Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and today looks a little warmer than yesterday and also comes with a chance for some thunderstorms later this evening. Enjoy today and get ready for a really wonderful tomorrow.
 

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Just a few corona-updates for you this Tuesday morning. First, here’s this week’s look at all-time cases, hospitalizations, and deaths due to COVID-19. It’s still too soon to tell if Delta’s tide has truly started to turn in Virginia, but it’s certainly not trending upwards at the moment. Second, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts will now give Pfizer booster shots at any of their vaccination clinics. While you need an appointment for a booster, folks who are still unvaccinated can (and should!) just walk up to get their shot. I imagine most pharmacies around town have also started offering boosters for folks who qualify, so, if you’re eligible, you’ve probably got a ton of options to go get boosted.
 

On September 30th (this coming Thursday), Councilmember Lambert will host a community meeting to discuss, among other things, the parklet planned for the 100 block of Brookland Park Boulevard, out front of Ms. Bee’s Juice Bar. I’m confused and frustrated by this since Council’s Urban Design Committee already recommended the parklet for approval at their April 8th meeting and then the City’s Planning Commission approved the parklet at their April 19th meeting. As far as I know, that’s all that’s needed to get a parklet installed, and I’m not sure what’s left to talk about on Thursday (other than how rad parklets are). I have some pretty strong feelings about a councilmember getting involved at the tail end of an already approved project and subverting the existing public process. The 3rd District has already had its fair share of this (remember Councilmember Grey and the Big Brook Road Bike Lane Fight), and I’m not stoked to have to expend a ton of effort defending projects that have already been approved multiple times. Alas, this is the unfortunate timeline we live in, and if you want to let Councilmember Lambert know you support the Brookland Park Boulevard parklet, show up on Thursday, September 30th at 6:30 PM at the Richmond Police Training Academy (1202 W. Graham Road).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and today looks beautiful with sunny highs in the low 80s. Richmond in the fall! It’s the best time of year!
 

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This morning, even before I woke up, the Governor hosted a press conference celebrating new train service to Main Street Train Station. Richmonders, if they can drag themselves out of bed, can now catch a train from downtown and end up in D.C. before the work day begins or, according to the press release, make it to “New York for a lunchtime meeting.” I think the goal is ultimately hourly service between D.C. and Richmond, so this is just step one out of one million to bringing frequent, higher-speed rail service to Richmond, connecting us to the rest of the Northeast. By the way, here’s what a 5:00 AM ribbon-cutting ceremony looks like. Too intense, even for me!
 

City Council will meet tonight with an enormous 58-item agenda. I’ve written about most of these before, but tonight Council will consider a ton of transportation-related papers securing or asking for money from the state for bike and pedestrian projects, and bunch of cat- and dog-related papers that mostly change the rules for pet owners, the bow and arrow ordinance, and those two resolutions to move forward with re-rezoning the southern side of Broad Street (those are all currently on the Consent Agenda, too). The resolution asking the Planning Commission to make sense of Council’s laundry list of Richmond 300 amendments has been continued until November 8th, and the resolution formally accepting the Mayor’s nomination of Lincoln Saunders as CAO has been continued until October 11th.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 53 °F, and today looks wonderful with highs in the mid 70s and plenty of sunshine. The weather wonderfulness should continue straight on through the weekend, too. Enjoy!
 

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What a rollercoaster of emotions for booster shots over the last couple of days! To recap: The FDA recommended Pfizer booster shots six months after the second dose for people older than 65, people at high risk for severe COVID-19, and frontline workers. Then, yesterday evening, a CDC advisory committee recommended Pfizer boosters for people older than 65 and people at high risk for severe COVID-19—leaving out frontline workers and creating a gap between the FDA recommendations and their own decision. At some point early this morning (this New York Times piece was updated at 2:40 AM), the director of the CDC overruled that recommendation and brought their official, final (for now) guidance in line with the FDA’s by adding back in frontline workers. While the NYT wants to blame politics for the turbulent decision making process, and I’m sure Biden’s public announcement of Boosters By September 20th didn’t help things, having the FDA and CDC publicly disagree about who should get booster doses would have ultimately (and further) eroded trust in the entire COVID-19 vaccine situation. At the time of writing, I’d imagine our state and local health officials are 1) asleep, and 2) still working through the details of the middle-of-the-night announcement. That means: If you’re newly eligible for a booster, don’t rush out to get one today expecting a smooth and consistent experience. Remember, your existing two doses still provide a ton of protection against COVID-19! Now that we have an initial framework for Pfizer boosters, I imagine Moderna will follow suit in the coming weeks.
 

