Good morning, RVA! It’s 40 °F, and today, with its highs in the mid 50s, is probably the warmest day we’ve got for an entire week. You can expect dry skies for as far as the extended forecast stretches, so outside plans are definitely an option if you put on a couple layers!
 

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PlanRVA, our regional transportation planning group, has launched a survey to gauge folks’ interest in expanding the Pulse west past Willow Lawn. Serving the rest of Broad Street, all the way out to whatever we call just past Short Pump, is clearly the Pulse’s manifest destiny, but it won’t be cheap to expand frequent service that far (and through some of the most congested parts of the region). However! We now have a regional funding mechanism in the Central Virginia Transportation Authority, and these sorts of region-level studies are pretty important to, fingers crossed, help convince the CVTA to eventually chip in funding for expansions like this. Responses are due December 15th, but just take eight minutes this morning and fill it out. Do it! It’s important!
 

Speaking of! Join RVA Rapid Transit tonight at Common House (303 W. Broad Street) for the premier of Richmond by Bus, a short film created in partnership with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network to show folks “what it’s like for everyday bus riders using public transportation in the Richmond Region.” You can get your ticket for free over on the Eventbrite; watch the film at 6:00, 6:30, or 7:00; meanwhile grabbing a drink or two with some of the region’s biggest transit fans. As we all know, talking public transportation with like-minded folks is an excellent way to spend an evening (and how I spend many of my own evenings!).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 40 °F, and today, with its highs in the mid 50s, is probably the warmest day we’ve got for an entire week. You can expect dry skies for as far as the extended forecast stretches, so outside plans are definitely an option if you put on a couple layers!
 

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PlanRVA, our regional transportation planning group, has launched a survey to gauge folks’ interest in expanding the Pulse west past Willow Lawn. Serving the rest of Broad Street, all the way out to whatever we call just past Short Pump, is clearly the Pulse’s manifest destiny, but it won’t be cheap to expand frequent service that far (and through some of the most congested parts of the region). However! We now have a regional funding mechanism in the Central Virginia Transportation Authority, and these sorts of region-level studies are pretty important to, fingers crossed, help convince the CVTA to eventually chip in funding for expansions like this. Responses are due December 15th, but just take eight minutes this morning and fill it out. Do it! It’s important!
 

Speaking of! Join RVA Rapid Transit tonight at Common House (303 W. Broad Street) for the premier of Richmond by Bus, a short film created in partnership with the Chesapeake Climate Action Network to show folks “what it’s like for everyday bus riders using public transportation in the Richmond Region.” You can get your ticket for free over on the Eventbrite; watch the film at 6:00, 6:30, or 7:00; meanwhile grabbing a drink or two with some of the region’s biggest transit fans. As we all know, talking public transportation with like-minded folks is an excellent way to spend an evening (and how I spend many of my own evenings!).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 32 °F, and today looks cold and, later this evening, rainy. Expect highs right around 50 °F, which is still pretty chilly, if you ask me. Slightly warmer temperatures move through tomorrow, but, really, we’re looking at some regular, early-winter weather for the rest of this week.
 

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David Ress at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that City Council (thankfully) voted to keep the City’s real estate tax rate at $1.20, avoiding shortchanging Future Richmond millions and millions of dollars. That’s great news! They also introduced the legislation to issue a one-time real estate tax rebate to homeowners, which should work its way through the bill-becomes-a-law process over the next month or so. With six supporters already on board, I don’t see any obvious roadblocks—plus the Mayor wants to get checks in the mail early next year, not leaving a ton of time for Council to delay. Assuming the rebate does pass, I think this was a pretty good outcome, all things considered. Richmond avoided a potentially catastrophic misstep and now has some time to figure out how best to ease the impact rising assessments can have on folks with lower incomes.
 

Remember how the Virginia Board of Education has delayed voting on the new history and social science learning standards a couple of times? With each delay I felt the likelihood of bad-faith Republican shenanigans increase, and, now, the Washington Post reports that “The Virginia Department of Education proposed revisions to the commonwealth’s history and social science learning standards late Friday in a move that would significantly alter the guidelines it had previously recommended and prompted a blistering response from critics who described it as political meddling.” You can find the draft standard here, which has six mentions of Ronald Reagan and zero mentions of Carter, Clinton, Obama, or Biden. I have no idea how that compares to the current standard or the standard proposed earlier this year before all the delays, so take my cmd+Fing with a grain of salt!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 32 °F, and today looks cold and, later this evening, rainy. Expect highs right around 50 °F, which is still pretty chilly, if you ask me. Slightly warmer temperatures move through tomorrow, but, really, we’re looking at some regular, early-winter weather for the rest of this week.
 

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David Ress at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that City Council (thankfully) voted to keep the City’s real estate tax rate at $1.20, avoiding shortchanging Future Richmond millions and millions of dollars. That’s great news! They also introduced the legislation to issue a one-time real estate tax rebate to homeowners, which should work its way through the bill-becomes-a-law process over the next month or so. With six supporters already on board, I don’t see any obvious roadblocks—plus the Mayor wants to get checks in the mail early next year, not leaving a ton of time for Council to delay. Assuming the rebate does pass, I think this was a pretty good outcome, all things considered. Richmond avoided a potentially catastrophic misstep and now has some time to figure out how best to ease the impact rising assessments can have on folks with lower incomes.
 

Remember how the Virginia Board of Education has delayed voting on the new history and social science learning standards a couple of times? With each delay I felt the likelihood of bad-faith Republican shenanigans increase, and, now, the Washington Post reports that “The Virginia Department of Education proposed revisions to the commonwealth’s history and social science learning standards late Friday in a move that would significantly alter the guidelines it had previously recommended and prompted a blistering response from critics who described it as political meddling.” You can find the draft standard here, which has six mentions of Ronald Reagan and zero mentions of Carter, Clinton, Obama, or Biden. I have no idea how that compares to the current standard or the standard proposed earlier this year before all the delays, so take my cmd+Fing with a grain of salt!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 31 °F, and that is a winter temperature. Today, and for the foreseeable future, you can expect afternoon highs around 50 °F and evening lows in the 30s—a big change from last week’s weirdly warm, weirdly humid situation. While I don’t love biking home from work in the frigid dark, I do always enjoy an opportunity to get the box of scarves out of winter storage.
 

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Don Harrison at Richmond Magazine writes about closing Carytown to vehicle traffic, and comes to the conclusion that it’s just too hard and we shouldn’t even try. I disagree! We could (and should) pilot closing Carytown to cars for just the cost of a couple hundred cones! What if: Every Sunday and on holidays, we put out some signs, cones, and barricades, and opened up Cary Street for folks to walk, roll, and bike around? It’d be a nice compromise between the huge number of people who want a pedestrianized Carytown and the Carytown Merchant’s Association. Technically, this is called a ciclovía and Bogotá, Colombia has been doing them for decades, but we could give it a different name so it felt like something we came up with on our own. It’s so disappointing that we inevitably come up with a bucketful of excuses to not even try these sorts of things. The lack of imagination and exploration into pilot and temporary infrastructure projects is so endemic to Richmond, and we need a handful of fun, successful pilots to show folks what’s possible.
 

City Council gathers today for their regularly scheduled meeting and you can find the full agenda here. Right before that meeting, however, they’ll discuss the City’s formal State Legislative Priorities—the parchment scroll of demands we give to our lobbyist to take across Broad Street and nail to the General Assembly’s door. The aforelinked PDF is worth scrolling through to get a sense for the City’s priorities (at the top of the list: “preserve and defend Richmond’s authority to hold a casino referendum in 2023”), but you should probably read with a big grain of realism salt. While it’s awesome to hope-and-dream for more local authority over property tax exemptions and inclusionary zoning, these don’t feel Iike legislation that has much chance of passing in the current split-control environment. Can’t hurt to ask, of course, but don’t hold your breath. As for the regular portion of their meeting, Council will consider the three ordinances that would maintain or decrease the City’s real estate tax rate. Given last week’s announcement of one-time tax rebates—with six supportive councilmembers!—I think Council will quickly pass ORD. 2022–270 and keep the rate at $1.20. Tune in, though, and listen to the inevitable speechifying for clues about how each member feels about longerterm ways to easy the impact rising assessments have on folks with lower incomes.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 47 °F, and today looks nice, cloudy, with highs in the 70s. Tomorrow, though, you should expect the remnants of Hurricane Nicole to roll through and bring with it showers, potential storms, and even the possibility of a tornado, says NBC12’s Andrew Freiden. Keep an eye on the weather app of your choice!
 

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s David Ress reports on the exciting news that the Mayor and six members of City Council (Addison, Jordan, Lambert, Lynch, Newbille, and Jones) have proposed a one-time $0.05 real estate tax rebate. That’s $0.05 for every $100 of your property’s assessed value, so if your home (and your land) is currently assessed at $200,000 you’ll be getting a $100 check at some point in “early 2023.” You can watch the full press conference over on the City’s YouTube channel. I’m stoked on this! The mayor seems pretty set against both the across-the-board tax cuts proposed by Councilmembers Nye and Trammell, saying: “Permanently cutting the tax rate would impact our ability to provide core services to our residents and our communities, it would also mean we couldn’t keep up with the increasing maintenance fees of our roadways, our parks, our libraries, and our schools.” Note that neither of Nye nor Trammell have sponsored this new proposal. It’s encouraging, like, really encouraging, to see the Mayor and a majority of Council work together to come up with a better solution to rising assessments than cutting the real estate tax rate. This is how things are supposed to work! Now, should this rebate pass, it feels like we’ve got a single year—two at the most—to find a clever, targeted, permanent solution or we’ll be right back in the same place debating lazily reducing the tax rate to the detriment of core services, roadways, parks, libraries, and schools.
 

Grace Todd’s November Attack of the Killer Thumbs column is out in RVA Mag, and, as always, you should tap through for your monthly dose of gardening advice. Like this: “I know it’s a Law of Suburban Dads that leaves must be raked and bagged by sullen teens in order to build character, but — color me shocked — dad was wrong about this one. Leave those leaves in the yard! They’ll rot away just fine, and your soil will thank you for all the nutrients they provide. Mulch them, compost them, run the mower over them to break them up, whatever.” Just this past weekend, we raked our leaves into the yard and had the sullen teen mow over them a couple times—helping both the Law of Suburban Dads and our lawn thrive.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 42 °F, and, with highs in the 60s, today certainly feels more like a Wednesday in November than the last couple of Wednesdays did. That said, it looks like we’ve got some warmer weather on deck in the next couple of days before chilly, True Fall Weather sets up shop (for good?).
 

