Observer Weekly

Observer Weekly May 28, 2026 Jefferson County, WV news & events For many of us, Memorial Day signals the start of summer and perhaps a little more time to relax. For schools and governments, it signals the end of the fiscal year is arriving. This week most of Jefferson County’s state legislators held an open forum to recap what they did in Charleston during this year’s legislative session. As usual for these types of discussions lately, the most animated conversations were about data centers....

Observer Weekly May 21, 2026 Jefferson County, WV news & events Data Centers were on the agenda for several presentations during this week’s interim session of the WV House of Delegates. There were no new announcements and few voices advocating for any changes to the state’s HB 2014 framework for data center projects, although Chris Morris, the director of the WV Data Economy Office did acknowledge that communication with communities about these projects has been “lacking” so far. Closer to...

Observer Weekly May 14, 2026 Jefferson County, WV news & events There will be a full slate of candidates on the Jefferson County ballot this fall running for County Commission and local House of Delegates seats. Only the Prosecuting Attorney and the State Senate race in District 16 will be uncontested. We’ve summarized the Jefferson County primary election results below — there were no real surprises in these races. If you’re interested in results elsewhere in West Virginia, Mountain State...

Observer Weekly May 7, 2026 Jefferson County, WV news & events Last week The Observer broke the news about a data center project near Summit Point. This week we watched a workshop for a project being proposed about 6 miles to the west, in Frederick County VA. What struck us most when watching the video (link below) was the willingness of the developer to offer specific proffers to address noise, setbacks, water usage, and other concerns from the community. It remains to be seen whether data...

Observer Weekly April 30, 2026 Jefferson County, WV news & events Jefferson County seems to have its own chapter of the Little Rascal’s “he-man woman-haters club” judging by the attack advertising aimed at Cara Keys, currently the only female serving on the Jefferson County Commission (story below). We’ll leave it to our readers to decide who is playing Spanky and who is playing Alfalfa in this case. Despite the political games, we occasionally see some glimmers of adults working together to...

Observer Weekly April 23, 2026 Jefferson County, WV news & events The County Commission has made a big deal of how the commissioners have been working well with each other to focus on county business over the past two years. That happy-face gloss faded a bit over the past two weeks as it became clear that political jockeying was going on behind closed doors. There had been hints that Commissioner Steve Stolipher was not happy with Commissioner Cara Keys being on the Planning Commission and...

Observer Weekly April 16, 2026 Jefferson County, WV news & events We hear a lot of talk about how important tourism is to Jefferson County, but this week we got to hear from folks who are actually making it work day-to-day and planning for how it might be even better for the county in the future. Individually the pieces might look small, but when you can connect things together they can have an impact on what’s already a significant part of the local economy. Speaking of local, both the...