Meg Schiffres at VPM has a long look at the community-built space around Marcus-David Peters Circle, what the State’s Department of General Services did with signage and memorials that remained in the circle after that horrible fencing went up, and what happens next. I think a lot of the frustration about the State’s handling of this space—aside from the fencing which literally keeps the public out of a space that the public themselves reclaimed and reimagined—comes from the lack of a visible process to remake the circle. The longer nothing happens, the more it feels like the plan is to return MDP circle to a sun-baked, shadeless, circle of grass. I don’t think anyone wants that, so let’s get some public meetings going! Or at least a survey, we all love surveys!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and, after the rain moves through this morning, I think we could have a pretty cool day on our hands. Expect highs right around 70 °F today and a really wonderful weekend.
 

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Booster update! Yesterday’s meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices didn’t yield much in terms of who’s eligible for a booster when, but they do have another meeting on the books today at 12:00 PM. You can, of course, stream that meeting and really spice up your afternoon. While the CDC advisory group toiled away, the FDA proper announced that they’d authorized Pfizer boosters for folks older than 65, are at high risk of becoming severely ill with COVID-19, or are at high risk due to frequent exposure at their jobs—all six months after their second dose. The New York Times has the details. This is a big, loosely defined group of humans that, while not the entire general public, certainly is a big chunk of it. I have no idea what happens if the FDA and CDC disagree on who should get boosters, and that certainly wouldn’t help the work going on to addressing hesitancy among those who are completely unvaccinated. Fingers crossed that everyone will end up on the same page at the end of the day after ACIP’s meeting. What a rollercoaster!
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Ali Rockett attended yesterday’s Marcus Alert community forum and reports the program should go into effect this coming December. Lots of good details in this piece, like: “Richmond’s stakeholders have determined four levels of response: routine, moderate, urgent and emergent. Only the third and fourth levels still would require police response, according to Wednesday’s presentation.” You can learn more over on the City’s Marcus Alert page and attend a second community forum on Saturday, September 25th at 1:00 PM.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F, and today looks warm with a chance of rain later this afternoon. However! NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says, “Today’s weather will be the last taste of summer we get for a while, with a cold front bringing a BIG CHANGE for later in the week. It’ll be warm and humid (low to mid 80s today) with 70s likely tomorrow and most of Thursday will be spent in the 60s!” I don’t know about you, but I can definitely justify boots to myself when its in the 60s.
 

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It’s Tuesday, and that’s COVID Dashboard Day for me (my mornings are weird). Here are the all-time graphs of COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in Virginia. We’re definitely at some sort of inflection point, whether it be peak or plateau who can tell. Fingers crossed for the former. Over on the vaccine side of things, we no longer see the steady, fear-of-delta-fueled increase in vaccinations, but I do still have hope that employer mandates will kick in soon and drive a nontrivial amount of vaccinations. As for my Tuesday check-in on VDH’s K–12 outbreaks dashboard, it looks like as of this past Friday Richmond had zero outbreaks, Henrico had one (at Henrico High School), and Chesterfield had three (at L.C. Bird High School, Woolridge Elementary School, and St. Edward-Epiphany). Remember that “outbreaks” has a specific epidemiological meaning here (mostly, it’s about transmission of COVID-19 within a school) and that it’s not the same thing as “cases reported at a school.” Also remember that Chesterfield County Public Schools have been back in action for a bit longer than either Richmond and Henrico. Still! Here we are, on the precipice of fall, and the in-person school situations seems to be going pretty much as planned.
 

