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A look back at the top city, county stories of 2024

A camping ban, panhandling laws, the collapse of Bartlett House.

Public outcry, lawsuits, conflict.

No single topic dominated Morgantown’s public discourse, and therefore headlines, in 2024 like the swirl of topics surrounding a relatively small, but vulnerable, group of citizens.

For nearly five months, from July 2 to Nov. 19, the primary topic of discussion in and around Morgantown City Council was the introduction, passage and potentially successful repeal of a citywide camping ban – Article 1157.

The topic regularly packed council chambers resulting in pointed commentary from community members, who turned out overwhelmingly opposed to the law, as well as heated debate between members of council.

The matter came to a head in the early morning of Sept. 4, when council – after hours of public comment – voted 4-3 to adopt the law as the main event of a record seven-hour-long meeting.

Later that same day, a committee of petitioners representing the Morgantown Coalition for Housing Action (MoCHA) initiated the process of repealing the law.

On Nov. 12, the city clerk’s office verified the group had collected the 1,310 signatures (10% of the registered voters in the 2023 city election) needed to put the law back before city council with a choice – either repeal it or put it before the city’s voters.

Council voted 4-3 against repealing the law on Nov. 19, meaning the voting citizens of Morgantown will write the final chapter of this story when they go to the polls on April 29.

And while a law criminalizing sleeping or having “camping paraphernalia” on public property was grinding its way through city council, the agency tasked for decades with providing emergency and long-term housing services to those in need was falling into insolvency.

In March, leadership with Bartlett Housing Solutions announced the nonprofit would need to close its triage shelter in Hazel’s House of Hope, at least temporarily, due to a lack of funds. 

In June, the BHS Board of Directors indicated it needed $300,000 in emergency funding to survive the next 60 days. That same month, Morgantown City Council and the Monongalia County Commission each put up $17,500 to cover the nonprofit’s payroll.

By October, Bartlett Housing Solutions had relinquished operational control of the shelter to Catholic Charities West Virginia and turned over its transitional and permanent supportive housing units on West Run Road to the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness.

These are just two in a long list of intertwined topics that kept people talking in 2024.

Included in that list is a federal lawsuit that pressured Morgantown to repeal its nearly 20-year old panhandling ordinance back in May. 

The same organization that filed the suit, Mountain State Justice, filed suit against the Monongalia County Commission earlier this month over the Ordinance Regulating Pedestrian and Vehicle Safety passed by the body in October 2023. 

While the city’s law did specifically target panhandling, which the courts have upheld as constitutionally protected speech, the county maintains its law is content neutral and plans to defend it.

East End Village

Reclaim Company is in the process of knocking down 58 old homes in the area of Richwood Avenue.

It’s been four years coming.

That soon-to-be-cleared land– approximately 10 contiguous acres of downtown-adjacent property – represents the most significant new development for the city of Morgantown in a long, long time.

The disappearing old houses once contained some 300 bedrooms of student housing.

The future of that land, according to Jay Rogers of Omni Architects, will be a mix of housing, retail and dining.

“They know the university isn’t looking to grow. There’s not a need for all these beds. The beds are out there,” Rogers said earlier this year. “They also know there’s a need for something affordable for workforce and for young professionals and they know those types of people want to be in an area where they can walk and get coffee or walk and have dinner or go to a tap house or tavern.” 

Late last year, the city rezoned much of property B-1 (neighborhood business), meaning structures must be between two and four stories above street level but cannot be more than 40 feet in height. Structures can be mixed use but cannot be strictly residential.

The Monongalia County Development Authority purchased the land from James Giuliani for $11.8 million in 2020.

Biafora Holdings is the master developer for the project.

Plugging in

The conversations had been happening for years.

They picked up significantly during and immediately following the height of COVID, when kids were sent home from school and America was introduced to remote learning.

The lessons learned: One, internet access isn’t a luxury in today’s world, it’s a necessity. Two, access to the internet for much of Monongalia County is poor at best.

On May 12, 2021,  the Monongalia County Commission invested $250,657 to begin its efforts to get the county connected.

More than three years later, those efforts came to fruition in 2024.

In the last six months, the commission has put up just over $8.5 million in American Rescue Plan Act money to leverage more than $20 million in broadband expansion projects across the county.