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Yesterday, elections happened! And, turns out, the “red wave” predicted by less-than-useful horse-race journalism did not materialize. The New York Times—who are certainly guilty of forcing that sort of narrative—has put together a nice page of the results from across the country (trigger warner: there are four needles). Many key races remain uncalled, as does which party will control the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Locally, Rep. Spanberger won in her newly redrawn district, which was one of the national Will They Or Won’t They races to watch. We’ll have to wait a couple of days before we know what it allmeans, but, as of this morning, things look slightly more hopeful than they did 24 hours ago.
 

The Richmond Police Department reports that a driver hit and killed a 75-year old man on Robinson Street just north of the Starbucks in the Fan. According to RPD’s release, this past Sunday afternoon, the victim was “attempting to cross [Robinson] just south of the intersection heading towards Stafford Avenue when he was struck by the [driver].” While the head of Richmond’s Department of Public Works thinks that “we can’t infrastructure our way out” of speeding, some easy infrastructure could have slowed down this driver and maybe saved a life. Robinson at the intersection of Kensington does not have a four-way stop or a stop light—just an odd, single yellow light and an aspiration pedestrian crossing sign.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and highs today could hit 80 °F—as if November 7th was some sort of summer’s day! Nick Russo at NBC12 says we broke the all-time record for high temperatures yesterday, set in 1975, and we might could break today’s record, too. I guess get out there and enjoy it, despite how wrong and bizarre it feels, because cooler(ish) temperatures return tomorrow.
 

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Tomorrow is Election Day! Up until now you’ve already had many, many opportunities to vote, thanks to the hard work Democrats did in recent years to expand access to voting in Virginia. But, if you still haven’t cast a ballot, you can do so tomorrow at your local polling place from 6:00 AM – 7:00 PM. Did you ignore all of my warnings over the past few months and fail to register to vote? Don’t worry (too much), starting this year Virginia now allows same-day voter registration: Just head to your local polling place and cast a provisional ballot. There are literally no excuses not to get out there and vote tomorrow!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 49 °F, but today—and the weekend ahead of us—looks amazing. You can expect highs in the mid 70s this afternoon with plenty of sunshine, and then temperatures will creep up into the 80s over the next few days. Worryingly unseasonable? Yes. Great weather to ride bikes? Also yes.
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have low CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 158, 65, and 90, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 8.1. Another week, another petty much exactly the same coronapicture. Cases rates and hospitalization rates continue to fluctuate in a frustrating plateau-y way, with the warmer weather possibly staving off some of the anticipated fall and winter increases. But, just because the numbers refuse to budge, doesn’t mean that you should head out to the nearest large, in-person gathering and start spitting in each others’ mouths! Cases of flu and RSV are both on the rise, and thousands of people are still dying of COVID-19 every day. Aside from keeping your spit to yourself, the best, easiest, and least disruptive way to protect yourself and your family from severe disease and a trip to the hospital is to get your COVID-19 booster (and your flu shot), if you haven’t already. If you want to go harder, Katelyn Jetelina has a thoughtful, if a little sobering, rundown of how she’ll navigate spending the holidays with high-risk, vulnerable family members this year. It sounds a lot like the last two years of life, which is hard to read, but she’s not wrong.
 

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports that the City has issued a Request for Interest for the planned City Center redevelopment: “The 242-page document invites teams to submit their information to be considered for development of a 9-acre assemblage that includes the shuttered arena and the site of a long-sought convention center hotel.” If you want, you can download the full PDF here—the first 30-or-so pages are pretty interesting and readable. The first phase of the redevelopment will include demolishing the Coliseum, figuring out what to do with the Blues Armory, improving infrastructure, and building the convention center hotel alongside some new office and residential (check out page 17 of the big PDF for more details). Transit, bike, and pedestrian infrastructure are all considered priorities, and, with some clever planning, this project could really make getting around downtown safer and more pleasant—something to keep an eye on. Developers will have until December 20th to submit their responses, with final selection sometime next spring or summer. Honestly, it’s great to see the City moving forward on this project alongside the Diamond District, and fingers crossed they keep up the good work.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 51 °F, and today looks beautiful. Expect highs in the 70s, sunshine, and an absolutely amazing evening for small talk on the porch or patio of your choosing.
 

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Jahd Khalil at VPM talks to Martin Wegbreit at the Central Virginia Legal Aid Society about the large number of evictions scheduled this week in Richmond—126 to be exact. While the pandemic put a pause on evictions across the state, that’s longer the case, especially in the city. In fact, RVA Eviction Lab says evictions could soon surpass their pre-pandemic levels: “By the third quarter (Q3), filings exceeded Q1 2020 numbers, reaching 87.8% of pre-pandemic levels. In Chesterfield, Petersburg, Hampton, Virginia Beach, Alexandria, Fairfax, Falls Church, and some parts of Richmond, the rate of filings was higher than it was in 2019. At this pace, the rate of eviction filings in Virginia will soon return to their pre-pandemic status, and could even surpass it, resulting in an eviction crisis greater than the conditions prior to the pandemic.” And, remember, those pre-pandemic conditions in Richmond made national headlines back in 2018. It’s upsetting that we’re headed back into the same, horrible place again, and Tracey Hardney-Scott at the NAACP reminds us that housing is absolutely critical for, well, everything: “You can’t do anything without housing. You can’t get a job without an address. You can’t [get a license] without an address…Imagine that all being taken away from you.” To prevent this statewide backslide, RVA Eviction Lab calls for legislation to protect vulnerable renters at this coming General Assembly session. I don’t know how realistic that is, but I definitely would like to learn more about the eviction diversion options on the table given we have a divided GA and a Republican governor.
 

Axios Richmond’s Ned Oliver got ahold of some of the emails sent to Governor Youngkin’s mostly fake Critical Race Theory / school tip line, and the results are about what you’d expect: mostly unserious, bad faith “tips” with a few bizarre emails thrown in for fun. Oliver says that as of this past Wednesday, “the tip line appears to have been shut down…Emails sent by Axios bounced back as undeliverable.” The Governor’s spokesperson had no comment about that.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and we’ve got another day of weirdly temperate weather, and you should expect highs in the 70s served alongside some clouds. Just to make sure I’m not misremembering all the previous Novembers of my life, I went and pulled the historic average temperatures for November in Richmond. Typically we see highs around 65 °F in the beginning of the month—compare that to this weekend’s forecasted highs in the 80s!
 

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Today, the Capital Region Land Conservancy announced that local residents have gifted them 3.5 acres of river-adjacent property, adding new green space to the James River Park System and protecting portions of the Buttermilk Trail forever. From the press release: “The Rogers have subdivided their property and donated 3.46 acres, including the entirety of the trail network located on their property, to the Capital Region Land Conservancy to be protected in perpetuity and be added into the James River Park System conservation easement upon transfer to the City of Richmond.” For whatever ancient and historical reason, portions of the Buttermilk Trail—which people use to walk, hike, and get rad on bikes—crossed over onto the private property of Josh and Carrie Belt Rogers. You can imagine that the idea of folks getting a little too rad and injured while on their property stressed the Rogers out. We should all be really thankful that they decided to permanently preserve the trail system as it is rather than putting up some fences and blocking access—something that would have been totally within their rights to do. AXIOS Richmond has a nice map of the new easement and location of the existing Buttermilk Trail.
 

David Ress at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Councilmember Lynch has withdrawn her proposal to rename the Robert E. Lee Bridge to the Belvidere Bridge. While Belvidere Bridge probably makes the easiest sense as a new (and needed!) name for this bridge, the namesake Belvidere was a 1700s estate owned by William Byrd III—a rich white man who enslaved people. Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams has some more on that history of Belvidere and some reactions from community members, if you want to dig in. I get it, like Lynch says in one of the aforelinked stories, “Richmond’s history is complicated.” Unfortunately for us, a lot of the names attached to our streets and infrastructure have disturbing histories that we’ve forgotten (or intentionally ignore), and its worth being thoughtful before attaching a new, long-lasting name to a thing. I think pumping the brakes on this particular renaming and switching to a community-driven process was a good idea. I also think that the City could just take down the “Robert E. Lee Bridge” signs today, and not wait for the results of that community process. I also also think we should just rename it back to the James River Bridge, its original 1933 name before the Lost Causers got ahold of it.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and later today you can expect almost summery highs in the mid 70s. After some clouds / flog / maybe-even-a-few-sprinkles burn off this morning, we should have one heck of a beautiful day lined up ahead of us. I hope you can find the time to get out there and enjoy it.
 

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Ben Paviour at VPM reports on the continuing issues with Governor Youngkin’s Department of Elections and the “additional 149,000 voter registration records that were affected by an IT glitch over the summer.” This is in addition to the 107,000 registration records impacted by the same issue last month; 175,000 ballots sent to the wrong addresses; and 60,000 that had incorrect information on them. That’s not great! If you’ve recently registered to vote or changed your address, you need to check your voter registration status online today. If something’s gone amiss you can still take advantage of Virginia’s new same-day voter registration law next week, but you’ll want to know your situation before heading to the polls.
 

With Halloween behind us, we’re now moving into early pre-General Assembly season—when we start seeing reporting on what sort of bills our elected legislators plan on introducing. We’ve got two of those stories today, both in the Richmond Times-Dispatch: The first, by David Ress, about Sen. Locke’s attempts to amend the Virginia Constitution and automatically restore voting rights to people convicted of felonies; and the second by, Charlotte Rene Woods, about Sen. Chase’s plans to introduce a total abortion ban. Virginia and Kentucky are the only two states that permanently prevent someone convicted of a felony from voting—at least unless the Governor decides to restore their rights. Anyway, it’s important to remember that these are early stories and none of the legislation discussed is a done deal. In fact, I don’t really think either of these two examples has a hope of passing this during the 2023 session. That all changes in 2024, though, with each and every seat is up for reelection a year from now. If you don’t typically vote in off-cycle elections, look again at the two aforelinked bills. If Republicans win control of the Senate while Governor Youngkin is still around, Virginia will almost certainly join states across the country in completely banning abortion.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 53 °F, and today you can expect highs right around 70 °F—with even warmer temperatures later on in the week. There is a small chance for rain tonight, but, fingers crossed, it’ll hold off until well past the end of trick-or-treat o’clock.
 

