Isle of Wight County Administrator Randy Keaton has announced his intention to retire within the next 10 months.

An Oct. 17 letter from Keaton to the Board of Supervisors specifies an effective date on or before Aug. 31.

“This is the opportunity of a lifetime and has been my pleasure to work with each one of you,” Keaton wrote to the supervisors. “I hope that I’ve been able to make a small contribution to Isle of Wight County’s success during my time here. The county’s been blessed with great leadership from the Board of Supervisors and extremely talented and dedicated staff who made my job possible. It has been a challenging and a rewarding experience and I’m extremely proud of the projects and programs that we have completed or initiated for the benefit of our citizens.”

Keaton, 64, is in his eighth year as county administrator for Isle of Wight and come November will reach his 42nd anniversary of working in local government across Virginia and North Carolina. Keaton said his last day will likely be between June 30 and Aug. 31, which will allow him to complete the county’s 2025-26 budget before turning the reins over to whomever the supervisors vote to hire as his successor.

Keaton said his retirement plans include spending more time with family, traveling and volunteer work. 

“I told the board when I interviewed for the job that this would be my last job. … I’m really thankful this ended up being my last job because it’s been my best job,” he said.

Board Chairman Joel Acree and Supervisors Rudolph Jefferson and William McCarty each had a hand in hiring Keaton in 2016. In January of that year, Acree and McCarty had just taken their seats after being elected in 2015 when Keaton’s predecessor, Anne Seward, announced her resignation. The board had worked with an interim administrator, Sanford “Sandy” Wanner, to recruit and interview candidates to replace Seward.

“I think we were certainly blessed to find Randy at that time,” Acree said.

Keaton, in 2016, left his role as deputy executive director of the Hampton Roads Planning District Commission to come to Isle of Wight, according to past reporting by The Smithfield Times. Before that, he’d served as county manager for Pasquotank and Perquimans counties, both in North Carolina.

“I think you’ve done the best job of any county administrator I’ve sat under all these years,” said Vice Chairman Don Rosie, who was first elected to the board in 2017 and before that served 17 years on the county’s Planning Commission.

“You have helped along with staff and the board to bring Isle of Wight County, in my opinion, to its strongest fiscal stature that we’ve ever been in,” McCarty said. “Our bond rating is as strong as it’s ever been; we’ve built a brand new school.”

Hardy Elementary opened its doors to students in 2023 after roughly 18 months of construction. Keaton’s recommended plan for funding the new school, which the supervisors adopted, entailed refinancing $6 million of the county’s existing debt to allow the county to pay back the more than $30 million it borrowed for Hardy in 2020 over the next several years without the originally envisioned 4-cent real estate tax increase.

Acree remarked that in 2016 one of the main controversies of the day, which remains so in 2024, was managing the county’s rate of population growth. Isle of Wight, which has seen its population grow roughly 2% annually since the 2020 census, is now the sixth or seventh fastest-growing county in the state according to differing census data and rankings by the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center.

“I remember the eyebrows raised when this man with experience from another locality said I know how you can stop growth, just make a community that nobody wants to live in,” Acree said of Keaton.

“We do want this to be a wonderful place and I know you’ve been a part of making it that much nicer of a place to live,” Acree told Keaton.

The supervisors have not announced a timeline or process for hiring Keaton’s successor.