Middleburg Chief of Police Steve Webber recently announced his retirement, well-deserved but sad for the town and its citizens. Chief Webber has brought stability to the town police department. The four outstanding officers he hired recently attended a Council meeting to express their support for their beleaguered boss and their regret at his retirement. Three drove from the Woodstock, VA area or further on their day off to be there. That alone speaks highly of their regard for Webber.

His officers talk about his openness and support of them, how he is willing to work shifts for them, and how he is always available to take their calls. In a recent conversation with Owen Heine, he recalled how Webber took shifts for him late last year when other officers were unavailable, so he could be home for the birth of his daughter. The others have similar stories.

As an aside, Webber's retirement was neither early, nor unexpected. Police officers may retire at any age with 25 years in the Virginia Retirement System (VRS) Law Enforcement Officer Service (LEOS). Not all Virginia towns belong to LEOS but Middleburg does. Webber was 3 years over and had been talking about it for at least that long. He had made travel plans with his family long before the announcement and had discussed it with at least 3-4 members of Council.

An outstanding town employee, Chief Webber has applied and received grants for the police department to the tune of $200,000 – money to buy equipment, including one police car. Additionally the grant money allowed the town to purchase two message trailers, a radar trailer, computers for all the town's police cars, additional radios and a radio base station. By doing so, he saved the town and its citizens quite a bit of money and brought our police department into the 21st Century. He has also worked out a detailed agreement for the town to lease additional police cars, with the option to purchase, working it so that the town never has to outright buy a full priced vehicle. He has always gone the additional mile to save the town money.

With less than two months to go, Webber was looking into grant money just last week for his department.

Working with the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT), he got the town into a pilot program to have our new traffic lights installed, as well as an electronic pedestrian crossing, and battery back-up power for the light. He has constantly looked into ways to make the town safer for our citizens and our visitors without burdening our already overtaxed citizens.

An even larger milestone is that every year for the past 10 years, Webber has brought his department in under budget and still is able to provide the town with almost 24 hours/7 day a week coverage, a first for the town. We have enhanced relationships with the Sheriff's Office and the State Police, allowing us to expand our police coverage, assist us with large events at little to no expense to the town, and provide us with a virtually free information service where we can have background and financial checks and polygraphs run.

Many other of Webber's accomplishments are smaller and brought out only because of incidents to individuals. Recently several Town Council members were stopped by business owners to express their outrage over the treatment of Webber by the media. One even went so far as to say, we haven't always seen eye to eye on issues, but he has been fair and equal in his treatment of all of us.

Either way the town is losing a valuable employee and friend, someone who put the good of the town and its citizens overall, before the good of the individual, including himself. I only hope the Town can find as good of a replacement for him.