Good morning, RVA! It's 32 °F, and this week looks a lot like last week—although maybe even a little warmer. Today, expect highs near 50 °F and some clouds here and there.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 5,141 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 2 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 500 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 155, Henrico: 206, and Richmond: 139). Since this pandemic began, 590 people have died in the Richmond region. This morning, I don't really know what else to say about the way the virus is spreading in our communities. Across the state, we're still seeing more cases than ever before, and I'm close to once again changing the y-axis of my graph. Despite doing more testing than at almost any point during the pandemic, the percent positivity across the state is 16.8%. The last time we saw that sort of number was back in May when were doing something like a quarter of the tests we're doing now. It's scary. While the progress towards vaccination fills me with hope, a whole lot of people will get sick and die if our mitigation plan for the next six months is "just do whatever while we wait for enough people to get vaccinated." Please stay home if you can, avoid gatherings, wear a mask inside and outside, and, if you must be around other people, try and keep at least six feet away. Speaking of vaccine, though, VDH launched this map which shows you the vaccination phase of each Health District. Almost everyone is still vaccinating Phase 1a (healthcare workers) with a handful of districts in southwest and northern virginia moving into Phase 1b (essential workers, folks older than 75, and people living in congregant settings). I imagine this map will change quickly over the next couple of weeks!
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Sabrina Moreno has a good story about the region's safety-net providers working together to get their staff vaccinated, which, of course, helps keep the folks served by those providers safer from the virus. I love these stories of partnership in the face of a tidal wave of adversity. Moreno also has this fascinating piece about the rollout of the vaccine in Virginia and how some of the lack of state and federal coordination makes things hard to, locally, get as much vaccine into as many arms as possible. My take away is that, yes, supply of the actual vaccine is a challenge, but more challenging is the sheer logistics around vaccinating eight million people.
City Council meets tonight for their regularly scheduled meeting—their first regularly scheduled meeting of 2021 and the first time they'll gather to do business as New Council (now just Regular Council, I guess). Two interesting items from the informal meeting agenda: "City Attorney Recruitment Process" and "Personnel Matter - Council Chief of Staff." I don't think I knew Council was looking to finally fill the City Attorney position, which has been staffed on an interim basis by Haskel Brown for the last while. And I have no idea about the details of the personnel matter—still intriguing though. On the formal meeting agenda (PDF), we've got a couple things of note. Councilmember Lambert has signed on to ORD 2020.214, the Mayor's ordinance to direct some additional/new real estate tax revenues to the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. Also the ordinance to remove a couple of the medians at Monument & Allen Avenues from the right-of-way and make them into parks (thereby closing them to the public after sunset and imposing a few other restrictions) sits on the Regular Agenda. I can't remember if we've talked about it, but this ordinance, ORD. 2020-217, got amended to only include the two medians on Allen Avenue north of Monument. I think that seems fine to me. Also! Committee Assignments! Committees do the work of triaging papers and recommending Council take some sort of action on them. A whole lot of work happens at committee meetings and their makeup can have a big impact—I'm looking at you Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee which for the last four years had some pretty anti-land use, anti-housing, and anti-transportation vibes. Behold! A long, boring list of who's on what committee! Education and Human Services: Lynch, Robertson, Jordan; Land Use, Housing and Transportation: Addison, Robertson, Jones; Finance and Economic Development: Jones, Larson, and Robertson; Public Safety: Trammell, Lambert, and Robertson; and Governmental Operations: Larson, Jordan, and Jones. There's some fascinating internal politics going on in that long, boring list, though.
The RTD's Mark Robinson has an update on the search for a new RRHA CEO. I imagine that this sentence is not great for potential candidates to read: "[The position] has been a revolving door in the past six years, with five people holding the post permanently or on an interim basis during the span, including three people in the past 12 months."
I will link to this story about RVA Bike Share in Richmond BizSense by Jonathan Spiers, but I will have no hope about the system actually expanding into something useful. Even with this chatter about a "pilot program." The last...three years??...have taught me to believe it when I see it.
Cool job alert: Capital Trees wants to hire a new executive director. I know about Capital Trees mostly through their work of turning the wasteland underneath the train tracks down by the Capital Trail into a lovely green space called The Low Line. They're an urban greening organizations that works to "create and advocate for public landscapes that build and create community and enhance health outcomes for all populations." If this sounds like something you're interested in, applications are due on February 8th.
This morning's patron longread
See What Happens When N.Y.C. Streets Are Full of People Instead of Cars
Submitted by Patron Lisa. Look what you can do when you take away the tiniest amount of space on the street and give it to people instead of cars!
Just as the early days of the coronavirus forced New Yorkers inside, it eventually pushed them outdoors — for fresh air, for exercise, for eating, for relief — in what became an organic takeover and reimagining of the city’s streets across its five boroughs. City officials handed over 83 miles of roadway to cyclists, runners and walkers, allowed nearly 11,000 restaurants to stretch onto sidewalks and streets and let retailers expand their storefronts beyond their front doors. People reclaimed the pavement and are, by and large, unwilling to give it back.
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