Hopefully, wait is over: Official’s visit signals roads in Preston at least on radar

For many, waiting is always the hardest part.
But by most government standards, state Department of Secretary Tom Smith was working at a blistering pace last week in Preston County.
That is, it only took him about four months to accept an invitation to tour Preston County’s roads.
However, the backstory to this “historic” visit is enough to make one ask, “What took you so long?”
This issue began years ago with the deterioration of state roads in our region, especially in Preston and Monongalia counties.
But the backstory to Smith’s visit here began with the creation of the North Central Road Caucus.
About a year ago the Preston County Commission contacted five other counties in the Division of Highway’s District 4 to huddle on road maintenance.
Since then that caucus has continued to meet and speak with one voice about this area’s road conditions to the DOH and political leaders.
Until Tuesday, when Gov. Jim Justice directed Smith, who also wears the DOH commissioner’s hat, to Preston, there was little to show for its efforts.
Nor was there little to show for the Preston County Commission’s declaration of a state of emergency over road conditions in April 2018.
For the record, Smith was invited to tour Preston’s roads, especially W.Va. 72 — the scene of a major road slip — numerous times since late October. He responded to few, if any, of those invitations.
It’s probably safe to say that the road caucus also played a large part in the rash of legislation on road conditions during this year’s regular legislative session.
Those efforts include “Randy’s Dream,” SB 522, that unanimously advanced out of the Senate last week.
Other lesser results of these calls for action on road conditions included a public hearing in the House chamber in January and a eye-opening audit of District 4.
This all reminds us of March 2009, when the state Board of Education finally decided to come to the rescue of Preston County’s schools.
Once again, that took years of this district floundering in debt, decrepit facilities, abysmal morale among staff and teachers and failing test standards by students.
When we asked the state schools superintendent point-blank then, “What took you so long”? he lamely responded that the state was hyper-sensitive about intruding on local control. Since when?
But in this issue of roads conditions, those roads are all under the state’s jurisdiction and have been since the 1930s.
We urge the governor to follow up on the DOH’s progress on improving Preston’s roads.
And make sure the wait for everyone is finally over.