Stafford County’s Board of Supervisors starts off the year with the fresh and the familiar.
First, the fresh: With newly elected Supervisors Maya Guy (Aquia District) and Kecia Evans (Falmouth District), taking their seats at the dais Tuesday night, the board has its first Black majority in Stafford’s 362-year history.
And the familiar: Supervisor Deuntay Diggs of the George Washington District was elected by his peers to serve as chairman of the board for the second straight year.
These were the two main takeaways from the governing body’s annual organizational meeting, where supervisors decide on leadership positions and appoint members to boards, authorities, committees and commissions.
The elections of Guy, former vice chairwoman of the Stafford School Board, and Evans, a former county planning commissioner, also meant that four Democrats would be on the board, as they would join Supervisors Pamela Yeung and Tinesha Allen. Yeung was re-elected in November in the Garrisonville District, and Allen, who represents the Griffis-Widewater District, wasn’t up for election.
The conventional thinking, then, might hold that the four Democrats would vote together Tuesday to elect a chairman or chairwoman of their choosing.
But that didn’t happen.
Deuntay Diggs
Allen, who served as board vice chairwoman last year, and Yeung were each nominated Tuesday, but they were unsuccessful on two 3-4 votes. Guy, Evans and Allen supported Allen, while the remainder of the board voted against her. Evans, Yeung and Supervisor Crystal Vanuch of the Rock Hill District, a Republican, voted for Yeung in a losing cause.
Diggs was nominated third, however, and his election was sealed with a 5-2 vote. Only Allen and Vanuch voted against him.
A decision on the board’s second-in-command also took more than one vote, with Guy eventually prevailing 4-3, with Yeung, Vanuch and Supervisor Darrell English of the Hartwood District dissenting. English is the board’s only other Republican.
From a leadership standpoint, it’s a lateral move for Guy, who goes from serving as vice chairwoman of the School Board to vice chairwoman of the supervisors.
The supervisors voted for chairman and chairwoman Tuesday with little comment, but Diggs, the board’s lone independent, addressed the new governing year in a prepared statement Wednesday.
“This board serves at the will of the people, and we are committed to engaging directly with our residents on the issues that matter most to Stafford County,” Diggs said. “Stafford is a multifaceted community, blending suburban and rural character, with an economy shaped by influences ranging from the federal government and global commerce to agriculture. This board will work together to pursue solutions that reflect the best interests of the county as a whole.”
Howard Rudat, who chairs the Stafford County Democratic Committee, told the Free Press during a break in Tuesday’s meeting that he and his party mates worked with the Democratic supervisors to try to coalesce around a single chair candidate, and that he’d hoped party would’ve taken priority in the leadership vote.
However, he said that while Diggs wasn’t the Stafford Democratic Committee’s first choice, he thought the repeat chairman was a “good choice for Stafford.”
Maya Guy
“I think Deuntay proved himself to be an effective chair over the last year,” Rudat said.
Seeing a Democratic majority seated on the Board of Supervisors in the formerly reliably GOP county of Stafford brought out other Democrats on Tuesday, including Del. Joshua Cole and Del.-elect Stacey Carroll, who both live in the locality.
When Democrats claimed victory in nearly every race in Stafford on election night in November, Rudat at least twice sounded this refrain: “Where were you when Stafford turned blue?”
On Tuesday, though, he had a more bipartisan theme when he addressed the supervisors during public comment time in the board’s meeting.
Working at the polls last year, he noticed that many voters either didn’t know who their elected leaders were or what election district they lived in.
He recommended to the supervisors that they have the names of county officials printed on tax and utility bills so that constituents can familiarize themselves with who represents them.
