two doses—but the doses are smaller—so you’ll need to eventually make that second appointment, too.
 

The Virginia Public Access Project has last night’s election results, if you can stomach them. Republicans won all three statewide offices and took control of the House of Delegates. Here’s the Virginia Mercury’s Graham Moomaw and Ned Oliver on the big-three races and here’s the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Michael Martz on the House races. I’m sure you’ve read all the hottest takes by now, but here’s mine: White voters across the state, afraid of kids learning about systemic racism (which is what the anti-CRT meme was always about), elected a bunch of Republicans specifically to build racism into our education system. What a scary and dangerous step backward. It’s incredibly naive to carry on with this Pollyanna rhetoric of “Republicans want to ban Critical Race Theory, which isn’t even a thing, look how logically inconsistent they are!”. Republicans' anti-CRT platform is a way for them to launder straight-up racism as something folks—especially liberals—don’t know how to debate. Michael Hobbes, who I’ve written about before, has a great thread on this and says it “short circuits our conventional way off doing politics.” We’ll quickly see how banning something “which isn’t even a thing” turns into policy that strips rights from our neighbors and cements inequities that’ll take decades to tear down. As Youngkin said in his victory speech: “We will change the trajectory of this Commonwealth on day one.” Anyway, I don’t feel very hopeful this morning as there are an unlimited number of mediocre rich white dudes out there willing to outwardly soften Trumpism enough to get elected while holding tight to a platform of explicitly backwards and bad policies. Expect to see a million Glen Youngkins on every ballot across the country for the foreseeable future.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, and I think the rain is on its way out of the region. Once that happens, you can expect drier times with highs in the mid-50s and cooler-than-expected temperatures for the next couple of days.
 

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Yesterday, a CDC’s advisory committee and the CDC proper both signed off on the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for kids aged 5–11! This means pharmacies, pediatricians, and other healthcare providers will start jabbing kids as soon as today. If you’ve been waiting and waiting (and waiting) to get the younger members of your family vaccinated, get thee to a pharmacy website or call up your healthcare provider to see if they’ve got appointments available! And remember, Kid Pfizer still requires two doses—but the doses are smaller—so you’ll need to eventually make that second appointment, too.
 

The Virginia Public Access Project has last night’s election results, if you can stomach them. Republicans won all three statewide offices and took control of the House of Delegates. Here’s the Virginia Mercury’s Graham Moomaw and Ned Oliver on the big-three races and here’s the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Michael Martz on the House races. I’m sure you’ve read all the hottest takes by now, but here’s mine: White voters across the state, afraid of kids learning about systemic racism (which is what the anti-CRT meme was always about), elected a bunch of Republicans specifically to build racism into our education system. What a scary and dangerous step backward. It’s incredibly naive to carry on with this Pollyanna rhetoric of “Republicans want to ban Critical Race Theory, which isn’t even a thing, look how logically inconsistent they are!”. Republicans' anti-CRT platform is a way for them to launder straight-up racism as something folks—especially liberals—don’t know how to debate. Michael Hobbes, who I’ve written about before, has a great thread on this and says it “short circuits our conventional way off doing politics.” We’ll quickly see how banning something “which isn’t even a thing” turns into policy that strips rights from our neighbors and cements inequities that’ll take decades to tear down. As Youngkin said in his victory speech: “We will change the trajectory of this Commonwealth on day one.” Anyway, I don’t feel very hopeful this morning as there are an unlimited number of mediocre rich white dudes out there willing to outwardly soften Trumpism enough to get elected while holding tight to a platform of explicitly backwards and bad policies. Expect to see a million Glen Youngkins on every ballot across the country for the foreseeable future.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F, and today looks lovely. Expect highs in the mid 60s and sunshine. Temperatures cool straight down to boots-and-flannel weather starting tomorrow, so get ready and/or get excited.
 

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch has dueling casino columns, the no-vote perspective provided by Jim Ukrop and the yes-vote perspective by the folks who run Urban One. In what I think is a pretty telling sign, the yes-voters’ piece mentions gambling or gaming just a single time. It shows up in this sentence describing the project in glowing terms while completely glossing over the fact that this is a proposed casino: “The project — a premier gaming, dining and entertainment facility — will include 15 unique restaurants and bars, including some famed local eateries; 250 luxurious hotel rooms; a 3,000-capacity theater that will bring the best in music and entertainment to the city; an on-site radio and television studio and soundstage; and 20,000 square feet of event space.” All of those things sound rad because they describe a thriving neighborhood, and that’s what folks want to see across Richmond—not casinos or downtown arenas, but neighborhoods and communities. The benefits and amenities promised by the casino developers (and the Navy Hill developers before them) sound great—and they’re what a lot of folks are excited about—but all of those things could be built without a casino as the anchor. We could just invest into supporting and building thriving and sustainable neighborhoods in the Southside. Heck, we’re doing that right now in the Diamond District with nary a slot machine in sight!
 

Today, Kevin Vonck, the new Director of the Department of Planning and Development Review, will give a really interesting presentation on the Richmond 300 Priority Project List to City Council’s Organizational Development committee. This is a great PDF that you should definitely scroll through! Beginning on page six, you’ll find tables linking projects to legislation to the Richmond 300 Big Moves—plus start and finish dates! Incredible! So far the City has finished three projects (B-3 zoning, rezoning the area around the Alison Street Pulse Station, and the Greater Scott’s Addition rezoning). They’ve listed out about 20 in-progress projects, 16 of which are on track to finish up before the end of 2022 (fun things like: the City Center small area plan, rezoning Shockoe, redeveloping the Diamond District, finalizing ADUs, and getting rid of parking minimums). It’d be rad for someone to drop these in a public spreadsheet so we can all remember the timelines and track the progress made!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 60 °F, and it’s rainy. You should expect the rain to continue for most of the day, tapering off later this evening. This weekend looks lovely though, so get out there and enjoy it (after things dry off a bit).
 

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Kenny Hunter reports that Richmond Public Schools “has started its promised disciplinary measures for teachers and employees who are out of compliance with the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.” Mandates aren’t mandates if you don’t enforce them! Unpaid suspensions begin this coming Monday, and I’m really interested to see how many folks choose leaving their job over getting a life-saving vaccine.
 

The Richmond Police Department will hold their third quarter crime briefing today, and afterwards their presentation should end up somewhere on their website. Yesterday, I wrote a little bit about police being a biased voice in the discussion around the creation of Richmond’s Civilian Review Board. Today, I’ve got two press releases in my inbox from the RPD that I think are great, low-consequence examples of how police are treated as infallible sources by media, when, just like the rest of us, they get stuff wrong. First, RPD sent out a press release yesterday morning titled “Tow Truck Pirate” claiming an unlicensed tow truck was being used to “quickly steal vehicles throughout the city.” Give “Richmond tow truck pirate” a quick Google, and you can see how the charming subject line and panic-inducing topic made it irresistible to write about. Then, later in the evening, RPD sent out another press release titled “UPDATE: Tow Truck Determined to Have Engaged in Lawful Tow.” So not only was no one stealing cars with a tow truck, it was a single tow truck (legally) towing a single car: “the tow truck featured in today’s release about a possible vehicle theft has been identified and it has been determined the vehicle was lawfully towed.” Not nearly as exciting as a rogue tow pirate sailing our streets snatching vehicles at their pleasure. This low-stakes example is a great reminder of how we always need to critically read releases and reporting where police are the only voice present. Michael Hobbes, host of the You’re Wrong About and Maintenance Phase podcasts talks about this a lot, and I encourage you to give both podcasts a listen and to give him a follow on Twitter.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 50 °F, and today looks ominous. Expect highs in the 60s and cloudy skies while we wait for tonight/tomorrow’s big rain.
 

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Former 2nd District City Council candidate Tarvarris Spinks has put together a great post on the harm a casino can cause to their surrounding communities, saying “When casinos implant themselves into struggling communities, they inflict caustic, irreparable social harm, with proximity to a casino being the key factor in creating a surge in pathological gamblers.” I really enjoy this bit, too: “I firmly believe that our city can and should embark on bold projects that uplift and empower our struggling communities. But, unfortunately, we have yet to see a project or proposal that meaningfully prioritizes the interests of vulnerable communities…”Just like Navy Hill, the casino project is not the ONLY way to create tax revenue for the city and build into communities that have seen decades of disinvestment. It is a big, shiny, temporary fix that gives some folks the opportunities to cut a ribbon and add a bullet point to their campaign website. It does not and will not build a thriving, sustainable community or neighborhood.
 

