The Stafford County Board of Supervisors has once again kicked the can down the road on a communications plan to inform the public about the county's redistricting, a process that will happen this year. The county has been stymied in their progress on redistricting which happens every 10 years due to the census data which was taken in 2020 being unavailable.

Like all other localities, Stafford County uses that census data in order to inform their decisions in redrawing district lines.

Stafford had planned to replace a series of planned stakeholder meetings that were to be used to disseminate information about redistricting with community information meetings. The county had hoped to reach a wider audience with these new meetings thus having more transparency on the redistricting efforts.

Residents spoke at the board's previous meeting on June 1 objecting to these new meetings citing their belief that these meetings actually made the process more opaque.

As a result, Stafford will continue to use the stakeholder model but will work on establishing some criteria for stakeholders since some of the groups listed as stakeholders are not residents of the county and are for-profit groups which came as a suggestion from Hartwood District Supervisor Gary Snellings.

Stafford County established its redistricting committee on March 3 to analyze population data and recommend adjustments to election district lines and polling locations. The delayed release of the U.S.Census data taken in 2020 has delayed the redistricting process.

The county will be responsible for redrawing the lines of its seven magisterial districts, while politicians in Richmond will redraw political boundaries for General Assembly and Congressional Districts.