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Chesterfield School Board OKs weapons scanners at middle and high schools
The Chesterfield School Board approved installing weapons scanners at all middle and high schools prior to the 2025-26 school year. "It's extremely important that our children feel safe and our staff feel safe," Steven Paranto, the Matoaca District representative on the school board, said. "This is not an answer that will cure everything in regards to their safety, but it's definitely a tool that we can use." The board voted 5-0 in favor of the scanners during its monthly meeting Tuesday.
Virginia’s new dashboards track pregnancy risks. But advocate says data alone won’t fix disparities.
Virginia is taking a closer look at what's putting new and expectant mothers at risk, and what it will take to keep them alive. On April 17, Governor Glenn Youngkin announced the Virginia Department of Health's updated Maternal and Child Health Dashboard and two new dashboards on maternal mortality and pregnancy-associated deaths. The public dashboards track maternal health and infant outcomes across the Commonwealth, monitoring data like preterm births and low birthweight.
Tempers, tensions, racism, lawsuits dot Hopewell City Council agenda
Tensions continue to boil over the firings of Hopewell’s city manager and city clerk, with the most recent City Council meeting erupting in chaos after demands for resignations, a description of some councilors as a “cancer” on Hopewell and the city’s mayor being called a “b***h” by a citizen while being escorted out. The May 13 council meeting was a potpourri of events that often turned up the temperature inside Hopewell’s council chambers.
Growing tension boils over in Martinsville council meeting
The temperature began to rise Monday at one of many budget work sessions and boiled-over Tuesday night with a disruption by a city employee and a near altercation between two council members. ... The Bulletin published a report on Tuesday showing Martinsville government employees had spent more than $1.4 million on city credit cards over 15 consecutive months ending in March. The statements show thousands of dollars in expenses involving travel, hotel stays, food, and conferences, including trips to Las Vegas and luxury resorts.
Dominion proposes cuts to credit for homes’ solar panels
Dominion Energy wants to cut the credit that customers with solar panels on their rooftops can get on their monthly power bills, a move that could make installing them less attractive to homeowners and businesses. Dominion currently values electricity flowing from residential rooftop solar panels at about 14 cents per kilowatt hour. The company proposes dropping this credit to 9.553 cents per kilowatt hour, the rate the utility pays for solar power from large-scale facilities. ... The proposal also is likely to spark one of the biggest clashes at the State Corporation Commission this year because it makes the economics of installing solar panels a lot more challenging, said Josephus Allmond, a staff attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center, a nonprofit that aims to protect ratepayers and the environment.
Earle-Sears: Right to work is still under threat
Virginia’s right-to-work law that says people cannot be required join a union is still under threat despite Democratic gubernatorial candidate Abigail Spanberger’s recent promise that she would not sign a full repeal, her Republican opponent, Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, said. In a letter to more than 350 Virginia business leaders, Earle-Sears said the law, dating to the 1940s, is critical to Virginia’s economy.
Levar Stoney goes on TV with six-figure ad buy in lieutenant governor race
Former Richmond mayor Levar Stoney — one of six Democrats seeking the party’s nomination for lieutenant governor June 17 — will appear on TV commercials played across Virginia in a new TV ad blitz starting Thursday. Four different spots will run in the expensive Washington media market as well as in Richmond and Norfolk. The ad buy is “well into the six figures," according to his campaign. Former Gov. Terry McAuliffe appears in two of the four ads.
Democrats running for attorney general say Virginia needs to challenge Trump
Democrats will choose between a longtime prosecutor from the Richmond suburbs and a former lawmaker from a politically active Hampton Roads family in the primary race for attorney general. Former state delegate Jay Jones and Henrico County Commonwealth’s Attorney Shannon Taylor are facing off in the Democratic primary. Democrats are hoping to win big this year. Virginia is considered to be a bellwether state because its statewide elections are held the year after the presidential election.
Amazon to open giant warehouse in Goochland County
Retail giant Amazon broke ground Wednesday on a massive, 3.1 million-square-foot fulfillment center in Goochland County. It will be the 10th Amazon facility in Greater Richmond, feature robotic operations and create more than 1,000 jobs, the company said. Amazon is building the warehouse at 2022 Ashland Road, near two dozen other industrial business locations. Expected to open in 2027, it will be the largest Amazon facility in greater Richmond and the second largest in the state, following Suffolk.
National Airport, Pentagon hotline had been disconnected for three years
A hotline connecting air traffic controllers at Reagan National Airport and their counterparts at the Pentagon has been “inoperable” since March 2022, a Federal Aviation Administration official confirmed Wednesday, further evidence of poor safety coordination between federal agencies responsible for the airspace where a midair collision in January killed 67 people. The line is maintained by the Defense Department, and the aviation agency was not aware of the outage during the three years it was down, Franklin McIntosh, the FAA’s deputy head of air traffic control, testified at a Senate hearing Wednesday.