As foretold, letting the Richmond Police Department update Council’s Public Safety committee about officer morale right before the Civilian Review Board Task Force presentation was not the best idea. Jon Burkett at WTVR reports that Chief Smith told Council that “morale and retention is a problem already and that if the CRB is implemented, he says it’s likely more officers will abandon ship.” Ali Rockett at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a few more details and quotes worth reading through, too. I don’t have a lot of empathy for the RPD in this situation. City Council created the CRB task force and asked them to come up with recommendations on how to best implement a CRB in Richmond. The task force has spent months doing just that, researching, according to Rockett, “more than 200 other bodies to tailor their recommendations specifically to Richmond’s needs.” Council should listen to their own task force and realize that the Chief of Police is in no way unbiased when it comes to civilian review boards—which are specifically designed to keep police accountable.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and today looks lovely. Expect sunshiney highs in the 70s and no chance for rain until Friday. This looks like a great afternoon to spend on the patio of your choosing.
 

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Yesterday, COVID-19 vaccines for children aged 5–11 cleared their first hurdle as an FDA advisory committee voted to recommend the shots. The New York Times has the details. Sounds like the committee was at it for hours and, while they ended up voting unanimously in favor of kid vax, some folks had concerns about the number of kids involved the clinical trials and whether or not all kids 5–11 needed vaccination or just high-risk children. Honestly, I think regular folks and families would have lost their minds if the vote had gone a different way, and I’m not really sure what to do with that feeling. Next up, the full FDA will need to give its authorization, and then we’re on to the CDC’s advisory committee which already has meetings on the books for November 2nd and 3rd. Barring an unexpected plot twist, we should see shots in little arms by the end of next week.
 

Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on GRTC’s board meeting (which you can watch in full here) and has the disappointing news about proposed bus service cuts due "an ongoing shortage of drivers and mechanics amid the COVID-19 pandemic." Riders could see reduction of frequency across a bunch of routes (#4A, #4B, #5, #20, #76, #77, #78, and #88) and even the Pulse—which could have its headway cut back to 15-minutes or 30-minutes off-peak. Yuck. GRTC CEO Julie Timm expects cuts to be temporary, but, dang, still, any cuts in bus service make me worry about our ability to restore them at a later date. While we’re at it, take a look at this graph comparing systemwide ridership over the last four years. While bus ridership has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, it has increased compared to last year, which I think is a good sign.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 58 °F, and it rained! The storms have moved through, though, and now we’ve got a pleasant fall day ahead of us. Expect highs in the mid 60s, some clouds, and dry weather for at least the next couple of days.
 

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One quick coronaupdate this morning for iPhone users: iOS 15.1 came out yesterday, and that means you can now store your vaccination card in the Wallet app. Just fill out this form on vaccinate.virginia.gov, and you’ll end up with a QR code and a link that’ll automatically load up your information as a fun card in Wallet.app. I think once you get boosted, you can even update it with that information, too. Neat!
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Chris Suarez has the update from last night’s final City Council meeting on the Mayor’s proposed ARPA spending plan, and it sounds like Council approved the whole shebang. You can find more details on the City’s ARPA page, but the big-ticket investments are parks, trails, and community centers; the Affordable Housing Trust Fund; stormwater infrastructure; and a new Healthy Equity Trust Fund. While the full spending plan is approved, this huge bucket of money will be allocated over two years. Someone should definitely set up a spreadsheet or a Trello or something to track progress on all these rad projects. In particular, I can’t wait for some of the new trails!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and today looks pretty OK with highs in the mid 70s. Just make sure you keep an eye out for rain later this afternoon and then again over night—we may even have some severe storms roll through.
 

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It’s been a while since I checked in on VDH’s COVID-19 Outbreaks by Selected Exposure Settings dashboard. This dashboard lets you look through outbreaks at K–12 schools, which, remember, are not the same as cases brought into schools by kids who picked up COVID-19 at home or elsewhere out in the world. Outbreaks mean disease transmission inside of a school (or other setting). At the moment Chesterfield County Public Schools reports 13 outbreaks, Henrico County Public Schools reports seven, and Richmond Public Schools reports two. If I had a minute, I’d be interested in figuring out some sort of “outbreak per capita” number or comparing the number of outbreaks in each school district to the amount of COVID-19 in each of these localities. Maybe another day!
 

Today at 6:00 PM, City Council will hold a special meeting to, fingers crossed, vote on how to spend the first $77 million of the City’s share of ARPA money. The Staff Report is pretty readable and very short, so take a quick scroll through if you’d like to learn more. As far as I can tell, the plan as presented represents the Mayor’s priorities, and, I guess, tonight Council will have their chance to present additional amendments? Honestly, I’m a little confused to how this process will play out. But! If you’d like to weigh in on the spending plan, you have until 10:00 AM this morning to send an email to the Clerk (CityClerksOfffice@rva.gov) or you can, of course, show up in-person and give a public comment this evening.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 63 °F, and today looks cooler and cloudier than the last couple of beautiful days. But! We’ve got a lovely weekend ahead of us with dry skies and temperatures in the 70s. I’m going camping, and it will most definitely be rad.
 

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Boosternews! After a daylong meeting, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and then the full CDC authorized boosters for both the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. They also authorized round robin mix-and-matching, so regardless of your first vaccine you can now boost yourself with any of the available three. Folks with a primary series of the mRNA vaccines need to wait six months after their second dose and should fall into one of the high-risk categories, while any J&Jers two months out from their one-and-no-longer-done shot can get boosted. The New York Times has the details, details which, of course, lack any sort of direction on how folks should go about making their booster decision. Here’s how the NYT puts it: “Regulators have not recommended any one vaccine over another as a booster. They have also remained silent on whether it is preferable to stick with the same vaccine when possible.”
 

White supremacists defaced two murals in town with racist, offensive, and lazy graffiti: The Arthur Ashe mural down by the Battery Park tennis courts and the Black Monument Avenue mural out at Six Points in Highland Park. Patrick Larsen at VPM talked with muralist James Thornhill who helped put up the monument back in 2017, who had this to say: "Just walking down here as an artist and seeing this black spot where we had a wonderful picture of Arthur Ashe, it feels like someone just put a silencer on my mouth…Saying ‘don’t talk, don’t speak, don’t be creative, don’t express yourself, or we’re gonna retaliate.” I am 100% sure our community of artists will respond to the cowards who’d did this with something incredible, but it’s awful that they need to.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 48 °F, and we’ve got another stunner lined up today: Expect highs near 80 °F with a few clouds here and there throughout the afternoon. Spend the evening outside watching the sun go down (sunset at 6:25 PM!).
 

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Boosternews! Last night the full FDA authorized booster shots for both the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. Today, the CDC’s advisory committee will meet to talk through things which could lead to CDC authorization as soon as this evening. If everything goes smoothly, you could even see appointments for Moderna and J&J boosters pop up this weekend. Also of note, especially for J&Jers, the FDA authorized mix-and-matching vaccine types, but, as far as I can tell, didn’t really give anyone any guidance about what to mix and match with what. Here’s the frustrating quote from the acting FDA commissioner: “We do not have preferential recommendations…We feel that if patients have questions, they should consult with perhaps their physician or another provider.” To me this sounds a lot like “do the research,” which I hate, and, like, I am not a scientist? I rely on scientists and doctors to tell me what to do when it comes to things like life-saving vaccines. I’m happy to return the favor if any scientists or doctors need advice on morning emails or emotionally-heated conversations about zoning. The CDC can, of course, layer on their own guidance to help people figure out which booster to get, but, according to the aforelinked NYT piece, that doesn’t sound likely. You can learn more directly by streaming today’s CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting here, if that’s your thing. Do the research, I guess.
 

Last night’s email from Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras is worth reading in full. He’s seeing incredible stress and burnout among staff and students from the trauma caused by the pandemic—loss of loved ones, jobs, and economic stability. He’s also seen stressors within RPS, which, unlike a deadly disease, he can control: “the three that I hear the most are: 1) We’re doing too much; 2) There’s not enough time; and 3) Students are exhibiting significant trauma from the past 20 months and we need more support to help them.” Kamras has announced concrete steps to address each of these, including “a moratorium on new division-wide programs, initiatives, curricula, etc. for the rest of the year”; protecting teachers' lunch and planning time (they need 100 lunch monitors, and you can apply here)); reallocating $3 million of federal relief funding to student mental health support services; and closing RPS on November 1st and 3rd, which will give students that entire week off due to Election Day, Diwali, and parent-teacher conferences. These changes will be disruptive to some, especially the calendar changes, but I’m into it. We knew—or should have known—that this fall would bring with it a ton of uncertainty, and that we’d need extra time, space, and grace to climb our way back to friends, family, community, work, and school. That’ll take a long time! Most likely it won’t go as planned, either, and we’ll need to take a break every now and then. To expect an immediate return to the 2019 version of life seems incredibly naive (and maybe not even what we’re after).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 48 °F, and we’ve got another stunner lined up today: Expect highs near 80 °F with a few clouds here and there throughout the afternoon. Spend the evening outside watching the sun go down (sunset at 6:25 PM!).
 

