WESTOVER — His “swan song” while resigning as Morgantown Utility Board’s general counsel set off a furor, Westover’s City Attorney Tim Stranko said during the most recent Westover city council meeting.
Speaking publicly about MUB for the first time since he resigned as its general counsel Oct. 15, Stranko said one of the things he mentioned during that five-minute public comment about things MUB should do differently was about Westover’s Sanitary Board.
“I never speak for Westover,” Stranko said. “This council speaks for Westover.”
His job is to bring council options and one of those options is getting out of the sewer business, something that’s been talked about in passing for years, Stranko said.
He said there were several reasons doing so was a good idea.
With the planned annexation at West Ridge Mayor Dave Johnson and his staff, who have “kept the poop flowing as it were,” will soon be focused on competing for retail and business along the interstate, Stranko said.
Additionally, the Dent’s Run Pump Station is in “dire condition” and the entire Dent’s Run watershed corridor is a “mess” which was never properly constructed,” Stranko said.
Fixing the two would likely be a $3 million project, he said.
Councilwoman Edie Viola asked about finding federal money to pay for the project.
“MUB is the best in the state in finding money; in finding low-interest money,” Stranko said. “Not just that but in managing projects and driving the costs down so that the ratepayer pays the bottom dollar for quality work.”
Westover and many small utilities share a common problem in that they can’t provide the kind of quality control that MUB does, he said.
“We can’t do that,” We’re not qualified to value engineer a sewer project,” Stranko said. “But boy they do it and they whip that dollar.”
That would be one of the advantages Westover residents would see if MUB took over the city’s sewer system, he said.
Johnson assured Viola that there would be public hearings and that council would have the final say on the direction the city went.
An ideal situation, Johnson said, would be that MUB takes over and Westover would pay the same rate as Morgantown does. He said it was ridiculous that Westover wanted out of the sewer business, but didn’t want to pay anything, as some had suggested.
At some point, Westover is going to have to invest in its sewer system and the question for Stranko is how to spend the money most efficiently and effectively.
“Is it most efficiently and effectively spent by us managing the project – the city of Westover or by MUB,” he asked.
