TOWNSEND VAN FLEET, INDEPENDENT
Three years ago, Townsend A. “Van” Van Fleet ran unsuccessfully for City Council as an Independent. This year, he’s back running for mayor, once again as an Independent.
“I have only one goal in this whole campaign and that is to win because I want to improve the quality of life for all citizens in the city,” Van Fleet said. “Over the years, we have seen this quality of life erode and I feel very strongly about a number of issues. I know that this is an uphill battle but whatever the outcome, I know that my message will get through to the people.”
Van Fleet grew up in San Francisco and graduated from the U. S. Military at West Point. He served for 23 years in the Army, retiring in 1981 as a colonel. In 1981, he founded his own consulting business, joining with Bruce Meredith in 1989 to form the Van Fleet Meredith Group. While in the Army, Van Fleet worked on planning and budgeting issues for the Army’s research and development programs and worked in the office of congressional affairs.
His current company represents national and international clients in the areas of defense and environmental issues. They represent two very large clients in the area of fuel cells, companies that are working on wind power and the American Gas Association’s alternative fuel programs.
He has spent the last three years learning more about issues in Alexandria, attending meetings on the East Eisenhower planning process, the Duke-Eisenhower Connector and the redevelopment of the Samuel Madden Homes.
For the past seven years he has served on the board of directors of an orphanage in Kenya called Nyumbani, the word for home in Swahili. There are 85 HIV positive children living in the orphanage and approximately 500 children receive services through the group’s outreach efforts. Van Fleet has two daughters who graduated from Robinson High School in Fairfax County and who attended Virginia State universities. He has lived in Alexandria for 18 years and in Northern Virginia for 31 years.
THE MOST OBVIOUS issue that will confront the next mayor and City Council is traffic and congestion. “Fifteen of our 16 square miles are developed, making us the ninth most densely developed cities in the United States. In 1990, we were eleventh, so we’ve moved up a couple of spots in the past decade, which is pretty significant when you look at it in relative terms. Also, in the next 10 years, 1,654 more people are going to move into Northern Virginia every day. By 2020, we’re going to have 1.3 million more people here than we do now. This means that traffic and congestion is going to affect us all,” he said. “Traffic isn’t going to get better. In fact, it’s probably going to get worse.
“During the last campaign, I proposed putting cops on the street to help with traffic and that is helping. If we call for a short-term moratorium on building, we can slow down traffic. We can do that because the Supreme Court ruled that these short-term moratoriums to improve infrastructure is not illegal taking of property as it has been in the past. Let’s get our infrastructure squared away before we do any more building and that will have a direct impact on traffic,” he said.
VAN FLEET HAD some additional suggestions. “Let’s think about making both Patrick and Henry one way going the same way during rush hour, like they do with Rock Creek Parkway,” Van Fleet said. “Let’s get most of the trucks out of the city by taking them down to the 301 cut-off and trying to get them onto I-95 without bringing them through the city.”
Even with these suggestions, Van Fleet believes that utilization of mass transit is the most important relief for traffic congestion. “Mass transit and telecommuting are the only things that are going to save us in all of this,” he said. “You can’t pave your way out of this. You must use mass transit and this means developing our Metro stops as mixed use developments, which we haven’t done such a good job at.
Arlington has 10 Metro stops and has done a good job developing around them. The planning on East Eisenhower was great but we still need a moratorium on building to slow things down.”
THE SECOND PRIORITY is education. “We spend about $140 million every year on education and that’s about $12,000 per student, just out of the operating account,” Van Fleet said. “This is close to top in the country. But what do we get for this $12,000? I want to know where this money is going. When our kids are taking the SAT test to go to college, their scores aren’t that good. I’m not saying that our scores should be the same as those at Thomas Jefferson, which is the Harvard of public high schools, but I’d like to see us improve our test scores.
“I’m not beating up on the schools. I want to see them do good. I want to see us allow our eighth graders be allowed to take algebra in the eighth grade. In Falls Church, 70 percent of eighth graders take algebra. In Alexandria, only 17 percent of our eighth graders take algebra. These little things build up.
“And there are the SOLs. The feds came in and determined that the SOLs aren’t as hard as they should be and now the state has a problem trying to fix what the federal government wants. I want to see an audit of the school system to see how much of this money is going into the classroom. As you know, the further you get away from the classroom, the more money you make. This means that administrators are making a lot of money. I think we need to get more money back into teacher salaries and into equipping classrooms,” Van Fleet said.
