I attended the Help Save Manassas Meeting the other night and there were a lot of questions about the peddlers and what the City is doing. Well, you can find out the same time I do if you like. The Land Use/Economic Development committee has a meeting scheduled for July 5th at 5:30 in the second floor conference room at City Hall and the peddler issue in slotted on the agenda about an hour after the meeting starts. It could be earlier or later depending on how discussion on earlier items goes. As always, these meetings are open to the public but public comment is at the discretion of the chair.
June 30, 2007 at 8:21 pm
This is very interesting because I was just told by a Manassas City Police Dept. dispatcher (when I reported one of these peddlers at 8:15 pm) that the City has issued Temporary Licenses to all the street peddlers!!
She said that the City Council had a meeting on the issue (past-tense) and this was the decision.
Maybe they had a meeting and didn’t invite you??
July 1, 2007 at 7:11 pm
Hopefully not!! She was probably referring to the upcoming meeting.
July 1, 2007 at 7:37 pm
No, no. According to her, it’s a done deal already. No mistake about it.
A bit of background. The gentleman who took my initial call at the non-emergency dispatch number, very politely said an officer would be sent.
Within two minutes, I got a call back from a female dispatcher to inform me “The City Council had met and the peddlers had already been issued temporary licenses,” which meant no officer would be sent.
PERIOD.
July 1, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Maybe the MP police and MC police all sat around the same round table to decide how to handle this matter without a fuss. Was in MP Saturday and called a peddler on Lambert in and dispatcher said “all the peddlers in the park are licensed and we won’t be sending an officer out.” Assuming this one was licensed!! Maybe both jurisdictions are sharing dispatchers now.
July 2, 2007 at 9:16 am
It seems to me, just your average citizen, that unless the city has an official moratorium on issuing such permits (either temporary or permanent permits), it would have been difficult to to refuse to issue such a permit to an applicant. Just because city officials may be considering certain changes does not mean that applicants can be kept on hold.
July 2, 2007 at 12:53 pm
Must have been bad information by the dispatcher. I can tell you that the situation is status quo at least until Thursday’s LU meeting. If you call, the police should come and check credentials and permitting, as the law allows.
The Chief has indicated to me that he’ll clarify the issue for his folks.
July 3, 2007 at 5:21 pm
Manassas is suffering in many ways at the hands of the Railroad
Company …. whistles are blown for long periods at all hours of the
night …crossings are often blocked. And in other ways our town can
stand improvement. Automobiles and motorcycles whizz along the
streets at a dangerous rate of speed. Stray dogs and children roam
everywhere.
Now what is the corrective ? Does the Railroad run the town? Are the
streets without regulation? Are other grievances sanctioned by the law?
If we have ordinances, why are they not enforced? If these ordiances
have been rescinded it is well nigh time another code was drawn up.
Why cannot Manassas be well well-ordered? We hope the day is near at
hand when Manassas can be proud of itself; of its laws and their
enforcement.
Mr. W. C. Wagener
THE MANASSAS DEMOCRAT
Seot. 25, 1913
July 3, 2007 at 5:39 pm
Posted Mr. Wagener’s comments (Sept. 25, 1913) to illustrate that
there was no golden age without “issues”, but his last two sentences
should always be kept in mind as a goal – 1913 or 2007.
(Mr. Wagener owned a hardware store and records
show him as Mayor of Manassas 1901-1903.)
July 5, 2007 at 10:27 am
Agenda: City Council Land Use and Economic Development Committee
Manassas City Hall -2nd Floor Conference Room
Today (7-5-2007) – 5:30PM
Public is invited – Agenda time lengths are estimates.
– Tax Exemption for Certain Rehabilitated, Renovated or Replacement
Property – Comm. of Revenue – 45 minutes.
– Peddlers and Repeal of Section 18.2 of the City Code – City Attorney-
– 45 minutes.
– Update on Home Business Ordinance Admendments – Director
Community Development – 15 minutes.
July 6, 2007 at 5:25 am
I would like to thank the Councilmembers, City Staff, City Attorney, and the Manassas PD for looking at this issue. It seems to me that all of them see a problem, and want to deliver a workable solution. This is another example of why local government is the most effective government. More got done in the 90 minutes at City Hall, then has been done by the Congress, since January.
I am looking forward to seeing the final product.
July 11, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Andy… Gosh, we’ve known you your whole life. You’re a kind man of no pretension with the best of intentions… but, please, release your soft political baby-lips from the gushing poisoned bosom of XXXXX. Let me make a few initial suggestions toward self improvement… subscribe to the Economist magazine, spend at least one weekend a month outside Virginia, and one weekend a month outside the United States (you have the means if you check the specials). You are doing us wrong, and DEEP IN YOUR HEART AND CONCIENCE, you know it! You are crapping in your own nest, so to speak, on a regular basis (with the exception of the zoning inspector broo-ha-ha, which is just rediculous, given how overwhelimingly sensible and cheap that little proposal was).
July 12, 2007 at 11:02 am
Hall needs some spellcheck to go with his venom.
Andy- don’t go changin’. We want you just the way you are.
July 12, 2007 at 9:22 pm
Hall:
Please only insult me here. If you want to insult others, send ’em a letter. I appreciate your sugestions for broadening my horizons.
For whatever it’s worth, I’ve subscribed to the economist for several years and, although it is somewhat less productive, I also read the Nation.
I do appreciate your input.
July 13, 2007 at 10:02 pm
Point well taken. I apologize, Andy. I do care, profoundly, and feel that the seed of our own destruction as a a community have been sown primarily by those who have made the laissez-faire argument in recent years. I will be blunt… Manassas is a magnet for the poor and dumb because of our local government policies. Low real estate taxes as the absolute primary goal of recent city councils, and a hands-off attitude toward development, coupled with insufficient public investment in infrastructure, has made Manassas a mecca for the poor… pure and simple. The streets in Manassas are not being repaved frequently enough… the sidewalks are not being replaced frequently enough… there is no excuse for there being a single overhead electric line in the City of Manassas (other than high voltage lines) after more than 30 years. Manassas has less open area and fewer parks, both in area and in number, than any other local jurisdiction. Our teachers are payed less. Our investment in artistic and resources is less. We have treated any high-minded objective of local government with absolute hostility for the last 5-10 years. Can we really be surprised that by celebrating civic poverty we invite civic decline. I invite you to look at the trends in the city of Manassas relative to its neigboring jurisdictions… check out per capita income, level of education, local graduation rates, per puil spending on schools, teacher salaries, average pay for police officers, police officers per capita, park space per capita, spending on parks and recreation per capita, spending on the arts per capita, capital improvement spending per capita, etc, etc, etc. The truth is, Manassas is at the very bottom. When one considers that the United States is quickly working its way down the list in most of those areas, and that Manassas is even more quickly working its way down the list among US municipalities in those areas, I simply don’y understand your pride in the Republican super-ideal of low taxes. What happened to the American idea of community, of home, of loyalty to one another, and to aspiring to being better. I transgressed in insulting you and your republican colleagues, but I can not understand, for the life of me, your failure to see the forest for the trees. Manassas city government had been in your absolute grip for many years and it has brought us very low, indeed.
July 13, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Yeah, I know… spell check. Another point well taken (I actually can spell.. I just try to type way too fast).
September 8, 2007 at 4:27 pm
This is my first post
just saying HI