Dr. Ella Ward, Chesapeake Council Woman Elected to Chair HRPDC

CHESAPEAKE
Chesapeake City Councilwoman Dr. Ella Ward was elected as Chair of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission (HRPDC) during its recent June meeting. The Hampton Roads Planning District Commission is one of the 21 Planning District Commissions in the Commonwealth of Virginia and is the regional organization that represents the 17 local governments of the Hampton Roads area.

The seventeen local governments represented on the COMMISSION include the following cities and counties: Chesapeake, Franklin, Gloucester, Hampton, Isle of Wight County, James City County, Newport News, Norfolk, Poquoson, Portsmouth, Smithfield, Southampton County, Suffolk, Surry County, Virginia Beach, Williamsburg, and York County. The purpose of the COMMISSION is to promote the orderly and most efficient development of the physical, social, and economic elements of the entire Hampton Roads area by planning, encouraging, and assisting the seventeen member localities that make up the District.

The COMMISSION works with the General Assembly members, Federal agencies, representatives of the military and the general public in order to facilitate local government cooperation and state-local cooperation in addressing on a regional basis problems that have greater than local importance including but not limited to transportation, economic growth, sea-level rise, education, the environment and many others.

Dr. Ward has represented the city of Chesapeake as a voting member of the COMMISSION for six years, and she is the immediate past vice-president. “ I am excited about the confidence the member localities have placed in me as their new Chair,” says Dr. Ward, “and I will work hard with our Executive Director Mr. Bob Crum to ensure that the COMMISSION continues to serve its seventeen member localities with the same efficiency and excellence that it has in the past.” Dr. Ward also serves as one of the Chesapeake representatives on the Hampton Roads Transportation Organization, the counter part to the Hampton Roads Planning Commission which votes on all of the transportation projects to be funded in the Hampton Roads Region.