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It’s actual Halloween and that means tonight the streets will flood with costumed children rushing around from house to house ignoring whatever street-safety knowledge they have, driven by an insatiable hunger for disappointingly-small candy bars. If, for some unknowable or emergency reason, you need to travel by car, please take it slow and pay double attention. You never know when some tiny Luigi or Ms. Marvel will dart out into the street, racing towards their next score.
 

Related: Desiree Montilla at NBC12 reports that Halloween on Hanover returns after a pandemic-related hiatus. Lost of neighborhoods have Halloween traditions, but Hanover Ave closing a couple blocks to car traffic lets the party spill out into the street in a really wonderful way. It’s an excellent idea, and, of course, what all of our neighborhoods should be doing. If you’ve never experienced the specific Halloween on Hanover chaos, it’s worth a trip just to kind of stand in the middle of the street and take it all in.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 45°F, and today looks a little bit cooler and a little bit cloudier than yesterday. Today, and for the next few days, you can expect highs in the mid-60 and rain-free skies. However, keep an eye on Monday’s trick-or-treat o’clock, because, at the moment, there’s a small chance of rain. Honestly, though, what’s scarier than wet, bedraggled children banging on your door demanding candy after the sun’s gone down?
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have low CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 159, 43, and 81, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 8.7. Across the board the numbers have definitely increased but not enough to send us back into a medium level (although on the CDC’s map of Virginia, quite a bit more is shaded yellow than last week). But, it’s not like COVID-19 is the only virus out there that can lay you low and disrupt whatever spooky weekend plans you may have. Katelyn Jetelina at Your Local Epidemiologist has a nice run down on what the media has, possibly prematurely, started calling a “triple threat” of winter of disease—COVID-19, flu, and RSV. Here’s her level-headed take: “Lots of viruses are spreading right now and it’s a bit earlier than normal. We don’t have a triple threat yet, but I don’t think we want to see one, as I’m concerned for our healthcare systems. Do your part by getting vaccinated, staying at home while you’re sick, and other measures like washing hands, wearing a mask, and getting that airflow moving.” Listen to her! You can (and should!) get both the COVID-19 bivalent booster and flu shot at the same time, and you can find them both pretty much everywhere at this point. Make a plan to do so today if you haven’t already!
 

Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that VCU has cancelled production of a Rams-themed beer, just a day after its launch. In a letter to the university president, a professor raised concern that selling collegiate-branded beer after a student died of alcohol poisoning on campus last year was insensitive (to say the least). It’s unclear to me whether this is a permanent cancellation or a temporary pause—I’d cynically guess the latter.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 51°F, and today looks beautiful. If you’re lucky, you can spend some time outside enjoying highs in the 60s and lots of sunshine. Get into it, because clouds and cooler temperatures return tomorrow. Looking further down the extended forecast, and it looks like we have at least another week of Richmond In The Fall™ ahead of us!
 

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The Richmond Police Department is reporting that a driver hit and killed a pedestrian on the 2900 block of Chamberlayne Avenue: “At approximately 6:44 p.m., officers were called to the 2900 block of Chamberlayne Avenue for the report of a collision. Officers arrived and found an adult male down and injured in the right lane of the southbound lanes of Chamberlayne Avenue after being struck by a truck.” WRIC reports that the truck in question was street sweeper. This part of Chamberlayne—between Brookland Park Boulevard and VCU—is fast, wide, dangerous, and full of people walking around. I have no idea what a street sweeper was doing going fast enough to kill a person, but I do know lots of ways we could redesign this street to make it safer for people.
 

Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports that the property arm of Sauer, Richmond’s spice and mayo empire, acquired the last piece they needed to complete their 38-acre mixed-use complex on Broad Street. Well, almost all of it: “The only properties it doesn’t own within the tract are the Lee’s Famous Recipe Chicken building.” Stay strong, Lee’s, stay strong.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 58 °F and foggy. With any luck, by the time you read this the fog will have burned off to reveal…more clouds! Today does look a little gloomy with highs in the 70s, but, if you’re solar-powered, don’t worry: Tomorrow looks bright and amazing.
 

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Turns out Richmond’s Chief of Police did not make a presentation to City Council about gun violence yesterday, because he was busy resigning entirely from the job! WTVR has the Mayor’s statement, which says he’s appointed Major Richard Edwards as Acting Chief and will conduct a “nationwide search in order for the City to find the best-qualified candidate and fit for the department and the community.” I don’t know what particular straw broke this camel’s back, but certainly the RPD’s messy handling of their Alleged Fourth of July Plot had a lot to do with it. I’ll also point out that, in his statement, the Mayor said, “As we look around the nation, the challenges faced by police departments have changed since 2020 and we, like so many of our counterparts, are pivoting to ensure we have the infrastructure, including leadership, in place to meet the needs of the current landscape and for the future.“ This directly contrasts with something ex-Chief Smith said just last week to WTVR’s Tyler Lane while talking about officer morale: “Um, I think [morale is] pretty good. I do have a lot of support with officers and talk to them. I think it’s just an occurrence in police departments, and especially since talking to other chiefs, that the morale is just an issue until we can get 2020 behind us 100%.” It sounds like Smith wanted to forget about 2020 and move past it, while the Mayor wants to use lessons learned from that summer to shift the direction of the Richmond Police Department. Who Mayor Stoney hires as the next chief will do a lot to show how serious he really is about that.
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Lyndon German reports on the official expanding of GRTC’s Board of Directors. First, for the first time ever, Henrico now has three seats on the Board. Second, the makeup of the Board is no longer subject-matter-expert citizens but entirely elected and municipal officials. Richmond will be represented by Councilmembers Addision and Robertson and Chief Administrative Officer Lincoln Saunders. I’m not sure how to feel about this! Certainly it should make for a less antagonistic relationship between GRTC and the City, but maybe some of that antagonism was good? For all its investments and improvements over the last decade, the City has not always valued public transit or had its best interests at heart. I guess we’ll see how it goes; hiring a new, permanent CEO is probably the first big task facing this new group.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 50 °F, and we’ve got another day ahead of us with pleasant temperatures, highs in the mid 70s, and dry skies. If todays doesn’t shout “work from the hammock” and “drinks on the porch” no day ever will!
 

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As foretold, the Governor used falling NAEP test scores across the nation to blame Democrats and the previous gubernatorial administration. The tone of the aforelinked press release is just so, so bad—excited to lay blame, utterly hopeless about the future of Virginia’s children. Here’s a depressing quote: “Virginia may lose a generation of children—particularly among our most in need.” I can’t empathize with folks whose world view is so bleak, especially folks who took a job to, ostensibly, make things better.
 

Whoa, big grant! Yesterday, Homeward announced that, along with a ton of partners and localities, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development awarded them $4.4 million to address youth homelessness. From the press release: “As part of the Youth Homelessness Demonstration Program funding, Homeward will coordinate a community-led planning process to identify the needs of youth experiencing homelessness in the Richmond region. A community plan will be developed and submitted to HUD. Once approved by HUD, funding will be used to support programs that address youth needs outlined in the regional plan.” This seems huge, both in impact and literal size, and I’m positive we’ll hear more about it as they start to move through their planning process.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 54 °F, and today you can expect dry skies and highs in the 70s. The week ahead of us looks a lot warmer than the week that was, which feels like a gift this far into October. Take advantage of it if you can—only a few more of these excellent fall weeks before winter starts to move in!
 

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This morning the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) released the 2022 Mathematics and Reading report cards for grades four and eight, giving the nation a comparison to 2019, pre-pandemic educational scores. Unsurprisingly, states across the country saw deep declines, and “the national average score declines in mathematics for fourth- and eight-graders were the largest ever recorded in that subject.” You can read through some of the highlights (lowlights?) directly from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics, and, if you can figure out the website, explore some of the more granular data. I liked this explainer piece from Chalkbeat, though, which includes some helpful charts and this clarifying bit on how to interpret these results: “The declines don’t mean that students failed to learn anything or forgot things they already knew between 2019 and 2022. Rather, students did learn over that period, but progressed at slower rates than their peers had in prior years.” Get ready, because you will almost certainly hear more about this over the course of the coming week. Governor Youngkin has remarks scheduled for 8:00 AM today at which he will no doubt point the finger at Democrats and the previous administration and use the nationwide scores decline as a reason to further defund Virginia’s public schools and continue to advance his charter-schools-everywhere plan. We’ll check back in tomorrow on what he’s got planned.
 

Last week the CDC added COVID-19 vaccines to the their schedule of childhood immunizations, and AXIOS Richmond’s Ned Oliver clarifies what that actually means. Here’s the important part: Only the General Assembly or the state Board of Health can change Virginia’s required school-age vaccines, despite whatever 100% non-existent mandate the Governor has vowed to fight/tweet against.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 38 °F right now, but warmer, beautiful weather is right around the corner. Today you can expect highs in the upper 60s and plenty of sunshine, which will continue right on through the weekend. Clouds may roll in at some point on Sunday, and we might see a bit of rain, but, overall, looks like a really excellent next couple of days!
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have low CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 126, 81, and 90, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 6.9. Our local COVID numbers continue to trend downward (or maybe fluctuate a little), and, this week, we’re starting to see less difference in the case rates across each locality. In fact, if you look at the entire map of Virginia, just a handful of counties are stuck in the medium level—pretty much mirroring the very green national map. This seems like progress, and you can help keep this progress going by getting both your COVID-19 booster and flu shot. Remember: This soothing green map just tracks COVID-19, flu is still out there lurking around, trying to ruin your Halloween plans!
 

In his newsletter, RPS Superintendent Kamras reports that the District has lost another student to gun violence. You should read the whole thing, which is gruesome and sad and horrible, but here’s a short section: “Our city is hurting. Despite the efforts of so many in our community – elders, government leaders, law enforcement, clergy, and more – the lethal pandemic of gun violence is tearing through our city at an alarming rate. Those who survive are left with scars – physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, relational – that will almost certainly never heal. Though we don’t have a vaccine in hand, we simply have to keep at it. Our children’s lives are literally depending on it. Let me remind everyone that this pandemic has killed far more of our young people than COVID-19.“
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 38 °F right now, but warmer, beautiful weather is right around the corner. Today you can expect highs in the upper 60s and plenty of sunshine, which will continue right on through the weekend. Clouds may roll in at some point on Sunday, and we might see a bit of rain, but, overall, looks like a really excellent next couple of days!
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have low CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 126, 81, and 90, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 6.9. Our local COVID numbers continue to trend downward (or maybe fluctuate a little), and, this week, we’re starting to see less difference in the case rates across each locality. In fact, if you look at the entire map of Virginia, just a handful of counties are stuck in the medium level—pretty much mirroring the very green national map. This seems like progress, and you can help keep this progress going by getting both your COVID-19 booster and flu shot. Remember: This soothing green map just tracks COVID-19, flu is still out there lurking around, trying to ruin your Halloween plans!
 

