Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and today looks cloudy and humid. Expect highs near 90 °F and maybe some rain this afternoon or evening. Cooler weather moves in tomorrow, which I’m excited about. I think screen-porch season is right around the corner!
 

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Over the weekend, the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Chris Suarez reported on the region’s rising property assessments. On average, property values increased by 12.4% in Chesterfield, 11.2% in Richmond, and 10.6% in Henrico. The two Zip Codes that saw the largest percentage increase, however, were on the City’s Southside. Richmond’s Assessor says lack of supply and rising rents have contributed to the increase in housing costs. Richmond’s 8th District Councilmember, Reva Trammell, wants to drop the City’s real-estate tax rate in response to these new assessments, and, I get it. Folks who have owned their homes forever—especially older folks—have seen non-trivial increases to their real estate tax bill over the last couple of years. For some people, that could definitely break their budget. However, once you lower the real estate tax rate it never, ever goes up again, and, at some point in the future, Richmond may need that additional real estate tax revenue. I think what I’d like to see is twofold: 1) Continue to use a portion of this new, additional revenue to build more and more affordable housing, 2) Have someone put together a detailed analysis on how switching to a Land Value Tax would impact folks with lower incomes who are bearing a disproportionate burden of the rising assessments. Given the lack of local authority to provide tax relief to specific people, I think we need to be creative in our solutions here. And I’m not convinced that a flat, 4-cent reduction in the real estate tax would actually do anything for the people who need relief most.
 

The RPS School Board meets this evening for the first time since they called an emergency meeting to discuss the District’s SOL scores—but then failed to take any actions. You can find their very full agenda here. Despite lots of things to get through, I imagine the Board will spend the majority of their time on the academics and curriculum updates—67- and 41-page presentations respectively. Flipping through those two exhaustive PDFs, which you should definitely do, and I’m overwhelmed by the amount of information! I bet Boardmembers will be too, and I’m interested in how they react and the types of questions they ask when presented with reams of data.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F, and today looks lovely. Expect highs in the 80s and good, sunny vibes that carry straight on through the next couple of days. There is a chance for rain on Sunday, but I say live your life and enjoy the weekend!
 

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As of last night, the CDC’s COVID-19 Community Level for Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield is pretty solidly medium. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality is 194, 102, and 169, respectively, and the 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 12.2. We’re definitely on a coronadownswing at the moment, and, if nothing about the world changed over the next few weeks, I’d say we were headed into the peaceful greens of a low Community Level. But, unfortunately, we know COVID-19 typically peaks in the fall, and fall is right around the corner. Luckily for us, unlike previous falls, now basically everyone is eligible for some sort of COVID-19 vaccine—plus we have a brand new tool in the bivalent boosters to help keep folks over the age of 12 extra protected. Speaking of, Katelyn Jetelina digs into the White House’s new plan of making COVID-19 boosters a once-a-year type of deal. She has some concerns—not with the concept but with the amount of science and data we have to support that sort of plan. Anyway, open that link in a tab while you schedule an appointment for your booster this weekend!
 

Jahd Khalil at VPM reports that the City’s Urban Design Committee failed to have a quorum yesterday, which means the committee couldn’t take any action at all on the plans to install landscaping at Marcus-David Peters Circle (aka the Lee Circle). That’s a bummer, but it does sound like Kevin Vonck, Director of Planning, will do his best to keep the plans moving forward so we don’t miss the fall planting window.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 70 °F, and today looks a little cooler with highs in the mid 80s but plenty of humidity. Keep an eye out for sporadic rain later this afternoon, though!
 

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Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that City Council decided to kill the ranked-choice voting ordinance (ORD. 2022–119) before it even got to regular council for a public hearing and a vote. “Ninth District Councilman Michael Jones made the motion to strike the legislation from the council’s agenda, effectively killing the ordinance. Council members Kristen Nye, Stephanie Lynch and Katherine Jordan, the chief sponsor of the bill, voted against the motion.” Tap through to read a bunch of disheartening quotes about ranked-choice voting diluting Black representation and voting power. It’s not super surprising to see incumbents vote against policies that may make it harder for them to win their next election, but to suggest ranked-choice voting is racist? We’ll, that’s disappointing to say the least. I came across two thoughts floating around on Twitter this morning that capture how I’m feeling following this vote. First, Sheri Shannon says “A lot more education is needed to enlighten council.” After last night, that feels right to me. We probably need a real, organized, and funded ranked-choice voting campaign to do work over the course of a couple years before Richmond next attempts to switch the way we run Council elections. If it were me, I’d start laying the ground work next year for a vote in 2025—right after the next Council sits down and the 2028 elections are just a gauzy whisper on the horizon. Second, Allan-Charles Chipman reminds us that Council has an active hand and responsibility in affordable housing policy: Keeping Black voters from being priced out of the City does a whole lot to preserve Black representation and voting power. It’s frustrating to see a majority of Council quick to strike down ranked-choice voting for racism reasons but incredibly slow to act on any of the one million housing, zoning, or transportation initiatives that would actually mitigate some of the impacts racism has on how folks in our City live, work, and thrive.
 

Council also headed into a closed session last night to discuss, with the Chief, the RPD’s Alleged 4th of July Plot. Since it was a closed session, we don’t have a ton of details, but WTVR’s Tyler Layne got a hold of Councilmember Jones afterwards. Sounds like most of the conversation centered around how to better inform City Council when there’s a potential emergency.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 73 °F, and today looks cloudy with a chance for a little bit of rain this morning. You can expect highs in the mid 80s, and don’t forget to keep checking in on your outside plants—it’s been a while since we’ve had a good soaking!
 

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VPM’s Ian M. Stewart asks: “What would it take to permanently close Carytown to cars?” The answer, which he doesn’t really get around to, is a bucketful of political will. We’d need strong support from the 1st, 2nd, and 5th district councilmembers, the mayor (so they could make it a priority for City staff), and a lot of residents (especially business owners). I think we have some of that citizen support right now, but we would have to really work to nail down the support from elected officials. Not impossible, certainly, but a lot of work.
 

Richmond’s Department of Parks and Recreation has closed the pedestrian bridge over the train tracks to Texas Beach. From the announcement: “During a recent inspection of park-maintained bridges, the pedestrian bridge that leads to Texas Beach was found to be structurally unsafe for public use. The bridge will be closed effective immediately.” NBC12 reports that while there is $2 million of federal funding to fix the bridge, there is, at this point, no timeline for repairs or a replacement. Huge bummer! Texas Beach is such a great and easy river spot, and, with the bridge closed, I’m not sure there’s now a safe (and legal) way to get there. I hope Parks & Rec can repair or replace the bridge quickly and that people will give them some grace during the process.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and we’ve got another hot, dry day ahead of us. You can expect consistent sunshine and highs around 90 °F straight on through the long weekend. I hope you find time to get outside—or, heck, take a long nap in the cool comfort of some air conditioning—to celebrate the ending of the summer and to start thinking about the fall! Richmond’s best season is just around the corner.
 

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It seems like it’s been forever, but the COVID-19 Community Level for all of Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield is now medium—only just barely medium, but medium nonetheless. The 7-day average case rate per 100,000 people in each locality respectively is 199, 138, and 191 (remember, the medium/high cutoff is 200). The 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 15.9. I’m taking this drop in level as good news but will still wear my mask when I’m out in indoor public spaces. The CDC does not recommend this for everyone while at a medium level, but it can’t hurt and masks are a chill and breezy way to help mitigate the spread of COVID-19. We’ll see if we can sustain a regional medium as kids return to school and college students return to whatever it is that they get up to these days.
 

In other fun COVID-19 news, last night the CDC recommended new bivalent boosters for everyone 12 and older. These bivalent boosters, in both Pfizer and Moderna flavors, have a new formulation that focuses on the original SARS-CoV-2 virus plus the more recent BA.4/5 variant. Katelyn Jetelina has a great explainer that you should read detailing the safety, efficacy, and benefits of these new vaccines. Making small updates to vaccines is normal and a lot like how we rejigger the flu vaccine each year, and I this hope signals that we’re starting to settle into Regular Life with COVID-19. It’s a weird thing to hope, I know, but much better than living in Infinite Pandemic Mode forever. Since this recommendation just came through last night, I’d give your local pharmacies and health departments a minute to figure things out before banging on the door, demanding a bivalent vaccine. That said, I’d think booster should be readily available in the coming weeks. Start making a plan to get yours today!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and today looks pretty good for the first day of September. Expect highs in the 80s, sunshine, and a continued drop in humidity. This recent hot-but-not-humid weather is wild—is this what it’s like to not live in a swamp? I mean, I spent some time on a bike yesterday and, while hot, I definitely didn’t melt into a pool of human remains when I arrived at my destination.
 

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RVA Rapid Transit’s Richard Hankins has a good column in the Richmond Times-Dispatch explaining and advocating for abolishing parking minimums. Getting rid of parking minimums, which we should definitely do, is all about space. Richmond has 62.5 square miles of land and we will never get an inch more. Requiring a set number of parking spaces for both residential and commercial buildings means we’re prioritizing our extremely limited space for storing empty cars instead of building more stuff for people. As Hankins writes, “The mandate to include parking can increase the cost of apartments by up to 25%. That makes new housing developments more expensive to rent or simply not built as they become financially infeasible.” The City’s Department of Planning and Development Review just wrapped up the first round of public engagement on parking minimums and plans to kick off a second round (via focus groups) later this month. If you support getting rid of parking minimums and want to join one of those focus groups, email Brian Mercer (Brian.Mercer@rva.gov)!
 

VPM’s Patrick Larsen reports on the Governor’s renewed plans to pull Virginia out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. RGGI is a cap-and-trade program—something conservatives used to support as a pro-capitalism way of lowering emissions. Pulling Virginia out of the program is just another way Republicans show how unserious and unworried they are about the current climate catastrophe. I’m still unclear on how much authority Virginia’s Department of Enviornmental Quality has to leave RGGI without General Assembly approval, but maybe all the Youngkin administration has to do is wait out the current contract (which ends in 2023). Charlotte Rene Woods at the RTD digs into that question a bit, and, honestly, it kind of seems like we’ll end up waiting to see what the courts have to say.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 70 °F, but today’s highs top out in the upper 80s and NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says the humidity should drop in a pleasant way later this morning. Hot but not an armpit! I’m looking forward to it!
 

