Good morning, RVA! It's 48 °F, and this morning looks rainy. Keep an eye on the sky until about 2:00 PM when things should start to clear up.
Water cooler
Ali Rockett and Reed Williams in the Richmond Times-Dispatch report on the eight people killed in Richmond last week—including two teenagers and three young adults. I'm thankful for Rockett and Williams's coverage, because, over the years, it's gotten harder and harder to understand who in our City is getting killed. I'm often confused by the press releases I get from the Richmond Police department when someone has been killed. Some deaths are labeled as homicides, some are labeled as death investigations, and I haven't put together a good system to track those death investigations to see if they end up classified as homicides. I'll often get a release announcing arrests of suspects for homicides that I hadn't previously heard about. So, with all of that in mind, I'm going stop covering Richmond's murders in the top section of this email. I don't believe that what I'm doing now paints an accurate picture of murders (or violence) in the city. You can always find the RPD's list of homicide victims here. For what it's worth, what I think would be really useful would be regular data analysis on all gun violence in Richmond.
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,305 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 17 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 156 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 46, Henrico: 81, and Richmond: 29). Since this pandemic began, 1,259 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state sits at 1,512. We've had a seven-day average of new cases over 1,500 for the last seven days. Is the seven-day average of seven-day averages a thing (1,536)?
Despite the disruptions in the supply of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, Virginia—and our region—continues to vaccinate more and more folks each week. Here's the graph of weekly doses administered in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield, and you can see we've blown past the governor's second goal of around 37,000 doses per week—almost doubling it. And here's the graph of our region's steady march toward the mostly-made-up goal of having 75% of the population vaccinated. We're still early on in the vaccine campaign, but what will be really interesting/telling is to watch the hospitalization and death numbers if we are headed into another peak of cases. If the vaccines can keep vulnerable folks out of the hospital while case counts increase, then I think we could quietly pump our fists in the air a bit. Over two million Virginians (24.6%) are full vaccinated and almost 40% have received at least one dose. We're getting there!
Tonight, the RPS School Board meets at 6:00 PM and you may want to tune in. Check out these Capital Plan Recommendations that Superintendent Kamras will present tonight, specifically pages six and seven. Remember last week when the School Board voted to take over school building procurement and construction from the City? Well, after a bit of research, Kamras's administration found that Chesterfield County Public Schools, Henrico County Public Schools, and Norfolk Public Schools do not handle their own procurement of new buildings. Chesterfield and Norfolk don't do construction either. The admin estimates RPS will need to hire 15 new folks at a cost of $3 million. Gasp! Additionally, as a result of the Board's resolution, the City has stopped working on the RFP for a new building to replace George Wythe—but RPS doesn't have staff yet to pick up that work. So the project sits in limbo. Not great. With the budget out of the Mayor's hands, I think Council would need to submit a budget amendment to fund these new spots—or RPS would have to go through some process unknown to me to cut funding from elsewhere in their own budget. I hate this whole situation, and don't see a great way out of it given all of the egos and personalities involved. Tune in tonight, I guess.
Speaking of budget amendments, City Council will have their fifth budget work session today, and they'll focus on an analysis of the CIP. Perhaps more exciting, their budget amendments, which they'll discuss on Wednesday, have dropped! This document lays out each proposed amendment (both increases and decreases) by councilmember. While it'll give you an idea for what's out there, it doesn't do a great job at telling the broader story of which amendments have larger support among Council. Basically, don't take a given member's lack of amendment as a lack of support for a program or department—they'll often collaborate on these things. A couple takeaways: Funding for the Civilian Review Board looks like it will happen, but it's unclear how much (it won't be the more than $1 million requested, that's for sure); some folks want police and fire to get a raise, and it's unclear to me whether that's inline or out of line with the existing compensation stuff that the mayor's budget made a priority; increasing the Affordable Housing Trust Fund contribution has a lot of support; and the public defenders office might could see an increase. Over on the cuts side, you've got suggested cuts to police, tax relief for seniors, fleet funding, and the non-departmental budget (aka when the City funds non-profits and other organizations). Also of note, Councilmember Jones proposed cutting every line item in the budget that received an increase by 34% of that increase. I'm not a fan of across the board cuts like this because I don't think they're equitable. We'll learn more about how all of these things fit together and what has councilwide support on Wednesday. Exciting!
I've got two more Council/legislative updates (but they're quick!). First, the Ms. Bee's parklet did need to go to the Planning Commission for approval. It's on their Consent Agenda today, so, fingers crossed, that shouldn't be a big deal. Second, Planning Commission will also consider these changes to the City's parklet program which, I assume, will make it easier and cheaper for businesses to install parklets.
You're going to want to budget some time this week to work your way through all of the RTD's The JXN Project: Contextualizing the origins of Jackson Ward. The JXN Project celebrates the 150th anniversary of Jackson Ward (this past weekend!), and the folks behind that work—Enjoli Moon and Sesha Joi Pritchett-Moon—partnered with the RTD to put together a handful of really nice stories about the painful and resilient history of the neighborhood.
Richmond BizSense's Michael Schwartz reports that Dominion will not build a second office tower downtown. I forget how the second Dominion tower was wrapped up into the eventual success of Navy Hill, but I'm glad it's not something we were counting on in the immediate future.
This morning's patron longread
How Lil Nas X Flipped Conservatives’ Culture-War Playbook
I love Lil Nas X.
That doesn’t mean that Lil Nas X is a sorry pop star — he’s quite an outstanding one by the genre’s own standards, displaying the same easy charm, sharp aesthetic eye and knowledge of the cultural moment that fueled icons from Jimi Hendrix to Madonna to Beyoncé. The rap world has not been historically friendly to LGBTQ people, to say the very least, making it even more impressive that he managed to somehow leap in a single bound the barriers of acceptance both there and in the world of country music. Pop needs figures like him as catalysts, if for nothing else than to keep its world from becoming stale, self-reflexive, decadent.
If you’d like your longread to show up here, go chip in a couple bucks on the ol’ Patreon.
