Press Rewind podcast
No time to read our weekly recap newsletter? Then listen to this. It’s the Press Rewind podcast, which will catch you up on top headlines in five minutes or less.
The week’s top stories
-Will a new bridge across the Rappahannock be built from Stafford County to Fredericksburg? The answer won’t come for some time, but a proposal to do just that has gotten one step closer to reality. The Fredericksburg Area Metropolitan Planning Organization’s Policy Committee last week approved a study of the project, Rick Horner reports.
-Dominion Energy plans to build a 70-mile, 500-kilovolt power line through part of the Fredericksburg area, but some residents are already bringing up concerns about it. The transmission line, called the Kraken Loop, is at least partially necessary because of data center development, Dominion says. The Stafford County Board of Supervisors, however, is scheduled to vote on Tuesday on a resolution that would ask Dominion to bury the line instead of constructing it above ground.
-Nonprofits from around the Fredericksburg area were busy last week offering aid to the homeless for the Thanksgiving holiday. Organizations including Action Church, St. George’s Episcopal Church, Piney Branch Baptist Church, Propelling Hands, I Am Royalty, Stafford R.I.S.E., the Fredericksburg Christian Car Club, and FXBG Free Closet helped to provide meals, clothes, gift cards and backpacks filled with necessities to those in need, Jamar Billingsley writes.
-The region’s largest school system continues to grow, as Stafford County prepares to open three new schools next year. School officials gave reporters a tour of one of those facilities, Hartwood High School, and they said it’s on schedule to open and within budget so far. The school is designed to accommodate up to 2,150 students, and it will house the Arts, Media and Production Center. It will offer coursework in digital content production, live event management, audio engineering and production, and visual arts.
Go figures (numbers in the news)
4 — Number of hours you can legally park in two-hour parking spaces in downtown Fredericksburg through Jan. 11. The idea is to make it easier for customers to shop downtown during the holiday season, and it’s probably a better deal than you can find in other Virginia downtowns. Bill Freehling has this nugget and other business news in Biz Beat Roundup.
Listen up
–Bill Freehling recently caught up with longtime University of Mary Washington Dean Cedric Rucker for the Biz Beat Banter podcast. Rucker talks about his career in education at his alma mater.
Pressing on (a look at the week ahead)
-The Stafford County Board of Supervisors last month enacted what is believed to be the most stringent data center regulations in Virginia. But what happens to the data centers that have already been approved, or the ones that could be built without the supervisors’ OK? A public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday on grandfathering those projects.
Sunday long read
-Fredericksburg’s school division has a lot of students from Afghanistan, so administrators made the decision to hire three people to help them who knew exactly what the immigrant experience is like. Free Press Managing Editor Joey LoMonaco tells their story.
