You’ve heard me blather on for awhile now about fixing up the zoning enforcement process.  Following is the text of the resolution that will be voted on at the next meeting on Feb 26th.  I can publish it here as it was in the agenda for the last meeting but we staff members out sick so it was delayed.  It isn’t filled with angry words and vitriol, as when I first wrote it, but it gets the point accross.  If you support it, show up and help me out!  If you want to suggest changes, feel free.

Re: Identifying Neighborhood Preservation as a City Priority

WHEREAS, the City Council of Manassas values the City’s neighborhoods and all of the people who live in those neighborhoods; and

WHEREAS, the City Council of Manassas has identified serious challenges facing our neighborhoods, particularly focusing on issues of appearance, maintenance and preservation; and

WHEREAS, it is the desire of the City Council of Manassas to maintain and improve the livability of City neighborhoods.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, that the Manassas City Council does hereby identify neighborhood preservation as a City priority and directs Staff to undertake the following:

1. Evaluate existing property maintenance, appearance, trash and zoning laws to determine their efficiency and adequacy for maintaining the appearance of the City’s neighborhoods.

2. Enforce and evaluate existing resources and programs for proactive, zero tolerance code enforcement to determine adequacy of existing resources for proactive code enforcement.

3. Provide a report from the Public Works, Community Development and Police departments on code complaints, violations and crime including a summary of the opportunities for increased enforcement initiatives.

4. Develop a process for facilitating requests from neighborhoods and complaints to the appropriate department for resolution with feedback and bimonthly reports back to the Manassas City Council.

5. Create an interdepartmental and community task force to work cooperatively to identify ways to improve the appearance and preservation of neighborhoods.

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Manassas City Council directs a report back on these matters from the appropriate Department Heads compiled by the Neighborhood Services Coordinator within 60 days describing actions taken, actions planned and results and quarterly progress reports thereafter.

When I was a kid, we used to have family reunions at my Grandmother’s farm. The Harrover’s have a lot of family members in the area – when you stay in one place for ~100 years, you will end up related to almost everybody. The reunions lasted hours and hours and mostly the moms took the kids home after Dinner and the Harrover brothers would stay to play cards and tell lies with their old man. They played cards around the dining room table which galled my Grandmother – she didn’t hold with playing poker in the house and required them to cover the table with a sheet. None of the brothers dared challenge that 5 foot nothing lady on that particular rule. You simply didn’t fool around with Granny. I can still remember her calling my uncle John’s name – a man who at 6 feet something towered over her – and him stopping, wheeling and saying “yes ma’am”. Granny didn’t make requests. She issued orders and her boys just didn’t ignored that voice.
That particular image has never really fallen out of my brain. As an adult, I don’t really have any problem with playing a friendly game of penny-ante poker but I expect that my Grandmother’s aversion to the idea is at the root of my problem with using OTB to finance road construction. It’s unseemly. It’s unseemly that in the Old Dominion we would turn to gambling to finance our basic public infrastructre. I don’t like it. I feel like it’s a cop out by the GA and a way to avoid making the hard decisions that need to be made right now. In the age of billion-dollar surpluses our representatives must find a way to provide the infrasturcture our citizens need. I understand that there are philosphical differences on how to do this but it boils down to governance and that, friends, is the one unyeilding duty that all of our representatives share. I can tell you first-hand that governance is hard. It is a demanding task master that requires compromise, communication and sometimes voting for things that you don’t like but it is the job that every single one of our representatives signed up for.

Simply going to Richmond and standing on principal year after year isn’t governance. I could well understand this happening with new issues as the debate over new issues is often framed in terms of principals and that is a good thing. What isn’t a good thing is when this goes on for years and your citizens wonder why you are there at all. OTB isn’t the right way to fix this problem. It isn’t a solution. It’s an abdication of responsibility.