Kathleen Seefeldt

Personal

Born in Minnesota, Mrs. Seefeldt earned her undergraduate degree from St. Scholastica College (1956) and did graduate work at Boston University. With Robert A. Seefeldt, her husband, she moved to Prince William County in 1970. They reside in Woodbridge and Chincoteague, Virginia. She is a mother and grandmother who gives stain removal advice and reads for pleasure.

Board of Supervisors

Kathleen Seefeldt was first elected to the Prince William Board of County Supervisors in 1975, and served as the Occoquan District Supervisor from 1976 to 1991. In 1991, she was elected the first at-large Chairman of the Board. Previously, the Chairman had been elected by the Board from among its membership. When Seefeldt took office as Chairman in 1992, she assumed the Board's eighth seat, the first time the Board had grown since it was enlarged to seven Supervisors in 1967.

During her tenure on the Board, she was a fairly strong advocate for greater growth and development in the County, which was still very rural when she first entered office in 1976. She was instrumental in the construction of the Prince William Parkway, a stretch of which bears her name. The Parkway, begun in 1990, provided a major arterial thoroughfare connecting the county's eastern and western ends, beginning at Interstate 95 near Woodbridge and continuing on through Dale City to Manassas. Later additions to the Parkway included an eastern extension providing a link-up with US Route 1 and a western extension that connected with Interstate 66 and those parts of the county west of Manassas.

In 1988, Seefeldt became involved in a battle between the National Park Service and real estate development company Hazel/Peterson over the proposed construction of a large, regional shopping mall near the Manassas National Battlefield Park. Seefeldt expressed concerns over the environmental and traffic impact of the proposed development, but supported the mall as a strong economic development tool, one that might compete with the large, popular, and profitable Tysons Corner Center in neighboring Fairfax County. Relations between Seefeldt and the Park Service soon deteriorated over longstanding county government concerns regarding the Park Service's stewardship of the Manassas Battlefield and the Park Service's opposition to the new mall. Ultimately, the mall was never built.

Mrs. Seefeldt lost reelection to a third term in 1999 to Republican Sean Connaughton who successfully targeted her as the architect of the County's burgeoning growth. Development that was once welcome had brought greater traffic and placed a strain on county services, fueling voter disenchantment in a historic election; the Democrats lost control of the Virginia General Assembly for the first time in a century. In Prince William County, once the Democrats' bastion in Northern Virginia, the County Sheriff, Commonwealth's Attorney, and two members of the Board of Supervisors were the only Democrats left in County Government.

She remains the last Democrat to have chaired Prince William County's government.

Prince William Parkway

In April 2001, a portion of the Prince William Parkway was dedicated as the "Kathleen K. Seefeldt Parkway". The portion named after Seefeldt stretches from I-95 to the intersection of Liberia and Fairview Avenues near Manassas; this segment is the original Parkway and was completed entirely during Seefeldt's tenure as Chairman. Mrs. Seefeldt was a key force in securing the parkway, and its unusual (for Virginia), mix of local with state financing. Stone monuments to Seefeldt can be found at the intersection of the Parkway and Davis Ford Road (no longer an arterial road) and again at the intersection of the Parkway and the border with the City of Manassas.

Other public service, politics

Civic and community organizations

Awards and commendations