MORGANTOWN — Members of the Monongalia County Commission responded to the announcement that 180 jobs at the former Blacksville No. 2 mine will be eliminated.
During its most recent session, the commission shared a letter from Monongalia County Coal Resources indicating the company will undergo two rounds of permanent layoffs as the mine prepares to shut down.
The first, on Aug. 9, will eliminate 66 jobs. The second, on Sept. 7, will cut an additional 114.
Commissioner Tom Bloom acknowledged there have been a series of troubling announcements of late, beginning in December when Viatris, formerly Mylan, announced it was pulling more than 1,400 jobs out of Morgantown.
“Yes, this has been a bad week in the sense of we have the Mylan closure getting closer. We have the announcement of Blacksville No. 2 and you also had the MedExpress,” he said, referencing the June 2 closure of the MedExpress on Don Knotts Boulevard. “We’re working as a commission to come up with other alternatives to balance out the loss. I just want the public to know that.”
While Commission President Sean Sikora admitted this closure has likely been a forgone conclusion for some time, he said local officials need to push back against national policies with local consequences.
“We need to be firm when we’re talking to our representatives at the federal level, because decisions made at the federal level are affecting us locally,” Sikora said, pointing to the scrapping of the XL Pipeline and expressing concern about upcoming expansion projects by Longview Power.
In other county news, Monongalia County Sheriff Perry Palmer and Chief Tax Deputy Kelly Palmer presented the county’s 2020 delinquent tax list.
All told, there is a total of $5,400,649.98 in delinquent taxes, broken down by real estate ($3,145,003.70) and personal property ($2,255,646.28).
Kelly Palmer said the number represents about 5.06% of the total tax amount. That number is down from 5.5% ($6,568,434.24) in 2019 and continues a downward trend which began in 2017, when 8.3% or $8,301,320.07 was delinquent.
Any real estate taxes not paid by November will result in a lien on the property. The tax office will work with the sheriff and prosecutor to recover unpaid personal property taxes.
Lastly, the commission approved a request by PopShop to use the courthouse square on July 17 for the Girls Rock Camp Summer Performance.
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