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.
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.
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.
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.”
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.”
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:
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.
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.
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.”
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.
