After an extensive search, the Town of Middleburg has hired a new Town Planner and Zoning administrator, Will Moore.

Moore, by all accounts, is an extraordinary and well-qualified candidate for a very tough job.

Middleburg, for all its southern grace and charm, takes on the characteristics of Grizzly-in-Defense-of-Cubs, when it comes to changes that affect what marketers would call the "look and feel" of place. . . and what the rest of the community sees as the underlying structure, the bones and muscles and sinews, of a rather special, ever-changing, growing and evolving living thing We call it Middleburg but it is more than just a place.

It's more than the land and even more than the people within the Town Limits. It embraces a truly extended community of family, friends, fans, and business interests, for whom Will Moore will become a singularly influential advisor, protector, seer, and steward.

Moore succeeds David Beniamino, for whom (in our view) the Town Code provided the critical tools for the exercise of the special level of stewardship required. That code was the outward and visible sign of what some might see as the Town's vision of itself.

Moore's training and experience, we understand, is the flip side of that same code of good stewardship. As a planner he knows the power of long-term planning around a well-articulated vision. Those insights, in turn, will help shape and re-shape the Town codes, rules, regulations and guidelines to maintain that vision as the living thing that is Middleburg continues to grow and evolve.

Congratulations to Middleburg on what by all accounts is a great hire . . . and thanks and best wishes to Mr. Moore for his commitment to Middleburg, in all its extraordinary forms.