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The week’s top stories
-With an additional proponent of more government oversight of data centers in office, the Spotsylvania Board of Supervisors reversed course last week and voted to require special-use permits for the technology businesses in industrially zoned areas of the county. That means data centers won’t be allowed anywhere in the locality “by right,” or without the supervisors’ specific approval, Taft Coghill Jr. reports.
-Scrutiny of Spotsylvania schools Superintendent Clint Mitchell continued last week as a county resident asked the School Board to deny his request to perform work outside of his primary job. Mitchell is an adjunct professor at Longwood University, a guest lecturer at Howard University and a superintendent coach for the Virginia Association of School Superintendents. Despite the resident’s outcry, board members voted to allow Mitchell to maintain the outside positions. Mitchell has faced criticism since coming to Spotsylvania from Colonial Beach. Coghill has the story.
-Five Fredericksburg-area teens will be sentenced in the coming weeks for their roles in a shootout last year in the Olde Greenwich neighborhood that left three other teens dead. Logan Soulier, 18, of Ruther Glen was convicted last week in Spotsylvania County Circuit Court of 24 charges in the incident that began with a botched gun deal. The four other teens had already pleaded guilty. The shootout shook the region in April, and an associated social media video showed two assailants walking through the 500 block of Olde Greenwich Circle with rifles.
-Kalahari Resorts & Conventions is now taking bookings for its $900 million, 1.38-million-square-foot resort hotel, waterpark and convention facility in Thornburg, a major step for the heralded tourist attraction. Bill Freehling has more on this story and other economic happenings in Biz Beat Roundup.
-Zachary Hulo, a Caroline High School graduate and the accounting manager at the Omni Richmond Hotel, will face Priscilla Voit, a 25-year veteran of the finance industry and the wife of a Bowling Green town councilman, in a special election next month for Caroline County treasurer. They are squaring off because incumbent treasurer Brittany Eisenbrown stepped down in October due to health issues, Coghill writes.
Go figures (numbers in the news)
2001 — The year Fredericksburg-area native Keller Williams met Bob Weir, rhythm guitarist and singer for the Grateful Dead. Weir died recently, and Williams, himself a veteran of the jam band music scene, reflected on the legendary musician’s passing in an interview with Stephen Hu. The story was in Free Time, our weekly arts and entertainment newsletter.
What they’re saying
“That was a surprise, but also a joy and something that I will never forget.” –Nicole Cole, new state delegate from Spotsylvania County. Cole was talking about attending her first committee meeting in Richmond, in which lawmakers advanced four constitutional amendments. She and fellow Democratic Del. Stacey Carroll of Stafford County were sworn in last week.
Pressing on (a look at the week ahead)
-The Stafford County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday will again discuss potentially leasing county-owned land to the Patawomeck Indian Tribe, and we’ll be there for the meeting. The supervisors voted in November not to renew a lease with the organization, which is featured in the Free Press investigative podcast “The Tribe.”
Sunday read
-Abigail Spanberger, formerly a congresswoman whose district included the Fredericksburg area, was inaugurated in Richmond on Saturday as the 75th governor of Virginia and the first woman to hold the office.