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Boosternews! Last night the full FDA authorized booster shots for both the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. Today, the CDC’s advisory committee will meet to talk through things which could lead to CDC authorization as soon as this evening. If everything goes smoothly, you could even see appointments for Moderna and J&J boosters pop up this weekend. Also of note, especially for J&Jers, the FDA authorized mix-and-matching vaccine types, but, as far as I can tell, didn’t really give anyone any guidance about what to mix and match with what. Here’s the frustrating quote from the acting FDA commissioner: “We do not have preferential recommendations…We feel that if patients have questions, they should consult with perhaps their physician or another provider.” To me this sounds a lot like “do the research,” which I hate, and, like, I am not a scientist? I rely on scientists and doctors to tell me what to do when it comes to things like life-saving vaccines. I’m happy to return the favor if any scientists or doctors need advice on morning emails or emotionally-heated conversations about zoning. The CDC can, of course, layer on their own guidance to help people figure out which booster to get, but, according to the aforelinked NYT piece, that doesn’t sound likely. You can learn more directly by streaming today’s CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices meeting here, if that’s your thing. Do the research, I guess.
 

Last night’s email from Richmond Public Schools Superintendent Jason Kamras is worth reading in full. He’s seeing incredible stress and burnout among staff and students from the trauma caused by the pandemic—loss of loved ones, jobs, and economic stability. He’s also seen stressors within RPS, which, unlike a deadly disease, he can control: “the three that I hear the most are: 1) We’re doing too much; 2) There’s not enough time; and 3) Students are exhibiting significant trauma from the past 20 months and we need more support to help them.” Kamras has announced concrete steps to address each of these, including “a moratorium on new division-wide programs, initiatives, curricula, etc. for the rest of the year”; protecting teachers' lunch and planning time (they need 100 lunch monitors, and you can apply here)); reallocating $3 million of federal relief funding to student mental health support services; and closing RPS on November 1st and 3rd, which will give students that entire week off due to Election Day, Diwali, and parent-teacher conferences. These changes will be disruptive to some, especially the calendar changes, but I’m into it. We knew—or should have known—that this fall would bring with it a ton of uncertainty, and that we’d need extra time, space, and grace to climb our way back to friends, family, community, work, and school. That’ll take a long time! Most likely it won’t go as planned, either, and we’ll need to take a break every now and then. To expect an immediate return to the 2019 version of life seems incredibly naive (and maybe not even what we’re after).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, and today looks wonderful. Get ready for highs in the upper 70s, a beautiful fall sky, and every reason in the world to spend at least part of the day outside.
 

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Richmond’s bike share system still exists! I don’t even know how long RVA Bike Share—which took forever to launch—has sat mired in its first phase, constrained to fewer than 20 stations (just 16 at the moment). A couple days ago, though, RVA Bike Share announced that they’ll move the Biotech Park station to Battery Park on the Northside and add an entirely new station at Chimborazo Park. This expands the bike share footprint quite a bit into the Northside and further out into the East End, maybe even by too much. The two new stations are kind of outpost islands and really will require some more stations connecting them back to the larger bike share network. According to the aforelinked Instagram post, though, this is just the start of a Phase 2 expansion, so maybe we’ll start to see that infill? I’ve been burned before, RVA Bike Share, so I won’t hold my breath. Meanwhile, I’ve seen a ton of these new BirdTwo scooters out and about, and they look sweet. Dockless scooter convenience (and ubiquity) will almost always beat out an extremely limited docked bike share system.
 

Tonight at 6:00 PM you can join a virtual public meeting to discuss the proposed rezoning of W. Broad Street. Council has already passed the resolution to kick off this rezoning process (RES. 2021-R017), so this is a real deal public meeting on actually doing the rezoning! As proposed, the plan would take an assortment of existing business and residential zones and upzone them to TOD-1, bringing the area in line with the Richmond 300 Master Plan and, fingers crossed, laying the foundation for a denser, better, less parking-lotted W. Broad Street. I foretell some light gnashing of teeth and rending of garments over the bits of the plan that would allow apartment buildings adjacent to some of these wealthy residential neighborhoods—you know, the typical stuff. Despite whatever NIMBY angst may come, this is, honestly, one of the more exciting rezonings we’ve got going on in Richmond. Just take a Google Maps Street View trip down W. Broad Street and look at how many surface parking lots face the street. Then imagine what could be! So much potential!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F and it’s a two-blanket morning over here on the couch! In fact, today you can expect temperatures to just creep their way up into the 70s late this afternoon. I think today is as good of a day as any to get those boots out of the closet and restore them to their proper place of honor.
 

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Yesterday, the Virginia Department of Health launched a new Cases Among Children data dashboard. Since March 15th 2020, VDH reports 127,997 cases among children, 380 hospitalizations, and nine deaths. I think the all-time graph of cases reported among children is really fascinating; right now we’re experiencing a peak of kid cases that exceeds the peak from this past winter. Some of that, surely, is due to the lack of vaccination among youth, since the subgroup seeing the most case (5–11 year olds) aren’t yet eligible. But! It really does sound like we’re less than a month out from offering the COVID-19 vaccine to all school-aged kids. Let’s check back in on this graph (and compare it to the general, all-time cases graph) later this year.
 

City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meets today with a couple items of note on their agenda. Up first, two interesting presentations that you can scroll through. RRHA will walk through the long-term plans for a bunch of their real estate project. The aforelinked PDF gives a great snapshot of properties owned by RRHA, and, if you zoom way in, some of the proposed redevelopment plans for these properties. Also, if you’ve still not been out to Armstrong Renaissance in the East End, flip down to page 31 for two great photographs that’ll give you an idea of how that development—which is part of the plan to replace Creighton Court—is turning out. Next, Maritza Pechin, deputy director of the Office of Equitable Development, will give a presentation on the City’s newly launched process to redevelop the Diamond District. Gotta love page eight, which, to me, reads as the Lessons Learned From Navy Hill slide: “Draft RFI Goals: Generate significant new revenues for the City [and] utilize financing approaches that minimize public investment/risk.” There are a lot of other really great goals they want the future developers to hit, too—transportation, open space, jobs, sustainable development to name a few. One of the things that ticked people off about the Navy Hill process was snapping a fully-formed idea into existing without bringing the community along. It’ll be worth watching to see if and how the Diamond District developments avoids that. Page five has a general project timeline and it puts the various Council approvals needed to move the development forward on their spring agenda. Also of note, LUHT will consider RES. 2021-R065 which would “request that the Chief Administrative Officer cause the Department of Public Works to develop a process for City residents to request traffic studies of the residential areas within their neighborhoods for the purpose of assessing the appropriateness of instituting a 15 mile per hour speed limit in such areas to increase traffic safety.” Meh. Despite what the City’s Director of Public Works believes, infrastructure is the only way to really slow drivers down. We can make DPW staff do traffic studies at the beck and call of residents, get Council to lower speed limits, have RPD enforce the lower speed limits, and then punish residents for speeding, all while hoping that process maintains some sense of equity or we can just build safer streets.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 45 °F, and here, in the middle of October, is fall! Today you can expect highs in the 60s and lots of sunshine. Early this morning it might just be the perfect time to sit on a porch wrapped in a blanket drinking a hot beverage.
 

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Last Thursday and Friday, an FDA advisory committee met and recommended boosters for both the Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccines. The Moderna recommendations generally fall in line with the Pfizer recommendations from a couple weeks back—six months out from your second dose, older folks, people with an increased chance of severe illness due to COVID-19, that sort of thing. The J&J recommendations, however, include any J&Jer who received their single shot at least two months earlier, which is basically all J&Jers. In fact, some on the FDA committee argued that this is not a J&J booster at all, but the second of what, from the get-go, should have been a two-dose vaccine. There was also some conversation about recommending mixing and matching vaccine types, but no decisions made. You can read more in the New York Times. What’s next? This coming Wednesday and Thursday a CDC advisory committee will meet to talk through the FDA advisory committee’s recommendations, which puts us on a path to more people eligible for more boosters as early as this weekend.
 

Last week I linked to Kenya Hunter’s three-part series on the racial disparities facing Maggie Walker Governor’s School over in the Richmond Times-Dispatch (here’s part one of the series, in case you missed it). Megan Pauly at VPM sat down with Hunter to talk about the whys and hows of putting together such an expansive piece—one that took six months to report! I love when reporters talk to other reporters about their process. You often end up learning some extra notes and anecdotes that never made it into the final piece or got cut by an editor along the way.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 59 °F, and I think today might be the last of these warm, summery October days. Expect highs in the mid 80s, some sunshine, and then rain to move in tomorrow bringing with it much cooler temperatures. Highs in the 60s on Sunday!
 

