To the Editor: After reading your article, “Mega Site gets positive response from businesses,” it’s no wonder residents fear getting involved in issues happening in their community. You report how once the announcement was made of this planned Megasite, “That’s about the time the shouting began.” BARD, formed in 2006 to fight the Branner Station development, started to reorganize to once again provide citizens with information about this site that the county is failing to provide. To be called a “thorn in the side of the Chesterfield Economic Development Authority” wrongly dismisses the work this group is doing to ensure…
Browsing: Commentary
Last week, a person in the county died in an early morning house fire. I have not seen the findings of the investigation, but I wanted to talk about three things that contribute to or lead to a fire fatality. One of the many purposes of the fire service is to prevent fires from occurring. Since fires are nearly impossible to prevent, then great emphasis is placed on preventing the loss of life. When loss of life occurs, due to fire, we need to talk about it. Smoke alarms are the early warning devices that wake us up or simply…
Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. I thought I would get a jump on next week’s article while I sit here waiting for my rock to arrive. We are talking about limestone…gravel rock…the stuff that finds a way to hit your car windshield type of rock. I live on a short private lane; a lane that was cut from the main road down to the lake which allowed several houses to be built along the road, of which one is mine. The road obviously does not get a lot of traffic since it is a…
Twenty years goes by like a flash of lightning that sends your dog jumping into your lap. Linda and I, who started the Village News twenty years ago, have worked toward a deadline every week since August 20, 1998. Linda and I have decided to retire. We will be passing the Village News down to our son, Elliott, who knows the business as much as Linda or me. Nothing will change for the reader; you can still expect the same great coverage of Chester’s news and events. Not every story has been a happy one but everyone has been uniquely…
I have been a member of the Chester Business Association for many years. I do not concur with their board’s letter to the editor that supports the Matoaca Mega Site in a residential area. I initially thought that the Matoaca Mega Site made good business sense to be developed in Chesterfield County as proposed in August 2017 by Gov. Terry McAuliffe. Since last summer there has been a major change on the horizon of Chesterfield County business development, i.e. the implosion of the Tranlin Paper manufacturing site at the James River Industrial Center as reported in October 2017. In my…
Chester by way of Montana. That’s the route of Caleb M. Soptelean, the Village News’s new editor/reporter. Soptelean comes to the newspaper with 20 years of experience as either a newspaper reporter or editor. He fills the position of founding editor Mark Fausz, who plans to enjoy his retirement years as much as possible. Soptelean, 47, grew up in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in rural eastern Ohio, about 65 miles of Pittsburgh. He is pleased to be back in the Old Dominion, closer to his daughters in Hampton Roads. He has covered a variety of beats over the…
In 1989, I received my certification as a cardiac technician, and in 1991, I became a nationally registered paramedic. So, for over twenty years, I did Advanced Life Support as a firefighter. This certification required numerous hours of continuing education and the requirement to renew my certification through the Virginia Office of EMS every two years. I retired from active duty firefighting in 2010 and allowed all my medical certifications to lapse. I have been asked by some, “Why would you ever let your certifications lapse, after all that it took for you to obtain them?” My answer has been…
Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. The good news is that we are now in the month of March and closer to spring than ever before…come on spring! I am so tired of cold, yucky weather. Even if it is cold out or there is snow on the ground…everything is made better when the sun is shining full-force on my face. One thing I do not like on my face is the pressure caused by sinus inflammation. About this time of the year, my sinuses decide to let me know that they are around. The…
Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. I had to think a minute or two about the title of this article since I was going to say “Dodged a bullet.” But in today’s environment that would be probably not be good thing to do, even though we all know that we do not mean this literally. So what did we dodge this week in the Dogpound? I, once again, came very close to locking myself out of my office. For some strange reason the locks in our offices do not always release the push-button on the…
Hello and welcome back to the wonderful world of the Dogpound. Well, not so great; one of my water lines froze up and as of this writing my plumber has not been able to determine if the line is frozen under the house or outside where it joins the water meter. Well, good news [a few days later], we had a break in the cold weather and I now have running water. Yea! As far as I can tell, there was no permanent damage, but I won’t know for sure until the plumber gets under the house where he will…