Good morning, RVA! It's 65 °F, and today's weather looks a lot like yesterday's. Expect highs in the 90s and a chance for thunderstorms later in the day. Stay cool, stay dry, and stay safe.
Water cooler
As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 611 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 16 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 90 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 35, Henrico: 29, and Richmond: 26). Since this pandemic began, 1,286 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the state sits at 999. Whoa, what's this? A barely three-digit seven-day average of new reported cases! The last time that happened was way back on October 20th. This, for some brains-are-weird reason, feels like real progress to me. The number of deaths is still pretty high, though. I know I've done the flu-comparison math before, but I think it's helpful to revisit it. According to the CDC, Virginia had an "influenza/pneumonia" death rate of 11 per 100,000 people back in 2019. If you take today's seven-day average of COVID-19 deaths (14.4), multiply it by 365 (5,256), and then divided it by 85.35 (the state's population divided by 100,000), you get 61.58. According to this quick and shoddy math, that's a coronadeath rate about 5.6 times higher than that of the 2019 flu. That year, 1,100 people died from "influenza/pneumonia", which is about three people per day, if you want to look at it that way.
Huge vaccine news in the New York Times: "The Food and Drug Administration is preparing to authorize use of the Pfizer-BioNTech coronavirus vaccine in adolescents 12 to 15 years old by early next week." Dang that was fast! I have no idea how many 12–15 year olds exist in Virginia or in our region, but I'm sure it's thousands and thousands—and I'm sure many of them are stoked to get vaccinated (including the one I live with). The NYT also says to expect a similar announcement from Moderna soon. Get excited for another, smaller flurry of vaccine news and for some interesting reporting on what adolescent vaccination means for this fall's school year.
I haven't yet listened to (or posted to The Boring Show) yesterday's two budget sessions, but will do so today. Also, looking at the City's legislative calendar, I see they've added another budget session today at 3:00 PM. The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Chris Suarez did listen in yesterday and reports that Council agreed on raises for all city employees and did it in a way that has support from the Mayor's administration. Given how employee salary conversations have gone over the past couple weeks with this group, a compromise acceptable by both sides seems like a big win. Other updates from yesterday: The Civilian Review Board will get funded at about $200,000 and the Affordable Housing Trust Find will have to wait until the American Rescue Plan money rolls in. One note about the CRB: I don't know if that $200,000 is funding for half a year or a full year, but neither number is close to the "about 1% of the police budget" number we'd kicked around late last year. For context, RPD has a proposed FY22 budget of $95 million.
RPS's school board also met yesterday to discuss, among other things, their recent takeover of school building procurement and construction. This, from the RTD's Kenya Hunter seems ominous: "Still, Kamras has moved forward to comply with the Board's directive, proposing three positions to beef up the school system's procurement department, including a director of school construction, a construction project manager, and a construction procurement manager. City Hall already approved the Board’s budget request prior to the move; it's unclear from which pot the money to pay for those positions would come." Emphasis mine and a thing I keep asking to the, like, four other people I know who follow School Board, City Council, and budget season.
Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense reports on a couple of rezonings y'all might be interested in. I predict that 17th Street between Broad and Dock Street is headed for a dramatic transformation over the next couple of years—new development, street redesigns, and potential investment in a big-deal museum are all headed that way.
I don't know why, but I found this photo essay—by VPM's Alex Scribner—from the Safe Space market up on Lakeside very soothing. It's nice to see people out doing things together in a COVID-responsible way, I think! Also, I'm super into pickles, so now I need go find some Dayum this is my Jam dills.
I love this deadpan headline from Kate Masters in the Virginia Mercury: "More Virginians are foraging for ramps. Many are poisoning themselves by picking the wrong plant.." To summarize, do not eat false hellebore, which, "in the most severe cases, it’s led to hospitalizations, with symptoms including vomiting, cardiac arrhythmias, dangerously low blood pressure and even seizures." Also fascinating, from the Wikipedia, "The plant was used by some tribes to elect a new leader. All the candidates would eat the root, and the last to start vomiting would become the new leader." So, yeah, maybe don't put it in your pasta.
Northside members of the RPS community, tonight at 6:00 PM you can join a Northside-specific version of the District's Reopen With Love 2.0 conversations. Tap the previous link for call-in info!
This morning's longread
What the “Infrastructure” Fight Is Really About
Infrastructure week comes and goes so fast and we never seem to get any infrastructure out of it. This piece in Politico explains that, kind of, but is also just a really interesting look at how infrastructure changed American history.
Together, twin revolutions in transportation and information (inspired by the U.S. Post Office, which subsidized the delivery of newspapers and magazines, and after 1848, the telegraph) drew disparate communities into closer connection with one another and with an emerging market economy that relied on credit, surplus production and trade. America evolved quickly from an agrarian republic into a capitalist democracy. It was a world that many Americans welcomed—but which equally as many dreaded and resisted.
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