King George Writes 25-Cent Check to Fredericksburg Regional Alliance
Board reduced support of FRA to $1 for fiscal year 2025. Supervisors have been vocal about their unhappiness with the organization's role in bringing data centers to the region.
By Adele Uphaus
MANAGING EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT
Email Adele
King George County last week mailed a check for 25-cents to the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance and paid 69-cents in postage to do it.
The county Board of Supervisors in May voted to reduce annual support for the Fredericksburg Regional Alliance from $26,229 to $26,228, leaving $1 for FRA in the county budget for fiscal year 2025, which began July 1.
FRA is a public/private partnership that works to support existing businesses and recruit new businesses to Fredericksburg and the surrounding counties of Stafford, Spotsylvania, Caroline, and King George.
The alliance has been promoting the Fredericksburg region to data center developers since 2016. It has worked with local jurisdictions and energy providers to identify suitable sites and develop a regional depreciation rate for data center equipment and business tax rate for data centers, so the jurisdictions would not be competing with each other.
The King George supervisors’ vote to reduce funding for FRA is a signal of their unhappiness with its role in bringing data centers to the region.
As soon as the new board was seated in January, they voted to “renegotiate” a performance agreement with Amazon Web Services—which proposed to operate a data center on the site of the Birchwood Power Plant. The agreement was signed in December of 2023 by then-Chair Richard Granger.
According to emails from County Attorney Richard Stuart to Charlie Payne, the attorney representing AWS, the board wants the agreement to include a commitment from AWS to provide “at least” 2 million gallons of treated drinking water to the county, among other requirements.
But AWS contends that the performance agreement as signed in December remains in effect and cannot be renegotiated unless the board reaffirms it.
Roberts told the Advance that it is typical for counties to make their annual payments to FRA in quarterly installments. But in an email sent Tuesday, Roberts asked King George County Administrator Matthew Smolnik not to make out a check for the small amount.
“It was brought to my attention that the County intended to send us a check for $.25 as an installment on the $1 budgeted for this fiscal year,” Roberts wrote. “Knowing how difficult bookkeeping can be on a local government, please don’t send checks for that amount as we will not pay the postage to return them.”
In Tuesday’s email exchange with Roberts, Smolnik also asked FRA to return a $27,000 check representing a contribution made in July to the FRA from the King George Economic Development Authority, which has its own budget separate from the county’s.
Board of Supervisors Chair T.C. Collins cited this contribution—which he contended the EDA did not have the authority to grant—among the reasons for motioning last month to remove all sitting members of the EDA, a motion that supervisors approved unanimously.
Roberts replied, “Last week we made a check out to the EDA in the amount of the contribution, and it is being sent via certified mail to your attention tomorrow.”
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