😷 Good morning, RVA: Masks on transit, zero-fare buses?, and budget amendments

Good morning, RVA! It’s 37 °F, and there’s a dang freeze warning in effect tonight through 9:00 AM tomorrow morning. Today, you can expect highs in the mid 50s, but tonight temperatures could dip below freezing and threaten all the hard work you put in to your spring plantings. Again: Good luck, outside plants!
 

Water cooler

Alright, it’s Tuesday, and while the CDC’s COVID-19 Community Level is low across the region, case rates have crept upwards over the last couple of weeks. Currently, the seven day average of cases per 100,000 people in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield is 152, 123, and 84 respectively—with all localities seeing increases over the last week. Once those case rate numbers pass 200 per 100,000, we’ll start to see localities in our region flip to yellow (or medium) on the CDC’s map. Meanwhile, as cases increase across the country, a federal judge in Florida struck down the mask requirement on public transportation. The NYT reports in the aforelinked article that “the ruling left it up to individual airlines and local transit agencies to decide what to do, and by late Monday, the nation’s largest airlines had dropped their mask requirements for domestic flights.” If you want to search them out, there are some pretty gross videos floating around of airline employees and passengers gleefully celebrating the end of the mandate mid-flight—sometimes with cheers and song. Vomit. This decision applies not only to planes, which I don’t have a lot of feelings on, but also buses, which provide essential transportation to millions of workers every day—and, at least in Richmond, to mostly folks with lower incomes. We’ll have to wait and see how GRTC decides to move forward with masks, but remember: You can totally keep wearing your own mask, and there are lots of great reasons other folks may want to stay masked. Maybe someone lives with a person who can’t get vaccinated (like a baby!) or spends a lot of time with an older, immunocompromised person (like grandma!). Maybe they just don’t want to inhale other folks' germs, COVID or otherwise.
 

Wyatt Gordon at Greater Greater Washington has an absolutely fascinating article about the future of the Mayor’s promise to keep GRTC fare-free in Richmond. Some background: The money to subsidize Richmond’s zero-fare program comes from a Department of Rail and Transportation grant which requires a $1 million match. Turns out, none of that $1 million is included in the Mayor’s proposed budget, despite several very public statements in support of zero fares, like this one: “As long as I am Mayor of @CityRichmondVA, I pledge to maintain fare-free @GRTCTransit in the City!” Seems bad, but I imagine the Mayor and his administration don’t feel like it’s solely Richmond’s responsibility to subsidize free fares for the entire region. Instead, Gordon reports that “City officials insist GRTC should fill the $1 million gap itself using federal funds leftover from the initial pandemic response, but such a move would be considered an increase to the transit provider’s budget and thus require the approval of GRTC’s full board.” This isn’t the worst idea, but it doesn’t seem sustainable and feels like it’s setting GRTC up to cover the ever-increasing costs of free fares (which means the transit agency will be able to provide less and less frequent service, one of the arguments I originally made against moving the system entirely fare-free). As of today, GRTC’s board includes, for the first time, representatives from Henrico, and, as of last night, includes Richmond’s CAO Lincoln Saunders. I think it’s a pretty safe bet that the newly comprised Board will vote to cover the million bucks, thus saving localities from doing so. But what happens when the required match increases to $3 million and then $5 million? Who will pay for that? Localities? GRTC? Will we spend even more of the CVTA’s money, which was intended to bring fast, frequent, and reliable transit to the entire region? You can watch the GRTC Board’s discussion over on their YouTube at 8:00 AM.
 

Sort of related, you can find all of City Council’s operating budget amendments and capital budget amendments over on the City’s legislative website. The operating budget amendments total $22 million and…include a $1 million amendment from Councilmember Addison to cover the required zero-fare match! Other high-dollar proposed amendments: $3.5 million for the Richmond Ambulance Authority, $2.9 million for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, $1 million for portable rent subsidies, and $1 million for homeless sheltering & services.
 

Welp, can’t not link to this: Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden will teach folks how to be good stormwater stewards tonight, from 5:00–7:00 PM, at Gallery5. Learn about “the sources and effects of pollutants on plan and animal species, and landscape-based strategies we can all adopt at home to be good water stewards.” The event is free, and you can even pick up some free seeds form the Garden’s seed library while you’re there!
 

This morning’s longread

The Hidden and Eternal Spirit of the Great Dismal Swamp

I don’t think this is the first thing I’ve linked to about the Great Dismal Swamp, and it probably won’t be the last. What a fascinating place that I definitely need to plan a bike trip around.
 

From the late 17th century to the end of the Civil War, thousands of maroons—runaways who obtained their freedom by occupying remote and uninhabited regions—lived in relative secrecy throughout the 750-square-mile wilderness. No one is sure exactly how many people escaped enslavement within its confines, but this much is clear: The Great Dismal Swamp, an area regarded by colonial settlers as so utterly inhospitable that its very air was once said to be toxic, was over multiple centuries home to the largest maroon community in the United States.
 

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

Picture of the Day

The Blue Ridge Mountains!