New Woodburn Community School

ALONG WITH MORNING GRIDLOCK CAUSED BY EASTWOOD ELEMENTARY

Mileground Road (US 119) at the intersection with WV 705 regularly gridlocks due to traffic backed up from the entrance/exit to Eastwood Elementary, in the midst of construction. There is no preventing the gridlock. The school creates it. Prior to the opening of the school and prior to construction, delays were commonplace but not gridlock. Now gridlock happens every morning and afternoon. The major commuter and commercial intersection is forced into gridlock to allow traffic into and out of Eastwood Elementary just up the road (WV 705). And all the traffic is frequently stopped by or forced to dodge giant backhoes and dump trucks and dirt movers and bulldozers, which regularly cross and work around the school drive and WV 705. Screeching ambulances going to and from the nearby hospitals also often freeze all vehicles.

And this morning: crash smash! a vehicle rear ended in the long queue of cars on the Mileground. Pop! Crunch! followed shortly by curses and obscenities. Just another pleasant scene by Eastwood Elementary: a school site that is totally illicit per regulations, state student safety Rules. The local Monongalia County Board of Education could not care less. Nor could the state Board of Education. Before all: it’s their wreck.

Three years ago to the day, one of our efforts in trying to stop the monster on the Mileground:

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WHY IS THE DOMINION POST TERRIFIED OF COUNTY COMMISSIONER TOM BLOOM?

Ahahahahahaha!!! Somewhere, not too very far away, comedian Lewis Black is laughing gleefully. “This stuff writes itself!” he cheers.

The latest DP would-be pontification against Commissioner Bloom does not even sound as if written as drunken spiel this time. It’s sober, very sober in tone. The April 22nd editorial is quite seriously (however ungrammatically) titled, “When and what you say no to”. And why not be serious and sober? After all, in this latest bit of lunacy, the DP self-proclaims itself to be “the public’s advocate.”

Ahahahahahaha!!!

Now that’s serious comedy.

Too often, clearly, the Dominion Post is the public’s devout bane. Not to belabor the obvious.

This Dominion Post editorial is, no surprise, full of ridiculous and false statements.

The DP pretends that Tom Bloom – a longtime high school counselor and a newly elected County Commissioner – should have “reassured himself [prior to the election] that he was eligible for flex time.” First, Bloom is eligible for flex time, just as are other school employees, a number of whom in fact receive it. However, in Bloom’s case, for no good reason, and for allegedly unscrupulous and unlawful reasons, Superintendent Devono has chosen to deny Bloom flex time. Thus, Bloom is suing. Second, for Bloom to sue prior to his election would have been a ludicrous and outrageous burden. Superintendent Devono has chosen to act in a highly suspect manner – actually, again, like a scoundrel – in denying newly elected Commissioner Bloom flex time. This base act by Superintendent Devono is neither Bloom’s fault nor his responsibility.

Lawsuit or no lawsuit, denying Bloom a meager bit of flex time is baseless, scoundrelous, and detrimental to everyone involved, to the general public not least. It stinks wildly. The Dominion Post has chosen to lie with the shit and garbage of that decision, a position in which the DP seems very comfortable, and from where it cheers and pontificates.

Lewis Black could only marvel. We all can.

The Dominion Post decrees: “Policies, laws and meeting times don’t conform to your availability or whim, you comply with them.”

Ahahahahahaha!!!

We’ll leave it as an exercise to the class (or, say, to the community) to pick apart the multiple canards and falsehoods embedded in that bogus claim. Simpleton decrees are readily shredded. Anyone who wants to take the time could proceed at length in eviscerating detail.

The Dominion Post editorials against County Commissioner Tom Bloom are willfully stupid. The Dominion Post never seems and sounds more in its innate element than when it is siding with thunking, thudding tyranny, with being the boss, the master – such as the way that is so often pounded forth – or is it paddled forth? – by the Superintendent of Schools of Monongalia County. And the Dominion Post never seems more in its innate element than when it is siding against an unusually genuine and courageous popular voice.

One final laugh – the DP’s claim that County Commissioner Tom Bloom is hurting “the public’s interest” given Mon Schools’ expenditure of “taxpayers dollars as the school board defends itself against [Bloom’s] legal action.”

Lewis Black time again. If Superintendent Devono and the school board had not denied Bloom an hour or so of flex time every other week to attend County Commission meetings, then there would be no legal action. Thus, the egregious, not to mention unprincipled, wasters of taxpayers’ dollars here are the Superintendent and the Board of Education. They would rather waste taxpayers’ dollars than give up their position in the sewer, a repugnant position from which they may or may not be forced by the courts. The Dominion Post is willfully stupid and working against the public interest in cheerleading and defending this excrement, unprincipled power. No surprise. That’s in its very nature.

