Good morning, RVA: 1,159 • 13; budget work session #1; bye bye Harry F. Byrd statue

Good morning, RVA! It’s 38 °F, but this afternoon’s temperatures look extremely pleasant. Expect highs in the 60s and sunshine. I think we’ve got at least one more day of dry weather before some rain moves in later this week.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 1,159 new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 13 new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 116 new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 43, Henrico: 54, and Richmond: 19). Since this pandemic began, 1,185 people have died in the Richmond region. Michael Martz at the Richmond Times-Dispatch has a one-year-later look back at the early and deadly COVID-19 outbreak at the Canterbury Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center. Over 50 people died, which is shocking—a little less than 10% of Henrico’s total deaths to date. It’s interesting/bizarre/sad to read about how little we knew about this disease back then and how much we learned from this particular outbreak.

Over in the vaccine side of the house, for the third week in a row the region vaccinated more than 37,000 people—easily defeating my (and the Governor’s) vaccination goals. You can see a satisfying graph of Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield’s steadily increasing vaccination work here. At this point, over 2 million Virginians have received their first dose of COVID-19 vaccine—almost 25% of the Commonwealth’s population! With supply of the vaccine less of an issue these days, that number should just continue to creep upwards. Speaking of supply, I’d never scrolled all the way down to the bottom of VDH’s vaccination data dashboard, where you’ll find this fun graph of types of vaccine received by the state over time. Looks like those of you hoping to get the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will have to wait a minute.

Good news! City Council will host their first budget work session today at 1:00 PM, and you can stream it live here. In years past, they’ve posted a list of which departments were scheduled to come present to Council when, but I haven’t found such a list for this year yet—I’ll keep looking. On today’s agenda for sure, though, is a presentation by RPS Superintendent Jason Kamras. Looking at the RPS (PDF) and the City(PDF) budget documents, the Mayor has fully funded RPS’s operating budget request, which I doubt City Council with futz around with. Might could be a short work session! Once the video of today’s meeting gets posted on the City’s website, I’ll get it added to The Boring Show.

Mark Robinson at the RTD has an update on the proposed redevelopment of Creighton Court that you should read. Specifically: “The housing authority asked the city for $6.8 million in capital funding for infrastructure improvements at the Creighton site. RRHA officials said the work is a precursor to building new homes, but also crucial to securing coveted low-income housing tax credits that the project’s financing will rely on. The five-year capital improvement plan Stoney pitched to the council earlier this month directs no money to the effort this year, or in any of the next five years.” I don’t know why the Mayor didn’t include money for this project in his CIP—maybe he’s unwilling to commit significant new funding until the agency gets their constant leadership turnover sorted out? Regardless, I do know, that even with the limited coronabudget we’re working with, a couple million dollars could be pulled from other projects. Or, I dunno, we could stop operating with such a scarcity mindset, raise the property tax, and fund basic services like public housing. Several members of City Council have made statements in the past about how strongly they believe in funding public housing, so we’ll see if any of them submit budget amendments to reflect that belief.

The Governor went ahead and signed HB 2208, which will remove the statue of Harry F. Byrd Sr. from the Capitol grounds. I’m pretty stoked on this and feel like it’s a significant and important step for the General Assembly to continue acknowledging that racism didn’t end after the early 1900s. Plus, that statue’s proximity to the Barbra Johns statue is just gross.

In a related but opposite update, the University of Richmond Board of Trustees issued a statement about removing the names of racists from their buildings, saying in part: “This work has revealed the University’s complicity in slavery in the Ryland era and the advocacy of past-Rector Douglas Southall Freeman for segregation, disenfranchisement, racial purity measures, and eugenics — advocacy arising from false, racist, and abhorrent beliefs. Many of the actions and views brought to light by the research are wholly inconsistent with the institution we are today….We believe, however, that removing building names is inconsistent with the pursuit of our educational mission, which informs all of our actions.” OK. Sounds like, for now, the names are sticking around.

I didn’t know this was happening, but the Asian American Society of Central Virginia, the Organization of Chinese Americans’ Central Virginia Chapter, and the Korean American Society of Greater Richmond sponsored a vigil this past Saturday in memory of the people killed in Atlanta last week. If folks know about future events like this, please drop me an email.

Today at 2:00 PM, the VCU women’s basketball team takes the court in their first NCAA tournament since 2009! Tune in on ESPNU. The VCU men’s basketball team, though, had to forfeit their opening game against Oregon due to COVID-19, which is a huge bummer. Again, why are we doing these large sporting events?

This morning’s longread

The Pandemic for Pedestrians

Here’s a good but depressing longread from the folks over at Sports Backers.

If you don’t read anything else in this blog post, you should know that in the year of our pandemic 2020, driving in Virginia dropped significantly (16.6%) but traffic fatalities actually increased (2.4%). Speeding-related fatalities increased (16.3%), but overall speeding crashes and injuries decreased (20% each). What this means is that crashes got deadlier – in large part because of speeding and the increased impact energy. Virginia pedestrian fatalities, which hit a record high in 2019 at 126, dropped modestly by 2.4% to 123. However, when compared to the unprecedented drop in driving, pedestrian fatalities actually increased a whopping 17%. That is not a typo – it is a very big increase in pedestrian fatalities relative to their exposure to driving rates.

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Picture of the Day