CAN VIKINGS WIN ONE MORE? The Woodbridge girls go for the state title Wednesday. Page 15
March 6, 2019 | Vol. 18, No. 10 | www.princewilliamtimes.com | 50¢ Covering Prince William County and surrounding communities, including Gainesville, Haymarket, Dumfries, Occoquan, Quantico and the cities of Manassas and Manassas Park.
Superintendent proposes raises for school board members Members mull their first raise in nearly two decades By Jill Palermo
Times Staff Writer
Prince William County has the second-largest school division in Virginia. But its school board pay
– at $12,000 annually for members and $13,100 for chairman – is on par with that of divisions less than one-quarter its size. What’s more, the county school board hasn’t upped its salary in 19 years. Is it time for a raise? Superintendent Steven Walts thinks so. Tucked into the school division’s $1.1 billion operating budget
for the 2019-2020 school year is a proposal to raise school board members’ salaries to $26,020 a year and the chairman’s pay to $29,040 a year. During a Feb. 27 school board budget work session, Walts explained how he arrived at the new amount. It’s equal to what the school board members would be making in fiscal year 2020 if they’d given
themselves raises matching those they granted teachers and staff over the past 19 years. Teachers and staff raises varied during those years from 4 percent to 1 percent to “zero,” Walts said. So, while the school board members would effectively receive a See SCHOOL BOARD, page 4
Recycling glass a thing of the past? In Prince William, it already is By Jill Palermo
Times Staff Writer
Hate to break it to you Prince William County, but the glass bottles and jars you dutifully toss into your recycling bins now end up in the landfill. It didn’t used to be that way. But a combination of logistics and the single-stream process used to sort through most of Northern Virginia’s recyclables have combined to make recycling glass more trouble than it’s worth. And that’s just one of the challenges currently facing privately owned recycling processors and local governments in Northern Virginia and across the nation. Recent changes in the markets for recyclable materials – for glass as well as some categories of plastics and paper – have officials considering changes to local laws that dictate which items must be separated for recycling. Tom Smith, director of Prince William’s Solid Waste Division, said the county is working on a plan to eliminate glass from curbside-collection requirements because most of what goes into haulers’ trucks ends up in the landfill anyway. That’s partly because the nearest “glass beneficiation” facilities – places that clean and process glass – are in North Carolina and Pennsylvania, which is too far away for recycling companies to haul the material and still make a profit.
PHOTO BY DELIA ENGSTROM.
Crews pick up the contents of curbside recycling bins on a recent Monday morning in Montclair. Glass is currently included in the items haulers pick up for recycling, but that might change soon.
See RECYCLING, page 4
INSIDE Business.............................................17 Calendar.............................................20 Classified............................................23 Obituaries...........................................22
Opinion...............................................13 Puzzle Page........................................14 Real Estate..........................................21 Sports.................................................15
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