MONTGOMERY COUNTY – With a five-to-two vote, The Montgomery County Board of Supervisors approved an amendment to the 2025 Comprehensive Plan, taking an additional step towards the possibility of an approximately 400-home housing development in the Elliston region.
The ordinance reads, “that the Board of Supervisors hereby approves the request by Fotheringay, LLC to amend the policy map designation for the Fotheringay Property from Resource Stewardship to Village Expansion on the Montgomery County 2025 Comprehensive Future Land Use Map.”
At this time, the rezoning request has been put on pause at the request of the applicant, Stateson Homes, according to Brea Hopkins, Director of Planning and GIS in Montgomery County, Virginia.
Also during the Supervisors’ meeting, Director of the Virginia Law Enforcement Professional Standards Commission (VLEPSC) Todd Clingenpeel presented Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department with the Virginia Commonwealth Re-Accreditation Certification.
“On January 5th we sent a team of three highly trained assessors to take a look at every aspect of your sheriff’s office, Clingenpeel said. “They met with the sheriff, Captain Hollinsworth, Lieutenant Marshall and many members of the staff of your sheriff’s office.”
To increase the difficulty of the process, this happened to be a terrible weekend for weather and traveling for the assessors, and snow greatly impacted their routes.
The accreditation process is a grueling evaluation of “192 standards that they have to meet in over 570 bullets,” Clingenpeel said. Out of over 400 sheriff’s offices in the state of Virginia, only 111 achieve the accreditation status.
Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office first achieved their accreditation status in December 1999, Clingenpeel said. The Commonwealth first began with the high standard of evaluation in 1998.
“You’re one of the longest, if not the longest agency in the Commonwealth of Virginia to be accredited,” Clingenpeel said.
Sheriff Hank Partin accepted the certificate of accreditation and addressed the supervisors, starting out by saying that achieving this status requires a full-time dedicated person to maintain records to meet with the standards. Partin said this particular accreditation process was very difficult and required additional support from the accreditation board and Mr. Clingenpeel.
“This is a big deal for us,” Partin said. “It’s a super big deal for the county because we’ve been accredited for so long and this would never happen without Captain Hollinsworth, Lieutenant Marshall, and the rest of the command staff and so many others at the sheriff’s office.”
