Data from the Virginia Public Access Project (Elections: Prince William County Prince William County Supervisor – Gainesville (vpap.org) shows Democrat Kerensa Sumers raised $46,583, while Republican Bob Weir raised $20,005.
Sumers largest donors ($1,000 or more) included:
• Donations from Service Employees International Union – Local 512 to Kerensa Sumers (vpap.org) (In-kind donation: digital advertisement)
• Donations from ActBlue Virginia to Kerensa Sumers (vpap.org)
• Donations from Coalition for a Brighter PWC to Kerensa Sumers (vpap.org) (address is Catharpin, VA)
• Donations from Democratic Party – Prince William County to Kerensa Sumers (vpap.org)
• Donations from Mulhausen, Jeff to Kerensa Sumers (vpap.org)
• Donations from Muslim Outreach and Volunteer Enterprise to Kerensa Sumers (vpap.org) (In-kind donation: canvassing support)
• Donations from Sumers, Kerensa to Kerensa Sumers (vpap.org) (loans)
• Donations from Stanley Martin Companies Inc to Kerensa Sumers (vpap.org)
• Donations from Nova Building Industry Assn to Kerensa Sumers (vpap.org)
• Donations from Kissler, Timothy L to Kerensa Sumers (vpap.org) (In-kind donation: catering)
• Donations from Angry, Victor to Kerensa Sumers (vpap.org)
• Donations from Boddye for Prince William County Board of Supervisors – Ken to Kerensa Sumers (vpap.org)
• Donations from Compton, Bettie to Kerensa Sumers (vpap.org)
Weir’s largest donors ($1,000 or more) included:
• Donations from Lawson for Prince William County Board of Supervisors – Jeanine to Bob B Weir (vpap.org) ($1,000 cash + $1,000 in-kind donation for a campaign fundraiser)
• Donations from Weir, Bobert Burton to Bob B Weir (vpap.org) (loans)
• Donations from Kulick, Kathryn to Bob B Weir (vpap.org)
• Donations from Price, James M to Bob B Weir (vpap.org)
• Donations from Vega for Prince William County Board of Supervisors – Yesli to Bob B Weir (vpap.org)
• Donations from Ward, Elizabeth H to Bob B Weir (vpap.org)
Notable among Sumers’ donors is virtually every homeowner in the Catharpin Valley Estates neighborhood. This was the neighborhood that attempted to join the Prince William Digital Gateway CPA once they believed its passage was inevitable.
It would be interesting to learn who the contributors to “Coalition for a Brighter PWC” (The Virginia Public Access Project (vpap.org)) are. Since it has a Catharpin, VA address, could this be residents of the Sanders Lane area who want to put together a data center assemblage?
Just a guess. Draw your own conclusions.
Bill Wright
Gainesville
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By Ian Lovejoy
If it’s a day that ends in “Y”, then there’s a data center debate going on somewhere in Prince William County.
While much attention has been given to the controversial Digital Gateway, another large data center development is pending, impacting several neighborhoods, schools, and businesses.
Rezoning for The Devlin Technology Park, a 4.25 million square foot data center project, is scheduled for a vote at the Tuesday, February 7 Prince William Board of County Supervisors meeting. The original vote was deferred in September, and many thought would be brought back up later this year.
Surprisingly, it became on the BOS agenda much sooner than anticipated.
The merits of the project will be debated, no doubt. With the battle lines being drawn along familiar terrain- those who benefit financially on one side and those who live with the ongoing impacts of the decision on the other. None of this is a particularly new debate in land use- the timing of this vote, however, is quite unusual.
As many are aware, the Gainesville district has no representative- the board is not whole.
With the February 21 special election looming, one cannot help but imagine this vacancy has played some role in the expedited vote for Devlin. With board ranks diminished the number of votes needed to pass a rezoning drops, an additional potential voice of decent goes unheard.
While it’s true this project is wholly contained within the Brentsville district, decisions of this magnitude are left to the whole board for a reason- so that countywide impacts can be discussed and considered. It’s increasingly impossible for the long-term ramifications of large land use decisions to remain contained within arbitrarily drawn political lines.
With the February special election just weeks away, the board has only one honorable choice- defer the Devlin Technology Park vote until after a new Gainesville representative is seated. As a former city councilman, I can attest firsthand that this may not be what the law requires, but is certainly considered best practice.
