Corey Stewart turned to the press this week to get residents riled up about the need for more police on the streets.

The At-large Chairman of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors’ rare press conference on Tuesday drew not only me to the table, but reporters from other online news websites and newspapers that cover the county, as well as a TV reporter from Washington, D.C.

It’s budget season residents want their tax money spent on certain things, such as libraries, parks, and schools. Stewart thinks more money should go to fund the police department and wants to revert back to a plan that predates recession of 2008 tax cuts that calls for hiring 25 new police officers each year.

“One of the reasons for me doing this press conference is to get the citizens engaged,” said Stewart. “It’s the citizenry that is the eyes and ears of the police department.”

Stewart said he approves of the job Chief Stephan Hudson is doing since taking the reigns of the force last year. But he could do better if his department had more funding, he added.

And, while I’m sure he’s right, let’s not forget the crime rate remains low in Prince William County. There were 17.04 crimes reported per every 1,000 people in the county in 2012, down from a 15-year high of 30.3 in 1998.

The rate of violent crime in 2012 – murders, rapes, robberies, and aggravated assaults – went up 9% in 2012. But it was really more like 5% because many of the violent crimes that were reported to police that year occurred during prior years.

Statistics show unequivocally that the rate of crime in Prince William County has fallen while its population has ballooned. For that we can thank a highly visible police force that has made it their mission to work with the community to curb crime, to involve them as much as possible during investigations, and to not withhold information about how they operate from residents or the press.

Stewart says his office has fielded more phone calls about crime and about what county officials are doing to curb it since the beginning of the year. Incidents like the murder of 21-year-old Glenda Marisol Coca-Romero who was shot and killed while working in a corner grocer in Woodbridge sparked the majority of those calls.

More police officers could also mean less funding for other things like schools, parks, and libraries, things Stewart says he’s for. But hereminded residents they can’t have everything without a price.

“Citizens also want us to keep their tax bills low, and one thing I’m not going to say is we can do all of those things and keep tax bills flat.”

Uriah Kiser is the publisher of Potomac Local News.

Publisher’s note: Peter Candland invited me to a cafe and offered his take on the Prince William County Board of Supervisors and the upcoming budget season. He ordered a soda and I had coffee. Here’s a bit of our conversation.

In recent weeks, Peter Candland has lost more than he’s won – but that hasn’t kept him from trying to change what he calls a “good ol’ boy” system in Prince William County politics.

Now serving his third of a four-year term representing residents the of the Gainesville District on the Board of Supervisors, the Republican recently called for more transparency in local government, and for his Board to vote on key issues at night rather than in the afternoon so more people can leave work and attend public meetings and put in their two cents prior to the votes.

A recent set of six proposals outlining many of those ideas failed one by one. He’ll bring those same ideas back for a vote next year, he said.

More oversight on School Board spending

And, though it’s a done deal and will be built inside the county’s 12th high school, Candland maintains that building a $10 million swimming facility is a raw deal for taxpayers. Voted on by the Prince William County School Board in December, the decision to build the swimming pool has caused him to ask for more oversight on how the independently-elected county School Board spends their money.

Currently, Prince William County gives 57.23% of its entire budget to the school division – down from the 62% Candland previously lobbied for. According to him, giving more cash to the schools would have helped reduce Prince William County’s burgeoning class sizes by three students per classroom at each grade level.

The county has the highest class sizes in the Washington region.

Choosing to build the pools shows the school division is not committed to reducing the numbers, he said.

“My confidence in school board in spending money in right way has waned,’ said Candland. “I’m the taxing authority, and I’m the one that is going come to you and take more of your money, and am I going to want to take more of your money if I don’t have the confidence that you are going to spend it the right way?”

In a perfect world, Candland said he would do away with the revenue sharing agreement and find another way to fund schools.

Budget season

Currently operating on a $2 billion budget, county officials will begin heavy deliberations on the next year’s budget. Candland has called for an end to the “budget carryover” process where officials can choose to spend left over funds not spent during the calendar year.

He points to when officials in December approved $3 million in funding for sports fields, and spending $11 million from a contingency fund to pay for the burial of power lines along U.S. 1 in Woodbridge. He says those spending measures should have been tabled and discussed during the annual budget process.