In his newsletter, RPS Superintendent Kamras reports that the District has lost another student to gun violence. You should read the whole thing, which is gruesome and sad and horrible, but here’s a short section: “Our city is hurting. Despite the efforts of so many in our community – elders, government leaders, law enforcement, clergy, and more – the lethal pandemic of gun violence is tearing through our city at an alarming rate. Those who survive are left with scars – physical, emotional, mental, spiritual, relational – that will almost certainly never heal. Though we don’t have a vaccine in hand, we simply have to keep at it. Our children’s lives are literally depending on it. Let me remind everyone that this pandemic has killed far more of our young people than COVID-19.“
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F, and if we didn’t hit an actual freeze overnight we got real close. Today, though, looks pretty nice with clear skies and highs in the 60s. The weather over the weekend—at least on Friday and Saturday—looks wonderful. Get excited!
 

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Today, City Council’s Finance committee meets and will consider three different papers that set the City’s real estate tax rate at three different levels: $1.20 (which keeps it where it stands today), $1.16, and $1.10. As I’ve written many times over the past several months, either of these rate cuts would be mistakes and wouldn’t provide the relief that these Councilmembers are looking for. Take a random example from the Washington Park neighborhood, where assessments have increased at some of the highest rates in the city. This property saw their total assessment rise almost 50%, from $81,000 in 2022 to $119,000 in 2023, which meant a $456 increase in their real estate tax bill—that’s a lot! If Council were to reduce the real estate tax rate to $1.16 this year, assuming no further increase to the property’s assessment (which is a dumb assumption), next year they would see their tax bill drop just $47. That’s still over $400 more than they were paying back in 2022 and hardly a substantial relief. Now, another example, this time from Windsor Farms, one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the City. This property, assessed at $1,564,000 in 2022 and $1,716,000 in 2023 (up just 10%), saw their tax bill increase $1,824. The four cent real estate tax cut would drop their tax bill by about $686. This an absolutely perfect picture of how equality is not equity. With an across-the-board rate cut, the City gives more money back to its wealthiest homeowners while failing to provide the substantial relief needed to those of modest means. Plus, remember that every penny reduction of the real estate tax rate means losing $3.5 million from the City’s budget, further stripping the City’s ability to provide services to those who need it most. I know Council is prevented from addressing this problem by state law in a lot of frustrating ways, but an across-the-board tax rate cut is not it. We need better solutions, and, until we can figure out what those are, I would recommend issuing one-time tax refunds using some of this year’s budget surplus. It’d at least give us a year to figure out how to truly, equitably address the issue at hand.
 

Jake Burns at WTVR reports on a new effort from our region’s police departments to reduce the number of catalytic converter thefts. Because sometimes science requires precious metals and always people will find a way to make money off of anything, catalytic converter thefts are on the rise in the region: Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield have seen a 20% increase in thefts this year over last (1,579 compared to 1,306). The local PDs have worked out a deal with local Midas locations to spray paint catalytic converters for free, hopefully deterring thefts (and deterring scrap metal dealers from buying stolen catalytic converters). I don’t know if it’ll work, but it’s cheap and it’s something!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 37 °F, and it is cold in my house! Today you can expect highs in the 50s and sunshine, but you’ll find me wrapped inside a sweatshirt. Temperatures should warm up, bit by bit, and find their way to a really lovely place by this weekend. For now, though, stay cozy out there!
 

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I swear this diagram was not in here when I read the story yesterday, but, as of right now, Richmond BizSense has a drawing of what Dominion’s Downtown electric car charging thing would look like. And it…looks like a surface-level parking lot? With some grass? Does Dominion really intend on replacing an entire office tower with a surface level parking lot right in the middle of Downtown? This seems bad for a host of reasons, but it’s especially counter to Richmond 300’s vision for the area: “New infill development matches the intensity of existing buildings and includes active ground floor uses that enliven the sidewalks.” Eco-parking (or whatever they’re calling it) is not that!
 

A couple days ago, RVAHub ran this story from the Capital News Service about traffic violence in the region. Reporter Darlene Johnson talked to Natalie Rainer who was out biking with Jonah Holland the day she was hit and killed by a driver. Incredibly, Rainer says she will ride a bike again, which is inspiring and heartbreaking in a bunch of ways for me. Johnson also talked to Doug Allen, board member of the Virginia Bicycling Federation, who has some good words about how to prevent horrible crashes like Jonah and Natalie’s in the future: “‘People will drive as fast as they feel comfortable driving,’ Allen said…[he] believes infrastructure design should be the primary focus of making streets safer.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 46 °F, and today’s highs will settle in just under 60 °F. That’s chilly! Temperatures will creep up over the next couple of days, but each evening still brings temperatures down in the 30s. Freeze warnings, frost warnings, bundle-up-in-the-morning warnings all abound!
 

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Michael Schwartz at Richmond BizSense has a fascinating report about the future of the old Dominion tower site down on 8th and Cary Streets: “The dormant, leveled-out lot will now be transformed into a site that will include 28 electric vehicle charging stations, all to be powered by solar panel canopies and wind turbines. The park will also have energy storage in the form of batteries, and green space for public use.” I don’t know how to feel about this! Scrapping plans for a huge tower and replacing it with 28 car chargers seems like…not the best and highest use of that land. On the other hand, more public (but privately owned) green space Downtown would be nice. On the third hand, parking spaces, car chargers, and landscaping seem like easy things to tear down if/when Dominion decides to build something else on that block. No renderings or plans or drawings exist for the space yet, but I’m sure we’ll get a peek in the coming weeks.
 

The City’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation Committee will meet today, and you can find their full agenda here. On deck, a presentation about GRTC’s Essential Transit Infrastructure plan, which would bring shelter or seating to 50–75% of bus stops by 2027. To reach this (in my opinion, ambitious) goal GRTC will probably need the City to chip in some money, support applications for funding (especially through the regional Central Virginia Transportation Authority), and make the current right-of-way process way more streamlined. That last thing I could see really throwing a wrench in the works. LUHT will also consider ORD. 2022–276, which would rename the “Robert E. Lee Memorial Bridge” to the “Belvidere Bridge.” While the easiest renaming choice for sure, and certainly better than the current name, I’m not sure we should proactively name things after mansions built by slave-owning colonial white men.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 46 °F, and today’s highs will settle in just under 60 °F. That’s chilly! Temperatures will creep up over the next couple of days, but each evening still brings temperatures down in the 30s. Freeze warnings, frost warnings, bundle-up-in-the-morning warnings all abound!
 

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Michael Schwartz at Richmond BizSense has a fascinating report about the future of the old Dominion tower site down on 8th and Cary Streets: “The dormant, leveled-out lot will now be transformed into a site that will include 28 electric vehicle charging stations, all to be powered by solar panel canopies and wind turbines. The park will also have energy storage in the form of batteries, and green space for public use.” I don’t know how to feel about this! Scrapping plans for a huge tower and replacing it with 28 car chargers seems like…not the best and highest use of that land. On the other hand, more public (but privately owned) green space Downtown would be nice. On the third hand, parking spaces, car chargers, and landscaping seem like easy things to tear down if/when Dominion decides to build something else on that block. No renderings or plans or drawings exist for the space yet, but I’m sure we’ll get a peek in the coming weeks.
 

The City’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation Committee will meet today, and you can find their full agenda here. On deck, a presentation about GRTC’s Essential Transit Infrastructure plan, which would bring shelter or seating to 50–75% of bus stops by 2027. To reach this (in my opinion, ambitious) goal GRTC will probably need the City to chip in some money, support applications for funding (especially through the regional Central Virginia Transportation Authority), and make the current right-of-way process way more streamlined. That last thing I could see really throwing a wrench in the works. LUHT will also consider ORD. 2022–276, which would rename the “Robert E. Lee Memorial Bridge” to the “Belvidere Bridge.” While the easiest renaming choice for sure, and certainly better than the current name, I’m not sure we should proactively name things after mansions built by slave-owning colonial white men.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 58 °F and rainy. The rain should taper off sometime this morning, but cooler temperatures move in this afternoon. Tonight we could see lows in the 30s, so pull your plants in if you haven’t already!
 

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Planning Commission meets today for their regularly scheduled meeting, and you can find the full agenda here. Of interest to me this morning is ORD. 2022–286 which would set the process in motion for the City to acquire a bunch of land from CSX for the James River Branch Trail. Here’s a 12-year-old PDF explaining the history of the project, which gives you some context on how long these things can take (who reading this remembers Councilmember Conner?), and here’s the James River Parks System Master Plan which mentions the trail a bunch of times, saying “in conjunction with ongoing and planned multimodal improvements, this [trail] would provide an important connection from the southeastern portion of the City to the heart of JRPS. It would also provide access to the City-owned property south of Ancarrow’s Landing that is proposed for addition into the JRPS.” Once this thing eventually gets built, we’d have a Capital Trail-style shared-use path making some interesting connections across a chunk of the Southside. Pretty cool stuff! I imagine Planning Commission, and ultimately City Council, will pass this without issue.
 

Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports on a potential new development coming to a surface-level parking lot adjacent to the Lowes on Broad Street. Platania reports that developers are planning a five-story apartment building with 301 units and a 423-space parking garage. Hmmm, I love replacing parking lots with homes, but seems like they’re planning on building too much new parking to go along with those new homes.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 58 °F and rainy. The rain should taper off sometime this morning, but cooler temperatures move in this afternoon. Tonight we could see lows in the 30s, so pull your plants in if you haven’t already!
 

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Planning Commission meets today for their regularly scheduled meeting, and you can find the full agenda here. Of interest to me this morning is ORD. 2022–286 which would set the process in motion for the City to acquire a bunch of land from CSX for the James River Branch Trail. Here’s a 12-year-old PDF explaining the history of the project, which gives you some context on how long these things can take (who reading this remembers Councilmember Conner?), and here’s the James River Parks System Master Plan which mentions the trail a bunch of times, saying “in conjunction with ongoing and planned multimodal improvements, this [trail] would provide an important connection from the southeastern portion of the City to the heart of JRPS. It would also provide access to the City-owned property south of Ancarrow’s Landing that is proposed for addition into the JRPS.” Once this thing eventually gets built, we’d have a Capital Trail-style shared-use path making some interesting connections across a chunk of the Southside. Pretty cool stuff! I imagine Planning Commission, and ultimately City Council, will pass this without issue.
 

Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports on a potential new development coming to a surface-level parking lot adjacent to the Lowes on Broad Street. Platania reports that developers are planning a five-story apartment building with 301 units and a 423-space parking garage. Hmmm, I love replacing parking lots with homes, but seems like they’re planning on building too much new parking to go along with those new homes.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 54 °F, and the next couple of days look like absolute stunners. Expect highs in the 70s, sunshine, and some serious hammock weather. There’s a small chance of rain on Sunday, and then cooler temperatures arrive on Tuesday—but you can safely ignore all of that while you enjoy a wonderful weekend.
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have low CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 113, 55, and 110, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 8.9. These numbers have all, generally, plateaued compared to last week. You know the deal at this point: Get your fall COVID-19 booster (now available to everyone five and older) and your flu shot. No one wants to either (or, gah!, both) of these diseases, so just go schedule your appointment this weekend. The Mayor got his two shots this week, which means you can probably find the time to do so, too.
 

Ned Oliver at AXIOS Richmond reports on the City’s efforts to open four emergency shelters…but not until mid November at the earliest. See above about the cold front moving in next week and then wonder why, after what seems like years and years at this point, the City still hasn’t figured out a sustainable emergency shelter solution.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F and rainy. You can expect the rain to, as predicted, continue for most of the day with temperatures staying below 70 °F until things dry out a bit. Don’t worry, though, after this rain moves through, it looks like we’ll be set up for a really pleasant weekend.
 

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Yesterday, the FDA authorized new, bivalent COVID-19 boosters for children (ages six and up for the Moderna booster, and ages five and up for the Pfizer booster). CDC quickly followed suit, and now, I think, we wait on the Virginia Department of Health to update their guidance. This is exciting news, and the quick pace of these eligibility expansions is a pretty welcome change to the last two years of waiting, waiting, and waiting. Well, wait no longer! Make your appointment today if you haven’t yet—everyone aged five and older is now eligible! But do give your primary care physician, local pharmacy, or health department a call before you rush on over with your small child in tow. It’ll surely take folks a minute to get these new boosters up and running.
 

Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a quick update on Bon Secours and Richmond Community Hospital. Kolenich points to this recent public letter by Rep. McEachin calling the health system to task: “During our meeting, I was troubled by [Bon Secours’s] explanation that the community served by Richmond Community Hospital did not demonstrate sufficient need to justify retaining more comprehensive services…Seeing a lower patient volume in disadvantaged communities speaks to the barriers people face in accessing health care—rather than the absence of need for health care.” McEachin is still looking for answers—which I think a lot of folks are—and I’m glad Kolenich is still covering this story.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 46 °F, and we’ve got another great fall day ahead of us. Rain moves into the region tomorrow, so get out there and enjoy today before things get soggy.
 

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Tonight at 6:00 PM, RVA Rapid Transit will host a public comment workshop—both in-person (at the Main Library (101 E. Franklin Street)) and virtual). I think putting on a workshop like this is a really smart idea. Lots of folks want to do a public comment but aren’t sure what exactly to say and, maybe more importantly, what not to say. Now you’ve got someone willing to help with exactly that!
 

If you can’t make it tonight, though, here are Ross’s Top Three Tips For Lazy But Effective Email Public Comments:
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 42 °F, and today looks really lovely. Expect highs in the mid 70s, clear skies, and a strong desire to lay down in the grass somewhere. The rest of this week looks pretty good, too, with a possible chance for storms on Thursday. P.S. I hope everyone had a great Yorktown Victory Day.
 

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Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that City Council voted unanimously to create a Civilian Review Board, passing ORD. 2022–261 in its clean, unamended form. Suarez says Councilmember Lambert “changed her mind” about the amendment to require a five-year residency requirement from board members and that allowed Council to go ahead and vote on the ordinance last night. If they’d amended the paper, it’d have needed to go through another round of public comment. So, without that out of the way and pending some hiring that the City has to do, Richmond, after two years, now has a CRB. A bittersweet step forward, maybe, because I think most folks interested and involved in this long process are probably disappointed with the CRB we ended up with—especially in its limited scope and authority. But the CRB exists, and because it exists as a result of legislation, a future, more progressive City Council can change its scope and authority by passing new legislation. I think this might have been the just about the best result given the current makeup of the Mayor’s administration and City Council.
 

You should read RVAgreen 2050’s email newsletter this month. First, you’ll learn about “energy burden,” the percentage of income a household pays towards their energy bill. If you’re putting 6% towards your power bills you have a “high” energy burden, 10% or more and you have a “severe” burden (and are considered in “energy poverty”). RVAgreen has a bunch of maps showing who in Richmond has a higher energy burden, and you can probably take an educated guess at what those maps look like without even tapping on the link. The energy burden map of Black households in the city is especially depressing. It sounds dumb and inconsequential, but, with some households spending 10% or more of their income on energy, making homes more energy efficient could help with housing affordability. OK, second, if you scroll to the bottom of the newsletter you’ll see that the Office of Sustainability has hired a new Director, Laura Thomas. Thomas is a Richmond native, returned home (as, eventually, everyone does) from Florida where she served as the Sustainability Program Executive for the city of Largo. Welcome back to Richmond, Thomas, and good luck!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and yesterday’s wonderful weather returns today. Expect highs around 80 °F with lots of sunshine throughout the entire day. This weekend looks rad, too, with slightly cooler temperatures and pleasant conditions as far as the eye/extended forecast can see. I hope you make the most of it!
 

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As of last night, the CDC’s COVID-19 Community Levels for Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield are low across the board! The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 155, 46, and 88, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 8.1. I’m not really sure what to make of the 3x disparity in case rate between Richmond and Henrico—it’s large enough that it almost seems like a data issue? Regardless, levels are low, get your COVID-19 booster to keep them that way, etc, etc. However, Katelyn Jetelina says not to get too excited about the current low levels, and points to a growing wave in Europe, which we typically see mirrored in the United States. From her State of Affairs post this past Wednesday: “Interestingly, no new subvariant is driving this wave, as the majority of cases are still the ‘old’ BA.5 subvariant. This means changing weather, waning immunity, and/or changing behaviors are the culprit. This theory is only solidified when we see patterns are not changing in neighboring country Israel, for example, whose weather hasn’t started changing yet.” So maybe seriously consider making an appointment for a COVID-19 booster before the weather changes on this side of the ocean?
 

Speaking of fun things to do while the COVID-19 levels are low: The Richmond Folk Festival kicks off tonight at 6:30 PM, runs through Sunday evening, and you can find the full, exhausting, overwhelming schedule here. I mean, it’s an embarrassment of riches, where do you even start? Personally, I’m fascinated by Sacred Steel and you have a couple opportunities to check out Fran Grace—so maybe start there! As for getting down to Brown’s Island, the City will close a couple of streets over the weekend, and I’m sure parking will be dumb, so consider riding a bike or taking the bus (#2, #3, #5, or #14 will all get you reasonably close). The Folk Festival is one of Richmond’s biggest, coolest things, so get out there and fill up your ears!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and, don’t worry, the warm weather has returned! Today you can expect wonderful highs near 80 °F paired with some beautiful afternoon sunshine. Honestly, I don’t think you could ask for a better Thursday. I hope you can find the time to get out there and enjoy it!
 

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A downside to scrapping Navy Hill—which, don’t get me wrong, needed to be scrapped—is that we’re still left with a miserable section of Leigh Street between Fourth and Eighth that dips down to serve the basement of the Coliseum. One clever piece of the Navy Hill project would have filled in that dip, returned Leigh Street to grade, and immensely improved bike and pedestrian connections through that part of town. No Navy Hill means no return-to-grade for Leigh Street, but today the Urban Design Committee will consider streetscape improvements that include a new, at-grade multiuse path along the north side of the street. The path will be “wider than a standard sidewalk” and will connect to the bike lanes over the viaduct at 11th Street “using a new street crossing specifically for use by bikes.” If you can read engineering diagrams, scroll through this PDF to get a better sense for the project. This is great news for me personally, as I ride through there all the time and hate descending into the depths of Leigh Street, but, more importantly, this new path will fill in an annoying gap in our bike network.
 

Ian M. Stewart at VPM has a really nice look back at the Capital Trail after seven years of being one of our region’s best amenities. The Trail is such an amazing, diverse, all-ages-and-abilities space! It’s a wonderful place with a wonderful vibe, and if you haven’t been out that way you really, really should. We’re lucky to have the trail, and its tremendous success as a locality-spanning multi-use path makes the work on future trails, like the Fall Line Trail, exponentially easier.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and today looks warmer than the last two days! You can expect highs near 70 °F and maybe, just maybe, a glimpse of the sun later this afternoon. If you’re one of the thousands and thousands of people out there hoping for a perfect October weekend for Richmond to host it’s biggest and bestest festival…looks like you’re in luck!
 

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The reporters have now had the chance to catch a couple hours of sleep and file their stories about Monday night’s RPS School Board meeting, and you can read good recaps from Megan Pauly at VPM and Jessica Nocera at the Richmond Times-Dispatch. Turns out the part I couldn’t track on Twitter yesterday was that School Board’s five-member bloc, after twice failing to scrap the current curriculum, voted to instead create working groups to evaluate the curriculum and create a three-year plan by the end of the current year. I think that’s an unrealistic deadline given that the last month and a half of the year is typically a disaster, but we’ll see what these workgroups come up with in the next 61ish days (42 weekdays (including holidays)). Tap through to Pauly’s piece to see the results of a teacher survey which has the majority of respondents supporting the math and science curricula (57% vs. 43% and 61% vs. 39%, respectively) and about an even split over the reading curriculum (49% vs. 51%). Maybe more interesting, or at least spicier, Jessica Nocera quotes some emails between the School Board and the Virginia Department of Education, which criticize Boardmember Gibson’s habit of constantly launching into surprise motions and says that the Board doesn’t even have the authority to immediately scrap curriculum anyway: “When things are allowed into motion without being on the agenda as an action item, it undermines the processes you all are attempting to institutionalize…The conversations in the two previous board meetings about eliminating the curricula (effective immediately) is not an option for RPS based on the current Memorandum of Understanding.” By the way, Kids First RPS has a whole bucketful of FOIA’d emails, if you’d like to dig into what exactly the School Board gets up to between meetings. The whole situation is exhausting—and I’m not even involved. I don’t know that this is what RPS needs to spends its incredibly limited energy on, but now it’s definitely happening. I’m preemptively thankful for the teachers that decide to participate in these workgroups and hope their work over the coming weeks will result in better experiences and outcomes for RPS’s students (and that they’ll get a chance to take a break at some point before the year’s end).
 

Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams has a good column about Governor Youngkin’s anti-trans policies. He talks to Jamie Nolan, co-executive director at Side by Side, who has this excellent quote about “parent’s rights”: “It’s a privileged phrase. It’s rooted in this idea that every youth grows up in a home with two loving, caring, adult individuals who are providing good examples…Every home is different. Every child is different. And every relationship that they have with their parent or caring other is different.” Any thoughtful person would know not every home is supportive of trans kid—in fact, the Trevor Project says “fewer than 1 in 3 transgender and nonbinary youth found their home to be gender-affirming” and “45% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year.” We need policies that support and protect kids, not policies that potentially put them in danger.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 49 °F, and we’ve got another chilly, dreary day ahead of us. Today you can expect highs around 60 °F and a chance of rain here or there. Don’t worry, typical October weather—aka Richmond At It’s Best—returns tomorrow, and the weekend ahead of us looks amazing.
 

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Richmond’s School Board met last night, and now we wait for reporters to try and cover what happened at the middle-of-the-night meeting—boardmembers were still voting on motions at 11:30 PM, well past the Hour of Good Decisions. However, from what I can gather from The Tweets, it looks like the Board solidly passed Boardmember Doerr’s resolution to reject the Governor’s anti-trans policies. All members voted in favor except for 4th District Member Jonathan Young, who is clearly and actually a Republican. That’s something that the 4th District, which went for Biden in 2020, should remember when he runs for City Council next go around. The Board also got back into their discussion about scrapping the District’s curriculum, but I couldn’t really follow what happened. I’m going to wait patiently for our education reporters to get some sleep and submit their stories to their editors.
 

VPM’s Connor Scribner, who clearly has the best name for a journalist, reports on City Council’s competing plans to lower the real estate tax. Councilmember Trammell and Nye have introduced a paper to lower the rate from $1.20 per $100 of your home’s assessed value to $1.16 per $100 (ORD. 2022–271), and Trammell has introduced her own paper to lower the rate all the way down to $1.10 (ORD. 2022–278). I disagree with both, but the latter is reckless. I’ve written about why these across-the-board cuts are a bad idea, but Councilmember Addison puts it really well: “Every penny [of the real estate tax rate] is about $3.4 to $3.5 million of revenue that would be lost to the future budget…One of the challenges with a tax-rate reduction is that our revenues and our forecasted revenues derive how we are going to do our capital budget. And so, when you change the tax rate, therefore it changes our ability to borrow.” So even with the smaller, four-cent reduction, we cut $14 million dollars from the City’s budget and impact our ability to pay for current and future capital projects—parks, side walks, bike lanes, community centers, paving, all kinds of things. Which $14 million of projects and services would these two councilmembers suggest cutting? And what do Richmonders get in return? Not much! The math is pretty straight forward: If your home is assessed at $292,000, then (($292,000/$100) * $.04 tax reduction) / 12 months = … $9.73 in tax savings per month. That’s just not the kind of impact we’re looking for. Like I keep saying, these across-the-board cuts are lazy and don’t really provide any sort of relief for the folks who need it most. City Council needs to get creative and find new ways—ways allowed by state law, which are precious few—to help folks who can’t afford rising assessments without putting the city’s future at risk.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 53 °F, and today looks like our last dry, hurricane-remnant-free day for a bit. Expect highs around 70 °F with a cloudy sky while we finally get ready for some rain. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says that while the wet weather will wait until tomorrow to show up, “the early arrival of rain means the weekend (although cloudy) will likely have a lot of rain-free time with clouds and some scattered showers but likely NOT A weekend washout.” This seems like a great combination of much-needed rain and some time to spend outside over the weekend!
 

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The 2022 Market Value Analysis is now available for all of your housing data needs. The MVA “categorizes local market conditions within communities by compiling home sales, owner occupancy rates, bank sales and other indicators between 2018–2021.” Sounds boring, I know, but it’s basically an extremely data-heavy picture of the housing market that you can poke around in. For example, two stats, just pulled from the press release, that paint a grim picture: 1) The number of homes selling for less than $250,000 fell from 48% to 34% between 2018 and 2021 as the number of homes selling for more than $450,000 rose from 15% to 21%, and 2) MVA data reveals that in areas with lower-priced homes, 25% of home sales were from owners to investors compared to less than 5% in stronger market neighborhoods. Like I said, grim. Anyway, take some time to scroll through the overview, and, if interactive maps aren’t your thing, you can download the 110-page PDF here.
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Eric Kolenich and Michael Martz continue their reporting on Bon Secours and Richmond Community Hospital in the East End. This piece is worth reading to get some of the context and history around what services Richmond Community Hospital offers currently and how that has changed over the years due to disinvestment.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 53 °F, and today looks like our last dry, hurricane-remnant-free day for a bit. Expect highs around 70 °F with a cloudy sky while we finally get ready for some rain. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says that while the wet weather will wait until tomorrow to show up, “the early arrival of rain means the weekend (although cloudy) will likely have a lot of rain-free time with clouds and some scattered showers but likely NOT A weekend washout.” This seems like a great combination of much-needed rain and some time to spend outside over the weekend!
 

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The 2022 Market Value Analysis is now available for all of your housing data needs. The MVA “categorizes local market conditions within communities by compiling home sales, owner occupancy rates, bank sales and other indicators between 2018–2021.” Sounds boring, I know, but it’s basically an extremely data-heavy picture of the housing market that you can poke around in. For example, two stats, just pulled from the press release, that paint a grim picture: 1) The number of homes selling for less than $250,000 fell from 48% to 34% between 2018 and 2021 as the number of homes selling for more than $450,000 rose from 15% to 21%, and 2) MVA data reveals that in areas with lower-priced homes, 25% of home sales were from owners to investors compared to less than 5% in stronger market neighborhoods. Like I said, grim. Anyway, take some time to scroll through the overview, and, if interactive maps aren’t your thing, you can download the 110-page PDF here.
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Eric Kolenich and Michael Martz continue their reporting on Bon Secours and Richmond Community Hospital in the East End. This piece is worth reading to get some of the context and history around what services Richmond Community Hospital offers currently and how that has changed over the years due to disinvestment.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 48 °F, and we’ve got another amazing, even cooler, day ahead of us. Today you can expect dry skies and highs around 70. Looking towards the weekend, and it is officially time to start keeping an eye on Hurricane Ian and its potential impacts on our region. As of right now, NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says we should expect moderate to heavy rain on Saturday and Sunday as the storm’s remnants move through Richmond. Spend 10 minutes today thinking about your plan should we see significant rain and lose power for a bit—never hurts to be prepared!
 

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Megan Pauly at VPM reports on yesterday’s student walkouts protesting Governor Youngkin’s regressive anti-trans policies for public schools. Pauly talked to students from all over the region about the protests—from Glen Allen High School, Henrico High School, Midlothian High School, Appomattox Regional Governor’s School, and Open High School—representing Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield school districts. The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Jessica Nocera and Anna Bryson spoke to a few of our elected representatives and grabbed a few videos of the walkouts, too. Apparently students at over 100 schools across the state walked out or had some sort of protest! These diverse, statewide student protests—which fill me with big, proud feelings—were timed to coincide with the Governor’s anti-trans policies dropping on the State’s online public-comment platform, Virginia Regulatory Town Hall. As of right now, just a couple of days into the comment period, over 25,000 comments already exist. Yes, you probably should go ahead and make your own comment in opposition to the policies, it’s easy and certainly can’t hurt, but the Virginia Superintendent of Public Instruction has already said the administration doesn’t really care about the total number of comments and will only consider “substantive” comments. Your guess is as good as mine for how they plan on pulling out the “substantive” comments from a bucket of tens of thousands.
 

Eric Kolenich and Michael Martz at the RTD have a follow up report to this week’s story about Bon Secours “buying medicine at a discounted price through a federal program intended for low-income patients and dispersing it to customers throughout the area, regardless of their financial ability.” It sounds like Bon Secours has not violated the letter of the federal law, but opening clinics in wealthy parts of Henrico and Chesterfield certainly doesn’t feel inline with the intended spirit of the program. In fact, Mayor Stoney submitted this letter to Health and Human Services Secretary asking them to “investigate the deeply troubling use of section 340B by Bon Secours”, saying “It is immoral to profit off the backs of Black and Brown residents under the guise of ‘healthcare,’ and it must cease immediately.” And Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams looks a bit further down the road and writes about how Bon Secours can make amends for extracting resource and profits from residents by investing in a fully functioning, full-service hospital in the East End.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 56 °F, and we’ve got another really wonderful day ahead of us (at least weatherwise). Today you can expect highs in the 70s and sunshine—keep an eye out for some gusty gusts this afternoon, though. If you have planters on your deck railing that keep getting blown off, maybe set them on the ground after lunch.
 

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Yesterday, the Virginia Department of Health expanded the eligibility criteria for the monkeypox vaccine, adding to the list of eligible folks “any person, of any sexual orientation or gender, who is living with HIV/AIDS; or any person, of any sexual orientation or gender, diagnosed with any sexually transmitted infection in the past three months.” If you’re a newly eligible Richmonder or Henricoan, set a reminder to fill out the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts’ updated Vaccine Interest Form this coming Monday (if you meet the previous eligibility criteria, go ahead and fill out that form right now). This is the second recent expansion of eligibility, which suggests, at least to me, that the tension between vaccine supply and vaccine demand is starting to balance out.
 

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports that last night City Council unanimously approved the resolution finalizing RVA Diamond Partners as the developer for the Diamond District (RES. 2022-R055). I’m not really sure what happens next, but I bet it’s a whole lot of paperwork. The City hopes to have the new stadium up and running by the 2025 baseball season, which really feels right around the corner. Time to get started tearing things up!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 60 °F, and today’s weather looks great. You can expect highs around 80 °F and a pleasant break in the humidity. I hope you spent some time outside this weekend and will find more time to do so today, because fall is officially The Best Time In Richmond. Take advantage of it!
 

