Press Rewind podcast
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The week’s top stories
-Rarely has a grocery store inspired such hoopla, but you’ve got it, fans: A Trader Joe’s spokeswoman has confirmed that there are plans for one of the company’s stores in Fredericksburg. The likely site is along Fall Hill Avenue. Bill Freehling has more on this story and other business news in Biz Beat Roundup.
-By the time you read this, there will probably already be snow on the ground, and Rappahannock Electric Cooperative and Dominion Energy officials are warning customers that multi-day power outages could follow. An REC executive said it would take only a quarter of an inch of ice to break power lines and cause widespread outages. It’s the weight of the ice that does the damage, Taft Coghill Jr. reports.
-On the day that honors the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Spotsylvania NAACP President Moe Petway urged attendees at an event in the county to keep King’s message alive through activism. Numerous challenges still exist for Black people nationally and locally, he said. Coghill has the story.
-Stafford’s Board of Supervisors agreed last week to reconsider leasing county-owned land to the Patawomeck Indian Tribe, but tension between tribe officials and two local historians remains high. The supervisors voted to schedule a public hearing on leasing 6.5 acres near Aquia Landing Park to the tribe. The organization leased the land from 2015 until last March, but when the supervisors talked about renewing the lease, the discussion turned to the legitimacy of the Patawomeck, an issue the Free Press investigative podcast “The Tribe” explores.
-U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine told students at Spotsylvania County’s Career & Technical Center last week about his background with welding and about how he’s probably the only senator who has been the principal of a technical school. That happened when he was in Honduras in the early 1980s. Kaine spoke to the need for career and technical education, and also discussed with the Free Press his opposition to the Trump administration’s recent actions regarding Venezuela and Greenland.
Go figures (numbers in the news)
8 — Age when Spotsylvania County youngster Heavenleigh Villar started playing music. Now not quite 13, she’s writing, recording and performing her own tunes. Kathy Knotts tells the singer’s story in Free Time, our weekly arts and entertainment newsletter.
What they’re saying
“It’s really just taking it day by day and attacking each day as it comes.” -Kye Robinson, sophomore guard on the University of Mary Washington men’s basketball team. He was talking about the squad’s impressive record this year.
Pressing on (a look at the week ahead)
-Stafford schools Superintendent Daniel Smith will present his proposed budget for the next fiscal year to the county School Board on Tuesday night. That is, if the meeting isn’t snowed out.
Sunday read
-Jill Payne is retiring from the Rappahannock Court Appointed Special Advocates at the end of the month after 35 years. Taft Coghill Jr. spoke with her about her experiences at the nonprofit, which advocates for children in the court system who were abused or neglected.
