Why Should Delaware Care?
New Castle County Executive Marcus Henry was sworn in as the leader of Delaware’s largest county in January, taking on a more than $350 million operating budget, the first property reassessment in decades, and leading through the Trump 2.0 presidency. This is his first time in elected office, however, and is still establishing a track record with the public.
New Castle County Executive Marcus Henry has had an eventful start to elected office.
The longtime public servant, and the first person of color to lead Delaware’s largest county, took office as New Castle County was completing its first property reassessment in decades and the federal government was targeting funding that supports local services.
Henry, the son of Margaret Rose Henry, the first Black woman elected to the Delaware State Senate, has overseen departments dealing with housing, community services and economic development over his career, but the county executive seat is his first time in elected office.
Spotlight Delaware recently sat down with Henry to discuss all this and more. The entire conversation can be heard in an exclusive podcast. A selection of the conversation, edited for length and clarity, is offered here.
You left your job three years ago to start running for county executive. Why? What was so enticing about this job that you were running for it for so long?
You know, I’ve had the good fortune to have worked in state and local government for almost 25 years.
I’ve worked in county government for over 11 years previous to this being elected to office, working under the last three county executives. I love county government. I love the work that we do. And it was kind of during COVID that I had a personal epiphany that I want to do more and serve in a higher function in county government. So I took a big chance, obviously.
Running for office is very hard to do, and I was fortunate financially and with family support to do that and to be at it for two and a half years, which is unusual, but I think it was necessary for me to take that amount of time for people out in the public to get to know who I am, what I’m about. And obviously that was successful.
Why not the county council, though? You wanted to come in and serve the county, but you went right for the top job?
The experience I brought to the table helped. So it wasn’t just running for elected office. It was this office because of how experienced I was with respect to county administration and governance. I thought it was a great fit.
You’re also the first person of color to ever be elected county executive in New Castle County, and that continues a barrier-breaking history for your family. Of course, your mother, the former state senator Margaret Rose Henry, was barrier-breaking in her own right. How might you bridge new connections to the county’s large Black population?
As county executive, I think it’s part of my duty to think about how we reach not just the minority population, African American specifically, but people who have not had access to opportunities – both directly with county government and in how we incentivize economic development.
I’m going to lean into that in a lot of different areas, be it land use, be it economic development, be it housing, which is a big, big, big priority for me.
Your first budget had to contend with a few issues, but the biggest of all is perhaps the first county-wide reassessment in decades. We’ve seen some criticism from how those reviews were done by Tyler Technologies, including from the city of Wilmington and some other corners of the state. The county had thousands of filed appeals that pushed back its own budget season. How do you assess that process?
Extremely difficult and complicated.
It’s a problem when you haven’t done this for 40 years, and this is the problem it can cause in terms of disparity.
What we did early on in county government, and I’m happy about, is we lean in. What can we do to help the residents where there’s clear errors, omissions or issues? So we’ve encouraged the city and other jurisdictions, where there is a real discrepancy, to lean into helping with the appeals process for those residents. We have 5,000-plus appeals pending right now. We’ve hired a team of referees to help review those appeals.
But I think there’s a lot of things that we can learn – not just New Castle County but other counties too – that we could do better in five years.
Where do you see those process improvements?
I think it will be a heck of a lot better in five years, because we’ll have more clear, concise market data. And one of the things we saw is there was a disparity in appreciation rates, with residential property values being higher than the commercial property.
One of the things we did, and I know the city did this too, is we actually set up two separate tax rates this time to balance out those values, the distribution of these values, I think, in five years. And plus, it’ll be a heck of a lot easier, logistically, to do to work on this with this new data.
My staff and I are doing a lot of research on this, and it wasn’t a great process back in 1983 either. There were economic conditions and pressures specific to Wilmington, for example, on vacancy and commercial properties.