HE SUPPORTS BUILDING two high schools. “The statistics show that we really need three but I’m not sure we have the money to do that,” he said. “I agree with Secretary Page and his motto in Texas: Smaller, Safer Saner schools,” he said.
Finally, there are taxes. “Your assessment, my assessment they just keep going up,” he said. “I was glad to see my assessment go up but I’m not in the same position as a lot of people who are going to have to sell their homes because they can’t pay the taxes. Rich people can afford to buy stuff anywhere. You can order by catalogue or go to New York or pretty much anyway you want. Poor people can’t afford to buy a whole lot. The economic engine of the city is the middle class. If you keep raising the taxes of the middle class, they’re going to move out of the city; you see this all of the time. Also, property owners are not going to continue to absorb these tax increases; they’re going to pass them onto their renters. A lot of those renters live on fixed incomes and they are going to be hurt.
“The way you correct this is to freeze the assessments just like they did in California in 1978 with Proposition 13. I have an 80-year-old mother who really benefited from this. We have to go to Richmond and convince them that these assessments need to be capped. There’s a bill down there now that didn’t pass and doesn’t have much of a chance of passing but we have to do something,” he said.
“We do have to make sure that we don’t get ourselves into a bind like California and have no money to fund the schools. So, you want to use the California methodology but learn from their mistakes,” Van Fleet said.
WHY SHOULD ALEXANDRIANS vote for Van Fleet?
“I don’t represent the status quo,” he said. “Also, I don’t have a record, I have a vision and I don’t think my opponents’ records, especially on quality of life issues, are that good. Most of the issues in this city are not Democrat or Republican issues, they are people issues.
“In my every-day my job, I work constantly to build consensus among Democrats and Republicans on a variety of issues and that’s what the next mayor is going to have to do,” he said. “It’s not about growing up here or voting right because if you can’t coalesce and get other people to vote with you, you’re not helping the citizens. You always need four votes to get anything passed on Council and you have to be able to articulate the issues and bring people together to get anything accomplished. I think people ought to look at me because I am a viable candidate and my only agenda is to improve everyone’s quality of life in Alexandria over the next three years.”
WILLIAM EUILLE, DEMOCRAT
William D. Euille has been a member of City Council for nine years and now he is running for mayor.
"I am running for mayor because Alexandria is my home and I can’t think of anyone else that’s better qualified to have the opportunity to give back to this community and who can meet the challenges that are ahead of us in the areas of affordable housing, education, financial stability, and traffic congestion. Alexandria has a long history of being well served by Democratic mayors and I want to be one of those Democratic mayors who moves the city ahead, positively.”
What are his specific qualifications?
“I have a historical perspective on the city because I am a life-long resident and a community activist who has worked on real solutions to the problems that face members of the community,” he said. “I have a proven track record because I have served on Council for nearly nine years and I have owned a business in the city for 16 years. In addition, I have a vision to help every Alexandrian reach his or her potential,” Euille said.
HE WAS BORN IN Alexandria and grew up in public housing. He attended public school and was one of the first group of youngsters to integrate the public school system, attending eighth grade at Jefferson Junior High School, ninth grade at George Washington and finally tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades at T. C. Williams High School. While in school, he worked delivering the Alexandria Gazette, at JC Penny’s in Old Town and at car washes. His grades were good enough to earn him a full scholarship to Quinnipiac College, a small liberal arts school in Connecticut, where he studied accounting.
After college, he returned to Alexandria and worked as an accountant for a construction firm and then started his own construction services firm in 1987. That firm now employs 50 people and is a multimillion dollar concern. Before being elected to City Council, he served for 10 years as an appointed School Board member. He also serves on a large number of Boards and commissions, representing City Council and as a private citizen. Through his foundation, he contributes funds to charities throughout the city.
“I am proud of everything that I am involved in but I am most proud of the work I do with organizations that reach out to families and children,” Euille said.
Those organizations include serving on the Board of Directors of Inova Health Systems, being a member of the Board of Healthy Families of Northern Virginia, his membership on the Board of the Boys and Girls Club, serving as chairman of the Board of the Urban League and his longtime efforts on behalf of the Alexandria United Way.
EUILLE BELIEVES that the first priority that will face the next mayor and Council is financial stability. “We must continue to balance our budget while we meet the increased demand for services and programs,” he said. “This means continued funding for our public schools, affordable housing, open space and other programs in a climate of ever decreasing support from the state and federal governments. A lot of demands are being placed on localities and we must find new ways to generate revenues to sustain existing programs, not to mention implementing new ones.