City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meets today at 3:00 PM with an absolutely packed agenda—including some potentially worrisome legislation. First, RES. 2021-R026 is back. This is the resolution asking the Planning Commission to do the heavy lifting on constructing a single amendment to Richmond 300 out of Council’s mostly inconsistent and sometimes incoherent list of proposed changes. I don’t know that Planning Commission will be stoked to do that work should this resolution pass. Second, Councilmember Jordan has proposed a height overlay district for, I think, the majority of the southern side of Broad Street between Arthur Ashe and Ryland (RES. 2021-R070). Should this resolution—and all the subsequent rezoning steps—pass, buildings would be capped at four or five stories on Richmond’s literal biggest and broadest commercial corridor. I need to learn more, but didn’t we just redo the entire rezoning of this area to appease the anti-affordable-housing and anti-density people living south of Broad? Didn’t we just declare a climate crisis threatening all of society and humanity? I don’t see how restricting density where density makes the most sense achieves any of our climate goals. Third, Councilmember Jordan also has proposed a design overlay district, RES. 2021-R062, for Jackson Ward. I have no idea what a design overlay district entails, but the legislation says that “residents and businesses…have express the desire to protect the character of that neighborhood and its history.” Typically protecting character just means preventing new housing, but this neighborhood is truly packed with history and we, collectively, have a long history of not protecting that history. I need to learn more, but there are a ton of surface parking lots floating around back there, and I’d hope that a design overlay district would not prevent developing them into homes for hundreds of people. I think we can protect history while also building more (and more affordable) housing. Fourth, there are just a ton of administrative papers authorizing and requesting funding for sidewalks and bike infrastructure! I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a single agenda contain so many fun projects that’ll make it easier and safer to get around the city. Fifth, and finally, Councilmember Larson has ORD. 2021–230, which adjusts—and loosens I think—the rules and regulations around shooting a bow and arrow within the city limits. Like I said, packed agenda!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and while we’ve got highs in the mid 80s today, just you wait until middle of this week when really, truly cooler temperatures roll through. I’m not saying it’s time to break out the boots and flannel yet, but you can maybe make a plan to dig them out from under the bed this weekend.
 

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The FDA’s advisory committee met this past Friday to discuss boosters, and, after a lot of talk, they ended up recommending Pfizer booster shots for people aged 65 and older and for those at high risk of getting severe COVID-19. They also took an informal poll—which they made very clear was not an actual vote—in favor of including, basically, frontline workers in that bucket of high-risk individuals. Importantly, their recommendation is non-binding, and the FDA will release its decision early this week. Next up, an advisory committee to the CDC will talk things through, and then the CDC actual will make a final call—all of which should also happen this week. The New York Times has some more details if you want to dig in. So if all goes as planned, at least some set of folks should be able to schedule appointments for Pfizer booster shots next week, but we’ll have to wade through these committee meetings to know exactly who all is included. Honestly, I think the spectrum of possible decisions is pretty wide, with just 65+ Pfizer humans on one end and, on the other end, anyone with Pfizer or Moderna in the loosely defined group of essential workers or folks with a condition that increases their risk of severe COVID. That’s an enormous group and contains…basically everyone.
 

Related, the New York Times is also reporting good Pfizer news for children 5–11 years old and that the FDA could authorize the COVID-19 vaccine for those kids before Halloween. Who wants to dress up as Comirnaty this year??
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and today you can expect highs in the 80s, humidity, plus a good chance of rain—but, with any luck, nothing like yesterday. Remember when I casually said “bring an umbrella?” More like bring a canoe!
 

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Two quick corona-updates this morning! First, a reminder that the FDA’s advisory committee (which is made up of independent experts) will meet today to consider booster shots for some subset of the general public. Given the strong feelings on either side of boostertown it might be an interesting meeting to watch, which you can do so here starting at 8:30 AM. Linking to an early morning virtual meeting of the “Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee” is definitely a next level of nerdy for me that I am excited to share with you. Second, the Virginia Department of Health rolled out QR codes for vaccination records based on the SMART Health format. You can grab a copy of yours over on vaccinate.virginia.gov. Saving a QR code to your phone somewhere is definitely better than carrying around a vaccine card or a picture of your vaccine card, for sure. Next thing I hope they’re working on: Getting your vaccination record into Apple Wallet.
 

