Good morning, RVA! It’s 38 °F, and today looks chilly with highs topping out around 50 °F sometime later this afternoon. You can also expect the sun to come out and, with any luck, dry up all of yesterday’s soggy rain. Look forward to more of the same—with maybe some more clouds—for the rest of the week.
 

Water cooler

City Council meets today for their first real, full meeting of 2023, and you can find the agenda here. It’s a pretty full agenda—31 total items—but all of them live on the Consent portion. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen an empty Regular Agenda. Also Council-related, check out this overview of the City’s budget put together by Steve Skinner, City Council’s public information officer. It’s filled with lots of neat facts to tide you over until we officially kick off this year’s budget season—which should be sometime soon with the superintendent’s presentation of needs to the RPS School Board. Of course, last year, getting the School Board to actually approve their budget so the Mayor could introduce his budget, was a whole situation. I’m looking forward to less situations this year, to be honest!
 

Megan Pauly at VPM has a good explainer on Governor Youngkin’s newest plan to defund public schools, this time through a program he’s calling “education savings accounts.” Here’s just a couple of the quotes from the experts Pauly talked to: “Voucher programs [like the education savings accounts] give money to private schools and private education providers that can discriminate, and pick and choose which students they want to admit, pick and choose whether they’re going to discipline students for things like their sexual orientation, and pick and choose whether they’re going to offer things like special education to students who need it” and “Chad Stewart, Virginia Education Association’s policy analyst, points out that the funds families could receive through an ESA account would cover a fraction of the cost of most private schools in the state.“ and “Rob Shand, a professor of education policy at American University, has studied voucher programs in other states and said they tend to most greatly benefit more affluent families.“ So whatever blah-blah-blah you may hear about this or similar programs, remember that the consistent goal of this administration—and Republicans nationwide—is the systematic dismantling of our public schools. I still don’t think Virginia’s Senate has even the smallest interest in this sort of thing (although someone did remind me that it’s difficult to predict what Sen. Morrissey will do with any given bill).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and cooler temperatures have returned! Today you can expect clear skies and highs in the 50s. It’s not what I’d call “classic January” weather, but it’s certainly less ominously warm. You can expect the same sort of deal tomorrow and even cooler temperatures—maybe even cold!—on Sunday.
 

Water cooler

As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield all have a high CDC COVID-19 Community Level. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 72, 226, and 182, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 21.8. Despite the sizable difference in case rates across the region, it’s the hospital admissions number that’s put us back into the high community level. If you want to dig into the numbers a bit more, look at the hospitalization graphs on the aforelinked CDC page and you’ll see some worryingly hockey-stick shapes. It is definitely time to break out the masks again! Remember: When in a high level, CDC recommends wearing a high-quality mask or respirator, and, if you are at high risk for getting very sick, you should consider avoiding non-essential indoor activities in public where you could be exposed.
 

Anna Bryson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on Governor Youngkin’s newest plan to defund public schools using something called “education savings accounts.” The idea is that the state would direct its per-pupil funding not to public schools, but, instead, into these savings accounts that parents could ostensibly use to pay for private school tuition. Delegate VanValkenburg, a public school teacher himself, points out just one concern with this proposed program: “There is no accountability with the money…St. Christopher’s School and Collegiate School don’t have more spots. Ideological schools and for-profit schools will pop up, offer inferior product, and discriminate based on their beliefs. All with public monies.” If the state’s Republicans were truly concerned about the quality of education Virginia’s students receive, they’d fully fund public schools instead of attempting—and failing—to do exactly the opposite. I’ll definitely keep an eye on this, but, like the Governor’s whiff on charter school last year, I don’t imagine the State Senate will have any appetite at all for defunding public schools. You can follow HB 1508, introduced by Del. Davis, over on the State’s legislative website.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 60 °F, and our streak of weirdly warm weather continues. Today, while you can expect highs near 70 °F (!?), which sounds great, you should also get ready for some rain to move through, which sounds less great. I hope you spent some time outside yesterday, because today looks soggy.
 

