Good morning, RVA! It's 47 °F, and today looks lovely. Expect highs around 80 and some sunshine. NBC12’s Andrew Freiden says we need rain, which some of my plants would agree with, but, dang, it’s just so pleasant out.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 272 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 11 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 39 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 15, Henrico: 12, and Richmond: 11). Since this pandemic began, 1,309 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state sits at 496. OK, OK, grain of salt with these numbers. While, the VDH dashboard is officially back online, I am skeptical of any and all numbers reported by said dashboard for the next couple of days. I imagine it’s hard for staff to enter in new data during extended periods of server maintenance.
Now that the coronanumbers are flowing agin, I’ve got this week’s vaccine graphs for you to flip through. First, the number of new people each day in Virginia with at least one dose continues to decrease. I don’t think this graph yet reflects the change in eligibility that allowed kids 12–15 to get their first Pfizer doses, so stay tuned for at least a tiny bump. I feel like, at some point, this graph should start to flatten out in a long-tail way, right? Second, here’s the graph showing the number of doses administered in our region by week, and you can see that it’s a pretty decent reflection of the previous graph. Finally, here’s our region’s progress towards my own fairly arbitrary goal of 75% of total people with at least one dose. I think sometime this week I’ll update this graph to reflect President Biden’s goal of having 70% of adults with at least one dose by July 4th.
City Council’s Land Use, Housing and Transportation committee will meet today and consider at least two interesting papers. First, RES. 2021-R027, patroned by Councilmember Addison, would initiate a change to the City’s zoning ordinance that would eliminate parking minimums. Whoa! Parking minimums are just what they sound like, a minimum, required number or parking spaces specified by the zoning ordinance that changes depending on the type of thing. It gets real specific. For example a church or other place of worship needs one off-street parking space per eight seats in the main auditorium; or an art gallery, library or museum must have 10 plus one per 300 square feet of floor area in excess of 2,000 square feet; or a bowling alley must have five per lane. You get the idea. You can easily imagine how these parking requirements make it really hard to start a new business when you’ve got to invest money into paying for parking spaces that you—or your customers—may not even want. Of course, nothing in this zoning change would prohibit business owners from buying and building parking for their customers, it just wouldn’t require it.
The other interesting paper in front of LUHT is less exciting. RES. 2021-R026 would direct the City’s Planning Commission to prepare an amendment to the newly-adopted Master Plan that addresses each of the issues raised in an eight-page document put together by Council. Planning Commission would then be required to hold a single public hearing on this chonky franken-amendment. I’m embarrassed by this. We just went through a yearslong process to craft a community vision for Richmond 300. There were dozens and dozens of meetings, feedbacks, and revisions. To request a single amendment with a single public hearing reflecting the messy set of changes laid out in this eight-page wish list is lazy, opaque, and definitely not in the best interest of our City. I think Planning Commission could spend an entire year working their way through this document and still not make significant, cohesive progress. Good luck, Planning Commission, you’re going to need it.
Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense says Planning Commission voted to recommend the rezoning of the Southern States silos, which seems good. One thing I’d like to learn more about is how the proposed development plans on preserving (or improving!) access to the river down that way. I know a lot of folks fish, bike, and walk through there currently.
Good news: The RPS School Board adopted a budget last night! Superintendent Kamras also answered my open question about where the money would come from to pay for the new staff to manage procurement and construction of school facilities. Check out page two of his presentation from last night: “State funding allocation increase by about $5 million more than was originally anticipated when the Board approved its FY22 budget in February. The Administration proposes using this additional funding to...fund the three Board-approved New School Construction positions.” Mystery solved! However, bad news: Five members of the Board—the same five who voted to take control of construction and procurement—voted against amending last night’s agenda to discuss the letter Mayor Stoney and City Council sent them about sharing those construction and procurement duties. From the Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Kenya Hunter, here’s 1st District rep Liz Doerr on that decision: “I think it’s extremely unfortunate that my colleagues do not want to discuss the construction of George Wythe...I want the public to be aware, this means we are transparently not discussing George Wythe and a major decision that needs to be made by June 1st.” It’s not a good look for the School Board to refuse to even discuss a potential compromise with City Council and the Mayor. Not great.
This morning's patron longread
Black homeowner had a white friend stand in for third appraisal. Her home value doubled.
Submitted by Patron Brian. This piece is from Indianapolis, but surely representative of cities across the country. Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia, based right here in Richmond, tackles this sort of housing discrimination in our part of the world.
During the early months of the coronavirus pandemic last year, the first two appraisers who visited her home in the historic Flanner House Homes neighborhood, just west of downtown, valued it at $125,000 and $110,000, respectively. But that third appraisal went differently. To get that one, Duffy, who is African American, communicated with the appraiser strictly via email, stripped her home of all signs of her racial and cultural identity and had the white husband of a friend stand in for her during the appraiser's visit. The home's new value: $259,000.
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