Today's Patreon-fueled shout-out is for the Plant Northern Piedmont Natives Campaign, an initiative that wants you to grow native plants in yards, farms, public spaces and gardens in the northern Piedmont. Native plants provide habitat, food sources for wildlife, ecosystem resiliency in the face of climate change, and clean water. Start at the Plant Northern Piedmont Natives Facebook page and tell them Lonnie Murray sent you!
In today’s newsletter:
Area health director briefs Council on COVID, vaccine prep
Governor Northam signs legislation banning “no-knock” warrants
Downtown business group wants you to buy gift cards
City Council is briefed on an end of year budget surplus
The recent increase in daily cases appears to be a trend with the Virginia Department of Health reporting another 3,860 new cases today. That brings the seven day average for new cases to 3,238. The seven day average for positive PCR tests has increased to 10.9.
There is a new reported case of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, the twelfth such diagnosis since the pandemic began. There have been no related deaths.
The VDH reports another 52 COVID deaths, bringing the statewide death toll to 4,260. Nationwide, there have been over 281,000 deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
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The head of the Blue Ridge Health District told City Council last night that she is concerned about a “dramatic increase” in local cases.
“We are certainly seeing more positive cases and we’ve had over a hundred positive closes, or close to a hundred for the past three or four days,” said Dr. Denise Bonds said. “When we do our community testing we are seeing increases in the percentage of those individuals who come to the community test that test positive.”
However, Bonds said the number of tests has decreased since dormitories at the University of Virginia have closed for the semester.
Today, there were 52 new cases reported in the Blue Ridge Health District, and the seven-day average remains at 67.
Yesterday, the Virginia Department of Health announced it was altering its rules on quarantines to match new federal guidance from the Centers for Disease Control. Now people who have been exposed can leave quarantine after ten days without a test if they don’t have symptoms, or if they get a negative test after seven days.
“Previously up until the change last week, we were recommending a 14 day quarantine period and I want to emphasize that staying home if you have been in contact with someone who is positive for that full 14 days is still best and it is what we will continue to recommend for health care workers,” Bonds said.
Dr. Bonds said this still comes with a risk because there is still a one percent chance an asymptomatic person can still pass on infections after ten days. As for vaccines, Dr. Bonds said the Food and Drug Administration will hold a hearing on Thursday for Pfizer’s application for emergency authorization. Moderna will get its turn on December 17. Health care workers will be the top priority, followed by long-term care facilities.
“By the end of December we should be well underway with this first priority group and vaccinating,” Bonds said. “After that, we will hopefully continue to receive weekly shipments of vaccine which will allow us to work down the other priority groups. Essential workers is the tentative next group. What that means still needs to be decided.”
Dr. Bonds said it is crucial that people continue to follow all of the protocols that have been recommended because it may take months for the vaccine to work. There are not enough resources to do a full level of contact tracing when there are over a hundred cases a day.
“We are having to triage cases that we investigate,” Bonds said. “We just do not have the staff to really do a full investigation into every single case so we’re working on those that are the highest risk exposures.”
Later in the meeting, Councilor Lloyd Snook suggested repealing the city’s local ordinance because it is no longer necessary. He said that Governor Northam’s recent Executive Order 67 is more restrictive than the ordinance adopted by Charlottesville in late July and he wants the city’s rules to be harmonized with the state’s rules.
“We know the Governor’s order is likely to change repeatedly in the next few months as the Governor is likely to try to do a number of things to get the situation better under control,” Snook said.
Snook said a mismatch in definitions between localities and states could lead to vulnerabilities in future legal challenges.
Interim City Manager John Blair, who was city attorney when the city enacted tougher restrictions than the governor, recommending keeping a city-specific ordinance given the city’s inability to control a sudden influx of people coming back to Charlottesville in mid-January.
“We could very well find ourselves exactly where we were back in July depending on the rapidity of vaccine distribution,” Blair said.
Council backed Blair’s position and the city’s ordinance was updated rather than repealed.