Water cooler

Unlike the U.S. House of Representatives, City Council successfully elected their new leadership last night: 9th District Councilmember Mike Jones will serve as president and 4th District Councilmember Kristin Nye will serve as vice president. You can check out the new committee assignments here. I’m bummed to see Jones leave the Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee, which now consists of Councilmembers Addison (chair), Robertson (vice chair), and Lambert. Also of note, Councilmember Trammell remains the chair of the Public Safety committee, with Lambert and Nye joining. Interestingly, Public Safety is Trammell’s only committee assignment other than the Organizational Development committee (which the entire Council sits on). Like I said yesterday about School Board, the role of president doesn’t hold a ton of power, but the president does get to run the meetings which can certainly set the tone for how the group works together—especially during budget season. We’ve seen more and less effective presidents over the years, and I’m excited to see how Jones fills the role.
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s editorial board has basically endorsed keeping Acting Police Chief Rick Edwards around, at least until the end of Mayor Stoney’s second term. Beware if you tap through: There are some right-wing talking points sprinkled throughout the piece. On the whole, though, I agree with the RTD. With only two years left in Stoney’s time at City Hall, I just don’t think the head job at the RPD will attract top-tier candidates in a national search. If Edwards can avoid major missteps—like, oh, I don’t know, inventing a fake mass shooting plot—I say give him a chance.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 60 °F, and our streak of weirdly warm weather continues. Today, while you can expect highs near 70 °F (!?), which sounds great, you should also get ready for some rain to move through, which sounds less great. I hope you spent some time outside yesterday, because today looks soggy.
 

Water cooler

Unlike the U.S. House of Representatives, City Council successfully elected their new leadership last night: 9th District Councilmember Mike Jones will serve as president and 4th District Councilmember Kristin Nye will serve as vice president. You can check out the new committee assignments here. I’m bummed to see Jones leave the Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee, which now consists of Councilmembers Addison (chair), Robertson (vice chair), and Lambert. Also of note, Councilmember Trammell remains the chair of the Public Safety committee, with Lambert and Nye joining. Interestingly, Public Safety is Trammell’s only committee assignment other than the Organizational Development committee (which the entire Council sits on). Like I said yesterday about School Board, the role of president doesn’t hold a ton of power, but the president does get to run the meetings which can certainly set the tone for how the group works together—especially during budget season. We’ve seen more and less effective presidents over the years, and I’m excited to see how Jones fills the role.
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s editorial board has basically endorsed keeping Acting Police Chief Rick Edwards around, at least until the end of Mayor Stoney’s second term. Beware if you tap through: There are some right-wing talking points sprinkled throughout the piece. On the whole, though, I agree with the RTD. With only two years left in Stoney’s time at City Hall, I just don’t think the head job at the RPD will attract top-tier candidates in a national search. If Edwards can avoid major missteps—like, oh, I don’t know, inventing a fake mass shooting plot—I say give him a chance.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 28 °F, and you can expect highs in the mid 40s later today. Tomorrow, rain soggily tramps back in and maybe sticks around most of the day. After we muddle through that, though, we’ve got clear and bright days—with teeth-chattering lows—on through to next week.
 

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Democracy! Yesterday’s Democratic firehouse primary to nominate a candidate for Virginia’s 4th Congressional seat was really special. I voted at Diversity Thrift with thousands of other folks who patiently stood in line for an hour on a cold and dark Tuesday evening. The vibe was so positive and wonderful, and I truthfully had a blast. Thank you to all of the volunteers who pulled off an incredible event at Diversity—and I hear things went just as smoothly at Dogtown Dance and at the other polling locations across the region. Vote counting starts this morning at 10:00 AM (Twitter), so tune back in later today for results!
 

Yesterday, GRTC announced that they would continue fare-free bus service through at least June 2024. Here’s the important bit: “GRTC recently received funding from the Virginia Department of Rail and Public Transportation to support the program through June 2025 with assurances that a local match would be made to offset the total cost of the annual $5.6 million program.” This is good news; the zero-fare program removes a lot of the friction of riding the bus, improving access for lots of folks. I still think our region has a lot of work to do to make our free-to-ride system better and more useful for riders, and I worry that all of this money going to offset fares could be used instead to expand and improve bus service. Some specific concerns: Since the system redesign a couple of years back, two of our most frequent, 15-minute routes—the #4 and the #5—have quietly become barely acceptable 30-minute routes; GRTC is considering bisecting the #1, ending cross-town, one-seat rides; and every day a handful of buses just never make it into service causing frequent delays. There’s lots to fix and improve in addition to keeping fares free, and I hope we don’t lose sight of that over the next couple of years. No one will ride the bus—no matter how free it is—if it’s slow and doesn’t get you where you need to go.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 25 °F, and it’s cold outside! Today you can expect highs around 40 °F as things start to warm up a bit before the weekend. Disappointingly, despite the sub-zero temperatures forecast for this weekend, I think our chance for a white Christmas has left the building.
 