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The New York Times published a long piece this weekend with the subhead: “Bon Secours Mercy Health, a major nonprofit health system, used the poverty of Richmond Community Hospital’s patients to tap into a lucrative federal drug program.” To quote a bit: “Richmond Community consists of little more than a strapped emergency room and a psychiatric ward…Yet the hollowed-out hospital — owned by Bon Secours Mercy Health, one of the largest nonprofit health care chains in the country — has the highest profit margins of any hospital in Virginia, generating as much as $100 million a year, according to the hospital’s financial data. The secret to its success lies with a federal program that allows clinics in impoverished neighborhoods to buy prescription drugs at steep discounts, charge insurers full price and pocket the difference.” Seems real bad on a local level, but also yet another signal that our entire healthcare system is so, so messed up.
 

City Council meets today with a pretty full agenda—lots of budge reallocations and special use permits. Two things to note, though: the ordinance to rezone the area around the Coliseum (ORD. 2022–246) and the resolution officially selecting RVA Diamond Partners LLC as the developer of the Diamond District (RES. 2022-R055). You should definitely flip through this PDF about the latter, it’s got some great slides about the community benefits attached to the development along with a high-level explanation of how the funding for this project works (check out slides 47–51). The City will create a Community Development Authority that will issue bonds to finance infrastructure, a park, and the baseball stadium. Those bonds will be repaid by taxes and fees collected from within the project area. This financing mechanism should sound vaguely familiar, because it’s very TIFlike and similar to how Navy Hill would have been funded. The massive difference here is in the size and scope of the area from which the taxes and fees are collected. Navy Hill planned to capture and funnel resources from the entirety of downtown to fund new development north of Broad. The Diamond District will only earmark funding from the project area, which is a small triangle surrounding the Diamond that is mostly parking lots and off-limits fields—a triangle that, at the moment, doesn’t generate a ton of tax revenue anyway. If revenue in the triangle exceeds the bond payments, the City keeps it. If the revenue falls short of the bond payments, the developer is on the hook to fill in the gap. There may be plenty of twists, turns, and gotchas in the text of the actual developer agreement, but, at least on the surface, this project seems just leaps and bounds better for the City than Navy Hill.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 60 °F, and today’s weather looks great. You can expect highs around 80 °F and a pleasant break in the humidity. I hope you spent some time outside this weekend and will find more time to do so today, because fall is officially The Best Time In Richmond. Take advantage of it!
 

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The New York Times published a long piece this weekend with the subhead: “Bon Secours Mercy Health, a major nonprofit health system, used the poverty of Richmond Community Hospital’s patients to tap into a lucrative federal drug program.” To quote a bit: “Richmond Community consists of little more than a strapped emergency room and a psychiatric ward…Yet the hollowed-out hospital — owned by Bon Secours Mercy Health, one of the largest nonprofit health care chains in the country — has the highest profit margins of any hospital in Virginia, generating as much as $100 million a year, according to the hospital’s financial data. The secret to its success lies with a federal program that allows clinics in impoverished neighborhoods to buy prescription drugs at steep discounts, charge insurers full price and pocket the difference.” Seems real bad on a local level, but also yet another signal that our entire healthcare system is so, so messed up.
 

City Council meets today with a pretty full agenda—lots of budge reallocations and special use permits. Two things to note, though: the ordinance to rezone the area around the Coliseum (ORD. 2022–246) and the resolution officially selecting RVA Diamond Partners LLC as the developer of the Diamond District (RES. 2022-R055). You should definitely flip through this PDF about the latter, it’s got some great slides about the community benefits attached to the development along with a high-level explanation of how the funding for this project works (check out slides 47–51). The City will create a Community Development Authority that will issue bonds to finance infrastructure, a park, and the baseball stadium. Those bonds will be repaid by taxes and fees collected from within the project area. This financing mechanism should sound vaguely familiar, because it’s very TIFlike and similar to how Navy Hill would have been funded. The massive difference here is in the size and scope of the area from which the taxes and fees are collected. Navy Hill planned to capture and funnel resources from the entirety of downtown to fund new development north of Broad. The Diamond District will only earmark funding from the project area, which is a small triangle surrounding the Diamond that is mostly parking lots and off-limits fields—a triangle that, at the moment, doesn’t generate a ton of tax revenue anyway. If revenue in the triangle exceeds the bond payments, the City keeps it. If the revenue falls short of the bond payments, the developer is on the hook to fill in the gap. There may be plenty of twists, turns, and gotchas in the text of the actual developer agreement, but, at least on the surface, this project seems just leaps and bounds better for the City than Navy Hill.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 54 °F, and that cooler, fall weather has finally arrived! Today you can expect highs in the low 70s, sunshine, and a beautiful start to the weekend. Temperatures may heat up a little on Sunday and Monday, but the vast majority of the next ten days looks lovely. I hope you have some excellent weekend plans to go alongside this excellent weekend weather!
 

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As of last night, the CDC’s COVID-19 Community Levels for Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield are all medium across the board—but only just! The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 133, 105, and 101, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 10.6. If the current trends continue, next week we could see the first low Community Levels in…who knows how long! That’s exciting news, and, for now at least, the creeping fall hasn’t yet brought along with it creeping COVID-19 case counts or hospitalizations. Let’s keep it that way: If you haven’t yet made an appointment to get your new, bivalent COVID-19 booster (and this year’s flu shot), just go ahead and do that today. Do your part in helping keep these coronanumbers down!
 

Early voting for the November 8th election starts today at your local registrar’s office, if you’re looking for something civics-y to do this weekened. However, if you still need a minute to get yourself together, you have plenty of time to request an absentee ballot or even register to vote. However: Don’t put either of those things off, don’t let the off-cycle election deter you, and don’t let the last nine months of lessons go to waste! Make a plan cast your ballot today.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 68 °F, and cooler weather arrives this afternoon! You can expect highs in the upper 80s, but then, at some point after lunch, a cold front moves through dropping temperatures and maybe even dropping some rain (finally). Tomorrow, and for the foreseeable future, you can expect temperatures mostly in the exceedingly temperate 70s.
 

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VPM’s Whittney Evans and Megan Pauly talked to a law professor and a couple legislators about the enforceability of the Governor’s new anti-trans policies for public schools. Unsurprisingly, it doesn’t seem like the Governor has the authority to make these changes in policy without some sort of action by the General Assembly, an ongoing theme with this administration. I liked this quote from Del. Marcus Simon from Fairfax: “There’s a whole bunch of things that are wrong with the way this was done, but I think that’s mostly because the governor isn’t interested in the policy here.”
 

Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense explains why there’s been an item about Virginia Union University’s tower signage floating around on various City Council agendas for a while now. Apparently, the signs went up without approval (signage is zoning!), and they may run afoul of the Commission of Architectural Review and historic preservation guidelines. Money can solve a lot of problems, though: “A nearly finalized agreement with the state Board of Historic Resources to allow the signage to remain in place includes an annual payment of $35,000 that VUU would be required to pay every year that the signs remain up, among other provisions.” The light-up signs seem fine to me—it is a college campus after all.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F, and we’ve got another hot day ahead of us. Expect highs around 90 °F as we wait for cooler temperatures—and maybe even some rain—to show up tomorrow afternoon (fingers crossed!).
 

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The old, deposed Confederate Monuments are now the responsibility of the Black History Museum and the Valentine. It’s a big responsibility, and, as they figure out what to do with these things, they want to get it right: “The Black History Museum & Cultural Center of Virginia (BHMVA) takes the responsibility of managing and having ultimate accountability for the disposition of the Confederate monuments very seriously. We are committed to ensuring the origin of these objects and their purpose are never forgotten: that is the glorification of those who led the fight to enslave African Americans and destroy the Union. We are likewise committed to the opportunities these monuments and our work related to them create: the opportunity to use the monuments as tools for education healing, and reconciliation as we deepen our understanding of an essential element of the American story: the expansion of freedom.” Part of that thoughtful process includes this quick survey that you should fill out. I felt surprising emotions when I saw the Valentine’s temporary Jefferson Davis display, so I’m pretty excited for whatever the Black History Museum ends up putting together. Collecting these massive things in a single, appropriate space with the right context should be pretty powerful.
 

The Chesterfield Observer reports that GRTC and Chesterfield County have agreed on a one-year expansion of bus service along Midlothian Turnpike. As soon as fall 2023, we could see 30-minute bus service along Midlo, continuing from its existing terminus at the city line, all the way out to Buford Road—including stops at Johnston-Willis Hospital and Chesterfield Towne Center. First, this is great news. Midlothian Turnpike is one of our region’s primary corridors and needs high-quality and frequent (more frequent than this!) bus service. Second, I’m nervous about setting up a one-year pilot. Folks don’t make life decisions based on bus service existing for a single year; you’re not going to take a job at the hospital if you’re not sure you’ll be able to get to work a year from now. But! Chesterfield had great success with the newish bus service down Route 1, so I’m hopeful they’ll be able to replicate that with this new service out Route 60.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F, and we’ve got another hot day in front of us. Expect highs around 90 °F again as we patiently wait for Friday’s cooler temperatures (and maybe even temperatures that starts with a six!). However, for today, stay cool stay to hydrated!
 

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Patrick Larsen at VPM has a few quotes and thoughts from local School Districts about Governor Youngkin’s new regressive anti-trans public school policies. Of course I deeply appreciate RPS Superintendent Kamras quickly and forcefully asking the School Board to “object to this model policy as vociferously as we possibly can to prevent its implementation.” But I also like where Dot Heffron, Chesterfield School Board Member, is coming from, too. She seems frustrated at the no-notice, drastic shift in a policy that’s been, in her words, “a nonissue.” RPS School Boardmember Liz Doerr introduced a motion last night to reject the Governor’s new model policy, an action which should show up on their October 3rd agenda.
 

Speaking of the RPS School Board, KidsFirst RPS live-tweeted their meeting last night and reports that the Board wrapped things up at 8:41 PM! That’s way before bad-decision o' clock!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F, but warmer weather returns today and continues until Thursday. Expect highs near 90 °F and lots of sunshine. The end of this week looks pretty nice though—now just to maintain until then!
 