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HOW PATHETIC IS THE CITY OF MORGANTOWN?

The map of the city of Morgantown, West Virginia looks like a block of swiss cheese half-eaten by a pack of rats.

So too the city’s budget, the city’s services, and the city’s infrastructure. It’s as if half the city has been clawed and gouged by varmints. Look at it. Look at the map. Look at the streets. Look at the neighborhoods. Look at the public spaces. Not all, of course, but a lot.

Then look again at the map. See those light spaces around 705 and Mileground Road and Cheat Road and Greenbag Road (between First Ward and Earl Core Road)? All those spaces are loaded with business and commerce that pay no B&O (Business & Occupation) tax to the city – unlike every other city business (those located within the darker colored sectors, the city itself). So this is how the city is gutted – in fact the whole area – fiscally, and socially, and physically. Businesses in the city pay B&O taxes to help support the city that helps to support them. But businesses technically located “outside” the city pay no B&O taxes even though those businesses would not exist if not for the city. It’s wrong. It causes the city to suffer. It hurts the city residents and the city workers. And thus the people of the county suffer, and the students and employees of WVU.

While much of the city of Morgantown is nice enough, providing a good place to live for many, the lousy roads, the crumbling or non-existent sidewalks, the pollution and traffic menace (not least by heavy trucks), the lack of high quality public schools, the badly underdeveloped parks system and public spaces, the dire lack of housing and services for the homeless, the endless rows of slum housing for WVU students, the trash, the fights, the fires – the perennial lack of funds for pressing social needs, employment needs, and quality of life – is outrageous.

How pathetic is the city of Morgantown? So pathetic it had to beg Monongalia County for half a million dollars in a loan to build an access road to the forthcoming light industrial park by the airport.

How pathetic is the city of Morgantown? So pathetic it could barely agree to buy the great public space that is the old Woodburn schoolgrounds, having to scramble to find less than half a million dollars to be paid out at a mere $70,000 annually over seven years to the county school system. And so pathetic that is lacks funds to even marginally let alone fully develop that great public space and many others.

How pathetic is the city of Morgantown? So pathetic that it has stated is has no money this summer for paving the crumbled city roads.

How pathetic is the city of Morgantown? So pathetic that is has virtually nothing new to offer this year toward the city’s perennial problem of homelessness.

How pathetic is the city of Morgantown? So pathetic in regard to power lines, like the state, that is has no money or leadership to bury the power lines that make the city streets look so ghastly, no money or leadership to get rid of the telephone poles that narrow sidewalks, menace pedestrians, especially those with disabilities, no money or leadership to bury these lines and get rid of these poles that are constantly subject to storm damages and power outages because they are not buried.

Pathetically, we the people of Morgantown have failed to take the one most obvious and most effective step to remediate these problems and more. The obvious necessary, and proper, step is annexation. Morgantown must annex the pockets of land and commerce that miraculously fall outside the city’s current boundaries. These are business-heavy areas that ought to be paying B&O taxes to the city. These businesses benefit mightily by their proximity to the city. Virtually surrounded as county islands within the city, these swaths of business enjoy high visibility and direct access to the many city residents and city workers and city amenities and consequent continuous flow of city money and city support. Yet none of these businesses reciprocate with any B&O taxes to the city, being technically located, in county pockets and islands, beyond the city boundaries though virtually wrapped within the city boundaries. See the map. See the commercial sectors along WV 705, and Greenbag Road, and Hartman Run Road, and the Mileground, and US 119 out to Glenmark Center and to Pierpont Landing. The businesses in these areas make their money directly and indirectly off of Morgantown city residents and Morgantown city workers and Morgantown city infrastructure and Morgantown city services, which are supported by city funds. The city funds consist largely of B&O taxes. Thus these non-city businesses, which also create additional traffic and pollution and other problems for the city, and which operate in such close proximity to the city, should pay B&O taxes, which will only occur if they are incorporated into the city. These many businesses are essentially an indivisible part of the city, yet they have not formally been made part of the city, and thus do not pay their fair share. They do not pay what current city businesses pay, and they will never contribute as they should until the city of Morgantown properly fleshes out its boundaries by annexation – to both interstates, and beyond.

Annexation, by providing the additional B&O taxes, would solve a lot of city problems and quality of life issues, and many other problems could be remediated. This annexation should have happened decades ago. The Morgantown City Council continues to offer no leadership on this most pressing of issues, and the people of Morgantown have not remotely sufficiently pressured the Council to get it done. The city deserves better. The county would benefit as well. So would WVU. The need is very great. The rewards would be great. The city must increase its pathetic revenue stream by long delayed annexation to address its long neglected needs.

The City of Westover is far ahead of the City of Morgantown in properly pressing for the long overdue and badly needed annexation of the mall and other commercial operations in immediate proximity to that city.

