New Woodburn Community School

FORMERLY A COAL RICH AREA, SCOTTS RUN PSD RECENTLY BECAME A TIF PLAN GOLD MINE RIPE TO BE PLUNDERED

And swiftly plundered it was. Long a coal rich area forced into deep poverty by the coal industry and related powers, the Scotts Run area far more recently saw its Public Service District (PSD) about to be transformed into a gold mine, due to the impending influx of WVU “Ballpark TIF” funds. Instead, this major gold vein has now been pre-emptively plundered by the powers of Morgantown and Monongalia County. This is history repeating itself, first as brutal tragedy and now as seeping farce.

What happened? The “ballpark TIF” plan happened. And it happened in the Scotts Run PSD, which was then immediately forcibly taken over. Those tens of millions of dollars of infrastructure improvements now locked-in to the TIF district will no longer be going to the Scotts Run PSD, which was scandalously dissolved, its resources and organizational capacity taken over and handed to the Morgantown Utility Board (MUB). Those new millions of TIF plan dollars will now be going to MUB rather than to Scotts Run PSD, due to the legally dubious and ethically disreputable actions of the Scotts Run PSD board members appointed by the Monongalia County Commission – which will be dispensing the TIF plan infrastructure fund.

By stacking the Scotts Run PSD Board, the Monongalia County Commission instigated the Scotts Run PSD dissolution and then approved MUB’s takeover of the PSD. The either ignorant or uncaring Morgantown City Council dutifully rubber stamped MUB’s “acquisition” of the Scotts Run PSD as orchestrated by the County Commission and its PSD appointees.

The recently passed “ballpark TIF” plan legislation obligates the Monongalia County Commission to spend tens of millions of local tax dollars – for up to the next 30 years – on infrastructure improvements in the TIF district (that is, in the University Town Centre area and in most all land stretching around and west from there to Mylan Park) – the TIF district being in the province of the now former Scotts Run PSD. Some people or some entities apparently wanted that massive amount of money and control for the next 3 decades to be taken out of the hands of the people of Scotts Run, who cannot seem to ever be pillaged enough to satisfy the local powers and string pullers.

Apparently the Monongalia County Commission did not want to work with the people of Scotts Run, let alone fund the Scotts Run PSD, which would have had the responsibility for making the infrastructure upgrades that the commission intends to and must fund in the TIF district in the near future and for the next 3 decades.

Scotts Run PSD might have reasonably used the influx of TIF funds to necessarily build up its organizational and material capacity and to also negotiate with the County Commission over funding and materials for a needed expansion of Scotts Run PSD sewer services to far flung Scotts Run area residents, beyond the TIF district. Quite possibly the County Commission did not want to be beholden to the Scotts Run Public Service District which has residents with more pressing needs than can be found anywhere in the County Commission’s “ballpark TIF” district – that scandalous local taxpayer gift to WVU and private commerce.

It seems that a lot has been going on behind closed doors in Monongalia County against the public’s interest, and possibly in stark violation of open government “sunshine” laws. What a shock. On the other hand, when the good old boys meet up one on one around town while appointing each other to public boards that then dissolve public entities out of existence – thereby gutting the public, shifting millions of dollars and badly needed organizational capacity away from the people – that’s certainly another method by which governmental transparency laws can be sneaked around, keeping all sorts of private wheelings and dealings secret from the public.

The lifting of the Scotts Run PSD data on computer hard drives this past October by the County Commission-chummy Scotts Run PSD board members ostensibly for security reasons was a curious episode in this hit and run farce, to say the least. Security from whom? Securing the public’s information from the public? Why remove the Scotts Run PSD data ostensibly to “secure” it mere months before dissolving the PSD and handing it over to MUB under the cool gaze of the County Sheriff’s department? Why remove and “secure” that Scott’s Run PSD data in October 2012? To prepare a slick transfer of Scotts Run PSD operations to MUB months before the public could have any clue of what was being done to them?

These particular individuals, officials, and agencies should be held to account as much as possible. The people of Scotts Run are doing the right thing in trying to reverse the shady dissolution of the Scotts Run PSD by acting first at the local level and now at the state and possibly judicial levels. Failing at those levels, Scotts Run PSD residents would be in a much weakened position to gain expanded sewerage on their own, suddenly absent their own PSD, let alone to negotiate with either MUB or the County Commission expansion of needed sewerage services to the Scotts Run area. Virtually all the local municipalities and powers have a both long and recent history of not only failing the Scotts Run area but of plundering it.

