Good morning, RVA! It’s 37 °F and cloudy and that’s probably the weather for the first half of today. Later this afternoon, though, the sun will come out and lead us into a generally bright and chilly weekend. Alert! Temperatures tonight and early Saturday morning look downright cold, so make sure you drip your faucets (or whatever other sub-freezing rituals you may have)!
 

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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 70, 165, and 127, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 13.2. Other than a quick spike to high a couple weeks back, our region has lived on a fairly consistent plateau of medium for nearly nine months at this point. While the situation on the ground hasn’t changed much, there are a couple upcoming COVID-19 policy changes that’ll impact how we (like, our country) responds to the waning pandemic. First, President Biden announced that he’d let the COVID-19 emergency declaration expire on May 11th. This will have some administrative, funding-type impacts, and, notably, will have the costs of COVID-19 vaccinations transfer over to folks’ health insurance plans. I’m not smart enough to know all the nitty-gritty about what else will happen when the emergency declaration ends, but I’m sure we’ll see more reporting on it in the coming months. Second, the FDA voted to “harmonize” the COVID-19 vaccines so they’re all using the newer bivalent recipe. This way, even if you’re just now ready to get your first shot (or maybe you’re new to the world), you’d get a bivalent doses, protecting you against the more recent strains of the virus. I’m into this and how it simplifies both the number of available vaccines and the decisions families have to make when deciding to get vaccinated. I can’t wait for the days when we all just get our updated COVID-19 shot in the fall alongside our flu shots, and I don’t have to write an entire paragraph about it every Friday!
 

Richmond Public Schools is putting together some really great interviews with students during Black History Month that you should check out over on their Instagram. Imani Adewale, a senior from Armstrong High School who’s now a published author, and Jackson and Cassidy, members of RPS’s first Battle of the Brains team (also from Armstrong!), talk about why it’s important for them to celebrate each other during Black History Month. Young people! So inspiring! I love this type of thing and will be checking back in for the rest of the month.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 32 °F, and, from where you sit, can you see any snow? I can!! However, NBC12’s Andrew Freiden, a much more trustworthy source of weather information than whatever’s outside my window, says we should expect a “barely there batch of winter weather this morning” (Twitter). Sigh. Expect clouds and cold weather, with lows around 40 °F for most of the day.
 

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4th District School Board member Jonathan Young’s proposal to close five schools—none in the 4th District and with absolutely zero community engagement—fell entirely flat at last night’s RPS budget meeting. In fact, Maggi Marshall at WTVR reports that “a majority of Richmond School Board members…denounced” the proposal. I tuned in to a bit of the meeting (skip to around 20 minutes in for this particular discussion) and was thankful to hear board member Gibson say she was “disappointed” in Young’s process and the stress it caused families and to hear Board Chair Rizzi apologize for the chaos and confusion Young’s half-baked proposal brought to the RPS community. Honestly, as frustrating as it was to hear about Young’s plan, it was really nice to see the School Board smoothly and empathetically handle it, pass it by, and move on with Board business. Give how this group has operated over the last couple years, last night seemed like progress!
 

We all know how foolish it is to get your hopes up this early in the General Assembly process—especially in years with control of the Senate and House divided. So I’m hesitant to even point out that SB 1293, a bill permitting safety stops (more commonly know as Idaho stops) has made it out of the full Senate on a bipartisan (!) 24–16 vote. Ian M. Stewart at VPM reported on the bill a couple of days ago, back when it was still in committee, and if you tap through you’ll definitely catch the, let’s say, realistic expectations Senate Democrats have about this bill making it through the House after crossover.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 32 °F, and, from where you sit, can you see any snow? I can!! However, NBC12’s Andrew Freiden, a much more trustworthy source of weather information than whatever’s outside my window, says we should expect a “barely there batch of winter weather this morning” (Twitter). Sigh. Expect clouds and cold weather, with lows around 40 °F for most of the day.
 

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4th District School Board member Jonathan Young’s proposal to close five schools—none in the 4th District and with absolutely zero community engagement—fell entirely flat at last night’s RPS budget meeting. In fact, Maggi Marshall at WTVR reports that “a majority of Richmond School Board members…denounced” the proposal. I tuned in to a bit of the meeting (skip to around 20 minutes in for this particular discussion) and was thankful to hear board member Gibson say she was “disappointed” in Young’s process and the stress it caused families and to hear Board Chair Rizzi apologize for the chaos and confusion Young’s half-baked proposal brought to the RPS community. Honestly, as frustrating as it was to hear about Young’s plan, it was really nice to see the School Board smoothly and empathetically handle it, pass it by, and move on with Board business. Give how this group has operated over the last couple years, last night seemed like progress!
 

We all know how foolish it is to get your hopes up this early in the General Assembly process—especially in years with control of the Senate and House divided. So I’m hesitant to even point out that SB 1293, a bill permitting safety stops (more commonly know as Idaho stops) has made it out of the full Senate on a bipartisan (!) 24–16 vote. Ian M. Stewart at VPM reported on the bill a couple of days ago, back when it was still in committee, and if you tap through you’ll definitely catch the, let’s say, realistic expectations Senate Democrats have about this bill making it through the House after crossover.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, wet, and we will probably not see any snow this morning. We will, however, see lots of drizzle-drazzle, doom-n-gloom, and plenty of excuses to stay inside—preferably under a blanket. The sun may come out right before it decides to set. If ever there was a day to call in sick and watch classic Star Wars movies, it’d be today!
 

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Henry Graff at NBC12 reports that 4th District RPS School Board Member Jonathan Young “plans to introduce a school consolidation plan” at tonight’s budget work session that would close five schools across the city: Woodville Elementary, Swansboro Elementary, Fairfield Court Elementary, Henderson Middle, and John Marshall High. None of these schools are even in the boardmember’s 4th District, and the proposal, as it stands, would leave the entire Northside without a middle school or comprehensive high school. Worst of all, Young hasn’t done a single second of community engagement or even the basic work of bringing alongside his fellow board members from the 5th, 7th, and 3rd Districts who would all lose schools. This is an unserious proposal from a person who, when talking to Graff, put the specter of utility costs ahead of the upheaval and chaos his proposal would cause. I think this is a troll, and, unfortunately, I fell for it. We’ll see how far it goes with his colleagues at the budget meeting. You can stream tonight’s meeting at 6:00 PM over on the RPS YouTube or stop by Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School.
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Michael Martz reports an unexpected-but-predictable story about Sen. Joe Morrissey: the Senator is “banned from visiting the Henrico County Jail for three months after an incident in which Sheriff Alisa A. Gregory said the lawmaker threatened staff over the weekend.” Here’s a great sentence from Martz: “In response to the sheriff’s ban, Morrissey said, ‘She’s not going to ban me.’” If you really want to feel deep dismay, Cameron Thompson at WTVR has a transcript of the events from the sheriff’s office. I’m excited for whenever this man eventually recedes from the headlines for good.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 50 °F, and this is as warm as it gets! Today you can expect dropping temperatures and a decent chance of rain pretty much all day until the sun goes down. I hope you had a chance to spend some time outside yesterday, because it was just the most wonderful flannel weather.
 