It was really coming down out there yesterday, wasn’t it? That slow-moving storm dropped three inches of rain on the Fan over short period of time, totally overwhelming our aging sewer system. Check out this absolutely bananas video of trash cans floating down Harrison Street. VCU even ended up cancelling afternoon and night classes due to flooding! Absolutely wild, but, honestly, we should expect more of these real and local impacts from severe weather as we continue to burn our planet down and fail to make any sort of real progress towards mitigating the impacts of climate change. Now, a tangential aside: It was fascinating scrolling through Twitter this morning and watching, in reverse chronological order, consensus build over the idea that yesterday’s flooding was a result of the City not cleaning out storm drains. Folks are so incredibly quick to chalk up the impact of a global climate crisis and literal decades of disinvestment in local infrastructure to “incompetence” at City Hall. Cleaning out the storm drains certainly helps, of course, but, as the @RVAH2O account puts it, “storm drains, and the system at large (as it was designed), are simply not meant to handle 3” of water in a matter of hours.” I’ve written about it a ton, but our sewer system is OLD and requires almost a BILLION dollars to get it into a place to handle the kind of severe weather we’re now facing because of climate change. The scale of this problem is simply not solvable on the local level alone and will require vast amounts of support from the State (and probably federal) government. There are lots of reasons to be critical of the City, but yesterday’s flooding was not one of them. Moving so quickly to “clean out the storm drains!” distracts us and our local elected leaders from the actual, hard, boring problems of addressing aging infrastructure and the impacts of the climate crisis.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and today you can expect highs in the 80s, humidity, plus a good chance of rain—but, with any luck, nothing like yesterday. Remember when I casually said “bring an umbrella?” More like bring a canoe!
 

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Two quick corona-updates this morning! First, a reminder that the FDA’s advisory committee (which is made up of independent experts) will meet today to consider booster shots for some subset of the general public. Given the strong feelings on either side of boostertown it might be an interesting meeting to watch, which you can do so here starting at 8:30 AM. Linking to an early morning virtual meeting of the “Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee” is definitely a next level of nerdy for me that I am excited to share with you. Second, the Virginia Department of Health rolled out QR codes for vaccination records based on the SMART Health format. You can grab a copy of yours over on vaccinate.virginia.gov. Saving a QR code to your phone somewhere is definitely better than carrying around a vaccine card or a picture of your vaccine card, for sure. Next thing I hope they’re working on: Getting your vaccination record into Apple Wallet.
 

It was really coming down out there yesterday, wasn’t it? That slow-moving storm dropped three inches of rain on the Fan over short period of time, totally overwhelming our aging sewer system. Check out this absolutely bananas video of trash cans floating down Harrison Street. VCU even ended up cancelling afternoon and night classes due to flooding! Absolutely wild, but, honestly, we should expect more of these real and local impacts from severe weather as we continue to burn our planet down and fail to make any sort of real progress towards mitigating the impacts of climate change. Now, a tangential aside: It was fascinating scrolling through Twitter this morning and watching, in reverse chronological order, consensus build over the idea that yesterday’s flooding was a result of the City not cleaning out storm drains. Folks are so incredibly quick to chalk up the impact of a global climate crisis and literal decades of disinvestment in local infrastructure to “incompetence” at City Hall. Cleaning out the storm drains certainly helps, of course, but, as the @RVAH2O account puts it, “storm drains, and the system at large (as it was designed), are simply not meant to handle 3” of water in a matter of hours.” I’ve written about it a ton, but our sewer system is OLD and requires almost a BILLION dollars to get it into a place to handle the kind of severe weather we’re now facing because of climate change. The scale of this problem is simply not solvable on the local level alone and will require vast amounts of support from the State (and probably federal) government. There are lots of reasons to be critical of the City, but yesterday’s flooding was not one of them. Moving so quickly to “clean out the storm drains!” distracts us and our local elected leaders from the actual, hard, boring problems of addressing aging infrastructure and the impacts of the climate crisis.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and things have started to cool down just the littlest bit today. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says you should bring an umbrella with you, should you venture outside, as we could see sporadic slow-moving storms this afternoon. Various plants in my backyard would really appreciate a good, slow-moving storm right about now.
 

