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A Bristow resident speaks in opposition to the Devlin Technology Park during a press conference held outside the James J. McCoart Administration Building ahead of the supervisors' Feb. 7 meeting.
Mark Buenavista resigned from the county's top planning post only about three weeks after taking the job. His deputy planning director resigned earlier this week.
A Bristow resident speaks in opposition to the Devlin Technology Park during a press conference held outside the James J. McCoart Administration Building ahead of the supervisors' Feb. 7 meeting.
The top two members of Prince William County’s professional planning staff resigned this week as several controversial development projects remain in limbo – including 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.
Mark Buenavista resigned from the county's top planning post only about three weeks after taking the job. His deputy planning director resigned earlier this week.
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Buenavista left less than one month after reporting to work as the planning department’s lead administrator on Jan. 23, at an annual 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.
Meika Daus, Prince William County's deputy planning director, presents the controversial Devlin Technology Park to the supervisors on Feb. 7.
John Calhoun
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, according to her LinkedIn page. She holds a master’s degree in landscape architecture from Clemson University.
Efforts to reach both Daus and Buenavista for comment were not immediately successful Friday afternoon.
The county planning office lost its "current planning manager" earlier this month when Stephen Gardner left after about 18 months in the department. Gardner previously worked for Fairfax and Loudoun counties and holds a master’s degree in community planning from the University of Cincinnati.
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.
Agrawal was hired in November 2020 to take over when former planning director Rebecca Horner was promoted to her job as deputy county executive. Horner oversees the planning department as well as development services, economic development, parks, recreation and tourism, public works and transportation.
“The three top positions in the planning office all jumped ship. That says a lot,” said Supervisor Jeanine Lawson, R-Brentsville, in reaction to the news Friday afternoon.
Lawson has several data centers in her district but opposes the Prince William Digital Gateway and has taken an increasingly dim view of data center projects as resident opposition has intensified. Lawson has said she will not support the Devlin Technology Park.
Lawson said she understands that members of the county’s planning staff have come under pressure from Board of Supervisors Chair Ann Wheeler, D-At Large, and others to move through projects quickly despite their professional reservations.
“I strongly believe the chair is interfering in planning decisions that should be made objectively based on planning staff’s professional expertise,” Lawson said. “We have a planning department that is being wrongly influenced by elected officials.”
Asked to respond, Wheeler denied the accusation Friday night.
“I have never asked staff to go against their professional judgment,” Wheeler said in a text message. “What Supervisor Lawson believes is just her opinion and does not make it fact.”
Wheeler declined a further interview.
Supervisor Margaret Franklin, D-Woodbridge, declined to comment Friday on the reasons behind the resignations but offered this regarding the planning director's post: “I think we need to find the best person who can both take and handle this job.”
Supervisors Kenny Boddye, D-Occoquan, and Victor Angry, D-Neabsco, did not return requests for comment Friday afternoon.
The turnover comes as the county’s planning department works through several controversial projects that have Prince William County on track to become the data center capital of the world -- despite significant and growing pushback from residents of Brentsville, Bristow and Gainesville.
Projects currently under review include three rezonings in connection with the Prince William Digital Gateway, a project that aims to bring up to 27.6 million square feet of data center development on 2,139 acres directly north of the Manassas battlefield. The amount is nearly equal to all of the data center development in Loudoun County, which currently has the highest concentration of data centers in the world.
Additional data center projects under review in Prince William include the Devlin Technology Park, which seeks approval for up to 14 data centers on about 270 acres near Devlin and Linton Hall Roads in Bristow. The board is also set to vote in the coming weeks on the John Marshall Technology Park, which would allow a 70-foot-tall data center within about 110 feet of PACE West School, a Prince William County School for at-risk students. That project is near Interstate 66, Catharpin Road and John Marshall Highway in Haymarket.
This map highlights the growing footprint of data centers in Prince William County as the board of supervisors weighs a controversial proposal to create the 2,100-acre Prince William Digital Gateway. The corridor, adjacent to the Manassas National Battlefield Park and in the protected rural crescent, could make the county the largest data center hub in the United States, surpassing Loudoun County.
Residents opposed to the Prince William Digital Gateway and the Devlin Technology Park because of their massive scale and their proximity to homes and schools, expressed concern about the resignations Friday and speculated about the message the county’s top planning staff members are trying to send with their decisions to leave.
Roger Yackel, a resident of Heritage Hunt who filed a lawsuit against the county board over the Prince William Digital Gateway vote, said he suspects the county’s planning staff is trying to do their best in a very tough environment.
“It’s a horrible position to work in a place where you want to do the right thing … but there’s too much development pressure and too much political pressure that you’re caught between a rock and a hard place,” he said. “It means less critical questions are being asked.”
Heritage Hunt is an active-55 community in Gainesville of about 3,500 residents that abuts the Prince William Digital Gateway planning area. Yackel and others have waged a months-long campaign of opposition to the Digital Gateway and in support of recalling Wheeler and former Gainesville supervisor Peter Candland from office. Candland resigned in December amid conflict-of-interest concerns related to his decision to sell his home and 5.7 acres to QTS, one of the developers involved in the Digital Gateway project.
Kathy Kulick, a Gainesville resident who serves as vice chair of the HOA Roundtable of Northern Virginia, a coalition of 65 homeowners associations that formed in opposition to the Digital Gateway, said the resignations suggest the county “is coming apart at the seams.”
