MORGANTOWN — The Monongalia County Commission authorized the use of $90,000 from the county’s Coalbed Methane Fund for infrastructure tied to a new development off Airport Boulevard.
Ricky Biafora, representing Fourth Generation LLC, and Scott Copen, an engineer with Cheat Road Engineering, described the project during Tuesday’s Monongalia County Commission meeting.
Copen said the site includes more than 40 acres and will feature 150,000 square feet of office space, some retail space and storage facilities.
He said the funds — initially approved by the Monongalia County Development Authority — will be used in the construction of a road into the site and the laying of utilities.
The Coalbed Methane Fund comes from state taxes on the production of methane, with 75% of the taxes collected distributed among methane-producing counties in proportion to taxes derived from methane production in each county. The other 25% goes to non-methane producing counties.
In other commission news, County Clerk Carye Blaney described how a new state law will allow the county to administratively close old, inactive estates.
Blaney said the law, passed during the most recent regular session of the West Virginia Legislature, gives the county the ability to clear estates off the books if, once opened, the estate is inactive for three years.
She said there are currently 230 open estates before the commission.
For this first effort, Blaney said her office looked at all the estates opened in 2015.
“So, for the last several months, our staff has been going back through our estate system to see if there was any estates within that recent time period where we could take advantage of that process,” she said.
The commission gave Blaney the green light to begin the administrative closing process on any eligible estates.
According to Blaney, any party ever involved with an estate up for closure will be notified. If there’s an objection to the closure, that estate will be pulled from the list. Additionally, a list of estates targeted for administrative closure will be published in this newspaper and a blanket public hearing will be held by the commission for those estates.
“If they come forward, we simply pull that name from the list and we don’t close those,” Blaney said. “Anyone who doesn’t come forward or make any process to close it on their own, after we’ve completed all these steps it would be administratively closed by order of the county commission.”
Also on Tuesday, the commission approved funds for projects at the Triune Community and Arnettsville Community centers.
The commission approved up to $17,500 to outfit the Triune building with a new HVAC system. The county will recoup $6,000 of that through a grant secured by seniors who utilize the center.
A total of $4,200 was granted to address issues with the roof on the Arnettsville building, as requested by the Arnettsville Community Association.
The Arnettsville Community building is owned by the Morgantown Public Library.
The commission moved its regular weekly meeting up a day due to scheduling conflicts.
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