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Y’all know that I am extremely frustrated by the State’s Department of General Services and their decision to block off Bank Street with that stupid Cold War-era border gate and those huge concrete balls. Bank Street was, is, and will be the critical bike connection between the Franklin Street Bike Lane in the west and the 17th Street Market/Capital Trail in the east. The current state of affairs, forcing people on bikes to weave through an obstacle course of gates and balls is already unacceptable and a great example of how the State just kind of does whatever they want in Richmond (see also: the horrible fencing at Marcus-David Peters Circle). Yesterday, I got an email from Bike Walk RVA pointing me to these proposed regulations that would close Capitol Square to the public from 9:00 PM–6:00 AM. It doesn’t take much to envision a potential future where the State closes Bank Street entirely to through traffic, incorporates it into “Capitol Square,” and completely fractures Richmond’s network of bike lanes. If you have a minute, please leave a comment on these regulations requesting that Bank Street remain a part of the public right-of-way and open to pedestrian and bike through traffic 24/7.
 

Richmond Public Schools launched a new website yesterday, always a terrifying task. As boring as “information architecture” sounds, the information on a website’s homepage is a quick shorthand for that organization’s priorities. It’s like budgets, but with words instead of dollars. Two things stick out to me from this recent RPS website reorg: The Superintendent’s newsletter is right there at the top, and there’s a whole section dedicated to the Dreams4RPS strategic plan. To help celebrate the launch, RPS has new merch designs over in their Bonfire store. Do I need a 3/4 sleeve baseball Tee featuring a colorful map of the RPS middle school zones? Obviously.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 59 °F, and today looks wonderful! Get out there and enjoy the sunshine, the temperatures in the 80s, and the last couple days of this extended summer.
 

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VDH has added a “People Vaccinated with Booster/Third Dose” tracker to their vaccination data dashboard. As of yesterday, about 240,000 Virginians had received their booster or third dose, just 4.6% of the fully vaccinated. Don’t feel any sort of way about that number yet, though, as 1) it’s early goings in boostertime, 2) only folks who received their second dose on or before April 14th are eligible, and 3) out of that group, just the Pfizer humans can get boosted. But! That could change soon. The FDA’s advisory committee (VRBPAC, or Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee) meets today to discuss Moderna Boosters and tomorrow to discuss J&J boosters. I don’t know if it’s all this recent talk about boosters, an ongoing fear of delta, a lessening of vaccine hesitancy, or a combination of all three and a bunch of other things, but vaccination rates in Virginia have increased since their summertime low. I like the shape of that graph!
 

I 100% forgot to mention it, but, this past Monday, City Council unanimously confirmed Lincoln Saunders as Richmond’s new, official, no-longer-acting CAO.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and I think we may get to see the sun today! Expect highs in the upper 70s, almost no chance for rain, and, with any luck, a break in the clouds. Get out there and enjoy it.
 

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If you haven’t registered to vote and didn’t do so yesterday, it’s too late, and I’m disappointed in you. I’m confident, though, that 100% of people subscribed to this email/podcast are registered and have either already voted or have fully made plans to. If not, for some reason, here’s the list of upcoming deadlines: October 22nd to request a mail-in ballot, October 30th to vote early in-person, and actual Election Day is November 2nd. Related and mildly interesting, ol' T-Mac has started hosting a bunch of campaign events with a handful of famously talented Democratic women, including Stacey Abrams, Keisha Lance Bottoms, and First Lady Jill Biden. I don’t know enough about politics to know if these types of campaign events do anything, but I do think it highlights the level of national importance Virginia’s gubernatorial election holds this year.
 

Ben Paviour at VPM reports on the racial disparity found in the recipients of the State’s COVID-19 relief fund for businesses. While a huge chunk of grant recipients chose not to report their race, “white and Black-owned businesses were approved for grants at similar rates during that period. But while Black-owned businesses got an average Rebuild VA grant of nearly $19,500, white-owned businesses received more than double that on average.” Paviour also reports that the Commonwealth Club, “an all-male private club that didn’t admit its first Black member until 1988,” received money from the program while other nearby black-owned businesses—ones that presumably serve people other than just men—were denied funds. Luckily, there is an additional round of money around the corner and the timing is less urgent at the moment, so the State has an opportunity to take a minute and work a little harder on equitably prioritizing recipients. Also I didn’t know where to put this but wanted to point it out, this sentence is just really dark: “Richmond-based floral designer Brom Hansboro got about $20,500 from Rebuild VA…The cash infusion helped him ride out the suspension of weddings and embrace new opportunities like the funeral business.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F, and today looks excellent. Get outside and enjoy highs in the upper 70s and no rain until late this evening or tomorrow. While Saturday does look kind of like a wash for outdoor activities, it looks great for staying inside and watching horror movies.
 

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Gregory J. Gilligan reports that Capital One and Genworth Financial have both postponed their return to in-person work plans until at least next year. Seems like something we’ll see more and more of from large employers as we move into the winter—and maybe even beyond. I keep thinking about this excellent piece I read earlier this week by Anne Helen Petersen about the future of in-person work. Read the whole thing, but here’s the part that grabbed me: “I am not anti-office. I am anti arbitrary office. I am against sucking two hours [of commuting] out of someone’s day just to briefly make a bad manager feel good. I am against siphoning power from workers and piping it directly to leaders’ already overflowing stores of it. We have such a unique, authentically exciting moment to take stock of what ‘office’ work could look like moving forward — what parts of it need a collective space, which parts do not, and what office spaces will look like and provide. And so many organizations are straight up squandering that opportunity.”
 

Ian M. Stewart at VPM has an update to the Brookland Park Boulevard Bump Out Situation: “members of the Historic Brookland Park Collective and the Brookland Park Merchants Association, called for the city to investigate if the proper steps were taken before the sidewalk extensions, called bump-outs, were removed.” Also notable, as Councilmember Lambert frequently mentioned a petition with 1,000 signatures as one of the reasons she asked the City’s Department of Public Works to remove the bump outs: “A copy of the petition has not been made public…VPM has sent a FOIA request to Director of Public Works Bobby Vincent and Lambert asking for a copy of the petition.” I’m really interested to see where this goes and am glad neighbors and journalists are continuing to push the City for an explanation. For me, it’s less about the City taking two steps backwards from their transportation and Vision Zero goals (although, that’s pretty bad), but it’s more about the process. I’m particularly concerned about the process that halted the already-approved parklet. While the Director of Public Works may have the authority to rip out street infrastructure at his own discretion (does he though?), I don’t love the idea that a single Councilmember can quietly intervene and stop a project that both the Urban Design Committee and Planning Commission have approved. Those are both public bodies and both have opportunities for citizens and councilmembers alike to weigh in with concerns. My biggest question remains: How did, months after public approval, a Councilmember convince the Mayor’s Director of Public Works to squash the parklet?
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 63 °F, and today looks cloudy but nice. I think we should avoid any sort of rain until at least tomorrow—better spend some time outside today if you can!
 

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Semmes Avenue is one of Richmond’s overly big, overly fast, and overly dangerous streets. Today, at 8:00 AM and at 5:00 PM, 5th District Councilmember Lynch will hold two rallies to get drivers to slow the heck down. I can already hear the sound of hundreds of keyboards typing “But rallies will not slow down drivers, Ross.” Correct! And the Councilmember knows this: “…when you have a big wide road, people are going to speed down it, and one of the tools is to narrow it, and I think it’s high time we start thinking about that.” Yes! Changing the physical shape of the streets is the only way to really get drivers to slow down—something we discussed recently with the Brookland Park Boulevard Bump Out Situation. This can mean taking away lanes, narrowing lanes, adding bike lanes, expanding sidewalks, or even just throwing a bunch of jersey barriers up until we figure out what is going on with drivers.
 

City Council’s Urban Design Committee will meet to again consider GRTC’s Yet Another Temporary Transfer Plaza. Last I wrote about this, UDC had some concerns about the chain link fencing used to separate out a portion of the space for car parking, which 1) looks trashy, and 2) makes pedestrian access to the actual buses harder. However, in some rare fencing good news, the letter attached to the updated engineering diagrams says, “The fence has been reduced on the east side to allow access from the south east corner of the site.” Anyway, these adjustments to the plan seem good, but, truth be told, Safari crashes every time I try to scroll through the aforelinked (and massive) PDF. That’s OK, though, we all know I can’t read engineering diagrams anyway! Richmond’s recent addiction to fencing things off aside, I’m mostly interested in how the City helps GRTC find a final, permanent location for a transfer plaza (or transfer street!). We need a place for buses to gather downtown, and, while Navy Hill and COVID-19 put a pause on the search for a bus home, the need has not vanished.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 63 °F, and today looks cloudy but nice. I think we should avoid any sort of rain until at least tomorrow—better spend some time outside today if you can!
 