Taking up the vote now is an unforced error from a board already marred in controversy, and at best, reeks of poor planning, and at worst, gives the impression of a board attempting to expedite a vote to take advantage of a board vacancy.
Defer the vote.
Ian Lovejoy is running for the Virginia House of Delegates District 22 seat in Manassas and Prince William County.
By Alicia Gloss
Coles District
Prince William County
Chairwoman Ann Wheeler and the Prince William County Board of County Supervisors have made a lot of news over the past three years and not the good kind.
Vote after vote, whether it’s controversial land use cases, increasing our taxes every year, meals tax, public corruption investigations, lack of disclosing data center stock, having illegal board meetings, the list goes on and on.
This chair has sighed, smirked, laughed, eye-rolled, and even interrupted citizens during their comment time many times over the years and even disrespected fellow colleagues by interrupting them and accusing them of inciting citizens simply for daring to keep their constituents informed. The truth is the public is speaking out in record numbers due to failed leadership by this chair and board.
This chair has shown disdain for public comment time since she realized she had to listen to us and we would hold her accountable. This leadership has chosen developer first, citizen last policies, padding wallets and stock portfolios over citizen’s best interests.
Supervisor Angry in the past has said, “I want to create this feeling, or this movement of trust and community relationships. I had that growing up, and I want to do more to create that and to get us back to that.”
How is limiting public comment time going to do that? I will call this what it is, an attempt to stop speech, to crush dissent over highly unpopular voting decisions.
The attempts to limit public speech by this chair and board are unprecedented, and at no point in the previous board did they ever limit public comment time as this board has.
This Chair has already limited our voice by changing how long our supervisors can speak on our behalf by limiting them to two five-minute statements during discussions, removing many of the 7:30 p.m. evening meetings in lieu of 2 p.m. meetings when the public is at work.
And whatever happened to the Saturday meetings this board said they would hold so people who work can participate and be heard? We’ve never seen one.
When we are allowed to speak, the chair has changed the rules requiring us to speak at the end of the meeting. This puts our voices last after all the voting and indicates what she has continually done during her tenure as chair. Since this hasn’t worked to silence us, she is now trying to restrict our voice further.
This chair and board receive constant backlash from the community because it is not in sync with what the community wants. Voters thought you were beholden to them, but they now realize you are beholden to power and monetary gain.
You have had our community in a constant uproar with all the controversial votes against the will of the people, but now you have gone too far. You have agitated the State Legislature with the approval of the Digital Gateway without waiting for the results of the environmental studies we’ve paid for, and even though so many citizens, senators, delegates, and conservation groups urged you not to.
The State Legislature is seeking to pass emergency legislation to stop the Digital Gateway and other data centers in Prince William County and to help protect our National Parks and land since you won’t. You have carved up Prince William County acre after acre and betrayed the voters with a bait and switch.
People of Prince William County: Let’s not forget what Ann Wheeler and this board have done to our community and hold them accountable in November. In November, the citizens will have the ultimate public comment time by cutting you out altogether.
The voice of the people should never be limited.
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The Democratic Party charter states: “What we seek for our Nation, we hope for all people – individual freedom in the framework of a just society, political freedom in the framework of meaningful participation by all citizens.
Bound by the U.S. Constitution, aware that a party must be responsive to be worthy of responsibility, we pledge ourselves to open, honest endeavor and to the conduct of public affairs in a manner worthy of a society of free people.”
Those principles have been repeatedly violated by the current Chair of the Prince William Board of County supervisors, Ann Wheeler.
Her blatant servitude to business interests has undermined a just society. Wheeler inhibited meaningful citizen participation by hastily scheduling community engagement meetings at the height of the COVID pandemic, refusing to delay them, and then barely acknowledging resident concerns.
Her disregard for due diligence proves she is insufficiently responsive to be worthy of the responsibility. Under Wheeler’s “leadership,” the county failed to conduct even a basic cost analysis of infrastructure and public services required for the Prince William Digital Gateway, nor did they conduct a noise study or assess electrical power needs.
The board also deliberately deferred a water study recommended by the county’s own Watershed Management branch and neighboring Fairfax County.  Wheeler’s aversion to transparency for the sake of political expedience demonstrates she can neither openly nor honestly conduct public affairs in a manner worthy of her constituents.
County staff and supervisors repeatedly hid behind non-disclosure agreements to obscure the truth about the land under development or available for data center use and neglected to respond to multiple inquiries from citizens and their attorneys for essential information to inform the public debate.
