2024 General Election Candidate Profile: Stephen Kent
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Via Patch.com
Patch asked candidates for mayor, Manassas City Council and Manassas School Board to fill out a candidate questionnaire with the same questions. Here are a few of Stephen Kent's responses:
Office Sought
Manassas City Council
Campaign Website
Age (As of Nov. 5 election)
34
Education
Bachelors, Political Science, UNC-Greensboro
Occupation
Public Relations
Family
Wife, Melony Kent | Daughter, Sylvie, 13
Why are you seeking this office?
It's important to have a range of perspectives in any legislature that represents the population being served. I'm a young professional with a young family, and we have concerns about the future of Manassas City that are unique in that way. I want to give voice to resident concerns over education quality in the city, affordability and available stock of housing, and the burden of rising tax bills. Beyond policy, it's important to have new people step up and make themselves available to represent their neighbors. I asked by a number of people to step up, and I believe citizens in a democracy have a duty to always consider running.
What are the major differences between you and the other candidate(s) seeking this post?
Raising a family in the city with a school age child. The concerns of people like myself in this stage of life are unique and it's my goal to give voice to issues faced by Manassas families struggling to make it by these days with such high costs of living.
What do you see as the top issues facing your city, and how do you address them in your campaign platform?
City residents have been quite clear in the most recent Manassas Community Satisfaction Survey in identifying the quality of public education and the flow of traffic in the city as their top concerns. Those are serious issues. The trick is that education is almost entirely the purview of the Manassas City School Board, and the Council merely disperses funding. That does not mean, however, that the City Council has to be complacent and absentee in collaborating with the School Board in a constructive manner, or in pushing for greater transparency and accountability on education outcomes. Traffic and parking issues in the city are being handled well by the widening of streets, roundabout projects and other infrastructure investments. We can do more on code enforcement with on-street parking and working with the county to bring the 28-bypass project to fruition. This could greatly help the city in alleviating traffic crunches during rush hour.
What accomplishments in your past would you cite as evidence you can handle this job?
I've worked a decade as a public policy communications professional and had the privilege of delivering the message about complex issues on local news like WUSA9, FOX 5 DC, and national outlets including Fox News, Al Jazeera, C-SPAN, HillTV, Fox Business, and much more. I've written for national papers and local news sites and can bring to council an understanding of how to talk about the policies we adopt and our vision for the city. I hear often from city officials that it's imperative Council be able to clearly communicate a vision for Manassas that they can follow, and that's something I'm well-positioned to do.
What else would you like voters to know about yourself and your positions?
Neighborliness is what matters to me as a candidate for Manassas City Council, not partisan-party politics. Republicans and Democrats at the national level don't offer relevant answers for our city about how to think about housing, zoning policy, and land use for development. Party politics doesn't answer how many police officers and fire departments Manassas needs to keep our people safe or whether or not we need another parking deck. What I want readers to know is that people matter more to me than politics. Manassas deserves representatives on Council who think local and put partisanship second.
Read more on Patch.com.
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