Know Your Candidate: Ed Van Hoven, OC Board of Supervisors District 2

Ed Van Hoven, candidate for Orange County Board of Supervisors District 2. (Photo Credit: Courtesy of Ed Van Hoven)

This interview is part of a series intended to give readers an overview of local political candidates and what they believe. Read our interview with fellow District 2 candidate Delton “DJ” Anglin III here.

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

Can you tell us about your background?

My name is Ed Van Hoven. I've lived in Orange County for over 35 years. I met and married my wife, Gwen, in Orange. We've raised two kids in Orange. They're now married and live and work here as well.

We own and operate American Color, which is a wholesale commercial greenhouse on the Monrovia or Thornhill end of Orange, along with farming about 2000 acres. So, it's a heavily agricultural background. I've built my family based off of agriculture — we happen to do it with greenhouses, but greenhouses are an agricultural entity and we do outdoor farming as well.

Do you have any previous political experience?

No previous political experience.

Any community involvement outside of politics?

We've been blessed with our businesses, so we definitely are of the mindset that you have to give back. We've been involved with many different things in the community, from donations to physically helping out. We’re heavily involved with 4-H, FFA and the Orange County Fairgrounds. We actively participate in any events that fire and EMS or the sheriff's office holds. We try to stay involved with wherever the needs are in Orange as best as we can.

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

Similar to my last answer, we're a Christian family. We believe in giving back as the Lord blesses us and quite frankly, I'm at a time of my life where my kids and in-laws are doing a lot more of the day-to-day operations for everything that we're running. So, I have a little bit more time and I want to take what I've learned and apply it to the board.

The board of supervisors is a business position, and that's what we've run in Orange for well over 25 years successfully. I also think it's a time of extreme need with some of the issues that are being talked about, and with inflation being the way it is. So, what inspired me is that I have the time and the business expertise to help the citizens of Orange.

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

The role of a county supervisor is to take the concerns of all the constituents of Orange — and in this particular case, District 2 constituents — and address them. Supervisors need to make sure that certain items come before the constituents, and that we pay attention to what the county wants.

The board takes taxpayer funds and distributes those funds for a budget, so one of the main roles of the board is budget control. Tying right back into the business that I do every day, it's all about controlling and managing the budget. Let’s take the school board for example. They put in their budget, but the board has to approve that budget. Are we actively, thoroughly watching what's going on?  

So, I think the board's number one purpose is to pay attention to what all the constituents want, not make it a personal matter, and then use the resources that are coming from the constituents. And the job is extremely important. You have to apply those funds correctly. If not, you're not wasting your dollar; you're wasting everybody's dollar.

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's a great question. First of all, as I mentioned in my background, agricultural character is my life. That's what we built our family on. That's what we do for a living. It's extremely important to me that we maintain the rural, agricultural character of Orange, no doubt about it. Farming in general is the lifeblood of Orange, so we have to do that and it's instilled in me and my family to do that.

We need to have budget control. To have budget control, you need to have a certain amount of controlled growth. Many, many boards ago, they had already set up different growth corridors in Orange. The Route 3 corridor was an established growth corridor. The Lee Industrial Park is a growth corridor in Orange, and it's how you manage these growth corridors that will determine what we're all paying on taxes and what our tax base will be moving forward for generations to come.

If the growth corridors get messed up — let's just say too much housing and not enough of the right amenities that Orange needs — we're going to overrun our fire and EMS, our schools and everything else. Right now, I'm not 100 percent privy to exactly what is on the docket at Wilderness Crossing. There are a lot of things that of course we just don't know. Hopefully if I get on the board, we'll learn that, but I think it absolutely needs to be managed.

You're correct in saying that people don't want to drive 45 minutes to Fredericksburg or Charlottesville or Culpeper if you're on my end of Orange to actually go find something. 40 years ago, Orange had two drive-in movie theaters. They had a bowling alley, two well-known grocery stores, a Jamesway. You could actually get things in Orange.

Now, when we need to get stuff, we're taking our money outside of our county, so we have to use these growth corridors correctly. I think people may get confused with the words ‘rural’ and ‘growth,’ saying that if you're pro-growth, you're not pro-rural. That's not at all the case. I'm 100 percent pro-rural. It's my life. But we need to have some kind of managed growth to where we can keep the rural people spending money inside the county and keep our next generation engaged with things to do in the county. And that's what growth corridors are for.