Ann Wheeler’s tenure has been dominated by contentiousness, divisiveness, and suspicion. Every day she spends in the office further damages the Democratic brand in Prince William County. She needs to be removed.
It is our civic duty to reject public officials who have betrayed our trust and replace them with better candidates that will restore it. With Deshundra Jefferson’s announcement last Wednesday, Prince William voters now have both a fine candidate and an opportunity for redemption.
Vote for Deshundra Jefferson in the Democratic primary on June 20.
Bill Wright
Gainesville
Former Treasurer, Gainesville Magisterial District Democratic Committee
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By Jennifer T. Wall
Prince William County School Board, Gainesville District
Over the past 18 months, I have repeatedly heard the statement to the effect that it is the western end of the county's turn to feel the pains of development. This statement ignores the fact that over the last two decades, the west end of Prince William has in fact experienced explosive growth.
Anyone who knows Prince William County and has lived in this county for the last two decades will agree that many areas in western Prince William have been completely transformed from what they once were.
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By Mel Kent
Manassas
Friends and neighbors, I sent this message a bit ago to my email list and thought I'd share it with you.
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By Stewart Schwartz
Coalition for Smarter Growth
Prior to midnight Monday, September 19 comment deadline, twelve non-profit organizations submitted a joint letter urging the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority to reject its proposed $76 Billion TransAction 2045 long-range transportation plan.
In our view, TransAction is unaffordable and ineffective and takes the region in the wrong direction. It represents a stapling together of local wishlists and not the results of a bottom-up alternatives analysis.
- The TransAction plan is supposed to guide transportation investments but its $76 billion price tag could exceed available funding by as much as four times.
- Over 1,000 miles of new highway and arterial lanes in TransAction would cause Northern Virginians to drive even longer distances, with the increase in highway driving far exceeding the rate of population growth in Loudoun, Prince William, and parts of Fairfax.
- The plan fails to lower greenhouse gas emissions anymore than what the region can already anticipate in the future (and far short of climate targets) despite spending $76 billion.
- TransAction fails to address the housing and land use issues that are the root of many transportation problems in the region.
- However, NVTA’s scenario analyses show that incentives and pricing, with equity provisions incorporated, and anticipated lasting increases in teleworking achieve largely the same improvements without spending $76 billion and paving over Northern Virginia.
The groups call on NVTA to create a new approach that combines land use, transit, housing close to jobs and transit, and pricing strategies. The region needs a plan that prioritizes a network of vibrant, walkable, bikeable, inclusive transit-oriented communities to reduce the amount we have to drive, improve access to jobs, and reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by at least 50% by 2030.
An improved TransAction process with bottom-up scenarios and alternatives would make the selection process more transparent, methodical, and responsive to regional needs and better inform the NVTA project selections.
Here is the letter and another from the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
By Sara Brescia
On Monday, September 12, Osbourn high school in Manassas experienced the threat of gun violence.
It was a chaotic and frightening moment for the city and the school community, which was unfounded.
Although this incident ended without further incident, the question of student safety remains urgent. As anyone who has ever been in the vicinity of Old Town Manassas during school hours knows, Osbourn High School struggles with a truancy problem.
Walking through Old Town at lunch hour, you might be forgiven for thinking Osbourn has an open campus policy (it does not).
At the School Board meeting on Tuesday, September 13 — the day after the gun violence threat-a concerned parent spoke during citizen’s comments, questioning whether the schools can keep children safe when children’s whereabouts are frequently unknown as a matter of routine. How can a school successfully implement a lockdown procedure when so many kids are off campus without leave? How is the school supposed to account for their safety?
Fortuitously, the School Board received a pre-scheduled presentation from the Executive Director of Student Services, Dr. Chevese Thomas, on the 2022-2023 Crisis Plan at the same meeting. This was a perfect opportunity for members of the School Board to ask probing, insightful questions about our crisis procedures and how they were applied to this specific incident.
One current School Board member did ask Dr. Thomas whether protocols were applied to the incident on Monday, September 12th.
The response was underwhelming, “Yesterday we did implement the plan… there were rumors… we did respond, we did use the plan… we did implement the plan… we handled that according to the plan.”
No additional questions were asked for clarification or specifics on the incident and the response. The only further questioning was whether the Crisis Team had debriefed following the incident and whether emotional support resources were made available to students.