Housing affordability is a major concern in New Castle County. The median home sale price in the county is up more than $150,000 from five years ago, and now tops $400,000. How might your administration help to drive down that cost for those looking to enter the housing market for the first time?
The challenge that we have is it’s driven by market conditions, but it’s driven specifically in New Castle County by a lack of supply. We have not had enough [housing] production historically over the last 10 to 15 years to meet the demands in terms of population growth specific to New Castle County.
That does not mean we just want to build a lot of single-family new construction homes to cure that. It’s about creating these housing opportunities of various housing types and locations that can support those types of housing types.
We can do that through our zoning. We can do that in public-private partnership. We can do that in public financing initiatives that we can collaborate directly with the state on. We have federal dollars that we help to incentivize certain affordable housing development.
Curing this issue is not just a focus on affordable housing though. It’s about how we create more housing opportunities. That can help drive down some of the cost.
And then we’ve got to look at the older housing stock. For example, how can we incentivize improvements in the older housing stock so younger families want to live in some of these subdivisions?
Southern New Castle County has seen significant growth in the last decades, and that has raised some concerns from people about the pace of that growth. Do you have a philosophy when it comes to land use policy in terms of how you would like to see the county developed?
Smart, sustainable growth that is planned correctly, that recognizes the market, and recognizes local needs of a population like Southern New Castle County.
For example, there’s a preponderance of warehousing that’s going down to Southern New Castle County. I have nothing against warehousing, there’s a need for that. I just think it needs to be planned correctly and zoned correctly to incentivize that in commercial, heavy industrial areas that can support that.
I, like a lot of folks, don’t want to see future warehousing next to residential areas. And not only that, but the county government, and really mostly the state, need to make sure that the roads and the infrastructure improvement for these roads makes sense to support that type of development. And that’s the concern.
I also want us to be a transparent government in terms of development, so that people are informed of what’s coming. We still need to create certainty in the process for our developers, but the public does have a right to know, and the public should have a right to give input early in that process.
Talking a little bit about public safety, the county has struggled to maintain a full police department workforce. Your budget tries to do some things like raise the maximum age of retirement for law enforcement officers to retain the workforce. How big of a challenge is that for you?
When you look at the county police force in terms of staffing and retention and having the ability to serve the duty, it’s a big challenge. I’m proud of the leadership that I’ve selected, both for director of public safety and my new chief of police.
[Hiring] has been a challenge for years. Other jurisdictions compete. Our authorized force is 415 officers, but we’re still down 50 to 60 people.
We’re running police academies twice a year and incentivizing folks to enter in law enforcement. The most important thing we do is to keep people safe and that’s not just policing, but also paramedics, 911 operators, etc. These are all continuum of public safety initiatives for which New Castle County is responsible.
And Kent and Sussex don’t necessarily do the same level of service that we do. Which means our services are more expensive – 60% of our operating more goes towards public safety efforts.
I’m not going to apologize for that. I’m gonna lean into that because it’s so important.
One of the things that your predecessor, Matt Meyer, put an onus on was transparency when it came to policing. He created the Police Accountability Board. He was often quick to release body cam footage when necessary. Would you stand behind those efforts too in trying to balance respecting the police’s ability to do their job with public oversight?
Yeah, I do, but I just have a different perspective on it – and maybe a different methodology and path to how we get there.
I appreciate the work of the Police Accountability Board and other efforts, but I look at it like this: At the end of day, I’m responsible. I’m personally responsible for what happens with the conduct of the police department.
So it’s the leadership that I select, but also my personal responsibility as county executive to make sure that we do the best we can. So the ultimate critic in terms of responsibility is with me.
I appreciate the help of citizens groups and others, but I don’t need additional help in terms of the seriousness and the veracity in my reviews to make sure we’re doing the best we can.
Meyer also passed in an executive order as county executive that was essentially a sanctuary state policy in which county police wouldn’t work on federal immigration cases. Is that something that you stick by as well? Or have you reassessed that policy?
I stick by it.