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The ACLU of Virginia puts it well, “DISAPPOINTING: The Hanover County School Board voted 5–2 to adopt its bathroom/locker room policy that would make trans and non-binary students jump through hoops simply to exist in schools. To trans and nonbinary students in Hanover: You are LOVED. We are here for you.” State Senator Hashmi points out that the Virginia Department of Education already has model policies on the books for this sort of thing and “call[s] upon Youngkin’s VODE team to follow through on protecting trans children.” To quote a bit from that VDOE model policy document Hashmi referenced: “All students are entitled to have access to restrooms, locker rooms, and changing facilities that are sanitary, safe, and adequate, so that they can comfortably and fully engage in their school programs and activities…Any accommodations offered should be non-stigmatizing and minimize lost instructional time…It can be emotionally harmful for a transgender student to be questioned regarding the use of restrooms and facilities.” I’m sure the Hanover County School Board feels like their new policy—which requires families to submit special requests so their students can go pee in a bathroom—adheres to the letter of this policy, but it certainly violates the spirit of it. I don’t hold a lot of hope that the Governor or his VDOE will do anything about this and expect to read a quote soon along the lines of how localities know best for their citizens (but that only applies when the localities agree with the current administration, of course).
 

Wyatt Gordon at Greater Greater Washington reports on a potential new scooter ordinance in Richmond. Remember when all we talked about was the City’s extended stumble towards legalizing scooters? Simpler times! Gordon says City staff will ask Council to extend scooter hours from 9:00 PM to 1:00 AM (bringing it in line with bus service) and to “require scooter companies to maintain at least 20% of their fleet south of the James River.” You can find a presentation the City’s Office of Equitable Transit and Mobility gave to Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee about the current scooter program here. All of this sounds great to me. When Bolt left Richmond’s scooter market a couple weeks ago, it turned the entire Southside into a micromobility desert, with just two bike share stations to cover a ton of square miles and neighborhoods. We’ll have to wait until Council returns from summer recess to see what the actual ordinance looks like, how Council feels about it, and how Scooter companies will respond. Regardless, I’m excited to write about scooters again!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 70 °F, and today’s another hot one with highs in the low 90s. I’ll tell you what, yesterday’s bike ride home was bakingly unpleasant, but the humidity should break tomorrow, which I hope will take some of the edge off. If you’ve gotta spend a bunch of time outside today, remember to stay hydrated!
 

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VPM is out here doing the lord’s work and has gotten ahold of DMV’s rejected license plates from 2019, 2020, and 2021. I think I could spend 100 hours looking through these lists; people are simultaneously fascinating and unique while also so incredibly the same. Poking around these PDFs and you’ll see infinite versions on just a handful of (mostly boring) themes: Sex, violence, and drugs. Some do seem genuinely innocuous, though, and I do think whoever was denied “NORFCK” got a raw deal.
 

Richmond BizSense’s Jonathan Spiers reports on some exciting Southside rezoning news that I either missed or forgot about entirely. Late in July, Council introduced a resolution (RES. 2022-R048) to kick off some up-zoning of portions of three major Southside corridors: Richmond Highway, Midlothian Turnpike, and Hull Street. Rezoning is a whole entire deal, so this is just the start of a long process, but it’s exciting nonetheless! Rezoning these corridors to TOD-1 (Transit-Oriented Development) will encourage denser development which helps build the case for adding more frequent transit which, in turn, brings more development. It’s a positive, reinforcing cycle, and rezoning is an important step in that process.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 70 °F, and today’s another hot one with highs in the low 90s. I’ll tell you what, yesterday’s bike ride home was bakingly unpleasant, but the humidity should break tomorrow, which I hope will take some of the edge off. If you’ve gotta spend a bunch of time outside today, remember to stay hydrated!
 

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VPM is out here doing the lord’s work and has gotten ahold of DMV’s rejected license plates from 2019, 2020, and 2021. I think I could spend 100 hours looking through these lists; people are simultaneously fascinating and unique while also so incredibly the same. Poking around these PDFs and you’ll see infinite versions on just a handful of (mostly boring) themes: Sex, violence, and drugs. Some do seem genuinely innocuous, though, and I do think whoever was denied “NORFCK” got a raw deal.
 

Richmond BizSense’s Jonathan Spiers reports on some exciting Southside rezoning news that I either missed or forgot about entirely. Late in July, Council introduced a resolution (RES. 2022-R048) to kick off some up-zoning of portions of three major Southside corridors: Richmond Highway, Midlothian Turnpike, and Hull Street. Rezoning is a whole entire deal, so this is just the start of a long process, but it’s exciting nonetheless! Rezoning these corridors to TOD-1 (Transit-Oriented Development) will encourage denser development which helps build the case for adding more frequent transit which, in turn, brings more development. It’s a positive, reinforcing cycle, and rezoning is an important step in that process.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 70 °F, and today’s gonna get hot again. You can expect highs right around 90 °F with plenty of humidity for your afternoon commute. I hope you have an excellent, if sweaty, day!
 

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Today is the official first day of school for both Richmond Public Schools and Henrico County Public Schools. Students: Good luck, it’ll be awesome. Families: You did it, you made it through the summer. Related, RPS School Boardmember Liz Doerr sent out a link to this neat data dashboard tracking RPS’s progress towards the goals laid out in their Goals4RPS strategic plan. The dashboard is currently in beta and tracks just a handful of things—graduation & dropout rates, SOL results, PALs results, enrollment trends, and attendance rates—with more goals and data coming soon. I love a good dashboard and will be interested to see how community members, decision makers, and media start to use this one.
 

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Patrick Wilson and Chis Suarez continue to report on the RPD’s Alleged 4th of July Plot, putting in FOIA requests to figure out what Chief Smith knew before holding his now-infamous press conference on July 6th. It doesn’t look good for the Chief: “Smith’s own department had provided him information in writing before his news conference that the location of any potential incident was ‘unknown,’…A police official emailed those records to Smith and an assistant seven minutes before Smith’s 2 p.m. July 6 news conference.” Tap through for a screenshot of the actual talking points sent to the chief, which say verbatim: “the location was unknown.” Why invent a location for a potential mass shooting on the spot, unnecessarily panicking neighbors and instantly calling into question police operations in and around Dogwood Dell on July 4th? I don’t know, but Wilson and Suarez ask a lot of good questions in this piece, and have started to elevate their questions to the City’s Chief Administrative Officer as they try to get to the bottom of this whole situation. Apparently, Councilmember Lynch has requested a “full briefing” at Council’s September 6th meeting, and I would even bet we’ll learn more this week.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 68 °F, and we’ve got another good summer day ahead of us. Expect highs near 90, sunshine, and maybe a few clouds this evening. We’ve got the weather forecast on repeat for the next little while—enjoy it!
 

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WTVR’s Tyler Layne has some follow-up reporting on this past Tuesday’s stressful emergency School Board meeting where nothing happened. If, for some reason, you didn’t spend your evening watching the meeting over takeout and yelling at the screen like my family did, read through this piece for a bunch of the more interesting quotes from Tuesday—plus some new ones post-meeting. Like this one from 4th District Boardmember Jonathan Young about the sudden introduction of a motion to scrap and rebuild the District’s curriculum on an unrealistic timeline: “Young said he was less worried about the process and ‘more concerned about the product…Cry me a river. Cry me a river.’” Don’t love that! Layne also has a bit of insight into the closed session: “Despite rumors, the board did not mention anything related to firing Kamras in closed session Tuesday evening. However, Young said he’s optimistic that ‘restructuring of personnel’ is still on the way.” OK. I guess we wait until the next Board meeting in a couple weeks to see if any other surprise motions pop up? This kind of unpredictable chaos is absolutely exhausting for families and the public. I have had my issues with City Council and their public process in the past, but it’s never been anything like! Not even close!
 

Ben Paviour at VPM reports on another sketchy hiring decision by the Governor’s administration. I continue to think that the specifics of these hires and appointments are mostly trolls designed to make liberals angry, so I try not to get too caught up in the “quiet hiring, breaking news, eventual resignation” cycle. However, I do think, generally, the larger pattern of placing unqualified people into important positions is worth pointing out and remembering.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 68 °F, and today looks pretty nice. Enjoy highs in the 80s, sunshine, and other regular summer stuff like slip-ons, evening strolls, and condensation dripping down the side of a mason jar. I think you can expect more of the same for the next couple of days, too.
 

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Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden will host a Celebration of Life for Jonah Holland on Sunday, October 2nd at 10:00 AM. In the meantime, if you’d like to help her family in some way, you can find information on donating to her children’s VA529 accounts at the bottom of the aforelinked page. Ride safe out there!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 68 °F, and today looks nice. Expect highs in the upper 80s and sunshine. While this week does look hotter than the week that was, the long-term forecast still lacks any of those sweat-through-your-shirt, melt-into-a-puddle, spontaneously-combust-on-the-sidewalk days.
 

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School Board will host their emergency meeting—at which they will theoretically do something in reaction to the District’s COVID-impacted SOL scores—tonight at John Marshall High School (4225 Old Brook Road) from 6:30 PM until question mark. Here’s the agenda, but it’s just three items: public comment, “discuss academics,” and a closed session. KidsFirstRPS speculates on a couple different scenarios of what exactly they could get into tonight, but without any clear communication from the Board it’s really hard to know what to expect. I hate this. I hate the vagueness from boardmembers, which at this point feels intentional, that’s designed to…what? Create panic and fear among RPS families? I don’t know how you can say to a reporter, “There may be some suggestions to change personnel. We don’t know yet, so I don’t want to put in an alarm into the public,” follow it up with zero further information, and not expect to do exactly that—raise a huge alarm to the public. The Mayor even felt like he needed to weigh in! I guess we’ll all tune in on YouTube to see what tonight amounts to: a round of nine speeches, putting the superintendent on double-secret probation, outright firing him, or none of the above.
 

VPM’s Megan Pauly reports on the first class at the Maggie Walker Governor’s School after they stopped using an achievement test as part of admissions, hoping to create a more equitable process. The stats seem pretty clear: “The percentage of new students admitted to Walker who are Black was 4% in 2020, when both the achievement and aptitude tests were administered; 13% in 2021, when neither test was administered; and 8% in 2022, when only the aptitude test was given.” Researcher and professor Genevieve Siegel-Hawley, who knows more about these things than most, is unsurprised, saying “We like to pretend that these aptitude tests are objective measures, but they are riddled with bias, both in this historical sense, but also, in terms of how the tests are constructed…There’s a body of scholarship that calls the SAT — the Scholastic Aptitude Test — the wealth test because the performance on the SAT is so correlated with family socioeconomic status.” Tangentially related, one thing I learned only semi-recently is that Algebra I is required to even apply to Maggie Walker, which means kids and families across the district need to start thinking about these sorts of things right as middle school starts. So it’s not just about making sure kids know that the Governor’s school exists, but it’s also about getting as many kids prepared so that it’s even an option for them at all—which I know, first hand!, is something RPS is working on.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 69 °F, and today you can expect highs in the mid 80s with a chance for a bit of rain here or there this morning and later in the evening. The coming week looks a bit warmer than the last—but still not oppressively hot. I’m looking forward to it!
 