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Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that due to “human error” Virginia’s public schools will be shorted $201 million in the budget signed by the Governor last year. Regionally, this means millions of dollars that school districts—and localities—are now left wondering how to replace: $3.2 million in Richmond, $8.1 million in Henrico, and $10.8 million in Chesterfield. Martz says, “the mistake was made when the [Virginia Department of Education] inadvertently failed to recognize the effect of a ‘hold harmless’ payment made to local school divisions to offset money they receive directly from the state’s portion of the sales tax on groceries.” Remember this from last year? When the General Assembly agreed to reduce the grocery tax but wanted to make sure that public schools still received the same amount of funding? Well, VDOE just…didn’t do that? It’s some real amateur-hour stuff, and, depending on how conspiratorial you want to get about it, this “human error” falls right in line with the Governor’s consistent efforts to defund public schools. Now, presumably, the General Assembly will scramble around trying to fix and fill this new and totally avoidable funding gap. Let’s hope they get it figured out soon.
 

I’ve yet to see the City or VCU officially address—like, with a plan of action—the student who was hit and killed by a driver at the intersection of Main and Laurel last week, but WTVR’s Tyler Layne has some early quotes from stakeholders. Let me just highlight a quote from Bike Walk RVA’s Brantley Tyndall: “People who are killed walking in dense urban environments are saved because traffic calming has been built around them…We really want to avoid these traps of blaming one person against the other and really, if we want to save lives, we have to do it by changing how our streets are engineered.” Read that last bit again! Enforcement, education, culture-shift, those are all things that exist and, theoretically, have some degree of impact, but if we actually want to save people’s lives we need to change the way our streets are built. And we should feel an incredible sense of urgency about this on the streets that we know are dangerous, too. Case in point: Literally while Lane was out filming this very story, police showed up in response to another pedestrian hit by a driver (Twitter)!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F and drizzly. Later this morning, though, the drizzle should dry up and, even later, the sun might come out. Enjoy it however you can, because the next couple of days look wet and increasingly cold.
 

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This past Friday morning, just before 9:00 AM, a driver hit and killed a 22-year-old VCU student at the intersection of N. Laurel and W. Main Street. I don’t know any of the specifics of this tragic incident, but I do know that drivers treat Main Street like a highway, speeding their way east from downtown, because the physical design of the street allows it. In fact, around the same time this student was killed for simply crossing a street on their college campus, I was writing “We’ve got to do something to discourage folks from using Main/Cary as a toll-free version of the Downtown Expressway.” Everyone, students especially, know Cary and Main Streets are dangerous, the question now is what will we do to make those streets safer for the thousands of students who criss-cross it daily? Anything? Will our City’s leadership take what we know—that these are dangerous, fast streets, as noted in the City’s own High Injury Street Network Map—and implement quick fixes to keep people from dying? Or will we look around, shrug our shoulders, and talk about how nothing could have been done to prevent this student’s death? If you’re fed up, you can find contact information for the Department of Public Works leadership and your City Council representative on this spreadsheet.
 

Richmond BizSense’s Jonathan Spiers reports that the proposed amphitheater down by the river has had its launched date pushed back to spring 2025. That’s two full years from now, but you should still tap through today to see a bunch of cool renderings of what the space will potentially look like. Also, check out this incredible sentence: “Existing parking in the area is expected to accommodate the venue.” No new parking! For a 7,500-seat venue! I feel like this is a major accomplishment in shifting the mindset of Richmonders Who Build Big Things!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, which is colder than it’s been in a minute. Today you can expect highs in the mid 40s, which, again, will definitely feel chiller than the last couple of days. However! The sun will come out, stay out, and that’s something I’m looking forward to. You can expect more of the same over the next couple of days, slightly warmer temperatures, and a pretty decent weekend weatherwise!
 

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As of last night, all three of 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 107, 168, and 147, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 14.3. Another week in 2023, and another week with our region at a medium COVID-19 Community Level—although I’d consider all of these numbers pretty meaty for medium. You should keep that in mind as you assess your own person risk budget! As for me, I’m continuing to: Wear a mask on the bus and in crowded public places (like VCU basketball games), test before heading off to big gatherings, and wash my hands frequently because I feel really accomplished when my Apple Watch is like “You did! You washed your hands, guy! Great work!” While we’re on the subject, Katelyn Jetelina took notes from yesterday’s VRBPAC meeting—the FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee—at which experts sorted through data in hopes of coming up with a longterm COVID-19 vaccination strategy. It’s still early, but it sounds like we’re headed towards annual vaccinations, just like flu, sometime in the fall.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 30 °F, which is colder than it’s been in a minute. Today you can expect highs in the mid 40s, which, again, will definitely feel chiller than the last couple of days. However! The sun will come out, stay out, and that’s something I’m looking forward to. You can expect more of the same over the next couple of days, slightly warmer temperatures, and a pretty decent weekend weatherwise!
 

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As of last night, all three of 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 107, 168, and 147, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 14.3. Another week in 2023, and another week with our region at a medium COVID-19 Community Level—although I’d consider all of these numbers pretty meaty for medium. You should keep that in mind as you assess your own person risk budget! As for me, I’m continuing to: Wear a mask on the bus and in crowded public places (like VCU basketball games), test before heading off to big gatherings, and wash my hands frequently because I feel really accomplished when my Apple Watch is like “You did! You washed your hands, guy! Great work!” While we’re on the subject, Katelyn Jetelina took notes from yesterday’s VRBPAC meeting—the FDA’s Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee—at which experts sorted through data in hopes of coming up with a longterm COVID-19 vaccination strategy. It’s still early, but it sounds like we’re headed towards annual vaccinations, just like flu, sometime in the fall.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 38 °F, and today looks cool and dry with highs right around 50 °F. Looking into the extended forecast and I think we’ve got around four, solid rainless days for the world to dry out a bit. Friday and Saturday look like excellent opportunities to head off into the forest and explore some of Richmond’s trails!
 

