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Politics & Government

City Council Creates 28-Point Vision at Retreat

Manassas City Council members left their retreat Friday with 28 specific goals to improve Manassas. The goals included schools and economic development to a possible youth curfew.

Manassas city council members left their retreat at the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club Friday afternoon after turning a day of discussion into a 28-point vision to improve the city in areas like its schools and economic development.

Much of Friday morning centered on ways to improve Manassas’s public school system. Council members expressed disappointment that Osbourn High School became one of the few schools in Virginia to miss full accreditation.

“Only 10 percent of Virginia high schools aren’t fully accredited,” said council member Steven Randolph. “I want to be in the 90 percent.”

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Other solutions included raising SOL test scores above the Virginia average and resource sharing between city council and school board staffs. Councilman Marc Aveni proposed bringing a charter school to Manassas.

Vice Mayor Andrew Harrover was concerned the school system’s quality might deter families from moving to the city.

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“Problem is, things are so bad you can’t say happy things and people will agree with you,” Harrover said.

Council member Ian Lovejoy acknowledged that city council has a limited ability to directly change school system policies, a responsibility that primarily falls on the school board.

“I have thousands of ideas about what we could do in the school system,” Lovejoy said. “But we have a narrow framework.”

The council moved quickly through issues of economic and housing development. They agreed to commit resources to draw more businesses and restaurants to Old Town and consider expanding the Manassas Museum to include a hotel or library.

They debated extensively on two proposals in the afternoon. The first, proposed by Aveni, was for Manassas to implement a citywide curfew for minors similar to Prince William County’s.

“If you look at the police reports that we get, I would say you only have to wait one or two days to see an issue where we’ve arrested somebody who’s a juvenile for robbery, for grand larceny or something like that,” Aveni said. “A lot of times they’re adults, but there’s a youth component as well.”

Council member Jonathan Way objected to the measure.

“It’s a civil rights intrusion on the presumption that everyone under a certain age is a crook,” Way said.

The council decided to evaluate how a curfew would work before going any further with it.

The second major debate centered on how to change neighborhood services by having AmeriCorps volunteers in Georgetown South, if the current efforts by volunteers were effective in reducing crime or encouraging more kids to go to school.

“We have to do this,” Harrover said. “Short of bulldozing whole neighborhoods and putting new housing in place, this is how we move the needle on schools and crime and blight."

The council agreed to evaluate the effectiveness of the volunteers, rather than suggest specific changes for them.

The 28-point vision decided at the meeting will now be submitted to the city’s staff for input and modification. The points will eventually become the city’s next strategic plan, designed to cover the next five years.

City Manager John Budesky hopes to have the plan formalized between December and mid-March before the budgeting process begins.

“I don’t want to do this at the same time we’re doing a budget,” Budesky said. “I want to do this so it drives the budget.”

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