SPORTS: Forest Park High School boys basketball team advances to region quarterfinals. PAGE 13
February 23, 2023 | Vol. 22, No. 8 | 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.
Prince William County’s planning director, deputy resign
Bob Weir, right, greets voters outside the Heritage Hunt polling place during the Feb. 21 special election for the Gainesville District supervisor’s seat.
Departures leave controversial data center projects in limbo By Jill Palermo
Times Staff Writer
Weir will serve the remainder of the term vacated by former supervisor Pete Candland, who resigned from his seat in December 2022 due to conf lict-of-interest concerns. Candland joined his neighbors A Heritage Hunt resident in signing a contract stands on her street corner to sell his family’s with signs, reminding her home and 5 acres on neighbors to vote. Livia Drive to Compass data centers, one of two companies seeking rezonings to develop the Digital Gateway. Weir’s win means the local GOP will retain the Gainesville District seat, and the county board will retain its 5-3 Democratic majority. Weir’s term will be up in December of this year unless he runs for re-election again in November – something he said he had not yet decided as of Tuesday. Turnout in the special election was about 21%, more than double the 10% Prince William County Registrar Eric Olsen said he was expecting in the special election.
The top two members of Prince William County’s professional planning staff resigned this week as several controversial development projects remain in limbo – inMark Buenavista cluding the massive Prince William Digital Gateway at the edge of Manassas National Battlefield Park. County Planning Director Mark Buenavista resigned abruptly Thursday, Feb. 16, and was off the job by Friday. Buenavista left less than one month after reporting to work on Jan. 23 as the planning department’s lead administrator at a salary of $185,000. Buenavista came to the county with a master’s degree in architecture from the University of Virginia and more than nine years’ experience with area county governments, including Fairfax County. Buenavista’s departure followed the resignation earlier this week of his number two: Deputy Planning Director Meika Daus, who announced she would leave in early March. Their resignations were confirmed by Rachel Johnson, a Prince William County spokeswoman. Johnson said the county could not share Buenavista’s and Daus’s letters of resignation, citing personnel issues. Daus is departing after nearly eight years with the county. She holds a master’s degree in landscape architecture from Clemson University. Neither Daus nor Buenavista have returned requests for comment Buenavista is the county’s second planning director to leave without much notice. Former planning director, Parag Agrawal, resigned in October 2021, also after less than a year on the job. Agrawal announced his resignation via email on a Friday and left the same day.
See WEIR, page 2
See RESIGN, page 2
TIMES STAFF PHOTOS/ CHER MUZYK
Weir wins Gainesville supervisor’s race Republican opposes the PW Digital Gateway By Cher Muzyk and Jill Palermo
Times Staff Writer
Republican Bob Weir, a vocal and longtime critic of the Prince William Digital Gateway and other data center developments in western Prince William County, handily won Tuesday’s special election for the Gainesville District seat with more than 60% of the votes cast, according to still unofficial results from the Virginia Department of Elections. Weir, 60, won nine of the 14 Gainesville precincts as well as the early vote cast in the race. Kerensa Sumers, his Democratic challenger, won five precincts as well as the mailed absentee ballots, garnering about 39% of the votes cast in the race. Weir attributed his win Tuesday night to discontent in the community over the county’s rapidly expanding data center development. “I would say it’s not only a referendum; it’s a mandate,” Weir said in an interview Tuesday night. “It’s a mandate from the Gainesville District about what they want and what they don’t want.”
Senior Living: Pickleball, drumming to the beat, page 9
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