By PETER CARY,
Piedmont Journalism Foundation
Town officials Thursday cleared the way for the construction of an Amazon data center in Warrenton, reaching a milestone in the long and tumultuous saga that splintered the town’s council and its residents.
Warrenton’s planning and zoning staff signed off on the latest site plans for the data center, removing the last major administrative hurdle for the 220,000-square-foot project on Blackwell Road. Now that the site plan has been approved, Amazon will move on to obtaining routine permits for site work and building construction.
By GRACE SCHUMACHER,
Fauquier Now
Warrenton town staff has approved the site development plan for Amazon’s proposed 220,000-square-foot data center campus on the 42-acre plot of land at the intersection of Blackwell Road and Lee Highway off the Route 17 Spur in town.
The approval, which came after staff’s fourth review and was detailed in a letter released Thursday, comes with 27 conditions and requirements. The conditions of approval, written with the intent of governing the project’s development, cover various aspects including adherence to approved plans, compliance with the 25 special use permit conditions and environmental considerations.
By CATHY DYSON,
Free Lance-Star
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People who’ve gotten free medical care at the Moss Free Clinic, as well as those who volunteer and work there, joined members of the community Sunday to show their support for the services the clinic provides. Jim Eagan told the crowd of about 80 people that he went to the clinic when he had an abscessed tooth and couldn’t find help anywhere else. ... The rally came about as the partnership between Mary Washington Healthcare and the clinic, named after the late co-founder, Dr. Lloyd Moss, has deteriorated in recent months.
By JOEY LOMONACO,
Fredericksburg Free Press
Lloyd Moss Jr. recalls his father’s trademark retort for whenever someone would make reference to his namesake health center.
“His comment was always, ‘It’s not my clinic.’” Moss Jr. said of the late Dr. Lloyd F. Moss, who helped found the Moss Free Clinic back in 1993. “It’s the Fredericksburg community’s, and it’s the volunteers’ clinic.”
On Sunday afternoon, nearly 100 people gathered in a Taco Bell parking lot less than a mile from the clinic’s doors with a shared aim: taking ownership of its now-precarious future.
By DAVE RESS,
Richmond Times-Dispatch
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Richmond’s housing agency is putting a freeze on evictions from public housing communities for at least 30 days while staff members recheck rents and arrears calculations that tenants and legal aid lawyers have said are incorrect. The Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority has dismissed 14 eviction cases and put a freeze on other cases where it takes first steps toward eviction, said Kenyatta Green, the agency’s senior vice president. RRHA is also not filing any new cases during the freeze, she said.
By PATRICK LARSEN,
VPM
The Richmond Redevelopment and Housing Authority announced a new approach to lease enforcement amid public outcry over eviction cases it recently filed against residents.
CEO Steven Nesmith said the “Compassion Action Initiative” will focus on re-establishing relationships with residents, adhering to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development regulations, strengthening data collection and sharing with stakeholders, and addressing a $3 million backlog of unpaid rent.
At least 14 pending cases were dismissed from Richmond General District Court on Wednesday in a pause that Nesmith said would extend for a minimum of 30 days.
By BILL ATKINSON,
Progress Index
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Hopewell’s outgoing city attorney has recommended that the Virginia attorney general’s office look into claims by an alleged department employee that the city’s treasurer improperly removed herself from a state agency’s list of delinquent taxpayers without attempting to settle her own tax debts. The allegations against Shannon Foskey were brought up in a letter sent last week to Commonwealth’s Attorney Rick Newman and cited in an April 18 memo from now-former city attorney Danielle Smith to City Manager Dr. Concetta Manker.
Roanoke Times
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The town of Blacksburg is streamlining the process of making and responding to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.
It launched a new records management software called JustFOIA, according to a town news release.
JustFOIA is designed for state and local government entities to modernize public records management and accessibility, according to the release.
By LUKE WEIR,
Roanoke Times
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Your trash becomes gas. It happens gradually, as mountains of our garbage decompose at Smith Gap Regional Landfill in Roanoke County. That’s where the Roanoke Valley Resource Authority hauls all the waste — more than 500 million pounds per year — from Roanoke, Salem, Roanoke County and Vinton. Among rotten banana peels and other decaying organic material sealed inside the landfill, methane-rich fumes are captured by a system of buried vacuum tubes ...
