New Woodburn Community School

Today on WAJR, the morning show hosts expressed if anything a surprised reaction (“hmm”) to a caller telling them that the hockey team helped build and pay for the BOPARC ice rink, and that WVU contributed to a room in it, and that donations came from Jack Roberts’ sister, and that Jack Roberts donated the park to BOPARC and the public in 1st ward neighborhood. Surely the hosts did not miss that all such funding now is flooding out of the neighborhoods and out of the city park system into Mylan Park where no one lives.

Another caller stated that WVU originally said its rec center would be open to the public but then had to disallow that when it feared losing its non-profit status.

This is how to make Morgantown poor. This is how Mylan Park makes Morgantown poor. Major private donations and WVU funding and grants that previously went to the area’s major city park system, spread widely through all of Morgantown’s neighborhoods and near densely populated urban county developments, all those millions and tens of millions of dollars now go primarily to Mylan Park where virtually no one lives, far from the many neighborhoods.

This is a recipe for further city blight of infrastructure, lack of green space and wellness activities, increased social and community decay, and the collapse of urban livability.

Where is a YMCA or other rec and wellness center for any of the city neighborhoods? Fairplay, Colorado, a crossroads town of 760 people, using two bonds, built a remarkable multi-million dollar year-round indoor water facility, community and wellness center on a scant few acres. Where is a similar center for the Woodburn schoolgrounds?

No, you can’t have it. Not the neighborhoods, not the communities. But Mylan Park can have it, a private entity, funded by wealthy donors. The city where tens of thousands of people live is instead gutted, made poor.

Monongalia County doesn’t even have a park system, not one single facility, for its tens of thousands of urban county residents around the fringes of Morgantown, Star City, and Westover. It has three parks for its many rural residents but nothing nearby for its urban residents in the many crowded housing developments of greater Morgantown. And the county pays virtually nothing ($50,000 this year) of the several million dollar budget of Morgantown’s city park system, BOPARC, even though half of BOPARC users are from outside the city. (Yes, there is a $2.5 million county levy to repair the BOPARC ice rink, but city residents are taxed for that levy too, just like any non-city resident).

This is how the city of Morgantown is made poor. Mylan Park makes BOPARC poor. Private, state, and county dollars that formerly would go to the many BOPARC green spaces and facilities and trails throughout the city neighborhoods, including near densely populated county areas, now go into the no-man’s-land of Mylan Park.

Monongalia County has committed $150,000 to Mylan Park – a private entity – while supporting BOPARC to the tune of a mere $50,000 – a public entity. All the while, Monongalia County has no urban county resident park system, at all.

This is how Morgantown and the greater Morgantown area is made poor.

And then there is annexation and the longstanding record of wealthy entities and the County Commission’s open hostility to the City of Morgantown expanding to encompass all the urban residences and urban commerce surrounding its borders. These people and business benefit from city-based consumption and from city structures and planning and services while not paying any of the taxes (B&O and property taxes) to the city that actually sustain the conditions off of which the businesses profit and the urban county residents use and enjoy.

This is how Morgantown is made poor. This is how the city Park System, BOPARC, is made poor. And urban county residents suffer too. The whole region suffers.

WVU has its own rec center for its students and faculty, and some shared public green space and facilities, if you can afford them, but this does not remotely compensate for what Morgantown’s BOPARC system and rail trails and neighborhood parks offer – largely free – to virtually all WVU employees, families, and also students, often right in the communities where they live. How much does WVU support BOPARC compared to the use of the system by its employees and students and its value to them? How much does Westover and Star City support BOPARC compared to the use of the system by its residents? How much does the county support BOPARC compared to the extremely heavy use of the system by the non-city residents, especially its urban county residents who have no neighborhood park system of their own?

The park systems of Star City and Granville and even Westover and the Brookhaven and Cheat Lake urban populations (let alone the non-existent park system of the other urban county residents flooding all around Morgantown’s borders), these systems or facilities do not remotely compare to the amenities offered by Morgantown’s BOPARC system with its pools, skate park, rail trails, tennis courts, ice rink, and so on, even in their currently impoverished state. And what do these population bases pay into the BOPARC system that they use heavily? The County should correct this inequity. $50,000 doesn’t cut it. Chump change.

It’s scandalous. This is how Morgantown is made poor.

This is why a county BOPARC levy is needed immediately this November, and not at the next opportunity two years from now during the next election.

Otherwise, we’ve all been cheated of our chance to decide for ourselves, yet again. And the County – which should provide a dedicated funding stream for BOPARC independent of any levy – would be derelict again. Does the County want to see that the City gets what it needs? Even has a chance, via a referendum for a levy, to get what it needs?

Or not. You can almost see the Commissioners thinking, if we can just wait the Council out, then we won’t have to allow a levy for another two years, if at all! How inspiring.

The WAJR morning show hosts, under the orders of their One Percent bosses, can whine and moan all they want about Morgantown City Council rushing – valiantly – to do what should have been done decades ago, making up for lost time. City Council is only elected on two year terms. Five of the members are new and more forward-thinking than in years past, in general. They’ve had a lot to take in and a lot to learn, and they are beginning to see, some of them, how the city has been shafted for years. And they are beginning to see, some of them, the need for urgency in the moment.

The hosts of the WAJR morning show don’t live in the city. Do they even live in the county? The state? Doesn’t one live in Pennsylvania? A former host lived in Preston County, let alone in the city of Morgantown. Does the other host even live in Monongalia County? And yet they sit there and blather as the One Percent’s judge and jury on the city of Morgantown because they don’t want the wealthy business community that they sing the praises of day in and day out to pay city property taxes or the levy taxes to support city infrastructure and services and planning that those businesses draw wealth off of in the first place. They don’t want their One Percent heroes’ property taxes to go toward making the many urban neighborhoods more livable than they would be otherwise. Let WVU and the wealthy businesses give their money now to Mylan Park! Let them be free to build their paradise apart! And let the people be free to wander the dilapidated parks. To hell with BOPARC and the urban neighborhoods! Where the people actually live. To hell with them.

Hey, don’t move to fund BOPARC! Let Mylan Park thrive! Let WVU glisten! To hell with Morgantown. Who cares about those tens of thousands of people, and the many more all around the perimeter?

Let the outrage and the scandal and the city and social decay continue. Let all the crowded people in their crowded conditions rot to the ground.

Let the people pilgrimage to Mylan Park! To pay their respects. And their dues. That’s what the County Commissioners do. Everyone follow!

And let them eat cake along the way. Let the people eat cake in their neighborhoods too. Give them cake, a few crumbs here and there. Because there is no bread. Not nearly enough bread for their communities. It went to Mylan Park. The loaves pass from one deep pocket to another. If you’re lucky, you can drive to Mylan’s Park, the One Percent Park, or pay a bus pass for the tedious ride there, and then you can pay to get in.

That’s how you make Morgantown poor.