So at the Morgantown City Council Town Hall today, Saturday, 9-noon, there were by my count at its high point, 33 people in the Met Theater audience seats and 11 support personnel for the city, including 6 Councilors, 1 City Manager, 1 moderator, 2 police officers, and 1 lighting technician. The people in attendance were more or less evenly split on their views, and there were only about three dozen or less.
This shows that the City Council basically has a clear mandate to do as it sees fit on the main issues of the day, especially in accord with the interests and needs of their constituents who elected them.
This Town Hall shows that City Council should move forward with all possible speed in deliberating and deciding to a) purchase Haymaker Forest, b) provide referendums for levies for community needs for the public to vote on in November, and c) further pursue annexation of the urban sprawl county areas that are overwhelming the city’s borders, infrastructure, and services.
The scheduled moderator, the “President and CEO of the Morgantown Area Chamber of Commerce,” arrived late, after the first question had been asked and partly answered, and he offered no apology for being late. Even if his excuse was a good one – traffic accident? – he offered no explanation.
No one seemed surprised, let alone asked for an explanation or apology from the “President and CEO of the Morgantown Area Chamber of Commerce.” Does he work more for the “Area” than for the “City of Morgantown”? Did he have an “Area” meeting that he had to attend prior to the Town Hall put on by the Morgantown City Council? One can only wonder.
In any event, one thing is clear. The Morgantown City Councilors evidently have retained their mandate to act as they see fit on the public’s behalf, throughout the second year of their two year term. Let’s hope the Councilors take that mandate ever more seriously and act on it ever more strongly over the course of the remaining year, for the public good, both near and long term.
New Woodburn Community School 
Leave a Reply