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The New York Times reports a possible Not So Fast on President Biden’s plan to roll out booster shots to the general public in the coming days. Specifically, it sounds like next week we may only get Pfizer boosters for “older Americans and others who are particularly vulnerable to serious illness.” I mean, a couple weeks back when Biden was like “And lo! Boosters shall flood the land on September 20th!” it did kind of feel like he was out ahead of the science a little bit. Since then, the NYT says we’ve had dueling studies released, with one in The New England Journal of Medicine saying boosters are great and one in The Lancet saying “current evidence does not…appear to show a need for boosting in the general population.” I don’t know how much the FDA’s advisory committee particularly cares about what the president wants, his previous proclamations, or his proposed booster timeline, but we’ll learn more when they meet on Friday.
 

Is this a first? The Free Lance-Star via the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Fredericksburg City Public Schools will require all student-athletes to be vaccinated by November 8th. I don’t think I’ve heard of any other student vaccine mandates in our region but could easily have missed something given everything else that’s going on. Student vaccine mandates make a ton of sense to me, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw similar—or even expanded—mandates pop up around town as school districts do whatever they can to keep school buildings open to in-person instruction.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 70 °F, and today we’ve got another hot one lined up. Expect highs near 90 °F and every reason in the world to wear an undershirt.
 

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Jessica Nocera reports that 2,231 Chesterfield County Public Schools students are in quarantine as of this past Monday, the District’s fourth week of in-person instruction. About half of those are elementary school students who are not yet eligible for a COVID-19 vaccine. Remember: Fully vaccinated and no symptoms usually means no quarantine. Over two thousand students in quarantine sounds like a lot—and it is!—but, for context, it’s 3.7% of their entire student body. The District has put together this dashboard tracking cases and quarantines, which is pretty interesting, and I’m sure we’ll see more of this type of article in the coming weeks.
 

One quick update on the mayor’s vision for spending the $155 million of ARPA funding: The City has put together a nice map showing the location of the proposed capital projects. You can see how a couple of the proposed trails would connect together to make getting around certain parts of the Southside a whole lot easier and safer. Also, check out all of that “corridor beautification” along our major transit thoroughfares! Could that mean sidewalks, bus shelters, and, gasp, maybe even separated and protected bike lanes? I have no idea and don’t see “corridor beautification” listed in the presentation from the other day. I assume we’ll learn more today or tomorrow when the second round of public engagement launches. Stay tuned, and get ready to fill out another survey!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 68 °F, and False Fall is over—welcome back to summer. Today you can expect highs in mid 90s, plenty of sunshine, and NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says you should keep an eye out for brilliantly red wildfire smoke-induced sunrises and sunsets.
 

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This past Friday, RPS Superintendent Kamras announced that an RPS employee died from COVID-19: “This marks our second known fatality from the pandemic. Please keep this individual’s family in your thoughts and prayers. Please also take every possible measure to protect yourself, your loved ones, and our entire community. RPS students and staff spend most of their day outside of school, where the transmission rate is high among unvaccinated individuals. To be direct, our unvaccinated family members and friends are putting RPS students and staff at risk outside of school, and, in doing so, jeopardizing our ability to keep our doors open.”
 

I think it’s still too soon to expect VDH’s weekly-updating COVID-19 Outbreaks By Selected Exposure Settings dashboard to reflect anything useful about the first week back to in-person school. But, so we have context for the coming weeks: At the moment Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield report one, one, and two outbreaks in K–12 settings respectively. Both the Richmond and Henrico outbreaks date from before school started, while VDH was notified of both the Chesterfield outbreaks the County’s first week of school (remember Chesterfield schools kicked off a week earlier on August 23rd).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 58 °F, and today’s weather looks wonderful. Expect highs in the 80s, sunshine, and six or seven reasons to knock off of work early to spend some time on the porch.
 