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WTVR’s Tyler Lane reports that the RPS School Board will “hold an emergency meeting to discuss a ‘devastating decrease to student achievement’ and potential division leadership changes.” It’s been clear for a while now that School Board’s five-member voting bloc wants to get rid of the Superintendent, and maybe this week they’ll use a drop in SOL scores due to a generational pandemic that disrupted the entire world to do so. Does it matter to the Board that scores everywhere are still below pre-pandemic levels? Even in can-do-no-wrong Henrico where just 61% of students passed their math SOL? Does it matter that Black and Economically Disadvantaged students in Richmond saw a smaller drop in scores than they did statewide? To quote Thad Williamson from the aforelinked piece, “But this observation also shows that systemwide decline in test scores, understood in context, is not clear and compelling evidence of systemic educational failure in RPS. Rather, the decline in test scores speaks to the earthquake that shook the entire educational landscape, an earthquake that will take years of focused effort to recover from.“ No, probably none of this critical context matters to the five-member voting bloc. It’d be a horrible mistake for the Board to fire the Superintendent, of course—they’ve already forced out much of his leadership team, leaving, I think, literally no one to take the reins heading into the school year (which starts a week from today). And after the Board’s open displays of hostility to the superintendent, blatant lack of trust in their own staff, and frequent gaslighting of the public, I don’t have a lot of hope for finding a high-quality replacement candidate.
 

Also from Tyler Lane, a quick check-in on the City’s gun buyback program, which hosted its first event this past weekend. The event ended early due to “overwhelming response,” which seems good. I’m excited to see some chartsandgraphs around what kind of guns folks brought in.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 64 °F, and today looks great. Expect highs in the mid 80s plus some clouds in the sky later this afternoon. The weekend looks decent, too—we’ll just have to see if any rogue rain pops up or not. For now, though, call dibs on your favorite outside chair and plan to spend the next couple mornings out there drinking your beverage of choice.
 

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As of last night the COVID-19 Community Level is high in Richmond but medium in both Henrico and Chesterfield. The 7-day average of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in each locality is 296, 197, and 150, respectively. The 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 is 15.3. We’re back into split decision territory! Which I don’t love! While the case rates do appear to be dropping in parts of our region, the hospital admission rates keep climbing, and I’m not sure what to make of that. I’ll still be wearing my mask and doing what I can to reduce my chances of getting COVID for the foreseeable future because 1) it’s easy, 2) Henrico’s “197” case rate is real close to “200” (at which it’d be in a high level), and 3) I’m patiently waiting to hear about those new fall COVID-19 boosters.
 

One other COVID-related piece of news, did y’all see the FDA’s new guidance on using at-home tests? Because our current at-home tests are less successful at accurately detecting omicron, the FDA now recommends that folks with symptoms follow a negative at-home test with a second at-home test 48 hours later. If you don’t have symptoms but believe you’ve been exposed, follow that original negative test with another 48 hours later and then one more after that (for a total of three). Do you have a huge pile of at-home tests in your cabinet? If not, now’s the time to grab a few more!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F, and how good was yesterday’s weather?? So good! Today, you can expect more of the same, maybe a bit warmer, and maybe a bit more sunshine. Get out there and enjoy it.
 

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Yesterday, I asked if anyone had a good explainer on the new Climate Bill (aka the Inflation Reduction Act), and reader Lori sent me this video by Hank Green, one of my favorite YouTubers/internet people. It’s about 20 minutes long, totally worth it, and will give you a good sense for how this bill invests almost $400 billion into reducing the United State’s carbon emissions and mitigating the impacts of climate change. I also love that this video gets the tone exactly right: This bill is a huge deal—one that seemed impossible just a month ago. That Congress could figure out how to get it passed gives me a sense of climate-hope that I didn’t think I’d feel…for awhile…maybe even in my lifetime. That’s cynical, but, hey, the last six years have been tough and cynicism-inducing. We needed a win!
 

VPM’s Ben Paviour has a quick Lab School update, which includes a map of all the college and universities that have expressed interest in starting their own Lab School. It’s a lot of colleges and universities all across Virginia—like, most of them! Lawmakers are now trying to figure out if private institutions, like Liberty University, are eligible for this (public) funding to start their own K–12 public school. Paviour also links to this PDF of the official Lab School guidelines from the Virginia Board of Education, which is a medium interesting read. Eric Kolenich at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has more and reports that the first Lab Schools “could begin recruiting teachers and students as early as February and open in time for the 2023–24 school year”. Seems rushed to me. Also, who knows how this will impact the teacher shortages facing almost every single public school district in the commonwealth. I think I have a lot of questions about how this effort won’t further divert resources away from the public school system that the State refuses to fund at an appropriate level.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and today, like yesterday, also looks very nice—expect highs in the 80s and sunshine. Temperatures start to creep up a bit over the next few days, but I’m going to pretend not to even notice!
 

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Yesterday, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, making the largest investment into mitigating climate change…ever? As President Obama said, “This is a BFD.” You can read a bit more in the Washington Post, but, even if that sounds boring, definitely tap through to see a great picture of Biden giving a “Can you believe this guy??” look to Joe Manchin after signing the Act. I’m impressed that Democrats got this bill passed—a bill investing billions in climate and health insurance!—given their incredibly thin majority and the raging anti-science opposition from Republicans. Exactly zero republicans in either the House or the Senate—Liz Cheney included—voted to invest in giving our burning planet a chance to support habitable life for the next couple of generations. Mindblowingly sad. I’m still looking for the best explainer on everything this new law accomplishes, so if you find a good, comprehensive one, send it my way!
 

Patrick Wilson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a big update on the Richmond Police Department’s alleged 4th of July plot: “[Chief] Smith misspoke at a July 6 news conference in which he erroneously said an anonymous tipster specified Dogwood Dell as a targeted location for a mass shooting on July Fourth.” While the Chief admits that no one, at any point, mentioned Dogwood Dell, he doubles down on there being “a plot that there would be a mass shooting, 4th of July, large event, Richmond Virginia.” This interview with the Chief comes just a week after he said he was done talking about the alleged plot and would watch as the federal cases move forward (which I still don’t think have anything to do with mass shootings). Staying quiet and trying to ignore it all was never going to be a winning strategy for the RPD, but I’m not sure this interview made anything better, either. Tap through to watch a short segment of the interview and read about some weird details around how the interview was set up. If I had to guess, we’ll hear more soon—maybe even from the Mayor. Smith did more interviews with WTVR, NBC12, and WRIC, if you want to check them out.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and today, like yesterday, also looks very nice—expect highs in the 80s and sunshine. Temperatures start to creep up a bit over the next few days, but I’m going to pretend not to even notice!
 

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Yesterday, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law, making the largest investment into mitigating climate change…ever? As President Obama said, “This is a BFD.” You can read a bit more in the Washington Post, but, even if that sounds boring, definitely tap through to see a great picture of Biden giving a “Can you believe this guy??” look to Joe Manchin after signing the Act. I’m impressed that Democrats got this bill passed—a bill investing billions in climate and health insurance!—given their incredibly thin majority and the raging anti-science opposition from Republicans. Exactly zero republicans in either the House or the Senate—Liz Cheney included—voted to invest in giving our burning planet a chance to support habitable life for the next couple of generations. Mindblowingly sad. I’m still looking for the best explainer on everything this new law accomplishes, so if you find a good, comprehensive one, send it my way!
 

Patrick Wilson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a big update on the Richmond Police Department’s alleged 4th of July plot: “[Chief] Smith misspoke at a July 6 news conference in which he erroneously said an anonymous tipster specified Dogwood Dell as a targeted location for a mass shooting on July Fourth.” While the Chief admits that no one, at any point, mentioned Dogwood Dell, he doubles down on there being “a plot that there would be a mass shooting, 4th of July, large event, Richmond Virginia.” This interview with the Chief comes just a week after he said he was done talking about the alleged plot and would watch as the federal cases move forward (which I still don’t think have anything to do with mass shootings). Staying quiet and trying to ignore it all was never going to be a winning strategy for the RPD, but I’m not sure this interview made anything better, either. Tap through to watch a short segment of the interview and read about some weird details around how the interview was set up. If I had to guess, we’ll hear more soon—maybe even from the Mayor. Smith did more interviews with WTVR, NBC12, and WRIC, if you want to check them out.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 63 °F, and today’s forecast looks lovely—a lot like yesterday but with more sun and less drizzle. You can expect highs right around 80 °F and perfect weather for an evening walk around your neighborhood.
 

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National Teacher of the Year Rodney Robinson pointed me towards this article in the Richmond Times-Dispatch by Anna Bryson from a couple days back: “Teacher vacancies in Varina, Fairfield put strain on Henrico County Schools.” Henrico has over 180 vacancies, but the map at the top of the article shows a striking gradient of disparity between the eastern and western parts of the County. According to Bryson, the eastern districts, which have the most teacher vacancies, also are home to “majority-Black populations and serve more than half of Henrico’s economically disadvantaged students.” In the original tweet that linked me to this article, Robinson says, “The teacher shortage is the biggest equity issue in education right now. Black, Brown, and economically disadvantaged populations will suffer the most.” Henrico’s not unique in dealing with a teacher shortage—it’s an issue facing school districts across the nation—but that map really paints a stark picture.
 

Related, the RPS School Board met last night, and Jessica Nocera, also at the Richmond Times-Dispatch, reports that the District has 144 teacher vacancies. Superintendent Kamras believes “between long-term subs, additional hires over the next two weeks and some … leveling of positions that we will have every single class covered on the first day of school.” Nocera also reports that RPS will “continue universal indoor masking in all school buildings and on buses for students and staff.” Good! Richmond has, for the last forever, been in a high COVID-19 Community Level, and the CDC recommendations continue to be for everyone, regardless of vaccination status, to wear masks indoors. Kamras says he’s open to adjusting the District’s policy should we (eventually) drop down to a medium or low Community Level.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 65 °F, and today looks not-so-hot, still humid, cloudy, and probably rainy at points—especially this morning. Expect highs in the 70s, and a slow, but productive, start to the week ahead.
 

