Phazhon Nash, Roanoke City Council Candidate, Answers Our 9 Burning Questions for 2024

Ahead of Roanoke’s municipal elections on Nov. 5, The Rambler once again sits down with each of the candidates — this time with a twist.

Three candidates for mayor and seven City Council candidates agreed to videotaped chats as we probed them on Roanoke’s past, present and future. To distinguish our questions from those frequently asked of the candidates, we focused on budgets, segregation, climate, housing and more. (Of course, we also had to touch on where they like to go out for dinner.)

For mayor, Vice Mayor Joe Cobb is running as a Democrat, Councilwoman Stephanie Moon Reynolds as an independent and former mayor David Bowers as a Republican. For City Council, the candidates are Democrats Terry McGuire, Phazhon Nash and Benjamin Woods; independents Evelyn Powers and Cathy Reynolds; and Republicans Jim Garrett and Nick Hagen. Voters can choose up to three Council candidates.

This interview features Nash, a 25-year-old Roanoke native who lives in Fairland. Nash works at Carilion Clinic as an operations consultant. This is his first run for public office.

Candidates did not receive copies of the questions beforehand. Transcripts of the interviews have been condensed and edited for length and clarity.

View the candidate's full video interview here:

Why do you want to serve Roanoke as a City Council member?

You know, I think that at the end of the day, I've always wanted to help people. My first career I wanted to be was a cop, and I wanted to be a cop up until I was in 10th grade. Then when my aunt passed away from colon cancer, I wanted to be a doctor, an oncologist. I wanted to help people. And then I realized I could be more effective and create more long lasting change working in community health and making communities healthier, safer and happier. 

And so with Carilion, I get to accomplish that, but to be able to do that from the Council perspective, because I see so many of the issues going on. I spent time with Del. Sam Rasoul as his community outreach liaison, and I would hear all these issues that citizens had, all these struggles they were facing, and I would be like, ‘Oh, well, why don't we try this? Or we can do that, or what if the city that did this?’ and it's like, what can I do about it? So that’s really the big motivating force. And then Evans Spring was kind of the last like, ‘Okay, I'm going to run,’ because the people need a councilman that cares. Not to say that I feel like our current Council members don't care about the people, but the people don't feel like Council cares about them. The people need someone that they feel like cares, listens, respects them and is going to work with them to get some of this progress we need done.

Let’s talk policy priorities. If you’re elected, what’s one of the first actions you would push for City Council to take? 

One of the first actions immediately speaking would be the process of appointing the city manager, if that's not done by the time we get there. If it's done already by the time we get there, I'm transitioning my focus to funding in our budget, because that's kind of the peak of budget season and so ensuring that we're putting the proper funding toward some of these programs to help prepare us for the following summer coming up, when it comes to Parks and Rec and providing programs and after-school activities and summer programs for the youth.

A main priority of Council is overseeing a roughly $380 million annual budget. What do you want to see happen with the city’s budget over your four-year term? 

Over my four-year term, I think that I would love to see number one, the budget be well maintained and grow very organically. Because I'm an expensive campaign. I want to focus on infrastructure, fixing roads, you know, exploring new technologies to make our streets safer. And so my campaign is expensive, but I want to definitely grow our budget. I want to make sure that we're, like I said, investing in our infrastructure, so that, you know, we're being fiscally responsible. Because inflation is real, the cheapest time to do something is now. In three years, concrete is going to be more expensive. The price to pay someone to do the work is going to be more expensive. And so for a lot of these infrastructural projects that are going to be multi-million dollar projects, we need to go ahead and get started on those as soon as possible. So I would focus on finding ways to grow the budget, then allocating funds towards infrastructural improvements. 

When you say, growing the budget, tax increases or ... ? 

No, no. God, no. Business development. There's a lot of avenues we can explore to help increase our budget. You know, I'm not a huge like, oh, tourism, tourism, tourism. I feel like too many people can get focused on tourists and they forget about the citizens that live here 365 days a year. But, you know, making sure we have a decent food and beverage tax, right, going to the General Assembly and not being afraid to ask for certain taxes on lodging, or all these little taxes that we can benefit from.

Roanoke’s residential neighborhoods remain highly racially segregated. What role should city government play in dismantling that legacy?  

I think one aspect of the zoning that I like — there's aspects of the new zoning that I don't agree with — but being on the Equity and Empowerment Advisory Board, these are the kind of issues in our city that we were tasked with trying to solve, and so we have members that are specifically working on neighborhood choice. But from our Council seats, you know, we really just have to create affordable places where people of all types can live and then be very observant to make sure landlords and developers are, you know, not having any type of exclusionary rules in place that stop people from being able to stay there, making sure that they're following the Fair Housing Act, making sure that all the current kind of protections we have in place are actually in effect.

You’re on record opposing current policies that ended exclusively single-family zoning. What’s your solution to encouraging the development of more affordable housing?

