Text of Resignation Letter

To the Arlington County Board: After more than 29 wonderful years working for Arlington County, I will move to the next phase of my career later this fall. I deeply appreciate the County Board for giving me the opportunity to serve as County Manager. We have worked on a bold agenda that has made Arlington a model community in multiple areas. The County Board’s support, vision, respectful guidance, willingness to take measured risks, and steadfast commitment to egalitarian values have made the job more rewarding than I could have ever hoped. I must also acknowledge Arlington’s dedicated, hard working employees who are its greatest source of strength. Staff work behind the scenes in settings that range from dangerous to tedious. Their names rarely appear in public. They are the people, however, on whom Arlington’s reputation depends. A world-class community requires a government workforce that achieves excellence every day in routine tasks, a workforce that understands the vision and values of the community, and delivers services in a manner that honors those values – especially the commitment to respect the importance of each person. It is at the line level that services are provided and where social equity is achieved or not. My goals going forward are to take the lessons I have learned in Arlington and help advance professional local government management and prepare the next generation of local government leaders. Thus, I have accepted a position with the International City/County Management Association – ICMA. At ICMA I will serve as Executive-in-Residence and Director, Strategic Domestic Initiatives. Among my areas of particular focus will be sustainability, social equity, emergency management, and community engagement. I will also continue my long-term relationship with The George Washington University. I will continue to provide day-to-day oversight as County Manager through October. From November through the end of 2009, I will shift my primary focus to ICMA, but continue to be available for consultation with Arlington as needed. I will work closely with the County Board and the Executive Leadership Team to prioritize the work to which I can lend the most value during the transition. It is impossible for me to fully express my appreciation for the Arlington community, which is and will continue to be my adopted home. When I came to work here in 1980, Arlington was not the community it is today and I planned to stay only a couple of years and go somewhere else. I soon learned, however, that Arlington had the vision, the will, and the resources to be much more than it was 29 years ago. Arlington’s leaders of the previous generation had a deep commitment to a progressive future. They had a belief in professional, apolitical management working on behalf of economic and environmental sustainability, while remaining rooted deeply in ethical conduct, social equity, and participatory democracy. My goals over the past eight years as County Manager have been to fulfill the vision of the previous generation, to attempt to live up to their expectations, and to lay a foundation for the next generation to take Arlington to even greater heights. I have been joined in this work by an exceptional senior leadership team, the members of which are widely respected regionally and nationally. I leave confident that Arlington is in very good hands. Finally, I want to note that, for more than a generation, Arlington’s leaders have shown a commitment to looking beyond our borders and working for mutual success with other local governments. It has been professionally and personally rewarding to work closely with colleagues from other jurisdictions, especially the Chief Administrative Officers of the National Capital Region and Northern Virginia and my friends in the Virginia Association of Local Human Services Officials. Ethical values, enlightened elected and community leaders, the excellence of County staff, and inter-governmental collaboration have all become expectations in Arlington to the point that we take them for granted. We should not. These qualities have made Arlington the community it is today and what our future depends on. When I accepted the position of County Manager in 2001, I said that I would serve as long as it was fun. The job remains immensely fun and is perhaps the best city/county management job anywhere. If I stayed as long as I was having fun, I would never leave. Working for ICMA, however, means that I don’t really have to leave, but that I get the opportunity to serve Arlington and other communities across the U.S. in a different way. I look forward to continuing to have fun with Arlington in my new role. Sincerely, Ron Carlee County Manager