Published: November 25, 2009
Melody Kinser .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Deborah B. Coats went back to school the same month she took a seat on the Hanover County Board of Supervisors representing the Mechanicsville District.
On Friday, she talked about her recent graduation and what it means to be a certified county supervisor.
The joint effort between the Virginia Cooperative Extension and the Virginia Association of Counties just completed its third class of the County Supervisor Certification Program.
Of particular interest to Coats, who has been on the board since January 2008, was the knowledge she gained as the county prepares for the upcoming budget season. “You don’t want people to suffer,” she said, because “we’re in the business to serve. You can only ask so much of everybody — I just hope that we slowly come back out and don’t have to ask anybody to tighten their belts any further.”
According to VACo, the program “provides training to enhance the leadership and decision-making skills of county supervisors in the Commonwealth.” It was created in response to members asking for more in-depth knowledge about government operations.
For Coats, the experience enabled her to “bring back some ideas,” which she shared with her fellow supervisors and the county’s administrative staff.
She said the program “really makes you think about a lot of things, especially when you hear from other people in other counties.”
Her participation makes her the only supervisor to have the distinction of being certified.
Coats said she became interested after learning about a similar program offered to members of the Planning Commission.
“They decided it was such a good program for the Planning Commission that they wanted to do one for supervisors as well.”
“We started out in January (2008) right after I got elected and we had our first class then. That was kind of an introduction to the principles of government and then we’ve had classes on planning, on budgets and finance, and also on regional issues.”
She also said the program “kind of encompasses all of the different areas that you would be involved in as a supervisor. It was very interesting.”
What Coats found beneficial was that she was able to meet “other supervisors from other counties and talk about the issues in our counties and how we were handling them. And then we got to hear about how other counties were handling similar problems or problems we hadn’t [encountered].”
The networking aspect also proved a bonus for her. The class provided an opportunity “to meet people you might not meet otherwise.”
She said the class also allowed them to talk “about things you have in common in county government. I think we all kind of shared that as one of the things that we really liked about being in it. It was interesting to see how some counties were pretty far behind Hanover as far as development and some of the way they do business.”
She did say that “some were al little ahead of us — a little more developed and advanced.” But, she added, “You can learn from both and they can learn from us and that made it really helpful.”
In addition to their meetings, the program included home study and homework every week. Coats said they would cover a book in two months.
She completed five core classes and two electives, choosing those targeted for the Planning Commission. She said that curriculum gave her a glimpse of the growth and development in Northern Virginia.
“It helped me understand a whole lot more about how local government works, about the budget. We have a really good Finance Department.” She said the class offered insight into better understanding “the budget process from beginning to end.”
Coats also said she learned about “the state’s limitations on what counties can do and can’t do and why we do what we do — just every aspect of it was really helpful in understanding how things are the way they are.
“It was a really good experience overall and I would strongly recommend every supervisor take the opportunity to enroll in the class. If nothing else, just for the benefit of learning about other counties and just county government in general.”
The class was taught by Mike Chandler of Virginia Tech, who designed the curriculum.