Water cooler

Today’s the day! Residents of Virginia’s 4th Congressional District have the exciting opportunity to cast a ballot in a rare December primary. First, if you’re not sure which district you live in, you can check your voter information on the Department of Elections website. Second, you can see the full list of the candidates that will appear on the ballot here. Third, you should make a plan to get to one of the eight polling locations scattered across the District (four of which are in and around Richmond) between 6:00 AM and 7:00 PM. Fourth, I’ll be voting for Sen. Jennifer McClellan, and I can’t think of anyone better equipped to represent me in Congress than her. I so rarely get to vote for someone with absolutely zero reservations, but this is definitely one of those times!
 

It’s sort of news-business inside baseball, but the Richmond Times-Dispatch editorial board has a good and even-handed editorial about Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act and how government agencies can abuse the current regulations. I think most folks’ eyes glaze over when you mention “FOIA legislation”, but, let’s be honest, other than zoning and rezoning, this email newsletter lives for news about the news. FOIA is complicated! Having both submitted and received FOIA requests, I know how important they can be to keeping the public informed but also how they can sometimes be used in bad faith to gum up the gears of government. Del. Roem’s proposals—which requires state government to fulfill FOIA requests that take no more than two hours free of charge—is a good compromise between transparency and the practical constraints of reality. So far all of Roem’s bills have failed to make it out of committee and will probably continue to do so given the current administration, but I still think it’s good and important work.
 

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Unfortunately, we’ve got to wait another season to pass before the horrible fencing around MDP Circle comes down.

Unfortunately, we’ve got to wait another season to pass before the horrible fencing around MDP Circle comes down.

Good morning, RVA! It’s 25 °F, and and today looks cold and bright. Expect highs in the mid 40s, but colder temperatures after the sun sets—which, at 4:54 PM, is remarkably soon today.
 

Water cooler

I always learn something when reading Councilmember Jordan’s email newsletter and recommend you subscribe even if you don’t live in the City’s 2nd District. This week, the Councilmember has a short update on the status of MDP Circle: “…the hope was to have irrigation work and landscaping done by the end of the year. Because of the lack of planting inventory late in the planting season, and other logistical difficulties, DPW has not yet begun that work. As we go into the new year, we expect to see DPW out in the circle working on fixing the irrigation system, followed by planting and landscaping in the early Spring. Once that work is completed, the fencing and jersey barriers will be removed.“ Disappointing but predictable after all the time the landscaping plan spent caught up in the Urban Design Committee / Planning Commission process earlier this fall. Now, unfortunately, we wait for another season to pass before the horrible fencing around the circle can come down.
 

It’s still very early, but Ned Oliver at Axios Richmond has a good reminder of how things will mostly likely play out as the General Assembly grapples with abortion law in the post-Roe v. Wade era. Democrats currently hold a one-seat majority in the Senate, which potentially dooms any Republican plans to further restrict the rights of women in Virginia. However, two things stress me out: 1) That majority includes loose-cannon and sometimes-abortion-opponent Joe Morrissey, and 2) The special election to fill Rep. McEachin’s congressional seat will take place on February 21st, three days before the end of the General Assembly session. I don’t know enough about GA procedural rules, but I am a little nervous about Republicans doing some shenanigans to quickly pass an anti-abortion law in a (theoretical) narrow window of time between elections when Democrats do not hold a majority in the Senate. Some hobbyist parliamentarian let me know if this is something to worry about or not!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F, and yesterday was too freaking gloomy. Today, though, we can expect sunshine, highs in the 50s, and a great opening to the—at least for me—long-awaited weekend. In fact, NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says today is the verified best weather day of the week. Get out there and enjoy it!
 

Water cooler

As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield continue to have medium CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 86, 152, and 128, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 11.2. If the third straight week at a medium level does not convince you to take a few extra measures to keep you and yours healthy, maybe reading the latest post by Katelyn Jetelina about longcovid will do the trick. 16 million working-age Americans have longcovid and it will have a total economic cost of about $3.7 trillion. Your risk of getting longcovid is about twice that of being permanently injured in a car crash (1-in-370 compared to 1-in-700). Luckily, getting vaccinated not only helps prevent you from getting COVID original, but studies have show that vaccinated people are less likely to get longcovid, too. Double lucky, at least for babies, everyone aged six months and older is now eligible for not only a COVID-19 vaccine but one of the new, bivalent vaccines that also protects against the omicron variant. If you haven’t yet for some reason, make a plan this weekend to get everyone in your immediate sphere of influence boosted and keep your holidays healthy.
 