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City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meets today for the first time in 2023, and, aside from a ton of ordinances allowing the City to spend a bunch of State money on cool bike and pedestrian projects, I’ve got my eye on three different papers. First, RES. 2023-R005 would adopt RVAgreen 2050’s Climate Equity Action Plan as the City’s official sustainability plan. This is a chonker of a PDF—566 pages!—so, if you want to skip past all the great stuff about why climate work in Richmond is so important and get right down to the meaty action bits, you can scroll to around page 88. Second, ORD. 2022–375 repeals ORD. 97–105–173, which, yes was adopted back in 1997, and, maybe unintentionally, created a street light policy for the entire city. From the staff report: “The intent behind the [original] Ordinance was to outline a plan for creating special service districts for ornamental street lights and not necessarily to establish a perpetual street light policy for the City. Nevertheless, the Ordinance’s broad language setting the 1997 Policy as the City’s official street light policy has frozen the City’s street light policy for over 20 years.” Amazing! Repealing the old policy would give the Department of Public Utilities the ability to figure out their own street light policies, which seems fine—but if anyone has street light conspiracy theories, I’d love to hear them. Third, ORD. 2023–029 updates the City’s scooter policies. Exciting! This ordinance would increase scooter operating hours from 9:00 PM to 1:00 AM, increase the fees for scooter companies by 25%, and “mandate shared mobility permittees in the City of Richmond deploy at lest 20% above their permitted fleet maximum, South of the James River.” I can’t tell if that last one requires scooter providers to drop a bunch of scooters on the Southside or just stipulates that they can exceed their maximum number of scooters for free if they do so on the Southside. That’s a pretty nice list of ordinances for January, and I’m excited to see how the committee’s new members work through their business.
 

Related, City Council will host a joint meeting with the RPS School Board tonight at 6:00 PM (which you can stream on RPS’s YouTube). Looks like they’ll hear a presentation of the proposed RPS budget by the Superintendent and then have a discussion about it together. This is great, fascinating, and I can’t remember them doing it in previous years. Sure we’ve had the Education Compact—Mayor Stoney’s valiant, but mostly ineffective, attempt to get Council and School Board discussing critical crossover issues—but a special meeting to discuss the budget feels new. It makes a ton of sense, too, since, ultimately, City Council decides how much of the School budget to fund, and it’s probably really helpful to catch Council’s vibe early in the process. Having this conversation in January, should, with any luck, prevent shenanigans like last year, when the School Board left millions of dollars offered by City Council on the table.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and, according to my weather app, today has a 100% chance of rain. You can expect the wet weather to move in right before lunch and, unfortunately, stick around until basically tomorrow. I think I’ll try and stay inside under a blanket as much as possible today—I recommend you try and do the same!
 

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Jessee, aka @BossRVA, livetweeted last night’s 3rd District meeting which featured Bobby Vincent, the City’s Director of Public Works. Full disclosure I didn’t attend or tune in to the meeting, so I can’t provide any context that Jessee may have missed, so maybe take some of this with a grain of salt. Regardless of context though, hearing the man in charge of safety on our city’s streets say he’s against speed tables and that we have to wait until someone’s hurt at an intersection to put down a crosswalk just…makes me real sad. I don’t know how we’ve come this far into Mayor Stoney’s tenure and are still failing to take big, serious, progressive steps toward making our streets safer for everyone. Look: I’ve said it six million times before, Vincent did incredible things at DPW when Stoney took office (and still does!), but Richmond needs someone who will champion proven ways to make our streets safer. Whether that’s finding a Director of Public Works who understands and has a passion for it, or, better yet, creating a true Department of Transportation that sits at the same level on the City’s org chart as DPW. It’s time to get thoughtful, strategic, holistic, and creative about how to make it safe for folks—everyone!—to move around the City.
 

Tonight at 6:00 PM, the RPS School Board will hold their first of four budget work sessions, this one at Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School (or you can, of course, stream it via the District’s YouTube). This year, the Superintendent has asked for a $35.3 million increase over last year’s budget, with most of that funding teacher and staff pay increases. It’s a big number, and I’m not sure the Mayor or City Council will just want to hand it over—especially considering the last 12 months of School Board shenanigans and their inability to competently run last year’s budget process. Tonight, though, we’ll start to see if things have changed, and if the Board has it in them to make the tough choices required to deviate significantly from the Superintendent’s proposal. Fireworks or boring public meeting? We’ll see! If you do plan to show up or tune in, beware: There’s no public comment period at this particular session, although they do have a combined work session / public hearing scheduled for February 6th. That said, you can always listening in via the livestream tonight and then send the entire board an email with the best of your budgetary thoughts after things wrap up.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 39 °F, and today we’ve got more of the same: Drizzles and clouds with highs right around 50 °F. I think, though, we should see the sun after the rain moves through this morning.
 

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Tonight—637 days since its introduction on April 26th, 2021—City Council will finally vote on RES. 2021-R026, the confusing, conflicting laundry list of proposed amendments to Richmond 300. The compromise that Council reached (thankfully) was to add these amendments as a non-binding, mostly ignorable appendix to the back of our City’s master plan. So they technically exist, and the councilmembers that proposed changes that don’t really have anything at all to do with land use can skip the part where the Planning Commission would have had to tell them that directly in a public meeting. It’s a decent compromise, but I’m mostly glad we get to skip a bunch of unproductive back-and-forth. Also of note tonight, a General Assembly update presentation at the informal meeting—check out the bills of interest at the bottom, including one to extend the moratorium on annexation for 15 years and one about restricting local Airbnb regulations.
 

For whatever really disappointing reasons, Richmond never really took advantage of how the pandemic shifted folks toward more outdoor dining—even in the winter. We didn’t change regulations or policies, we didn’t convert parking spaces, and we didn’t do much at all to incentivize restaurants to move a few tables outside to benefit from Nature’s Ventilation. But lack of support from the local government hasn’t stopped business owners, and, to prove it, RIC Today has put together a nice map of restaurants who have heated patios. Perfect if you’re trying to remember what it’s like to leave your house but are still not in love with packing into a hot, germy bar with three dozen of your closest Richmonders.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 49 °F, and today you can expect temperatures right around 60 °F served up with plenty of sunshine. You can expect more of the same over the weekend as temperatures slowly creep down—not to, like, wintery temperatures, of course, just slightly less unseasonably warm temperatures. I hope you find some time to get out there and enjoy it.
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield all now have a medium CDC COVID-19 Community Level. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 102, 173, and 135, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 14. We’re back in medium across the board, and, even with case count numbers not the most reliable, the hospital admissions number has started to trend downward. All good news (but if you wanted to keep your mask on in crowded space, I totally wouldn’t fault you)! Related, Katelyn Jetelina put together a great post dispelling the most recent crop of covidmyths, if mythbusting is your thing. While I’m not sure that reading a post like this would change the mind of a longtime COVID-denier, I do think it’s useful for reasonable folks who hear a weird thing on the internet and then go “hmmmm, that seems troubling.”
 