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Semmes Avenue is one of Richmond’s overly big, overly fast, and overly dangerous streets. Today, at 8:00 AM and at 5:00 PM, 5th District Councilmember Lynch will hold two rallies to get drivers to slow the heck down. I can already hear the sound of hundreds of keyboards typing “But rallies will not slow down drivers, Ross.” Correct! And the Councilmember knows this: “…when you have a big wide road, people are going to speed down it, and one of the tools is to narrow it, and I think it’s high time we start thinking about that.” Yes! Changing the physical shape of the streets is the only way to really get drivers to slow down—something we discussed recently with the Brookland Park Boulevard Bump Out Situation. This can mean taking away lanes, narrowing lanes, adding bike lanes, expanding sidewalks, or even just throwing a bunch of jersey barriers up until we figure out what is going on with drivers.
 

City Council’s Urban Design Committee will meet to again consider GRTC’s Yet Another Temporary Transfer Plaza. Last I wrote about this, UDC had some concerns about the chain link fencing used to separate out a portion of the space for car parking, which 1) looks trashy, and 2) makes pedestrian access to the actual buses harder. However, in some rare fencing good news, the letter attached to the updated engineering diagrams says, “The fence has been reduced on the east side to allow access from the south east corner of the site.” Anyway, these adjustments to the plan seem good, but, truth be told, Safari crashes every time I try to scroll through the aforelinked (and massive) PDF. That’s OK, though, we all know I can’t read engineering diagrams anyway! Richmond’s recent addiction to fencing things off aside, I’m mostly interested in how the City helps GRTC find a final, permanent location for a transfer plaza (or transfer street!). We need a place for buses to gather downtown, and, while Navy Hill and COVID-19 put a pause on the search for a bus home, the need has not vanished.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 69 °F, and today looks a bit cooler and bit less downpour-y than yesterday. You should still stay on the lookout for some rain later this afternoon, though—keep that umbrella handy.
 

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Megan Pauly at VPM reports on this past Monday’s RPS School Board meeting and the 5–4 vote to “keep police in schools for the foreseeable future but with some changes.” You can read through those proposed changed in this single-slide presentation. Out of the list of tweaks, this one seems most substantial to me: “RPD and RPS would develop a diversion program to end arrests on school grounds for any non-violent offenses.” RPD didn’t respond to Pauly by deadline if fights were considered “non-violent offenses,” which seems like a an important clarification because fights account for a big percentage of the arrests in schools. In fact, Pauly says that “in the 2018–2019 and 2019–2020 combined school years, there were nearly 400 student arrests in Richmond schools, the majority over fights and possession of marijuana.” I know it’s complicated, but I’m not sure that either of those things should end in arrests on school property.
 

Mark Robinson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on the early goings of a really interesting program proposed by the Virginia Poverty Law Center that would “provide down-payment assistance to households that can demonstrate that they, or their relatives, suffered financial consequences as a result of past practices that disproportionately impacted Black households.” It’s not like we’ve had a dearth of those in the Richmond region over the last couple hundred years—and this is not a Richmond-specific problem, of course. The way The System’s set up right now, homeownership is one of the primary ways families in American build wealth, and we know that Black families lag significantly behind white families in homeownership rates, and we also know that Black families have accumulated much less wealth than white families. Programs like this attempt to address these financial disparities. Two local legislators, Del. Jeff Bourne and Del. Ghazala Hashmi will carry the related legislation at the General Assembly this coming session. Keep an eye on it!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F, and, while today looks lovely, there is a persistent chance of rain thought the day. Enjoy, of course, but keep an eye to the sky and a rain jacket handy.
 

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Some good news from RPS Superintendent Kamras’s email this past Friday: “The Virginia Department of Education just released official graduation results for the Class of 2021. I’m proud to share that our Hispanic/Latino/a/x students had the largest growth of any division in the entire state – up 24.8 percentage points! And overall, our graduation rate increased 7.3 percentage points to 78.8%! That means we officially no longer have the lowest rate in Virginia. Of course, we’re aiming MUCH higher and have a tremendous amount of work to do, but it’s clear we’re on the right path. Please join me in congratulating the Class of 2021, along with their families, teachers, counselors, principals, and so many others who taught, led, and served them with love—all through a global pandemic. Simply incredible.”
 

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense has an update on Brookland Park Boulevard’s already-approved parklet and now-removed bump outs. I don’t love this quote from Bobby Vincent, Director of Public Works: “‘Anybody can go and sit inside that parklet for any reason,’ Vincent said. For the parklet to be placed, he added, ‘only to be used in a negative capacity by those who can legally occupy it, I needed to put a pause on it until we all have an understanding of what in fact it does, and what the rules are in regard to a parklet.’”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 51 °F, and today you can expect highs in the 70s—not even the upper 70s, just the regular 70s! While things do warm up a bit over the next couple of days, this weekend looks simply stunning. Have a blast, spend some time recovering from the week that was, and stay hydrated.
 

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Last night’s 3rd District meeting about the parklet and bump outs on Brookland Park Boulevard was a mess. The Director of Public Works made some pretty terrible statements given his role in our City’s transportation infrastructure, people got angry, and Councilmember Lambert had a head-shaking hot-mic moment. All of it makes me feel demoralized, ashamed, and left wondering why it is so hard to make progress in Richmond. Here’s an enormous thread from @BossRVA if you want a full recap of the meeting, but below are my generally unprocessed and unsorted thoughts from last night:
 

• The absolute worst moment came when Director of Public Works Bobby Vincent said something along the lines of “we are not going to infrastructure our way out of speeding in Richmond.” Turns out, the ONLY way to slow speeds on our too-fast, unsafe streets is by installing physical infrastructure to force drivers to slow down. We should all be super concerned that the man in charge of our streets’ infrastructure doesn’t believe in street infrastructure.
• This is why, for the last five or six years, folks have asked the City to create a standalone Department of Transportation. No one, not a single person, would argue with the excellent job DPW has done to improve trash pick-up, bulk & brush, mowing, and, of course, filling pot holes over the Mayor’s first term. Things were a literal mess when Vincent showed up and are much, much better now. However, none of those things makes me think that DPW should be in charge of making our streets safer for people—especially now! What we got from the Mayor’s administration instead of a Department of Transportation that would have full authority over things like bump outs, is the Office of Equitable Transit and Mobility. It’s really clear after this week that OETM was either not consulted on this decision, has no sway over the Department of Public Works, or, worst-case, didn’t care.
• That brings me to my next point: DPW works for the Mayor. Don’t get me wrong, this whole situation seems to have been instigated entirely by Councilmember Lambert, but it’s still City staff that made the decision to stop the already-approved parklet and rip out the bump outs. How his Department of Public Works functions across the city is something the Mayor is responsible for.
• It kind of goes without saying at this point, but halting the parklet and digging out the bump outs and then having a public meeting is the exact opposite of how the timeline for these things should go.
• At some point in the evening it seemed like Councilmember Lambert and the owner of the parklet had reached a verbal agreement to move the parklet across the street. How does that even work, though? Would UDC and the Planning Commission need to…unpass their existing approvals for the parklet? Would they have to reconsider the whole thing again? I am deeply disturbed by the idea that if a councilperson is unhappy with how a public process turned out they can just lean on certain members of City staff to kill or restart a project—it’s a really awful precedent to set.
• Finally, here’s Councilmember Lambert’s hot-mic moment in which she seems to suggest that the only people upset are those who didn’t vote for her.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 51 °F, and today you can expect highs in the 70s—not even the upper 70s, just the regular 70s! While things do warm up a bit over the next couple of days, this weekend looks simply stunning. Have a blast, spend some time recovering from the week that was, and stay hydrated.
 

