MORGANTOWN — Morgantown City Council played a road game on Tuesday, conducting the first of what will likely be many meetings in Monongalia County Commission chambers.
The city will hold at least six meetings monthly in the county courthouse during renovations to Morgantown City Hall, which could take up to a year.
In a bit of role reversal, Commissioners Tom Bloom and Sean Sikora took the opportunity to provide public comment.
“Hopefully you guys can operate just like you’re home and I hope you can consider this your home for the next couple months or however long it takes,” Sikora said.
Once down to business, council passed on first reading the first budget revision of the 2023 fiscal year reflecting an additional $3,396,000 in carryover and bringing the city’s total carryover to $6,646,000.
The $39,486,629 budget passed by council in March anticipated $3,250,000 in carryover from the 2022 spending plan.
Finance Director Kevin Tenant laid out a number of uses for some of those additional funds, including $575,000 for a one-time “COVID relief and inflation payout” for city employees.
He said the exact method and details are still being worked out.
“Today I looked at the latest [consumer price index] that was recently published … The 12 months ending June 30, Inflation was at 9.1%, so I think anything we could give the employees would certainly help out,” Tennant said. “Just an additional item, gas for vehicles, inflation was 60% for the same 12-month period.”
To that end, the city will earmark $129,000 of the additional carryover to cover fuel costs for the city’s police, fire and street departments.
The budget revision will also move an extra $862,000 into the city’s contingency fund, bringing it up to $1.5 million.
BOPARC’s capital improvement fund will receive a $539,360 bump from the increased carryover and $180,000 will go toward additional police vehicles, which are currently on back order through Enterprise.
In other news, City Clerk Christine Wade offered a reminder that Morgantown will play host to the West Virginia Municipal League conference Aug. 2-5 at the Waterfront.
Deputy Mayor Danielle Trumble is scheduled to speak at 9:30 a.m. on Aug. 4.
“The topic of the workshop I’ll be giving is ‘leveraging your community’s resources.’ It’s largely focused on Hazel’s House of Hope and the development and operations there and how that is working for us as a city as well as some of the challenges we’re facing with that,” Trumble said. “There is a lot of interest around the state to replicate that model.”
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