“The pressure on staff members to deliver recommendations of approval, for highly impactful data center projects is enormous, and there are indications that thorough and complete reviews are not being performed,” Kulick said.
Kulick said the resignations are a sign that something is wrong in the planning department and with the county’s review process for land-use cases. She said every pending case should be placed on hold until the review process can be audited.
“The sudden and coincident departure of three of the most important public officials in the county planning office may be telling us the conditions under which they were asked to perform their jobs were not only unreasonable, but that it unfairly tested their personal ethics and standards,” she said.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly identified Stephen Gardner as a deputy planning director in the Prince William County planning department. Gardner's position was "current planning manager." The Times regrets the error.
Another recent planning office resignation was senior planner Bryce Barrett. He was the lead planner for I-66/29 Technology Park when that extremely controversial project was approved in Dec 2021.
After Dec 2021 he was working on the PW Digital Gateway CPA. In 2022 he left the planning office and moved to a different department. It should be noted that the I-66/29 Technology Park data center proposal ended up going into closed session with the county attorney because of improprieties - but Supervisors approved anyway.
Maybe Mr. Barrett found a better opportunity elsewhere. Or maybe going from the controversy of I-66/29 Technology Park to the PW Digital Gateway was like going from the frying pan into the fire and he chose to leave instead.
If it is about violating the AIPC Code of Ethics, is there a mechanism to find out what the planner objected to? How would it protect the public interest to resign if the public still doesn't know what is going on? Are there FOIA requests that would help? There's a lot at stake here.
The Prince William County Planning Office is obviously in turmoil. Here are some questions that require answers:
* Why did former Planning Director Parag Agrawal resign abruptly after less than a year on the job?
* Why did Deputy County Executive for Community Development Rebecca Horner remain dual-hatted in a compromised role as acting Planning Director for nearly fifteen months when workload clearly warranted hiring a permanent successor?
* Why was Ms. Horner so averse to transparency in the planning process? Her office declined to reply to a July 5, 2022 letter from an attorney for the Gainesville Citizens for Smart Growth expressing concern over her office’s obstruction of legitimate citizen inquiries and withheld critical information from the public in advance of the September 14th Planning Commission hearing on the Prince William Digital Gateway.
* The American Institute of Certified Planners has a detailed Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct which calls on members to faithfully serve the public interest and resist improper influences. Are we confident the Planning Office has been strictly adhering to those provisions?
In addition to the resignations mentioned in this article -- In November 2022, after the substantial irregularities that took place at the Planning Commission meeting for the PW Digital Gateway, Planning Commissioner Perry (Occoquan District) resigned. He bravely abstained instead of voting to approve the PW Digital Gateway CPA - even though it meant going against the Democratic bloc that was voting in favor. About two weeks later he resigned.
The AIPC Code of Ethics states "Our primary obligation as planners and active participants in the planning process is to serve the public interest". Every PWC planner should either speak up or resign because as this ugly process gets more and more exposed - it's going to be their reputation at stake.
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(4) comments
Another recent planning office resignation was senior planner Bryce Barrett. He was the lead planner for I-66/29 Technology Park when that extremely controversial project was approved in Dec 2021.
After Dec 2021 he was working on the PW Digital Gateway CPA. In 2022 he left the planning office and moved to a different department. It should be noted that the I-66/29 Technology Park data center proposal ended up going into closed session with the county attorney because of improprieties - but Supervisors approved anyway.
Maybe Mr. Barrett found a better opportunity elsewhere. Or maybe going from the controversy of I-66/29 Technology Park to the PW Digital Gateway was like going from the frying pan into the fire and he chose to leave instead.
If it is about violating the AIPC Code of Ethics, is there a mechanism to find out what the planner objected to? How would it protect the public interest to resign if the public still doesn't know what is going on? Are there FOIA requests that would help? There's a lot at stake here.
The Prince William County Planning Office is obviously in turmoil. Here are some questions that require answers:
* Why did former Planning Director Parag Agrawal resign abruptly after less than a year on the job?
* Why did Deputy County Executive for Community Development Rebecca Horner remain dual-hatted in a compromised role as acting Planning Director for nearly fifteen months when workload clearly warranted hiring a permanent successor?
* Why was Ms. Horner so averse to transparency in the planning process? Her office declined to reply to a July 5, 2022 letter from an attorney for the Gainesville Citizens for Smart Growth expressing concern over her office’s obstruction of legitimate citizen inquiries and withheld critical information from the public in advance of the September 14th Planning Commission hearing on the Prince William Digital Gateway.
* The American Institute of Certified Planners has a detailed Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct which calls on members to faithfully serve the public interest and resist improper influences. Are we confident the Planning Office has been strictly adhering to those provisions?
In addition to the resignations mentioned in this article -- In November 2022, after the substantial irregularities that took place at the Planning Commission meeting for the PW Digital Gateway, Planning Commissioner Perry (Occoquan District) resigned. He bravely abstained instead of voting to approve the PW Digital Gateway CPA - even though it meant going against the Democratic bloc that was voting in favor. About two weeks later he resigned.
The AIPC Code of Ethics states "Our primary obligation as planners and active participants in the planning process is to serve the public interest". Every PWC planner should either speak up or resign because as this ugly process gets more and more exposed - it's going to be their reputation at stake.
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Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.