“While we look at these challenges, we must also expand tax deferral programs for our elderly citizens and protect the city’s AAA bond rating. We’re going to have to be very masterful in attempting to accomplish all of that.
"I understand these issues very well because I have a degree in accounting, I own my own business and I have been one of the team leaders in building consensus and helping to develop the sound fiscal policies that we have today,” he said.
Next, he believes that the city must find a way to meet the needs of affordable housing and open space. “We are proud of the diversity that we have here in the city. It’s one of our greatest assets. Unfortunately, unless we find a way to keep Alexandria affordable for all of its residents, we run the risk that many of our citizens will no longer be able to afford to rent here or become homeowners.”
HE CONCEDES THAT this is not just a problem for Alexandria but must be addressed regionally. “We must all agree that we need to increase resources to meet this need but that we also have the political will to address the need,” he said. “We have stepped up to that responsibility in Alexandria. I had the honor to serve as the co-chair of an affordable housing task force and we have implemented many of the recommendations of that task force. That is a good first step but we must do more.”
He would like to see the development of a Community Development Corporation that would be a public/private partnership to provide affordable housing. “These programs have been quite successful throughout the country and, I believe, would be successful here,” he said.
Traffic and congestion is an ongoing issue.
“This is a problem that has been with us in Alexandria for the past 25 or 30 years, long before the city moved toward expanding development,” he said. “We have more people driving cars than we have citizens and until we get people in the mind set to get out of their cars and into mass transit, we aren’t going to make any major inroads into this problem. This means that we must improve our mass transit systems and make it easy for people to get from point a to point b. Otherwise people will continue to use their automobiles.”
Euille strongly supports the public school system. “I want to continue to work with the School Board, my Council colleagues and the city manager to ensure that the Alexandria city public school system is the best system that it can be,” he said. “We have a lot of challenges but I believe that we can meet them. We need to advance our marketing and public relations for the school system. Any time we have the opportunity, we need to talk about the positive gains that our children are making.” I would like to encourage all of our citizens, whether they have children in the system or not, to get involved and volunteer their time in one of our schools.”
WHAT ARE SOME of the things Euille wishes had been done differently during his nine years on Council? “While I have no regrets about the economic development in the city, we might have been able to do something a little differently with the Patent and Trademark Office. I have no regrets about bringing it here. I think that is a good thing but we, perhaps, could have had a bit different plan,” he said. “For the most part, I believe we’re headed in the right direction. We have to balance residential development with commercial and industrial development where appropriate. I know there are those who would prefer to see no development or very little development but then we run the risk that our revenue base will diminish thus placing an even higher burden on our residential property owners.”
“I have passion and I do what I do because I want to work with all of our citizens to move our city forward in the areas of race relations, education, job training, affordable housing and more. I believe in giving citizens the opportunity to do their best.
“I also understand that I cannot accomplish these things alone and have not accomplished them alone on Council. I understand the need to build consensus and to work with others to meet my goals and to make the city an even better place to live, work and raise a family. I believe that I have shown a willingness to work with others throughout my tenure on Council and in my everyday life and I think that this is what makes a good leader,” he said.
WILLIAM CLEVELAND, REPUBLICAN
For the past 15 years, Bill Cleveland has served as a member of City Council. Now, he wants to be mayor.
"This campaign is different from the rest of my campaigns because, I want you to think about the last time there were three open seats on Council and there was a real mayoral race. I don’t think that’s ever happened,” Cleveland said.
“This is a real opportunity for the people of Alexandria to elect a totally new Council and set a new direction for the City of Alexandria. When I first moved to the city in 1971, it had a small town feel and it was a small town. Now, it’s a mega metropolis and is filled with cranes. My wife calls the Eisenhower Valley where we live, Crane City.
“Growth in the city is out of control and we have to get a hold on it. I’ve been asking that we redo the city’s master plan and out of that has come the plan for planning. That’s a good start, but we have to go further and look at the master plan. This is a great opportunity for the people of Alexandria because there’s going to be a great change,” he said.
CLEVELAND WAS BORN in Pittsburgh and grew up in the African-American Hill District of that city. He stayed in school despite failing both the second and seventh grades because his mother felt that it was important for him to graduate from high school. He did so and was planning his life when a letter arrived in the mail from “Uncle Sam” inviting him to become a member of the U. S. Army.
He enlisted for three years because he wanted to become an engineer, working on generators and because he believed that the three-year commitment would allow him to stay out of Vietnam. It didn’t, and on Dec. 6, 1968, he went to Vietnam. He got out of the Army in 1971 and settled in Alexandria.
