Editorial: Now-deleted hit piece on Manassas Councilwoman Forkell Greene is sloppy journalism. Here’s the whole story

Late last month, a post on pwperspective.com, a website that features political news from Prince William County and touts itself as “Virginia’s anti-racist voice,” posted a hit piece about Manassas City Councilwoman Lynn Forkell Greene, whose running for re-election on November 8.

Light on details, the post accurately reported someone filed a grievance against Forkell Greene while she was still on the city’s Parks and Recreation Committee before she was elected to the City Council in November 2021. The author, and website founder John Reid, didn’t bother to report on the nature of the grievance, who filed it, or whatever came of it.

I read the post and asked Reid for more information and why he omitted those details, and the post vanished from the website. A week and a half later, the same post appeared again, this time without the author’s name, after someone posted it to the left-leaning website The Daily Kos.

“Why you didn’t contact the subject of the story for comment? Is PW Perspective a journalistic news site or a partisan opinion blog?” I asked Reid. Reid never answered my questions about why he didn’t call Forkell Greene for a statement or ask those at City Hall about how the grievance was resolved.

Call Potomac Local what you will, but we seek comments from both sides. Either side might ignore us, but at least we’re showing our readers — the people who trust us enough to pay to read our news — that we’re doing our job.

Curious, as we journalists naturally are, I wanted to know more. I learned the grievance dates back to July 2021.

Forkell Greene volunteered to serve on the Manassas Parks and Recreation Committee for two years before she was elected to help develop policies for the city’s parks. Much of that time was spent during a youth baseball league controversy. The city signed an agreement with its largest employer, Micron, to allow it to pave over two of the eight city-owned ballfields at the E.G. Smith Baseball Complex to build an employee parking lot.

Late last year, the Greater Manassas Baseball League coaches, parents, and children learned they would eventually get the boot from the 60-year-old ballfield complex after the city agreed to allow Micron to build a new structure on the fields and agreed to find a new home for the baseball team.

During the winter of 2021, Forkell Greene contributed a handful of stories to Potomac Local as a freelance reporter. I would keep her from covering the parks and recreation committee on which she sat, and when she announced she would seek a City Council seat, we made a clean break.

During her time on the City Council, Forkell Greene has advocated for open government. She’s pushed to live stream more public meetings online, making local government business more accessible to the public, especially since City Hall is closed and undergoing a massive, costlier-than-anticipated overhaul.

She had the same attitude while on the parks and recreation commission and often questioned why the parks and recreation committee wasn’t consulted when the city decided to ink a land-use deal that would turn one of its most popular parks into a parking lot. Malcolm Richards, committee chairman at the time and who filed the grievance, apparently would have none of it.

He wrote the mayor:

“To date, Mrs. Lynn Forkell has sent me emails, text messages, and phone calls that were aggressive in nature and vexing. Today, my personal email and along with other committee members’ emails were shared with a reporter who Mrs. Lynn Forkell provides content for the publication (Potomac Local). In addition, Mrs. Lynn Forkell has used committee time as a platform to run for political office; she invites guests to attend the meeting to disrupt the flow of the meeting and stage arguments. Additionally, she used electronic devices to record meetings and take pictures of committee members as a form of intimidation.”

Mark Rabatin, who served with Forkell Greene on the parks committee, concurs that most of the consternation born in those meetings was over the city’s takeover of the baseball fields and that the committee had little say

“One day, I was driving by the little league t-ball fields and saw they were all torn up, and then I asked about it. [The city staff liaison to the committee] said they had already decided to give the fields away,” said Rabatin “If it weren’t for me driving by and asking about it, none of us would have ever known.”

Rabatin left the committee last summer, about the same time as Forkell Greene. At least six other members followed them out the door. According to the City’s website, Richards no longer sits on the committee.

Toward the end, the meetings became unproductive, uncollaborative, and difficult to attend due to a rigid meeting schedule they said was set by Richards, said Rabatin and Forkell Greene.

The mayor wrote a response to Richard’s letter and sent it to committee members in July 2021, telling them to straighten up. “An atmosphere of respect and civility” includes respecting and following the leadership of the Chair, unless his or her decisions are reversed by a vote of the membership,” Davis Younger wrote.

The one-and-half-page letter was all that came from the grievance against Forkell Greene.

The city has more than 30 community boards to help guide policies on everything from the library, utilities, and towing to garbage. Not everyone on the boards and commissions will get along, so the city maintains an open-door policy to hear from members, said city spokeswoman Patty Prince.

“Any volunteer from any board, committee, or commission is welcome to talk to any member of staff or Mayor and Council should they have a grievance. However, our [boards, commissions, and committees] have been wonderful groups of individuals who are dedicated to their city and work hard to move the city forward,” said Prince.

The time Rabatin spent on the parks and recreation commission left him sour, he told Potomac Local News. He volunteered about 12 hours a month working on items for parks and rec, and in exchange, he had hoped to work with elected leaders and city staff to help chart the course of the growing city and plan for the care and expansion of its parks.

“We had ideas, but so did the city staff. They’ll listen to you, but then, in the end, they’ll do it their way,” said Rabatin.