MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Morgantown City Councilors met with state lawmakers Tuesday evening to present three priorities for the upcoming legislative year.
The priorities discussed were traffic cameras used to cite certain traffic violations, improved road maintenance, and help identifying funding sources for the Morgantown Municipal Airport runway extension project.
Council asked for changes to state laws for the use of traffic cameras to document and cite certain moving violations. Councilors want the law to allow the detection of vehicles traveling 10 miles or more over the speed limit, failure to yield for a pedestrian in a crosswalk, and disregarding a traffic signal or stop sign.
State Department of Highways District 4 Engineer/Manager Earl Gaskins was named to that post over the summer and came to the meeting to meet councilors. Gaskins told councilors they can benefit each other, but they have to communicate and be realistic. He provided mowing as an example—municipalities mow for aesthetic value where the DOH considers sight lines and general safety only.
“We need to get working together, we need to get reasonable expectations in place, and we need to move on to 2025 and not 1940,” Gaskins said.
He went on to say meeting with municipalities is a regular occurrence, and they need to get to work on their lines of communication. In many cases the state and municipalities have access to different resources that can be used to help each other.
“We sit down with cities and see what they’re capable of doing,” Gaskins said. “You guys have some leeway we don’t; you guys have some resources that aren’t available to us, and we have resources available to us that aren’t available to you. Now how do we merge that?”
While reminding councilors they are not a fire department, Gaskins distributed contact information for the members of his team and said they will respond to calls for repairs. Due to staffing, Gaskins said his labor and equipment are planned every workday, so he has to shut one job down to address daily concerns.
“From January 1 to December 31, everyone in Monongalia County is already committed to a job,” Gaskins said. “So, if you call me about a pothole on Route 7, I have to shut a project down on another road in the county to respond to that.”
Gaskins said prison crews were more available before the pandemic, and now they are down to one crew. The one crew has the responsibility of picking up trash within the District 4 limits on I-79 and I-68. That’s on I-79 from Weston to the Pennsylvania state line and I-68 from the Maryland state line to the I-79 split.
“So, that one prison crew is trying to pick up all the trash and all the debris on all that interstate, and it’s not reasonable,” Gaskins said.
State senator Mike Oliverio, R, Monongalia, 13, wants to work on establishing a high maintenance corridor. A proposal would be from I-68 and exit 7 to Mileground through town and back to I-79 via Star City.
“A high-maintenance corridor,” Oliverio said. “So, rather than cutting the grass twice a year, we cut the grass in that corridor twice a month,” Oliverio said.
Councilors asked again this year for help securing additional funding for the Morgantown Municipal Airport runway extension, citing the economic impact the project could have. In addition to seeking out military reserve units that could perform some of the work as training, lawmakers also suggested accessing additional grant opportunities.
Lawmakers in attendance were Mike Oliverio, R, Monongalia 13; State Senator-elect Joey Garcia, D, Marion, 13; Delegate John Williams, D, Monongalia 80; Anitra Hamilton, D, Monongalia, 81; Joe Statler, R, Monongalia, 77; and Evan Hansen, D, Monongalia, 79.