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Rosemary Wilson, Glenn Davis and Dan Edwards

In Virginia Beach, Sessoms for mayor

Editorial, The Virginian-Pilot - 10/26/2008

In the next few months, the commonwealth's largest city, a place with quality schools, beaches and services, has difficult choices to make.

Virginia Beach was built on, and has profited from, cheap gas and cheap land. Now it has neither.

That new reality requires adapting to a broad set of immense and complex challenges: traffic jams, aging neighborhoods and schools, stagnant population and a dangerous overreliance on residential property taxes.

To sustain itself over the next 20 years, Virginia Beach needs more than a ceremonial mayor to cheer it through good times; it needs a practical advocate, someone who will pursue more businesses, vigorously protect the Navy's assets and guide the city through the current economic crisis.

Four years ago, this page endorsed Meyera Oberndorf for re-election. We cited her integrity and her unquestioned motives, and said she offered continuity on a council in which six of the 11 members had less than two years in office.

Now the city needs more than continuity. It needs more than an ambassador - a role in which Oberndorf has excelled.

It needs someone with a vision for what Virginia Beach can become and a clear plan to make it happen. It needs someone comfortable with balance sheets and bond ratings as well as parades and ribbon-cuttings. Oberndorf has been more at home reading to children in the schools and going to civic league functions - noble, important work, but not the priorities today's climate demands.

During the Base Closure and Realignment Committee hearings in Washington, D.C., for example, when the fate of Oceana Naval Air Station was at stake, Oberndorf was out of her league trying to make a case for keeping the base in Virginia Beach. In front of governors, senators and four-star generals, she was unprepared and, along with the other Virginia officials, defensive and unpersuasive.

Virginia Beach deserves a mayor who will never again put the city in that position.

To lead Virginia Beach for the next four years, we recommend former Vice Mayor Will Sessoms. Like Oberndorf, Sessoms is an optimist who appreciates the good things about his native city. Unlike the incumbent, Sessoms, a bank president, has business acumen, negotiating skills and the ability to lead. He helped the city buy Lake Ridge for a steal - $8,000 an acre. He also helped negotiate the agricultural reserve and hurricane protection plans.

Sessoms notes that when he left the council in 2002, residential property taxes made up 81 percent of the city's revenues. Now that figure is 87 percent and climbing.

He proposes aggressive recruiting of research and development businesses and training to give students and residents skills for higher-paying jobs. He wants to strengthen relationships with neighboring cities to go after industry, to lobby the legislature, to tackle traffic and transit. He vows to help neighborhoods, some long neglected, reap the benefits of the business coming to the Oceanfront, and to make the resort area a place inviting to residents, not just tourists.

Sessoms has the energy, passion and ideas to turn the challenges facing the city into opportunities. He offers the best return on voters' investment.

City Council. The trickiest thing about the ballot is remembering that everyone votes in every race, not just in his district. In this cycle, three council members running for re-election have opposition. We urge the re-election of two and the replacement of one.

Rosemary Wilson is an easy and obvious choice in the crowded at-large field. Wilson, a Realtor and former School Board member, is attuned to what residents will accept and won't. But she isn't afraid of leaning into a political headwind - affordable housing, for example. Wilson, who has spent eight years on the council, has pushed hard for a bold, if unproven, housing plan designed to help people who work at the Beach be able to afford to live there. That kind of leadership merits a third term.

In Kempsville, incumbent Harry Diezel, the city's retired fire chief, doesn't make headlines, but he votes his convictions, and his institutional knowledge would be hard to replace. Intuitively, he knows a good idea from a bad one, and the council has come to rely on his expertise in public safety issues and the nitty-gritty details of pay plans. Diezel likes public service, but not politics, which is all the more reason to ask him for four more years.

In Rose Hall, veteran Reba McClanan, a former teacher and civic leader, has served on the council for 24 years. She has a heart for the city, and her honesty and motives are unquestioned. But she is such a consistent "no" vote that she has isolated herself and diminished her influence and effectiveness.

Her opponent, Glenn Davis, offers a crisp and correct critique of her shortcomings: "There's a difference between a voice of dissent and a vote of dissent." By contrast, Davis is full of possibilities, energy and ideas. He grew up in Virginia Beach and started his own business, and he's prepared himself by running for an at-large council seat two years ago and serving on the Arts and Humanities Commission and several community boards. Davis has an entrepreneur's spirit, with ideas for how to phase out the business tax, how to streamline government and entice industry. He's the kind of young leader Virginia Beach needs to nourish.

School Board. Six seats are up for election in November. One is vacant; two members have no opposition. Of the three incumbents with challengers, we recommend the re-election of two and the replacement of one.

Of the five people running for two at-large seats, we enthusiastically endorse Rita Sweet Bellitto, the only incumbent. The board's vice chairman, she is extremely thorough, as you might expect from a civil engineer. She advocates full-day kindergarten, keeps a special eye on school construction and was a member of the committee that developed the new strategic plan. Of the challengers, Erika Walker-Cash, a business law attorney and licensed clinical social worker, is the most qualified.

In his nine years as chairman, Dan Edwards has capably led the board through turbulence, controversy and change. Voters should express their gratitude by re-electing him to represent the Centerville district.

In Rose Hall, incumbent Michael Stewart, seeking his third term, has backed some worthy causes, including improving education for black male students. But he's made some blunders that cost him support and credibility. In March 2007, for example, he derided teachers as "Pluto people" who think they're overworked and underpaid.

His energetic, knowledgeable and articulate challenger, Brent McKenzie, would be a markedly better choice. McKenzie, a teacher at Norview High School in Norfolk, has worked in the revenue commissioner's office and in the General Assembly as a legislative assistant. He has a good rapport with lawmakers and has been endorsed by three Beach delegates and two sitting School Board members. His relationships and his understanding of budgets would be great assets on the School Board.

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