Dear Coalition Friends and Supporters,
No mincing of words, no flowery prose. Very simply, the Virginia Court of Appeals dealt yet another blow (near fatal this time) to the Digital Gateway “Robber Barons.”
NOW we need OUR representatives on OUR Board of Supervisors — whom WE elected to represent OUR interests — to END this self-inflicted wound from the failed leadership of Ann Wheeler.
PWC BOCS: WITHDRAW FROM THIS LAWSUIT. Stop using OUR taxpayer money to defend this industrial abomination.
Access this easy click to send.
Judges favor local residents in Digital Gateway case | Prince William | insidenova.com
A three-judge Virginia Court of Appeals panel on Tuesday ruled in favor of the Oak Valley Homeowners Association and the American Battlefield Trust in two legal challenges against the controversial PW Digital Gateway data center project in western Prince William County.
Virginia Court of Appeals Judges Stuart A. Raphael, Randolph A. Beales and David Bernhard ruled unanimously in the consolidated opinion.
The two cases, Oak Valley Homeowners Association, Inc., et al. v. Prince William County Board of County Supervisors, et al. and Katy Burke et al. v. Board of County Supervisors were jointly heard in a Feb. 24 hearing in Arlington.
“Our community never gave up and never gave in,” the Coalition to Protect Prince William County said in a statement Tuesday. “We are so proud of the dedication of citizens, non-profits and our justice system that followed the rule of law. The Digital Gateway represents everything that is broken with the data center industry. From the distortion of good local governance, to the complete abdication of oversight on an industry that is taking too much…power, water, and land…this community never relented.”
BREAKING: Digital Gateway suffers another blow in court | Localnews | princewilliamtimes.com
The Prince William Digital Gateway – a controversial plan to allow 37 data centers at the edge of the Manassas National Battlefield Park – suffered another major blow in court Tuesday, when the Virginia Court of Appeals ruled in favor of two lawsuits trying to kill it.
The court’s opinion, released Tuesday, March 31, affirmed an earlier ruling by Prince William County Circuit Court Judge Kimberly Irving, who declared the three rezonings underpinning the project void last August due to the county’s failure to comply with Virginia’s public notice law ahead of the Prince William County Board of Supervisors’ December 2023 vote to approve the project.
“This is a fabulous win for the community and for Prince William County,” said Mac Haddow, president of the Oak Valley Homeowners Association. “We can now move forward with good, responsible land-use planning for data centers going forward.”
“Haddow said the ruling confirms what the residents have been arguing “from the very start.”
“The decision made by the Prince William Board of County Supervisors was wrong,” Haddow said. “This decision never should have been made to rezone.”
Life rarely, if ever, provides opportunities for do-overs. The board was warned, before that fateful vote on December 13, 2023, that there was a defective notice. And yet, five supervisors (Wheeler, Bailey, Angry, Boddye, and Franklin) with their votes of 4 YES and 1 Abstention, sealed our fate for the next 2 1/2 years. Now is the time to undo that vote, which resulted in dragging an entire county through this debacle. The past cannot be changed, but the future can be written a better way. We hope all of the supervisors will now do the right thing!
Remember this letter: County-Attorney-Robl-memo-11-30-23.pdf
The Virginia Appellate Court has ruled. It is time to return some semblance of normalcy to a proper land use process in Prince William County. It is time to return trust to a broken process.
Digital Gateway lawsuit Appellate Court decision 033126
(emphasis added below)
For the reasons set forth below, we hold that one or more of the Oak Valley plaintiffs has standing to challenge all three rezonings. We further hold that Judge Irving correctly found that the Board’s advertising for the December 2023 public hearing violated Code § 15.2-2204(A) and Prince William County Zoning Ordinance § 32-700.60, rendering those rezonings void ab initio.
In Burke, we hold that Judge Hudson erred in sustaining the Board’s demurrer to the landowners’ claims in Count IX, which raised the same advertising deficiencies on which we affirm the judgment invalidating the rezoning ordinances in the PWC appeals.
There is no reason to remand Burke for further proceedings in the trial court, however, as our ruling in the PWC appeals moots the Burke plaintiffs’ need for further relief.
In resolving these appeals, we make clear that a public body must advertise proposed zoning ordinances in compliance with Code § 15.2-2204(A) and with any non-conflicting advertising requirements self-imposed by ordinance. The saving provision in Code § 15.2-2204(B)—which
– 5 -excuses a violation of the written-notice requirement for affected and adjacent landowners who had “actual notice of” the hearing or who actively participated in it—does not excuse advertising deficiencies under subsection A. In other words, in a timely challenge brought under
Code § 15.2-2204(E), a plaintiff who alleges and proves standing may enforce the mandatory public advertising requirements, even if the plaintiff knew about and actively participated in the public
hearing.
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