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This past Friday, Governor Youngkin’s administration issued new, horrible guidelines for how public schools should treat transgender kids. From Hannah Natanson at the Washington Post: “The administration of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) this weekend sharply restricted the rights of transgender students, sending schools into turmoil and drawing strong denunciations from Democratic legislators and some educators, but earning applause from Republicans…The new ‘model policies’ — a version of which must be adopted by all of the state’s 133 school districts next month — will require transgender students to access school facilities and programs matching the sex they were assigned at birth. The policies also make it onerous for students to change their name and gender at school.” You can read the new model policies here, ghoulishly titled “2022 Model Police’s on the Privacy, Dignity, and Respect for All Students and Parents in Virginia’s Public Schools”. About the new policies, RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras says, “This is unacceptable. Public schools should be welcoming and inclusive, not exclusionary. The very least we can give our students is dignity and respect. This action takes it away.” Democratic legislators say the new policy violates the spirit of a 2020 law passed by the GA and, as such, will be challenged in court. We’ll see. We’ll also see how progressive school districts respond should VDOE adopt this new, regressive policy. We’ve watched conservative school districts, like Hanover County’s, decide to just…not comply…with current policies that protect trans students, and those districts have suffered literally zero consequences.
 

Related, I thought this was a really good insight from Ned Oliver and Karri Peifer at AXIOS Richmond: “The administration’s rollout of the policy offers a textbook example of Youngkin’s strategy of delivering dramatically different messages to different audiences. Youngkin exclusively announced the policy to a right-wing national media outlet, the Daily Wire, on Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, his administration never issued a press release to Virginia-based media outlets, instead emailing reporters to promote efforts to hold down college tuition costs.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 59 °F, and today you can expect beautiful weather with low humidity and highs right around 80 °F. The amazing temperatures continue right on through the weekend, too, so I hope you have something planned that involves at least some sort of outdoor physical activity. I know that this is probably 2022’s False Fall and we should prepare ourselves for an impending Second Summer, but, dang, this weekend’s gonna feel great!
 

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As of last night, the CDC’s COVID-19 Community Levels for Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield are all medium across the board. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 170, 131, and 156, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 13. The big question I have is whether or not the approaching fall and winter will bring with it another coronawave or if we’re really starting to see a permanent decrease in the spread of COVID-19 in our communities. We’ll find out in 6 weeks, I bet. Until then, you, personally, can help keep those numbers down (and help keep yourself out of the hospital) by making an appointment for one of those new bivalent boosters. The region is lousy with appointments, and you can probably even find one today at your local pharmacy. The best part: These boosters work against the original strain of COVID-19 and the newer Omicron strains—all in a single shot! Why not get your flu vaccine while you’re there, too? You’ll walk out having strong protection against all sorts of things! You’ll be the She-Hulk of respiratory diseases!
 

You should read through 1st District Councilmember Andreas Addison’s September newsletter. He’s been the advocate on Council for implementing a Land Value Tax in Richmond, and he explains where we are in that process—delayed and slow moving, which isn’t great news as Council already has an ordinance to lower the real estate tax on their agenda. Maybe that’s not a done deal, though! Addison says, “We are exploring a real estate tax rebate funded through our FY2022 Budget Surplus based upon last years approved budget. I am interested in capping or limiting the amount real estate assessments can be increased per year to 5%…We have a proposal on the table to lower the tax rate. I am concerned that the solution of only lowering the rate will not address the underlying problem in how we calculate our taxes and how an inflated housing market is currently driving this problem.” Yes to all of this. These are great examples of creative ways to provide tax relief to those who need it while not hamstringing Richmond Of The Future should, for whatever reason or recession, assessments and revenue crater. Here’s the rub: With no other solutions on the table, Councilmember Nye and Trammell’s plan to cut the real estate tax by four cents will most likely pass. However, if Councilmember Addison can quickly tee up some of these alternatives, a majority of Council may be willing to delay any rate cuts, giving time to fully flesh out a LVT plan for next September.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 60 °F, and we’ve got another beautiful day ahead of us. Expect highs in the low 80s and a continued break in the humidity. I hope everyone can find some time to sit quietly outside, enjoy the weather, and watch the world go by for at least a minute or two.
 

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All you gotta do is ask! The person behind the Richmond Department of Transformation (assuming it’s not just an incredibly advanced AI), put together a mostly-accurate-but-totally-serviceable map of the existing and proposed bike lanes across the city). Here’s what I want you to do: Turn off the bike share station layer, zoom out a bit, and then toggle the “Public Survey 2022” layer on and off. You should see how these new, proposed bike lanes aren’t just isolated islands but connect and infill the existing bike network. You should also see that we’ve got massive gaps in that existing bike network that we need to address. Still though, the progress made over the last couple of years is really impressive. P.S. The Department of Public Works still wants your feedback on those six proposed bike lanes—it only takes a couple of minutes and gives you the opportunity to ask for more physical protection on each of these designs.
 

City Council’s Finance and Economic Development committee meets today at 1:00 PM and will consider, among other things, the resolution to approve RVA Diamond Partners LLC as the developer of the Diamond District (RES. 2022-R055). At this point, Councmembers Newbille, Robertson, Lambert, Addison, Jordan, Lynch, and Jones have all signed on as patrons—which means, barring something completely unexpected, this is gonna zoom through committee today and easily pass Council at their next meeting in a couple weeks.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 59 °F, and NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says we haven’t seen a morning in the 50s since June 21st. Today you can expect highs in the 80s, mostly sunshine, and a strong pull to take as many meetings or calls or classes outside as possible. Enjoy, and get ready for more of the same over the next couple of days!
 

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You should read RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras’s email from last night. First, to see the real and horrible impact gun violence has on our city’s children and families. Second, to read his thoughts on the current efforts by School Board to scrap-and-rewrite the District’s curriculum. Here are three points he brings up that address a handful of concerns I’ve heard floating around and mentioned during various public comment periods: “1) Curricula are the floor, not the ceiling. Teachers are free to make adjustments to the curricula as necessary to meet the unique needs of their students. 2) No RPS teacher will be disciplined for making adjustments that they feel are necessary to meet the needs of their students. 3) Curricula are living things. They need to continue to evolve based on student and teacher needs. RPS is committed to that process.”—emphasis his.
 

Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams write about that same gun violence and how RRHA’s new CEO, Steven Nesmith, has a hard and complicated job: “And this is part of what separates Nesmith’s job from that of other real estate developers. To be successful, he must not only replace the aging bricks and mortar of RRHA’s housing stock. He must foster a sense of security among tenants beset by gun violence and chronic economic and housing insecurity.” Nesmith, who grew up in a public housing neighborhood in Philly, already seems pretty involved in the community—despite not officially starting until October.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 69 °F, and today looks like the beginning of a great stretch of weather. Expect highs in the low 80s, less humidity, and enough sun to get it done. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says this is “the first of a lot of LOW HUMIDITY DAYS.” Me and my sweaty undershirts are incredibly excited about this development!
 

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RPS’s School Board met last night for a marathon meeting, and KidsFirst RPS live-tweeted the entire thing—right up through when the Board moved into a closed session at 12:43 AM. That’s a 6+ hour meeting spanning two different days! Bananas! No one makes good decisions after midnight, especially not decisions that impact thousands of kids and families. I’m sure we (those of us who did not voluntarily tune in to a 6-hour public meeting) will get a full breakdown of the decisions the Board did make once reporters have a chance to catch a couple hours of sleep. Poking around on Twitter this morning, though, and it does sound like the Board failed in another attempt to scrap the District’s curriculum (on a 4–4–1 vote, with Boardmember Harris-Muhammed abstaining). That’s twice now the Board has tried to delete the current curriculum and replace it with something homegrown, and twice that the motion failed when one of the five-member voting bloc didn’t go along with their majority. I think that’s interesting.
 

It’s been a while, but I’ve got another bike lane survey for you to fill out! The City’s Department of Public Works needs a second round of feedback for bike infrastructure on six corridors across Richmond: Warwick Road, Admiral/School Streets, Moore Street, W. Marshall Street, Norfolk Street, and N. Sheppard Street. DPW will take this next round of feedback, tweak the designs if needed, and then begin construction as soon as this fall! Exciting stuff for a Tuesday morning. Slight tangent: I haven’t had time to do this, but someone should take these proposed bike lanes and drop them on the map of existing bike lanes so folks can see how the new projects help make important connections. For example, the proposed Admiral Street bike lane would (finally!) provide a safe, protected bike connection between Brook Road and Lombardy Street heading south. As someone who rides through there all the time, I’m incredibly excited…but it’s hard to know the big picture when you’re just looking at the tiny little map in the survey.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 69 °F, and today looks like the beginning of a great stretch of weather. Expect highs in the low 80s, less humidity, and enough sun to get it done. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says this is “the first of a lot of LOW HUMIDITY DAYS.” Me and my sweaty undershirts are incredibly excited about this development!
 

Water cooler

RPS’s School Board met last night for a marathon meeting, and KidsFirst RPS live-tweeted the entire thing—right up through when the Board moved into a closed session at 12:43 AM. That’s a 6+ hour meeting spanning two different days! Bananas! No one makes good decisions after midnight, especially not decisions that impact thousands of kids and families. I’m sure we (those of us who did not voluntarily tune in to a 6-hour public meeting) will get a full breakdown of the decisions the Board did make once reporters have a chance to catch a couple hours of sleep. Poking around on Twitter this morning, though, and it does sound like the Board failed in another attempt to scrap the District’s curriculum (on a 4–4–1 vote, with Boardmember Harris-Muhammed abstaining). That’s twice now the Board has tried to delete the current curriculum and replace it with something homegrown, and twice that the motion failed when one of the five-member voting bloc didn’t go along with their majority. I think that’s interesting.
 

It’s been a while, but I’ve got another bike lane survey for you to fill out! The City’s Department of Public Works needs a second round of feedback for bike infrastructure on six corridors across Richmond: Warwick Road, Admiral/School Streets, Moore Street, W. Marshall Street, Norfolk Street, and N. Sheppard Street. DPW will take this next round of feedback, tweak the designs if needed, and then begin construction as soon as this fall! Exciting stuff for a Tuesday morning. Slight tangent: I haven’t had time to do this, but someone should take these proposed bike lanes and drop them on the map of existing bike lanes so folks can see how the new projects help make important connections. For example, the proposed Admiral Street bike lane would (finally!) provide a safe, protected bike connection between Brook Road and Lombardy Street heading south. As someone who rides through there all the time, I’m incredibly excited…but it’s hard to know the big picture when you’re just looking at the tiny little map in the survey.