Know Your Candidate: Delton “DJ” Anglin, OC Board of Supervisors District 2

Delton “DJ” Anglin III, candidate for Orange County Board of Supervisors District 2. (Photo Credit: Courtesy of DJ Anglin)

This interview is part of a series intended to give readers an overview of local political candidates and what they believe. Read previous interviews with District 4 candidates by following the links below, and check back soon to hear from fellow District 2 candidate Ed Van Hoven.

Know Your Candidate: Ryan Soon

Know Your Candidate: Brit Lewis

Know Your Candidate: Crystal Hale

Know Your Candidate: Laird Knights

(Note: Responses may be edited for length or clarity.)

Can you tell us about your background?

My career started when I got into law enforcement in my early years. I was a private investigator and security officer prior to becoming 21, when I was able to become a law enforcement officer. I started my career in the town of Orange, also worked for the city of Richmond, and then came back to the town and the county. During that time period, I was an FTO was spent a few years here off and on, so to speak, training and doing different things like that. And during that timeframe, we were on food stamps because the pay was so low, so we had to have support.

Eventually I moved on and went to Northern Virginia to help solve that problem, and I also went to work for the Department of Juvenile Justice. From the Department of Juvenile Justice, I went to Northern Virginia and spent the next 20 years helping build them up and develop their departments in the area where I retired from. As the administrative services commander, I spent years managing budgets and construction projects, and dealing with high profile investigations, dignitary protection, hiring, firing, HR issues, just a multitude of things of that nature.

I'm from a middle-class family who's always had 9-to-5 jobs working hard. My mother worked for the government and for hospital systems, and my father was a driver for Kenmore Cleaners in Fredericksburg for years. All of my children have either gone to Orange County schools or graduated from Orange County schools, except for my oldest. I have one school right now who's in the Orange County High School system.

Do you have any previous political experience?

I ran one time before as a write-in campaign for District 4 before they changed the lines. During that write-in campaign over a six-week period, I was able to obtain over 30 percent of the vote with my name not being on the ballot. That was just getting around talking to people and people believing in my message.

Any community involvement outside of politics?

There's not a whole lot that I can speak to as far as community involvement outside of politics, other than going to the normal stuff: 4-H, participating in some of the local events, giving donations to different churches and those types of things. 

I'm a member of the VCDL and I’m what they would call an area coordinator or an alertist for Orange County, and have been for the last couple of years in protection of our Second Amendment rights.

In terms of other clubs, there are several groups I've been a member of over the years. Most of them have to do with protection of the Second Amendment, and I was one of the founders of Trump Supporters of Virginia. I was one of the top three members that started that. So, most of my involvement has been political.

What motivated you to run for a position on the Orange County Board of Supervisors?

Quite honestly, we can't keep doing things the way they've been done. Things need to change. People keep doing the same things over and over again and expecting a different result, and that's literally the definition of insanity.

I've had a lot of experience being in Northern Virginia and I really don't want to see those types of things happen here in Orange County. Orange County still has an opportunity to do things differently, and what we decide to build here is what we're going to get. So, part of my reason for running and for making this bid is that I believe we have to change things at the ground level. That's where we start to difference before we can change anything else. We have to rebuild a solid foundation for our community and our country.

What is your understanding of the role of a county supervisor?

The county board of supervisors has a lot of things that it's responsible for. The number one job of the county board of supervisors is to deal with the county budget. So, you have to look very closely at where money is going, how things are being spent, what services can be improved, and where money can be saved for the citizens of the county.

And we really set the tone for how the rest of the county agencies act. The services that people get are derived from the county board of supervisors, what we're willing to support and what expectations we set. And of course, you end up setting tax rates, trying to find ways to cut taxes, approving and setting county ordinances that have to do with zoning and all of these types of things. But the biggest thing that the county board of supervisors has to do is oversee the budget meticulously and watch for those red flags when they pop up.

