The City of Manassas today reached a settlement agreement with the Washington, Dc-based Equal Rights Center, HOME and eleven residents of Manassas in relation to allegations that the City discriminated against Hispanic residents.  There are three primary reasons, in my view, why we settled:

1.        There were several complaints against the City.  If the City lost on any of the specific complaints, we would have been liable for the plaintiff’s attorney fees and also damages.   Our exposure there was considerable – in between $4 and $7 million dollars.  We didn’t have to lose on all of them, just one.

2.       The insurance company  had notified us that they were content with the settlement number and if we decided not to settle that any future award or settlement would be borne entirely by Manassas City.  Needless to say that an award of $5+ million dollars would be catastrophic.

3.  The legal action was just getting started.  If we had proceeded to discovery and trial, the costs would have exploded and far outstripped the money that we had already spent and if we would have lost, the entire nut would have been paid by Manassas taxpayers.

So, at the end of the day, I wasn’t prepared to leave my home town to the tender mercies of a Federal jury in Alexandria.  This is a business decision, pure and simple in order to limit the damage to Manassas.  Trust me when I say that it isn’t on my list of fun things to do.

City Brings Home Three State Neighborhood Awards

MANASSAS, VA – The City of Manassas, one of its neighborhood organizations and a local youth have won three state neighborhood awards.  They are:

 

State Neighborhood Youth Individual Effort of the Year

Michael Sensale, Cannon Ridge Community

 

State Neighborhood Youth Group Effort of the Year

Week of Hope Program, City of Manassas Neighborhood Services

 

State Neighborhood Project of the Year

Weems Neighborhood Watch/Week of Hope Cleanup

The awards were presented on Saturday, September 20 at the 9^th annual Virginia Statewide Neighborhood Conference, held at the Hilton McLean Tysons Corner.

The City of Manassas has been stepping up efforts to build strong neighborhoods and increase civic involvement since it hired Kisha Wilson-Sogunro as Neighborhood Services Coordinator in November 2006. Sogunro has put her extensive knowledge to work addressing critical needs in the community,

“This was truly a city government-citizen group partnership,” said Cindy Brookshire, whose project had the support of more than a dozen Weems Neighborhood Watch members to organize a four-day cleanup of Landgreen Street, where Manassas Cab Company driver Khawaja Ahmed was murdered in February 2008. More than 30 youth and adult church volunteers, including the general manager of the cab company, worked with Watch members to fill four City trucks with trash and yard waste, mow 12 lawns, haul away a trailer load of hazardous household waste (used motor oil, paint, car batteries, TV and computer monitors), reinstall a mailbox and spread a truckload of mulch.  They ended their labors with an ice cream “party in the park” at Byrd Park.  “Our Neighborhood Watch could not have pulled this project together without the encouragement of Officer Scott Stallard of the City of Manassas Police Department, Kisha’s in-field guidance of the Week of Hope volunteers, and the Public Works Department, which supplied us with courtesy trucks, wheelbarrows and other tools we needed to get the job done.  I’m grateful to the City and to the church youth for their help in our crime prevention and community building efforts.”

The City is planning to host its own Neighborhood Conference on Saturday, November 15 from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. at the Carteret Mortgage Branch Boys & Girls Club on Dean Drive, complete with workshops, a marketplace of exhibits, a block party lunch with “divine desserts” from local churches and their own Best of Neighborhood award winners.To register for the City’s Second Annual Neighborhood Conference, go to www.manassascity.org.