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Governor Ralph Northam signed legislation yesterday that bans police from using what are known as “no-knock” warrants. The legislation was prompted by an incident in Louisville, Kentucky where a 26-year old Black woman was killed by plainclothes police officers who forced entry into the wrong apartment unit. Dr. Janice Underwood is Virginia’s Chief Officer of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
“We stand here today somewhat reassured and in solidarity with Breonna Taylor who is undoubtedly with us in spirit that going forward, that the Commonwealth of Virginia, only the third state in the nation, has taken a bold stand against no-knock warrants, an institutional mechanism that disproportionately terrorizes people of color,” Underwood said.
Members of Breonna Taylor’s family were in attendance for the signing ceremony. Soon after, the president of the Virginia Association of Chiefs of Police issued a statement of opposition to the HB 5099 becoming law.
“While we continue to disagree with the elimination of this tactic in all circumstances, we remain critically concerned regarding additional changes made in this bill which will place our law enforcement officers and our community in significantly greater danger,” wrote Maggie DeBoard of the town of Herndon.
Senator Mamie Locke (D-2) said when the bill was introduced, she and others were critiqued for addressing something that happened in another state.
“Virginia is not immune to injustice and when injustice happens in Louisville, Kentucky on a no-knock warrant, that did not mean that Virginia was immune to the same injustice, to the same inequality, it could also happen here in Virginia and we do not want happened to Breonna to also happen here in Virginia because Breonna is me,” Locke said.
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With uncertainty about the near-term future, the Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville has launched a gift card program to encourage people to support businesses. Roy Van Doorn is on the DBAC’s Board of Directors.
“There are a few ways in our community that can effectively support an entire region and downtown business in particular,” Van Doorn said. “This is one that is substantial, impactful and consequential, today, next month, and next year.”
The gift card program has been in the works for two years. Van Doorn said the pandemic has done much damage to business downtown and purchasing the cards will show financial support. He asked Council for funding to help support the program through marketing efforts.
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Council was also briefed on the close-out of fiscal year 2020, which ended on June 30. Finance Director Christopher Cullinan said the city did not meet its revenue targets for the year.
“The city on an operating basis, the general fund did report a decline, a loss of $1.8 million, or about one percent of the adopted budget and this was the result primarily due to COVID,” Cullinan said. “COVID had a tremendous impact on the city’s revenues, especially our most economically sensitive ones such as sales, meals, lodging, utilities.”
The fact that the pandemic hit during the final quarter of the year did not help, and Cullinan said the city did not have time to make enough adjustments to the adopted budget. However, as the budget was closed out for the year, staff followed city financial policy that requires a reserve fund balance of 14 percent of the general fund budget be kept at all times.
“This policy provides the City with sufficient working capital and a margin of financial safety to address unforeseen, one-time expenditure emergencies or significant unforeseen declines in revenues in a specific fiscal year,” reads page A-9 of the city’s adopted budget for the current fiscal year.
“That loss did eat into the city’s general fund fund balance,” Cullinan said. “However, once we deducted out that operating loss as well as some of the other adjustments that we make, the general fund fund balance did end the year with a $3.9 million surplus above our 17 percent fund balance policy
Cullinan said staff’s recommendation was to devote the surplus to the city’s capital improvement program contingency fund per financial policy. That gives the city additional cash to pay for capital projects, slightly reducing the need to borrow money for programs in CIP. Council held a work session about the CIP for next year’s budget on November 20.
Council will have a public hearing on the surplus at the next meeting. Here’s Councilor Heather Hill.
“No final allocations are going to be made at this time but this is essentially a placeholder and allows us to have some more time to see how some other things are going to play out before we actually determine where this funding may go or to see if it’s just going to continue to reside in the CIP,” Hill said.
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Today in meetings:
The Albemarle Board of Supervisors and the Albemarle Planning Commission meet in a joint work session on housing policy beginning at 6 p.m. (meeting info)
The Greene County Board of Supervisors meets at 7:30 p.m. (meeting info)
The Albemarle Department of Social Services Advisory Board meets at 3:30 p.m. (meeting info)
The Charlottesville Economic Development Authority meets at 4 p.m. (meeting info)
December 8, 2020: Health director expressed concern over rising cases; Northam signs ban on "no-knock warrants"