I would have approached this moment differently if I were on the School Board. I would have asked Dr. Thomas to describe the events of Monday, September 12. I would have asked her to describe “the plan” and how, strictly, it was implemented.
I would have asked Dr. Thomas to address the question raised by the concerned parent: how does the school account for the safety of students in a lockdown scenario who are absent from campus without leave? Has the Crisis Team factored in the unusually large truancy issue at Osbourn? How?
On the topic of truancy, I would have had some additional questions. What are our attendance procedures at the high school? Have we studied our mid-day truancy issue? How many students leave the campus and do not return to class? How many students leave the campus and eventually find their way back to class? How are hall passes monitored? What controls have we established around the early release/late arrival program? What security procedures do we have in place around the perimeter of the campus?
The School Board is an oversight body. School Board members must ask good, detailed questions of school officials, especially on matters of urgent community concern.
I plan to do just that if I am elected to the School Board.
Brescia is a candidate seeking one of three open seats on the Manassas City School Board during the November 8, 2022, General Election. Here’s more information about the upcoming elections from the city’s website.
We are Democrats, neighbors, and fellow citizens of Prince William County who find ourselves on different sides of an issue that has pitched your fellow landowners along Pageland Lane against a huge majority of residents in the county and surrounding jurisdictions.
We respect the right you and other property owners have to your personal financial interests in this issue, and we had hoped you would show others the same respect.
Trying to manipulate this into a partisan political issue, a racial issue, or an anti-school issue is completely dishonest. Your attempt to cast Hung Cao, the Republican nominee for Congress (Va.-10), as against equal opportunity, property rights, businesses, schools, students, teachers, government employees, and first responders is unhinged.
Your letter to Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton, the Prince William Board of County Supervisors, the Planning Commission, and others recasts your differences with Mr. Cao, and the vast majority of County residents, in the most self-serving and disingenuous way imaginable.
And, for the record, you dishonestly characterize a screenshot from an HOA Roundtable email message as being a flyer from the Hung Cao campaign. That is simply untrue and another example of the dishonest public relations campaign you are waging.
Congresswoman Wexton has, herself, conveyed concerns regarding the impacts of such an aggressive expansion of data centers in areas selected primarily for the economic gain of landowners rather than professionally established land use policies that place such facilities where they minimize impacts on surrounding communities.
In her letter of January 25, 2022, to the Prince William BOCS, Congresswoman Wexton stressed former Manassas National Battlefield Park Superintendent Brandon Bies’ concern about ” … the effect of increased traffic, noise pollution, deforestation, and the degradation of park streams and water quality …”
She is right to have those concerns, as is Mr. Cao, and we look forward to continuing to work with both of them on these issues.
As Democrats working alongside Republicans, we are not against data centers, and neither is Mr. Cao. We support the expansion of the commercial tax base to balance the tax burden on every homeowner in Prince William County.
We believe that properly placed data center developments can increase the commercial tax base, but they cannot be placed where the environmental impacts devastate the watershed, where noise makes adjacent homes unlivable, where the property values of homeowners are significantly eroded, and where the current infrastructure simply does not exist for power generation or distribution for more of these new industrial monoliths.
We understand the financial windfall that you and a small number of landowners wish to receive, but you have no right to demand everyone else around you willingly have their property values reduced to enrich your financial position.
When located in appropriate locations in Prince William County, data centers can be a valuable tool to rebalance the tax burden on homeowners. But such impactful industrial development must be implemented with reasonable tax policy comparable to surrounding jurisdictions.
The county absolutely should not give a 60% tax break to the world’s richest corporate entities at the expense of Prince William taxpayers. Once taxed fairly, there is no need for the excess 27 million square feet of industrial data centers the PW Digital Gateway would bring, and the citizens of our county will not be taken to the cleaners for your largesse and that of big tech.
And, as residents representing diverse financial means and employment, we support workers in data centers and the unions that represent them. Adding union representatives to your letter demonstrates clearly how you deliberately mislead others when the real issue is the amount of money you will receive if this self-serving land grab works.
While you claim a desire to expand public open spaces and parks, the gymnastics you are going through to sell a lie that data centers will save the County from a deficit of needed parklands is absurd. Attempting to con the families of Prince William into believing that trails between gargantuan industrial buildings, ringed by security fences, is “hundreds and hundreds of acres of permanent public open space and parks” is laughable.