Water cooler

Last night’s 3rd District meeting about the parklet and bump outs on Brookland Park Boulevard was a mess. The Director of Public Works made some pretty terrible statements given his role in our City’s transportation infrastructure, people got angry, and Councilmember Lambert had a head-shaking hot-mic moment. All of it makes me feel demoralized, ashamed, and left wondering why it is so hard to make progress in Richmond. Here’s an enormous thread from @BossRVA if you want a full recap of the meeting, but below are my generally unprocessed and unsorted thoughts from last night:
 

• The absolute worst moment came when Director of Public Works Bobby Vincent said something along the lines of “we are not going to infrastructure our way out of speeding in Richmond.” Turns out, the ONLY way to slow speeds on our too-fast, unsafe streets is by installing physical infrastructure to force drivers to slow down. We should all be super concerned that the man in charge of our streets’ infrastructure doesn’t believe in street infrastructure.
• This is why, for the last five or six years, folks have asked the City to create a standalone Department of Transportation. No one, not a single person, would argue with the excellent job DPW has done to improve trash pick-up, bulk & brush, mowing, and, of course, filling pot holes over the Mayor’s first term. Things were a literal mess when Vincent showed up and are much, much better now. However, none of those things makes me think that DPW should be in charge of making our streets safer for people—especially now! What we got from the Mayor’s administration instead of a Department of Transportation that would have full authority over things like bump outs, is the Office of Equitable Transit and Mobility. It’s really clear after this week that OETM was either not consulted on this decision, has no sway over the Department of Public Works, or, worst-case, didn’t care.
• That brings me to my next point: DPW works for the Mayor. Don’t get me wrong, this whole situation seems to have been instigated entirely by Councilmember Lambert, but it’s still City staff that made the decision to stop the already-approved parklet and rip out the bump outs. How his Department of Public Works functions across the city is something the Mayor is responsible for.
• It kind of goes without saying at this point, but halting the parklet and digging out the bump outs and then having a public meeting is the exact opposite of how the timeline for these things should go.
• At some point in the evening it seemed like Councilmember Lambert and the owner of the parklet had reached a verbal agreement to move the parklet across the street. How does that even work, though? Would UDC and the Planning Commission need to…unpass their existing approvals for the parklet? Would they have to reconsider the whole thing again? I am deeply disturbed by the idea that if a councilperson is unhappy with how a public process turned out they can just lean on certain members of City staff to kill or restart a project—it’s a really awful precedent to set.
• Finally, here’s Councilmember Lambert’s hot-mic moment in which she seems to suggest that the only people upset are those who didn’t vote for her.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and we’ve got another beautiful day on deck. Enjoy temperatures in the upper 70s, sunshine, and being nice to your neighbors. The pleasant weather continue for the next couple of days, so enjoy!
 

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Jessica Nocera at the Richmond Times-Dispatch checks in on Chesterfield County Public Schools and the success they’ve had at mitigating the spread of COVID-19. To date, the District has had just over a thousand reported cases since school started, which is something like 1.6% of the student population. Plus, the vast majority of those cases were brought in from outside of school; VDH’s outbreaks dashboard lists five ongoing outbreaks, the largest at Thomas Dale High School with 12 cases. A related thing that’s kind of blowing my mind: Most of the schools on VDH’s list of K–12 facilities experiencing outbreaks are high schools. These aren’t exactly correct numbers as some private schools and rural schools combine a bunch of grade levels, but eyeballing things gives six elementary schools with outbreaks, four middle schools, and 17 high schools. That’s exactly opposite of what I’d expect since littler kids both cannot get vaccinated and are, at least, twice as grubby. Maybe mitigation measures like podding are easier with elementary students who don’t switch classes? Maybe it’s impossible to keep high school students from touching each other?
 

Richmond Together, which put out some of the smartest analysis of how Richmond should spend its $155 million of ARPA money, will host an ARPA town hall this coming Saturday, October 2nd, at the Black History Museum and Cultural Center of Virginia (122 W. Leigh Street) from 10:00–11:30 AM. The City’s Acting CAO, Lincoln Saunders, will be on hand to answer questions, which seems like a really rare and great opportunity to get in front of the very high-level, senior leadership that will end up actually making a lot of the ARPA-related decisions. In fact, if you’ve got burning questions about how the Mayor plans on spending this bucket of cash, you can send them to togetherrichmond@gmail.com and they might could end up in the queue! If ARPA is all you think about, you can continue to get involved by attending an in-person community meeting tonight at 6:00 PM at Diversity Richmond (1407 Sherwood Avenue) or submit your feedback by filling out this ARPA survey until October 4th.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and today looks wonderful. Expect highs in the mid 70s and lots of potential hammock time. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says today is the first of three "Best Weather Days of the Week” in a row. I hope you can find the time to enjoy them!
 

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I didn’t watch the gubernatorial debate, because I’m wisely investing my time in the Korean survival horror drama Squid Game instead. I’ve got three thoughts after getting caught up this morning, though. First, Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a recap which should terrify you as it frames the Republican candidate as a moderate, pretty OK guy that’s not too different from McAuliffe. Second, third-party candidate Princess Blanding, who didn’t poll high enough to make it on the stage, interrupted the debate, forcing Chuck Todd to throw to commercial. You can watch video from the audience here. Third, I failed to fill out my ballot over the weekend as promised, but there is a 100% chance I will do so and will vote for Terry McAuliffe. Did I vote for T-Mac in the primary? No. Am I inspired by a repeat rich white man candidate? No. Am I terrified that a Republican governor will undo the advances made in healthcare, abortion, environment, and social justice Virginia has made over the last couple of years? Yes, very much so. It is possible to believe all of these thing simultaneously!
 

If you want to get bummed about the Brookland Park Boulevard bump outs (RIP), here are a couple pictures Wyatt Gordon took of the ugly new asphalt patches that replaced actual concrete infrastructure and plants. Remember, Councilmember Lambert has a community meeting to discuss the (already approved) parklet and a few other topics related to the corridor tomorrow, 6:30 PM, at the Police Training Academy (1202 W. Graham Road).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and today looks a little warmer than yesterday and also comes with a chance for some thunderstorms later this evening. Enjoy today and get ready for a really wonderful tomorrow.
 

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Just a few corona-updates for you this Tuesday morning. First, here’s this week’s look at all-time cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID-19. It’s still too soon to tell if Delta’s tide has truly started to turn in Virginia, but it’s certainly not trending upwards at the moment. Second, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts will now give Pfizer booster shots at any of their vaccination clinics. While you need an appointment for a booster, folks who are still unvaccinated can (and should!) just walk up to get their shot. I imagine most pharmacies around town have also started offering boosters for folks who qualify, so, if you’re eligible, you’ve probably got a ton of options to go get boosted.
 

On September 30th (this coming Thursday), Councilmember Lambert will host a community meeting to discuss, among other things, the parklet planned for the 100 block of Brookland Park Boulevard, out front of Ms. Bee’s Juice Bar. I’m confused and frustrated by this since Council’s Urban Design Committee already recommended the parklet for approval at their April 8th meeting and then the City’s Planning Commission approved the parklet at their April 19th meeting. As far as I know, that’s all that’s needed to get a parklet installed, and I’m not sure what’s left to talk about on Thursday (other than how rad parklets are). I have some pretty strong feelings about a councilmember getting involved at the tail end of an already approved project and subverting the existing public process. The 3rd District has already had its fair share of this (remember Councilmember Grey and the Big Brook Road Bike Lane Fight), and I’m not stoked to have to expend a ton of effort defending projects that have already been approved multiple times. Alas, this is the unfortunate timeline we live in, and if you want to let Councilmember Lambert know you support the Brookland Park Boulevard parklet, show up on Thursday, September 30th at 6:30 PM at the Richmond Police Training Academy (1202 W. Graham Road).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and today looks a little warmer than yesterday and also comes with a chance for some thunderstorms later this evening. Enjoy today and get ready for a really wonderful tomorrow.
 

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Just a few corona-updates for you this Tuesday morning. First, here’s this week’s look at all-time cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID-19. It’s still too soon to tell if Delta’s tide has truly started to turn in Virginia, but it’s certainly not trending upwards at the moment. Second, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts will now give Pfizer booster shots at any of their vaccination clinics. While you need an appointment for a booster, folks who are still unvaccinated can (and should!) just walk up to get their shot. I imagine most pharmacies around town have also started offering boosters for folks who qualify, so, if you’re eligible, you’ve probably got a ton of options to go get boosted.
 

On September 30th (this coming Thursday), Councilmember Lambert will host a community meeting to discuss, among other things, the parklet planned for the 100 block of Brookland Park Boulevard, out front of Ms. Bee’s Juice Bar. I’m confused and frustrated by this since Council’s Urban Design Committee already recommended the parklet for approval at their April 8th meeting and then the City’s Planning Commission approved the parklet at their April 19th meeting. As far as I know, that’s all that’s needed to get a parklet installed, and I’m not sure what’s left to talk about on Thursday (other than how rad parklets are). I have some pretty strong feelings about a councilmember getting involved at the tail end of an already approved project and subverting the existing public process. The 3rd District has already had its fair share of this (remember Councilmember Grey and the Big Brook Road Bike Lane Fight), and I’m not stoked to have to expend a ton of effort defending projects that have already been approved multiple times. Alas, this is the unfortunate timeline we live in, and if you want to let Councilmember Lambert know you support the Brookland Park Boulevard parklet, show up on Thursday, September 30th at 6:30 PM at the Richmond Police Training Academy (1202 W. Graham Road).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and today looks beautiful with sunny highs in the low 80s. Richmond in the fall! It’s the best time of year!
 

