Good morning, RVA! It’s 54 °F, and we’ve got a chance for rain here and there throughout today. Highs near 80 °F, though! If you can, make sure you spend some socially-distanced time in your backyard or on your balcony.

Water cooler

Richmond Police are reporting that Javon A. Tuck, 34, was shot to death on the 1900 block of Mechanicsville Turnpike yesterday at 1:11 AM.

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 77 positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth, and two people in Virginia have died as a result of the virus. For the first time, VDH reports three cases in Richmond, bringing the number of cases reported in The Big Three Localities (Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield) to 10. The City—which reports four positive cases of coronavirus, highlighting, once again, the need for high-quality information—says all of the infected folks are at home in isolation and none of them have required hospitalization. The map of positive cases on the VDH site now perfectly highlights Virginia’s Urban Crescent.

I guess I had just assumed that once the local universities announced they’d move to remote instruction following Spring Break, that that would be The Way of Things for the rest of the semester. That’s now official as VCU has announced remote classes for the remainder of the semester and canceled commencement. Here’s a similar announcement from UR. Also, Henrico and Chesterfield school districts have joined Richmond in closing schools until the middle of April.

Scrolling through the calendar of Richmond’s public meetings this morning, as one does, I noticed that City Council has canceled the first three of their planned budget work sessions. The City is required by State law to pass a budget no later than May 31st, and they’ve just canned all public meetings until at least after April 6th. Stressful! That’s not a whole lot of time for folks to weigh in. C. Suarez Rojas at the Richmond Times-Dispatch looks into how a pandemic-induced state of emergency sits in tension with public meeting laws. I hope Council will use this extra time to think through some really clever ways to get folks involved remotely that aren’t just lazily defaulting to “Facebook Live.” Our public meetings should not be restricted to walled-off, privately-owned platforms!

Yesterday, I speculated that GRTC might could move to free fares and back-door boarding in the near future, and, effective today, March 19th, they’ve done just that. This decision will help protect operators from close contact with riders and help limit the spread of the coronavirus. GRTC has also dumped a few more Pulse buses onto that route, meaning more frequency and, with any luck, fewer people on each bus. Not to always be Budget Guy, especially considering we don’t even know when the first budget session will take place, but City Council should think long and hard about cutting any local funding for GRTC from this upcoming budget. During this crisis, ridership will drop and fare revenue will decrease, but the City should not addresses this by cutting something as absolutely critical as bus service. Potholes can wait. Council and GRTC should also follow New York City’s lead and start publicly asking state and federal legislators to prepare to bail out the transit system once this present moment passes.

I can’t remember if I mentioned it here or not, but the Supreme Court of VIrginia issued a judicial emergency (PDF) effective March 16th–April 6th. This includes, among other things, a prohibition on new eviction cases. Armed with that knowledge, check out this strong work yesterday by 9th District Councilmember Mike Jones, from his Twitter: “Crisis averted @ Southwood Apts. 40 residents rec eviction notices. I gave the manager a call to see if they were aware that the courts were not evicting residents. She just rec a call from their attorney saying they couldn’t evict. I asked her to please notify the residents. 🙏🏾” We need clever policies to allow people to socially distance themselves, but we also need leaders willing to do the work to enforce those policies. I’m very thankful for Councilmember Jones this morning.

Yesterday, Baltimore’s State Attorney asked the governor to use his clemency powers to release folks in jail over the age of 60, with an immunodeficiency-related illness, who’ve been approved by the parole board, or who are due to complete their sentence in the next year. Ali Rockett and Frank Green at the RTD say the ACLU of Virginia is leading the charge to protect people who have been incarcerated locally from the coronavirus. They’ve already started to push the Richmond Magistrate’s Office and Police Department to “allow the release of individuals awaiting trail who are charged with nonviolent felonies and do not pose a risk to the community.”

This morning’s longread

The Curious Tale of the Salish Sea Feet

The Pacific Northwest is weird, right? Weird in a great way, but still weird.

To the intrigue and often horror of Pacific Northwesterners, in 2007 feet began washing up along the shores of the Salish Sea, an inland ocean spanning nearly 500 miles from Olympia, Washington, the state’s capitol, to Desolation Sound, in British Columbia, Canada. Today the tally is 21 feet and counting (15 in BC, six in Washington). So prevalent are the gruesome discoveries that the BC coroner’s office has a map marked up with each new find: Foot #1 — a right — found in August 2007 floated up to Jedediah Island in a generic white sneaker with navy blue accents; Foot #5 in a muddy Nike; Foot #13 wore black with Velcro. New Year’s Day 2019 delivered the most recent foot, number 21, to a beach in Everett. It tumbled ashore in an aging boot, its condition indicating it had been out to sea for “some time,” according to local police.

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This morning’s Instagram