Friends and neighbors, I sent this message a bit ago to my email list and thought I’d share it with you.
Back in May, I did one of those things your much younger self would look at and say, “Are you crazy?” After witnessing firsthand during the pandemic how the decisions of local government impact our everyday lives – I decided to run for office in Manassas.
Chair Ann Wheeler acknowledged that the Prince William Digital Gateway CPA review was “confusing” and announced a delay in bringing it to the Board of County Supervisors for a vote.
Despite the compromised nature of the September 14th Planning Commission public hearing, there was no mention of invalidating its recommendation or conducting a new hearing under more trustworthy conditions. So, you can expect the pause is merely designed to give weary citizens time to forget.
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.
By Sara Brescia
On Monday, September 12, Osbourn high school in Manassas experienced the threat of gun violence.
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.
“I am here to serve. I will serve all without any discrimination,” are the words of Imam Shamshad Nasir, who is the new Imam at Masroor Mosque, at 5640 Hoadly Road near Dale City.
On August 15, the congregation formally welcomed Imam Shamshad Nasir at a dinner specially organized in his honor.
The imminent approval of Devlin Technology Park, a site formerly planned for housing that morphed into yet another power-sucking eyesore, will bring the total capacity of data centers operating or planned in Prince William County to nearly 50 million square feet.
That doubles the current capacity of neighboring Loudoun county, and exceeds the 48 million a recent study projected to be the maximum demand for the next twenty years.
Your mission states that you wish to “inform” the community about what is happening. Well, your writer’s understanding of the recent removal of Henry “Hank” Scharpenberg from the Citizens Transportation Advisory Committee’s (CTAC) leadership role is flawed and does not reflect the real issue at hand.
Had the reporter and the Stafford Board of Supervisors members who called for his ill-considered removal and ultimately yanked Mr. Scharpenberg from his leadership role of CTAC had attended more than one meeting, they would have understood the issues this group faces, works hard on, and discussed at length all year long.
It’s a bit unusual to have one-quarter of your county supervisors facing recall petitions from their constituents. It’s also unusual that Prince William County has no Ombudsman or Ethics Office. So, what other recourse do our citizens have?
In the Navy, when a commanding officer is relieved for cause, it is usually not for specific misdeeds but for leadership failures that adversely affected subordinates or enabled their substandard performance. You’ll hear terms like “loss of trust and confidence in the ability to command” or “cultivating a poor command climate.” There is a recognition that bad leadership is unacceptably corrosive to an organization.
It seems clear to us that, as a group, our local elected leaders in Prince William County appear to be struggling to make decisions regarding the long-term strategic use of a scarce resource — our land.
Such land use decisions are critical to ensuring our county will be one that continues to attract new residents and new businesses and retains the current attributes that attracted current residents to move here.