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This morning, even before I woke up, the Governor hosted a press conference celebrating new train service to Main Street Train Station. Richmonders, if they can drag themselves out of bed, can now catch a train from downtown and end up in D.C. before the work day begins or, according to the press release, make it to “New York for a lunchtime meeting.” I think the goal is ultimately hourly service between D.C. and Richmond, so this is just step one out of one million to bringing frequent, higher-speed rail service to Richmond, connecting us to the rest of the Northeast. By the way, here’s what a 5:00 AM ribbon-cutting ceremony looks like. Too intense, even for me!
 

City Council will meet tonight with an enormous 58-item agenda. I’ve written about most of these before, but tonight Council will consider a ton of transportation-related papers securing or asking for money from the state for bike and pedestrian projects, and bunch of cat- and dog-related papers that mostly change the rules for pet owners, the bow and arrow ordinance, and those two resolutions to move forward with re-rezoning the southern side of Broad Street (those are all currently on the Consent Agenda, too). The resolution asking the Planning Commission to make sense of Council’s laundry list of Richmond 300 amendments has been continued until November 8th, and the resolution formally accepting the Mayor’s nomination of Lincoln Saunders as CAO has been continued until October 11th.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 53 °F, and today looks wonderful with highs in the mid 70s and plenty of sunshine. The weather wonderfulness should continue straight on through the weekend, too. Enjoy!
 

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What a rollercoaster of emotions for booster shots over the last couple of days! To recap: The FDA recommended Pfizer booster shots six months after the second dose for people older than 65, people at high risk for severe COVID-19, and frontline workers. Then, yesterday evening, a CDC advisory committee recommended Pfizer boosters for people older than 65 and people at high risk for severe COVID-19—leaving out frontline workers and creating a gap between the FDA recommendations and their own decision. At some point early this morning (this New York Times piece was updated at 2:40 AM), the director of the CDC overruled that recommendation and brought their official, final (for now) guidance in line with the FDA’s by adding back in frontline workers. While the NYT wants to blame politics for the turbulent decision making process, and I’m sure Biden’s public announcement of Boosters By September 20th didn’t help things, having the FDA and CDC publicly disagree about who should get booster doses would have ultimately (and further) eroded trust in the entire COVID-19 vaccine situation. At the time of writing, I’d imagine our state and local health officials are 1) asleep, and 2) still working through the details of the middle-of-the-night announcement. That means: If you’re newly eligible for a booster, don’t rush out to get one today expecting a smooth and consistent experience. Remember, your existing two doses still provide a ton of protection against COVID-19! Now that we have an initial framework for Pfizer boosters, I imagine Moderna will follow suit in the coming weeks.
 

Meg Schiffres at VPM has a long look at the community-built space around Marcus-David Peters Circle, what the State’s Department of General Services did with signage and memorials that remained in the circle after that horrible fencing went up, and what happens next. I think a lot of the frustration about the State’s handling of this space—aside from the fencing which literally keeps the public out of a space that the public themselves reclaimed and reimagined—comes from the lack of a visible process to remake the circle. The longer nothing happens, the more it feels like the plan is to return MDP circle to a sun-baked, shadeless, circle of grass. I don’t think anyone wants that, so let’s get some public meetings going! Or at least a survey, we all love surveys!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and, after the rain moves through this morning, I think we could have a pretty cool day on our hands. Expect highs right around 70 °F today and a really wonderful weekend.
 

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Booster update! Yesterday’s meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices didn’t yield much in terms of who’s eligible for a booster when, but they do have another meeting on the books today at 12:00 PM. You can, of course, stream that meeting and really spice up your afternoon. While the CDC advisory group toiled away, the FDA proper announced that they’d authorized Pfizer boosters for folks older than 65, are at high risk of becoming severely ill with COVID-19, or are at high risk due to frequent exposure at their jobs—all six months after their second dose. The New York Times has the details. This is a big, loosely defined group of humans that, while not the entire general public, certainly is a big chunk of it. I have no idea what happens if the FDA and CDC disagree on who should get boosters, and that certainly wouldn’t help the work going on to addressing hesitancy among those who are completely unvaccinated. Fingers crossed that everyone will end up on the same page at the end of the day after ACIP’s meeting. What a rollercoaster!
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Ali Rockett attended yesterday’s Marcus Alert community forum and reports the program should go into effect this coming December. Lots of good details in this piece, like: “Richmond’s stakeholders have determined four levels of response: routine, moderate, urgent and emergent. Only the third and fourth levels still would require police response, according to Wednesday’s presentation.” You can learn more over on the City’s Marcus Alert page and attend a second community forum on Saturday, September 25th at 1:00 PM.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F, and today looks warm with a chance of rain later this afternoon. However! NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says, “Today’s weather will be the last taste of summer we get for a while, with a cold front bringing a BIG CHANGE for later in the week. It’ll be warm and humid (low to mid 80s today) with 70s likely tomorrow and most of Thursday will be spent in the 60s!” I don’t know about you, but I can definitely justify boots to myself when its in the 60s.
 

Water cooler

It’s Tuesday, and that’s COVID Dashboard Day for me (my mornings are weird). Here are the all-time graphs of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in Virginia. We’re definitely at some sort of inflection point, whether it be peak or plateau who can tell. Fingers crossed for the former. Over on the vaccine side of things, we no longer see the steady, fear-of-delta-fueled increase in vaccinations, but I do still have hope that employer mandates will kick in soon and drive a nontrivial amount of vaccinations. As for my Tuesday check-in on VDH’s K–12 outbreaks dashboard, it looks like as of this past Friday Richmond had zero outbreaks, Henrico had one (at Henrico High School), and Chesterfield had three (at L.C. Bird High School, Woolridge Elementary School, and St. Edward-Epiphany). Remember that “outbreaks” has a specific epidemiological meaning here (mostly, it’s about transmission of COVID-19 within a school) and that it’s not the same thing as “cases reported at a school.” Also remember that Chesterfield County Public Schools have been back in action for a bit longer than either Richmond and Henrico. Still! Here we are, on the precipice of fall, and the in-person school situations seems to be going pretty much as planned.
 

City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meets today at 3:00 PM with an absolutely packed agenda—including some potentially worrisome legislation. First, RES. 2021-R026 is back. This is the resolution asking the Planning Commission to do the heavy lifting on constructing a single amendment to Richmond 300 out of Council’s mostly inconsistent and sometimes incoherent list of proposed changes. I don’t know that Planning Commission will be stoked to do that work should this resolution pass. Second, Councilmember Jordan has proposed a height overlay district for, I think, the majority of the southern side of Broad Street between Arthur Ashe and Ryland (RES. 2021-R070). Should this resolution—and all the subsequent rezoning steps—pass, buildings would be capped at four or five stories on Richmond’s literal biggest and broadest commercial corridor. I need to learn more, but didn’t we just redo the entire rezoning of this area to appease the anti-affordable-housing and anti-density people living south of Broad? Didn’t we just declare a climate crisis threatening all of society and humanity? I don’t see how restricting density where density makes the most sense achieves any of our climate goals. Third, Councilmember Jordan also has proposed a design overlay district, RES. 2021-R062, for Jackson Ward. I have no idea what a design overlay district entails, but the legislation says that “residents and businesses…have express the desire to protect the character of that neighborhood and its history.” Typically protecting character just means preventing new housing, but this neighborhood is truly packed with history and we, collectively, have a long history of not protecting that history. I need to learn more, but there are a ton of surface parking lots floating around back there, and I’d hope that a design overlay district would not prevent developing them into homes for hundreds of people. I think we can protect history while also building more (and more affordable) housing. Fourth, there are just a ton of administrative papers authorizing and requesting funding for sidewalks and bike infrastructure! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a single agenda contain so many fun projects that’ll make it easier and safer to get around the city. Fifth, and finally, Councilmember Larson has ORD. 2021–230, which adjusts—and loosens I think—the rules and regulations around shooting a bow and arrow within the city limits. Like I said, packed agenda!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and while we’ve got highs in the mid 80s today, just you wait until middle of this week when really, truly cooler temperatures roll through. I’m not saying it’s time to break out the boots and flannel yet, but you can maybe make a plan to dig them out from under the bed this weekend.
 