“I think Chairman [Corey] Stewart likes to spend money. He’s a big government Republican. He believes that spending money is the answer to a lot of problems,” said Candland.

Candland and Stewart butt heads often while on the dias during the Tuesday afternoon sessions, regularly disagreeing on how local tax monies are spent.

Good ol’ boys?

Stewart in recent months has opted to spend more on county services to benefit residents, while Candland campaigned on promises to spend less and lower taxes. That idea of spending money for more services is something of a “good ol’ boy” system, said Candland.

“This spending mentality is part of an ‘old guard’ here on the Board in Prince William County, and that’s what I’m trying to change,” he said.

While his recent measures may have failed, it is not for a lack of his ability to build a consensus. An outspoken opponent of the Bi-County Parkway that would link Interstate 95 in Dumfries with Dulles Airport via the Manassas National Battlefield, Candland was successful in rallying the Board drop the project from its priorities list.

Budget shortfall

Last month, officials learned residential tax assessments grew much more than anticipated, but a low tax rate set in December to help guide the coming budget process would yield a significant budget shortfall in the county unless the county’s property tax rate was hiked. Commercial assessments also missed the mark and fell short of their 4% anticipated growth, netting only 3% growth for the year.

It comes after a typo led to a $5 million budget error last June.

Candland has been unusually quiet on this issue in light of the multiple budgeting mistakes.

“My job isn’t to necessarily embarrass the Board, or rub their face in everything…I’ve proposed several changes in closed session Board does not want to support,” said Candland.

First we brought independent local news to Prince William and Stafford counties. And now we’ve launched the region’s most powerful locally-maintained and insightful real estate tool.

Prominently featured at in the top main navigation section of our website, the Potomac Local Real Estate section features listings for home sales and rentals, commercial properties, land, as well as market trends and statistics for Prince William and Stafford counties and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.

It’s easy to use, includes up-to-the-minute data from professional real estate listings, and it allows private sellers and Realtors to add their listings directly to our site. With this new tool you’ll know the second something new comes onto the local market.

Being a local news site is much more than just bringing you the headlines. It’s also about providing a place for the community to gather online, to comment, to connect with neighbors, and it’s place for soon-to-be residents to learn more about our community and why we call it home.

This week, we’ve done more than just launch a new real estate section – we’ve made the news you’ve come to rely on us for easier to find by placing our content in a popular scrolling format on our homepage. We’ve reduced clutter on our site after you told us you wanted more local news and content and less noise.

We’re not done improving our site, either. In the coming weeks you’ll notice more obituary information on our site because we know it’s not good enough to cover the people in our community right now — we also need to remember those who came before us who worked hard to make our neighborhoods what they are today.

You will also see a greater commitment to community news as new editors will begin covering specific neighborhoods to find details on the news that impacts all of us. Their goal: Continue our tradition of telling good stories about the people, places, and local issues that impact our lives. I’m sure you’d expect nothing less from your award-winning local news source.

Thank you for your continued support of independent news. I look forward to continuing to serve you in 2014.

Opinion

It’s been a brutal year on Interstate 95 in Northern Virginia. Yes, more so than in years past, the delays seemed to rack up on the highway that bridges the gap not only Prince William and Stafford counties but to many jobs many of us commute to in Arlington and Washington, D.C.

For nearly all of us, the highway and its delays are something we’ve become very familiar with.

The Virginia Department of Transportation told us congestion on I-95 would get worse this year, especially during the summer of 2013 when work on the 95 Express Lanes would kick into high gear.

Now in winter and heading into 2014, we can see pavement that has been laid on the new lanes that, when the open in early 2015, will bring an extension of the HOV lanes from Dumfries to Va. 610 in North Stafford. The entire facility will between North Stafford and Esdall Road in Alexandria, and will allow single drivers to pay an electronic toll to use the lanes or occupants in vehicles of three or more to ride free.

And, while that all sounds well and good, it will be even better when the lanes finally open and work-related delays for the Express Lanes project a thing of the past. Even during the holidays, I-95 in our area has been plagued by delays morning, midday, and night as work zones are set up, closing lanes and backing up miles of traffic, in some cases.

