My Side of the Fence

There was a letter to the editor today (or maybe a guest column) about the uncontested race for City Council. I agree with Ms. Scott that there should have been more people running but that was not to be. I would like to make two points:

1. There is nothing preventing members of other parties (or no party) from running for office. It doesn’t cost that much but it does require a lot of legwork. This isn’t some pie in the sky notion either, Steve R. has been doing it for 25 or so years. All it requires is the will to get up and do it.

2. Dividing the City up into wards or precincts was an idea that I really liked until about a year after my election. I thought it would provide better representation to City residents. However, it would have some unintended side-effects. The first, most important, effect would be that no longer are you represented by 6 Council members, you are represented by 1. This is an important distinction and here’s a quick (true) story as to why:

Say that there is a development going in near your neighborhood. You and yours are mad about it and want to let the Council know about it. You call all of the Council members and they all come to your neighborhood meeting to hear you out. They agree and things happen. They have to happen - your vote helps elect each and every one of them.

Now, run that scenario with a ward system:

You are mad about a development in your area. You call your member of Council and vent. He agrees with you and thinks the development needs to be changed. This is about as far as you are going to get. He is only 1 of 6. The other 5 might think that this project is too important. Heck, the other 5 might not even take meetings with you. You don’t elect them!!!

Having all of the members elected at-large provides the people with more leverage over the actions of the council. All that is required is that the citizens take the time to use that leverage.

Now, there will be those of you that discount what I’m saying as a technicality and believe that I’m afraid for my job or some such.  Let me tell you with complete candor that I’m not all that crazy about this job.  However, if I were inclined to be a life-long elected I would be agitating for a ward system right now.  It would cut the amount of work I need to do in order to get elected by 80%. I live in the Baldwin precinct - why on earth would I knock on doors in Weems, Haydon, Metz or Dean? They don’t elect me so I wouldn’t bother. Neither would anyone else.

This may seem cynical but look at what happens in the District. It would take some time for Manassas to get that way but it would happen.

Please go vote tomorrow.  For whatever it’s worth, I like all of the R’s for City Council and I like the incumbents on the School Board.

I’m starting to hear about the windfall profits tax again on the Oil companies.  Seriously, this is the dumbest idea on the planet.  Well, next to a complete lack of action and/or planning if your country happened to be utterly dependent upon oil for it’s energy requirements.

The budget was, at long last, voted on tonight.  As reported in the MJM, I voted against the first iteration of the budget which included a higher fire levy.  However, it turns out that the Council can’t increase the amount of the budget after it has been advertised.  Therefore, we reconsidered the original motion and it died.  Another motion was made to approve the original budget, as advertised, and it passed 6-0.

Second (and final) reading will be on Wednesday night.

The public hearing for the proposed budget was last night.  We had a pretty full room and a diversity of opinion.  There were only a handful that opposed higher spending on Manassas Next where the majority seemed to favor it.  The Fire & Rescue levy also seemed well supported.  Interestingly, the proposed ICE program for the City took a beating.  There were only 2 people there last night that opposed higher spending period but I have received some emails to this effect as well.

Lower is always better but overall it seems like this budget is coming in about where it needs to be.

In today’s MJM there is an article about the Volunteer Rescue Squad. Towards the end, it seems to imply that the Council did not approve of the Fire levy. My recollection might be a little hazy as it came at the end of a 5 hour meeting but I recall that we approved of a nine cent fire levy.

Here’s the rational:The Manager came to the Council about a month ago and indicated that our Fire/Rescue situation was dire and we needed more staff. The council quickly voted to hire 5 more cross-trained fire-fighters/medics as well as a Fire/Rescue Chief. To pay for all of these guys plus our existing staff requires a levy of 8.5 cents. However, the City Manager’s plan to provide 24/7 coverage by paid emergency staff required an additional 11 fire fighters/medics in the budget year that starts in July. This would have required the full 10 cent levy as well as some money from our rainy day fund. The full cost to pay those fire fighters in 2010 would have required the levy to be raised to somewhere around 12 cents.

