COOPER’S NOSE FOR THE GOAL: Senior helps Osbourn boys soccer win district title. PAGES 11-12
May 25, 2023 | Vol. 22, No. 21 | www.princewilliamtimes.com | $1.00 Covering Prince William County and surrounding communities, including Gainesville, Haymarket, Dumfries, Occoquan, Quantico and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.
Va. Supreme Court: Supervisors violated FOIA law
Case involved impromptu meeting with the police department after 2020 protests
The Va. Supreme Court ruled five Prince William County supervisors violated the state’s FOIA law by meeting with police the day after this May 2020 protest in Manassas.
By Cher Muzyk
Times Staff Writer
Five members of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors violated Virginia’s Freedom of Information Act when they attended a police department meeting called in the wake of a Manassas protest against the police killing of George Floyd in 2020 without complying with statutory public disclosure requirements, the Virginia Supreme Court held Thursday. Writing for the majority in a 5-2 decision, Justice Wesley Russell, Jr. said that there was sufficient evidence presented that the meeting at issue, called by former Prince William County police chief Barry Barnard and Deputy Chief Jarad Phelps, met the definition of a public meeting subject to Virginia’s FOIA law. The Supreme Court decision, released Thursday, May 18, revived the lawsuit after it was dismissed in October 2020 by Judge Dennis Smith, the former chief judge of the Fairfax County Circuit Court. Smith granted Board of Supervisors Chair Ann Wheeler and her four fellow Democratic supervisors’ motion to strike the lawsuit in Prince William County Circuit Court after a five-hour hearing. Smith was assigned by the Virginia Supreme Court to hear the case after all six judges on the Prince William County Circuit Court bench re-
PHOTO BY ALFREDO PANAMENO
cused themselves. The meeting that sparked the case was a gathering of about 60 community members, faith leaders and elected officials called in the wake of a May 30 protest in Manassas. The meeting was attended by five of the eight supervisors: Victor Angry, D-Neabsco; Andrea Bailey, D-Potomac; Kenny Boddye, D-Occoquan; Margaret Franklin, D-Woodbridge; and Wheeler. According to testimony, several faith leaders and members of local Black churches were also in attendance. The meeting was held at the Prince William County Police Department’s central station off Bacon Race Road and lasted about two hours, supervisors said. Prince William County residents B. Alan
Gloss, Tammy Spinks and Carol Fox alleged the police department meeting was illegal because the public wasn’t notified and because the three Republican county supervisors – Jeanine Lawson, R-Brentsville; Yesli Vega, R-Coles; and former supervisor Pete Candland, R-Gainesville – were not told about the meeting and did not attend. Spinks said she is no longer a party to the lawsuit because she moved out of the county. The lawsuit alleged public business was discussed at the meeting because the police department officials gave their account of the police response to the protest, which began peacefully and then turned violent. See FOIA, page 4
Longtime Gainesville campground slated for data centers Hillwood Camping Park, behind U.S. 29, pursues rezoning for 80-foot data centers By Peter Cary
Piedmont Journalism Foundation
PHOTO BY JILL PALERMO
Hillwood Camping Park, one of the few area campgrounds that allows longer-term stays for those living in camping trailers, is subject to a rezoning application to allow for 1.8 million square feet of new data centers.
New movie theater coming to Manassas Park in 2025, page 3
Prince William County’s next large data center complex could displace the Hillwood Camping Park, a recreational vehicle and camping trailer park tucked behind U.S. 29 in Gainesville that has long provided a lower-cost housing option for both long-stay visitors and longer-term workers. An application to rezone the park’s nearly 82 acres was filed with the county late last year and is moving through the process. The site is under contract to sell to Chuck Kuhn, founder of JK Moving Services and a developer of several data center properties in Loudoun and Prince William counties. His company filed the rezoning application.
Occoquan RiverFest, craft show coming June 3-4, page 7
The application seeks to shift the area’s zoning from agricultural and general business to light industrial to accommodate the construction of nearly 1.8 million square feet of data centers. The applicant also wants to add the property to the county’s Data Center Opportunity Zone Overlay District, as doing so would let it avoid the special use permit process, which would subject the project to more intensive review. Enlarging the data center zone is usually done through a board of supervisors-initiated zoning text amendment. That initiation was scheduled by planners for consideration by the Prince William Board of County Supervisors on Tuesday, June 6. But Supervisor Jeanine Lawson, R-Brentsville, whose district contains the property, says she was not briefed on the matter and was taken by surprise by the scheduling. See DATA CENTERS, page 2
88 DULLES, VA