Exciting news about next week’s Firehouse Primary to fill Virginia’s 4th Congressional District seat: Delegate Lamont Bagby has suspended his campaign and endorsed Senator Jennifer McClellan. Bagby’s not the only one to endorse the senator, though, and you can read through her list of more than 75 endorsements (and counting!) here. McClellan has done the seemingly impossible and found something that the Mayor, a majority of City Council, and a majority of the School Board will all agree on—herself! If you live in the 4th, you can (and should, because there will be other candidates on the ballot) vote for Senator McClellan on Tuesday, between 6:00 AM and 7:00 PM at one of eight location around the region.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and its gross and rainy outside right now. Unfortunately, you can expect the cold and the rain to continue on and off until this evening. But! The weekend ahead of us—which is so, so close—looks bright, crisp, and wintery.
 

Water cooler

While the CDC will not update their COVID-19 Community Levels until this evening, all signs point to another week at a medium level in our region. This means a lot of disease floating around in our communities as we head into the holidays and start spending more time with the vulnerable people in our lives. Remember: One of the best ways to keep your gross germs to yourself is to stay home if you’re sick, and, regardless of your symptoms, take a COVID-19 test before heading out to your next holiday party. To that end, this morning you can order four more free COVID-19 tests from the United States Postal Service to be delivered next week, just in time for the High Holidays. Even if you have a a few tests laying around, go ahead and place an order—they’re free and you will almost certainly use all of them over the next couple of months.
 

Yesterday, the Mayor held a press conference to talk through the future of the City’s streets, infrastructure, and Vision Zero—Lyndon German at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has the details. I feel ambivalent about this sort of thing. Over the past six years, the City has spent tens of millions of dollars catching up on decades of deferred maintenance to our streets. It’s been impressive to watch—especially compared to years previous when other folks were in charge. That said, I don’t see the appropriate amount of urgency for making our streets safer as traffic violence continues to rise. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very thankful that our Department of Public Works staff has a pretty incredibly success rate at applying for (and winning!) long-term funding for ongoing infrastructure projects. But there are many, many, many things the City could do to make our streets safer without millions of dollars. We could allow neighborhoods to create pandemic-era “slow streets” (which Richmond never did a single time) or close streets entirely to vehicular traffic, we could increase the frequency of bus routes making public transportation more useful, and we could use cheap, temporary infrastructure to pilot tactical traffic calming projects. There are thousands of things we could be doing in addition to working hard at squeezing those long-term funding sources. So, yes, the City has come a long, long way since 2015, but I don’t think “we’ve applied for a bunch of money” is an exciting and bold plan to adequately address the issues we’re facing in 2022. What we’ve done is good, but we need to do better.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and its gross and rainy outside right now. Unfortunately, you can expect the cold and the rain to continue on and off until this evening. But! The weekend ahead of us—which is so, so close—looks bright, crisp, and wintery.
 

Water cooler

While the CDC will not update their COVID-19 Community Levels until this evening, all signs point to another week at a medium level in our region. This means a lot of disease floating around in our communities as we head into the holidays and start spending more time with the vulnerable people in our lives. Remember: One of the best ways to keep your gross germs to yourself is to stay home if you’re sick, and, regardless of your symptoms, take a COVID-19 test before heading out to your next holiday party. To that end, this morning you can order four more free COVID-19 tests from the United States Postal Service to be delivered next week, just in time for the High Holidays. Even if you have a a few tests laying around, go ahead and place an order—they’re free and you will almost certainly use all of them over the next couple of months.
 