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Saturday morning, a drunk driver hit and killed Jonah Holland and critically injured Natalie Rainer while they were riding their bikes out on Osborn Turnpike. I’d known Jonah for the better part of two decades—working with her to promote Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden through RVANews, and, even before that, during the early social media days in Richmond. Last year, I posted a picture of a Nandina in my yard, and she let me know how poisonous and invasive they were (which had me and my mom out there pulling up Nandina for a few weeks). Just a couple of months ago she sent me a kind note wishing me luck on my first bikepacking adventure. The last time I saw Jonah, was back in May at a Richmond Area Bicycling Association ride out in Goochland. We met up at the halfway point, and she tried to convince me to join her riding club before speeding off as I took a break in the shade. Jonah’s the first person that I’ve known, known to be killed while biking—biking on a stretch of road that I’ve ridden a thousand times, at least once with my parents and my son. I didn’t know Natalie, but her family has set up a gofundme to help with medical bills. If I hear about memorial funds or group rides for Jonah, I’ll make sure they end up in this space.
 

Last week, the CDC released new COVID-19 guidance that made me feel pretty ambivalent. Since then, both Katelyn Jetelina and Emily Oster have weighed in on the new guidance (with Oster much more positive than Jetelina, but in a schools-and-kids focused way). If you’re feeling unmoored about the new guidance, or just the whole pandemic in general, I recommend reading both pieces—especially the last two paragraphs of Jetelina’s. To quote a bit: “…we are in a very strange phase of the pandemic: somewhere between endemic and a full blown emergency. If you’re confused on what to do, know that we are all confused and just trying to do our best. Give yourself and others grace through this time.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 68 °F (a number that starts with a six!), and today you can expect less humidity and highs in the low 80s. Even better: This beautiful weather continues right on through the weekend. Keep an eye out for a potential bit of rain, but then I hope you’re ready to cram four weekends of pent up outside activity into the next couple of days!
 

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As of last night Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield each remain at a high COVID-19 Community Level. The 7-day average of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people in each locality are, respectively, 258, 260, and 234. The 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospitalizations is 14.2. There’s still a ton of COVID-19 in our communities, and, while we do have a bunch more tools and knowledge than we did a year ago, folks are exhausted. I’m exhausted! Yesterday, CDC acknowledged that folks are either slumped-in-a-chair tired or, alternatively, have moved entirely past the pandemic, and, to use CDC’s words, “streamlined” COVID-19 guidance. You can read the press release here. They’ve made a lot of changes, but the biggest ones seem to be: 1) no longer recommending folks quarantine if exposed to COVID-19 (instead wear a mask for 10 days and get tested at day five), and 2) if you do test positive, you can leave isolation after day five if you are fever-free (no test needed) and you wear a mask through day 10. They’ve also updated a lot of their guidance pages in a nice and friendly way—this explanation of the COVID-19 Community Levels is much, much better. I’m pretty ambivalent about these changes. I recognize that the majority of people are not slumped-in-a-chair tired but out there living their lives, hardly thinking about masks or COVIDs or prandemics. I also recognize that people—people I know!—are still getting very sick from this disease with some are even dealing with pretty devastating effects of longcovid. And if we are “done with the pandemic,” we have completely failed (big surprise) to create support systems for folks who end up with a serious illness and can’t work, go to school, or pay their rent—or for folks who are at high-risk and are now double nervous about going back to school or work or even out to the grocery store. It’s complicated, and I’m still processing, obviously.
 

WTVR’s Tyler Lane talks to a bunch of experts and one resident of the Fan about getting rid of parking minimums. Here’s the important thing to remember about doing away with parking minimums: Developers can still build as many parking spaces as they’d like! They’re just no longer required—by law—to take up valuable space in our city to store empty cars. If you want to open a restaurant and have four parking spaces for every seat in the place, have it! Sounds expensive! Councilmember Mike Jones has this to say about building more city instead of more parking: “The reality is this: parking minimums are going to go away. They are. They need to. That’s the best thing for the environment. It’s the best thing for our city…Density is not the death of a city. It begins to challenge our views on mobility, challenges our views on transportation and how we get around.” Deleting parking minimums is one of the three fun zoning changes the City’s contemplating, and they’ll host a few more telephone town halls next week to collect more public feedback.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and we turned the corner! Today you can expect highs in the 80s—still humid, yes, but a little less mind-obliteratingly hot. Really, truly pleasant weather should show up tomorrow, just in time for a wonderful weekend.
 

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Tyler Layne at WTVR continues to report on the Richmond Police Department and the alleged 4th of July mass shooting plot. No new info in this piece, but what’s fascinating is the diversity of folks Layne got to speak on the record about their concerns and frustrations with the RPD: the president of the Carillon Civic Association, the president of the Richmond NAACP, and the former co-chair of City Council’s Civilian Review Board Task Force. It’s also the first piece I’ve read that significantly starts to shift accountability over to the Mayor. This makes total sense! Folks still have tons of questions, and, unfortunately, the Police Chief has decided to clam up entirely. Like I said earlier, I really don’t think that strategy is going to work for either the RPD or the Mayor over the coming weeks.
 

It’s Infrastructure Week! Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that Richmond has won an $18.4 million grant from the federal Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act to help replace the Arthur Ashe railroad bridge. I am very excited for this bridge-replacement! The current bridge is an absolutely vital connection from Scott’s Addition south of the train tracks to points north—like the Diamond (and also my home). It’s an awful bridge to walk over and an even worse one to bike over. And while I haven’t seen plans or designs for the new bridge, Martz says, “The project also is an opportunity for the city to improve bicycle and pedestrian access along the heavily traveled Ashe Boulevard, which carries about 26,000 vehicles a day through midtown Richmond.” Yes! I agree!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 75 °F, and we made it to the beginning of the end of this hot streak! Today you can look forward to the final gasp of this hot, humid weather (for a bit at least). Storms will roll though late afternoon or evening, bringing with them three days of cooler temperatures and less oppressive humidity. There’s a lot going on weatherwise today, so listen to NBC12’s Andrew Freiden when he says that you need to watch out for heat, the humid, and strong storms.
 

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Anna Bryson at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on last night’s Hanover School Board meeting at which they discussed potential anti-trans policies for the district. From the piece: “The policy, if approved, would require transgender students, along with their parents or guardians, to submit a written request to school administration asking for access to restrooms, locker rooms or changing facilities that align with the students’ gender identities…the written request may contain several personal documents related to the student including their disciplinary or criminal records, as well as signed statements from the student’s doctor or therapist.” This invasive and condescending policy is the unsurprising result of the Hanover County School Board decision to hire the “Alliance Defending Freedom,” an anti-LGBTQ legal org (or, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an anti-LGTBQ hate group), to review and write school policies. You get what you pay for, and, in this case, you get gross documents that try and paint all trans kids as criminals. Pulitzer Prize Winner Michael Paul Williams, puts it this way: “No other class of Hanover students needs a background check to pee. It’s bad enough that transgender students are bullied in school. It’s unforgiveable that their School Board is party to the bullying.” MPW is not hopeful—to put it mildly—that the Board will reverse course, and he thinks these new polices are pretty much a done deal. An additional public hearing will take place on August 16th and a potential vote at the end of the month.
 

Horribly related, ABC News in Arlington reports that Governor Youngkin wants teachers to out LGBTQ kids to their parents—and with the folks he brought in to the Virginia Department of Education and his newly-appointed majority on the Virginia Board of Education he might be able create the policies to make this a reality. Delegate Danica Roem has a great response: “The Governor will never know what it’s like to be a LGBTQ kid outed against their will at home, abused for being out and kicked out by their parent(s). That’s as real as it gets. @GovernorVA: talk to those LGBTQ kids who were beaten and are homeless because someone outed them.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 74 °F, and today’s looking hot, looking humid, and got me looking forward to tomorrow when the heat breaks. I swear to you, that at least for the moment, the forecast for next week has a daily high that starts with a seven! Endure today, and then it’s cooler temperatures for the next little while.
 

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Tyler Layne at WTVR covered the Richmond Police Department’s quarterly-crime-update press conference yesterday, which you can watch in full here. Of note, Chief Smith started the briefing by saying, “We are closing all discussion about the planned Fourth of July mass shooting.” and took no questions from reporters about it. Former RTD reporter Sabrina Moreno had the same immediate, salty thought I did when reading this headline. If the RPD’s plan is to just not say anything and hope this fades into the background, I think they’re going to be disappointed by how that goes. Anyway, if you’re interested, Patrick Larsen at VPM gives a bit of an overview of the crime statistics the Chief presented (I couldn’t find the presentation PDF on the RPD’s website, but I know its out there somewhere).
 

Sorry, one other RPD update! Ned Oliver at Axios Richmond reports that “charges against one of the two men arrested in the [July 4th] case have been downgraded to a single count of entering the country illegally…both had previously faced charges of illegally possessing firearms.” What? So one of the two men arrested for a potential mass shooting is no longer charged with any gun-related anything? Oliver says the two men are scheduled to appear in court today, and that “so far, prosecutors have not mentioned the alleged plot described by police in court filings.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and today you can expect the same ol’ weather we’ve had for the last couple of weeks: hot, humid, with highs in the 90s. Will we have an unpredictable storm later this evening? There’s nothing on the forecast at the moment, but who can say! Cooler weather arrives in a real and wonderful way this Thursday, so get excited.
 

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Jon Baliles, in the most recent edition of his RVA 5x5 newsletter, has the most comprehensive play-by-play of the Richmond Police Department’s Dogwood Dell fiasco to date—with tons of linked original source material. If you want to dive in, set aside a chunk of time. To get the gist, though, read this incredibly damning paragraph: “So, Chief Smith knew about a mass shooting threat at Dogwood Dell on July 4th, didn’t tell the Mayor until July 5th…didn’t warn the sold-out Diamond baseball game or our surrounding localities, or the police officers at the Dell that night that two men with automatic weapons were allegedly planning on creating mass casualties on a dreadful scale. And yet the Chief saw no reason or need to increase the security plan at all or tell his boss or the neighboring police departments?”
 