One of the other things is that you have to plan for the future. We set the tone for where Orange County potentially can go and in years past, that hasn't been done. We haven't really built an infrastructure for what we want to come here or picked an identity for Orange County to try to build toward. And whatever we decide to pick and build as an identity for Orange County is what we're going to attract.  

So, we have a real opportunity to make a difference in what Orange County does going forward. There's a huge difference between urban sprawl and rural growth. For us to be able to grow rurally, if that's the identity we choose, it can make a huge difference.

Think about things like this:  My predecessor came into office in 2011 and the population of the county increased by 13 percent, yet the increase in administrative salaries nearly tripled and the number of full-time county employees increased by about 75 percent. So, there are things we definitely have to pay attention to.

The Wilderness Crossing rezoning earlier this year brought attention a shared desire to maintain the rural character of Orange County, but many residents have also expressed a need for additional services and amenities like grocery stores and doctor’s offices. If elected, how do you plan to balance these two concerns?

That comes back to what I was talking about before. There's a big difference between urban sprawl and rural growth when you're talking about grocery stores and those types of things. The fact of the matter is that a grocery store actually could be developed that caters to rural growth, and it could be supported by local farms and local industry.

As a matter of fact, there's an example of it out west where they've done just that. They've been able to keep the prices at the grocery store comparable to Food Lion and or lower, and they're getting higher quality food because it's coming from all local processes — the beef, the pork, the eggs, the milk, the vegetables, even a lot of the canned foods. And it's done on a mass basis.

Well, guess what? This grocery store became so popular, it started bringing people in from other states. It brought an influx of outside residents coming to shop here, which actually helps support our tax base. And you start building a community based around that.

You can do the same thing in almost any industry if we look at it that way. We can start to build attractions that bring people here without creating the urban sprawl. They spend money, and we create amenities and jobs literally based on a country lifestyle. We're in a position where we're going to be surrounded by growth and people are looking for that rural getaway.

The other thing that we build attractions around is our history, and we haven't done a good job of that in Orange County. Orange County is literally the cradle that rocked the Constitution. We do not do a good job of developing our tourism industry to help bring people in. We do not do a good job of developing living history or pointing out some of the other historical sites in the county that have great significance.

I'd really like to see some of those things change. I believe we can create an attraction to Orange County, and we're in a position to do so. Have you ever been able to have growth urban sprawl in a county, keep taxes down and keep services up? You can't show me an example of where it's been done. It doesn't happen. We're in a position to do things differently and think outside of the box.

Improving teacher recruitment and retention has been a major goal at Orange County Public Schools in recent years. Do you feel that there are ways the Board of Supervisors can better partner with or support the school system in this area, and if so, how?

First and foremost, one of the biggest things we have to do as a board of supervisors is make sure the school board is doing their job, which means we're going back to them and going, “Hey, we're looking at your budget. Did y'all actually look at this?” Quite frankly, in the past, I know for a fact that they've rubber stamped the budget that they've gotten from the superintendent without questioning anything.  

There also need to be opportunities taken where the school board is empowered to look at the finances of how the school system is working — looking for places where they can save money and do things that can enhance teacher salaries and opportunities for education so that we can start looking at technical and trades for our students, because not everybody's geared to go to college. Some of them have much broader talents, and a lot of those talents lie in their hands and their mechanical abilities. And we're not servicing those students well.

So, as a county, we need to support our students, our agricultural programs, our FFA, our 4-H, all of those programs as much as we possibly can, because those are going to help develop what we want to see happen in the county as well. When we develop those programs, we become known to outside places for our technical and trades, we get national recognition and potentially industry recognition. When you start developing a workforce like that, all of a sudden, light industry has some interest in coming here and filling up our industrial parks that we have built, which then provides more jobs. Farms and light industry are actually what keeps our tax base lower, and those are the things we need to focus on building and supporting.