Patrick Wilson and Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch continue to report on the Governor’s decision to scuttle a Ford Motor Co. battery plant—and its thousands of jobs—in the southern part of the state. Yesterday, they reported that Ford had finalized the Pittsylvania location before Governor Youngkin pulled out of the deal, twisting the knife a little deeper for Southside residents and contradicting the Governor’s previous statements that, no, he’d pulled Virginia from consideration first. Then, just a couple hours later, a Ford spokesperson contradicted that contradiction, saying “the company had not made a site selection decision on its plans for an electric vehicle battery plant in partnership with a Chinese company.” What a mess. Sometimes, when you get too cute with playing politics it has real consequences for actual people. We’ll now have to wait and see if the Governor can clean this up and bring another company (and its jobs) to the folks living out that way—although, after this debacle, I’m note sure other companies will beat down the door to work with the Commonwealth.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F, and today you can expect more of these warmer temperatures with highs in the mid 60s. We may see a few showers sprinkled about here or there, so keep an eye out. Other than that, enjoy!
 

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Here’s a fascinating email I got from Councilmember Robertson’s office about a “community agreement” reached with Carolina Express Convenience Store. Tap through to read the terms of the agreement, which are pretty intense, and I’m kind of surprised the City or the State or the Whoever has the authority to enforce some of these. Specifics aside, I’m pretty sure that this announcement is related to RES. 2022-R073, patroned by the Councilmember, which passed back in December and asked the City to start a rezoning process which would sort of ban convenience stores in large swaths of Richmond. At the time I thought it was bad legislation and a misuse of the process; we shouldn’t rewrite our citywide zoning ordinance to solve specific issues at a specific store. Turns out, I still think this! Now, though, I wonder that since the specific problems have been addressed, will the City just kind of forget about this far-reaching resolution?
 

Tonight at 6:00 PM, the City’s Charter Review Commission will meet for the first time to begin conducting a comprehensive review of Richmond’s Charter. Our Charter, a long and tediously wonderful document, lays out the nuts and bolts of how our city functions—stuff like its roles and responsibilities, the structure of our government, and how we elect our representatives. Do you hate the popularly-elected mayoral system and how it pits City Council against the Mayor in an unhelpful way? Do you wish we had fewer City Council districts and maybe even a couple at-large Councilmembers? The Charter is what you’d need to update to make any of those changes. Unfortunately, because we live in Virginia and the State doesn’t trust cities to do much of anything on their own, all changes to the Charter have to be approved by the General Assembly. That really puts a damper—and a limit—on the types of changes we can make. That said, this is still a useful and helpful process, and one that you can totally participate in: All of the Commission meetings, including tonight’s, are open to the public, and they’ll soon lay out their public engagement timeline which should include a survey, a website, and public input sessions. It’s been a good, long while since we’ve taken a look at the current Charter and made a list of what we’d like to fix, and I’m pretty excited about kicking off this process.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 44 °F, and today you can expect dry skies and highs in the 60s. I think we might could even see the sun later this afternoon! If you can, take the mid-week opportunity to walk, roll, or ride around your neighborhood in the unseasonably warm weather (not thinking too, too hard about what it all means).
 

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Caroline Coleburn at WTVR reports on a new study conducted by the Science Museum of Virginia which shows that “going for a walk in a quiet, green space has better mental health and physiological outcomes than going for a walk in a busy, gray or loud environment.” For anyone who’s walked along Broad Street versus, say, Floyd Avenue, those results shouldn’t be too shocking. Sort of related: This story reminded me that the Science Museum’s cool new park, which used to be a horrible, hot parking lot, is now open for folks to explore. I rolled through there the other night, and it’s beautiful. The new park (plus the Museum’s ProtoPath) already make up my preferred way to get from points north to Robinson, and its going to really shine once spring hits and the plant life starts to do its thing.
 

Charlie Paullin at the Virginia Mercury reports that, as foretold, Democrats in a Virginia Senate committee killed a bunch of bills that would have decoupled the Commonwealth from California’s Clean Car standards. States can choose one of two options to follow for vehicle emissions: California’s or the EPA’s. California’s requirements are more climate-friendly and would require, among other things, that “all new vehicles sold be zero-emission starting in 2035.” That’s right around the corner! I’m thankful for the slim majority Democrats hold in the Senate, and this is just one example of the backstop they provide against Republican’s anti-climate agenda. Remember: There are probably similar bills floating around that will pass through and out of the Republican-controlled House, but they’ll most likely die a similar death when they crossover to the Senate. Of course, nothing’s truly dead until the session adjourns!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 42 °F, and you’ll probably see some rain this morning. Temperatures will eek up into the 50s this afternoon but things should get significant warmer over the next couple of days. Richmond in the winter: Weirdly warm, wet, and cloudy!
 

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Tonight, at the RPS School Board meeting, the 2023 budget season officially kicks off with the Superintendent’s presentation of his proposed budget. This is definitely a PDF you’ll want to flip through—especially the first section which includes a really nice primer on how budgets work in Richmond. This year, Superintendent Kamras has proposed a $35.3 million increase over last year’s budget with the vast majority of that (about 66%) going towards teacher and staff pay increases. Slides eight and nine of the presentation detail the specifics and point out that if this year’s raises get funded, teachers will have seen their pay increase 30% since 2018—jumping the average salary from $52,000 to $68,000. Seems like a worthy expense, especially in the middle of a nationwide teacher shortage. As for how to find the money to pay for those raises, slide 16 gets down to business and breaks out where the School District hopes to find the $35.3 million in new spending: Mostly from an anticipated $6 million increase from the state and a new $28.3 million ask from the City. That’s a nontrivial number, so we’ll have to see what ultimately ends up in the City’s budget. Next steps are for the School Board to hold some public meetings, make some tweaks, vote on this budget, and send it to the Mayor (something they failed to do last year). Then the mayor will introduce his budget at some point in March, which gets tweaked by Council for final approval in June. Welcome to budget season! The most wonderful time of the year!
 