So, as we say goodbye to 2013 and welcome 2014 give yourself a pat on the back for putting up with what has been horrendous traffic congestion. And, join me in looking forward to the project’s completion and the opening of the new lanes. Let’s hope they help to improve the awful delays that keep us away from home, family, and life’s activities by giving us another option to get where going just a bit faster.

Relying solely on your Facebook feed for local news about things happening where you live? Don’t be so sure it’s the only place to find what you’re looking for.

A new report from Ignite Social Media says continued to adjustments to Facebook’s news feed algorithm have lead to branded pages, like our Facebook page for Potomac Local News, to be seen by fewer users.

According to the site, some brand pages on Facebook have declines of 44% on average to as much as 88%. This means that fewer organic, or non paid content, from brand pages are showing up less frequently in users’ news feeds.

In 2011, Facebook introduced the option for organizations to pay to have their posts reach more users of the social media service. Nearly all of what we post to our Facebook page is local news, and these posts are all non-sponsored, organic posts to Facebook.

All of this is not to say Facebook is wrong for offering up the option for sponsored content. Potomac Local News also works with small businesses to create sponsored content to be consumed by our readers, on multiple platforms, to help showcase their business or organization.

But an over reliance on Facebook to get all of the great local news and information we post to PotomacLocal.com on a daily basis could mean you’re missing out on knowing what’s happening around your corner.

PotomacLocal.com is designed with you in mind, so we’ve made it easy to log on to our homepage and get the latest local headlines by area in which you live – Prince William, Stafford, or Greater Manassas. Our events calendar is promptly posted at the top right of each page. Slide show galleries and columnists appear on the home page. And, there’s great information from the local advertisers who provide financial support so we can continue covering the news that affects you.

Opinion 

I won’t cover the Black Friday mad dash this year. That means I won’t be standing in line with several impatient people all waiting to score a “good deal” on a cheap TV.

Sure, I’ve spent many Black Fridays going out at midnight, standing at the front door of Potomac Mills mall as the bargain seekers fly in. I also witnessed a fight there one Black Friday morning as hordes tried to get into a shoe store that had not yet opened its retractable metal store gate.

What once started as an idea to generate buzz and get an early jump on Christmas sales has become routine, and frankly, that means it’s no longer news. We know people will camp in tents outside of big box electronics stores, and that long lines will form at shopping malls before the sun comes up. And, expanding on a trend started by Kmart in the late 1990s, many stores for a second and third year in a row will be open on Thanksgiving Day.

Some say it’s a great way to grab a bargain. Others wonder if anyone actually plans to spend any time with friends and family and do what you are supposed to do on this holiday – eat and give thanks. A friend of mine wondered if anyone standing in those lines will eat anything. “If they ate like I do, none of them would be able to walk around,” he quipped.

Let’s also not forget that opening retail stores early on Fridays, or on Thanksgiving for that matter, gives workers less time, if any, to spend with their loved ones. Sure, you can argue that those workers signed up for the requirements of the job, but it’s clear that our greed created those requirements.

So, enjoy your time on Thanksgiving doing whatever it is you plan to do. I’m writing this from a market inside a grocery store where I’ll pick up the remaining items we’ll need for our Thanksgiving feast. You won’t find me in a store tomorrow, and probably not on Friday either.

If there is one thing I’ve learned in recent days it’s that our Potomac Local News is slightly above average.

A proud member of LION Publishers (It stands for Local, Independent, Online, News), I attended our 1st annual conference last weekend in Chicago. The organization formed after the Block-By-Block conferences ended its three-year pioneering mission to help local indie news publishers find financial sustainability.

While at LION I was once again was able to network with my fellow publishers, swap ideas, see how journalists are finding better ways to report on under-served communities, and plan for the long term financial sustainability of Potomac Local News, which, at least for now, is solely supported by local ad dollars.

More than three years into this project andwe are considered by some as veterans in the indie local news scene. However, I tend not to think of myself as being ready for retirement.

But as we indies compared notes on the number of viewers we have on our sites, how long they stay on our site to read and interact with the news, and which publishers are making a profit and which ones are making just enough to get by, Potomac Local News ranks in about the middle.

