Good morning, RVA! It's 56 °F, and we've got another really wonderful day ahead of us (at least weatherwise). Today you can expect highs in the 70s and sunshine—keep an eye out for some gusty gusts this afternoon, though. If you have planters on your deck railing that keep getting blown off, maybe set them on the ground after lunch.
Water cooler
Yesterday, the Virginia Department of Health expanded the eligibility criteria for the monkeypox vaccine, adding to the list of eligible folks "any person, of any sexual orientation or gender, who is living with HIV/AIDS; or any person, of any sexual orientation or gender, diagnosed with any sexually transmitted infection in the past three months." If you're a newly eligible Richmonder or Henricoan, set a reminder to fill out the Richmond and Henrico Health Districts’ updated Vaccine Interest Form this coming Monday (if you meet the previous eligibility criteria, go ahead and fill out that form right now). This is the second recent expansion of eligibility, which suggests, at least to me, that the tension between vaccine supply and vaccine demand is starting to balance out.
Jonathan Spiers at Richmond BizSense reports that last night City Council unanimously approved the resolution finalizing RVA Diamond Partners as the developer for the Diamond District (RES. 2022-R055). I'm not really sure what happens next, but I bet it's a whole lot of paperwork. The City hopes to have the new stadium up and running by the 2025 baseball season, which really feels right around the corner. Time to get started tearing things up!
One other quick, Council-related reminder: The Public Safety committee meets today and will consider the ordinance creating the new, compromise version of the Civilian Review Board (ORD. 2022-261). Might be worth tuning into this meeting to see if any of the paper's current patrons have an interest in making tweaks to this, the latest version of the CRB. Councilmembers Addison and Lambert, both patrons, sit on the Public Safety committee, so I imagine they'll guide the conversation today.
I'm fascinated by this new community composting pilot that the City's Department of Parks, Recreation & Community Facilities just launched—Patrick Larsen at VPM has the details. Basically every library in the city (and a few other spots) now host bright purple bins that folks can fill with their food scraps. The rich, healthy compost created from your literal trash will then end up in community gardens and public planting projects. It's the circle of life in the best possible way! You can find a list of drop-off locations and a guide to what you can and cannot toss in the bins here. Now I just need to figure out the best way to bike my food scraps over to the nearest library without making a mess of myself...
In the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Michael Martz and Eric Kolenich have some early reactions to the New York Times story about Bon Secours profiting off of expenses at Richmond Community Hospital in the East End. Sen. Kaine, Rep. McEachin, and Rep. Spanberger are all quoted and none of them are happy. You can read Bon Secours’ full statement over on NBC12.
Tonight, at 6:30 PM, the Richmond Police Department will host the final Community Conversation with Chief Smith—this one a telephone town hall. You can register for the event here and, if you're planning on calling in, you must do so before 3:30 PM today. This town hall is still a good opportunity to hear directly from the Chief if you haven't already, but I think I'm more interested in what the RPD decides to do now after this first round of community meetings wraps up.
Yesterday, NASA successfully crashed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos as part of "the agency's first attempt to move an asteroid in space." This is very, very cool, and part of the early work in creating actual planetary defense technology—like Armageddon and, to a lesser extent, Deep Impact but in real life and without Bruce Willis. Tap through to see a really cool video of the asteroid's surface rushing up to meet the spacecraft in its final minutes. Also check out this ground-based observation of the impact and subsequent shock wave. Amazing!
This morning's longread
Jim Crow Infrastructure and the Jackson, Miss., “Water Crisis”
More on the water crisis in Jackson. I can't stop reading about this because I can so clearly see a future where Richmond ended up in a similar place. Several billions of dollars of disinvestment in sewer, housing, and transportation says we still could, too.
Most residents under the age of 50 have no memory of a Jackson without “boil water” notices—the frequent public warnings that the water that comes out of your faucet is not safe to consume in any form without a good, rolling boil. The truth is that the “Jackson Water Crisis”—as the press has dubbed it—has been decades in the making. It’s part and parcel of an infrastructure crisis that is gripping much of the country—but with grossly unequal impact. Its roots are in Jim Crow, the separate that was never equal, where everything from water to parks to food and even air in our communities receives less investment, less protection, and less access. Broken levees in New Orleans. Toxic water in Flint. Crumbling buildings in eastern Kentucky. This is beyond a crisis in infrastructure. It is a crisis in justice.
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