By Stephen Smoot
Last week, West Virginia State Treasurer Larry Pack came to the Potomac Highlands. He toured the Dominion facility at Mount Storm, met with the Hardy County Public Service District, and took in an arts presentation in Lost City. Midway through the day on Wednesday, State Treasurer Pack met with Hardy and Grant county officials at the Grant County Courthouse.
Joining him were Region Eight Economic Development and Planning Council Executive Director Melissa Earle, Delegate John Paul Hott, Kevin Hagerty and Scott Miley from the Grant County Commission, Hardy County Commission President Steven Schetrom, Mineral County Commission President Roger Leatherman, and others.
Statewide, more attention has come to aging water and sewer systems as communities in some parts of the state have lost paying customers whose rates support maintenance and repairs. Public water systems also differ widely in how soundly they manage their systems and finances.
The State Treasurer addressed the sometimes delicate balance that public water systems must tread. While systems need maintenance and outlying areas want expansion of service, at the same time systems “don’t want to charge my 88-year-old grandmother more.”
He explained the issue in terms of the human decency of those making the decisions rather than in terms of negligence. “It’s human nature to not want to raise rates (but) maintenance comes from payment of those rates.” Many systems find themselves in trouble when they avoid raising water and sewer charges gradually over time to meet rising costs of keeping a system running properly while also meeting environmental mandates, especially in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.
Systems that put off the rate hikes too long end up having to impose massive hikes every several years rather than easier-to-manage small increases annually or every two years. State Treasurer Pack shared that many southern West Virginia communities had to go to small regular increases.
Municipal systems also have to prepare for the unexpected, such as when plastic pipe seen as top of the line in the 1990s was installed in Franklin’s system. Three decades into service, crews have found the piping less reliable than advertised and must address frequent problems from that part of the system.
Commission President Hagerty noted that “we have a pretty expensive system. It’s 50 or 60 years old now (and) it’s extremely expensive.” Commissioner Miley noted that the PSD has an excellent relationship with the Town of Petersburg water system, but also stated that served as the sole source. He added that the system was basically in good shape, but “has some age on it.”
The discussion then turned to an issue that Region Eight has incorporated into their Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy planning and updating for many years. Commission President Schetrom told the State Treasurer “we need more housing.”
Commission President Hagerty has worked as a real estate appraiser in Maryland and also West Virginia. He explained that the COVID pandemic opened up significant interest among those living in Mid Atlantic urban areas to buy second homes in West Virginia. At the time, they served as safe remote work locations, then became vacation homes.
With affluent buyers able to pay more, the price of single family housing increased substantially. Home prices pegged more to markets to the east, such as the Shenandoah Valley, rather than to the less pricey counties to the west of the Potomac Highlands.
Commission President Schetrom described what he called “the gap of affordability.” He explained that local middle class residents, from professionals to those earning good manufacturing wages, can afford up to about $180,000. He went on to relate that the median price in the area for even substandard housing was closer to $220,000, creating a $40,000 affordability gap. He shared that he was pushing for public and private partnerships to come up with solutions.
Additionally, rental properties have increasingly gone to employees of Pilgrims, both native and foreign-born. With the company providing rental assistance, the price of units has increased dramatically over the past decade. Pilgrims also addressed the issue themselves by constructing large apartment buildings near their complex in Moorefield.
Related to the problem of a shortage of housing is a shortage of those who build and maintain them, tradesmen. Commissioner Miley shared that those willing to pay more out of state and also in vacation areas such as Tucker County, mean that residents in other areas must take a backseat and wait for carpenters, masons, electricians, or others.
Commission President Leatherman and Commissioner Miley both noted that the shortage of trades workers creates an excellent opportunity for young people. The latter commissioner said “The Wall Street Journal reported that America’s next millionaires will be tradesmen because they are in such high demand.”
Earle from Region Eight then shared information gathered during their workforce roundtable held in Moorefield the previous week. Economic development officials met with representatives from South Branch Technical School, Mineral County Technical School, Hampshire High School, and Eastern West Virginia Community and Technical College. They discussed the same topic, a dearth of tradesmen and how to connect students in those fields with employment and business opportunities after graduation.
She noted that labor laws hamstring trades education significantly by limiting how minors can be paid to work in an industrial or construction setting.
She noted that labor laws hamstring trades education significantly by limiting how minors can be paid to work in an industrial or construction setting. Some of the laws date back to Industrial Revolution-era exploitation of child labor, but such conditions disappeared long ago in the United States. “They need to change the laws to allow a 16-year-old to get paid” by an industrial or construction internship or apprenticeship.
State Treasurer Pack then reminisced about one of his teenage jobs, working in a sawmill at the ages of 16 and 17. “There was no OSHA,” he said.
The State Treasurer then shared a program launched in Cabell County. Voters approved a bond levy to create a new kind of technical school for West Virginia. Students go there instead of to a traditional high school all day. Teachers instruct in all required topics, but students lose no travel time going back and forth to a school.