This week and next, the City’s Department of Planning and Development Review will host a few meetings to talk through three fun, citywide zoning changes: revising regulations around short-term rentals (aka Airbnbs), eliminating parking minimums, and permitting accessory dwelling units everywhere. These last two are good, progressive, urbanist ideas that—pending weird details in the legislation and NIMBY cries of despair—will make Richmond a better place to do business and call home. As for the other one, I haven’t seen what Council wants to specifically change about the City’s short-term rental regulations, but I’d guess that there are at least a few councilmembers who want to get rid of the residency requirement. Currently, an Airbnb must also be the owner’s primary residence for at least 185 days of the year. This functionally limits folks to owning just one Airbnb, which is, in my opinion, a good limitation! It helps keeps investors from snatching up what limited housing stock we have and converting it to short-term rentals instead of homes. If folks have some extra cash and aspire to get into the glamorous landlording business, we already have lots of processes and regulations to help them fulfill that dream. The first meeting to discuss all of the changes kicks off tomorrow, in-person at the Main Library (101 E. Franklin Street) at 6:00 PM.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 74 °F, and it. is. Friday! Today you can expect highs in the low 90s, lots of humidity, and more of the same over the next several days. If you’ve got outside plans, I hope they’re in the morning or the evening. Remember: hydrate or diedrate!
 

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Once again, Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield remain in the high COVID-19 Community Level, with 7-day average case rates per 100,000 people at 258, 287, and 266 respectively. New COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 in the region hit 14.3. Yes it is hot out, yes your face is already sweaty enough, and yes you should still wear a mask in indoors public spaces according to current CDC guidance (which may change soon?). There’s just a lot of COVID-19 floating around out there, y’all. Fall boosters can’t come soon enough.
 

Also disease-related, yesterday the White House declared monkeypox a public health emergency, opening up more access to federal funding and support for state and local monkeypox response efforts. So far, in Virginia, we’ve seen 122 confirmed monkeypox cases, with 7 in the Central Region (a big group of localities that includes Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield). The majority of those cases continue to show up in men who have sex with men, but, it’s important to remember that anyone can get monkeypox with the right kind of exposure. The Richmond and Henrico Health District have put together a vaccine interest form if you think you might be at high risk for monkeypox, and the Virginia Department of Health has a nice information page if you’d like to learn more.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 73 °F, and today you can expect highs in the mid 90s with a family-sized helping of humidity on the side. Get used to it (as if you weren’t already), because the weather today looks a lot like the weather tomorrow, the day after, and on until Tuesday. Whew, I’m running out of undershirts to sweat through over here!
 

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The details surrounding the Richmond Police Department’s claim that they prevented a mass shooting at Dogwood Dell continue to get less clear and more confusing. VPM’s Whittney Evans reports that: “Richmond prosecutors have withdrawn charges against two people originally from Guatemala who police accused of planning a mass shooting at the Dogwood Dell Fourth of July celebration. A prosecutor told a Richmond judge Wednesday the office has no evidence tying their arrests to a planned shooting at that location.” The RPD released this statement on Twitter that sure feels like it’s in direct conflict with what happened in court: “As confirmed today, there is evidence that RPD stopped a mass shooting from happening in the city on July 4. Our investigation led us to conclude that Dogwood Dell was the intended target. The result of good investigative work led to removing two men with guns and rounds of ammunition from harming our residents and visitors. The case is now in the hands of the federal justice system and we will continue to follow the case as it unfolds.” First, I’m confused about the federal case. According to Evans, it has nothing to do with a mass shooting but with the immigration status of the two men, but this reporting from the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Mark Bowes is less certain about the meat of the federal case. Second, an email statement sent by RPD uses entirely different, softer language than their Twitter statement, backing off from “as confirmed today” and not even mentioning Dogwood Dell at all. I honestly don’t know what the next steps are for this, but it’s a mess and it keeps getting messier.
 

KidsFirst RPS has a good write up of this past Monday’s School Board meeting alongside their School Board scorecard. Sounds like a mixed bag! The most interesting item, for me at least, is the Board’s decision to delay progress on rebuilding Fox Elementary by asking for more information—despite the Board previously authorizing the Superintendent to move as fast as possible under an emergency procurement policy. You can watch a short excerpt from the meeting on that first link and see board members express a kind of helplessness about finding and receiving information from the RPS administration. Sure, maybe the Board needs to review the Fox contract before voting on it (up for debate given the emergency procurement situation), but they certainly don’t need to wait until their regularly scheduled public meetings to ask for more information.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and, while today looks hot and humid just like the rest of the days, NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says it’s the “least bad” day of the week. I’ll take it! You can expect highs in the 90s and (probably) dry skies throughout the afternoon. Drink some water, eat a popsicle, and do what you gotta do to stay cool out there.
 

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Last night, the people of Kansas “rejected an amendment to the state constitution that would have specified ‘Kansas does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion’” by a huge margin—59% voting no, and just 41% voting yes. Kansas is, of course, a very red state, with 56% of people voting for Donald Trump in 2020. Here’s the interesting part to me: The state also ran a gubernatorial primary last night for both parties and while about 451,000 folks voted in the Republican primary, only about 375,000 folks voted to restrict abortion. To me, that says there are lots and lots of Republicans out there who are unwilling to ban abortions and Republican politicians should be real careful running on an anti-abortion platform or advancing legislation restriction abortions. That’s just my take, though, and we’ll get to see how it plays out here in Virginia in a couple of months when abortion will almost certainly be the topic of the next General Assembly session.
 

Here’s something wild from Ned Oliver at Axios Richmond: “One of City Councilwoman Reva Trammell’s biggest campaign donations in 2020 came from a shell company founded by a now-convicted drug trafficker…It was the third-largest donation to her campaign. In June, authorities revealed the man behind the company was Nikike Tyler, a Henrico resident who pleaded guilty that same month to wholesaling millions of dollars worth of heroin, cocaine and fentanyl throughout the region.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and today looks hot, humid, with a chance of thunderstorms this afternoon. Should sound pretty familiar. You can continue to expect highs in the 90s for the next couple of days—maxing out on Thursday—and then maybe we’ll get a bit of relief over the weekend. Yes, it’s Tuesday and I’m already looking forward to the weekend!
 

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You should read RVAgreen 2050’s August newsletter—I enjoyed it, including this quick intro-to-the-cause video. RVAgreen always does digital engagement in really clever ways, giving folks easy, straightforward paths to participate even if they only have a couple of minutes to spare. This month, that engagement goes meta, and they’ve got a quick, four-minute Community Advocacy Questionnaire that you should fill out. This survey will help RVAgreen “identify and form networks of interested advocates to support Richmond’s equitable climate actions and resilience work,” and lets you raise your hand to lead, implement, promote, advocate, or stay informed about Richmond’s climate efforts across a variety of topics. Go fill it out! Even if all you can commit to is staying informed, it’s the literal least you can do as you stay inside trying to avoid today’s dangerous heat and humidity.
 

Jessica Nocera at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on teacher vacancies at Richmond Public Schools. It sounds like while the new financial hiring incentives RPS launched a couple weeks ago are starting to pay off, a bunch of schools still have a bunch of vacancies. Check out this PDF the Superintendent presented at last night’s board meeting and scroll through the list of vacancies at each school on July 10th as compared to July 29th. Progress for sure, but still a ways to go.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and today’s looking hot and humid. Expect highs near 90 °F with maybe a chance for a bit of rain. You can expect a similarly hot, humid, and dry week ahead of you, too.
 

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You’ve still got some time this morning to vote in the quarterfinals of the very exciting RVA Sweep 16 tournament bracket (aka the wonderfully distracting Twitter poll to name Richmond’s adorable bike lane street sweeper). Contenders that look like they’ll move on to the semis: Sweepy McSweeperson, The Grim Sweeper, Meryl Sweep, and MF BROOM. If you disagree, get in there and vote (the Grim Sweeper and Bike Dyson race is especially close)!
 

Wyatt Gordon at the Virginia Mercury reports on the new variable speed limits on a 15-mile stretch of I-95 just south of Fredericksburg. The new technology hopes to slow vehicles and avert traffic jams before they happen: “The problem variable speed limits seek to solve is called speed flow inversion — the phenomenon whereby even minor interruptions in vehicles’ movement cause extensive congestion due to the density of traffic.” First, I had no idea there was a name for those highway standstills with no discernible cause. Second, Gordon talked to some traffic experts who say this sort of thing can only be truly effective if you pair it with increased enforcement. The piece ends with this quote from VDOT which really speaks to the mindset we have around what we’re willing to do to keep our streets safe: “Drivers don’t like to be slowed down when they don’t need to be or else they won’t comply.” Someone could write a whole book about that quote (oh wait, they did).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 74 °F, and today looks a lot like the last couple of days: hot, humid, and a chance for storms later this evening. This weekend, though! Get excited for a little bit cooler temperatures and a little bit more time to spend outside without taking your life into your own hands.
 

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As of last night, the CDC’s COVID-19 Community Level for Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield is HIGH—like, way high. The case rate per 100,000 people in each locality, respectively, is 323, 260, and 327; and the new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 13.4. I’m not sure I’ve seen case rates in the 300s before (at least in this recent wavy plateau we seem to be stuck on). Unfortunately, CDC has no extra guidance for when the amount of COVID floating around in your community is real high, but they do continue to recommend that everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear a mask in indoor public settings. It’s stressful and annoying, but maybe take some time this weekend to think through your own acceptable level of risk and if the increased amount of COVID-19 in the region impacts what you’re comfortable doing in your day-to-day.
 

Related, some good news from the New York Times: “The Biden administration now expects to begin a Covid-19 booster campaign with retooled vaccines in September because Pfizer and Moderna have promised that they can deliver doses by then.” It sounds like all adults (and maybe some children) will be eligible for a new omicron-specific booster in as few as six weeks! We all know how soft these sorts of timeline announcements can be, so I’m not clearing my calendar just yet. That said…sign me upppppp!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 74 °F, and today we’re back on the Heat Advisory train. The National Weather Services says to watch out for dangerous heat from 12:00–8:00 PM—with a heat index between 103 and 107 °F. That’s hot, and you should be real careful with what you decide to do outside this afternoon. Stay safe, stay cool, and stay hydrated.
 

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Here’s a really an critical update: The City and Venture Richmond have put together a Twitter bracket to name the adorable, tiny bike-lane street sweeper the Department of Public Works bought just last week. The first round of the RVA Sweep 16 (so charming!) runs through today, with the Elite Eight announced tomorrow. My current favorites: The Grim Sweeper, Kate Brush, and Dirt Reynolds. Go vote now, before the next round starts!
 