Meanwhile, the County Commissioners are subject to election (as is of course the Morgantown City Council) and could be replaced and should be pressured to do more for Scotts Run area residents. Toward this end, no matter the near term outcome, the Scotts Run PSD dissolution and takeover scandal could be and should be held over the heads of these officials and these public bodies from now on. They need to better serve and protect the public, by far, and especially the Scotts Run area, which going back nearly a century, has been both a regional and national site and symbol of social and economic neglect and abuse.

Congratulations to Morgantown and to Monongalia County. Congratulations to us all. We’ve come a long way by dissolving the Scotts Run Public Service District, and by taking over its hard won materials and capacities, and by preparing to swallow up its impending flood of TIF gold. We’ve come a long, long way.

The failure to learn to respect the dignity, let alone the organizational capacity and the would-be wealth, of the people of Scotts Run: yet another repugnant, and historical, farce.

Read the rest of this entry »

NOTHING LIKE PILLAGING THE FACE OF APPALACHIAN POVERTY

or

SCOTTS RUN – WHAT’S LEFT TO PILLAGE? TURNS OUT: PLENTY

During the US Great Depression, the Scotts Run area stretching for a few miles just west of Morgantown gained prominence as the miserable face of Appalachian poverty. Eleanor Roosevelt, the wife of US President Franklin Roosevelt, visited the collapsed coal mining communities of Scotts Run and decried the situation as the human catastrophe that it was. (See: “Scott’s Run: America’s Symbol of the Great Depression in the Coal Fields” by WVU Professor of History Ronald L. Lewis). After 10 years of violent union-breaking attacks by the coal industry, combined with the national economic collapse, the people of Scotts Run were destitute. Professor Lewis notes that “It was in this pitiful condition that Scotts Run became America’s symbol of the Depression in the coal fields and set a new standard for measuring human suffering in the country…” Professor Lewis adds:

“To what degree life was worse here than in other coal hollows is difficult to determine, but there was plenty of misery to go around. Ironically, Scotts Run received much more attention than other depressed coal communities because it was far more accessible to outside photographers, reporters, social workers, and government agencies. This begs the question of just how “isolated” Scotts Run actually was in the 1920s and 1930s, a perspective tightly linked to its public identity. It should be noted that the run was easily accessible by bus, auto, trolley, or train during this period, and it was only a few miles from the county seat of Morgantown. The commercial center of the county, Morgantown itself was linked into the national transportation network which connected the hinterland with major metropolitan centers. Even though outside observers usually portrayed Scotts Run as ‘isolated,’ its spatial relationship to the rest of the world is more accurately understood as ‘stranded,’ a term frequently employed by contemporary relief workers to describe the condition of people trapped on economic desert islands and powerless to alter their condition. Most of the people were trapped not by geography, but by the lack of resources, employment options, and by their culture…”

When Eleanor Roosevelt visited the not so isolated but stranded, impoverished Scotts Run area for a firsthand examination, Lewis writes that she too “was appalled by conditions on Scotts Run” and notes that Roosevelt would go on to write that “The Run in Jere, like all the others that ran down the gullies to the larger, main stream was the only sewage disposal system that existed.”

Still today, 8 decades later, some Scotts Run area homes lack for quality sewage disposal. These residents had put their hopes in the Scotts Run Public Service District (SRPSD) which had been, until recently, working toward connecting the outlying residents to the municipal sewer. However, that hope, even expectation, died this past month when the SRPSD was abruptly disbanded by its 3 member board and taken over by the Morgantown Utility Board (MUB). Thereupon soon followed the after-the-fact takeover approval of the Morgantown City Council and the Monongalia County Commission. To say the least, both the ethics and the legality of these moves, which are being actively opposed by Scotts Run residents, and that still require approval by the state, are currently in dispute.

In the meantime, now in control of the Scotts Run service area, MUB Manager Tim Ball has stated to the public that MUB cannot afford to connect the outlying Scotts Run residents to the municipal sewer system despite the intentions of the now former Scotts Run PSD to do so. Apparently, Public Service Districts have access to various types of grant funding from which municipal utility boards are barred. So now that the Scotts Run PSD no longer exists, the outlying Scotts Run residents are stranded once again.

