Retiring admin says Stafford prepared for future growth and change

Stafford County Administrator Tom Foley will retire on July 1 after a 30-year career serving jurisdictions in Virginia.

The county will search for a replacement for Foley. His departure comes as the county continues to grow in population and increasingly finds itself increasingly becoming apart of the Northern Virginia region.

In recent months, the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments has expressed interest in bringing the county into its Transportation Planning Board, which would make it eligible for new sources of federal funding for transportation projects. If the county were to join, however, it would find itself competing against the interests of other jurisdictions in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C.

Nonetheless, Foley says the past three years that he’s been at the helm of county government has positioned the county for future growth.

Foley statement from Jan. 7, 2020 Board of Supervisors meeting | A pleasure to work for Stafford County, working with the board and staff has been a tremendous honor from the day I walked in here I felt so welcome to be a part of this community and this team here in Stafford. And that’s been big because it’s been about a partnership we’ve had to get things done and the things that needed to get done it seems like we were all on the same page about it as well the board and the staff have been so open about some of the changes we’ve needed to do and that’s made it easy to move some good things together forward.

So I just want to say I can’t say enough about what a great staff we have here in Stafford County and we have some new board members who will be getting used to that tremendous staff who’ve been just a pleasure to work with. I want to say what a great community Stafford is we’re going through a lot of change right now. And that’s going to continue because of growth we’ve talked about it over the last three years.

But the important thing about that is that we’ve all spent time these last three years preparing for the future and the change that this county has done, and that’s no small things, having a strategic plan given where we are in Northern Virginia and the growth is super significant that was a piece of cake getting done with this board and this staff and an important step forward, multi-year financial planning has been critical to and will be as we go into the future.

So I feel like, together with this partnership, we’ve made a lot of progress. For me personally, the bottom line is that I feel really blessed to work with this Board and staff during this period of time and I’m really grateful to be finishing my career here in Stafford County.