School Board sure has a busy night ahead of them, because alongside all of that fun budget stuff, there’s also interesting presentations on proposed tweaks to the District’s cell phone policy and their 2023 list of legislative advocacy priorities. About the latter, I don’t know that any of these, especially the funding-related ones, will find favor with the current Governor—he wants to defund public schools, not give them more money. But, maybe some of the investments in mental health will sneak through. If you’d like to advocate for fully funding public schools and the other RPS priorities, keep an eye on their Advocacy Hub to find resources for getting involved.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 52 °F, and, depending when you read this email, last night’s rain my just now be starting to tail off. You can expect highs in the 50s along with some welcomed sunshine today, with more of the same over the long weekend. I hope you find some time to rest, relax, get involved, and get outside!
 

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As of last night, Richmond is at a medium COVID-19 Community Level, while Henrico and Chesterfield continue to have high CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 122, 353, and 262, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 17.4. Looking at the map of Virginia on the CDC’s Community Level Site, I don’t think you should necessarily read Richmond’s drop from high to medium as a sign that less disease is floating around in our communities. Nearly the entire state is painted orange and hospital numbers for our region are generally trending upward. If you’ve got (crowded) places to be, think about the risks you’re willing to take and how you can mitigate those a bit by wearing a mask, staying outside if you can, and getting your bivalent booster if you haven’t already.
 

WTVR’s Tyler Lane reports that another person has died at the Richmond City Jail, the third person in as many months and the fourth person in the past year. We’ve seen the jail and the sheriff (who runs the jail) in the headlines a handful of times recently—and none of those stories have been positive. In fact, I think last time I wrote about the jail it was when the sheriff had used a lie detector on her employees to find out who talked to the press. Ridiculous! I don’t think we’re done with this story, and I appreciate Lane’s continued reporting. I’d guess we’ll continue to hear from him on this over the next year.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 41 °F, and today is probably the warmest day of the week with highs right around 60 °F. We may see some sprinkles here and there, and possibly some real rain this evening, but I say get out there and enjoy the warmer weather this afternoon if you can!
 

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If you wish, you may read the text of Governor Youngkin’s State of the Commonwealth address or watch a video of it over on WTVR’s YouTube. I haven’t tapped through myself because I think it’d just make me angry, and I’ve got a lot more important things to do this morning. For a good selection of some of the in-the-moment Democratic responses, you can scroll back through VAPLAN’s Twitter timeline. You can also read David Ress’s summary in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, which contains this salty quote from Senate Majority Leader Dick Saslaw about the likelihood of the Governor’s wishlist making it through the Senate: “The speech should have started ‘once upon a time.’” P.S. Just a quick reminder that many of the bills you’ll read about in the coming days have absolutely zero chance of becoming actual law. In the moment, it’s sometimes hard to know which proposed legislation is a political stunt to improve a legislator’s election-year resume and which is something to get emotionally invested in. So when you read a headline that fills you with a furious rage—and you will read many!—take a minute to think about where we are in the bill-becomes-a-law process and, importantly, what Senate Democrats have to say about it.
 

Keeping in mind the previous sentence, Roger Chelsey at the Virginia Mercury has a nice column about the Governor’s no-good plan to defund public schools. I liked this bit in particular: “Even if some public schools are failing to educate students, the state should first provide more than the bare minimum of resources before consigning them to the trash heap. The unofficial GOP mantra of ‘low taxes above all else’ has consequences – especially for education.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 29 °F, and today you can expect highs just on the cooler side of 50 °F. The skies stay cloudy but dry today as we’re waiting on a bit of rain tomorrow evening and still gearing up for a sunny weekend. It feels like winter in Richmond!
 

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It’s the second Wednesday in January, and that means today the General Assembly will kick off its 2023 session! The General Assembly, it’ll have you know, is the oldest continuously operating law-making body in the Western Hemisphere, and, as such, is weird and doesn’t really care what you think about it. For example, since it’s an odd-numbered year, the GA will meet for just “30 days,” because our legislative process predates America and we still think our legislators need to hurry back home and take care of the farm. The delightful weirdness begins in earnest at 12:00 PM, and you can probably find all sorts of interesting resources—including some streaming video—over on VirginiaGeneralAssembly.gov. At 4:00 PM, Governor Youngkin will deliver a State of the Commonwealth address to both houses of the GA and will “outline his Day Two Agenda for Virginia.” You can probably expect tax cuts, defunding public schools, undoing climate policy, and further restricting abortion to all make the talking points.
 

That previous, dystopian sentence bums me out, but I am feeling decidedly un-bummed by the news that it seems Democrat Aaron Rouse won the 7th Senate District special election last night. Should the results hold, this gives Democrats a decidedly Morrissey-proof majority in the Senate and strengthens their brick wall against policies Senator Morrissey may be willing to cross the aisle to support—like restricting abortion and defunding public schools. I guess Rouse is due to get to work in Richmond this morning? The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Andrew Cain says results will be finalized on Friday, so I’m not sure how seating him in the Senate works. Regardless, busy week for that guy!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 28 °F, and today looks chilly and cloudy with highs in the upper 40s. Expect more of this until Thursday when things warm up a bit. I know its early to already be thinking about the weekend, but I think we might get a good dose of sunshine on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.
 

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Congratulations to LaTesha S. Holmes, City Council’s new Chief of Staff! Council officially appointed Holmes yesterday, and she starts in her new role one week from today. I think this is great news. The Chief of Staff position has sat unfilled for two years now, and I’m excited to finally have a full-time person in that role—and doubly excited to have it filled by someone who comes from outside City of Richmond government. City Councilmembers are woefully part-time public employees and having strong and efficient Council staff can really impact how the body works as a whole. Stay tuned, because with budget season right around the corner, we’re all about to get a front row seat to this new-look Council, with their new leadership and new staff. Fun stuff!
 

Not Richmond-related, but Virginia Beach residents will vote in a special election for Virginia’s 7th Senate District today. Democrat Aaron Rouse faces Republican Kevin Adams, and Ryan Murphy, writing for VPM, says it’s “the most expensive special election in Virginia Senate history and more expensive than 85% of the state Senate races held in 2019.” Why so much cash flowing into this race? Should Rouse win, it’d give Democrats a two-seat, Joe-Morrissey-proof majority in the Virginia Senate, severely diluting that man’s power and assuring the Democrat’s brick wall against any shenanigans—specifically around abortion or public school funding. Not having to think about Morrissey for an entire General Assembly session would certainly lower my personal stress levels.
 