In my book, starting from nothing, in a community as challenging as this one is (lets face it, life’s tough around here if your financial livelihood is not directly tied in some way to the federal government, and mine is not), then building it into something, then scoring above average is more than a passing grade.

We reached nearly 70,000 unique visits last month — our highest yet — an impressive number for website with such a local focus as ours. The only way to go from here is up.

Opinion 

I’ve never written about a Hyperloop.

I have spent years writing about transportation. Highways, buses, trains, carpools, even sidewalks, I’ve written about them all.

As long as there is traffic congestion in our region, I will undoubtedly always have something to write about.

While I appreciate job security I also live here, and have often wondered why we can’t get from Point A to Point B more efficiently. Why are we so dependent upon the automobile? On most days, especially during summertime, it takes hours to go less than 2o miles.

So, when I read about the Hyperloop, I was hooked. The brainchild of the co-founder of PayPal and investor in Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, says that could shoot passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco — 400 miles — in about 30 minutes.

It seems like the stuff of science fiction, and given our current transportation climate in our region — one where we are arguing over what 1950’s-era highway to extend or widen, or where to extend the 1970’s-era heavy rail Metro system, the idea of the Hyperloop is a breath of fresh air.

A service like this from Richmond to Boston would benefit the entire East Coast. It could, if built correctly, help to fulfil the dream someone once had of the seamlessly flowing highway, bus system, railway, and carpool.

After the turkey leftovers are put away for sandwiches and last licks are taken from the dessert bowls, what’s next on this annual day set aside to give thanks? If you’re a retail employee you’re probably headed straight to bed to get a few hours of sleep before your shift begins at midnight.

Stores in the Potomac Communities are opening earlier than ever this Black Friday – the one shopping day each year when retailers slash prices on electronics, home goods and just about everything else — to entice shoppers to rush their stores, open their wallets and take them out of the red and put them back in black.

K-Mart remains open on Thanksgiving, but other big box stores like Walmart and Best Buy that have traditionally waited until 4 or 5 a.m. to open Black Friday have now decided to join the ranks of shopping malls, like Potomac Mills, which has opened at midnight, and has remained open for nearly 24 hours, on Black Friday since 2009.

For years I have covered Black Friday madness, talking with shoppers who have literally made battle plans with friends, family members, and neighbors, who have all worked ahead of time plotting out who will make the mad dash for their most coveted items.

At midnight last Thanksgiving night at Potomac Mills mall, a fight broke out at the gate of Foot Action shoe store for no other reason that the store’s metal gate had not opened soon enough to appease the hordes of shoppers. Is fighting to get into a shoe store really worth the late night rush to the mall?

Employees working the sale counters at midnight, at first, usually tell me how funny it is to see so many customers at such an early hour. Later, into the early morning hours, they begin their own fight with fatigue.

And why shouldn’t they be tired? Sure, they had Thanksgiving Day off of work to be with family, friends, or to catch up on sleep. But, unlike us, they had to cut short their holiday or go without sleep to make to work so shoppers can feed their shopping need. Moreover, many shoppers each year simply venture out from their homes to be a part of the early shopping buzz.

I appreciate all the invites we’ve gotten from stores and malls asking us to come and write stories about the mob of holiday shoppers who rush their doors at midnight. This year, however, we won’t be there.

Thanksgiving is a time to be with family, friends, or the ones you care about no matter what your religion or creed. It’s a national holiday, and should be more than just some day wedged between Halloween and Christmas where we fat out on delicious fixings and then dream of the deals on computer gaming systems, enticing people to leave their homes on Thanksgiving out of curiosity to be apart of Black Friday.

Some argue retail workers must accept, given the state of the current job market, early Black Friday hours as part of the job, and the companies are just responding to shoppers’ demands. They’re right responding to demand, but retailers have also had help over the years creating the Black Friday craze with the help of advertising and media that put so much focus on the event.

Maybe the big box stores are opening earlier will alleviate mob scenes where some people in past years have been trampled to death. Maybe we’re seeing the evolution Black Friday, or maybe we’re just standing by to watch the continued erosion of the Thanksgiving holiday.

One thing is sure: the deals will still be around even if you’re not at the stores at midnight.