Henrico supervisor proposes ending 'The Henrico Way'
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Could it be the end of "The Henrico Way?"
For years, elected and appointed Henrico officials and rank-and-file members of county government have championed the phrase – a reference to the manner in which the county operates, the level of service that all of its employees are expected to provide and, generally speaking, the local government’s pride in its ability to be effective, efficient and responsive.
But at least two members of the county’s board of supervisors last week said that they struggle with the term and worry about how it may be interpreted or perceived by some citizens.
At the end of the first day of the board’s two-day retreat last week, during which supervisors discussed a wide variety of topics and heard from various Henrico government department leaders, Three Chopt District Supervisor Misty Whitehead told her colleagues and officials that the terminology didn’t sit right with her.
“I don’t like the feeling that I feel is evoked by ‘The Henrico Way,’ said Whitehead, a Democrat who is a native of the Philippines and serving her first year on the board. “It feels very dog-whistley to me and has for some time. When I got elected and some of us got elected, I kind of just loosely joked that this is a new Henrico Way, and I don’t say that in a way that is disparaging at all to the great things that Henrico has done. But I do think we have to acknowledge that Henrico has not always felt super inclusive to everyone within its borders.”
The term, Whitehead said, could bring about impressions that are not welcoming for some citizens.
“Generally whenever something is ‘The Blank Way,’ it hearkens to mind a period of time when things weren’t focused on equity and inclusivity,” she said. “And so the Henrico Way has always grated on me, and whenever my executive assistant hands me something that references or is written by [Henrico County] PR [officials] that says The Henrico Way, she knows automatically that I would like that taken out of my speech.”
Whitehead told her colleagues that she was raising the issue as “food for thought” and acknowledged that that topic might not be a concern to others.
“It could be just me, but maybe it’s not just me,” she said.
Board Chair and Varina District Supervisor Tyrone Nelson, however, said that he also has felt conflicted about the term since joining the board 12 years ago.
“I came on in 2012, I was 38 years old, everybody else on that board was 60-plus,” said Nelson, a Democrat who became just the second Black supervisor ever to serve on the board. “I survived through a time where not everybody had the same type of thoughts, ideas, etc. I think most of us have a sense of what ‘Henrico Way’ means, but I too have struggled over the course of a decade actually saying it. And that’s because people actually said to me, ‘You know when you all say Henrico Way, you know what that means, right?'
And I think to myself, it should mean good customer service, that we’re doing the best that we can, that we are giving maximum effort, that we go an extra step. But there are some who look at that statement as a sense of arrogance and they look at it . . . as a time where we might not have felt like we were part of a greater region or equitable, etc.”
The other three board members did not weigh in on the matter during the meeting, and no further discussion about the issue was immediately planned.
The “Henrico Way” phrase is embedded within the county’s government structure and appears in multiple places on the Henrico County website.
“The Henrico Way has been a long-standing tradition – purposeful customer-focused services,” reads the introductory sentence on the site’s Transparency page, which displays “the tangible outcomes of our focus in a simple and informative manner.” The page shows a variety of information, from the county code, zoning map and comprehensive plan to bid postings for government projects, Henrico’s public data portal and information about the board of supervisors and other agencies.
Another page on the website is devoted to The Henrico Way by name, with examples of it in action across various departments.
“Henrico is proud to share recognition of county employees who exemplify The Henrico Way of customer service, leadership and accountability,” it reads.
The section includes a series of brief videos showcasing county employees and the work they do a daily basis, as well as documented cases in which county employees responded to citizen inquiries in a manner consistent with the goals of "The Henrico Way." Captions on those videos describe the phrase as representing “the county's workplace culture that strives to provide excellent customer service every day.”