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Yesterday evening, President Biden announced a six-pronged strategy to decrease the spread of the Delta variant and get as many people vaccinated as possible. The headlining prong is probably the Department of Labor requiring all employers with 100 or more employees to institute a vaccination mandate (or require employees to “produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work”). As you can imagine, this would impact a ton of employees, and will mostly likely lead to a ton of vaccine-holdouts getting jabbed up. Vaccine hesitancy become a lot less academic and a lot more cold-hard-reality when you have to find time in your schedule to get tested each and every week. The federal government will also require employer to give paid time off “for the time it takes for workers to get vaccinated or to recover if they are under the weather post-vaccination,” which should address another huge reason some folks remain unvaccinated—they just can’t afford to skip work for it. Other interesting presidential prongs: Requiring healthcare workers at facilities participating in Medicare and Medicaid to get vaccinated, same for Head Start staff, asking large entertainment venues to require proof of vaccination, calling on states to adopt vaccine requirements for all school employees, and turning on the Defense Production Act to help make more at-home tests available (and more affordable). I love almost all of this stuff and appreciate the clever work that went in to developing a plan to move as many people toward vaccination as possible—even in the face of some obstinate, anti-science state governments.
 

Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has an important monument update and one of the better headlines this week: “‘It’s not the void they hoped it would be': 1890 time capsule under Lee statue could not be found.” The chief comms guy for the Governor’s office, Grant Neely, also has one of the better quotes of the week: “After a long hard day, it’s clear the time capsule won’t be found—and Virginia is done with lost causes…The search for this moldy Confederate box is over. We’re moving on.” Also, a less fun update from this article, “The state hasn’t decided when it will remove the black perimeter fence it installed in January.” I’m pretty sure we were all told the fence was going up in preparation for the monument’s removal. Now that it’s removed, it’s entirely unacceptable to leave that horrible fence up permanently or even “temporarily.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F, and today you can expect highs in the upper 80s and a chance for storms later this afternoon. If you plan on spending some time outside, do it before cocktail o’ clock!
 

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After a jillion days, the majority of public school students in Richmond and Henrico are BACK in school buildings today! As a parent of an RPS middle schooler, it’s wild, stressful, exciting, and strange to think about. Who knows what this coming season—the Fall of Uncertainty—will bring, and I think families, in as much as they’re able, should prepare to be flexible and ready for change. Given the level of community transmission at the moment, COVID-19 will most likely find its way into schools right from day one. You should expect positive cases and you should expect quarantines, but you should also expect schools to work hard at implementing their COVID-19 protocols and layered mitigation strategies. I imagine this will play out unevenly, with some schools and classrooms completely and utterly disrupted while others quietly go on about their business. It’s good for students to be back in buildings with teachers and friends, but it’s scary, too—especially for younger kids who are still ineligible for a COVID-19 vaccine. We’ll learn a ton in the next couple of weeks, we’ll read dozens of shocking headlines, and then, with any luck, we’ll settle into some sort of rhythm. The Fall of Uncertainty is gonna feel real weird, and I hope that you’ll have grace and patience with the friends, family, and coworkers in your lives who have kids heading back to school this morning. If you want some more feels, watch this three-minute video from RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras to kick off this new season.
 

Yesterday afternoon, Style Weekly dropped this huge announcement on Facebook: “Style Weekly will cease publishing after the Sept. 8 edition. We thank our talented staff for their award-winning efforts and our loyal readers for their support. Thank you, Richmond.” I have personal, first-hand knowledge of what it feels like to shut down a local new biz, and, let’s me tell you, it sucks. I feel for the folks at Style and for what they’re processing this morning as their last issue goes out. It’s bad for Richmond to lose local media outlets, and the current environment doesn’t seem especially fertile for encouraging new ones to pop up. If you want to commiserate with folks, hop over into Style’s mentions on Twitter.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and we’ve got another—if slightly warmer—pleasant day ahead of us. Expect highs in the upper 80s and few clouds here and there.
 

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While it only updates on Fridays and Richmond and Henrico public schools have not yet returned to in-person instruction, it’s probably worth taking a look at VDH’s Outbreaks By Selected Exposure Settings dashboard. As of this past Friday, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield all posted exactly one ongoing outbreak in a public K–12 setting—and, remember, Chesterfield’s school year started back on August 24th. We’ll check back in this coming Monday to see how, if at all, things have changed.
 