Water cooler

The FDA’s advisory committee met this past Friday to discuss boosters, and, after a lot of talk, they ended up recommending Pfizer booster shots for people aged 65 and older and for those at high risk of getting severe COVID-19. They also took an informal poll—which they made very clear was not an actual vote—in favor of including, basically, frontline workers in that bucket of high-risk individuals. Importantly, their recommendation is non-binding, and the FDA will release its decision early this week. Next up, an advisory committee to the CDC will talk things through, and then the CDC actual will make a final call—all of which should also happen this week. The New York Times has some more details if you want to dig in. So if all goes as planned, at least some set of folks should be able to schedule appointments for Pfizer booster shots next week, but we’ll have to wade through these committee meetings to know exactly who all is included. Honestly, I think the spectrum of possible decisions is pretty wide, with just 65+ Pfizer humans on one end and, on the other end, anyone with Pfizer or Moderna in the loosely defined group of essential workers or folks with a condition that increases their risk of severe COVID. That’s an enormous group and contains…basically everyone.
 

Related, the New York Times is also reporting good Pfizer news for children 5–11 years old and that the FDA could authorize the COVID-19 vaccine for those kids before Halloween. Who wants to dress up as Comirnaty this year??
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and today you can expect highs in the 80s, humidity, plus a good chance of rain—but, with any luck, nothing like yesterday. Remember when I casually said “bring an umbrella?” More like bring a canoe!
 

Water cooler

Two quick corona-updates this morning! First, a reminder that the FDA’s advisory committee (which is made up of independent experts) will meet today to consider booster shots for some subset of the general public. Given the strong feelings on either side of boostertown it might be an interesting meeting to watch, which you can do so here starting at 8:30 AM. Linking to an early morning virtual meeting of the “Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee” is definitely a next level of nerdy for me that I am excited to share with you. Second, the Virginia Department of Health rolled out QR codes for vaccination records based on the SMART Health format. You can grab a copy of yours over on vaccinate.virginia.gov. Saving a QR code to your phone somewhere is definitely better than carrying around a vaccine card or a picture of your vaccine card, for sure. Next thing I hope they’re working on: Getting your vaccination record into Apple Wallet.
 

It was really coming down out there yesterday, wasn’t it? That slow-moving storm dropped three inches of rain on the Fan over short period of time, totally overwhelming our aging sewer system. Check out this absolutely bananas video of trash cans floating down Harrison Street. VCU even ended up cancelling afternoon and night classes due to flooding! Absolutely wild, but, honestly, we should expect more of these real and local impacts from severe weather as we continue to burn our planet down and fail to make any sort of real progress towards mitigating the impacts of climate change. Now, a tangential aside: It was fascinating scrolling through Twitter this morning and watching, in reverse chronological order, consensus build over the idea that yesterday’s flooding was a result of the City not cleaning out storm drains. Folks are so incredibly quick to chalk up the impact of a global climate crisis and literal decades of disinvestment in local infrastructure to “incompetence” at City Hall. Cleaning out the storm drains certainly helps, of course, but, as the @RVAH2O account puts it, “storm drains, and the system at large (as it was designed), are simply not meant to handle 3” of water in a matter of hours.” I’ve written about it a ton, but our sewer system is OLD and requires almost a BILLION dollars to get it into a place to handle the kind of severe weather we’re now facing because of climate change. The scale of this problem is simply not solvable on the local level alone and will require vast amounts of support from the State (and probably federal) government. There are lots of reasons to be critical of the City, but yesterday’s flooding was not one of them. Moving so quickly to “clean out the storm drains!” distracts us and our local elected leaders from the actual, hard, boring problems of addressing aging infrastructure and the impacts of the climate crisis.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and today you can expect highs in the 80s, humidity, plus a good chance of rain—but, with any luck, nothing like yesterday. Remember when I casually said “bring an umbrella?” More like bring a canoe!
 

Water cooler

Two quick corona-updates this morning! First, a reminder that the FDA’s advisory committee (which is made up of independent experts) will meet today to consider booster shots for some subset of the general public. Given the strong feelings on either side of boostertown it might be an interesting meeting to watch, which you can do so here starting at 8:30 AM. Linking to an early morning virtual meeting of the “Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee” is definitely a next level of nerdy for me that I am excited to share with you. Second, the Virginia Department of Health rolled out QR codes for vaccination records based on the SMART Health format. You can grab a copy of yours over on vaccinate.virginia.gov. Saving a QR code to your phone somewhere is definitely better than carrying around a vaccine card or a picture of your vaccine card, for sure. Next thing I hope they’re working on: Getting your vaccination record into Apple Wallet.
 

It was really coming down out there yesterday, wasn’t it? That slow-moving storm dropped three inches of rain on the Fan over short period of time, totally overwhelming our aging sewer system. Check out this absolutely bananas video of trash cans floating down Harrison Street. VCU even ended up cancelling afternoon and night classes due to flooding! Absolutely wild, but, honestly, we should expect more of these real and local impacts from severe weather as we continue to burn our planet down and fail to make any sort of real progress towards mitigating the impacts of climate change. Now, a tangential aside: It was fascinating scrolling through Twitter this morning and watching, in reverse chronological order, consensus build over the idea that yesterday’s flooding was a result of the City not cleaning out storm drains. Folks are so incredibly quick to chalk up the impact of a global climate crisis and literal decades of disinvestment in local infrastructure to “incompetence” at City Hall. Cleaning out the storm drains certainly helps, of course, but, as the @RVAH2O account puts it, “storm drains, and the system at large (as it was designed), are simply not meant to handle 3” of water in a matter of hours.” I’ve written about it a ton, but our sewer system is OLD and requires almost a BILLION dollars to get it into a place to handle the kind of severe weather we’re now facing because of climate change. The scale of this problem is simply not solvable on the local level alone and will require vast amounts of support from the State (and probably federal) government. There are lots of reasons to be critical of the City, but yesterday’s flooding was not one of them. Moving so quickly to “clean out the storm drains!” distracts us and our local elected leaders from the actual, hard, boring problems of addressing aging infrastructure and the impacts of the climate crisis.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and things have started to cool down just the littlest bit today. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says you should bring an umbrella with you, should you venture outside, as we could see sporadic slow-moving storms this afternoon. Various plants in my backyard would really appreciate a good, slow-moving storm right about now.
 

Water cooler

The New York Times reports a possible Not So Fast on President Biden’s plan to roll out booster shots to the general public in the coming days. Specifically, it sounds like next week we may only get Pfizer boosters for “older Americans and others who are particularly vulnerable to serious illness.” I mean, a couple weeks back when Biden was like “And lo! Boosters shall flood the land on September 20th!” it did kind of feel like he was out ahead of the science a little bit. Since then, the NYT says we’ve had dueling studies released, with one in The New England Journal of Medicine saying boosters are great and one in The Lancet saying “current evidence does not…appear to show a need for boosting in the general population.” I don’t know how much the FDA’s advisory committee particularly cares about what the president wants, his previous proclamations, or his proposed booster timeline, but we’ll learn more when they meet on Friday.
 

Is this a first? The Free Lance-Star via the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Fredericksburg City Public Schools will require all student-athletes to be vaccinated by November 8th. I don’t think I’ve heard of any other student vaccine mandates in our region but could easily have missed something given everything else that’s going on. Student vaccine mandates make a ton of sense to me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw similar—or even expanded—mandates pop up around town as school districts do whatever they can to keep school buildings open to in-person instruction.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 70 °F, and today we’ve got another hot one lined up. Expect highs near 90 °F and every reason in the world to wear an undershirt.
 

Water cooler

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Jessica Nocera reports that 2,231 Chesterfield County Public Schools students are in quarantine as of this past Monday, the District’s fourth week of in-person instruction. About half of those are elementary school students who are not yet eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine. Remember: Fully vaccinated and no symptoms usually means no quarantine. Over two thousand students in quarantine sounds like a lot—and it is!—but, for context, it’s 3.7% of their entire student body. The District has put together this dashboard tracking cases and quarantines, which is pretty interesting, and I’m sure we’ll see more of this type of article in the coming weeks.
 

One quick update on the mayor’s vision for spending the $155 million of ARPA funding: The City has put together a nice map showing the location of the proposed capital projects. You can see how a couple of the proposed trails would connect together to make getting around certain parts of the Southside a whole lot easier and safer. Also, check out all of that “corridor beautification” along our major transit thoroughfares! Could that mean sidewalks, bus shelters, and, gasp, maybe even separated and protected bike lanes? I have no idea and don’t see “corridor beautification” listed in the presentation from the other day. I assume we’ll learn more today or tomorrow when the second round of public engagement launches. Stay tuned, and get ready to fill out another survey!