Yesterday, the Mayor held a press conference to talk through the future of the City’s streets, infrastructure, and Vision Zero—Lyndon German at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has the details. I feel ambivalent about this sort of thing. Over the past six years, the City has spent tens of millions of dollars catching up on decades of deferred maintenance to our streets. It’s been impressive to watch—especially compared to years previous when other folks were in charge. That said, I don’t see the appropriate amount of urgency for making our streets safer as traffic violence continues to rise. Don’t get me wrong, I’m very thankful that our Department of Public Works staff has a pretty incredibly success rate at applying for (and winning!) long-term funding for ongoing infrastructure projects. But there are many, many, many things the City could do to make our streets safer without millions of dollars. We could allow neighborhoods to create pandemic-era “slow streets” (which Richmond never did a single time) or close streets entirely to vehicular traffic, we could increase the frequency of bus routes making public transportation more useful, and we could use cheap, temporary infrastructure to pilot tactical traffic calming projects. There are thousands of things we could be doing in addition to working hard at squeezing those long-term funding sources. So, yes, the City has come a long, long way since 2015, but I don’t think “we’ve applied for a bunch of money” is an exciting and bold plan to adequately address the issues we’re facing in 2022. What we’ve done is good, but we need to do better.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 26 °F, and that’s cold! Today you can expect highs in the mid 40s, clouds, and a vibrating sense of anticipation as we wait for tomorrow’s storms. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden expects an inch or more of rain and warns that we should all prepare for a cold and wet Thursday.
 

Water cooler

Alright, Congressional primary news! The Firehouse Primary to determine the Democratic nominee for Virginia’s 4th Congressional District will take place this coming Tuesday, December 20th. You can vote at one of five locations across the district at any point between 6:00 AM and 7:00 PM, and, at the moment, you have the choice between State Senator Jennifer McClellan and two men. Potential candidates still have until 12:00 PM on Friday to collect signatures and pay a fee ($3,480, which is, interestingly, 2% of a Congressional salary), so we might see another candidate or two added to the list. I’ll wait for the finale slate before saying too much, but this sure seems like a missed opportunity to have used ranked-choice voting. If you’d like to volunteer to help out with the primary on Tuesday, you can fill out this form.
 

Eva Russo at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has pictures of work crews lifting the corpse of A.P. Hill out of the ground, wrapping it in a Virginian flag, and putting it on a gurney. I find this photoset, which is not at all explicit or gruesome, to be incredibly surreal.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 26 °F, and that’s cold! Today you can expect highs in the mid 40s, clouds, and a vibrating sense of anticipation as we wait for tomorrow’s storms. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden expects an inch or more of rain and warns that we should all prepare for a cold and wet Thursday.
 

Water cooler

Alright, Congressional primary news! The Firehouse Primary to determine the Democratic nominee for Virginia’s 4th Congressional District will take place this coming Tuesday, December 20th. You can vote at one of five locations across the district at any point between 6:00 AM and 7:00 PM, and, at the moment, you have the choice between State Senator Jennifer McClellan and two men. Potential candidates still have until 12:00 PM on Friday to collect signatures and pay a fee ($3,480, which is, interestingly, 2% of a Congressional salary), so we might see another candidate or two added to the list. I’ll wait for the finale slate before saying too much, but this sure seems like a missed opportunity to have used ranked-choice voting. If you’d like to volunteer to help out with the primary on Tuesday, you can fill out this form.
 

Eva Russo at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has pictures of work crews lifting the corpse of A.P. Hill out of the ground, wrapping it in a Virginian flag, and putting it on a gurney. I find this photoset, which is not at all explicit or gruesome, to be incredibly surreal.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s a wintery 32 °F, and highs today will stay in the mid 40s. We should also expect plenty of sunshine, setting us up for a lovely, cold, bright, and clear December day. If you can find 15 minutes in your day, bundle up and take a quiet walk around your neighborhood. I love Richmond in the winter!
 

Water cooler

Yesterday, the Governor set the date of the special election to fill Rep. McEachin’s Congressional seat for February 21st. If you remember our date math around these special elections from last week, candidates have 60 days from the date of the special election to file their paperwork, which means Democrats need to decide on their candidate by…December 23rd. 10 days from now, eight working days, the week before the holidays. While it is the Governor’s prerogative to schedule special elections, nothing says he has to be so petty about it. Now, with so few days to organize, Democrats will scramble to hold a Firehouse Primary on Tuesday, December 20th—a week from today. This is new territory for me, but apparently “a Firehouse Primary, or unassembled caucus, allows any Democrat in VA-04 to cast their ballot. There will be multiple locations across VA-04 where voters can cast their ballot for their preferred candidate.” First, the Governor could have picked March 7th for the date of the special election and avoided this mad year-end scramble, but he didn’t and I think that’s petty and unnecessary. Second, thank you to all of the volunteers who now need to spend these next two weeks putting together a primary instead of winding down and spending time with their loved ones. Third, more information on next Tuesday’s primary as soon as I see it!
 