Then why did the Scotts Run PSD board terminate the Scotts Run workers and hand the PSD over to MUB, and why did the city of Morgantown and the county of Monongalia approve MUB’s immediate takeover of the Scotts Run PSD operations? Who benefits? Not the Scotts Run PSD workers who all lost their jobs. Not the Scotts Run PSD customers whose rates will remain the same under MUB. Not the outlying Scotts Run inhabitants who now will not have their homes’ sewage disposals upgraded by connecting to the municipal sewer.

Who benefits? Evidently the city of Morgantown and the county of Monongalia which both to various extents oversee the operations and reach of MUB. How do Morgantown and the county benefit but not Scotts Run? Morgantown and the County gain the valuable Scotts Run PSD which has many more financial and material assets than liabilities, or as MUB Manager Tim Ball stated in his May 23, 2013 memo to Morgantown City Council: “The acquisition [of the Scotts Run PSD] is an attractive opportunity for MUB to expand its customer base and service area… This acquisition will allow a valuable system addition to be done…”

There is nothing in this memo from MUB to the Morgantown City Council about benefiting Scotts Run, which loses jobs and loses the expectation of gaining additional connections to the municipal sewer system in the most impoverished areas of Scotts Run. But what an “attractive” and “valuable” gain for MUB is the Scotts Run PSD!

That’s not even half of the story. After all, why would the city of Morgantown and the county of Monongalia wish to pillage, that is, to “acquire,” the Scotts Run PSD now rather than, say, 5 years ago, or, say, 5 years from now? Why now? What changed, ever so recently?

Let’s think. What happens when we follow the money trail a little bit farther?

We run smack into a gigantic pot of gold that was about to fall into the lap of the Scotts Run PSD … as will be detailed in a subsequent post: Scotts Run Pillaged Yet Again – Part Two. See this subsequent post also for an examination of possible ways to right this wrong. Read the rest of this entry »

THE BIG LIE THAT IS THE “BALLPARK TIF” PLAN

The Phony Claims of CTMountaineer at the City Data forums:

CTMountaineer claims: “Taxpayers are not ‘giving’ WVU a ballpark.” The claim is False. In fact, $16.2 million in local taxpayer TIF district funds will be used to build the ballpark. And the Monongalia County Commission has publicly indicated its willingness to sign away, prior to construction, all ballpark operation and management to WVU as well as eventual full ownership of the ballpark.

CTMountaineer claims: “The only funding involved with this project will be created right there on site from usage.” The claim is False. Local tax increases for up to the next three decades – including such predictable tax revenue increases from, for example, the existing Sheetz and McDonalds and Target and WalMart, etc, in the TIF district and from everywhere else in the TIF district – will be used to pay off the $16.2 million construction of the ballpark. For the next 30 years all the anticipated and predictable property and sales tax increases that would have gone to the county and state will instead go toward paying off the ballpark and paying for tens of million of dollars of infrastructure payments on roadways and other upgrades serving the ballpark and the privately owned businesses and commercial enterprises currently existing and anticipated.

CTMountaineer claims: “The county will receive the same amount of property tax on the adjacent land they have in the past. The only difference is the improvements (which are not now in place) won’t be subject to property tax until they are paid for.” The claim is False. Mon-View LLC developers expect the current development plans for the TIF district to be paid for within about 10 or 15 years, but all county property taxes and state sales taxes on such development will remain locked into the TIF district (and away from the rest of the country) for up to 30 years. Moreover, benchmarking property tax for all the properties in the TIF district at the current level for general county use means that in real dollar terms, due to inflation, the county loses money every year for the next thirty years, in addition to not being allowed to spend a dime of 3 decades worth of property and sales tax increases outside of this thriving largely commercial district, and apparently not being allowed to spend the money even inside the district on anything but infrastructure support for the private developments and business operations.

