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Originals
Residents and grassroots groups held a roughly 40-minute press conference Thursday evening outside the NTT data center complex at 13710 Daves Store Lane in Gainesville to call for a 12-month pause on new data center applications that require a vote by the Prince William Board of County Supervisors. Organizers said the pause is needed so the county can update buffers, setbacks, noise rules, lighting standards, and other protections before more projects advance.
Speakers included Rina Stapp of Save Braemar, Carolee Carrington of Wentworth Green, Catherine Kulik of the HOA Roundtable, Patrick Harters, and Dalton Nichols of the Occoquan District. They described impacts from noise and large industrial fans, light trespass and non-dark-sky-compliant fixtures, diesel generators, power demand they said is equivalent to hundreds of thousands of homes for this campus alone, rising electricity bills, and proximity to homes, schools, and the Occoquan Reservoir Protective Area.
Early FY27 numbers show the county is still waiting on the large property-tax payments that will reflect the higher rate supervisors set in April, while the same unfunded disabled-veterans mandate that drove that increase continues to grow by about $400,000 a month.
Stafford County Budget Director Jeff Stamp presented first-quarter FY2027 results to the Board of Supervisors on Oct. 20. The general fund adjusted budget for total revenues and other financing sources is $509.8 million. First-quarter collections were $21.1 million, or 4.1 percent of the adjusted budget.
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A table on the University of Mary Washington’s Campus Walk that advertised voter registration while displaying Democratic campaign literature was permitted under the university’s rules, a UMW spokeswoman said.
A reader who contacted Potomac Local News reported seeing the table in front of Lee Hall on Oct. 22. It carried a “register to vote here” banner, and two men were staffing it, according to an email the reader sent that evening to UMW’s director of student activities and the president’s office.
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Parents who told the Stafford County School Board that removing religious holidays while adding instructional days amounted to “covert oppression” helped push the board to keep those days on the 2027-28 calendar.
The board voted 6-1 on Oct. 27 to approve version 2 of the calendar, which keeps federal holidays plus religious and cultural days the division has observed in recent years, including Yom Kippur, Diwali and Eid. A substitute motion for version 3, which would have kept only federal holidays, failed 4-3.
Loudoun County Public Schools staff this week floated closing four low-enrollment western elementary schools to save about $8.5 million, but most members of the Loudoun County School Board rejected the idea at Tuesday’s meeting, Loudoun Now reported.
The discussion comes after neighboring Prince William County closed Potomac View Elementary School when students moved into the new Woodbridge Elementary this fall, Potomac Local News reported, and after the Prince William School Board canceled plans for a 14th high school in February amid declining enrollment projections.
Stafford County offices will close an extra half-day on Wednesday, Nov. 25, 2026, after the Board of Supervisors approved the additional holiday leave on Oct. 20.
The board voted 5-2 to approve Resolution R26-383, which gives county employees a full day off the day before Thanksgiving. Supervisors Crystal Vanuch and Pamela Yeung voted against it.
A parent returned to the Prince William County School Board for the third time on Oct. 21, 2026, to press for a division-wide policy guaranteeing students timely access to toilets, citing Freedom of Information Act records about locked bathrooms at Colgan High School.
Janelle Anderson told the board that Colgan, which has nearly 3,000 students, locks multiple bathrooms during seven-minute passing periods, before and after school, during lunch, and during class. She said students who cannot find an unlocked bathroom must interrupt instruction to ask permission to leave class, even with restrictions already in place for the first and last 10 minutes of class.
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Manassas City Council deadlocked 3-3 twice Monday on the first reading of a rezoning that would put 162 apartments and a public parking garage on the former Manassas Ice and Fuel site at 9007 Center Street, then left the outcome unclear when the clerk’s language on the tape said the item both “is passed” and “is deferred.”
A motion to defer the item failed 3-3. Theresa Coates Ellis, Sonia R. Vásquez Luna, and Ashley Hutson voted yes. Mark D. Wolfe, Ralph J. Smith, and Tom Osina voted no. A motion to approve produced the same split: Osina, Smith, and Wolfe yes; Ellis, Vásquez Luna, and Hutson no. Under ordinary council rules a 3-3 vote fails. Official minutes or a later clarification will be needed to confirm what, if anything, advanced.
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Correction: An earlier version of this story incorrectly referred to Bull Run Unitarian Universalists as “Brew Church.” The congregation’s acronym is BRUU.
Manassas police recovered more than 25 shell casings from the street at the Church and Main intersection after shots were fired about 11 p.m. Friday outside Bull Run Unitarian Universalists (BRUU). No injuries were reported, and officers already within one block of the scene arrived in less than one minute.