🎹 Good morning, RVA: Gun violence, real estate tax rate, and the Mighty Wurlitzer

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!
 

Water cooler

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.“
 

Yesterday, City Council’s Finance committee met to consider the three papers dealing with Richmond’s real estate tax rate. The Committee forwarded all three—including the one which would keep the rate where it is today—to full Council with “no recommendation.” Certainly not the bold move I was hoping for. If you didn’t read it, yesterday I did some napkin math to show how inequitable an across-the-board rate cut would be (something I haven’t even seen Council request from staff yet). Today, I’ll just put it plainly: With the proposed rate cuts, people of modest means get $50 of relief, rich people get $500, and the city loses $15 million to pay for critical public services because they have to give so much money back to rich people. This is not an equitable or clever solution to rising assessments! There are other ways to help the folks who need help without impacting the City’s financial future and its ability to provide basic services. I really hope Council finds their way to an alternate path forward, because with three plans in front of them and a lack of other good options, I’m nervous a majority of Council will just vote for “the one in the middle” and end up cutting $15 million of future revenue.
 

Keep an eye on this: VPM’s Ben Paviour reports that Governor Youngkin’s Superintendent of Public Instruction is still futzing around with the history and social science standards for public schools. She’s requested multiple delays which, originally, seemed technical or logistical in nature, but, now, sentences like this make me skeptical: “Balow said her team was also reaching out to unspecified ‘individuals and entities’ for more feedback and asked the board to vote to delay the standards update when they meet Thursday.” We all saw what happened when Hanover County reached out to “individuals and entities” for feedback on their anti-trans policies.
 

Rich Griset at Style Weekly talked to Bob Gulledge, the organist at the Byrd Theatre, about the Wurlitzer organ’s history and a very important organ-related fundraiser this weekend. The organ is in need of some basic repairs, and on Sunday at 2:00 PM the Byrd will host a screening of Bella Lugosi’s Dracula with all the proceeds benefiting the Mighty Wurlitzer. Tickets are $15, for a good cause, and totally worth it.
 

This video—taken in actual space by actual astronauts—reenacting one of the iconic scenes from 2001 is just absolutely wonderful. People can be great.
 

This morning’s longread

Inside the fantastical, pragmatic quest to make “hybrid” meat

I think this concept of hybrid meat—mostly plants, a little bit of lab-grown cells—is pretty smart. Who knows if it’ll ever make its way to market (or avoid having its own horrible impact on the environment)!
 

We’re far from finding out if the deep skepticism is warranted; new technologies take decades, not years, to pan out (or sputter out). If the skeptics are right, though, there might seem to be no simple escape from the meat paradox. Then what? There may be a third way: blending plant-based meat ingredients with just enough cultivated meat to make a “hybrid” burger. In much the same way that hybrid vehicles acted as a bridge between the electric vehicle experimentation of the 1970s to their rapid commercialization today, hybrid meat products may do the same for cultivated meat. They could renew excitement in meat alternatives as the novelty of Impossible Whoppers and Beyond Meat McPlants wears off, while also giving the cultivated meat sector a testing ground for its grand ambition of one day ending conventional meat production.
 

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Picture of the Day

Some real leafy stunners over on VUU’s campus.