The City sent out a press release on Saturday notifying the public that they’ll close a bunch of roads around the Lee Monument beginning tonight at 6:00 PM through 6:00 PM on Saturday. This means the work on taking down the Lee monument starts this evening! Mel Leonor at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that fencing goes up tonight, the statue comes down on Wednesday morning, and plaques come off Thursday while crews replace a time capsule in the plinth. I have so many questions about what exactly they’ll take down, what they’ll leave up, and what the next steps are for MDP Circle and the entirety of Monument Avenue. Honestly, now would be a good time for the Reimagining Monument Avenue folks to start kicking things off (whatever those things may be).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 57 °F, and when was the last time we saw early morning temperatures in the 50s?? Today you can expect highs in the upper 70s, some gentle sunshine, and to find me in a hammock for at least part of the day.
 

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Frank Green at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the Virginia Supreme Court has finally cleared the way for the Lee Monument to come down. As for the timing, “Removal will be a multiday process, and no action on the statue is expected this week, officials said.” I’m interested in the Department of General Services plan to remove this thing and really hope they keep the plinth as it stands today. I also wonder if, after the monument and fencing come down, the space will resume its role as a high-traffic gathering place for folks. We all saw how the community turned the bland grass circle into an actual place last year. So let’s use some of that ARPA money and make some permanent upgrades! Chris Suarez, also at the RTD, talks to a handful of local folks about the impending removal and has this interesting fact I did not know: “Georgia now leads the nation with 109 monuments standing. Virginia, which has removed or relocated more monuments than any other state in the country, led the nation before last summer.”
 

All that rain a couple days ago triggered a combined sewer overflow event, and the @rvah2o account (winner of a recent fake award I made up one morning) has a nice thread about the plans and funding required to make that sort of thing less frequent. Remember, combined sewer overflows happen when our centuries-old sewer system can’t handle the amount of stormwater gushing through it and discharges whatever its got at that moment into the river—which includes untreated wastewater (aka pooptown). @rvah2o points to state legislation that will fund some immediate fixes, plus longer term plans that will completely modernize our 19th century infrastructure (seriously, it’s centuries old). They estimate the total cost at around $850 million! You can sign up to get email notifications of every CSO event here, if that’s your sort of thing.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 57 °F, and when was the last time we saw early morning temperatures in the 50s?? Today you can expect highs in the upper 70s, some gentle sunshine, and to find me in a hammock for at least part of the day.
 

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Frank Green at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the Virginia Supreme Court has finally cleared the way for the Lee Monument to come down. As for the timing, “Removal will be a multiday process, and no action on the statue is expected this week, officials said.” I’m interested in the Department of General Services plan to remove this thing and really hope they keep the plinth as it stands today. I also wonder if, after the monument and fencing come down, the space will resume its role as a high-traffic gathering place for folks. We all saw how the community turned the bland grass circle into an actual place last year. So let’s use some of that ARPA money and make some permanent upgrades! Chris Suarez, also at the RTD, talks to a handful of local folks about the impending removal and has this interesting fact I did not know: “Georgia now leads the nation with 109 monuments standing. Virginia, which has removed or relocated more monuments than any other state in the country, led the nation before last summer.”
 

All that rain a couple days ago triggered a combined sewer overflow event, and the @rvah2o account (winner of a recent fake award I made up one morning) has a nice thread about the plans and funding required to make that sort of thing less frequent. Remember, combined sewer overflows happen when our centuries-old sewer system can’t handle the amount of stormwater gushing through it and discharges whatever its got at that moment into the river—which includes untreated wastewater (aka pooptown). @rvah2o points to state legislation that will fund some immediate fixes, plus longer term plans that will completely modernize our 19th century infrastructure (seriously, it’s centuries old). They estimate the total cost at around $850 million! You can sign up to get email notifications of every CSO event here, if that’s your sort of thing.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and we did it. We made it through the heat and humidity to place of temporary relief. Today you can expect highs in the upper 70s and, more importantly, a break from the humidity. Temperatures will heat up over the weekend—but not to any of those triple-digit Feels Likes of the last couple of weeks.
 

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Not the best news morning to wake up to, with historic rain in the Northeast, flooding in New York City, and the Supreme Court gutting Roe v. Wade in the middle of the night.
 