Transparency has been a key issue in Orange County elections this year, but in the internet era, we’ve also seen a proliferation of social media groups and websites run without a transparent leadership structure. What is your view on the responsibility of candidates and elected officials in dealing with anonymous political groups?

First off, anonymous political groups are always going to exist. They're never going anywhere, and it's something that we do not have any control over. Until things change far above our level, that's not an issue that we can greatly deal with. You can only challenge if they present an incorrect fact. If they are not presenting incorrect facts, then I'm not quite sure what the issue is on those types of things.  

Now, as a candidate, what I can tell you is that I'm 100 percent into transparency. I want my voters to have the opportunity to know, think and feel what's going on. And I want the feedback not just from District 2, but from every person in the county. We're all together in this. I have to represent the voters of District 2 and at the end of the day, that's what I will always do. But when it comes to transparency, I want to know what voters in the county are thinking and feeling. I'm providing that information to them. I want them to call me with questions.

One of the things I've done is to put out my personal cell phone number and email for people to reach out and talk to me in person when they have questions. Even when it comes to posts, they'll ask a long question that would take 15 paragraphs to answer. Let me ask them to call me. And people have called me, and I've spoken to people about those issues.

Our board of supervisors has done these nondisclosure agreements, but they did it without getting any input from the voters and what their thoughts were. They also didn't insist on an expiration date for stuff like that. Guess what? It may be a great opportunity, but if your voters aren't on board, then maybe it's not something that you should be doing.

We need to be forward about the things that we are doing and when we are allowed to disclose things. You just have to be upfront about it. Citizens just want to know. And they have not done a good job of that. They really haven't. I find it amazing that they find it so hard, but I am hoping that as we go forward, we can be transparent about those types of issues.

I'm always straightforward and honest. It doesn't mean I can't change my opinion on something. Absolutely not. I can change my opinion on something, but if I've had a conversation with somebody, you can almost guarantee I'm going to call that person back and go, “Hey, more information has come to light, and this is why I feel differently about something now.” And I'll have that conversation with them.

One of the key slogans of your campaign has been “Don’t Central Park Orange County.” What specific aspects or problems related to Central Park are you worried about coming to Orange County?

Have you driven through Central Park in Fredericksburg? It's a nightmare. For years, it was a golf course over there, a nice one at one point in time and a nice hotel. But when Central Park came in there, congestion built around Central Park and there was poor planning by VDOT.  

VDOT always comes up with a plan, but I have never once seen their traffic plan actually relieve traffic. Why? Because they're always 30 years behind, and the county did not plan for the infrastructure to make that an efficient setup. Now, they're still trying to correct it, and look at all the traffic and the stuff they're having to do with the roads and the highways to try to alleviate that.

At certain times of the year, you can try to go through Route 3 anywhere near Central Park and it will take you 45 minutes to an hour to get through six lights. And it ends up being a huge commuter hub, which is only going to get worse when you move that over here. So, what you end up with is very similar to what's going on in northern Virginia. 

That is all the response to becoming a bedroom community, and the county did not do a good job of building resources for it. They're short on police officers; they're short on fire and rescue personnel. They are short infrastructure and they've had to buy water from other counties.

They've had to do all of that because of poor planning. I don't want Orange County to be another place that has done poor planning, and we already have things that they're talking about doing today that should have been set in place 20 years ago.

Let’s wrap this up with a few apolitical get-to-know-you questions. Favorite pizza topping?

Honey.

Movie or TV show?

“Pay It Forward.”

Place to travel or go on vacation? 

I love going to the Outer Banks, but a place I haven't been yet and I’m looking forward to is Ireland and Scotland.

To learn more about DJ Anglin, visit www.elect-dj.com or his Facebook page here. Readers can also contact Anglin directly at (540) 742-4320 or danglin3@gmail.com. For more information on Orange County elections, visit www.orangecountyva.gov/354/Voter-Registration-Elections or call the Orange County Office of Voter Registration and Elections at (540) 672-5262.