The New York Times reports on the “surprise deal by Senate Democrats on Wednesday [that] would be the most ambitious action ever taken by the United States to try and stop the planet from catastrophically overheating.” Senators Schumer and Manchin announced the deal together, so, theoretically, this thing would have enough votes to get across the finish line. I remain skeptical since Senator Manchin is a chaotic, unpredictable man who has tanked progressive legislation many times in the past couple of years. That said, should this bill pass, it really does seem like a medium-sized step in the right direction. It’s not perfect, as many folks on transit twitter have pointed out, but it’s something! And something sure feels like a lot these days.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and today looks wet! Expect cooler temperatures, a pretty good chance of rain this morning, and plenty of humidity. At this point, I’m pretty stoked for any weather that’s not dangerous and oppressive heat!
 

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Today, City Council’s Governmental Operations committee will meet and hear, what looks to be, an interesting presentation from the Department of Public Utilities about their planned rate increases. I don’t know why I find this stuff interesting, but I do! Flip through the aforelinked PDF and be entertained by how much our natural gas, water, and stormwater costs and how each of those things are getting more expensive. I think most interesting to me is slide five, which says consumers are using less water and natural gas, but most of DPU’s costs are basically fixed—which means, necessarily, that the cost per unit of those things will likely increase. First, we should do everything we can to continue moving away from using natural gas. Second, do most cities own the natural gas utility? I feel like there are weird incentives at play for the City to keep using and promoting natural gas as long as possibly because it is the local natural gas company!
 

Unrelated, Gov Ops will also take a look at ORD. 2022–219, the new noise ordinance, which will prohibit folks from (loudly) protesting near health care facilities. That includes places that perform abortions, which was at least part of the impetus for this change. From the Ordinance: “No person shall operate a device or otherwise create sound which, when measured from any point on the property of a health care facility, exceeds 65 dBA between the hours of 7:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. or 55 dBA between the hours of 11:00 p.m. and 7:00 am.” For context, 60 dBA is the volume of a normal conversation (but keep in mind the decibel scale is not linear!). Note that this new ordinance does totally delete and replace the old noise ordinance, so there may be other changes buried in the dark recesses of the text. I really wish, when wholesale legislative replacement like this happens, that there was an easy way to diff the old and new text. Or maybe the City’s attorney could be required to provide a summary of the changes? I dunno, I’m sure the three other people that read ordinance PDFs also wish the current process were a bit better.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 73 °F, and highs today will stay in the 80s! That’s relatively cool and exciting! Keep an eye on this afternoon, though, because we could see storms roll through again, and I’d hate for you to get stuck outside during some thunder and lightning.
 

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I don’t know how to process this reporting by Meg Schiffres at VPM: “Richmond police have arrested dozens based on list of potential ‘shooters’.” My first reaction is that this sounds a lot like Minority Report’s precrimes. I mean: “Approximately 100 individuals are on the list…which includes individuals who don’t have a criminal record. In addition to focusing on people who have shot others previously, RPD also added victims of gun violence and people who ‘will shoot other people’ to the list…police decide whether a person ‘will shoot other people’ by investigating their background and connections to confirmed perpetrators of gun violence.“ Creepy. My second reaction is that real life and real violence in real neighborhoods is probably a lot more complicated than a Philip K. Dick short story. But still, are there better ways to reduce violence in our public housing neighborhoods than creepy, predictive policing? Later on in the piece, Schiffres points to Boston’s Operation Ceasefire as a counter example, but it seems like that program also focuses on “aggressive law enforcement and prosecution efforts.” As with most things, this is totally not my area of expertise or lived experience, and I’d like to learn more. So far, police have arrested 45 residents of public housing as part of this program.
 

As foretold, City Council easily passed the collective bargaining ordinance last night (ORD. 2022–221)—in front of a packed house even. Patrick Larsen at VPM has a recap and reports on some next steps, including one tiny piece of the timeline: “the city must hire its labor relations manager within 120 days of passage, according to the ordinance.” That’s November 23nd, so we’ll check back then. Until then, congratulations City employees!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 76 °F, and today looks hot (again) with highs in the mid 90s. Storms might could roll in early this evening, bringing with them cooler temperatures and some relief for my poor, dry outside plants. The rest of this week looks a lot cooler than this past weekend, so get excited!
 

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WRIC got ahold of Richmond Police Department body-cam footage from the night they tear-gassed peaceful protestors during the summer of 2020. I should have given myself a content warning, because I don’t think I was ready to watch some of that video this morning—so consider yourself warned. Regardless, it’s not a good look for the RPD. Hold tight, because I’m nearly certain that we’ll see more of this footage once other reporters start combing through what police made available to the Library of Virginia as part of a legal settlement.
 

City Council will meet today for their regularly-scheduled meeting, the full agenda of which you can find here. It’s a long one, with 37 items on the consent portion of the agenda—mostly special use permits and other ticky-tacky papers. The star of the show tonight, though, is ORD. 2022–221, the new collective bargaining compromise. Since the Mayor and all of City Council have signed on to this paper as patrons, and double since Council held a special meeting last week to introduce it, I don’t have any doubts that this ordinance will pass quickly. After tonight’s vote, the City will look to hire a Labor Relations Administrator, and employees in those five collective bargaining units (police, fire & emergency, labor & trades, professional, and administrative & technical) could start organizing. Units need signatures from 30% of the employees to hold an election and get their union certified by the LRA human. This sounds like a slowish/methodical process to me, so don’t expect any city unions this summer—or maybe even this calendar year. I’m pretty interested in how this all turns out and excited to follow along.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and today still looks hot. However! NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says that despite highs in the mid 90s, “a notable drop in humidity midday will make it feel decent.” I will totally accept decent after the last couple of muggy days! After today’s decent weather, though, you can expect the humidity to return and nearly triple-digit highs to move in over the weekend. Stay safe out there, make good heat-related decisions, drink tons of water, and have a great weekend.
 

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It’s another week at a high COVID-19 Community level for Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield. That means everyone, regardless of vaccination status, should wear a mask in indoors public spaces. As of last night, the 7-day average of cases per 100,000 people in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield was: 243, 269, and 259, respectively. The 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people was 11.1 across the region. While Richmond and the surrounding localities hit and got stuck at a high level weeks ago, most of the Commonwealth has now joined them, with just a handful of localities (eight maybe?) still in the cool, refreshing green of a low Community Level. It definitely sucks to be on this plateau (autocorrect wanted “sucks to be on this plague” there, which, sure, that too). As everyone and their sister knows at this point, everyone and their sister is now eligible for a COVID-19 vaccination (including sisters as young as 6 months old!). Even at this late point in the pandemic, the best thing you can do to keep yourself and your loved ones safe is make sure everyone is up-to-date on their COVID-19 vaccinations. It’s free, easy, and does a lot of the work of keeping you out of the hospital—which is neither free nor easy. Find a convenient vaccination appointment near you today: vaccines.gov.
 

As we get used to life in this stage of the pandemic, settled in on this current plateau, how do we evaluate risk? What data can we look at? What data even exists at the moment? Emily Oster had a good post from earlier this week that doesn’t really answer those questions, but at least got me noodling on how to think about these sorts of questions. To quote a bit: “You are now in a world where COVID is some risk more or less all the time, and you probably will not have much more than a vague sense of the size of the risk. Given that, what kind of long-term precautions do you want to take?…I don’t imagine everyone will come down in the same way on these questions. Comfort with COVID risk differs for many reasons. But at this point I think the question you need to ask is: What behaviors am I willing to undertake long-term to avoid infection? This question is sort of a bummer, since it recognizes that there isn’t some moment when COVID will be gone, but it also lets you off the hook from re-making these choices every time.” The anxiety and fatigued caused be newly evaluating each and every situation as it pops up is so real! And while I don’t know that I have my own framework yet for what sort of risks I’m willing to take, I do know that figuring it out at some point will make my day-to-day life a lot more pleasant.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 58 °F, and today looks lovely! Expect highs in the mid 80s, some sunshine, and a further break in the humidity. You can expect an absolutely enjoyable Friday, so make sure you out there and enjoy it! The A+ weather—with some rain tomorrow—continues through the weekend, but then things heat up in an unpleasant way on Monday.
 

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As of last night, and for the next week, the COVID-19 Community Level remains high for Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield. The 7-day average case rates per 100,000 people in each locality are 270, 260, 247, respectively. This means that the CDC guidance continues to recommend that everyone, regardless of vaccination status, wear masks in indoor public places! Our current coronamoment is all about riding the waves, and this particular wave sure looks like a weekslong extended plateau.
 

I haven’t seen much reporting on how the proposed but still-in-limbo state budget impacts Richmond Public Schools, but KidsFirst RPS has a quick write up from earlier this week and, yikes, it’s not looking good. From the piece: “The state’s budget means that the district is getting $3.1 million less than what the Administration had expected. And, with a mandate to give teachers $2.2 million in one-time bonuses — which wasn’t in RPS’s budget — that means we now have an additional $5.3 million gap in our school budgets for next year…The answer to this complicated math problem? RPS kids are short by more than $12 million.” First, RPS’s School Board, despite pleas from City Council, didn’t even request the full budget amount suggested by the Superintendent, which, in retrospect, seems like an unforced error that’s going to have compounding consequences. Second, I think there are a couple of ways out of this $12 million hole that don’t involve slashing support for Richmond’s kids—but they’ll all require the School Board, City Council, and the Mayor to get on the same page. Possible but probably exhausting.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 78 °F, and, yet again, today looks dangerously hot. We’ve got a heat advisory in effect until at 8:00 PM, and the National Weather Service says to expect heat a index between 105 and 109 °F. That’s no-joke, serious hot, and if you plan on being outside, maybe just don’t. This heatwave continues through, probably, Tuesday, so get used to it. Remember: Hydrate or diedrate.
 

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Yesterday, the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts launched a form for folks to fill out if they’re interested in receiving the monkeypox vaccine. At the moment, supply of the vaccine is limited, so filling out the form does not guarantee you a vaccine, but puts you on a list to “potentially receive a vaccine in the future depending on your risk factors and the available supply.” This should all sound super familiar and regular, since we’ve all spent the last two years learning how to fill out forms and patiently wait our turn when the supply of a vaccine is low. RHHD will start by offering the monkeypox vaccine to the highest-risk individuals, which, for this current outbreak, includes: Gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men and have had multiple or anonymous sexual partners; transgender women and nonbinary persons assigned male at birth who have sex with men and have had multiple or anonymous sexual partners; sex workers; staff at establishments where sexual activity occurs; and people who attend sex-on-premises venues. I think it’s super important to note that, despite whatever thoughts you have after reading that list, anyone can get monkeypox regardless of gender identity or sexual orientation, if they have close contact with someone infected with the virus. So, if you’re at high-risk, fill out that form, and you can read RHHD’s release here and learn more about monkeypox here.
 

