Deuntay Diggs Calls for Board to Be a Team ...
... but tensions were evident throughout the evening, from Diggs' becoming chair, to Crystal Vanuch's requesting Board members employed by the county submit leave when involved in Board activities.
By Martin Davis
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
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Following his freshman year of service on the Stafford Board of Supervisors, Deuntay Diggs was elected chair for the 2025 year.
Just before the meeting concluded, Diggs said “we’re starting off 2025 on a new path, new journey, and the goal is that we’re going to work together as a team. I’m not asking, I’m demanding that.”
But the tensions that have been on the Board, brought on in part by the Advance’s exposing Mary Becelia’s dismissal from the Central Rappahannock Regional Library, were on full display both in the Boardroom on Tuesday night and later that evening in a dispute that erupted on Facebook between Board members Crystal Vanuch and Monica Gary. (The dispute occurred over a post Gary made after the meeting. The Advance, as a matter of policy, does not report on content for which social media is the sole source of information.)
The divide on the Board surfaced early in the meeting when Stafford County Administrator Bill Ashton took the gavel from outgoing chair Meg Bohmke and called for nominees to be the new chair. Almost simultaneously, both Bohmke and Gary spoke to put forth their candidates. Bohmke nominated Vanuch, and Gary nominated Diggs.
Following a brief discussion, during which Ashton determined that Bohmke had spoken first, the Board voted on Vanuch. She lost the chair on a 4-3 vote, with Bohmke, English, and Vanuch supporting her nomination. Diggs then won the gavel with support from Gary, Tinesha Allen, Pamela Yeung, and Diggs.
The main points of business Tuesday evening were selecting private citizens and Board members to serve on Boards, Authorities, Committees, and Commissions, or BACCs.
These were passed with little controversy, save for Gary voting “no” on each of the Board of Supervisors appointments to the BACCs.
In a statement read before voting began, Gary said she would vote “no” because:
It is my position that … this Board is continuing to retaliate against me by withholding appointments when I exercised free speech to call this Board’s violation out of the Virginia Code 42.1-35 when removing Ms. Becelia. …. I believe that these appointments were done out of order in a way that they excluded one Board of Supervisors member illegally.
Following the BACC approvals, Vanuch asked to pull the third item from the Consent Agenda, which was the adoption of the Board’s Code of Performance.
At issue was Vanuch’s request to add a requirement to the code that would mandate county staff to submit leave when attending “any board of supervisor meetings, activities, work, or constituent outreach and submit that leave request to the county administrator for public review.”
The addition would have affected two Board members — Darrell English, who has served on the Board since 2022, and Diggs, who was elected in November 2023. English is a retired from the Sheriff’s who continues to work there as a civil process deputy, and Diggs is currently a Lieutenant within the Special Operations Division.
Vanuch said that this was a matter of “transparency.”
Yeung countered that she had worked on the document over the summer and took exception with doing this as a line-item action right now. Rather, she said that the code as a whole should be looked at.
Diggs in his comment said that “transparency has been the hallmark of everything that I do and have done. Clearly, there is only two people on this Board the comment is aimed at, and that’s myself and Supervisor English.”
He continued, “this is an issue because of my new position as chairman on the Board. And the question is can I conduct myself in a transparent and honest manner.”
Then, apparently referencing Vanuch’s losing the vote for chair, he remarked: “I find it rich that every time something on this Board doesn’t go someone’s way that this keeps being brought up.”
“It does not bode well,” he said for his demand that the Board work as a team, “when we create doubt in the minds of the citizens.”
Vanuch’s motion was withdrawn and the matter will be taken up at the next Board work session.
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