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.
 

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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 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.
 

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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.
 

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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.
 

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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.
 

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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.
 

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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.
 

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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.
 

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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!
 

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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.
 

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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.
 

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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?
 

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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.
 

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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!
 

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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.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 27 °F, and I need to put another blanket on my bed tonight. Today, though, you can expect cloudy skies and highs in the mid 50s (which is right on track with the historical average, turns out). Tomorrow, one of Richmond’s big Holiday Event Days, we might see some rain early on in the morning so keep an eye out.
 

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As of last night, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield popped back up to a medium CDC COVID-19 Community Levels. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 87, 92, and 101, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 10.2. This is the first time in a while we’ve crossed back over into medium’s yellow territory—and that’s before we see whatever impact the long holiday weekend, filled with travel and family get-togethers, will have on the spread of COVID-19. As for how this should change your own personal behavior, the difference in CDC guidance between a low/green level and a medium/yellow level is the addition of this sentence, “If you are at high risk for severe illness, consider wearing a mask indoors in public and taking additional precautions.” Since this is America, it is totally up to you what precautions you take, but with an increased amount of flu and RSV floating around, too, I’d suggest keeping your respiratory disease toolbox handy: staying home if you’re sick, spending time outside or in well-ventilated spaces if you can, washing your hands, and wearing a mask.
 

This seems weird: Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the City of Petersburg has “no records available to show how the city selected The Cordish Companies” to operate their proposed casino. In response to a FOIA request submitted by the RTD, the City replied: “There are also no public records of any evaluation of potential casino resort projects proposed to the City of Petersburg in this calendar year.” That seems wild! Not even a single email from a public official about who to pick to build and run their (proposed) multi-million dollar casino? I find that hard to believe, but Petersburg has apparently contracted all of the work—and I guess, like, really 100% all of it—out to a third-party consultant. I have no idea what this means, if anything, but I think it’s really interesting. As for where we are in this ongoing, tumbledown casino process, the General Assembly will most likely decide in their upcoming session whether Richmond, Petersburg, or both can host a casino. Pending that GA approval, the casino would then still need voter approval in either city (or both).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and today looks bright, clear, and a bit cooler than yesterday. You can expect highs right around 50 °F, with temperatures dropping below freezing tonight. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to move fully into True Winter and leave this transitional weather behind!
 

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Today, the Richmond Police Department will graduate their 125th Basic Recruit Class, which will add 12 new officers to their ranks. First, I’m fully and deeply aware that the police often get to write their own, unchallenged narrative and often that narrative is not an accurate portrayal of reality. Second, I think the language in RPD’s press release about these new recruits is really interesting: “These men and women join RPD and bring with them diverse backgrounds and perspectives. A brand new mother who completed training after giving birth to her son, an Iraqi who has past experience from a war torn country, and an elected female class president of the 125th BRC stand to bring fresh perspective, drive, and conviction to change the stigma of law enforcement officers. Relating to the younger generation and feeling the impact of the events of 2020, these twelve officers are inspired to be the catalyst for change. Empathy and awareness stand to support bringing about a new public perception of law enforcement officers.” Again, take the content with a grain of salt, but the tone here is definitely a marked shift from the typically defensive and paternalistic RPD releases I’ve read in the past. I wonder if this change comes from the department’s new leadership? More importantly, I wonder if we’ll see on-the-ground actions that match this shift in public tone.
 

NBC12’s Henry Graff has some early details on a proposed Richmond Region Tourism Improvement District, which would add a 2% fee to hotel rooms across the region to pay for marketing and advertising designed to lure people into Richmond’s eternal embrace. Richmond Region Tourism, our regional tourism and marketing group, estimates that the new fees would generate $8.2 million the first year, and City Council’s Organizational Development committee will hear a presentation on the proposal this coming Monday, which you can flip through here. I like that this fee is distributed evenly across localities and would apply to “all lodging properties of 41+ rooms located within the boundaries of Chesterfield, Hanover, and Henrico counties, Town of Ashland, and the cities of Richmond and Colonial Height.” Side note: This proposal makes me want to remember how our lodging tax works, the vast majority of which, I think, currently funds debt payments on the convention center. I wonder if it’s time to revisit how that agreement shakes out.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 35 °F, and today looks bright, clear, and a bit cooler than yesterday. You can expect highs right around 50 °F, with temperatures dropping below freezing tonight. I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to move fully into True Winter and leave this transitional weather behind!
 

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Today, the Richmond Police Department will graduate their 125th Basic Recruit Class, which will add 12 new officers to their ranks. First, I’m fully and deeply aware that the police often get to write their own, unchallenged narrative and often that narrative is not an accurate portrayal of reality. Second, I think the language in RPD’s press release about these new recruits is really interesting: “These men and women join RPD and bring with them diverse backgrounds and perspectives. A brand new mother who completed training after giving birth to her son, an Iraqi who has past experience from a war torn country, and an elected female class president of the 125th BRC stand to bring fresh perspective, drive, and conviction to change the stigma of law enforcement officers. Relating to the younger generation and feeling the impact of the events of 2020, these twelve officers are inspired to be the catalyst for change. Empathy and awareness stand to support bringing about a new public perception of law enforcement officers.” Again, take the content with a grain of salt, but the tone here is definitely a marked shift from the typically defensive and paternalistic RPD releases I’ve read in the past. I wonder if this change comes from the department’s new leadership? More importantly, I wonder if we’ll see on-the-ground actions that match this shift in public tone.
 

NBC12’s Henry Graff has some early details on a proposed Richmond Region Tourism Improvement District, which would add a 2% fee to hotel rooms across the region to pay for marketing and advertising designed to lure people into Richmond’s eternal embrace. Richmond Region Tourism, our regional tourism and marketing group, estimates that the new fees would generate $8.2 million the first year, and City Council’s Organizational Development committee will hear a presentation on the proposal this coming Monday, which you can flip through here. I like that this fee is distributed evenly across localities and would apply to “all lodging properties of 41+ rooms located within the boundaries of Chesterfield, Hanover, and Henrico counties, Town of Ashland, and the cities of Richmond and Colonial Height.” Side note: This proposal makes me want to remember how our lodging tax works, the vast majority of which, I think, currently funds debt payments on the convention center. I wonder if it’s time to revisit how that agreement shakes out.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 49 °F, and it’s raining. It looks like it’ll keep raining until after lunch, so bring your coat or umbrella if you’ve got somewhere to be this morning. After the rain moves through we might have a decent, if windy, day ahead of us.
 

