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.

We had the forecast meeting on Wednesday and yep, it’s as bad as everyone thought…:)  As it stands right now, we have a $3.2 million hole in the City budget (which is roughly $50 million) due to a contraction in just about every tax that the City or State collects.  How we deal with this remains somewhat unclear.  For my part, I’m not convinced that things are as bad as they might get.  Bad?  Yes.  Catastrophic, No. So I’m not convinced that the time is nigh to draw heavily on the rainy day fund.  However, there are only 3 places the City can get money to balance the budget: budget cuts, taxpayers or the rainy day fund.

As with most things, it is going to require a compromise utilizing all 3. The City Manager has made some immediate budget cuts that will save around $1 million and instituted a hiring freeze.  The Council will meet several times over the next week or so to determine a direction.

It’s going to be a difficult fall.