MANASSAS — Do you love Manassas enough to have its image on your car?
City Councilman Marc Aveni and resident Robert Keller hope so because they’re working to develop a new specialized license plate to showcase the city to the rest of the state.
Over the weekend, the two met at Ashton Family Restaurant to discuss possible designs for the new plate.
They include the city’s government seal, the “Historic Heart, Modern Beat” logo frequently used by the city’s economic development office, and a Civil War-themed image noting the Battle of Manassas with U.S. and Confederate flags.
If approved, the city’s plate would join more than 200 other specialty plate designs offered by Virginia’s DMV, depicting logos for everything from railroad and fishing enthusiasts, to other independent Virginia cities like Fairfax and Poquoson.
Aveni said the City Council is the sponsor of the new license plate, as far as the DMV is concerned, so it must approve the final plate design in the coming weeks.
Before the DMV takes the effort seriously, organizers must have 350 signed, prepaid applications ready to submit. The first 350 people who want the plate must write a check for the required $25 (add $10 if you want to add a personalized message to the plate) for a total payment of at least $8,750.
Aveni said he hopes to create a revenue-sharing plate where the DMV will give back $15 of every $25 to a designated entity in the city. The money could go back into the city’s museum and tourism funds.
“Let’s put money back into tourism and historic resources, entities that generally don’t get a lot of money from us anyway,” said Aveni.
A report written by Keller notes Fairfax City generates about $4,000 annually from sales of its license plate and has about half of the population of Manassas’ 41,000 residents.
Another local attempt was made
Creating a new license plate for a town may seem like a fun way to promote civic pride, but it’s not easy.
Four years ago, Occoquan River Communities (ORC) — a then non-profit organization with paid members who wanted to promote not only the Town of Occoquan in Prince William County, but the regional park and Workhouse Arts Center in Fairfax — also tried to create a “Friends of the Occoquan” plate.
“There was a lot of enthusiasm for the plate, and we would go to events and give people the form to fill out,” said Betty Dean, a member of the ORC Board of Directors before the non-profit dissolved last year.
The problem: Those who got the form handed to them at events didn’t have all the necessary information with them to fill out and complete the form and hand it back to the person sitting at the event booth.
So, forms went home, and people forgot to fill them out and return them.
The biggest hurdle for ORC — you couldn’t fill out the application online. ORC never collected enough signed applications.
The money it did collect was all donated to another non-profit: Friends of the Occoquan — a group organized to fight pollution in the Occoquan River.
The plate creation process can also be risky if those behind the endeavor aren’t up front with supporters.
“The period between when you hand in your applications to the time the first plate is created is 18 months,” said Dean. “And you’re asking people for their money, and you’re not immediately handing them something in return.”
Today, the Virginia DMV notes that form VSA 10D is available as a fillable PDF, so supporters can go online and complete the application process. The same form might have helped ORC years ago.
People were surprised that, given all of the enthusiasm for the plate, the Occoquan license plate never came to be. After they were told their money was going to help keep the river clean, no one ever asked for their money back, added Dean.
