CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW) – With the new year just around the corner, big changes are in store for the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors in January with two new members set to join — Fred Missel and Sally Duncan.

Chair Jim Andrews and Vice-Chair Diantha McKeel will both be stepping away from the board next month. Andrews, who has been on the Board since 2022 representing the Samuel Miller District, will have his seat filled by Missel, who defeated Scott Smith in November’s election.

McKeel, who has served as Jack Jouett’s representative since 2014, will have her seat filled by Duncan, who ran unopposed in the general election.

With the transition well underway, both Missel and Duncan have already been attending meetings and preparing for the upcoming year. Both told Cville Right Now they are excited to get started.

“The more that I’m learning and doing stuff, just the more excited I am about getting to be involved,” Duncan said.

Both newcomers bring a unique background to the board. Missel is an Urban Planner and Landscape Architect who has previously served as the chair of the Albemarle County Architectural Review Board and Planning Commission. He said in some ways, he feels he’s been preparing to be a board member his whole career without realizing.

“I essentially have a career in land use and planning and design,” he said, “so I’m excited to bring that to the table and bring some experience that maybe some other board of supervisor members don’t have, but I’m also really excited to learn from them.”

Duncan’s is a high school history teacher and mother of five. She said, thanks to her research before deciding to run, there hasn’t been much that has surprised her about her new position as a supervisor.

However, she has been surprised by the amount of work being done by county staff and other organizations behind the scenes.

“I know people can think, ‘Oh, government is boring because it’s just roads and budgets,'” she said, “but really, kind of anything people touch on their daily life has to do with local government, and so it’s actually even more interesting than I even thought it was.”

Despite their different backgrounds, both said they hope to prioritize economic development as their first fews months as Supervisors will bring about “budget season.” Missel said he hopes to focus on directing growth toward already existing infastrure in order to save taxpayer dollars, as well as affordable housing which was also a major part of Duncan’s platform.

“I really have my antenna up to try to understand how we can build a sort of ongoing, reliable, affordable housing fund and see if we can carry that to the next level,” Missel said.

Both will also be joining the board on the heels of a work session with the School Board earlier this month, in which the latter body requested funds to begin work on a fourth high school, which would cost $230 million and open by the 2030-31 school. Despite the School Board calling the project its top priority, the Supervisors questioned the feasibility of the project, and the School Board is now planning to collect more data on the project.

Missel and Duncan were both present for the meeting, Duncan, whose two youngest kids currently attend AHS, said while she very aware of the overcapacity issues with the county’s high schools and is in favor of a new high school, she agreed with the sentiment of the current board members that more data is needed from the School Board before such an investment can be made, and is also in favor of any other solutions that could address the issue with less financial commitment.

“I wish the process was better in that there was a mechanism to design a plan and have some solid numbers before presenting it to the Board of Supervisors,” she said.

Missel said funding the high school will be “a real challenge,” and while his kids are over a decade removed from the school system, he understands the overcapacity problem from his time on the Planning Commission. He said he’s interested to learn more about the issue and is excited to work with his school board counterpart, incoming Samuel Miller representative Bob Beard.

“I think there’ll be a really collaborative process there,” Missel said, “just trying to understand how we can prioritize in ways that make logical sense in the county, and do we invest in center or do we invest in academies or do we invest in another school and how are these all sort of balanced out and prioritized will be something that I’d be interested in focusing on.”

The high school overcapacity issue will be just one of many Missel, Duncan and the other Supervisors will have to tackle this upcoming year. But both of the newcomers are eager to get started and looking forward to continuing to work with their fellow board members come January.

“I am really excited,” Duncan said. “I think we all are going to really well together. Fred and I have talked a lot. He is really great. I’m very very excited to have a really great working relationship with the people on the board.”