Super related and super exciting: “On Tuesday, December 13th at 10:00 AM, Sen. Jennifer McClellan will make a major announcement at the Bell Tower in Capitol Square.”
 

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Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F, and today you can expect highs just under 50 °F with a few clouds here or there. This week looks chillier and drier than last, which sounds like an upgrade to me.
 

Water cooler

City Council meets tonight for their very last regularly-scheduled meeting of 2022—and what a year’s it’s been! Today they’ve got a beefy agenda, and at least three things I’ve got my eyes on.
 

• First, I’m pretty sure the stack of ordinances that’ll make the real estate tax rebate happen should pass without issue.
• Second, according to Councilmember Jordan’s email newsletter, “there will be a motion to amend Resolution 2021-R026, the paper containing all of Council’s submitted amendments to the Richmond 300 Master plan. This paper would ask Planning Commission to incorporate the amendments as an appendix to the plan, and would then use those amendments as a starting point for the comprehensive amendments process in 2025.“ You might know RES. 2021-R026 as the “embarrassing Richmond 300 amendments paper” that’s been on Council’s agenda since April 26th, 2021. While I’m glad Council has decided not to try and hastily force their laundry list of amendments into our award-winning master plan, I still wish the entire resolution ended up in bin instead. I supposed “filed away as an appendix” is as close as we’re going to get to that.
• Third, Council will consider RES. 2022-R073, which would kick off the process to rewrite our zoning ordinance to ban convenience stores from lots of different zoning districts. I don’t really understand the purpose or intent of this resolution, but, to me, it certainly reads in opposition to our (previously-mentioned) award-wining master plan, which, at its heart wants to get away from these sorts of use-based restrictions. I’m surprised the Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee recommended it for approval, and I’d like to know more from the paper’s three patrons (Robertson, Lambert, and Addison).

Good morning, RVA! It’s 43 °F, and today you can again expect cloudy skies with highs in the 50s. Depending on where you’re sitting, though, you might see the sun break through—which is exciting. Count on more of the same over the weekend, and then, fingers crossed, some cold, sunny, winter days next week.
 

Water cooler

As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield posted their second week at medium CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 22, 177, and 112, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 10.6. Looking at those case rate numbers, and one of those things is definitely not like the others; I have no idea why Richmond’s case rate is eight times lower than Henrico’s, and I’d take those numbers with a grain of salt. But! The hospital admission number I accept salt-free and has continued to creep up since last week. So whatever you think about the wonky case rates in our region, more people are ending up in the hospital right now and you should keep that in mind when you’re out-and-about or while putting together your holiday plans. It’s simple: If you haven’t yet gotten your bivalent COVID-19 booster, do it this weekend and chase it with a flu shot. Getting vaccinated against these diseases is the best and easiest way to protect your friends and family over the holidays.
 

Delegate Lamont Bagby, one of the top contenders (or maybe the top contender) for Representative McEachin’s Congressional seat, posted this cryptic teaser tweet last night: “My name is Lamont Bagby and as Chair of the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus I have been focused on saving Virginia’s children’s classrooms from Glenn Youngkin trying to erase Black history from our schools. Please Retweet and follow me— I have a major announcement coming soon!” This sure sounds like a “I’m going to Congress!” tweet to me. Bagby moving up to the federal level wouldn’t set off a bunch of election dominos in Richmond, as the 74th District is almost entirely parts of Chesterfield. Stay tuned, I guess.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F and cloudy, and that’s about what you get today. You can expect highs to creep up a bit (into the upper 50s) and maybe a little sunshine this morning, but warmish and cloudyish seems to be the situation for the next few days. With any luck, though, a (fingers crossed) lack of actual rain will still give things a chance to dry out. How do people in the Pacific Northwest live like this?? Are they just covered in mold constantly?
 

Water cooler

Today the City will host two, fun public meetings. First, the second of three meetings about Those Three Zoning Changes takes place virtually tonight at 6:00 PM. If you want to do some homework before attending, Jonathan Spiers’s reporting in Richmond BizSense from yesterday remains the best I’ve read on the proposed changes. If you feel like you already know enough, you can skip the meeting entirely and give a public comment by filling out this quick, one-minute form. Second, and I really dropped the ball on this one, but Richmond Connects, the process to update the City’s multimodal transportation plan, will host two telephone town halls (the first of which was yesterday, sorry). Worse than that, registration for today’s 12:00 PM event is already closed. But! There is an option to register for “ALL City of Richmond Telephone Town Hall Meetings”? Maybe selecting that option will get you added to today’s meeting, too? Anyway, I mostly mention this to put Richmond Connects back on your radar as we move into 2023 and further into their community engagement process.
 