In June, the county announced a $17.8 million partnership with Comcast that will deliver broadband access to some 2,175 unserved and underserved homes and businesses across Monongalia County. The project, which will bring customers on line over the next two years, has an emphasis on the difficult-to-connect western end of the county.

The commission signed off on a handful of smaller projects earlier this month with both Comcast and Frontier that will target specific dark spots, or “doughnut holes” in coverage.

Those include the areas of  Stewart’s Run, Gandalf Road (Snake Hill), River Road and Gladesville/Halleck road.

While the projects rolling out in 2025 will touch every corner of the county, Commission President Sean Sikora said the overall goal of getting everyone connected will need to be a sustained effort.

He said the body is considering allocating at least some of the $1.4 million in interest generated by the county’s ARPA dollars to a fund that could be utilized to assist with future connection projects.

Right around the bend

They’ve been talked to death in recent years.

But in the span of about 72 days in late 2024 we learned that the hotly-debated roundabout projects planned for Green Bag Road and the intersection of University Avenue/Collins Ferry Road are not only very much alive, but right around the bend.

Kingwood-based Mountaineer Contractors will construct both projects.

On September 25, the firm was awarded a $2,091,104 contract to build a single-lane, oblong roundabout at the angular intersection of University Avenue, Collins Ferry Road and Baldwin Street.

Discussion surrounding the intersection began nearly 20 years ago. 

In 2017, the DOH put forward its oblong roundabout recommendation explaining it would dramatically improve the service level of the intersection. 

It received letters of support from the MPO, Morgantown City Council and the Monongalia County Board of Education — and immediate pushback from some Suncrest residents and business owners in the immediate area who worry how the traffic circle will impact the surrounding neighborhoods. 

This is actually the second time the contract has been awarded. It was initially let in December 2019 with a completion date of September 2021, but cancelled due to right-of-way complications.

This time around, work is expected to begin in March and be complete in August 2026.

Moving our attention about five miles away, the same firm was awarded an $18,332,804.40 contract on Dec. 6 to complete a Green Bag Road project that’s been on the community’s radar in some fashion since 2014.

According to DOH Highway Engineer Associate Chad Lowther and Senior Highway Engineer Dirar Ahmad, “the work begins just east of the intersection of Green Bag Road and the Mountaineer Mall entrance and ends at the intersection of Green Bag Road and Jonathan Lane.”

The road will be widened along that portion and a five-foot sidewalk constructed.

More controversially, however, the project will include the construction of two new roundabouts – one at the intersection of Green Bag Road and Kingwood Pike/Dosey Avenue, and one at the intersection with Mississippi Street.

Construction is expected to begin this coming spring and end in fall of 2027.

Long term, this is just the opening phase of work planned for Green Bag Road as local officials aim to make it a more attractive alternative to downtown Morgantown for heavy trucks.

Phase II will essentially address the rest of the road — from Mississippi Street to Don Knotts Boulevard on one end, and from Lucky Lane to Deckers Creek Boulevard on the other. 

That project is currently listed at just over $12.4 million. 

So long, city manager

In 2020, when members of Morgantown City Council made the argument for extending city council terms from two to four years and staggering terms so that either four or three seats was on the ballot each election, continuity was among the major talking points.

After all, they argued, the potential of city administration having to start over with an entirely new council every two years could be a hindrance to progress.

The city’s voters agreed and supported the change.

But continuity of leadership in Morgantown in recent years has had less to do with the elected members of council than the city managers they’re hiring.

A little less than two weeks ago, Kim Haws retired as Morgantown’s city manager, ending a 40-year career in municipal government and a four-year stint with the city.

Prior to that, he spent 20 years as Bridgeport’s chief executive.

The last time the city of Morgantown had a manager last anywhere near that long was Dan Broroff, who filled that role from 1992 to 2010.

Haws’ four-year stay was the longest since Boroff and came on the heels of a decade (2010-2020) that saw three city managers – Terrence Moore, Jeff Mikorski, Paul Brake – choose to leave after average tenures of three years and two months.

As Assistant City Manager Emily Muzzarelli will be off on maternity leave, council appointed Engineering and Public Works Director Damien Davis to serve as interim manager until the city’s nationwide search is concluded.

Council approved a contract with Raftelis, at a base cost of $35,800, to conduct the search.

By way of comparison, City Clerk Christine Wade has explained it costs the city about $40,000 to hold an election.