One of the big things that I came across in talking to developers and people that own current properties, is the process to be able to get started and get it built is long. There's a lot of red tape, and it's expensive. And one thing that I did not understand — because I don't work in construction or development or building or anything like that — but from the time they acquire the land, they're incurring costs because most of the time they go out and they take out a loan, or they're getting the money from somewhere, so they have an interest rate, they have to make that payment back, so on and so forth. And so I feel like us exploring avenues of, you know, potentially saying, ‘Hey, instead of, you know, having to pay X amount of dollars to acquire this lot, we'll give it to you.’ You know, we'll help you cut through some of the red tape to get some of these permits or whatever sort of paperwork that needs to be filed. You know, help cut through the red tape to get that done in a quick manner. I believe that exploring those types of avenues will allow them to have a type of freedom and quickness to be able to get these projects started and then help keep their costs low.

How would you work to implement the city’s climate action plan? Or do you disagree with its recommendations?

I think that a lot of times, and this is really not even a reflection on the city, but a lot of times, things can be done because everyone will sit in the room and say, ‘Oh, we need to do this.’ So they will do work. They put it in place, but then there's no action taken to make it happen. But when people say, Oh, you're not environmentally friendly, you're not environmentally conscious, they always point to, oh, we got a Climate Action Plan, or we have, you know, agencies be like, ‘Oh, we have a DEI plan.’ But it's like, what has happened from that plan? And so, luckily we have Terry McGuire. But I think we really just have to pull the plan out, in a metaphorical way, pull the plan out, and really just take actions on making some of the promises and goals of it to happen when it comes to solar, solar energy specifically is what I'm mainly interested in, because of the cost-savings benefit for the city on some of our city buildings, like libraries, the bus station, and so on and so forth, city hall.  

This question is unique to you, and we've spoken a bit about this before. You may be tired of hearing, you know, sort of the context, but you are 25, is that correct? I believe you would be the youngest person elected to Roanoke City Council since at least the 19th century, and possibly ever in history. What would you say to voters who maybe they like what you say, but they think, you know, maybe he needs more life experience. Or why not, you know, run in another four years?

I would say to those voters that would question the experience to be on City Council, most of the time no one who runs for City Council has experience being a politician or being on City Council or really an elected official on any level. You have people that might be, you know, several decades into a particular career field, and they've acquired skills and knowledge that they can then translate on to City Council. And I feel that I can do the same with my 25 years of lived experience in Roanoke City and my degree in community health, global health and American government, in the knowledge I'm able to gain from Del. Rasoul, working for him as his community outreach liaison. And so I would tell the people, you know, to just trust me, trust the process. 

Because Cardinal news — I know I'm bringing up a competitor; I'm just joking — but Cardinal News released an article about the population loss. And the biggest demographic that's leaving are between, like 18 and like 30 or 35 and so I'm like, I'm that demographic. I know why they're leaving. One, some of them are my friends that grew up here. And they're like, ‘Man, I'm out.’ 

Why are they leaving? 

If you grow up in Roanoke, at some point you say to yourself, your friends, ‘It’s boring here. There's nothing to do.’ And until you hit the age of 21 in Roanoke, that changes. When I was younger, in high school, specifically, like between, like, 18 and 20, you know, we had the hookah lounge in downtown Roanoke, and that was a spot where a lot of us between 18 and 21 and couldn't go to any of the bars, any of the other places, that's where we went. And this was back when, you know, you didn't have to be 21 to use tobacco in Virginia. But when they changed that law, that shut down, and I agree with you being 21 to use tobacco. 

But we have nothing for youth to do. We have nothing for kids under 18. And when you get to the stage of life like we're in, we're like 25, 30, 35, you start thinking about the next 40 years. The next 30 years. You start thinking about, What does my life look like here? What does my career growth look like? How are the schools for my children? How is that life going to be for me and my partner? You know, are we going to be able to find a home that fits our budget in a neighborhood — speaking about the segregated neighborhoods — in a neighborhood that's high quality? And so I think me being in that demographic, me myself, personally, with my girlfriend, us thinking about the next decade, the next 20, 30, 40, 50, years. You know, I am in that position, of those individuals that are leaving our city. 

And so I'm able to bring that lived experience and bring that connectedness of my generation to Council, to advocate for certain business development that needs to occur, certain developments and investments in our entertainment industry here in the city, and try to bring some different entertainment into the city than we usually have, specifically at the Berglund Center, and making sure that we're bringing in good, solid careers and not jobs. I always tell people there's a difference between a career and job. A job is you work two, three, four, five days a week, you get your check, you go home. A career is a place where you work for decades, two decades, three decades, retire, and you have a retirement package, you have benefits, you have life insurance through that company/ They add a real benefit to your life. And so making sure we have good, solid employers that are going to pay high, fair wages to our citizens, those are the avenues we need to do to keep younger people here.  

You’re going out to dinner in Roanoke. Name one place — where do you go?

Bennie’s. Three slices of pizza.

What kind?

Cheese. Cheese, cheese. Eat two there, take one home, eat it later.

What books are on your night stand? What are you reading currently?

So right now, my girlfriend got me, it's a Kobe picture book. It has a bunch of quotes and pictures of Kobe Bryant, a lot of behind-the-scenes pictures of him, you know, Achilles rehab when he tore his Achilles, him playing with his daughters. I really admire Kobe Bryant.

And then Meditations, as well, is a book that I've been spending some time looking through, reading meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Just because of the campaign and the, you know, too many variables. It's so crazy sometimes. Trying to have that kind of stoic outlook towards it, to handle the stress.