Bleh. The Virginia Mercury’s Charlie Paullin reports that the State Air Pollution Control Board “officially began the process of withdrawing Virginia from a regional carbon market.” Questions abound about the legality of Board’s vote, but, regardless of the legal outcomes, we should fully expect the State’s Republican leadership to continue the strategic dismantling of legislation and policies that reduce the impact of climate change on Virginians. It’s going to take a decade to make back the progress lost over the course of this administration—on climate and on everything else.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and today you can expect highs in the 50s, light rain this morning, and then some real rain later on this evening. This kind of soggy-but-still-cold weather makes biking and walking a challenge, and you’ll probably start to find me on the bus more and more this week—at least until things dry out.
 

Water cooler

I haven’t written about it before, but, over the last couple of months, Forest Hill residents have started to get heated over the plans to build a new Sheetz at Forest Hill and Hathaway. No one hates gas stations or building more car-based crap in our neighborhoods than me, but this development is by-right, meaning it’s explicitly allowed by the area’s current zoning. The City has put together this really great PDF that explains how by-right development works and pleads with the reader not to blame the City or Council for allowing yet another long-lasting, climate-unfriendly development on a piece of our extremely finite and limited square miles. As the PDF points out, the only way to prevent this sort of thing in the future is with a thorough, A+, progressive rewrite of the zoning ordinance—which is happening! We could, if we wanted, change our zoning ordinance to ban gas stations in the entirety of Richmond. While I don’t think that’ll happen (people are much more likely to oppose the gas station in their own neighborhood than the idea of gas stations generally), I do think we can make several good, sweeping changes to the rules that control what gets built where. Stay tuned for more on this process, especially if the Sheetz debacle gets you heated! While there’s not much we can do about this specific project, we can set out guidelines for development that hew a lot closer to our vision for Richmond’s future.
 

Tyler Lane at WTVR has an update on the fatal crash on Chamberlayne that killed a pedestrian this past Friday. Lane reports a few interesting things: 1) “data from the DMV shows at least six other crashes involving pedestrians along Chamberlayne in 2022,” up from three in 2021; 2) a nearby business has been hit by drivers three times, the owner of which was “alarmed, but unfortunately not surprised” by the recent fatal crash; and 3) the City has recently installed a stoplight on the 1400 block of Chamberlayne, where the fatal crash occurred, but it’s “not yet fully functioning.” I guess I’ll just keep saying the same thing again and again, into whatever black hole I can find: If it wanted, the City could pilot quick and cheap traffic calming measures on Chamberlayne today—measures that would be up and functional probably before the new traffic signal gets wired up.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 29 °F, and you can expect highs in the 50s and the last dry skies for awhile. This week’s current forecast predicts rain for three of the next four days. That’s too soggy for me—I need some time to dry out!
 

Water cooler

The Richmond Police Department reports that a driver hit and killed a woman on the 1400 block of Chamberlayne Avenue this past Friday night. This is the second person killed by a driver on Chamberlayne in the last 40 days, and, to my knowledge, nothing has been done to slow traffic or make this street any safer for people. As this corridor continues to add retail and residential—and as the region looks to improve north-south bus service—we have to start making the street safer now or more and more people will have their lives irrevocably changed by traffic violence. My suggestion: Put up a ton of barrels to create a bus-only lane, narrowing and slowing the entirety Chamberlayne. After that, build some safe, well-lit, and comfortable pedestrian crossings. At least do something!
 

RPS’s School Board meets tonight for one of their regularly schedule meetings, and you can find the full, massive agenda here. RVA Dirt has an agenda preview, which, like the agenda itself, is long. We all know there’s a ton going on in RPS right now, but such a huge agenda necessarily means late-night meetings with important decisions made after most people have (or should have!) gone to bed. In fact, according to RVA Dirt, the Council of the Great City Schools recommends school boards tackle no more than three discussion items per meeting—not almost 20! We’ll see if they even get to “Discuss FY23–24 Budget priorities,” which, after last year’s budge debacle, seems like a pretty important agenda item.