MORGANTOWN — Budgetary requests are nothing new to Monongalia County Commission.
In fact, the body is currently working through dozens of them received as part of finalizing its 2025-’26 spending plan.
Far less common, however, are budgetary requests by the county to other local levying bodies.
On Wednesday, the commission approved letters to Monongalia County Board of Education and the city of Westover to request both consider as part of their budgeting processes the repayment of incorrectly remitted taxes tied to the University Town Centre TIF District.
According to the county, both received excess tax proceeds that should have stayed in the TIF District in the 2020, 2021 and 2022 fiscal years.
“To further explain, the UTC TIF “Menards” parcel was not included in the certified assessed values of the TIF District for the fiscal years noted above. As a result, the levying bodies were remitted the TIF taxes in addition to the proper base taxes for that parcel,” the letters state.
The total amount requested of the BOE is $189,243.21 – $34,450.11 (2020); $35,072.50 (2021); $119,720.60 (2022).
Westover is being asked to pay back $121,935.06 – $22,197.24 (2020); $22,598.26 (2021); $77,139.56 (2022).
The county also incorrectly received a total of $108,642.71 over the three years. It returned the money in May 2024, when the discrepancy was identified in the lead-up to a critical bond payment by developer WestRidge.
In order to allow that process to move forward, the county wrote a check for just over $420,000.
Now, it’s looking to recoup the Westover and the BOE portions of that payment.
“We’re providing them a letter as they’re going through and planning their budgets, just like we are, to take this into account, and there’s no timetable for when this money is refunded,” Commissioner Sean Sikora said. “We can either deduct it from their regular proceeds as they start coming in, in the July-August timeframe, or they can simply, if they want to have a paper trail, they can write us a check.”
In other commission news, the body approved a request from the West Virginia Black Bears by providing up to $3,000 for seat upgrades at the Kendrick Family Ballpark at the Monongalia County Baseball Complex.
According to Commission President Jeff Arnett, the funds will be used to purchase and place stickers to cover seat numbers that have been sun-faded.
