Good morning, RVA: 874↘️ • 2↘️; a big pile of questionnaires; and some sports stuff

Good morning, RVA! It’s 71 °F, and I think cooler temperatures are here to stay. Today you can expect highs in the 80s, and it might be the warmest day of the week. It’s not time to bust out your flannels, but we’re getting there.

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 874↘️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealthand 2↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 153↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 40, Henrico: 87, and Richmond: 26). Since this pandemic began, 330 people have died in the Richmond region. The seven-day average of new reported cases across the Commonwealth continues to hover right around 1,000, which, honestly, is where we’ve been since the middle of July. I think that’s fascinating considering everything that’s happened over the past couple of months. Also, one quick sports update, Virginia Tech had to postpone this coming Saturday’s football game with UVAbecause, due to positive COVID-19 cases plus required quarantines and isolations, they didn’t have enough players at certain positions to safely play the game. This is the third time the Hokies have had the start of their season pushed back, and, like, at what point do you just throw in the towel? For lots of different reasons, colleges keep trying to do college football with varying degrees of success, and it stresses me out.

The Richmond Times-Dispatch’s Mark Robinson has the 3rd District City Council questionnaire responses up, which means, at some point, I missed the 2nd District questionnaires. Sometimes I feel like 3rd District Candidate Hilliard is speaking directly to me with responses like this one about his priorities for the district: “On the City Council, I will advocate for reforms to our zoning code and transportation system, which have downstream effects on housing affordability.” Yes! Also, so far, Hilliard is the only candidate to answer the question about raising the City’s real estate tax to fund schools (a question that should be phrase more broadly) with something other than “No” or “No, I will, from my part-time City Council job in a medium-sized City continually disrespected by the State government, convince state legislators, who have no legal requirement to listen to me, to give RPS more money.” This must be a yes-and situation. Richmond will desperately need more money to provide basic services this coming budget season and to just count on the state to provide it is wishful thinking at best or magical thinking at worst.

Oh snap! The RTD’s Kenya Hunter also has a questionnaire up for 3rd District School Board candidates, which means I missed the 1st District questionnaire and the 2nd District questionnaire. That’s embarrassing and gave me a lot of reading to do this morning. Unfortunately, it’s a lot of reading for you, too: Even though you just live in a single district, your civic duty requires you to read every questionnaire for every district—and for every race! Sorry, those are the rules. Also, these School Board questionnaires are much better and more interesting than the Council questionnaires. Over in Councilland we get “Do you believe Mayor Levar Stoney deserves a second term? Why or why not?” and here in Schoolsworld we have “How would you rate Superintendent Jason Kamras’ performance? Do you believe he is doing a good job as superintendent and why?” The former leads almost every single candidate to answer “That’s up to the voters.”, whereas the latter requires candidates to actually weigh in on Kamras’s leadership.

Speaking of elected folks, City Council meets today for their regularly scheduled meeting, and, at least as of this very moment, the paper to rezone the area around the Science Museum, Allison Street, and VCU & VUU Pulse stations has been continued to their September 28th meeting. You can see the full agenda here (PDF). I kind of figured Council would hold off on this rezoning until after the next 2nd District Councilmember took office, and, as we all know, this particular Council loves nothing more than to continue a piece of potential legislation for ages. In fact, Councilmember Gray’s ORD. 2018–236, now continued until September 28th, has floated around on the agenda for over two years! That’s half a council term! Also of note on the agenda today, that paper to open up some parking lots in Monroe Ward to actual development (ORD. 2020–174). Councilmembers Lynch and Jones’s resolution to ask the Richmond Police Department to ban the use of certain less-lethal weapons to control unlawful assemblies (RES. 2020-R048) has been continued until at least October 12th.

A couple weeks ago I wrote about the Long Bridge project in D.C. and how it will help get high-speed rail down to Richmond. As with all train-based projects, it’s slow going—until, suddenly, it’s high-speed! Wyatt Gordon at the Virginia Mercury has some details on what you can expect and how the project will move forward over the next decade or so.

This morning’s longread

How Big Oil Misled The Public Into Believing Plastic Would Be Recycled

Ahhh dangit.

Here’s the basic problem: All used plastic can be turned into new things, but picking it up, sorting it out and melting it down is expensive. Plastic also degrades each time it is reused, meaning it can’t be reused more than once or twice. On the other hand, new plastic is cheap. It’s made from oil and gas, and it’s almost always less expensive and of better quality to just start fresh. All of these problems have existed for decades, no matter what new recycling technology or expensive machinery has been developed. In all that time, less than 10 percent of plastic has ever been recycled. But the public has known little about these difficulties. It could be because that’s not what they were told.

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