CTMountaineer claims: “It is only the improvements that are not taxed, and those improvements would not have been an issue in any event without the project.” The claims are False. New tax revenue is lost to general county use for up to 30 years not only on “improvements” but also on (expected non-TIF) increased sales and increases in property value due to inflation and due to local (expected non-TIF) development. New sales and “improvements” – that is, commercial projects and businesses and their activities have been starting up and increasing in this thriving commercial district on a regular and uninterrupted basis and would continue to do so with or without any TIF legislation. It’s a lie to pretend otherwise. In fact, the “ballpark TIF” plan legislation was rushed to passage this year not only because WVU wants a ballpark pronto, but also because if the TIF legislation had been delayed a year, then at least one major new “improvement” – “The Domain” housing complex, which has just been built but is not quite yet on the tax rolls, all of those tax dollars instead of going to the TIF district for the next 30 years would have gone toward general county spending for the next 30 years had the TIF plan legislation been delayed by a year. The TIF district gets the local taxes on the “improvement” that is “The Domain,” 3 decades worth of tax revenue, even though the TIF legislation had nothing to do with building “The Domain.” The same is true of many other planned and predictable future developments in this thriving and constantly developing commercial area now and for the next three decades. Those revenues could have gone toward replacing the crumbling Hartman Run Bridge that the County may instead need to close due to lack of funds to repair or replace it. Instead, thanks to the recklessness and the haste of the TIF plan legislation passage, all the tax revenue generated by the already built “improvement” that is “The Domain” and other impending and future “improvements” is now locked into the TIF district and locked out from use in any of the rest of the county, for the next 30 years. Many new businesses and commercial “improvements” would have been inevitably developed in this thriving commercial area over the next 30 years without any TIF district creation. (It’s important to note what everyone has been silent about: the County Commissioners can vote to cancel the TIF plan at any point after any bonds it has approved are paid off. (See the WV TIF Handbook.) The Commission does not have to allow the TIF plan to run for a full 30 years, however the Commission has expressed zero inclination of ending the plan prior to year 30 in 2043. The general county would lose out on any increase in revenue from the TIF district until then, year 2043, and instead would receive for general county use only year 2012 tax revenue, which it would have to make do with until year 2043, by which time that sum would look incredibly paltry.)

CTMountaineer claims: “The county is out nothing, and 30 years down the road they get the benefit of the improvements for tax purposes. In the meantime, the people of the county get all the considerable benefits of the improvements for nothing.” These something for “nothing” claims are False. For 30 years, the TIF district legislation locks in these massive local taxpayer funds to this thriving largely commercial and uninhabited TIF district area, and away from all the rest of the county – that’s what the “county is out” – including away from many populous and impoverished areas that are starved for badly needed public services and infrastructure. $16.2 million of these public funds will be used to build the baseball ballpark that County Commissioners indicate WVU will manage, operate, and then own for the taking. $16.2 million-plus is not “nothing” – very far from the county getting something for nothing. Rather, WVU is getting something for nothing, or virtually nothing – and so are the TIF district businesses, when one considers the $28 million TIF highway interstate interchange, to be built entirely with local taxpayer funds, which TIF district commerce will benefit by. $28 million is not nothing either, let alone the additional tens of millions of dollars that the TIF legislation locks into that commercial and uninhabited district. The general county loses 30 years worth of taxes on “improvements” (that is, property tax increases) much of which would occur without or without the TIF legislation.

CTMountaineer claims, and this is the basic, biggest lie: “Mon County, and the state for that matter, will see this entire project take place without having to part with any significant amount of money at all from their budgets.” The claim is false. This claim pretends that the future – somehow, magically – does not exist, that predictable revenue increases do not exist, that expected inflation and growth are figments of the imagination. Try this analogy: A husband returns home after work one day pulling a boat on a trailer worth tens of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile his car and house and land are falling apart and in disrepair.

His wife says, “What did you do?!”

And he says, and he’s not drunk out of his mind, “This cost us nothing! The bank lent us the money to buy this great boat in exchange for the next 30 years of salary increases we would have received due to inflation and to the ever increasing value of our labors. But we lose nothing from our budget today! Never mind what we would have gained tomorrow. And look!” the husband exalts, “not only can we have fun on the boat, we can use the trailer for hauling other stuff around! Plus…we are helping to employ people who build boats and who supply gas and boating gear!”

“You’re either crazy, drunk, a liar, or all three,” the wife says, as another shingle falls off the house roof, the bumper falls off the car, and part of the yard collapses into a ravine.

“But that’s not all,” the husband beams, “after 30 years instead of bothering to own this boat ourselves and then renting it out to pay for its upkeep, or to earn money, I’ve already signed over ownership of the boat to our rich neighbor who so loves boats and who may give us a ride on it every once in awhile. Isn’t it great? Aren’t I great? What a swell deal. It costs us nothing! Think of the benefits!”

At which point the wife strikes down the lunatic with a frying pan.

Or, in the case of the TIF, the boat boys pat one another on the back and say what a wonderful thing they are doing for the families of the area.

That’s the big lie. That’s the “ballpark TIF” plan. Read the rest of this entry »