Five members make up the Mathews County Board of Supervisors. All serve at large, meaning each member represents everyone in the county.

The members’ length of service range from slightly more than one year to 25 years. They reside in all parts of Mathews. They serve four-year terms, staggered, so that either three or two seats come up for election in every odd-numbered year.

The Mathews County Board of Supervisors meets in the historic courthouse on the fourth Tuesday of each month. Most meetings begin at 1 p.m., but for several months (March, June and September), meetings are set for 7 p.m.

A county board, while an expression of representative government, is very accessible. Almost everyone in a small county knows at least one member well enough to have no shyness in firing off an opinion on county affairs. If anything hot is on the agenda, crowds fill the old courthouse, sitting on the steps to the second floor, standing along the rear, and spilling out of the double swingi...