When data centers pull the plug
May 5: The industry watchdog that monitors what data centers do to our electrical grid issued its highest warning yesterday—a level 3 alert—for only the third time in its history. The catalyst? Data centers in Virginia and Texas abruptly disconnecting from the grid in 2024 and 2025, threatening widespread blackouts.
Staunton’s cross(ing) is hard to bear
May 1: We’re now more than three weeks into the 90-day timetable Tim Davey gave Staunton City Council for updating the Staunton Crossing master plan, and so far there’s been no word on how or when this process will begin, or how the city’s residents will be included. That’s a problem, and more so if the city is seriously thinking of trying to land a data center.
United Way: new bottle, same vinegar
April 22: United Way of Central Shenandoah Valley is pelting me with fund-raising appeals that stress how useful it is, helping people with free tax preparation services and providing kids with free back-to-school backpacks. But it’s still contributing only 30 cents of every dollar of the donations it solicits to local social service providers—you know, the agencies that deal with the little things in life, like food, shelter and health care.
Data center FOMO with a side of nuke
April 13: Nice town you have here. Be a shame if it was the only one in Virginia without a data center to juice property tax revenues. And oh, yeah—just to sweeten the pot, whaddya say to building a small nuke to feed the beast?
There’s thrifty, and then there’s cheap
April 5: Staunton is looking at tens of millions of dollars in long overdue maintenance of its physical infrastructure, so why is it looking at increasing the average household’s water and sewer bills by just $7.41 a month? At that rate, it won’t be able to replace its century-old main water pipelines for another 81 years—but at least it’ll have bragging rights for its low taxes and cheap utility rates.
A solid ‘A’ on Staunton’s report card
Feb. 28: A biannual survey of Staunton residents, only the second time it’s been taken, shows a huge jump in confidence in city government and an overall high level of satisfaction with living here. But economic anxiety is running high, and there are hard to interpret concerns about the city’s utility infrstructure.
Put your money where your mouth is
Feb. 10: The city is currently trying to figure how to prioritize next year’s spending—and the choices it’s making in some cases reflect badly on its values and its unwillingness to bite the bullet.
The deadly combination of fire and ice
Jan. 31: Here’s a quick thought experiment: next time you’re driving around, today or tomorrow, look around and see how many fire hydrants are visible. Now think about the implications of what you’ve just seen.
It’s not just the weather that’s chilly
Jan. 26: Well, this is a Fern mess we’re in. Seven inches of “snow,” actually tiny and therefore densely packed crystals that have frozen into slabs of ice. Sub-freezing temperatures that will drop into low single digits every night this week and won’t break above 32 degrees for at least another week. And a tone-deaf city government whose main concern is that you follow its rules about clearing the “snowfall” from its relatively few sidewalks.
Who has the Death Star plans?
Jan. 10, 2026: Lest anyone remain skeptical that life imitates art, the past week’s events should dispel all doubts. In the space of just a few days our very own Emperor Palpatine unleashed his storm troopers with deadly effect, killing more than 80 in an unprovoked attack on Venezuela while also shooting a 37-year-old Minneapolis woman in the head. Cue Darth Vader’s “Imperial March.”
Macy’s ‘tough crowd’ was just rude
Nov. 25: Beth Macy has become the third Democrat to announce her candidacy for the Sixth Congressional District currently held by absentee Republican Ben Cline. Unfortunately, what she learned yesterday on the first stop of her listening tour is that some potential voters are more interested in hearing themselves talk, even going so far as to film the whole exchange while talking into a cell phone.
Paper or cell phone? No contest.
October 31: When did it become a given that you are no longer an accepted member of society if you don’t have a cell phone? And who’s the bright bulb who decided a QR code is an appropriate replacement for an old-fashioned paper map—the kind that gives you a bird’s eye view of where you are and where you can go without having to squint at a tiny screen?
Staunton Crossing dissonance
October 24: Sixteen years and roughly $30 million later, Staunton Crossing has brought in a less than impressive 200 or so jobs. When will the balance of that 300-acre site ever pull its weight? Hard to say, partly because the city has been less than forthright about what kind of industries it wants to bring in, or at what environmental cost.
A ‘Failure to Act,’ a 28% water loss
October 3: Here’s what I learned in school this week: that for the past decade, the American Society of Civil Engineers has awarded the nation’s water infrastructure a D-minus, or just a hair above an F. That isn’t an academic abstraction, nor is it irrelevant to Staunton—not when 28% of all the water produced by the city’s treatment plant simply disappears, at a rate that’s almost twice the national average.
‘Unknown causes?’ Give me a break!
Sept. 12: Claiming that Staunton’s major water main break had “unknown causes” amounts to whistling past the cemetery. Most if not all of the city’s biggest water mains are made of brittle cast iron, which has an expected useful life of 100 years—and that centennial anniversary will be reached this coming January. The only “unknown”? How soon before the next rupture.
(Re)turning the tables
August 25: Fans of Bed, Bath and Beyond may take solace that it lives on as an internet ghost, selling its wares online and preparing to reenter the brick-and-mortar world with new storefronts. But its management under Marcus Lemonis, who strangled another middle-class institution known as Good Sam, doesn’t augur well for the future.
The main question: why did it break?
August 18: Why did a 16-inch water main break last week, in the middle of summer, closing schools for two days and disrupting businesses?? And what does that say about where we’ve placed our priorities when it comes to spending scarce capital investment money on behalf of city residents?
Let’s not send our water into the cloud
August 13: That million-gallon water tank looming over I-81 a year is being built mostly to supply coolant for a proposed data center that a) will bring few jobs to the city; b) will threaten an already precarious drinking water supply; and c) will result in as-yet-incalculable higher electricity bills for the area. Maybe we should be rethinking the Staunton Crossing master plan?
If you don’t sell it, it won’t sell
August 6: You might think, with the $7,500 federal tax credit for EVs set to expire at the end of September, that car dealers would be making a huge push to get buyers in the door before that inducement evaporates. But to do that requires them to believe in their product—and in Staunton, at least, that seems not to be the case.
Looking askance 