MORGANTOWN — Morgantown City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to continue paying retirees of the city’s police and fire service their promised pension amounts, even if those amounts have been erroneously inflated.
The decision drew a cheer from the overflowing crowd, comprised largely of current and retired fire and police personnel.
All told, 31 retirees from the Morgantown Police Department and 22 from the Morgantown Fire Department, and the survivor beneficiaries of both groups, are receiving a total of $119,132.16 in “overpayments” annually.
The issue lies in how a pensioner’s payments are calculated — a complicated process made more difficult as local pension boards were previously left to decipher complex and ambiguous state code.
In essence, it was found in the above 53 instances that the calculation determining pension payments included years in which the retiree earned an income more than 120% of the their average adjusted salary. According to state code, those years were to have been excluded as outliers.
The Municipal Pensions Oversight Board was created in 2009. In 2017, the MPOB created a process to remedy payments awarded in error. That process not only corrects or reduces the previously agreed upon pension payments of those impacted, but forces those pensioners to return any overpayments received back to July 1, 2017.
However, in the most recent legislative session, Senate Bill 316 was passed into law, allowing local legislative bodies the discretion to honor the previously awarded overpayments, as the city council did Tuesday.
Deputy Mayor Rachel Fetty summed up the decision, explaining, “We can call it an overpayment, or we can call it a promise.”
In other city news, Todd Stainbrook, who ran unsuccessfully as a 7th Ward write-in candidate in April’s municipal election, said he’s reached out to the city regarding questions he has about the signatures on the candidate petition of 7th Ward Councilor Barry Wendell.
A candidate must collect 75 signatures from residents of their respective ward in order to get on the ballot.
Stainbrook entered the race as a write-in after Wendell’s challenger, Aaron Metz, admitted to forging petition signatures and withdrew his candidacy.
In looking at Wendell’s petition, Stainbrook said, he believes there are four signatures that were counted for Wendell but dated August of 2018, well outside the permitted signature window from Jan. 7 to Feb. 11 of 2019.
Further, Stainbrook said it appears that a handful of signatures were initially marked “wrong address,” but later counted for Wendell, allowing him to hit exactly 75 signatures.
“Mr. Wendell was the only one that got that privilege,” Stainbrook said, later adding, “From the outside … it looks an awful lot like whomever in the city did what they could in order to get Mr. Wendell on the ballot. He came in at exactly 75 signatures with some of his addresses counted, some of them not counted and four that should not have been counted at all.”
During his remarks at the close of the meeting, Wendell said he was disturbed by the corruption in the 7th Ward election and disappointed more wasn’t done in response to the “apparent fraud” committed by a former candidate.
Then he addressed Stainbrook’s comments.
“Now the losers have targeted me. All I will say is, bring it,” Wendell said.
Also on Tuesday, council approved a contract with Mountaineer Contractors totaling $1,037,558.55 for a series of projects at the Morgantown Municipal Airport.
City Manager Paul Brake explained that these upgrades are needed ahead of the planned runway extension project and will be paid for using federal airport improvement funds, which will likely require a local match of between 5-10%.
The improvements include repaving Taxiway C, replacing four stormwater inlets, replacing the 30-year-old PAPI visual guidance system and relocating existing windcones and a seal and coat of Taxiway A.
