Dear Stafford County Board of Supervisors,
If you would be so kind as to restrict your tax increase to no more than the rate of inflation on the rest of Stafford County middle-class taxpayers, I will pay that tax rate and send an extra check to cover the difference between the past tax, and what it would have been at $1.17.
It isn’t about me, but about the fact that so many people are struggling in this economic climate and just can’t afford what you are pursuing.
Cord Sterling
Stafford
The Prince William County circus is never short on sideshows.
In eastern Prince William, we’re gambling on “The Rose.” In western Prince William, we’ve bet the house on data centers.
The latest Prince William County Police Department report shows our violent crime rate has skyrocketed since 2019. Good luck getting those winnings home from the casino.
Our Absence-of-Planning Office is absolutely melting down after a series of controversial decisions that prioritized developer exploitation over prudent land use. Senior planning staff runs for their professional lives without a word of explanation. Are even the exiles muzzled by non-disclosure agreements?
Just when you think you need a breath of fresh air, there isn’t any. Despite our sustainability goals, Prince William County is one of two Northern Virginia counties increasing its greenhouse gas emissions. As if no one’s paying attention, our earth-moving and clear-cutting Chair At-large Ann Wheeler dons environmental lipstick to gloss over her abysmal record before a Green Business Council invented by her husband.
And when you’re drowning, you can always count on our self-serving friends along Pageland Lane to throw you an anchor. Ken Knarr has generously stepped forward to claim Pete Candland’s financially-conflicted “what’s-in-it-for-me?” role in the Republican primary. This stunt is most likely designed to dilute the burgeoning opposition to our beleaguered Chair.
For all these “services,” you got a tax increase. In the alternate universe of Ann Wheeler, this bedlam is supposed to merit her re-election. She has inexplicably chosen to run on a record most would be running from.
Pulling off this con requires an awful lot of voter disengagement. Don’t fall for it. Vote for Deshundra Jefferson in the June 20 Democratic primary.
Bill Wright
Gainesville
Editors note: This post appeared on March 28, 2023, as a video on our Youtube channel.
If you missed the story we posted on March 24, 2023, a historic tax increase is proposed for Stafford County residents. The real estate property tax could increase by 40% over last year.
We reported on the meeting in which the Stafford Board of County Supervisors advertised that the tax rate would be 40% higher. Virginia State law says the Board of Supervisors can advertise a tax rate it’s considering which will be used to fund local government, as it is typically on the backs of homeowners people who own real estate in the county, to fund and not only local government but also public schools.
Supervisors said the additional funding would primarily go to education. After posting our story, over the weekend, we started seeing messages on Twitter from sitting Aquia District Supervisor Monica Gary. First elected in 2021 to serve a four-year term on the Board of Supervisors, Gary is now running for a Virginia State Senate seat that includes Stafford County.
She started taking shots at us on Twitter, stating our story about the proposed budget increase is not accurate and our reporting is not trustworthy.
I responded, reminding her that she had my cell phone number. We’ve talked many times, and she’s been good to call us to let us know of local news happening in the county, and we’re happy to share that news.
And I told her that if something is incorrect, we want to get it right. When something needs to be corrected, we make that correction immediately. We aim to get it right every day; some days, we do, and unfortunately, some days, we don’t.
Gary would not say what in our story was incorrect. She continued to say that she did not like how we reported the story. She accused us of “twisting facts.”
In my mind, and maybe yours too, if something is a fact, it’s a fact. Facts are stubborn things, as President John Adams said. To this day, we’re still waiting for Ms. Gary to ask us to issue a correction. Read More
There were audible guffaws upon learning that Chair Ann Wheeler was to be a guest speaker for the Prince William County Green Business Council’s 2023 Spring Conference.
Is their “green” shorthand for greenbacks? We all wondered if she was going to ride in on an opulent bulldozer.
Is this somebody’s idea of sarcasm? Or is this just the raw nerve of a politician trying to conjure up environmental “creds” now that she is in re-election mode?
Does she think nobody has been paying attention? You must have been living under a rock for the past three years not to have noticed the damage wrought at the hands of her developer-cozy agenda. Even the rock wouldn’t have shielded you against the odds that some type of earth moving equipment unleashed by our Chair would have dislodged it.
Does she remember the long list of conservation groups who have consistently opposed her actions to promote environmentally devastating projects like the Prince William Digital Gateway?
And what about her failure to speak up for the safety of her constituents during the recent debate about the Department of Environmental Quality’s proposed variance to allow data centers’ diesel generators to operate continually during periods of peak electrical load?
And isn’t our overtaxed electrical grid being aggravated by a complete absence of forethought coincident with her relentless championing of Prince William’s budding data center theme park?
Did somebody confuse green with greed? Ann Wheeler is about as green as soot.
Bottom line Prince William needs new leadership to cultivate an environmentally friendly future for our future generations.
