A Chat With Mayor Michelle Davis-Younger On Development, Salary Hike, Real Estate

MANASSAS, VA — In 2018, Michelle Davis-Younger became the first woman of color to be elected to Manassas City Council. Two years later, she made history again as the first person of color, woman and Democrat to be elected mayor.

Davis-Younger and her parents have always lived in the Manassas area. She grew up in the Manassas area of Prince William County, attending Tyler Elementary School in Gainesville, Marsteller School within city limits and Stonewall Jackson High School (now Unity Reed High School). Because her family didn't have the money to send her to college, Davis-Younger balanced working full time with college work at home. She earned undergraduate and graduate degrees from Strayer University.

Now in her second term, Davis-Younger is working to fulfill goals while continuing her human resources consulting business. She's also grappled with the loss of her husband and both parents in recent years.

Patch sat down with Davis-Younger in late September. We discussed everything from downtown development and the airport's upcoming commercial service and traffic to budget uncertainties, refusing the mayoral pay increase, and being a non-voting member of council except to break ties.

Below is an abbreviated version of part one of two from Patch's interview with the mayor. See part two here.

Can you give me an introduction and how you got to be mayor?

I got elected to council in 2018. When I got elected to council, made history as the first woman of color to get elected to the Manassas City Council. Can't believe it took that long to get that done, but it finally did. And then two years later, after being on council and just seeing how things work, I've always been like, I can probably do that better.

And so then the opportunity came up, I didn't know if the current mayor was going to run again or not. And so I met with my political advisor, and he's like, "well, if you're going to do it now's the best time, because you'd be making history, and you'd be the first woman, you'd be the first person of color and the first Democrat ever hold the seat. And not only that, if you weren't successful, you still have two years on council if you didn't make it." I always thought to myself, if I had not, I would regret [it]. I probably been kicking myself forever if I hadn't done it.

So growing up here, my parents being from here, they never lived anywhere but Manassas, they're now passed away. And people said to me, "you're institutions, like everybody knows your family. People know your parents, you come from good people." And I'm thinking, "I'm not a politician. I don't know any of that stuff and of acronyms, but all I kept hearing was, but that's exactly what the community needs, is a breath of fresh air, somebody who has a different look. The people that don't feel like they belong can now feel like that when they look and see you, especially people of color."

I didn't do anything political at all. It was always just go vote, but I never knew what was on the other side of the vote. And that's when I try to educate people about now. I have the programs I do — essay contest, the day with the mayor, the "my mayor looks like me" program. These are all things that I've started to just kind of let you see this is what it's supposed to look like. This is what you do when you're in position and you're supposed to share. You're supposed to educate people and make sure they're smart about things.

So [I] got into HR, worked for a company. I got laid off in 2017. I think that was my turning point. Then I got elected to council, and so I was able to just use that and have my own business. I do human resources consulting for small businesses. I've been "DOGE'd," so I need money more than ever before, but I'm making do with what I got.

So here I am. So I'm just loving the second term. Rough getting there, but I got it. I think it was the most votes ever received in a contested election in the City of Manassas.

Can you tell me a little bit about what the city is working on for strategies to support downtown vitality?

We just had a big one on Grant Avenue, with the Ashberry. We got the town homes that's over 200 that are coming right across there from Georgetown South. The Grant Avenue streetscape update, the roundabout, all that. We don't hear as many complaints as we used to about that. It was just a change, and people have to get used to driving in a roundabout. I think traffic is slowing down a lot, which was the intention because we had people crossing in the middle of the street and they don't get hit or something. So this way we have the actual turn lane, crosswalks and all that. And so that'll be good.

With the Olde Towne Inn that was the first domino. [It] took me two and a half years to get those folks to agree to sell. That was one of three things at the top of my list when I got elected that I wanted to get done was Olde Towne Inn, a new Jennie Dean [Elementary] and a community center. And all three of those things were being done.

The Olde Towne Inn is the first domino, and then we knew we would have to get rid of MIFCO [Manassas Ice and Fuel Company] over here, and that's what we're at now. [At] our council meeting, we did the presentation from one developer. We just accepted the proposal from MLG. That's just one, and this opens up the door for others to be able to put in bids for 45 days. What I'm hoping to see is others come in. I mean, I like what MLG has put forward. It's beautiful. They've done a lot of work in Ashburn, which has been very successful.

We talked to the folks in Ashburn, and they're like, "we love them." They're just interested in doing all of it, where others might say, "oh, we'll go do your hotel," but they won't do the garage, or they won't do the other part. So we're trying to find somebody that will do the whole thing. And so far, they're the ones that's unsolicited, so they came and gave it to us.

That is the heart of downtown, and once that happens, you get in that parking that people have been crying for forever, especially First Fridays and things like that. They've been screaming about more parking and availability for parking and stuff. So that'll help a lot with that, with having another garage, and just being able to retail mixed use, having residential, having more stores, restaurants come in. That's just kind of what it's going to be.

And then you extend over to Mathis Avenue, we've had community conversations with people about different things that can go in there. It's going to be years and years and years and years away. I'll be gone, but we're talking with the community.

Our [Economic Development Authority] is all over that. They're the ones that are handling that, and they're doing a great job. I guess businesses want to temporarily be in there doing something, but we are including the community on what's what we want to see, and then that streetscape update over there, as well is going to play right into what we do.

We'd love to see maybe affordable housing over there. We need to make it walkable for people to get to and from, and we want to try to connect downtown to Mathis, so we'll see how that goes. But right now, it's just conversations and working with the EDA and bringing stuff to us, the council to say, hey, we're approached by XYZ, a church. A couple of churches have approached us about land space there, and we just got to see, because a lot of that stuff was really run down. And it was past time for that thing to be revitalized.