My feeling about all of that was that we were rushing into this thing awfully fast and perhaps we should get our Fire/Rescue Chief hired first and let him make the determination if the volunteers need more help and, if so, how much. Adding an extra half-cent to the levy was my idea as it builds a bit of spare cash into the Emergency Services fund. If the Chief rolls into town and says we need more staff, at least that way we won’t have to pay for all of it out of the rainy day fund. If we don’t need more staff, we will leave the money in there so that we can buy fire and/or rescue equipment at some point down the line.In any event, it is crucial that the new Chief work very closely with the volunteers to get things working smoothly.

Barring something extraordinary happening, this is my last post on this year’s budget.  The Council’s budget was presented last night and the public hearing on the budget is set for next Monday night.  Two days after that, the Council will have a budget worksession to address any changes (if any) deemed necessary and from there it goes to first and second readings.  If you have input, next Monday night is the night.

The mark up meeting went until about 11:00 last night. 6 hours makes for a long meeting. At the end of that, the Council did come up with a budget proposal as follows:

101.5 cent tax rate

9 cent fire levy

These numbers represent a 6.46% increase in the budget. At this level, it is a budget I can believe in as includes at least parts of each big ticket item people were interested in. There are 2 ICE positions, 1 patrol officer, 1 financial analyst for the PD, 1 fire chief and several fire fighters (5).

Manassas Next made it through but with a reduction of $75k to the Economic Development initiative. This was at my suggestion as the City staff has indicated that they have no capacity to make new things happen right now. This seriously weakens the initiative but the City is not in a position to add more staff right now so that is the way it goes. On the bright side, the Schools initiative and the Battle street remake went through. Thanks to the School Board Chair and Vice Chair for their support last night and many thanks to my peers on the Council for supporting the initiative.

Well, tonight’s the night.  The Council Mark Up session is where everything that has been brought up as a possible addition, change or deletion to the City Manager’s budget is voted upon.  I think it will be a long meeting tonight as there are several important items to sort through.  Included in there is Manassas Next, ICE and firefighters.  There are usually lots of City staff there and sometimes a couple of citizens.

This is pretty much brass tacks time.

OK, we’re getting down to the wire on the budget.  Today is the last of the departmental presentations and Wednesday is “Markup”.  Markup is the end of the budgetary line where the Council as a whole goes through everything that has been put onto the open items list.  Of course, nothing is set in stone until we vote after the public hearing but markup is a very important point in the process.  Two VERY important dates:

April 14th - 6:45pm - presentation of the Council’s budget.  This will be followed by Citizen’s time @ 7:30.

April 21st - 7:30 - Public hearing on the Council budget.

If you have something to say about the budget, these are the two days to come and speak your mind.

BTW, so far we have had a grand total of 4 (!!!) citizens attend budget work sessions…..

Councilman Marc Aveni’s daughter has, along with some friends, won tickets to see the Pope!  The group entered a contest by creating a video welcoming the Pope and were selected to receive tickets to see the Pope at Nationals stadium.  Congratulations to Olivia and the rest of the group!  I know Marc and family are very proud of her.

Many have asked me about the sign so here it is:

As is indicated in today’s paper, at least part of the matter concerning the Liberty Street Sign has been passed along to the City Atty’s office so I will say no more.

That is all.

I’ve been out of town for a bit and I have some thoughts on the ICE problems over at the jail and some stuff to pass along about Manassas Next but here’s some information you can actually use:

The City is having a household waste drop-off event this weekend - April 5th It will be at the Manassas waste transfer station at 8305 Quarry Road. No fee for City residents.

They’ll take most kinds of electronics including monitors, computers and TV’s as well as the usual paints, oils, solvents, insecticides, batteries and fertilizers.

They will not take industrial waste.

I’m watching HBO’s “John Adams” series. I’m not sure of its historical accuracy but there is some really some good stuff in there. The lines that Ben Franklin delivers are really good. When Ben Franklin is asked “do you not believe in saying what you think? He replies “No, I’m very much against it. Thinking aloud is a habit responsible for much of mankind’s misery”. I am interested to do a little bit of research on the side to confirm that Adams was the near firebrand he appears to be in this series.

