Good morning, RVA! It's 48 °F, and cloudy. You can expect pleasant temperatures in the mid 70s for most of the day, despite the lack of extreme sunshine.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports...something. VDH had some server maintenance done over the weekend, which meant their data dashboards went 404 for the past couple of days. They’re sort of up now, showing screenshots for most of the dashboard pages, but, like, you can’t scroll down on any of them and that makes finding “Richmond’ in an alphabetically sorted list a challenge. I’m missing data in my spreadsheet since Thursday, so expect numbers and chartsandgraphs to be weird for a while.
This past Friday afternoon, Governor Northam “lifted Virginia’s universal indoor mask mandate to align with new guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.” He recorded a short video of the announcement, too, if you’d rather hear his soft Eastern Shore drawl than read a press release this morning. The gist is the same as what we went over last week: If you’re fully vaccinated you can do whatever, whenever with a handful of exceptions (transit, health care facilities, and a few other spots). Additionally, businesses can still choose to require masks, so pay attention before you saunter into a place maskless. The Governor also announced that he’ll “ease all distancing and capacity restrictions on Friday, May 28th.” That’s two weeks earlier than planned and right before Memorial Day weekend—an, I’m sure, not unrelated fact. Until the 28th, though, we’re stuck in this limboland of mixed messaging around who can do what and for what reasons. Can I pack a big room full of maximally vaccinated people? I think the Governor’s restrictions prevent it, but the guidance says it’d be fine. Confusing. Regardless of how you feel about the sudden lurch in masking guidance, we’ll have a lot more clarity at the end of this month. I like how President Biden put it: “The rule is now simple: Get vaccinated or wear a mask until you do.”
The school procurement and construction situation continues to evolve? devolve? Over the weekend the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Chris Suarez reported that Mayor Stoney and three City Council members “are asking the School Board to reconsider its plans for the school division to manage the construction of a new George Wythe High School.” Via Councilmember Lynch’s newsletter, here are screenshots (first page, second page) of the letter sent by Mayor Stoney and Councilmembers Lynch, Robertson, and Newbille (that’s the Council President, Vice President, and George Wythe’s council rep) outlining how the new proposed process will work. It sounds like the City will hire a third party to help both sides with the procurement and construction process for “the entirety of the process.” Importantly, via Suarez’s piece, swing-vote School Board member Jonathan Young seems interested in the idea. School Board meets tonight, so maybe tune in to see if they choose to respond to this letter publicly.
A Chris Suarez double header! He reports that the City has withdrawn a $75,000 contribution to the Enrichmond Foundation after complaints about how they’ve involved (or failed to involve) volunteers and descendants—folks who have been working to preserve and restore those cemeteries for years and years. This is a long-simmering conflict and, from reading the article, does not sound nearly resolved. Also of note in a political intrigue sort of way, near the bottom of the article, Del. Delores McQuinn weighs in to disagree with Mayor Stoney’s decision.
The Department of Public Works has a new survey up (until May 30th) for folks to weigh in on potential new bike lanes for the summer 2021 and spring 2022 paving seasons. You‘ ll be asked to weigh in on how bike lanes should look on six potential corridors: Brookland Parkway (not Brookland Park Boulevard), Colorado Avenue, Grove Avenue, Marshall Street, Walmsley Road, and Warwick Road. It’s so incredibly exciting to me that bike lanes are now just part of the regular paving process. Not too long ago, each of these pieces of proposed bike infrastructure would have involved a huge, drawn out, months long battle in public meetings and in the media. Progress!
The City’s Planning Commission meets today and there’s a lot of interesting stuff on the agenda—including some cool pedestrian plaza stuff, a public stairs project (which you know I love), and the rezoning of the Southern States silos. Probably most interesting to readers of this newsletter is the presentation on the rezoning of the area around the Science Museum, Alison Street, and VCU & VUU Pulse stations. Last time this particular rezoning popped up on agendas there was much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth from nearby residents about all the typical stuff (height, density, shade, crime, sewers, etc, etc, etc). We’ll see how the City plans on moving this rezoning forward, now that we’re coming out of the pandemic and the Planning Department has new leadership.
Important civic duty reminder: Today is the deadline to register to vote or update any of your voter information if you want to vote in the June gubernatorial primary.
This morning's longread
Why The Vaccines are a Home Run Despite the Yankees’ Outbreak
This was the best analysis of the New York Yankees COVID-19 story that I read. It’s a challenge to remember that, with so many folks vaccinated, new cases are far, far less important than the number of hospitalizations and deaths. This piece made me want to rewrite the template for the top section of this email!
A case of vaccine breakthrough is not the same thing as an unvaccinated or non-immune person catching COVID-19. Personally, if I had tested positive while unvaccinated, I’d be worried until it played out. Post-vaccination? For me, testing positive would be but a curiosity unworthy of my anxiety. There’s a reason that vaccine trials and real world data show so few severe cases, let alone hospitalizations or deaths. Post-vaccination, the virus would no no longer be able to surprise my immune system as a novel pathogen, and I’m not that worried whether it replicates just a bit in my nose before getting shut down.
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