Taysha King
Gainesville
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Prince William Board of County Supervisors
In recent years, residents of Prince William County have likely heard me promote the financial benefits data centers bring to our county. The tax revenue they generate and will continue to contribute for years to come is essential to our ability to boost funding for schools, social services and other county priorities while decreasing the tax burden on county homeowners.
What often goes unheralded, however, are the many ways data centers and their employees contribute to and strengthen our community. In 2022 alone, those contributions have had a tremendous impact.
Educating Prince William County students and cultivating their interest in STEM and related careers is one important way data centers make our communities better.
In 2019, Amazon Web Services (AWS) partnered with Prince William County Schools and the Spark Foundation to open the first-ever Think Big Space at River Oaks Elementary School. The learning space is designed to promote career awareness, engineering design, coding, and gamification.
AWS has also partnered with SPARK and the Children’s Science Center to create sustainable STEM enrichment opportunities for 4th and 5th-grade students across Prince William County, particularly benefiting Title I schools. This pilot project aims to increase students’ enthusiasm, exposure, and competencies in STEM, while also providing STEM resources to targeted schools with no science labs.
Data center company QTS partners with Prince William County Public Schools to provide internships and promote career paths leading to jobs in the data center industry. QTS also sponsors the Prince William Chamber of Commerce Scholarship Program, which provides scholarships to graduating high school seniors who have shown a commitment to academic excellence and community involvement.
And as they have done since 2018, AFCOM Potomac Chapter provided paid internships for undergraduate students within the data center community.
Data centers and their employees also support efforts to help those in need in our county. Last fall, AWS employees volunteered for the Northern Virginia Family Services Operation Turkey event to unload and sort food donations to provide food for holiday meals to more than 1,000 Prince William County families. Employees of data center company Iron Mountain volunteered and donated food to thrift and food pantry House of Mercy.
Data center company Digital Realty hosted a charity golf tournament and heart walk that raised $93,552 in donations for the Greater Washington American Heart Association. Iron Mountain donated cash and staff volunteers for both the Freedom Firecracker 5K and the Prince William Turkey Trot with proceeds going to Hero’s Bridge to support elderly veterans.
Finally, the Data Center Coalition (DCC) partnered with the American Red Cross of Loudoun and Prince William Counties to host the #DataCentersSleevesUp blood drive to help address the critical blood shortage of blood across the United States. 12 DCC member data center companies participated in the campaign logging a total of 502 blood donations, enough to save approximately 1,500 lives.
As an industry, data centers have shown their commitment to improving the communities in which their employees live and work. Prince William County and its residents have benefited from data centers’ donations of time, money, and talent in 2022. I’m looking forward to seeing new and continuing contributions from the data center industry to the county, our schools, and our citizens in 2023.
Victor Angry represents the Neabsco District on the Prince William Board of County Supervisors serving his second term.
As you consider the County’s budget, I request that you repeal the 4% Meals Tax on restaurant food. The following are my reasons.
The tax is unfair and unhealthy. Restaurants prepare fresh food daily; grocery stores sell the same food in frozen, refrigerated, and dehydrated forms. Restaurants like mine start with unadulterated raw ingredients; grocery foods, by necessity, contain chemical preservatives and stabilizers. Cooks who live and pay taxes in the County prepare restaurant food; factory workers in faraway locations manufacture grocery food.
These comparisons hold true for almost all items on restaurant menus; examples are pork barbecue, macaroni and cheese, pizza, enchiladas, chili, soups, bread, pies, etc.
Yet, your 1% sales tax on grocery food and now a 10% tax on restaurant food equates to your taxing restaurant customers 10 times more for their food. You are penalizing restaurant owners, employees, and landlords in this county while incentivizing residents to consume foods laden with chemical preservatives and stabilizers. This is unfair and unhealthy.
The Meals Tax is bad economics.
It is well established that as prices rise, demand falls. Prior to imposing the Meals Tax, inflation had already pushed restaurant prices on average up 9%. At this level, the fall off in demand was still manageable. When your Meals Tax raised prices by another 4%, you exceeded the breaking point and demand dropped precipitously. In our case, we immediately lost over 20% of our customers. We were forced to respond by reducing our payroll by 33% and obtaining rent relief.
All county restaurants and their employees were hurt, some more than others.
I have heard stated a justification for the tax: “If you can’t afford a 4% tax, then you can’t afford to eat out.” They are right. That is exactly what happened. A dangerously significant number of people stopped going to the sounty’s restaurants.
The Meals Tax is unpopular.
If you had submitted the tax to a referendum as was required in the past, I hypothesize that it would have failed decidedly, just as it had failed in the past. In your defense, you may have been unaware of the consequences when you imposed the tax. You may still have your reasons for maintaining it. If you decide to retain it, you will have ample opportunities to present your arguments to the voters in your upcoming election.
