Good morning, RVA! It's 72 °F, and you know the deal: hot, humid, sweat straight on through your undershirt. A bit of relief comes this weekend, though!
Water cooler
Yesterday, the CDC updated their mask-wearing guidance for fully-vaccinated folks, recommending that if you're in an area of substantial or high transmission you should wear a mask in public indoor settings—again, even if you're fully vaccinated! This change in guidance comes after some new evidence suggests that the small percentage of fully-vaccinated people who do get infected with the Delta variant can possibly transmit the virus to others. First, and most importantly, all of the vaccines are incredibly effective against the Delta variant and still prevent severe symptoms in folks who experience breakthrough infections (which is great because we're all trying to avoid going to the hospital or dying). Second, this is something new that we hadn't seen in the other variants. There are still lots of folks who remain unvaccinated either because they simply are not eligible (children), cannot get the vaccine (some immunocompromised individuals), are grappling with legitimate vaccine hesitancy, or have fallen into some partisan anti-science black hole never to return. When fully-vaccinated people wear masks indoors, we're helping to prevent the spread of this disease to others, which is something we should be 100% willing to do. You can check the CDC's COVID Data Tracker for individual county-level transmission rates if you'd like, but, honestly, it's probably easier to just wear a mask if you're headed to an indoors public space. At this moment, Richmond and Henrico have "moderate" levels of community transmission, while Chesterfield has a "substantial" level of community transmission.
One other change to the CDC's recommendations: "CDC recommends universal indoor masking for all teachers, staff, students, and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status." This, as far as I can tell, is unrelated to the level of community transmission in and around the school—just a blanket, universal mask recommendation. Richmond Public Schools had already announced their mask policy a while back, and it's 100% inline with this new CDC guidance. I hadn't heard anything about either Henrico or Chesterfield's plans, but yesterday Anna Bryson at the Henrico Citizen reported that HCPS will not require masks for any students, teachers, or staff. 100% optional masking is pretty out of step with "universal indoor masking," so I'm not really sure what's going on. Maybe it's a case of reporting getting ahead the school district finalizing their policies? Maybe it's that HCPS thinks their other, non-mask mitigation efforts are good enough? Maybe it's something less charitable? I don't know. Keep an eye on this and on how other school districts in the region respond to the new guidance.
We've been pining after the City's share of the American Rescue Plan money for months now, and everyone (myself included) has all sorts of ideas about what we should spend it on. Yesterday, the City launched this page explaining how the once-in-a-lifetime $154 million influx of cash will work, how it can be spent, and how folks can get engaged in the process. Step one for readers of this email (and everyone else), is to fill out this community priorities survey. Honestly, I'm pretty excited about this engagement process since we didn't really see one for the CARES Act money (at least that I can remember) and it builds on the community engagement done to support Richmond 300 and the Mayor's Equity Agenda. It's great to see the pieces coming together! You've got until August 9th to weigh in, which is a pretty quick turnaround as far as community engagement surveys go, so don't put it off until the last minute. After this survey closes, the City will put together a draft spending plan, we'll all have a chance to weigh in on that, and then the final plan heads to Council for approval. It's this last step I've got questions about, because Council for sure has its own ideas on how to spend all of this cash. I wonder how much the Mayor's administration and City Council will work together on the draft spending plan before putting it out there for us to poke through?
Related! Are you confused or conflicted about how the City should prioritize spending millions and millions of dollars? Tonight at 7:00 PM you can join the folks from Richmond Together for their first-ever Town Hall to talk about exactly this! From their release: "Panelists will include Laura Goren of The Commonwealth Institute, who will provide an overview of ARPA as a whole as well as its provisions for aid to states and localities; Thad Williamson of Richmond Together who will provide an overview of RT’s proposed investment plan; and Kelly Harris-Braxton of Virginia First Cities, who will discuss how localities across Virginia are approaching the use of these funds. The panel will be followed by audience questions and discussion, moderated by Bryce Robertson of Richmond Together." Maybe dip in to tonight's discussion and then fill out the City's ARP survey.
Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports on the State's plan to allocate at least some money to Richmond's aging sewer system. The City asked for almost a billion dollars, the governor allocated $50 million—not even the same magnitude, but it's not nothing, though. Mayor Stoney put it well, "We appreciate this down payment and look forward to continued partnership from the state."
Maybe all of the fun, progressive, urbanist talent that ends up working in Chesterfield has started to have an impact! Check out this quote from the County's Economic Development Director about a new County-run development at Chippenham and Midlothian: "The vision is to take what we did at Stonebridge and make it more mixed, more dense and to allow for connectivity through the Boulders and Stonebridge." A vision for more uses and more density! In Chesterfield! Jack Jacobs has more details in Richmond BizSense.
This morning's longread
Why People Are So Awful Online
I can't tell if more folks are writing more things about how bad social media makes them feel or if I've ironically trained the algorithm to only show me articles about the negative emotional effects of social media. Either way, this is a thoughtful piece from Roxane Gay in the New York Times.
After a while, the lines blur, and it’s not at all clear what friend or foe look like, or how we as humans should interact in this place. After being on the receiving end of enough aggression, everything starts to feel like an attack. Your skin thins until you have no defenses left. It becomes harder and harder to distinguish good-faith criticism from pettiness or cruelty. It becomes harder to disinvest from pointless arguments that have nothing at all to do with you. An experience that was once charming and fun becomes stressful and largely unpleasant. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way. We have all become hammers in search of nails.
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