City manager gives M. Park ballot boost

By Kipp Hanley

Published: September 3, 2008

The Manassas Park City Council wants to switch from the public electing a treasurer to the council appointing one. But it needed more signatures than it had in order to get a referendum on November's ballot.

So, with a deadline looming, city manager Mercury Payton went out last week and got them.

According to state law, the council needed 20 percent of the total who voted in the last election, or 670 signatures, to forward the referendum.

As of late August, a little more than 500 signatures had been collected by Temporary Solutions, an agency the city hired to collect the signatures.

Payton said he felt like he had to do something, so he spent part of last week going door-to-door to collect the extra signatures. 

Payton said while he typically likes to delegate responsibility, he felt as if he was out of options.

He said that the temp agency did the best it could with shrinking resources as the school year started.

Not everyone at Tuesday's city council meeting agreed with Payton's solution.

Former mayor and Manassas Park resident Frank Murphy discovered that the city manager was out collecting signatures last Friday after repeated phone calls to Payton's office.

Murphy chastised Payton in front of the council, saying there were a number of other people who could have collected the signatures.

Payton recognized Murphy's concerns but said he felt compelled to do the work himself. "There's no task that's too small for me to do," Payton said after the meeting.

In a June 18 letter to residents, treasurer George Adamson said the city needed an appointed position to retain qualified candidates. It had five treasurers in the four years before Adamson was elected in 2005.

There is also a limited talent pool in a city of 11,500, and ever increasing professional qualifications for the position necessitate appointing a treasurer, Adamson said.

"It's important to get a qualified person in there," said Councilman Michael Bunner. "If that's what the citizens want, they will have the opportunity to do so now."

If approved by voters this fall, the issue would go to the Virginia General Assembly for approval as early as the next session that begins in January.

The earliest the position could change would be the end of 2009. Manassas Park would join Prince William County, Fairfax County and the city of Alexandria as one of only a handful of jurisdictions in the commonwealth without an elected treasurer.

Adamson said he will be retiring from the position in December. However, vice-mayor Bryan Polk said that Adamson's impending departure wasn't the sole impetus for getting the referendum on the ballot this fall.

Adamson said the city had tried this in previous years but failed to get the necessary number of signatures. And if anyone should be blamed for the way the signatures were obtained this year, it's the council and city leaders, said Polk.

"We started early enough to have plenty of time but if we got behind during the execution of the project, then shame on us as a governing body," Polk said.

Payton said that the city owed Temporary Solutions more money in spite even though the agency did not get 670 signatures. The agency spent more time than the anticipated several weeks on the project.

The council approved an additional $1,000 for the agency's time. The city had budgeted $9,000.

Staff writer Kipp Hanley can be reached at 703-369-5738.