In the tug of words between Monongalia County and the City of Morgantown, BOPARC often ends up playing the rope.
In this latest episode of what has long been a point of contention — the responsibility of the county to help fund city parks — BOPARC President Patrick Hathaway asked Morgantown City Council to provide at least $50,000 in additional funding for BOPARC after a cut in funding from the Monongalia County Commission.Hathaway explained that when the county commission provided $75,000 of a $100,000 grant request for the current fiscal year that ends June 30, it stipulated that $25,000 must be spent on programming at the Hazel Ruby McQuain Riverfront Park. BOPARC was unable to spend those funds due to construction on a multi-million riverfront renovation project.
So when BOPARC made its grant request to the county for the coming fiscal year, it asked for $500,000 — which the commission found unreasonable and out of line with previous requests — but it budgeted for $75,000 using the county’s previous allotment as a guide.
“The county commission’s decision was to reallocate the $25,000 that BOPARC was unable to spend in 2018,” Hathaway told city council members. “For those of you not doing the math, that’s a net of $0 for 2019.”
Without the city filling that $50,000 gap, Hathaway said programming will be impacted as BOPARC’s $3.46 million budget is tight — as in, a-couple-thousand-dollars-for-contingencies tight.
The city’s allocation to BOPARC’s budget is $1.43 million for the upcoming fiscal year.
City representatives have long held that county residents make up a large percentage of BOPARC’s patrons, but the county doesn’t contribute to BOPARC in any meaningful way.
County commissioners note that issues with BOPARC’s funding are the result of city decisions to grow its park system far beyond the pace at which it opted to fund or staff it.
County Commission President Tom Bloom said he’s always perplexed why issues with the city’s parks always seem to the county’s fault.
“I want this very clear. The problem is not with BOPARC. The problem is that over the years, for whatever the reason, the city council chose not to make BOPARC a priority,” he said.
“You can look at decisions going back years where council cut the percentage of hotel/motel tax going to BOPARC or said BOPARC had to start covering its own insurance. That is hundreds of thousands of dollars, year over year. Those were choices they made. Now you see the result of those choices and somehow it’s the county’s fault.”
Disagreements over who should pay for parks, and how much, are not new. That issue helped bring about the end of the county-wide Monongalia County Consolidated Recreation Commission (MCCRC) in 1981, and subsequently, the creation of BOPARC by the city of Morgantown.
But disbanding the MCCRC did little to end the debate, which continues nearly 40 years later.
Hathaway said he doesn’t see it as an us-versus-them issue, but an issue of equity, noting everyone who lives in the city is a county resident.
He noted the county is divided into three districts — eastern, western and central. The central district is basically the City of Morgantown.
“The county maintains three parks on their own … two of those parks are in the western district (Camp Muffly, Chestnut Ridge) and one of those parks is in the eastern district (Mason-Dixon). The county doesn’t maintain any parks in its central district,” Hathaway said, pointing out that county residents in the central district get little to no recreational return for their tax dollars.
“So the county should either maintain a park in the central district or allocate a percentage of their park funding to the entity that maintains the parks in the central district, which would be BOPARC.”
The county has poured just over $1.5 million into parks and recreation as of April, according to its financial reporting website, monongaliacountywv.opengov.com.
Bloom said the county will provide additional funds for BOPARC soon, when county residents begin paying the city’s new 1% sales tax. Conservative estimates indicate the tax will generate at least $5 million annually for the city, $1.25 million of which will be allocated to BOPARC.
But the main reason things like the sales tax and annexation are needed, Councilor Rachel Fetty said, are “directly related to a lack of funding from our external sources. So that means a lack of funding from the county and a lack of funding from the state.”
Bloom disagrees, claiming that BOPARC nor the city has ever asked to sit with the commission and discuss the issue.
“So because the city can’t pay their own bills and work within their financial limits, they want the county to bail them out. That’s not what the county does,” Bloom said. “If they’re in that much trouble, then they should dissolve, or incorporate with another city.”
