MORGANTOWN — Morgantown City Council approved a resolution authorizing the creation of the City of Morgantown Land Reuse and Preservation Agency, providing the city with additional avenues to explore land purchases.
The agency will be authorized to exercise defined powers to purchase tax-delinquent properties, funded by and with the approval of city council.
Mayor Bill Kawecki said the agency will essentially operate as a scout for potential land acquisitions.
“It is providing tools in the toolbox for the agency,” Kawecki said. “We will wait for them to come to us.”
Deputy Mayor Jenny Selin said, generally speaking, Morgantown hasn’t had as large of a need for such tools.
“We haven’t adopted some of the tools that were available to us, because we haven’t had as much vacant property as other cities,” Selin said.
“But where we have had vacant property, there will be one or two vacant properties and that will sort of expand out,” she added.
That results in a domino effect that hurts neighborhoods, Selin continued.
“There are land speculators who will just come in and acquire the property as cheaply as they can in a courthouse steps kind of auction and then just hold onto it hoping that they can turn a profit from it and neglect it completely,” Kawecki said.
The agency will also have the right of first refusal on tax delinquent properties valued at $25,000 or less.
Brake also said the group has a mechanism to acquire green spaces, potentially fulfilling a council goal of surrounding the city with a “green belt” of land. That debate hit fever pitch during the controversial discussion last May and June surrounding the tabled proposal to purchase more than 40 acres of land known as Haymaker Forest.
“We’ve had a considerable discussion about providing a beltway around the community, preserving these open spaces,” Brake said. “And this group would have the mechanism to do that.”
Money to acquire lands would need to be budgeted in future years in the capital escrow account, Brake said.
In other news, council chose to appoint two new members to the Morgantown Utility Board, but neither spot was filled by City Manager Paul Brake — who applied for an open seat on the MUB Board.
“I think it was a good outcome,” Brake said. “And we can move forward.”
The board appointed Karen Kunz to the open seat. Barbara Parsons, who previously has served on MUB, will fill the unexpired term. Parsons was supported unanimously. Mayor Bill Kawecki was the lone dissenting vote on Kunz’s appointment.
“Obviously the appointments to this board have been somewhat controversial,” Ron Dulaney said.
“We had excellent candidates,” Dulaney added. “All the candidates are excellent. But we decided, in this case, not to appoint the city manager in one of these positions, and we decided not to make a re-appointment as a way of sort of moving forward in a new direction.”
During the public portion of the evening, Roger Banks, the wards and bounds commissioner who filed a complaint with the Secretary of State’s Office related to unfairness in voting wards, said he would follow the advice of the Secretary of State’s Office and retain counsel to address reported inequities in the number of residents and registered voters in Morgantown’s seven wards.
Banks filed that complaint in early December.
In other business:
— Council unanimously passed a motion to support a MUB initiative to offer deferred payments to furloughed federal employees and those receiving federal benefits for water, sewer and garbage bills; impacted customers will need to apply for accommodation through the City of Morgantown, who will release additional information on the program this week.
— Council approved a measure from the city manager’s report to submit a priority list of nine locations that could potentially be homes for as many as four new bus shelters to the traffic commission.
— Council approved a proposal for City Manager Paul Brake to present a written proposal at the next council meeting as part of a financial and program transparency program.
— Deputy Clerk Heather Carl took the oath of office.
— Christine M. Wade and Daniel Langdon were announced and sworn in as the head ballot commissioner and ballot commissioner for the 2019 municipal election, respectively.
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