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As folks continue to remember and pay their respects to Representative Donald McEachin (including President Biden), Jahd Khalil at VPM has some of the complicated date math involved in setting a special election to fill McEachin’s seat. The Governor, who gets to decide when the special election will take place, says “there are folks that I’m going to want to listen to as to the best time in order to call this [election],” which, depending on how you read that may sound ominous. The gist, however, is that Youngkin can call a special election any time between today and April 26th. After April 26th, it’s too close to the June 20th primary, and the election would fall on that day instead. Once the date is set, candidates have 60 days to file—unless the special election is fewer than 60 days away, which then means they have five days to file. Clear? Depending on the state of readiness among candidates, you can see how accelerating or slow-walking the timeline could be a big strategic decision for the Governor and his party.
 

Speaking of, if you’re looking for a good remembrance of the congressman, take a minute to read this one from Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams. Williams and McEachin grew up together in the same neighborhood in Henrico called Middletown Gee, “a neighborhood built on 33 acres owned by an African American brick mason, contractor and developer named George Washington Gee.” Surely that’s the same Gee of McEachin and Gee, the law firm run by the congressman before he launched his political career? This piece from Williams is like a tiny lesson in 1970s Richmond history, and now I want to know more!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 36 °F, and yesterday was chillier than I expected with all that wind—nearly got blown right off my bike! Today, though, you can expect highs near 60 °F and fewer gusts, at least until tomorrow when wind and rain return with a vengeance!
 

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Last night, Congressman Donald McEachin died from “secondary effects of his colorectal cancer from 2013.” You can read reactions from Senator Kaine, state Senator McClellan, Mayor Stoney, and this in-memoriam piece by Michael Martz in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. So sad. McEachin has represented at least parts of Richmond (and now all of it) in Congress for the last five years, and had been a mainstay of Central Virginia politics since the early 2000s. He was a reliable advocate for Richmond at the federal level and a surprising leader on mitigating climate change. It’s crass to think about today, but the special election to fill McEachin’s now-vacant seat will mostly likely have a domino effect on Richmond politics, as local elected leaders shuffle upwards leaving empty seats behind them.
 

It’s Giving Tuesday, which means you’ve probably got an inbox stuffed with an endless amount of email from all of Richmond’s wonderful non-profits asking for end-of-year donations. You should definitely follow your heart and give to the organizations that have an impact in a way that aligns with how you see the world, however, this morning, I’m going to suggest that you donate to the Richmond Public Schools Education Foundation, and specifically to their “Honoring the Memory Fund.” Over the Thanksgiving holiday, another RPS student, Tyrae Clanton, was killed by gun violence, and the Honoring the Memory Fund “helps RPS families who have lost a student with funeral costs, co-pays for mental health support, and any expenses incurred for taking time off work to grieve.“
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 32 °F, and both today and tomorrow look great! You can expect dry skies, highs in the 60s, and the perfect weather for being grateful for the people closest to you. Keep an out for rain rolling through for much of the weekend, though. That totally works for me, because I’ve got a long backlog of horror films I need to work through over Thanksgiving break. Hope you find time to do the same (or find time to do whatever is your horror movie equivalent)!
 

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Last night at least seven people were killed and five injured in a mass shooting at a Walmart in Chesapeake. The Virginian-Pilot has ongoing coverage. This is the second mass shooting in Virginia in as many weeks.
 

120 days ago yesterday, Richmond passed the ordinance authorizing collective bargaining for City employees (ORD. 2022–221). I had written down on my super secret Good Morning, RVA calendar that the City must have hired a “labor relations administrator” by now, I think mostly because of this article in VPM. Looking over the text of the ordinance this morning, though, and 1) I again wish I was a lawyer or could at least read lawyer, and 2) I think that the City is not required to hire a labor relations administrator by yesterday, but, because they have not (as far as I know), a different process for addressing labor disputes is now in place. Honestly, I’d love a general collective bargaining update to sort all this out! Have the five collective bargaining units started to organize? Can they even do so without the labor relations administrator? Are good candidates for that position working their way through the hiring process? What’s the haps??
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 28 °F, and today we get some incrementally warmer weather with highs right around 60 °F. While the nights are still cold—right around freezing—the next couple of afternoons look pretty pleasant. I think I might go for a walk around the neighborhood today to start preparing my body for the onslaught of food it’s about to endure.
 

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Yesterday, Katelyn Jetelina at Your Local Epidemiologist put up a really nice post with some concrete guidance on how to stay safe and protect high-risk and older family members over Thanksgiving. The gist: If you’re planning to see grandma and grandpa (or anyone that’s at high-risk for COVID-19) on Thursday, consider testing both today and tomorrow and wearing a mask if you’re out and about. As I read through Jetelina’s advice, I keep thinking about Figure 15 from this recent CDC report. It shows the proportion of in-hospital deaths due to COVID-19, split out by age and vaccination status. 72% of people over the age of 65 dying from COVID have had just their primary series of the vaccine or a single booster—that’s comparable to the proportion of unvaccinated people aged 50–64 who died from COVID (68%). Older folks need to get that bivalent booster ASAP, if they haven’t already, and everyone else needs to do what they can to keep the more vulnerable members of our communities safe and healthy.
 

City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee meets today, and you can find the full agenda here. Of deep and burning interest to readers of this newsletter: Kevin Vonk, director of the Department of Planning and Development Review, will give a presentation on the long-awaited complete rewrite of the City’s zoning ordinance. I really like this presentation! It runs through a bunch of slides stating what a new zoning ordinance will do—stuff like, “allow for neighborhoods to evolve without losing their foundation of order” and “align the maximum development potential of a parcel with the existing and future capacity of transportation networks and public infrastructure” and even “more appropriately regulate structural form, more specifically in established neighborhoods, and more architecturally in old and historic districts.” Check out slides 16–19 for how the process will work and slide 25 for an estimated timeline. It’s a big project to tackle, so I’m not surprised that Vonk thinks the entire process will take at least two years. Also of note on LUHT’s agenda, RES. 2022-R073, which would kick off the rezoning process to…ban a lot of convenience stores? Submitted by Councilmembers Robertson and Lambert, this resolution would remove convenience stores as a permitted use from a lot of existing zoning districts and, instead, have them “be regulated through either a neighborhood-based convenience store overlay district…or the conditional use permit process.” I have no idea what is going on here and would like to learn more. Regardless of the intent behind this paper (which, conspiratorially and baselessly, I think is to address a specific convenience store in the 6th District), using the zoning ordinance as a cudgel to bang away at a specific problem in one council district seems incredibly counter to the thoughtful goals laid out in the above zoning rewrite.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 23 °F, which is definitely cold, but highs today should reach up into the 50s, which is definitely a bit more pleasant than yesterday. Warmer(ish) temperatures and sunny skies continue over the next couple of days, so get out there any enjoy it if you have an easy-breezy and short holiday week.
 

