Good morning, RVA! It's 26 °F, but temperatures should head back up near 50 °F today. Soak it up and take a lunch-break stroll, because cold weather arrives on Friday and with it the potential for a winter storm—including snow!—on Sunday.
Water cooler
The Chesterfield Education Association, as close to a teachers union as they've got, issued this release last night, raising concern about the County's "ability to conduct effective in-person learning under the current conditions." Richmond's version of the same group raised the same flag last week. There are a lot of simultaneously true things happening right now, and it's hard—at least for me—to make sense of them all. 1) You can't have school without teachers, 2) In-person learning is waaaay better for kids than virtual learning, 3) Omicron is incredibly transmissible, 4) Omicron is maybe way more mild?, 5) Regardless of how mild it is, isolation and quarantine guidance will keep a lot of kids and teachers out of school, 6) More people are in the hospital now than ever before. I don't know how you take that (surely incomplete) list, fit all the piece together, and come up with something to keep everyone safe, healthy, and moving forward. Rather than schools hurtling forward toward some inevitable decision, it feels more like they're stuck, getting pulled in 100 different directions, tearing at the seams.
Kate Masters at the Virginia Mercury reports on Governor-elect Youngkin's newest COVID-19 adviser, Dr. Marty Makary. Here's a fun quote from the piece, "in February of 2021...Makary predicted that COVID-19 would be 'mostly gone' by that April. The reason, he wrote, would be natural immunity combined with vaccines, which would protect enough Americans to nearly halt transmission of the virus." Or how about this one: "In an August column for the Wall Street journal, Makary argued against mask requirements in schools, claiming that face coverings could be 'vectors for pathogens.'" I dunno, if it were me, I'd want the person leading my COVID-19 team to at least have avoided making incredibly inaccurate COVID-19 predictions in international newspapers.
The Richmond Times-Dispatch's Mel Leonor and Andrew Cain report on this year's Republican-driven General Assembly session—which starts today! Expect lots of petty bills designed to roll back progressive changes made by Democrats over the last handful of years. We'll see if the Senate, which lacks a Republican majority, has an appetite for garbage like decreasing the grand larceny threshold and removing the authority for local governments to restrict guns in their own buildings.
Meg Schiffres at VPM reports on City Council's reaction to the news that Richmond's public housing authority has already resumed the eviction process for families late on rent. You can flip through RHHA's presentation to Council here. Residents do have a handful of options to avoid eviction—including applying for rent relief—but, given the first paragraph of this email, is now really the time to boot up evictions in our public housing neighborhoods? Also, and I am not a lawyer, but City Council is a legislative body! It seems to me that if they really wanted to intervene and stop evictions, they could draw up and pass some ordinances. Additionally, Council appoints the RRHA board, so keep this week's strong concerns in mind next time those appointments come up for approval.
Today at 9:00 AM, the Central Virginia Transportation Authority's Fall Line Working Group will meet to noodle on a timeline for building out segments of the multi-use trail that will eventually stretch from Ashland to Petersburg. Tune in if you want, but really I'm just excited to point out that the wheels of government have started to turn and the Fall Line is rapidly becoming a Real Boy! If you have some time this morning, stare dreamily at the proposed alignment which crosses eight different localities.
This morning's longread
Chicago’s “Race-Neutral” Traffic Cameras Ticket Black and Latino Drivers the Most
ProPublica has a complicated story about racial disparities issued by automated speeding cameras in Chicago, but I think the excerpt below gets it right. Much like how redlined neighborhoods have historically and systemically lacked the investments that bring cooling tree cover, they also, because of racism, can have more than their fair share of huge, fast streets that encourage speeding, which, in turn, leads to more automated speeding tickets issued in Black and Brown neighborhoods. Really and truly, infrastructuring our way out of this is the only option (which itself is complicated).
Perry said he takes responsibility for getting tickets. But he can’t help but notice something every time he drives through majority-Black neighborhoods: There are fewer pedestrians and more vacant lots and industrial areas. “It’s almost like you feel like there is nothing there. Nothing to slow you down,” he said. When Perry enters more densely populated Latino neighborhoods, he sees bustling commerce and more pedestrians. And in majority white neighborhoods, there are even more pedestrians and “a stop light every few blocks. A stop sign between those. Crosswalks,” he said. “There’s a million reasons to stop once you pass downtown on the North Side.” It all makes him wonder: Does the way a neighborhood looks affect whether a driver will get a ticket?
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