MORGANTOWN — As the crow flies, lower Alpine Street is about 2,000 feet from Mon Health Medical Center. It’s a half-mile by car.
It’s located between Riddle Avenue and Bergamont Street, in the North Hills area.
It’s less than a mile — about 4,000 feet — from W.Va. 705, just outside the city of Morgantown and right in the middle of Monongalia County’s urban core.
It’s also on the verge of being impassable — been that way for years.
“It’s one of the worst roads I’ve seen in the county,” Monongalia County Commissioner Jeff Arnett said Wednesday, later adding, “There are roads that I would say are certainly worse in rural areas, but for an urban area that close to a hospital and that close to a main artery, it’s really kind of shocking when you see it.”
Now, after multiple requests, the commission is going to help do something about it.
The body on Wednesday agreed to provide up to $82,400 from its Orphan Road Grant Program to address underlying drainage issues and resurface the road.
As per stipulations of the program, the money comes with a couple requirements.
One, there has to be buy-in from the beneficiaries of the work. In this case, six households will provide $9,500 for the project. Derek Jackson, the Alpine Street resident who’s spearheaded the effort, covered the engineering costs.
Two, there has to be a mechanism to keep the road maintained going forward. Following the repairs, the street and its residents will become part of the surrounding North Hills Neighborhood Association. Dues paid into that organization will cover the cost of maintenance.
This is the third and largest allocation made from the county’s orphan road program, which was created almost exactly three years ago, on Sept. 22, 2021.
During that same meeting, the commission approved $67,000 for improvements to Bridge Road and $44,000 to help address problems with Pinecrest/Farmview Road.
As the name suggests, the program is meant as a lifeline for county residents living on roads built to access new development, then abandoned.
Arnett said Alpine Street “was essentially abandoned decades ago by the developer.”
Referencing the county’s perpetually forthcoming subdivision regulations, Commission President Sean Sikora said these issues are not going to go away on their own.
“If we don’t have any planning, this is going to continue to happen. And I know I’m going to immediately get a text now, but we’re not talking about zoning. We’re talking about when people are going to build developments like this, to have a conversation with our planning office so they do it the right way,” he said.
Sikora went on to say, “This is a larger conversation that we’ll have in the future. I think we ought to proactively try to address these things rather than reactively, which is what we’re doing here.”
In other news from Wednesday’s meeting, Assessor Mark Musick reminded taxpayers that time is running out to take advantage of the state’s vehicle property tax credit.
“Paying [personal property taxes] before Oct. 1 will allow them to get credit when they’re filing their income tax next year for ‘24. They can pay half before Oct. 1 and they can pay the second half before Dec. 1 in order to still get the credit, because it runs in the calendar year,” he said.
Information is available at tax.wv.gov.
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