One other thing the movie does very well is to reflect the impact on his family. In one scene, his small boy is watching him head off towards Philadelphia and says “I hate the Congress”. I wouldn’t be so dim as to compare the travails of the founders to small-town politics but my family identifies with that sentiment (at the Council level of course) from time to time.

The Council held its first public work session on Manassas Next tonight. In attendance were several citizens, many members of the Manassas Business Council, several City staff members and Mark Wolfe - the republican nominee for Council. I had a presentation that was about 10 slides that went over the pieces of MN and estimated a budget for the first year. I will put that presentation up on the web tomorrow.The presentation and the costs were well recieved. The Vice Mayor suggested that the way to advance MN is to go ahead and insert the costs for MN into the budget for consideration this year. I will do that at the next budget meeting. The strategic planning aspects will have to be taken up by the City Council that is seated in early July.

All of this might seem a bit anti-climatic but I assure you that this is terribly exciting. For the first time in two years, we’re going to start strategic planning. We’re going to start a new public agenda and dialog. I can’t wait. Please do remember that the Council can’t do this without the citizens. We need your help and your input as we are just getting started.

Before I sign off, I’d like to thank all of those who helped. Beyond my family, some would prefer to remain anonymous so I’ll just leave it at that. If you helped, you know who you are and Manassas is better for your involvement. Thanks again and stay close as I know I’ll need everyone’s help before this is over in order to get it all done.

Update:  Here is a link to the presentation I made last night.

There is a work session tomorrow night on Manassas Next.  City Hall - 2nd floor conference room at 5:30.

I know that some think I’ve been kind of absent lately.  I haven’t been causing much of a fuss lately because I’ve been working on something called “Manassas Next”.  It started in late October of last year and I have spent a tremendous amount of time on it.  If you want to know more about Manassas Next, check out the website here.

If you want to comment, please be gentle.  The plan is a strategic plan so there aren’t many details yet.  We’ll get there but  it will take time and it won’t be easy.  The Council is having a public meeting on this the 18th of March.

The Real Estate Tax rate that will be advertised will be $1.15.5 this year. Understand that once the rate is advertised, it may not go higher but it can go lower. This seems high and it is - with good reason:

In the last General Assembly scrum, the law regarding when localities are required to advertise their tax rate was changed. This change required advertisement far in advance (4 weeks I believe) of any public hearings on a real estate tax increase. For this to happen, the Council had to pick a rate last night - after only having had 2 budget meetings.

In some years, this short schedule is not a big deal but the Fire levy is a major change for the City and the Council hasn’t formally approved it yet. However, we did vote to approve the hiring of new fire fighters. This being the case, it seemed wise to pick a rate that would allow us to hire fire fighters even if the fire levy doesn’t make it through the process. Of course, w/o the fire levy hiring the firemen costs twice as much as that money gets split with the schools.

For my part, I would be surprised if we end up with a rate of $1.15.5 but anything is possible. Point is, it is simply too early in the process to say with any certainty what the eventual rate will be.

UPDATE:  Here is a web page that explains what is going on.

I spent last weekend in Richmond visiting with family.  The renovation of the Capitol building is complete and the building looks great. In stark contrast, the sidewalks, streets and many of the surrounding buildings look like the Civil War just ended.  As our State Capitol, the place could use some serious work.

 While I was in the hotel room recovering from too much prime rib at the Tobacco company, I caught Doug Wilder delivering what seemed to be a “State of the City” address on the government cable channel.  Mr. Wilder spoke quite a bit about Economic Development and the pressing need for Richmond to focus on ED and quality schools.  I find this interesting as this is exactly what our City is talking about.  In the days and weeks ahead, I believe there will be an expanding discussion on the subject.

All of that got me thinking about “change” and what it takes to make “change” happen.  On the local level, if you and ten of your closest friends are prepared to sit through a couple of meetings at City Hall and speak up when the time comes, you can pretty much guarantee that some sort of change will take place.  In our lovely little town, things will not change much this year unless the citizens get involved.  The tax rate will need to increase about 16 cents just to get back to a flat budget.  If we’re to do anything past that, the Council will need to hear from the citizens.  The budget process is still young:  If you think things need to change, you need to let the Council know.  We have a hearing on this on Monday night - 7:30.

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Update:  Test