On July 20th, the Board of Supervisor approved the 2021-2024 Strategic Plan on a 7-1 vote, with Supervisor Vega casting the lone vote against.
The strategic plan lays out the county’s goals for the next four years and is used as a governing roadmap for initiatives and annual budget priorities.
Due to COVID, the timeline for the vote was pushed back more than half a year beyond the original timeline of December 2020 as team plan members held all their meetings and conducted community outreach virtually.
Touted as a citizen driven document, Supervisor Vega questioned moves from the very beginning which seemed to decrease the power of the citizens in the process while empowering the views of county staff and certain county supervisors. This began when each supervisor was allowed only one citizen appointee to the team instead of the two allowed in the previous plan. Instead of two citizens the remaining slots went to county staff, paid to be in line with the board majority’s wishes.
Survey questions composed for the plan also seemed to ignore some of the issues most pertinent to Prince William County citizens, including the pace of residential growth. Increased growth and high-density housing has created traffic nightmares in Prince William County, overcrowded schools, strained public safety services, and increased the burden of residential tax bills on those who have been in the county longest. Supervisor Vega’s request to include a question related to the pace of residential growth in the county was disregarded by county staff.
Adding to the feeling that the strategic plan goals were largely pre-determined regardless of citizen feedback was that no matter how low a goal option scored in the staff drafted citizen survey, the predetermined goals still happened to appear prominently through the strategic plan’s final document.
In the online survey which measured priority areas set out not by the citizens, but by Prince William County government (sans slowing the pace of residential growth) the results from over 2,500 county residents (staff not included) were as follows:
Safe and Secure Communities – 68.1
Mobility – 64.6
Schools and Quality Education – 62.9
Environmental Conservation – 41.6
Economic Development – 41.1
Sustainable Growth – 39.5
Culture, Recreation, and History – 30.8
Services for Mental and Physical Health – 27.1
Affordable Housing – 24.9
Technology and Connectivity – 22.5
Workforce Development – 20.6
Equity & Inclusion – 20.6
The online community survey was far and away received the greatest numerical feedback from Prince William County residents, yet the results were largely ignored as every predetermined priority area made its way into the document no matter how low it scored with the taxpayers.
Despite coming in dead last, Chair Wheeler’s dictate to look at everything through an “Equity Lens” was used as the cornerstone for all priority areas. Equity meaning equal outcomes, which is impossible, versus equality, which strives for equal opportunity. This came up several times throughout the document including in hiring decisions based solely on physical characteristics over merit; preferences and taxpayer services for certain groups of residents and not others; and language and terminology which would have been more apt if examining Prince William County in the 1950’s instead of the year 2021.
“Affordable Housing,” strangely defined by the plan as any housing where a resident spends no more than 30% of their income on household living expenses was cited as a top five residential goal by fewer than 1 in 4 civilian respondents yet was mentioned several times throughout the document as a top tier goal.
Meanwhile, while an officer’s racial makeup was expressed as a goal to achieve “Safe and Secure Communities,” actually reducing crime, was not, nor was closing the gap on the 229 officers Prince William County Police are of achieving the county’s own level of service standards.
Supervisor Vega was left alone to question items in the 20 page document and eventually shut down her line of questioning after it became apparent her colleagues did not wish to closely examine the document. “I was hoping we’d have a more robust conversation on something so consequential,” Vega said.
While there were many worthwhile goals stated in the document, many coming from Supervisor Vega’s appointee to the team, Martin Jeter, President of MIDCO, taken together, this document represented an unprecedented amount of power given to Prince William County government, in order to achieve all of its goals. After a thorough review of the document, Supervisor Vega believed many of the goals, while perhaps well intentioned or well meaning, were not legitimate functions of government and would necessitate tremendous increases in taxes and the cost of living of Prince William County residents in order to achieve.
While she could not vote for the document in its entirety, Supervisor Vega would like to thank the tireless efforts of her appointee, Mr. Jeter, for proposing and fighting for many common-sense goals, and to all the residents who took the time to share their feedback on what they hoped their local government and governing body would focus on.
– Coles District Staff