Your opponents, to whom I and other restaurant owners in the emerging coalition have spoken, have already stated their opposition to the tax. The debates will be interesting to watch. In any case, the Meals Tax issue will not be swept away and ignored by voters. I can assure you of that.
I appreciate your consideration and will watch with interest your decision.
Nelson H. Head
Dixie Bones Inc.
On September 22, 2022 that Sustainability Commission unanimously passed resolution #22-007 which recommended several “fast-track” measures to put the county on a trajectory to achieve those goals.
Among their recommendations were: “Prohibit the building of new backup power generation using diesel and/or petroleum in favor of less carbon-intensive generation and encourage the conversion of existing diesel and/or petroleum backup systems to less carbon-intensive generation.”
This recommendation proved prescient. Unfortunately, it also proved futile. Chair Ann Wheeler has not seen fit to place it on the BOCS agenda despite multiple inquiries.
Now the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality is proposing that more than 100 data centers in Loudoun, Prince William and Fairfax counties be given a variance from air pollution controls so they can run their diesel generators any time the electrical transmission system is strained.
Such a strain on the grid is anticipated this summer. This strain does not even account for numerous additional data centers that have been approved but not yet completed. These approvals move forward at breakneck speed despite the obvious inability of our electrical transmission capacity to keep pace.
Diesel generators are extremely loud and their pollutants are linked to cancer, asthma and autoimmune disease.
The Sustainability Commission is doing what they were hired for. The Board of County Supervisors clearly is not.
Bill Wright
Gainesville
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Since this Board of County Supervisors took office in January, 2020, Ann Wheeler has marshaled her fellow Democrats on a determined path to open Prince William County to the data center industry with little due diligence to their impacts on the environment or the residents.
Ask yourself, is this why you chose to live in Prince William County?
- Industrialization to rival northern New Jersey.
- A new cross-county truck route from I-95 to Dulles airport.
- More than twice as much data center capacity as Loudoun County.
- Data center facilities directly adjacent to homes and schools.
- Proliferation of ugly new power lines and towers.
- Increased water pollution risk to the Occoquan Reservoir.
- A 60% tax discount to the world’s largest and most profitable big tech corporations.
- Infrastructure costs resulting in increased property taxes, rents, meal taxes and consumer energy bills.
- The world’s highest concentration of noisy, polluting, industrial diesel generators.
- Degradation of nationally-renowned historic areas, state and national parks and African American heritage sites.
Chair Wheeler would claim that this list does not reflect her vision, but her actions tell a different story in the proliferation and pace of Data Centers approved in the past three years.
Without the introduction of some semblance of sanity, this vision will surely become a long-term economic drain and enduring nightmare for the residents of PWC.
We must stop this march to unchecked industrialization and return to a more balanced and compatible approach to civic planning.
Paula Daly
Gainesville
PLN accepts letters to the editor on issues of local importance. Submit your letters to [email protected].
While I applaud your latest opinion piece about data centers, there was one aspect of it that I take issue with:
“We hear former Deputy County Executive Rebecca Horner has been sent back to the county planning department after several recent departures we told you about last week. She’s familiar with the planning office — she ran the place until she was promoted to deputy county executive in 2020. She may right the ship and create a plan because she’s one of the few people still around with institutional knowledge.”
I believe it is quite likely that the supervision of Rebecca Horner was at least partly responsible for the staff exodus. She is only back in her compromised “acting” role because so much has been driven out.
The Prince William County Planning Office is obviously in turmoil. Here are some questions that require answers:
- Why did former Planning Director Parag Agrawal resign abruptly after less than a year on the job?
- Why did Deputy County Executive for Community Development Rebecca Horner remain dual-hatted in a compromised role as acting Planning Director for nearly fifteen months when the workload warranted hiring a permanent successor?
- Why was Ms. Horner so averse to transparency in the planning process? Her office declined to reply to a July 5, 2022, letter from an attorney for the Gainesville Citizens for Smart Growth expressing concern over her office’s obstruction of legitimate citizen inquiries and withholding critical information from the public in advance of the September 14 Planning Commission hearing on the Prince William Digital Gateway.
- The American Institute of Certified Planners has a detailed Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, which calls on members to serve the public interest and resist improper influences faithfully. Are we confident the Planning Office has been strictly adhering to those provisions?
And what about her role in pigeon-holing the infamous 31-page letter from QTS and Compass attorneys before the Planning Commission public hearing on the Prince William Digital Gateway website?
That letter was held by her office and first made accessible to the public at 1:22 p.m. on September 15 – eight hours after the Planning Commission voted to recommend approval of the Prince William Digital Gateway.
This document should have been made available before the public hearing.
Rebecca Horner is not the answer to the Planning Office’s woes. It is far more likely she was a cause of them.
Bill Wright
Gainesville
PLN accepts letters to the editor on issues of local importance. Submit your letters to [email protected].