Further Reading:

• The Monongalia County Commission Has A Lot To Answer For, An Awful Lot
• A Wave Election and Annexation
• Morgantown Monongalia Annexation Plans?

SOMEONE SHOULD CALL THE POLICE ON MONONGALIA COUNTY SCHOOLS

Day 1 of the new school, Eastwood, on the Mileground was met with a “wreck” on the Mileground between a car and school bus, a wreck that was responded to by multiple fire trucks. Fortunately no one was injured, reportedly.

Day 2 of the new school on the Mileground brings a news report in which Eastwood Principal Hartshorn assures the public that the state police “have agreed to provide [an] officer there every day,” said Hartshorn. “He will be there [at the Eastwood campus entrance and exit on WV 705] to help with traffic and congestion in and out of the school.” Oh really, Principal Hartshorn? No police officer of any sort was stationed anywhere – let alone along WV 705 – at either the opening or the closing of school on Day 2.

By contract with the DOH the contractor is required to have a police officer handling traffic at the school. And the Eastwood Principal promised an officer would be there. On Day 1 he was. On Day 2 he wasn’t. Day 3?

Day 2 also brought an in-school announced warning to the students that they might feel something or hear something apparently from the adjacent blasting [of bedrock] for the highway roundabout construction. Why is the contractor blasting by the school during school hours?

Why is there no safety fence between the school and the massive construction site?

Is heavy equipment still being allowed on the school campus? [Update: Yes. Heavy machinery, giant backhoes, etc, are being operated and driven on school grounds and school drives, daily. Even at the height of school dropoff and pickup hours. Cars and buses form lines on campus behind and beside active backhoes, dump trucks, bulldozers…]

What happened to the “DANGER! BLASTING! KEEP OUT” sign sitting on school grounds by the campus traffic circle at the school’s front doors on Day 1? The “DANGER! BLASTING!” sign sat out on the afternoon of Day 1 but was nowhere to be found on Day 2 when apparently the actual blasting occurred. And there is no fence between the school and the adjacent construction pit. Not even a tape barrier.

Everyone should read Donald Barthelme’s penetrating story “The School” immediately.

On Day 1, school afternoon pickup traffic backed up so far across the Eastwood Elementary campus that it would have stretched into the future state highways roundabout – during early afternoon rush hour – EVEN THOUGH traffic monitors guided cars into parallel pickup lines throughout the parking lot, for hundreds of feet. Of course, this meant children were dodging between the two lines of cars at pickup, while teachers guided them as best they could.

On Day 2, school morning dropoff traffic stretched all the way onto WV 705, backing up traffic into THE EXISTING intersection of WV 705 and US 119 (Mileground Road). School traffic cars on WV 705 blocked the highway because school traffic filled the entire campus. And no police officer or any personnel whatsoever were at that WV 705 intersection with the campus to direct traffic one way or another. Not that any traffic could move during the gridlock. Thank negligent leadership and disastrous planning. Cars needing to turn onto the school campus simply sat on WV 705, blocking all traffic – during morning rush hour – until the gridlock on campus eased a bit.

On Day 2, during morning dropoff, children dodged between two lines of cars to get into the school. “Look there goes Johnny! Go, Johnny!” A relief that the first graders dashing out of the cars actually reached the sidewalk in one piece.

On Day 1, for “recess,” lacking play space, the children walked along the school building off sidewalk. (There aren’t enough sidewalks.) What sights to behold. Hey, look! Heavy construction! Diesel fumes! Heavy traffic! And the DANGER! BLASTING! sign. Such an exercise walk is the least of any concerns. It was likely the safest thing that could happen around that school.

On Day 1, there was no 15 MPH School Zone warning sign on WV 705. Well guess what. On Day 2, the day after the Day 1 crash of a car and a school bus on the schoolside Mileground Road, there magically appeared a 15 MPH School Zone warning sign on the schoolside state highway (WV 705) that parents had long asked for and that had never been promised. Yes, the school district had never guaranteed such a sign, and the WV Division of Highways had recently publicly stated that such signs would be determined after the fact by an engineering study. Apparently the Day 1 congestion and crash was study enough.

So who says the officials can’t learn? If only too late. And as for the Monongalia County Schools top officials? They appear incorrigible.

So take care out there as you fend for yourselves, parents and students.

Mon Schools’ promises are to be taken with a grain of salt.

Eastwood Elementary opened over its reported student capacity – as parents sensed years ago and then demonstrated that it would, also years ago. And no promised police officer showed up to direct traffic on Day 2. Someone sold Principal Hartshorn a line of bull. Let’s hope that she stops passing along that line of bull to the parents and to the larger public. Read the rest of this entry »