'Icon' led with passion, humor

Dick Stafford, who remembers Woodbury when it was hardly a footprint on the big city's doorstep, knows matters of scale. He spent years managing Washington County's pocketbook, first as treasurer and then as a commissioner. He watched the county's population balloon from 85,000 to nearly a quarter million in about 30 years.

And before he took public office? He was a milkman.

"History, humor, compromise," is what Stafford, a perennial wisecracker, said he brought in his long service to the county, which ended two weeks ago. He's retired now -- for the third time -- from any paid function, at least.

"I think I was truly the middle guy there on a lot of issues," Stafford, 79, said of his nine years spent on the five-member county board. He retired as county treasurer in 1999 and retired again in 2006 after eight years representing Woodbury on the commission. But after the commissioner who replaced him, Greg Orth, died in a fall in Mankato last January, the board appointed Stafford to fill the seat until the November election.

"He's definitely an icon in Woodbury," said Lisa Weik, his successor. "I think of him as a friend. I value his friendship, value his advice. He claims that he'll try to help keep me out of trouble. He's got this great sense of humor, like mischievous. He's a very funny man."

Stafford, once an Army squad leader who served during the Korean War, decided to campaign for county treasurer when he was a "milkman" at a dairy, bidding for milk sales in schools. He didn't know much about numbers then -- math was his weakest subject in high school, he said -- but he campaigned for better management in the treasurer's office and won.

"I was used to telling people what to do," he said of his Army experience and of being sales manager at the dairy.

Stafford also points to Washington County's credit rating with pride -- one of only 30 or so counties and cities nationwide that has an AAA rating.

Not long before Stafford became county treasurer, about 4,500 people lived in Woodbury, most of them near Maplewood and Oakdale west of the Interstate 494 loop. Today Woodbury is the county's largest city with a population of about 60,000, stretching all the way from Maplewood to its border with Afton. Countywide growth challenged commissioners to guide huge transformations on issues such as taxation, transportation, land use and solid waste, he said.

"It was fun to manage growth," he said. "It's going to be a lot tougher now because they're going to manage a recession."

Stafford went about his work with a passion, said Commissioner Myra Peterson, who represents Cottage Grove and other south Washington County cities. "There were times he's wanted to beat me on the head and times I wanted to beat him on the head," she said. "We always had spirited conversations that led us to good policies."

Said another commissioner, Bill Pulkrabek: "We aren't afraid to trade jokes and barbs and sarcasm back and forth. I can't say enough about Stafford, he's a great guy, a great elected official, truly a model for people in office. I kind of looked to Stafford as the diplomat or statesman on our board. I always listen when Dick Stafford talks."

Stafford said his vote for the transit tax was a difficult one. He's still not sold that the tax is working to the county's benefit, but he said a commissioner's role is to think beyond individual districts. "I still think we're not an island," he said of Washington County. "We're part of a huge community and we need to take part in it."

And that was the message he imparted to Weik. Woodbury, he said, is a heavy hitter in the county economy, producing 32 percent of the property tax revenue with 28 percent of the county's overall population. The city has progressive, determined leadership, he said.

"I told her, 'Lisa, you have to be loyal to your city but you're a county commissioner. Sometimes you're going to have to do something Woodbury doesn't like.' "

Stafford, who said he once was known as "the dirty rotten tax collector," plans to spend the first months of his latest retirement grooming one of his pet projects, a memorial to veterans outside Woodbury City Hall. His legacy lives on at the R.H. Stafford Library in Woodbury, now the county's busiest.

And his advice for commissioners?