MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — The administrators of Morgantown’s parks and recreational facilities are seeking to address long-standing issues and asking for a “bigger slice of the pie” from City Council.
During the June 26 Committee of the Whole meeting, Morgantown Board of Parks and Recreation (BOPARC) representatives presented to the Morgantown City Council, asking them to invest in them by designating a specific funding source to BOPARC.
Much of the recent discussion over funding for BOPARC is a direct result over the recent Haymaker Forest debate, but City Councilman Ryan Wallace said the problems didn’t begin overnight.
“It’s also a historical problem,” Wallace said Wednesday on WAJR’s Morgantown AM. “I picked up that we’re dealing with years of under-funding, years of deferred maintenance. It’s certainly not an ‘oh surprise problem look at the 2018 budget, now were in trouble.’ It’s been ruined for awhile and we need to do something equally long term and sustainable to fix it.”
When asked about the presentation, BOPARC Executive Director Melissa Wiles said they had many goals, “[To] basically give an overview of the state of our facilities at this point and also request that city council consider a designated funding source for BOPARC.”
Currently, BOPARC is funded through the city of Morgantown, grants, special funding, and self-generated revenue. The city contributes 39 percent, 22 percent is funded through grants, and the remaining 39 percent is funded by BOPARC itself. The current budget for BOPARC is $3.3 million per year.
The city’s parks and recreational facilities are now aging. Krepps Park is more than 40 years old and Marilla Pool is more than 60 years old. With the aging of these facilities comes need for repairs. BOPARC says the need lies heavily within those aging parks.
“We have facilities that are very aged, a lot of which we referred to in the presentation,” said Melissa Wiles. “So, facilities are probably going to be our first priority at any juncture that we receive funding to do any upgrades.”
BOPARC offers Morgantown more than 60 “unique programs opportunities” such as ball fields, shelters, dog parks, swimming pools, skate parks and sports leagues.
In order to keep these programs alive, BOPARC representatives came up with a four component plan to work towards receiving necessary funding.
The plan consists of the following steps:
- Assess and address aging facilities
- Seek and cultivate partnerships
- Identify internal means for funding opportunities
- Designate adequate and dedicated support mechanism for city parks
Currently, the city supplies BOPARC with $1.17 million pear year. In previous years, Monongalia County contributed between $75,000 and $100,000 annually to BOPARC. However, that funding stopped around four years ago due to the decrease in coal severance taxes. The county still contributes $50,000 to the summer series.
It was repeated several times throughout the meeting that the funding would not occur over night — just as the need for repairs did not occur overnight.
“There’s a city budget process that we are part of. So, as City Manager Paul brake mentioned, we will start the budget process in November and we’ll take a look at our needs at that point,” Wiles said. “Just to go into some further detail on our relationship with the city, they have really stepped up in the past couple years with some of the deferred maintenance issues that we’re having. We really appreciate working with the city manager and city administration. We have gotten a lot of things taken care of that have been on the BOPARC radar for a long time. So we’re hoping that that continues.”
Patrons not able to attend the meeting can find the BOPARC presentation on www.BOPARC.org.
“We appreciate our patrons’ support of course,” she said. “We are very dedicated to serving Morgantown so we do appreciate their support.”
City Council will be holding a town hall on Saturday, July 14 to speak more on this issue as well as others. The time and place of the town hall are to be announced at a later date.
Story by Hannah Williams