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Preliminary plan unveiled for Norfolk schools to be closed, repurposed, rebuilt
Ten Norfolk schools are set to consolidate, and after a series of meetings, a preliminary plan — that still needs to be voted on by the school board — has been provided to the committee spearheading the effort. In March, Norfolk City Council tasked the school district with developing a plan to consolidate and close 10 schools, while opting to renovate or repurpose others. The resolution, passed unanimously by the city council, asks the school board to come up with a plan by Aug. 1. The district would then close two schools a year starting before the 2026-2027 school year.
Hashmi to receive $1M from Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association
Virginia’s Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, Sen. Ghazala Hashmi, D-Chesterfield, will receive a $1 million donation from the national Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association — the largest donation ever received by a lieutenant governor nominee in the state, the group says. The DLGA is a national organization that works each year to elect Democratic lieutenant governors and candidates across the U.S.
From VPAP New Episode of Policy Matters: Your Window Into Virginia Politics with VPAP on VPM
Join VPAP’s Chris Piper and VPM’s Ben Dolle as they recap Virginia’s June primaries and VPAP's campaign finance resources that helped voters prepare. They dig into a trove of features on vpap.org: primary night results and interactive maps that break down votes by contest and district, plus helpful post-primary tools that let users explore results down to their ballot. You’ll also hear about new data on legislator stock holdings, paid conferences, and the top VaNews headlines covering government and politics across the commonwealth.
Wagner: Stop the PREVAIL Act from raising drug prices
Recently, the Virginia General Assembly took a big step in lowering prescription drug prices. A bipartisan bill passed both the House and the Senate that would create a board to oversee prescription drug prices, identify excessively priced medications, and recommend strategies to lower costs, including potential price caps. This bill represented a long-overdue recognition that the status quo is unsustainable and unfair to working families.
Williams: Trump’s phony Confederate name game is child’s play
In 1964, singer-songwriter Shirley Ellis penned a hit song of nonsensical rhymes called “The Name Game,” whose second verse went like this: Lincoln! Lincoln, Lincoln, bo-bin-coln Bo-na-na fanna, fo-fin-coln ... Her song came to mind as the Trump administration does its bit to restore Confederate surnames to Army bases, with a puerile twist. In the process, it’s reversing changes made several years ago through an act of Congress.
Yancey: Earle-Sears and Spanberger ditch a Virginia tradition. Will they even debate at all?
Virginia, like the seasons, once had four great political traditions. All now seem to be discarded, trampled over by changing times. The great springtime rite of passage once was the Shad Planking, a fish roast (shad cooked on wooden planks over an open fire) in Sussex County that was more remembered for the political speeches than the cuisine.
Charles City County defers data center decision amid public outcry
Charles City County has again deferred a decision on a planned 500-acre data center campus. The county Board of Supervisors unanimously decided Tuesday to delay voting on the proposed Roxbury Technology Park, after previously postponing the decision in May. Kansas-based Diode Ventures first submitted plans for the park last November and is seeking to rezone around 515 acres about 20 miles due east of Richmond to allow for the campus.
Appeals Court puts Missing Middle back on the books in Arlington
Arlington’s Missing Middle zoning ordinance is back on the books, at least for the time being, following a ruling in the Virginia Court of Appeals. In the latest development in the dramatic legal battle over the county’s Expanded Housing Options (EHO), three appeals court judges issued a ruling yesterday (Tuesday) that reverses a circuit court decision declaring the zoning change void. The move sends the case back to the lower court for further review, according to court documents reviewed by ARLnow. The disposition doesn’t touch on the legal arguments at the heart of the lawsuit, which seeks to overturn an ordinance allowing for the development of multi-unit buildings in previously single-family neighborhoods.
Virginia appeals court says Arlington can end single-family-only zoning
An Arlington policy eliminating single-family-only zoning was effectively reinstated Tuesday by a Virginia panel of judges, who ruled that homeowners challenging the county over that effort in court should have also sued real estate developers who built projects under the zoning change. The ruling marks another development in a dizzying legal saga over the Northern Virginia county’s push for more “missing middle” housing, which is aimed at bringing more homes into a tight real estate market and eventually lowering costs in the expensive D.C. suburb.
Housing Department to Move Headquarters to Virginia, Booting National Science Foundation
The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced on Wednesday that it was moving its headquarters out of Washington and into a building in Alexandria, Va., already occupied by the National Science Foundation, with no clear plan in place for the foundation’s employees. It is the first major shift of a federal agency’s operations out of the capital under President Trump’s plans to relocate parts of the government. But the science foundation will need to move out before the housing agency moves in. Union representatives for the foundation’s employees said that more than 1,833 people with the agency work in the building, and that they did not know where those employees would go.