Good morning, RVA! It's 74 °F, and today looks a little cooler with highs in 80s. Just like yesterday, keep an eye out of rain throughout the day but especially this evening.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 776↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 8↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 116↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 36, Henrico: 61, and Richmond: 19). Since this pandemic began, 307 people have died in the Richmond region. I think yesterday's COVID Tracking Project thread is worth reading just to get a feel for the weirdness and increasing unreliability of the public data around the coronavirus. The shift to reporting hospitalizations to the Department of Health and Human Services instead of the CDC a couple weeks back continues to result in "unexplained phenomena," which is not the most reassuring thing to hear from professional spreadsheetidemiologists: "We compared current hospitalization data reported by the federal government and state health departments since the switch, and found contradictions that suggest the federal data continue to be unreliable, while the state datasets face their own challenges."
I think y'all probably know how I feel about colleges and universities reopening with in-person classes—not great! What I'm really not looking forward to, though, is hearing higher-ed administrators admonish and blame students if/when coronavirus outbreaks start to pop up on campus. The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Andrew Cain has a piece that sets the stage for just such a thing: "UR warns returning students of severe penalties for breaking COVID rules." Yes students should follow the rules, but also the adults in charge should make (and should have made!) good decisions to keep students safe and healthy.
Yesterday was the three-year anniversary of "Charlottesville"—the grim shorthand for when a white supremacist deliberately drove his car into a crowd of protestors and killed Heather Heyer. I wrote this piece on August 14th, the Monday following the weekend of turmoil in our neighboring city to the west. I think it's worth reading now and seeing how much has changed (and not changed) in Richmond and the world.
As promised, here's the ordinance banning guns adjacent to protests that the Mayor introduced earlier this week: ORD. 2020-184. The ordinance amends the existing ban on guns in city-owned buildings and parks, and adds to the list "any public street, road, alley, or sidewalk or public right-of-way or any other place of whatever nature that is open to the public and is being used by or is adjacent to a permitted event or an event that would otherwise require a permit." As an added bonus, guns would also be banned from the parts of private buildings that are being used for public, "governmental purposes." At the moment, this ordinance sits on Council's August 20th agenda (PDF)—a meeting I didn't realize they planned on having.
Ned Oliver at the Virginia Mercury looks into how the General Assembly will tackle Civilian Review Boards at the sate level when they meet for a special session next week. I'm still confused about what kind of powers Civilian Review Boards created by localities today can wield. In Richmond, it seems like we've already decided our CRB can have subpoena power, but this piece by Oliver seems to suggest the State needs to specifically grant that authority. Either way, it sounds like the GA will look to pass some legislation to clear this up. I'm excited to see what's introduced next week, stay tuned.
Two women who hail from Carytown Bicycle Company have started using their bike mechanic skills to help Richmonders who rely on bikes for essential transportation—including people experiencing homelessness, teenagers in Randolph, and folks hanging out at Marcus-David Peters Circle (with priority given to people of color). Carytown Bicycle Company has set up this gofundme to help Mati and Emma buy and distribute "U-locks and bike parts for people who benefit from the donated bike builds and maintenance." Keeping bikes safe—especially bikes used for essential transportation—is a worthy cause, and I hope you'll chip in a couple of bucks this morning.
The Henrico and Richmond City Health Districts will host a free community COVID-19 testing event today at Tuckahoe Middle School (9000 Three Chopt Road) from 9:00–11:00 AM. Also, have you installed the COVIDWISE app on your phone yet? It'll take three minutes and will help public health folks slow the spread of the virus. I got an alert from the app yesterday with the title "COVID-19 EXPOS...", had a small heart attack, and continued reading to where it said "Your device identified 0 potential exposures this week". Good to know it works, though!
Tonight, if you've got two devices, you can attend dueling virtual mayoral events. Candidate Alexsis Rodgers will host an environmental town hall at 7:30 PM while Mayor Levar Stoney will join a call hosted by VSU Professor Dr. Shedrick McCall at 7:00 PM. My Big List of 2020 Candidate Events has started to look meager and small, so if you know of any educational event featuring candidates for mayor, City Council, or School Board, please let me know! Also I want to mention, mostly because it took a nontrivial amount of time, I went through my entire Trello board of candidates and added as much contact information for each as I could—website, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, email, VPAP profile, the works. Part of me, the stupid part, wants to create a Google Doc for each candidate and start compiling information about their policy platforms, notable quotes, voting records...
This morning's longread
On Wednesday, Portland will pass the best low-density zoning reform in US history
This did pass last night!
Portland’s city council seems certain Wednesday to set a new bar for North American housing reform by legalizing up to four homes on almost any residential lot. Portland’s new rules will also offer a “deeper affordability” option: four to six homes on any lot if at least half are available to low-income Portlanders at regulated, affordable prices. The measure will make it viable for nonprofits to intersperse below-market housing anywhere in the city for the first time in a century. And among other things it will remove all parking mandates from three quarters of the city’s residential land, combining with a recent reform of apartment zones to essentially make home driveways optional citywide for the first time since 1973. It’s the most pro-housing reform to low-density zones in US history.
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