Good morning, RVA! It's 37 °F and rainy. You can expect rain for the next several hours, after which the sun should make an appearance and dry things out a bit. Temperatures today will top out in the 50s, and colder weather continues tomorrow! Next week, though, looks pretty great.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,035 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 10 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 112 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 25, Henrico: 10, and Richmond: 77). Since this pandemic began, 1,210 people have died in the Richmond region.
Exciting news! Sabrina Moreno at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that the Richmond, Henrico, Chesterfield, and Chickahominy Health Districts have all moved into Phase 1c of their vaccination rollout plans. Phase 1c includes "other essential workers" in broadly defined categories like: Energy; housing and construction; institutions of higher education faculty/staff; finance; media; and barbers, stylists, and hairdressers. Given this announcement and President Biden's announcement earlier this week, I feel like we'll start to see (at least parts of) Virginia move into Phase 2 in just a couple of weeks.
Less exciting news: The New York Times reports that "workers at a plant in Baltimore manufacturing two coronavirus vaccines accidentally conflated the ingredients several weeks ago, contaminating up to 15 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine and forcing regulators to delay authorization of the plant’s production lines." Luckily, this snafu doesn't impact doses currently in use or being delivered. Still, maybe I should temper some of my "Phase 2 in just a couple of weeks!" vibes from the previous paragraph.
The Governor dropped the full list of his proposed changes to the marijuana legalization bill, which include: money for a public awareness campaign about marijuana, worker protections for marijuana-related businesses, legalizing possession on July 1st, allowing expungement of marijuana-related criminal charges from folks' records as soon as possible, and legalizing owning and growing up to four marijuana plants in your home. There are a LOT of quotes from a lot of different legislators in the press release—from both chambers of the General Assembly—so I feel a small, but cautious!, sense of optimism that these amendments will pass next week.
As promised, I posted City Council's second budget work session over on The Boring Show yesterday. I haven't listened to the whole thing yet (at 2x, of course), but, scrubbing through the recording, I hear both Director of Budget & Strategic Planning Jay Brown and Acting CAO Lincoln Saunder's voices. Get in there over the weekend and get to know your City's budget!
This is unexpected: 9th District Councilmember Jones, who is? was? running for the 69th House of Delegates seat "failed to turn in two forms in time that are required to be on the primary ballot," according to Brandon Jarvis on Twitter. Jones released a statement saying that his campaign submitted everything to the local registrar's office on the 5th, 20 days before the deadline, but "the Certificate of Candidate Qualifications and Statement of Economic Interest were filed with the Richmond Registrar and not forwarded to the Virginia Department of Elections." Jones was not granted an extension, so I'm not sure what that ultimately means for his candidacy.
Transportation for America has an early look at Biden's brand new and massive infrastructure proposal. This seems good: "We have never seen this much money for public transportation and passenger rail included in a presidential infrastructure proposal." Also exciting: $20 billion dedicated to repairing the damage caused by urban highways—Richmond should do whatever it can to get a chunk of that money, should it exist. T4A does, however, have concerns about how the $115 billion for fixing bridges, highways, and roads will get spent. Maintenance = good; Road construction and widening = bad. But, overall, this seems like an exciting proposal, and I guess we'll wait on how the broken Senate handles it.
Tonight is the last of three virtual meetings on the remaining resort casino proposals. Tune in at 6:00 PM to hear a presentation on the Bally's Richmond Casino Resort project (that's the 4th District location). A recording of the 2nd District site meeting from earlier this week got posted to the City's Department of Economic Development's YouTube if you'd like to check that out. Next steps, according the City's casino page, will be two "report" meetings next Thursday and Friday.
The Richmond and Henrico Health Districts will host a free COVID-19 community testing event today from 1:00–3:00 PM at Second Baptist Church (3300 Broad Rock Boulevard). This is a drive-thru event. We're getting closer to the finish line but that doesn't mean you're somehow magically immune to this disease. If you're sick or think you might have been exposed to COVID-19, go get tested! Check out the full list of testing locations here.
Via the /r/rva, this time-lapse of a stenciled painting of Bob Gulledge playing the Wurlitzer at the Byrd is incredible. People are amazing.
This morning's longread
Riders Are Abandoning Buses and Trains. That’s a Problem for Climate Change.
Public transit is a critical part of our future if we want planet to live on in that future. It's pretty terrifying to consider folks just not coming back to buses and trains after the pandemic, but the level of federal support in recent COVID-19 relief packages and the upcoming infrastructure bill does give me hope.
The worry about the future is twofold. If commuters shun public transit for cars as their cities recover from the pandemic, that has huge implications for air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Most importantly, if transit systems continue to lose passenger fare revenues, they will not be able to make the investments necessary to be efficient, safe and attractive to commuters. There are a few outliers. In Shanghai, for example, public transit numbers took a nosedive in February 2020, but riders have returned as new coronavirus infections remain low and the economy rebounds. But the picture is grim in many more cities.
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