Residents urge more school staff, raise election-security concerns and praise housing efforts during Henrico public comments
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Summary
Residents at the April 14 Henrico Board meeting urged funding for English-language-learner and special-education positions, urged review of election equipment, and praised the county's housing-affordability programs; Master Gardeners requested consistent meeting and storage space.
During the public-comment period at the April 14 meeting, several residents raised community concerns that the board discussed later in the budget debate.
Nadine Oswald, president of the Henrico Master Gardener Association, told the board the group recorded nearly 354,895 community contacts in 2025, donated nearly 10,000 volunteer hours and needs consistent meeting and storage space to sustain programming. "We realize recreation and parks needs meeting space as did social services, but we who contribute our time to Henrico County need consistent meeting and storage space too," Oswald said.
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Clark urged supervisors to reconsider recently proposed electronic-voting expenditures and invited board members to attend a briefing on alternatives, saying the county could save taxpayers money by moving to hand-counted paper ballots. He asked the board "not to approve the $600,000 in expenses" currently proposed for election equipment and said he had arranged a private briefing and a public talk for residents on the issue.
Technology expert Mark Cook also told the board he has studied election systems and risk-limiting audits and said transparency is essential; "Voting's simple. We put dots on pieces of paper, and then we count the dots," he said, urging greater verifiability of election results.
Frank Callan urged the board to fully fund the school board’s request for 50 ELL teachers and 27 exceptional-education positions; Callan described comparative dropout and absenteeism figures and asked supervisors to consider the human cost of short staffing in those programs.
Other commenters included Bruce Richardson, who commended county housing-affordability partnerships, and Christopher Malmquist, who raised procedural concerns about the public-comment rules and reported experiences with local officials and social media bans.
The board acknowledged the comments during budget discussion and referenced them as part of deliberations over school staffing and county priorities.
