Good morning, RVA! It's 29 °F, but today looks pretty wonderful with warmer highs in the mid 50s. Expect highs in the 70s later this week, and potentially no rain until Friday. We've got some good weather lined up this week, y'all.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,163 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 77 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 150 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 79, Henrico: 40, and Richmond: 31). Since this pandemic began, 1,120 people have died in the Richmond region. Also as of this morning, I have 359 rows in my coronacounts spreadsheet, and on Sunday I'll have entered a new row in the spreadsheet every day for an entire year. An entire year! That's a long time to do anything, and only because I'm mostly trapped in my home each and every day—by the coronavirus—am I able to commit to updating a spreadsheet at 12:30 PM every afternoon. I'm sure this week you'll see lots of One Year Later reflections in the media, and if you read any worth sharing, please send them my way.
Last week the region hit the new Stupid Math Goal of 37,000 vaccines administered in a week. Here's the graph of vaccines administered in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield, plus the same (dubious) graph with statewide supply of vaccine overlaid on top. According to the Governor's public schedule, today we're seeing some of the first doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine administered at the Raceway during a vaccination event for seniors. It feels like a lot of the pieces are starting to come together, doesn't it?
OK! Some 2021 Budget Season updates! First you can download the entire proposed FY22 budget here and the entire proposed FY22 Capital Improvement Program here. Second, this Budget Hub the City put together does a pretty good job at highlighting the Mayor's priorities: schools, a few new interesting positions here and there, and a focus on maintaining. Third, I uploaded both the CIP presentation to the Planning Commission and the Mayor's budget presentation to Council to The Boring Show podcast. The Boring Show only exists because I know there are, like, four other people in Richmond who want to listen to public budget meetings but would rather avoid the City's website and its video player—and do so while riding their bike, taking the bus, or doing some sort of mindless work. It's a service I provide mostly to myself but hope it is useful to others! Finally, Chris Suarez at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has an overview of the Mayor's budget and explains what the freeze on vacant jobs means. With the City fully in maintain mode, I get it, but running a city with 600 vacant positions is not sustainable. For the first time this budget season, I'll say it: At some point, we will need to raise the real estate tax to fill these positions and pay for basic services.
The Mayor will present his draft Equity Agenda to City Council at their informal meeting today. I don't know what that means for the public input timeline, but the page to leave feedback on the Agenda still exists, so, if you haven't already, go leave at least two or three comments. Scrolling through the document, and a bunch of interesting ideas have been added since last I looked—great job everyone.
A little while back, I wrote about University of Richmond's decision to change the names of two dorms by adding names rather than scrubbing off the names of enslavers and racists. Here's an open letter from Black UR students and alums which says, in part, "We believe that the University’s plans as stated create a dangerous false equivalency between Ryland and the people he enslaved as well as between Freeman and Mitchell. This false equivalency suggests that all parties are worth honor and respect when that is simply not the case concerning Ryland and Freeman. Thus, we are calling on the administration and the Board of Trustees to heed the student body’s wishes and remove the names of Robert Ryland and Douglas Southall Freeman from Ryland Hall and Mitchell-Freeman Hall." There's also a petition for UR-adjacent folks to sign in support of the open letter.
The South of the James Farmers Market will return to Forest Hill Park on Thursday evenings starting May 6th. Note! Thursday evenings are not Saturday mornings! If you show up to Forest Hill Park the weekend of the 6th, you will be disappointed. However, if you need some fresh produce, the Market spends its Saturdays up in Bryan Park. More info over on their Facebook.
This morning's longread
E-mail Is Making Us Miserable
A perfect longread for a Monday morning! Bleh.
To return to our motivating question, there are many reasons why e-mail makes us miserable. It creates, for example, a tortuous cycle that increases the amount of work on our plate while simultaneously thwarting, through constant distraction, our ability to accomplish it effectively. We’re also, it turns out, really bad at communicating clearly through a purely written medium—all kinds of nuances are lost, especially sarcasm, which leads to frustrating misunderstandings and confused exchanges. But lurking beneath these surface depredations is a more fundamental concern. The sheer volume of communication generated by modern professional e-mail directly conflicts with our ancient social circuits. We’re miserable, in other words, because we’ve accidentally deployed a literally inhumane way to collaborate.
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