Greene County chair wins reelection by just 9 votes

The Greene County Board of Supervisors will be keeping a familiar face among its ranks after an election that was too close to call for more than a week.

Incumbent Standardsville District Supervisor Steve Catalano, and the board’s sitting chair, will stay in his seat after beating challenger Jason Snow by just 9 votes.

“To those of you that did support me, thank you. To those of you that didn’t. I have heard you; I understand and please give me a chance to earn your support,” Catalano said in a Facebook post announcing his victory on Nov. 13.

The race between the two men remained close until 11 provisional ballots could be verified and counted on Nov. 12. There was a 12-vote difference favoring Catalano heading into that final count.

“Public Service is never easy, and all of us benefit when we lift our elected officials up rather than tear them down,” Snow posted on his own Facebook page after Catalano was confirmed the winner of the election.

Snow hoped to unseat Catalano, who previously served on the board from 1999 to 2011 and was appointed in 2023 to fill the vacancy left by Abbey Heflin before winning an election for a one-year term in 2024. Both men ran as independents.

“I have had to help make a bunch of very difficult decisions in my time on this board. Many of these not popular, some have been controversial. As I have said so many times, our community is at a critical crossroads in its history. Many issues have been overlooked, not finished, or disorganized for a variety of reasons. My goal for the last 2 years and the next 4 is to put our community on the proper platform, to define its future and give it the opportunity to be sustainable,” Catalano said in his Facebook post.

Some of those "difficult decisions" likely include closing the Ruckersville Volunteer Fire Company, the county’s busiest fire department, earlier this year without explanation and instructing county staff they were not allowed to speak to the press in contravention of the U.S. Constitution. Catalano led the charge in both of those matters. Both were reversed after The Daily Progress reported on them.

The Daily Progress reached out to Snow to inquire if he would request a recount, which he is legally allowed to do under Virginia law, but he did not respond.

Source: www.dailyprogress.com