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This past Friday, Governor Youngkin announced his “Make Virginia Home” housing plan to “promote increasing the supply of attainable, affordable, and accessible housing across the Commonwealth.” I’d love to see the actual legislation behind this plan, but, for now, all we’ve got is the aforelinked short list of talking points—which do contain some good words like “comprehensive reforms of Virginia’s land use and zoning laws” and “increasing the supply of land for housing.” It also mentions providing a “more efficient way” for projects to meet mandated wetland and stream mitigation requirements, which reminds me a lot of this longread from last week criticizing how federal NEPA standards bog down important infrastructure. Of course, with these sorts of things, the devil is in the details. Will the zoning reforms make it easier to built single-family homes while preventing incredibly needed multi-family housing? How will increasing the supply of land for housing impact green spaces? Will any of part of this plan approach development in a sustainable way, and will any of the housing that gets built follow sustainability and climate best practices? I have no idea, but I think you can forgive me for starting from a fairly skeptical place given the current administration’s approach to every other issue thus far.
 

Patrick Larsen at VPM reports on last week’s meeting of the Richmond Coalition for Healthcare Equity, the group organizing around Richmond Community Hospital in the East End and Bon Secours’ use of 340B funds. Larsen provides a good synopsis of the issue: “Richmond Community is supposed to benefit from a federal program called 340B – which allows the facility to purchase medicine at a discount, while charging close to full price to insured patients and their insurers, leaving the difference to be reinvested. Bon Secours registered a series of clinics in wealthier parts of the city through Richmond Community, allowing the hospital to buy deeply discounted drugs, despite a well-insured patient base.” The Coalition has a bunch of actions they’d like to see from Bon Secours—including investing 100% of its profits from the 340B program in the East End—and will meet again on December 15th to figure out some next steps.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 23 °F, which is definitely cold, but highs today should reach up into the 50s, which is definitely a bit more pleasant than yesterday. Warmer(ish) temperatures and sunny skies continue over the next couple of days, so get out there any enjoy it if you have an easy-breezy and short holiday week.
 

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This past Friday, Governor Youngkin announced his “Make Virginia Home” housing plan to “promote increasing the supply of attainable, affordable, and accessible housing across the Commonwealth.” I’d love to see the actual legislation behind this plan, but, for now, all we’ve got is the aforelinked short list of talking points—which do contain some good words like “comprehensive reforms of Virginia’s land use and zoning laws” and “increasing the supply of land for housing.” It also mentions providing a “more efficient way” for projects to meet mandated wetland and stream mitigation requirements, which reminds me a lot of this longread from last week criticizing how federal NEPA standards bog down important infrastructure. Of course, with these sorts of things, the devil is in the details. Will the zoning reforms make it easier to built single-family homes while preventing incredibly needed multi-family housing? How will increasing the supply of land for housing impact green spaces? Will any of part of this plan approach development in a sustainable way, and will any of the housing that gets built follow sustainability and climate best practices? I have no idea, but I think you can forgive me for starting from a fairly skeptical place given the current administration’s approach to every other issue thus far.
 

Patrick Larsen at VPM reports on last week’s meeting of the Richmond Coalition for Healthcare Equity, the group organizing around Richmond Community Hospital in the East End and Bon Secours’ use of 340B funds. Larsen provides a good synopsis of the issue: “Richmond Community is supposed to benefit from a federal program called 340B – which allows the facility to purchase medicine at a discount, while charging close to full price to insured patients and their insurers, leaving the difference to be reinvested. Bon Secours registered a series of clinics in wealthier parts of the city through Richmond Community, allowing the hospital to buy deeply discounted drugs, despite a well-insured patient base.” The Coalition has a bunch of actions they’d like to see from Bon Secours—including investing 100% of its profits from the 340B program in the East End—and will meet again on December 15th to figure out some next steps.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 33 °F, and that’s cold! Overnight lows for the next couple of days will sink below freezing, putting an end to whatever’s still living in your garden (and sending a wave of abominable spider crickets indoors to take disgusting refuge). Today, though, you can expect middle-of-November highs in the upper 40s with plenty of sunshine.
 

Water cooler

Yesterday, blistering reactions to the Virginia Department of Education’s changes to the history and social science learning standards started to pour in. The Virginia Legislative Black Caucus penned this open letter, saying they “have deep concerns with the politically-drafted revised standards that literally revise, whitewash, and omit important history in Virginia’s school curriculum.” An example: The draft standards VDOE released this past Friday did not mention Martin Luther King Jr. until 6th grade, something the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Anna Bryson says VDOE has since quietly updated calling the omission “unintentional.” Another example, and huge red flag: “The original Northam administration draft references multiple times that slavery was the central cause of the Civil War, while the Youngkin administration draft does not.” Bryson also reports on some of the other topics scrubbed out of the new standards and the role Hillsdale College—whose president led the extremely eye-rolly “1776 Commission”—may have had in the recent update. The State Board of Education will look over the new draft at their meeting today (agenda here, livestream here), but you’ll definitely have an opportunity to get involved at a few public engagement sessions over the next couple of months.
 

Tonight at 6:00 PM, the newly-formed Richmond Coalition for Health Care Equity will host a community meeting at Mount Olivet Church (1223 N. 25th Street) to “discuss recent reporting calling into question Bon Secours’s use of the 340B federal program intended to help hospital systems reinvest in services benefitting low-income patients and communities.” The tone for the evening sounds serious, informational;, and action-oriented; I really like the language they chose for the event flyer: “What has Bon Secours Mercy done to Richmond Community Hospital, and what can we do about it?” Richmond Together, a local progressive group with smart thoughts on policy change, has helped put together this new coalition to tackle an important and timely issue. I think that’s an interesting, grass-rootsy model, and it avoids the hours and expense required to stand up an actual single-issue nonprofit. I’m looking forward to seeing what next steps towards accountability and restitution come out of tonight’s meeting.