Cleveland attended the Northern Virginia Police Academy and served as an officer at Northern Virginia Community College for two years. In 1974, he became a member of the U. S. Capitol Police force, where he remains today. His two children attended public schools in Alexandria, as does one of his granddaughters today.
Cleveland has been involved with the Untouchables, an organization that is dedicated to working with African-American young men. The members of the organization work with the youngsters in school, at home and in the community. Cleveland has been involved with the Untouchables since 1989. He is a founding member of the Carlyle-Eisenhower Civic Association and served on the Board of Alexandria First Night, to name a few of the organizations with which he has been involved.
ONE OF CLEVELAND'S top priorities as mayor would be to make Alexandria’s city government more open. “If you were to look up on the web site, you would find that there were some votes taken at last night’s meeting and you would see how many people voted for something and how many people voted against it but you wouldn’t know who voted what way. As mayor, I would change that. I would list every vote that is cast and who voted for and against. And I wouldn’t just do that for City Council. I would do that for Planning Commission and the Zoning Board. Citizens shouldn’t have to go to the date and the docket item to find out how people that they elected voted,” he said. “Some Council members go out into the community and say they are for things and then they vote the other way. I want everyone to know how they voted.”
Then, there is the master plan.
“The master plan was designed in 1992,” he said. “It’s time for us to relook at the whole thing. We need to look at all of the Small Area plans because what is good in the way of zoning for Old Town may not be good for Arlandria, for example. The Small Area plans make up the master plan and we need to look at them every three to five years.
“We need to have good traffic analysis, too, as we look at the master plan. We need to know clearly how development is going to effect everybody and we need this to be done thoroughly. I voted for the Eisenhower East plan but I said then that I am going to keep an eye on traffic and the planning and see how this goes,” he said.
Third, Cleveland is concerned about safety and security. “Being a police officer for 30 years, a certified police officer, we all know that we live in a dangerous world,” he said. “It would be good for the people of Alexandria to have a line police officer, not a desk police officer, look at the city’s safety and security.
“For 13 and a half years, I was a member of the Capitol’s security coordination team. When we were doing the plans for the then new Capitol Visitor’s Center, we came up with a plan that would have cost $100 million. They said that that was too much money and put it in a desk drawer somewhere. Then, 9-11 happened and someone found that desk drawer and pulled that plan out and decided that it looked like a pretty good plan. Now it’s being implemented and is costing three to four times what it would have cost if we had done it 13 years ago. I think it would be good for someone with my experience to really look at the city’s safety and security plan,” he said.
AT THE TOP OF THE list of things that Cleveland wishes had been done differently while he was on Council is the Capital Development Office. “Almost all of the nonprofit organizations said that they thought this capital development office was a bad idea. This is going to be something totally different than any other city has done. We are going to go out and get big developers or landowners to give money for projects so that they can have their names on it. Also, it’s supposed to be for the lessening of the burdens on the government. I thought that was what City Council was for.
“If you look at what has happened since 9-11, with people not contributing as much to nonprofits because they are giving to other organizations, this is a great concern for the safety net. To me, we’re putting big gaping holes in the safety net by competing with them for funding. Also, I believe that this could be a conflict of interest for Council members because people could be giving large amounts of money for these projects and then coming before Council expecting their projects to be approved. I don’t want to have any part of that and one of my first priorities as mayor would be to get rid of the Capital Development office,” he said.
THE SECOND VOTE that he wishes had been done differently is Windmill Hill Park. “When you hire a consultant, use staff time and get a task force together to work for 18 months, and they come to a clear consensus, Council has a responsibility to listen to them,” Cleveland said. “It is Council’s prerogative to tweak things but when you spend money and people’s time, Council ought to listen to what they recommend, even if we disagree because it’s not about what I want, it’s about what the people want.”
Finally, the Burke Library. “I fought hard to get Burke Library reopened and we have had some success,” he said. “It’s not a full-service library like it used to be but it is open. You don’t take away services like that to the community when they are clearly being used.”
Why should Alexandrians vote for Cleveland?
"I have worked for 28 years as a Capitol police officer and with my three years of service in the Army, I am eligible to retire any time I want. When I am elected mayor, I will retire so that I can be available to the citizens of Alexandria, to work for them any time they need me.
"Also, two of the people running for mayor have records and have voted on issues. I believe that if the voters look at my record, they will see that I have voted for the citizens of this city. Business is important and they have a lot of say in how things are run. Citizens haven’t had a lot to say about how things are done for a long time and I think they have a right to be heard. I believe that if voters look at the record, they will vote for Bill Cleveland because I have voted for them.”