MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Former State Senator and current candidate for State Senate Mike Oliverio and has insight about how to improve the quality of roads in Morgantown and around the state with the help from the Division of Highways.
“There have been plenty of audits done in the past,” he said. “And what we really need is a reallocation of some of those existing dollars and we need to look for sources of new funding.”
Oliverio is looking into funding for the roads that doesn’t require taxpayer money.
“We just can’t continue to put a tax burden on them,” he said on WAJR’s Morgantown AM. “We’ve got to use the resources that we have in the most efficient manner and we’ve got to address areas of the state that are growing. You can accomplish a whole lot more if you were to pour a little bit of water on flowers than you can by pouring water on clay and we’ve been guilty of that in West Virginia for too long.”
More help from the DOH could be the primary source for fixing the roads.
“We need a bigger piece of the pie of the Division of Highways” Oliverio said. “That’s really the first place where we can try to pursue our effort. And we can do that through a North Central roads caucus. I think there’s some value to that.”
The North Central Roads Caucus is a group of county commissioners and state representatives from Doddridge, Marion, Monongalia, Preston and Taylor counties that meet to seek out money from the DOH for road maintenance funding. There have also been legislators from Harrison County who have taken an interest in the Caucus.
If generating funds from the DOH isn’t successful, adjusting the existing DOH budget may be the answer.
“We need to reallocate dollars within the Division of Highways,” Oliverio said. “It’s pretty obvious there are areas of the state where there’s tremendous growth and there’s tremendous traffic. We are the epicenter of that.”
Story by Hannah Williams