Rick Smith, the Democrat running for Prince William County Chairman of the Board of County Supervisors, with his family.Rick Smith believes that if you change the Chairman of the Board of County Supervisors, you change the reputation of Prince William County.
Rick Smith is the Democratic candidate running for Chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors. He is someone who believes a new chairman can improve the reputation of Prince William County, which will then will help to attract new businesses.
Becoming Competitive
Smith feels Prince William County should be more competitive as a county, attracting more high-paying jobs. Although its residents are highly educated, the average pay wage in the county is $46,000. The average pay wage in Fairfax is $82,000. Smith realizes that Prince William is farther out from D.C. than Fairfax is, but he believes Prince William should be able to compete with counties such as Stafford.
Why is Prince William lacking in those businesses? Smith partially blames current chairman, Corey Stewart (R).
“I certainly hear it knocking on doors. I hear from business folks. Corey Stewart damaged our reputation. We have a reputation for not being a friendly, open community. That breaks my heart,” Smith said, saying, he’s lived in Prince William County for 37 years and believes it is actually is a friendly, open community. “I blame Corey.”
He explains that when Stewart launched a campaign against illegal immigration in Prince William, that hurt and alienated many people. Additionally, he says it gave Prince William a bad reputation. Smith also believes the issue was never really about what was best for Prince William, but partisan politics intended to further Stewart’s political career.
Smith also plans to improve business relations by making the process of opening a business in Prince William County much easier, making the county much more business-friendly overall.
On Residential Development
He also thinks that Stewart has changed from his initial campaign for Chairman.
Smith said he is not anti-development; he thinks there needs to be a balance between residential and commercial. But, he saw how Stewart has gone from being anti-development to a friend of developers, some of whom are supporting his campaign.
“Had Corey been honest from the beginning and not run on a position to ‘stick it to the developers’ [I would not make an issue out of it.] but he literally handed out fliers saying, ‘Make a developer mad. Vote for Corey.’”
Now, like many residents, Smith is concerned that development has left schools overcrowded. Prince William class sizes are the largest in the state, and many residents feel they are already paying too much in taxes. Why is that? Smith says there is no balance between residential and commercial development. The current ratio is 78 to 22. Prince William has not enough commercial real estate.
If and when Prince William attracts new business and commercial enterprises, it can expand its commercial tax base. A healthy commercial tax base will help to pay for things that residents use, like schools, Smith says.
He disagrees with supervisors who say companies are not purchasing office space anymore.
“It’s not that people don’t want office space; people don’t want office space in Prince William County.”
Smith also said he does not want to raise taxes, saying too much of the tax burden is already on the residents.
Police and Safety
Smith also has other goals such as making communities safer by increasing police presence. He wants to be able to at least fulfill the county’s own plan of having two officers for every thousand residents.
“If the board had stuck to the plan, we’d have 880 police officers. We have 605, so we’re not even close to 75 percent to the number of officers the board said we were suppose to have,” Smith said. “We have just enough police to do reactive policing. We don’t have enough to do proactive policing: crime prevention and more community engagement.”
He also said Prince William loses some of its experienced officers to other jurisdictions where they pay better.
“We spend a lot of money recruiting and hiring safety officers to see them leave because the pay is better, and then we start the process again.”
Smith plans to hire more officers including people of color so they can reflect the communities of Prince William County. He also wants to reach out to victims so they can help make the community safer.
Smith knows what it is like to be a victim of violent crime when his first wife and son were murdered during a house burglary in 2008. He knows families want to heal and dealing with police can be a difficult burden.
To help, he hopes to open a victim advocacy center.
“Some of this comes from my experience as a victim. This is an idea from some of the folks I talked to, having a location where we have police working side by side with social services staff,” said Smith, explaining it would help victims feel more at ease with reporting crimes and working with the police.
Smith said it should particularly help minority communities who are afraid to report crimes.
“I think is absolutely critical. This will help the police. The police want this; they want it very badly,” Smith said.
Community Partners
Another thing that Smith wants to change about the county is to provide better assistance to community partners, the nonprofits that serve the community.
“Our current board does not support the local nonprofit community I believe to the extent that it should as far as financially and coordinating services. So many great nonprofit that can provide services that are critical to our residents and at a fraction of the cost that it costs our government to do so.”
Smith said, for instance, the homeless population only received the attention it deserved during very cold temperatures.
“It should have never had taken so long for it to come to a head. How many different organization just stepped into that and said, ‘I want to help?'”
Smith said that if he becomes chairman he would “take a much harder look at what all of these groups are doing and seeing what we can do better more effectively more efficiently.”
Transparency
Smith plans to operate the board in a transparent manner. He was especially offended when Corey Stewart tried to pass a raise for supervisors during closed session.
He also wants to remind residents that Stewart cannot take credit for everything that happened when he was chairman. For instance, he believes Stewart made Supervisors Pete Candland and Maureen Caddigan fight for their libraries while he tried to use them as a political bargaining chip.
Experience
Finally, Smith believes he has the experience necessary to become chairman. Particularly from his work on the Board of Zoning Appeals, he knows land use, which is one of most difficult parts of being a supervisor since they deal with so many land use issues.
He has also gained experience working on the Hylton Performing Arts Center Committee and has learned the importance of partnership, such as the one between George Mason University and Prince William County. He hopes to bring in more partnerships like this to Prince William in the future.
To learn more about the Rick Smith’s campaign for Chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors visit his website, ricksmithforchair.com.
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