While we’re talking about diseases, VCU has partnered with the National Institute of Health to run a study on long COVID in children and families. They’re looking for “children, teens, and young adults aged 25 years or younger and their families” to participate—regardless of whether they’ve had COVID-19 or not. Tap through that link to learn more or check out the NIH’s helpful page, or, damn the torpedoes, and head straight on over to the sign up form.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and, guess what, today’s gonna be hot. You can expect highs in the mid 90s, with almost no chance of relief. I know I sound like a broken record when I talk about extreme heat and staying hydrated, but it’s important! You can’t do your best work if you’re dehydrated. Stay cool, stay safe, and drink a ton of water.
 

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Yesterday, Richmond’s Department of Public Works announced that they’d purchased a charming Mini Street and Sidewalk Sweeper to help keep our city’s bike lanes free of garbage (not cars, to clarify, but actual trash garbage). You can check out a video of the sweeper in action here, which has just the best audio so make sure you turn the volume up. This seems like a such a small thing—“keep the bike lanes clean”—but it really does impact the safety and use of our bike infrastructure. The Brook Road bike lane, for example, is often so full of trash and sticks and urban decay that sometimes it’s safer to just ride in the road, and that kind of defeats the point. So, thank you, DPW, for looking out!
 

Also on the streets beat, Katherine Lutge at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the City’s crews will finish painting the Pulse’s bus-only lanes red on Friday—a month early! Great work, team.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 74 °F, and today looks hot. You can expect highs in the 90s again and probably a real sweaty shirt if you decide to ride your bike home in the late-afternoon sun like I did yesterday. At the moment, we’re looking at triple-digit temperatures forecasted for Saturday and Sunday. That’s too hot!
 

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Yesterday, at their special meeting, City Council introduced ORD. 2022–221, the new collective bargaining ordinance patroned by both the Mayor and all of City Council. Previously, Council and the Mayor each had their own visions for collective bargaining, the latter wanting to start with a small pilot group of City employees, while the former wanted everyone (cops included) to get their own union powers. I pulled up the new, compromise paper, scrolled around, and found the list of bargaining units recognized by the ordinance: Police, Fire and Emergency Services, Labor and Trades, Professional, and Administrative and Technical. Turns out, this is the same list from Councilmember Trammell’s original Everyone Gets a Union ordinance submitted at the end of last year (ORD. 2021–345). That must mean the compromises reached by Council and the Mayor lie somewhere deep within the dark workings of the legislation—too deep and too technical for me to understand. Patrick Larsen at VPM and Lyndon German at the Richmond Times-Dispatch have some coverage, but don’t really get into the differences between this new ordinance and the competing versions that came before it. I guess it doesn’t really matter, but I still want to know! Anyway, Council will skip the committee process and will most likely vote on ORD. 2022–221 at this coming Monday’s meeting, where it should pass without much discussion—save for some victory-lap speeches.
 

While we’re talking Council, one other tiny update: The Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee will meet today and discuss the “Composition of the Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board of Commissioners.” I don’t know exactly what about the composition of the RRHA Board they’ll discuss, but I’m super interested to learn more. Appointing RRHA board members is Council’s most direct way for maintaining oversight of Richmond’s public housing authority. Whenever you hear someone on Council talk about RRHA’s leadership, remember that it is Council that appoints the Board of Commissioners!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 74 °F, and highs today will settle in the sweaty mid-90s. Looks like we could catch an afternoon storm, so if you’ve gotta commute home, keep an eye on the sky. The rest of the week looks hot, with temperatures slowly, steadily increasing as we approach the weekend.
 

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Hello, and welcome back to myself! I took the last two weeks to rest, relax, ride a bike almost every morning, and play rummy with my family every evening. It was delightful, and I strongly recommended it if you can make it happen. While voluntarily trapped on Hilton Head Island for a fortnight, I did follow Richmond’s news from afar—so I’m not totally out of the loop. Here are just a handful of things that may now be old news, but I wanted to make sure I put down in the GMRVA historical record:
 

• On Friday, July 1st, the Richmond Police Department was required to post this tweet thread retracting their—now admittedly false—rationalization for tear gassing peaceful protestors during the summer of 2020. Here’s the important bit: “There were no RPD officers cut off by violent protestors at Lee Monument. There was no need for gas at Lee Monument to get RPD officers to safety.” Then, on July 4th, seven people were murdered in Highland Park, Illinois at a mass shooting during an Independence Day parade. On July 6th, RPD released this statement about a “planned mass shooting for July 4th” at, apparently, Dogwood Dell. Since that statement’s release—just a handful of days after admitting to lying to the public about tear gassing peaceful protestors—all sorts of inconsistencies in the RPD’s story have started to pop up. Jon Baliles has a full rundown in his newsletter, but, most worryingly to me: The police didn’t update the Mayor until July 5th. I don’t know where this story goes next, but it certainly feels like trust in Richmond’s police department is at an all-time low.
• Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reported that NewMarket Corp will build a 7,500-seat amphitheater on their big, green hillside right behind Tredegar. Two things to note: First, this development is by-right, so no opportunities for folks to queue up at Planning Commission or City Council and yell about noise or parking or whatever other thing; Second, Coran Capshaw is involved (manager of Dave Matthews Band, Phish, and others), which, for me, lends immediate legitimacy to the project.
• The UVA Weldon Cooper Center released their updated statewide population projections for 2030, 2040, and 2050. In the time-honored tradition practiced by all Virginians, scroll down to the bottom of the table to find the list of the Commonwealth’s independent cities. At some point between 2030 and 2040, Richmond will hit 250,000 residents!

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and summer weather has fully returned. Today you can expect highs in the 90s, a decent amount of humidity, and a gusty afternoon—we should avoid any suddenly downpours, though. Looks like a mixed bag of hot and rainy over the long weekend, but I’m sure you’ll find time to get out and enjoy it when you can.
 

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Hello and welcome to the final day of the Good Morning, RVA member drive! I don’t have much to say, other than 79 folks decided to either join the GMRVA patreon or up their existing monthly donation. That’s wild! I (you? we?) far exceeded my $200 goal—probably by greater than 50%, but I lost track of the math in my inbox and can’t figure out how to pull that report from Patreon. Regardless, y’all are amazing, and I am very thankful. I’m about to head out on vacation (see logistical note below), and I do want to take some of that time to rethink how my Patreon works—I’ve had a couple of patron-only ideas kicking around for awhile. No promise though, because I could just end up spending 100% of every day riding bikes and watching horror films! Anyway if you’ve got fun ideas for patrons, just reply to this email and let me know, and, of course, if you’d like to become a GMRVA patron, you can do so at patreon.com/gmrva. Thanks, y’all.
 

Welp, after what looked like a potential downward trend in the spread of COVID-19 in our communities, the CDC COVID-19 Community Level is back up to high in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield. The 7-day average number of cases per 100,000 people in each jurisdiction is, respectively: 256, 258, and 245. The 7-day average of new COVID-19 hospital admissions per 100,000 people is 11.4. Big sigh. Remember: You should be wearing a mask in all indoor public spaces, regardless of your vaccination status. Double remember: Everyone you know that is older than a 6-month-old baby is eligible for some sort of COVID-19 vaccine, and, most likely, some sort of booster. The vaccine is still the best and easiest way to protect yourself and others from a summertime trip to the hospital, so if you or anyone you love is missing a dose or two, get that fixed over the long weekend.
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s already 70 °F, and today looks like a truly summer day with highs peaking right around 90 °F. It’s definitely that time of year where no matter how easy I take it on the ride into work, I show up to meetings sweaty and smelling…not the best. Deal with it, I say! Normalize sweat due to non-car commutes!
 

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Just a quick reminder this morning that the Good Morning, RVA membership drive continues! I hit my goal on Tuesday, surpassed it on Wednesday, and am stoked regardless of whatever happens today or tomorrow. Thank you again to all patrons—new or old and grizzled. I deeply appreciate you! So, if you’ve been meaning to chip in a couple of bucks to support this daily newsletter, you can do so at: patreon.com/gmrva. Thanks, y’all.
 

I continue to track a lot of plans and developments going on in the region, and the Staples Mill Road Small Area Plan is one of them. It’s a little out of my typical coverage zone and is—at least at this point—vastly suburban, but 1) the area sparkles with potential, and 2) getting to the Staples Mill Road Train Station in a safe and convenient way would sure be nice. To that end, tonight at 6:00 PM, VDOT will host an online public meeting to discuss the “multimodal transportation needs and improvements on Staples Mill Road and other key streets near the Staples Mill Road Amtrak Station in Henrico County.” If you can’t make, what’s sure to be, a thrilling meeting but would like to weight in, you can, of course, fill out a survey! For serious though, tap through and fill this thing out, because there are some intensely progressive options for remaking Staples Mill Road—including one with sidewalks, physically separated bike lanes, and a dedicated transit-only lane. Small Area Plans are not construction work orders, so who knows what will really happen in the corridor’s future, but I don’t think I’ve ever filled out a local infrastructure survey that let me pick an option that included dedicated, safe space for four modes of travel (foot, bike, bus, and car).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s already 70 °F, and today looks like a truly summer day with highs peaking right around 90 °F. It’s definitely that time of year where no matter how easy I take it on the ride into work, I show up to meetings sweaty and smelling…not the best. Deal with it, I say! Normalize sweat due to non-car commutes!
 

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Just a quick reminder this morning that the Good Morning, RVA membership drive continues! I hit my goal on Tuesday, surpassed it on Wednesday, and am stoked regardless of whatever happens today or tomorrow. Thank you again to all patrons—new or old and grizzled. I deeply appreciate you! So, if you’ve been meaning to chip in a couple of bucks to support this daily newsletter, you can do so at: patreon.com/gmrva. Thanks, y’all.
 

