Christine Smith and Cli Miller
Cliff Miller, a Sperryville business owner, is challenging Piedmont Supervisor Christine Smith on the Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors.
Miller was born and raised in Richmond, but visited Rappahannock on weekends since his family owned the property where his restaurant, Headmaster’s Pub, is now located. He attended Dartmouth College for his undergraduate degree and earned an MBA from the University of Virginia.
He returned to Rappahannock in 2009 after nearly a decade on the west coast in San Francisco where he worked as an investment firm trader and pursued other independent projects. He became disenchanted with the hustle and bustle of the city and yearned for a return to rural life. Originally, he moved to Rappahannock with the intent of only staying for a year, but ended up not leaving.
“I realized that I really didn’t enjoy being in traffic and being in congested areas,” Miller said of the lifestyle change. The candidate lives in Sperryville with his wife and their 18-month-old daughter.
Miller said he’s running for supervisor to bridge the divides he believes are increasingly handicapping both discourse and civility within the community — oftentimes the result of national politics unnecessarily being injected into local affairs.
“I’ve gone to enough meetings to see that there really are kind of two sides that don’t want to work together, and I feel like I come down on the conservative side of a lot of issues, and I come down on the liberal side of a lot of issues,” he said. “I kind of would enjoy being somebody who might be able to unite these two sides [and] come up with solutions that make more people happy.”
HOW SHOULD RAPPAHANNOCK APPROACH ITS FUTURE?
Miller, if elected, hopes to walk a fine line between preserving Rappahannock’s open spaces, rural feel and relative lack of development — characteristics that make the county “unique” — while also finding room to facilitate creation of businesses that can offer jobs and attract young families into the community.
“There’s a faction in our government and constituents here that think the best way to preserve that [unique feel] is to do nothing. I don’t believe that is a viable option,” he said.
“We are slowly becoming a retirement community because young working families are finding it more and more difficult to live here. And so I think we have to do some things that make this a place [where] people can live and work.”
Tourism is also a crucial part of the county’s future, particularly in Sperryville near the entrance to Shenandoah National Park, one of the country’s most visited national parks, Miller said.
The county government should work to bolster existing businesses and encourage development of new ones — so long as they don’t dampen the prized rural character — to serve both residents and tourists who frequent the park, he said.
“So these people are really going to drive through … and they’re going to spend no money, or they’re going to find businesses where they want to spend,” Miller said. “And I think it’s crazy to not take some of that and put it into our tax base.”
HOW TO ADDRESS LACK OF UNIVERSAL BROADBAND?
While Miller isn’t sure whether he would prefer the county take up fiber expansion or utilize SpaceX’s Starlink, he said broadband expansion is critical to Rappahannock’s future success.
“One or the other has got to happen so people can work online and students can learn online, and that’s going to be a crucial part of this place being a viable place for families to live,” he said. Even better would be if the county was able to pull off an expansion without the taxpayer bearing any financial burden, Miller said.
The Rappahannock County Board of Supervisors are currently moving forward with a plan for large-scale fiber installation. It’s not yet clear what role taxpayers may have in a potential expansion initiative.
WHERE TO ALLOCATE STIMULUS FUNDS?
Rappahannack should devote stimulus money first and foremost to infrastructure and broadband expansion, Miller said. Resources should also be poured into determining how to combat declining enrollment in the Rappahannock County Public Schools, he added.
WHY SHOULD VOTERS ELECT YOU?
Miller said he’s willing to have his mind changed, remains wholly focused on working to tackle tough issues as a united community, and rarely enters negotiations with an agenda.
“We seem to be two teams that are butting heads rather than one team that is trying to come up with the best solution for the people in Rappahannock,” he said. “And that to me is a problem, and that’s a big part of the reason I’d like to be on this board, because I feel like I’m capable of having civil discourse — even when I disagree with somebody.”