The PW Digital Gateway is proposed between a National Park and a State Forest. How can you claim to increase parkland while destroying the environs of two major parks in the process?
The truth is, the current view scape of the Manassas National Battlefield Park (MNBP) will be destroyed forever by the proposed data center corridor on Pageland Lane, and the Rural Crescent that has been the most effective land use tool ever enacted in the state will be demolished. A four-lane divided industrial highway will become the highly dreaded Bi-County Parkway that even the Board of County Supervisors has removed from any planning document precisely because of its negative impacts on the entire county.
Your characterization of the Rural Crescent as stealing your property rights 23 years ago is a convenient recast of history for you and some of your neighbors when just two years ago, you personally extolled the virtues of the Rural Crescent when the Bi-County Parkway would have significantly reduced your property values.
You publicly argued that the Bi-County Parkway would just be a way to expand housing developments in Loudoun County that would threaten the Rural Crescent designation in Prince William County.
You fought for the Rural Crescent then, and in the blink of an eye, you condemn it as a segregationist relic. That’s a convenient 11th-hour conversion to line your pockets with millions at the expense of an entire culture that actually suffered through the worst of our nation’s history. Some of us stood together with you and fought for the protection of the Rural Crescent.
You are on record – and we can roll the videotape of media conferences.
Further, you supported the previous Board Chair, who frightened people of color by advocating for the 287(g) migrant enforcement policy with ICE. Only now, when millions are at stake, have you chosen to embrace equity and inclusion, in name but not in practice.
What is true today is that you and your neighbors have found a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for you to hit the land-sale lottery because a group of large multi-national data center companies is willing to pay a high premium for the land where the siting of data centers serves their economic interests, not the interests of the communities and homeowners impacted by those decisions.
None of those data center companies would have even thought to promote the historic and environmentally vulnerable Pageland corridor without your personal promotion.  Don’t try to make this about anyone else benefitting other than you and a small number of your neighbors.
Those who oppose the PW Digital Gateway are not exclusively “Republicans,” and the fact that a congressional candidate from the Republican Party has recognized the importance of this issue and its impacts on the MNBP, the Occoquan watershed that serves a large portion of the Northern Virginia homes, and the national security interests at Ft. Belvoir, makes it far more than a local land use issue.
The HOA Roundtable, whose email image you intentionally misused, is made up of tens of thousands of homeowners of all political stripes who have one common objective: Protect our homes, our communities, and our quality of life. Your cynical attempt to make this a Republican vs. Democratic issue is plainly dishonest.
Neither Hung Cao nor Prince William County Republicans are against expanding the commercial tax base in Prince William County, and they fully support Prince William County Schools, its students, teachers, employees, and first responders every bit as much as you do. As part of a strong bipartisan coalition, we all support the property rights of landowners – including our land and homes – and the right we have to protect our property values from personally exploitative decisions that benefit a small number of people at the expense of hundreds of thousands of homeowners.
Finally, you argue that your vision for data centers will result in “billions in investments.” Responsible land-use and tax policy will deliver the very same results, without the devastating impacts of the improperly placed data center corridor you are promoting for your own economic benefit.
Hung Cao sees through your selfish ambitions and, like us, knows you are far from the self-styled virtuous protector of Prince William County’s future.
We appreciate Mr. Cao and his principled stand on the PW Digital Gateway. His views represent courage and commitment emblematic of the dedicated service he selflessly gave to the nation during his storied military career.  We thank him for supporting us as we work to prevent Prince William from being bulldozed into a vast industrial zone.
Sincerely,
Prince William County Democrats:
- Deshundra Jefferson, Treasurer of the Potomac Democratic Committee
- Ruth Balton, Former Chair of the Gainesville Magisterial District Democratic Committee
- Bill Wright, Former Treasurer of the Gainesville Magisterial District Democratic Committee
- Roger Yackel, Gainesville District Resident
- Sue Yackel, Gainesville District Resident
- Erik Brown, Gainesville District Resident
- Brigette Wilson, Gainesville District Resident
- James Ryan, Gainesville District Resident
- Jacqueline Ryan, Gainesville District Resident
- Elena Schlossberg, Executive Director, Coalition to Protect PWC, Gainesville District Resident
- Paula Daly, Board of Directors HOA Roundtable of Prince William County, Member Gainesville Citizens for Smart Growth
