MORGANTOWN — Dumbfounded.
Morgantown Deputy Mayor Danielle Trumble said that was her response to City Manager Kim Haws after he described a recent conversation in which a longtime downtown business owner praised improvements to cleanliness and safety in the city center.
“I’m kind of dumbfounded because I don’t understand if we’re looking at the same downtown,” Trumble said near the end of Wednesday’s council meeting.
“I don’t want to make anyone feel unsafe or unwelcome downtown, and that is definitely never my intention. However, sticking our head in the sand and pretending we don’t have issues is not the method to remedy things either.”
Trumble said she and other members of council have called for a 24-hour police presence downtown. She said the city also needs to ramp up code enforcement efforts, noting trash cans left along the street over the weekends end up being trash on the streets and sidewalks.
“I can’t fathom the way that business owners must feel, that we’re hanging them out to dry and making things their issues. I cannot fathom that our code enforcement is writing tickets and citations to property owners for graffiti on their building. Graffiti that they obviously did not do and are working to remove at their own expense while we seem to be ignoring so many of our other issues that are happening,” Trumble said.
While Trumble said being homeless or loitering on the street aren’t crimes, there are plenty of crimes occurring, like open drug use and indecent exposure.
She said she’s willing to work to get the MPD and code enforcement what they need to address the problems. She also pushed back against the idea that city council is somehow interfering in the enforcement of laws downtown.
Councilor Brian Butcher said he’s heard from a number of people over the last year or so who’ve said they’ve been told by officers that city council doesn’t allow them to enforce the law.
He called the claim “patently absurd on its face.”
“I don’t know what that breakdown in communication is. I have my suspicions. But that’s not an acceptable way to be responding to our community members when they have concerns, nor is it true,” he said. “We don’t direct police officers at all nor would we direct them to allow people to break the law.”