So again, on the Wilderness Crossing end, I'm not familiar enough to speak about that yet because I like to look at facts. Everything for me is fact-driven, not emotion-driven. I want to see what the facts are about all of this. And if in fact, there are going to be a lot of rooftops at Wilderness Crossing, then we better control the rooftops versus the progress. We’ll need to make sure the progress outweighs the rooftops so we can continue to keep all of our finances in check, and that will enable us to maintain our rural character.

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?

The answer is yes. I believe the board can better partner with the school. I think there need to be more bridges built from the board of supervisors to every department in the county, whether it's the school, the town, or the sheriff's office. There needs to be more information going back and forth. Figuring out how is something I'm going to have to delve into, but I do think it's extremely important and it needs to happen. We need to have better teacher retention and we're all interested in educating our kids in a much better manner.

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?

Transparency is hyper-important and to me, transparency in business equals communication. There are certain things that are an open book when you make business decisions, and there are certain decisions you can't make like that. When I enter one of those agreements on any business endeavor, I can still communicate a story around that particular NDA to anybody that needs to know, so that everybody can connect the dots and understand whether or not something is a good move.

I think what's happened here in Orange is the failure to communicate properly. And you say, well, why are we failing to communicate? The bridges to the different organizations are not intact today. They started crumbling and we haven't repaired them over time. Now, we're all running on our own different agendas, and we need to pull this agenda together quickly. We need to be communicative, and then that will follow through to all the community members.

I think what's happening on social media, from the little bits I'm gathering, is that people will make their own presumptions. They'll take a phrase from what any particular candidate says and totally misconstrue that phrase. They're not listening to the paragraph. They're talking about excerpts of a couple words and then they put it together.

And that becomes the new truth, except it's not the truth.

So, just like I want to make decisions based off of facts, I think we have to be really careful in today's environment when we look at social media to determine what the actual fact is. The actual fact is when you pick up the phone, type an email or text me and say, “Ed, I'm hearing this. What's the truth?”

If I want to know something about you, I need to ask you. We all need to communicate as individuals because that's where you're going to get your true statements from, not from what people concoct and all of these anonymous things.

We're all allowed to disagree, but you can disagree in a kind fashion. We can all learn something by disagreeing with each other, and we can come to a very good conclusion that makes sense for everyone. But when you're disagreeing behind a wall, it’s impossible to come to a conclusion that's going to benefit everyone. The only way to do that is to get on the same page and all be talking about the same thing. Let's do it universally, not just in boardrooms, planning commission meetings and closed-door budget meetings.

One of the remarks that you've made during your campaign is that progress is inevitable. But some residents have expressed concerns that progress will inevitably lead to higher taxes. What are some of the specific strategies that you plan to use to minimize tax increases if elected?

‘Progress is inevitable’ is a very wide term. The people that are saying that are acting like I'm the guy that wants to build all of these housing developments and such, which we know puts a burden on the county.

That's not at all what I'm saying. I'm saying things will change. For me, progress means how we can use these growth corridors where something is going to happen, period. That's what's inevitable. Something's going to happen in a growth corridor, whether it happens today, tomorrow, or 50 years from now. That's what it's designed for. Let's put the right stuff there to keep our taxes the same or drill them down, while increasing our amenities needed in Orange.

We need to manage progress in a way that controls our tax base and won't get into our pockets. There are examples of counties that have reduced their taxes in a time of inflation. We can all pick on the examples where it goes up, but it doesn't have to be that way.

And I'm not naive. I know building houses adds to the tax base. So, when I'm referring to progress, I'm referring to bringing in the correct businesses and infrastructure in the growth corridors, not in our farming backyards. Let's bring in the right people to put the right proffers on the table to continue to build our amenities without dipping into the residents’ pocketbooks.

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

Pepperoni.

Movie or TV show?

“Yellowstone.”

Place to travel or go on vacation? 

It seems to change every couple of years as my family expands and grows. Currently, we really enjoy Smith Mountain Lake and it’s been working well for our family. Before that, it was Myrtle Beach, and before that it was Florida.

To learn more about Ed Van Hoven, visit his Facebook page here or contact edvanhovenforbos@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.