It’s hard to be chipper up there in the weather paragraph when the same hurricane remnants that brought us a dip in humidity unleashed record-setting rain in Central Park, smashing an all-time record set way back in…last week when Tropical Storm Henri rolled through. The New York Times reports that the flooding has killed eight people, which, I think, is more than the number of people who died when Ida made landfall in Louisiana. All of this, while multiple wildfires in the west burn out of control, and Apple News just showed me a Wall Street Journal article about the best air purifier for ridding your home of wildfire smoke (whatever your budget!). Things are bad, and our legislators and other elected officials—at the local, state, and federal levels—remain unserious about climate change and continue to fund highways to the tune of billions of dollars. Locally, on September 13th, Richmond’s City Council will take up non-binding RES. 2021-R049, which would declare the existence of a climate and ecological emergency. It’s definitely a step in the right direction, but it’s, by any measure imaginable, six or seven magnitudes of not enough.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and, along with the remnants of Hurricane Ida, cooler weather has arrived! You can expect highs in the 80s and a chance of rain pretty much throughout the entire day. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says, “This morning looks to be mainly dry but some storms this afternoon could turn severe.” Tomorrow and Friday look like real stunners.
 

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Oof, the Freelance Star reports that two Spotsylvania County schools have reverted to fully virtual learning for 10 days to stop the spread of COVID-19 among students. I didn’t even know that was allowed under the law passed by the General Assembly this past summer. Is this a sign of things to come in the Richmond region or the result of different mitigation measures and vaccine uptake rates? We’ll get to find out soon, I guess.
 

Yesterday, on National Overdose Awareness Day, Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on our region’s spike in fatal overdoses over the past year—2,308 people in Virginia died of an overdose in 2020. That’s a 40% increase from the number of deaths recorded in 2019. If you’d like an easy way to get involved, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts provide free in-person and virtual trainings on how to use Narcan to treat a narcotic overdose in an emergency situation.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 69 °F, and today looks the teensiest bit cooler than yesterday. Keep your eye out for potential afternoon storms, and then prepare for the remnants of Hurricane Ida to make their way through the region tomorrow. Cooler temperatures on Thursday!
 

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It’s Tuesday, and I thought I would take a look at VHD’s COVID-19 dashboard. The all-time graphs of new cases, hospitalizations, and deaths still show me that vaccination works as a strong protection against hospitalization and death. While cases are way, way up (to late January levels!), if you’re vaccinated you should feel at least some, maybe small, sense of relief. If you’re not vaccinated, you should head over to your nearest pharmacy this morning, because…cases are way, way up. While I don’t (yet) see a bump in the new vaccinations graph due to full approval of the Pfizer vaccine, the number of new doses administered each day has increased since its low point in the beginning of July. Give those employee mandates time to work, though!
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Chris Suarez and Mark Robinson checked in on the local housing market and, according to the headline, it’s on fire. Look at this bananas stat: “Citywide, the average value of a home surged to $315,000, up from $277,000 this year and $266,000 the year before.” Robinson and Suarez also report that Councilmember Jones plans to introduce a newly retooled tax abatement program to help longtime residents who are hit by the increase in real estate taxes. That sounds like a way better plan than Councilmember Trammell’s, who wants to reduce the real estate tax rate which hasn’t increased—even to account for inflation—for years and years and years.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and the humid heat will stick around for another couple days. Relief arrives on Wednesday or Thursday, but, for today, expect highs in the mid 90s and plenty of sweat.
 

Scary but also weather-related, the Washington Post has a Hurricane Ida liveblog detailing the destruction and damage caused by the storm over the last 24 hours. They’ll continue to update this, I imagine, as the sun rises and folks get a better sense of the situation.
 

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The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Sabrina Moreno reports on how Richmond’s racial and economic disparities play out into vaccine uptake disparities. Here’s the big takeaway: “Wealthier and predominantly white census tracts in Richmond and Henrico County have 2 to 5 times the vaccination rates of low-income areas with mostly Black and Latino residents.” I think a lot of overlapping issues contribute to these low vaccination rates, and there’s no magical sentence to say or program to implement that would suddenly see every neighborhood in Richmond vaccinated at the same rate as Windsor Farms. As Cotina Brake, outreach leader at the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts says, one-on-one conversations are critical moving forward—and that’s slow, methodical work.