THE FXBG ADVANCE SATURDAY 7/18/26
OUR WEEKLY READER: Cell Phone Tower Next to School. What's that Thing Called Again? Misuse of Force. Mutants
City Staff Met Twice with NOVA Builder About Proposed 150-Foot Telecom Towers Next to City School, Kids’ Baseball Park
By Steve Watkins, ADVANCE EDITOR
UPDATE: FROM THE CITY OF FREDERICKSBURG, 7/16/26:
Regarding the cell towers proposed on City property near Walker Grant Middle School and at the Sunshine Ball Park:
Milestone Towers requested pre-application meetings on these two sites this past May for the May 14th and 28th Technical Review Committee meetings. The meetings discussed the proposed construction of two 150-foot monopole style wireless communications towers and the need for City Council approval of a Special Use Permit and Comprehensive Plan Amendment for each tower project location.
The City has not received a Special Use Permit application or a Comprehensive Plan Amendment request for the towers at this time. However, it is our understanding that Milestone Towers is intending to hold community meetings on the projects, prior to submitting applications to Community Planning and Building Department.
Once applications are received, the Technical Review Committee would review and provide comments on the project prior to scheduling a public hearing with the Planning Commission. In addition, the applicant would need to request that City Council initiate a Comprehensive Plan Amendment prior to scheduling the Planning Commission public hearing.
The City suggests that anyone interested in hearing about these types of projects subscribe to City Notifications, available on the City’s Website: https://www.fredericksburgva.gov/notifyme.
Questions concerning lease terms, land use, and duration of potential agreements are not known at this point, and will be determined if this project finds support through the entitlement process.
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I Don’t Have the Words
By Edie Gross, ADVANCE COLUMNIST
My husband and I were attending a party to celebrate the high school graduation of one of our nieces when he pulled me aside, nodded gently at a woman across the room and whispered, “Can you please remind me of her name?”
I glanced casually in the direction of his nod and spied the familiar face of a long-time friend of our extended family, a woman we’d sat next to or across the table from during countless holiday dinners and special occasions over the last two decades.
But try as I might, I couldn’t come up with her name either. I plumbed the depths of my memory bank to no avail. File not found.
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Misuse of Force
By Michael O’Keefe, ADVANCE CONTRIBUTOR
As a former police officer and attorney, I wrote this essay not long after two United States citizens—Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti—were shot and killed in Minneapolis by federal law enforcement agents during domestic law enforcement operations in the United States. Initially, the feds denied any wrongdoing and cast blame on the victims. They also implied, or said outright, that the federal actors involved had enhanced powers beyond those of civilian police officers. None of these claims were true. Videotape evidence laid bare the factual lies. And our Constitution, Bill of Rights, and case law guide and empower statutes, codes, and policies that govern ALL domestic law enforcement conduct, including conduct involving the use of force.
Just this past week, two more people were stopped and killed by ICE agents, both under disputed and controversial circumstances, one in Houston, and one in Maine.
I was and remain angry that the marauding task force of feds from DHS, ICE, Customs, DOJ, Border Patrol, and who knows what other federal law enforcement agencies have evaded personal accountability by wearing masks and placing electrical tape over their name plates and badge numbers. I’m also angry at the politicians and political appointees who encourage and cheer on the task force. Collectively, they almost make me feel ashamed to have worn the badge
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The Family Heart, Part 3: Mutants
By Steve Watkins, ADVANCE EDITOR
I woke up the other morning thinking about an artificial heart. Not just any artificial heart, but a specific one, made of titanium, implanted last year in a 40-year-old Australian man who was in such severe heart failure that most days he could barely make it to the toilet. He was the sixth person in the world to get the new device, and the first to ever be discharged from the hospital with a fully artificial heart and able to live on his own. It kept him alive for a hundred and five days, until he was finally matched with a donor, making him one of 5,000 heart transplant recipients worldwide last year out of more than 50,000 on waiting lists, most of whom died, or will die, with their original, failing hearts. There have been other artificial devices over the past 60 years, all of which have been temporary—a way to keep patients alive long enough to get the real thing. The titanium heart, though, is meant to be forever.
I’m not on anybody’s transplant list—too old; too conflicted--but I could use a new heart. A cardiologist told me this a few of months ago after I had a sudden bout of ventricular tachycardia while out walking our dog. It was a warm, bright day in late January. Luke and I were on the sidewalk at the end of our two-mile hike, just passing in front of the next-door neighbors’ house, when the lower chamber of my heart suddenly, and for no apparent reason, jumped from 75 beats a minute to more than 150, too fast to pump blood to the rest of my body. Everything shut down. I sagged halfway to the ground, what they call pre-syncope, and would have kept falling, helpless to stop what was happening. But then, 13 seconds into the episode, the CRT-D device implanted in my chest fired off a controlled burst of electrical impulses that interrupted the V-tach and put me back into normal rhythm.
CRT-D stands for “Cardiac Resynchronization Therapy with Defibrillator,” a mouthful, I know. It’s a combination pacemaker and implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, or ICD, for people suffering from heart conditions that put them at a high risk of sudden cardiac death.
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