by Nicki Bland

Dear Chair Wheeler,

I am writing in support of you as Chair of Prince William County’s Board of County Supervisors. Many of us want more for PWC: opportunity for all, jobs in our own county, equitable housing and schooling, and improved infrastructure. Your leadership has resulted in steady progress toward these objectives.

The opposition claims that your retirement investments are a conflict of interest, but show me a single 401K that DOESN’T include data center stocks, a move encouraged by countless retirement portfolio advisors. This recall attempt is smoke and mirrors, conjured up by those who want to keep PWC in the past and stop real economic progress, namely the PW Digital Gateway (PWDG).

The PWDG is the single biggest economic opportunity to leap frog our county into the present. We have always lagged behind our neighbors as an island of stagnation in a sea of opportunity. Counties to the South and West are snagging opportunities for economic development that could have been ours. The Rural Crescent is one of PWC’s most spectacular policy failures and its time we recognized its effective and actual expiration.

I am a proud member of the PWDG, seeking to bring opportunity to our county. Yes, the PWDG proposal is a financial opportunity for us personally. But before PWDG opponents cry “HYPOCRISY” remember: Heritage Hunt, Thunder Oaks, Piedmont, Gainesville Crossing, and every other business park, housing development, and shopping center in our County were also born from opportunities for landowners to benefit economically. It’s a tale as old as time. But for farmers selling to developers, PWC as we know it today would not exist.

Pageland is one of the last bastions of economic opportunity for PWC. It is the de facto extension of the PW parkway in every way but it’s name, thanks to the commuter and industrial traffic, and transmission lines that have all but killed farming and caused severely negative environmental and health related fallout. “Rural” by definition means “living in the country, rustic, and agricultural.” Pageland may have been that once, but those are bygone days.

Stand strong knowing there are many of us who support your continued leadership. I’m proud of the work you are doing and proud to say I am part of a proposal that will change our collective futures.

Sincerely,
Nicki Bland
Pageland Land Owner