I continue to track a lot of plans and developments going on in the region, and the Staples Mill Road Small Area Plan is one of them. It’s a little out of my typical coverage zone and is—at least at this point—vastly suburban, but 1) the area sparkles with potential, and 2) getting to the Staples Mill Road Train Station in a safe and convenient way would sure be nice. To that end, tonight at 6:00 PM, VDOT will host an online public meeting to discuss the “multimodal transportation needs and improvements on Staples Mill Road and other key streets near the Staples Mill Road Amtrak Station in Henrico County.” If you can’t make, what’s sure to be, a thrilling meeting but would like to weight in, you can, of course, fill out a survey! For serious though, tap through and fill this thing out, because there are some intensely progressive options for remaking Staples Mill Road—including one with sidewalks, physically separated bike lanes, and a dedicated transit-only lane. Small Area Plans are not construction work orders, so who knows what will really happen in the corridor’s future, but I don’t think I’ve ever filled out a local infrastructure survey that let me pick an option that included dedicated, safe space for four modes of travel (foot, bike, bus, and car).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 61 °F, and, dang, wasn’t yesterday just so unbelievably pleasant? We get mostly more of the same today—with slightly higher highs in the mid 80s—so get out there and keep enjoying it.
 

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Turns out I was big wrong about velocity of the generosity of Good Morning, RVA readers! Not only did yesterday not see a half-life decay in new contributions, but I reached my goal of finding $200 in new monthly Patreon contributions in just two days! That’s not exponential decay at all! Anyway, I’m pretty surprised and very thankful to everyone who joined or upped their donation; it means a lot to me that so many people think what I write each morning is useful enough to support it with actual, real currency. The Patreon is still, of course, open to new members, so if you didn’t get a chance to chip in a couple of bucks, don’t let my fairly arbitrary goal stop you. You can do so at: patreon.com/gmrva. Thanks y’all!
 

Tonight, from 6:00–8:00 PM at the Hippodrome (528 N. 2nd Street), the Reconnect Jackson Ward Feasibility Study team will host a community meeting to “unveil a recommended framework to help reconnect Jackson Ward and surrounding neighborhoods, while meeting the ideals of inclusion, unification, access to everyone and keeping Black history alive.” I’m tracking a ton of City-run projects lately, so I wouldn’t fault you for forgetting what this particular project is all about—but it’s a fun one. The City and the State will put together a plan to undo some of the damage done by I-95/64—most likely in the form of capping that highway and building cool stuff right on top of it. Because engineers are basically dark wizards at this point in history, you can put pretty much whatever you want on top of a highway (in fact, Kanawha Plaza and the entire building at 9th and Canal sit on top of a highway cap). I don’t think anyone’s trying to build a single massive building of that scale straddling I-95/64, and tonight we’ll learn more about the specific plans for building those (literal) bridges across the the divide we cut into our own city 70-some years ago. Once this plan exists, I think the City and State will apply for a federal grant that’ll get us a couple more steps down the road towards implementing whatever’s presented tonight. Exciting!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 59 °F, and today looks stunning! Expect sunshine, dry skies, and highs right around 80 °F. I’m not sure there’s ever been a better June day in Richmond to ride a bike around your neighborhood. Heat and humidity return toward the end of the week, so squeeze the goodness out of today while you can!
 

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Good morning to me! After a single day of this, the first GMRVA member drive, I am 48.5% of the way to my goal of finding $200 in new monthly Patreon contributions. Thank you to all new patrons and to all existing patrons who decided to chip in a couple more bucks! I figure the rate of new contributions probably looks like a half-life decay situation at best, with each day seeing half of the previous day’s total—so I’m sure finding the next 51.5% of my goal will be an ongoing challenge. Still seems achievable though! If you’d like to support the work I do each and every morning, and help me reach my goal, you can do so at: patreon.com/gmrva. Thanks y’all.
 

Lyndon German at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has an overview of why cities might want to paint their bus-only lanes red. I’m sure most of y’all know the gist—red lanes keep things that aren’t buses out of the bus lanes, be it people in cars, on bikes, or folks crossing the street. But check out these statistics that German provides from San Francisco: “Red-painted transit lanes resulted in fewer transit delays, a 25% improvement in transit reliability, a 16% decrease in collisions, and a 24% drop in injury collisions. Bus lane violations fell by 51%.” 51% is a lot of percents (see previous paragraph!).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 59 °F, and today looks stunning! Expect sunshine, dry skies, and highs right around 80 °F. I’m not sure there’s ever been a better June day in Richmond to ride a bike around your neighborhood. Heat and humidity return toward the end of the week, so squeeze the goodness out of today while you can!
 

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Good morning to me! After a single day of this, the first GMRVA member drive, I am 48.5% of the way to my goal of finding $200 in new monthly Patreon contributions. Thank you to all new patrons and to all existing patrons who decided to chip in a couple more bucks! I figure the rate of new contributions probably looks like a half-life decay situation at best, with each day seeing half of the previous day’s total—so I’m sure finding the next 51.5% of my goal will be an ongoing challenge. Still seems achievable though! If you’d like to support the work I do each and every morning, and help me reach my goal, you can do so at: patreon.com/gmrva. Thanks y’all.
 

Lyndon German at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has an overview of why cities might want to paint their bus-only lanes red. I’m sure most of y’all know the gist—red lanes keep things that aren’t buses out of the bus lanes, be it people in cars, on bikes, or folks crossing the street. But check out these statistics that German provides from San Francisco: “Red-painted transit lanes resulted in fewer transit delays, a 25% improvement in transit reliability, a 16% decrease in collisions, and a 24% drop in injury collisions. Bus lane violations fell by 51%.” 51% is a lot of percents (see previous paragraph!).
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 72 °F, and today looks warm and humid with a potential chance of rain for pretty much the entire day (mostly in the afternoon, though). Temperatures stay cooler(ish) for the next couple of days and then heat up later this week. I think my garden could use the rain, so I’m not going to complain too much.
 

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The other day my calendar reminded me that I’ve written a daily morning newsletter for the past six years—since at least 2016! Six years is a long time to do anything, especially for me, and I’m pretty proud of how Good Morning, RVA has changed and evolved over the better part of a decade: Fewer sentences about restaurants, way more sentences about zoning. This week, I’ve decided to do something new and run a first-ever mini membership drive. It’s something I’ve been meaning to do for awhile, but 1) feels awkward, and 2) there’s just so much to write about every morning that I’ve never gotten around to it. But here we are! My goal over the next couple of weeks is to find $200 in new monthly Patreon contributions—whether that be entirely new Patrons or existing Patrons that increase their donation. I think that seems achievable, right? To both existing patrons and new friends, thank you so much for supporting something that I love doing and hope is a useful and good thing for our city. As always, you can become a patron at: patreon.com/gmrva.
 

Former City Councilmember Jon Baliles (and former excellent city blogger before that) has a new weekly newsletter to which you should subscribe. There are very few people in Richmond who know more about the subtext and context of what’s going on in town than Baliles. For example, check out this smart thought about the financing of a baseball stadium in his most recent edition: “It would not surprise me at all to see the ‘winning bidder’ with a plan that looks great on paper but when the wheels start moving, it is quickly “discovered” that to make the plan work on the City’s timeline, a City backstop of bonds will be needed to help make sure the stadium is completed. Mix that with the MLB deadline requirement, and the pressure on the Council to approve the backstop will be unrelenting and allow little if any time for deliberation or consideration. Navy Hill died a death by 1,000 self-inflicted cuts by the Administration. If this cynical prediction unfolds, we could be told we must approve the City bond backstop or we will lose the Squirrels.” Certainly something to keep an eye on. Anyway, I think readers of this newsletter will enjoy what Baliles has going on—go subscribe this morning!
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F, and today looks a lot less like yesterday’s constant drizzle and a lot more like a typical sunny summer day. Expect highs in the mid 80s, with temperatures rising a bit over the next couple of days. While last weekend was absolute perfection, this weekend’s no slouch, either! Get some rest, stay hydrated, and enjoy!
 

Water cooler

Today, we’re back to a split CDC COVID-19 Community Level: Henrico County remains at a HIGH level, while both Richmond and Chesterfield County have dropped to a MEDIUM level. The seven-day average case rate per 100,000 people for each county, respectively, is: 211, 195, and 185. So while the case rates are dropping, which is great, they’re still hovering right around the magical 200 per 100,000 number, the border between medium and high. For what it’s worth: I’m going to keep wearing my mask in indoors public places wherever I go in the region because 195 is pretty close to 200 and because the border between Henrico and Richmond is not some magical wall keeping the virus at bay.
 

WTVR’s Tyler Layne reports on yesterday’s State Board of Health meeting. The Board questioned the Virginia Department of Health’s Commissioner about his comments in the recent Washington Post article about structural racism, and, ultimately, “unanimously voted to approve a resolution stating the Commissioner embarrassed the board and issued guidelines saying Greene should not deny ‘basic scientific facts’ moving forward.” The WaPo’s Jenna Portnoy has another follow up piece covering the same meeting with a few additional details, including this one: “Two years earlier, Greene interrupted a Virginia Tech professor mid-speech to dismiss conclusions from data showing that Black and Brown people are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards and environmental pollution.”
 

Good morning, RVA! It’s 62 °F, and today looks a lot less like yesterday’s constant drizzle and a lot more like a typical sunny summer day. Expect highs in the mid 80s, with temperatures rising a bit over the next couple of days. While last weekend was absolute perfection, this weekend’s no slouch, either! Get some rest, stay hydrated, and enjoy!
 

Water cooler

Today, we’re back to a split CDC COVID-19 Community Level: Henrico County remains at a HIGH level, while both Richmond and Chesterfield County have dropped to a MEDIUM level. The seven-day average case rate per 100,000 people for each county, respectively, is: 211, 195, and 185. So while the case rates are dropping, which is great, they’re still hovering right around the magical 200 per 100,000 number, the border between medium and high. For what it’s worth: I’m going to keep wearing my mask in indoors public places wherever I go in the region because 195 is pretty close to 200 and because the border between Henrico and Richmond is not some magical wall keeping the virus at bay.
 

WTVR’s Tyler Layne reports on yesterday’s State Board of Health meeting. The Board questioned the Virginia Department of Health’s Commissioner about his comments in the recent Washington Post article about structural racism, and, ultimately, “unanimously voted to approve a resolution stating the Commissioner embarrassed the board and issued guidelines saying Greene should not deny ‘basic scientific facts’ moving forward.” The WaPo’s Jenna Portnoy has another follow up piece covering the same meeting with a few additional details, including this one: “Two years earlier, Greene interrupted a Virginia Tech professor mid-speech to dismiss conclusions from data showing that Black and Brown people are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards and environmental pollution.”