Caren Anton Resigns From Reston Association Board

RESTON, VA — Caren Anton announced on Tuesday that she was stepping down as the Hunters Woods/Dogwood District representative to the Reston Association Board of Directors.

In a letter to board President Sarah Selvaraj-D’Souza, Anton said it was “an honor to serve the general membership and, especially, to represent the residents of the Hunters Woods/Dogwood District these past four years.”

“On behalf of the board and our members, I’d like to thank Caren for her dedication and service to the Reston community,” D’Souza said in a release.

In a statement to FFXNow, Anton said: “This was a very painful decision for me because I care deeply about Reston Association. But life is fleeting, and I want to spend the rest of mine serving in ways that will bring me less frustration and greater satisfaction."

Anton's resignation comes almost two months after she finished her one-year term as board president. Much of the focus of the last six months of Anton's tenure as board president was the search to find a full-time chief executive officer.

The association has been without a full-time CEO since the beginning of September 2021. That's when former CEO Harry P. "Hank" Lynch stepped down to become the CEO at WildAid, a nonprofit focused on protecting endangered species and their habitats.

Since Lynch's departure, Larry Butler, RA's chief operating officer, has been acting as CEO.

Anton told Patch in March that the board was focused on completing the CEO hiring process by the time the RA election wrapped up on April 1.

This effort to pick a CEO before the new board was sworn in drew criticism from some community members, including Irwin Flashman, who was one of the three candidates running unopposed in last March's RA election.

Flashman told Patch in March that he thought the board's decision not to delay the process to be "unseemly." He compared it to former President Trump's rush to appoint Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court before the 2020 presidential election.

Although the outgoing board did conduct in-person interviews with prospective candidates in March, it failed to hire a new CEO before the new board was sworn in.

Last Thursday, the board appointed John Farrell as one of the at-large members on the board. Farrell fills the position vacated by Tim Dowling, who resigned on April 13, the same meeting in which the new board was sworn in.

With Dowling and Anton's resignations and the addition of three new members in April, the nine-member RA Board will have added five new members this year.

The board will begin the process of appointing her successor. RA members who live in the Hunters Woods/Dogwood District can submit their applications by 9 a.m. on June 10. The term of the new candidate will run until the 2023 RA Board election.