What would be your vision for improving downtown?

I'm seeing more people, they don't necessarily want to drive, they don't want cars, they don't want that expense. Younger folks have pets for kids, and they want to be able to just easily get to the train or get to the bus. They don't want to have to have a car to worry about parking. They'd rather take scooters or bikes or things like that, so we need to consider all of that when we're looking at mobility and we're talking about how to make things easier with [Route] 28 and all these other things.

For me, it is a vision of I can live here, I can be young, or I can be elderly. I can get to where I need to get to. And it's not going to cost me and arm or a leg. I'll be able to catch the bus and get to where I need to go or walk or take a scooter or whatever.

Accessibility has to be there for everybody, and that's my vision. It shouldn't have to be a struggle just to get somewhere. It should be easy to do that. So we need to do it. That's our job, to make sure that those mobility things are there for people.

How do you think expanding Virginia Railway Express could play into that, because it seems like someday they may be getting into that Saturday service?

It's exciting, but also a little scary, because you don't want to bite off more than you can chew. And I know we're looking at the mobility hub and people are like, don't take away the train station, and we're not doing that. We haven't had any discussions about that. So we have two council people that are on the [Transportation Planning Board] and the boards that do that. So I've not had any in depth discussions with them, but to me, Saturday service would be amazing, because people come in and go, and it would be awesome if they could really get that going.

And I think the more people that see Manassas will want to live here, and that's what we want. We want people moving here, but we want to be able to accommodate all ages, and that we don't want to tax out our seniors, which I heard at the council meeting. This one lady said, "you know, you're taxing the elderly out of the city," and that's certainly not our goal. We want to bring in more businesses so the tax base can go up, and you guys don't have to pay. We're going to try to meet every need, and it's just so hard.

Can you tell me about how the community center project came about and developing it into a new place for the city?

It started I think when I was on council. [Manassas Baptist Church], I heard for years they want all this money. We're not spending that kind of money. So that project came about because Manassas Batpist [Church] ran into some financial issues, and they needed to get out from under it. So it was just the right timing, and then we figure we can put our fire station on there, we can move it off that corner over here, and we can move it over there and have it there, as well as a community center for the city, which we've never had before. And we're adding park space, which is a good thing always.

With the community center and the Manassas Shopping Center and things like that, one of the recent resident concerns has been the city's real estate purchases. Can you tell me what the city's strategy with these purchases is and how it will benefit the city?

We want to own what we own. We're only 10 square miles, and so we can't make land. So we have to be cognizant about what we're doing and be thoughtful for future councils to set them up to be successful as well. That's where we come from with a lot of this, where they don't have to come back and say, "oh, we should have built this, or we should have." It's already there, and it is forward thinking. And when we're doing all of this, we are not real estate company. We're not, but we've been given responsibility to have that foresight on what we feel is going to be best there and create jobs. All of that goes together. It's not just, oh, let's buy it. It's a lot of, how are we going to look in 10, 15, 20 years?

What do you think are going to be the biggest budget challenges and unknowns going into the next couple years?

The government cutbacks, what our social services are going to face with with federal cuts, government shutdowns, federal credits, the money that they're going to take away, what they do with the schools. And I've heard we're going into a recession. So I think those are the biggest things, right now, tightening the belt and just cutting back where we really, really, really don't have to spend. We are in great financial shape, triple A bond rating. Thankfully, we've got a great director of finance in place. We have reserves built up. We're in a good spot, but we want to stay there, and so we're just not going to do anything and just kind of keep a watch on stuff.

But I think the challenge is going to be the government and what gets cut. Because we just don't know. We know Medicare and Medicaid and all that. And then how does that affect our social services? We put extra money aside in the budget for them, like it's 400k just in case something happens. So far, they haven't had to hit into that, but it's there. And so that was just kind of planning for what might be. Just from day to day, we're like, what now? But the schools as well, [we're] kind of worried about what's going to happen there. And it's so many other people involved, but we got to rely on the others, on the state, the General Assembly people and the senators and all like that.

How do you balance sort of those federal uncertainties with families experiencing maybe more financial strain, and maybe are like, Well, what about some relief for us?

We've increased our nonprofit donations. We made the list bigger and spread it out a little bit more. It's a little less money, but it's more people that we're able to help in our nonprofits, our food pantries, we work with [Action in Community Through Service]. We work with the Freedom Museum. We do a lot where we give as a city to all these various nonprofits to try to alleviate some of that, and that's really all we can do. I mean, we want to cut taxes. We want to do that, but we start to run a city, and so we want to pay everybody. We kept the tax rate flat but that's still increasing the tax bill.

It was a couple weeks ago that you were speaking out against the mayoral salary increase. Can you tell me a little bit about that and why you disagree?

Right now is just not the time. Even though it is not in effect until [2027] the regular person doesn't feel it. They know what you're asking for right now. I know I'm struggling to put food on the table, and you're asking for more money. It just wasn't the time.

Don't get me wrong, these positions absolutely deserve six figures. I think it should pay that all day long, but you just don't do it right now. Now is not the time when there's so many people that are struggling. So my salary does increase, but I was adamant about I won't take it. I am going to donate the overage to picking an organization from our nonprofits, and then switch it up every month. But to me, that's the right thing to do, and the next mayor can, whoever comes along, they can take the whole [$37,000], but it just didn't feel right.

Before the first vote was to happen that day before we were at the pavilion at Prince William [Hunger Free Campaign], asking for donations for people, for food, and then the next day, we're asking more money. It just made no sense. It's very tone deaf to ask for money right now. So I stood firm on that."