Who We Are

The Code of Virginia requires each county to be governed by a board of supervisors, composed of three to eleven members. Supervisors are elected for four-year terms, which are staggered at two-year intervals. Montgomery County has seven (7) supervisors, one for each of the seven voting districts in the county. At the first meeting of the year, the board organizes itself and selects one of its members to serve as chairman and another to serve as vice-chairman. The chairman and vice-chairman continue to be voting members of the governing body. Meetings are held the 2nd and 4th Monday of each month at 7:15 p.m. at the County Government Center, 755 Roanoke Street, in Christiansburg. Special meetings may be held when necessary. All meetings are open to the public. Each meeting has a public address session, at which time citizens are invited to address the Board on any issue of concern.

For any action agreed to in a closed meeting to become effective, the board of supervisors must reconvene in an open meeting and take a vote of its membership on the particular action, the substance of which must be reasonably identified in the open meeting.

The board of supervisors has both administrative and legislative responsibilities, some of which are discharged in the role of the local governing body and some of which have derived from its function as an administrative subdivision of the state. The powers and duties of the board of supervisors include:

• preparing the county budget and appropriating funds
• levying county taxes
• appointing members of various boards and committees
• pre-auditing claims against the county and issuing warrants for their settlement
• constructing and maintaining county buildings
• adopting the county's comprehensive land use plan and approving and enforcing related ordinances
• adopting and enforcing ordinances for police, sanitation, health, and other regulations permitted by state laws.

Resolutions and Ordinances

Resolutions and ordinances are formal actions of the Board of Supervisors. Resolutions generally are used for all county business that is essentially administrative, such as making appointments and appropriating funds. An ordinance affects the lives, liberty or property of citizens and has a permanent effect. Before the Board of Supervisors can adopt an ordinance they are required to hold a public hearing. The public hearing must be advertised for two consecutive weeks prior to the hearing. Emergency ordinances may be adopted without notice, but may not be enforced for more than sixty (60) days unless readopted in the required manner. Land use control ordinances are an exception to this general procedure, requiring individual notice to certain affected property owners and other more stringent procedural requirements.