Good morning, RVA: 904↗️ • 15↘️; two police reform papers pass committee; and a logistical note

Good morning, RVA! It’s 73 °F, and highs today will head back up past 90 °F. The Feels Like™ will most likely hit triple digits, so stay inside if you can. Maybe some rain this evening, though!

Water cooler

As of this morning, the Virginia Department of Health reports 904↗️ new positive cases of the coronavirus in the Commonwealth and 15↘️ new deaths as a result of the virus. VDH reports 77↗️ new cases in and around Richmond (Chesterfield: 35, Henrico: 17, and Richmond: 25). Since this pandemic began, 275 people have died in the Richmond region. I don’t think it’s reflected in the VDH numbers yet, but C. Suarez Rojas at the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports that an outbreak a the Henrico County Jail West “has resulted in roughly 130 confirmed cases among inmates and jail staff.” At the national level, for whatever reason, I find these hexagonal Catan maps of the number of new COVID-19 cases by state extremely compelling. Looking at the most recent one from the COVID Tracking Project, and as of yesterday, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia all reported more than 1,800 new cases. In fact, all of them except for South Carolina reported over 2,000 new cases. Florida reported 13,965 cases in one day! You’d have to add up every new reported positive case in Virginia since June 26th to hit that number. Things are not looking good throughout the South.

City Council’s Finance and Economic Development committee met yesterday and recommended that full City Council approve both of their police reform resolutions—that’s RES. 2020-R046 (asset forfeiture reports) and RES. 2020-R047(requests a report on reallocating a few mental-health-related portions of the Richmond Police Department’s budget). Ali Rockett at the RTD has a recap of the three-hour meeting, for which I am very thankful (but the audio is, of course, available for those of you who are into that sort of thing). Councilmembers Jones and Robertson voted for the latter paper and Councilmember Larson voted against. Again, I haven’t listened to the audio for the context, but Rockett quotes Larson as saying “I’m not comfortable with moving money to move money.”

Mike Platania at Richmond BizSense says a six-story cohousing project could pop up just north of the Starbucks on Arthur Ashe Boulevard. Cohousing is interesting, and if I were young and hip and cool it would totally be something I’d convince my best pals to do with me. I’m stoked to have some taller buildings start to fill in this corridor and am hopeful that they’ll generate some pressure to get rid of the surface lots and auto-oriented businesses that stand in the way of Arthur Ashe Boulevard looking like this.

Today, I’ve got two opportunities for you to fill out surveys and get your opinions heard. First, the VCU Committee on Commemoration and Memorials is looking for public comments on its “recommended actions to commemorate or de-commemorate buildings, names, plaques and places on VCU’s campuses.” You can find that survey here. I guess it shouldn’t surprise me how much old stuff in Richmond is named after Confederates, but, dang, its a lot. City Council will have a lot of street renaming to do if they want to thoroughly scrape the decades of Confederate grime off our city. Second, PlanRVA needs your feedback on their regional transportation goals and priorities. What mode of transportation do you use to get to work? What mode do you wish you used? What priorities do you think our region should consider when spending federal transportation money? Building new roads (boooo!) or building new sidewalks (yessssss!)? Make sure you fill this one out, it’ll only take three minutes of your life.

Quick update from this week’s Virginia Employment Commission unemployment numbers: The total number of folks filing for unemployment insurance dropped from 410,432 to 404,362—but the number of new claimants did go up slightly from last week. I’m not trying to maintain yet another spreadsheet, but here’s what combined new and continued weekly unemployment insurance claims look like for the past several months. I couldn’t help myself! Related, John Reid Blackwell at the RTD says 43 democratic legislators have signed onto a letter asking VEC to review and reform its systems and policies in light of delays folks are seeing in getting their unemployment payments.

The Washington Post has a huge exclusive on rampant sexual harassment throughout the Washington football team’s organization. The report does briefly mention the team’s time in Richmond, saying “Training camp in Richmond in August was a hotbed of improper activity, several women said. Some encouraged younger female staffers to avoid the Tobacco Company, a bar and restaurant in a stately brick building frequented by team officials.”

Logistical note! I’m on vacation next week—in as much as one vacations during a pandemic—so you won’t hear from me again in this space until July 27th. Don’t worry: Instead of mostly staying inside this house and avoiding people, we’ll be headed to a different house to stay inside while avoiding people. Patrons, if cool/important stuff happens, please help keep me informed over on the GMRVA slack! Thanks y’all, have a great week!

This morning’s longread

Risks & Benefits Matrix

Here’s another column from Emily Oster about opening up schools. I really like this two-dimensional risk matrix way of thinking about the coronavirus—even if she hates bikes.

In fact, our goal is not to get the most activities allowed with our risk budget. Instead, it is to have the highest total benefit subject to the risk budget. This is true both of us personally and of society. To make good decision with that frame, it’s not enough to have the risk graph. We need to think about these risks along with benefits. Basically, we need two axes. Here’s a simple version of a two-axis graph, capturing the risk levels in that link above, and my own personal preferences. There are some activities that are very important to me but also high risk, like seeing grandparents and having child care. There are others which are high risk and very unimportant to me, like bars (I have little kids; my bar days are over). And then there are low risk/high benefit activities (hiking) and low risk/low benefit activities (biking; I hate it and usually get badly injured).

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