Written by our friend Dave. Interested in submitting? Email us at thecityofmorgantown@gmail.com or Tweet at us at wvmorgantown. 

As happens with just about all of us at some point, I was nearby when an elderly lady needed medical assistance. 911 was called immediately and Mon EMS was there within five minutes. The two people (1 man, 1 woman) started treating the woman and preparing her for transporting to the hospital.

About five minutes after Mon EMS was on the scene, Star City VFD came blazing in looking like the Calvary aiming to save the day. A command vehicle, a firetruck, and an ambulance I believe fully loaded with twelve men and women. Judging by their attire, most of them came prepared to fight a fire. With their two people and one ambulance, Mon EMS had the situation completely under control.

I suppose that two of the Star City VFD personnel were needed there to direct traffic around the unneeded vehicles they brought, but the other ten people from Star City stood and watched. The call to 911 was clear as to what had happened and 911 personnel obviously made the correct call to Mon EMS for one ambulance who was there quickly. It appears that Star City picked up on the call on the scanner and tried to get to the scene before Mon EMS.

When they come out like that do they try to get paid for the run? Are they reimbursed somehow through the other ambulance service for “assisting”? Hopefully by just showing up at an emergency like they do, they aren’t able to bill our health, home, and auto insurance companies! 

All they did in this case was make fools of themselves. They sent out three vehicles (a firetruck for a medical call?) and twelve people to assist Mon EMS (one ambulance, two people) for a health issue on private property.

Our emergency response system needs to have all the parts working together, not battling for calls. Wouldn’t Star City VFD looked good if there had been an emergency in Star City while they were out “assisting”? If more ambulances are needed in Mon county, then lets get more in place! Someone at the State or County levels needs to step in and get this situation with Star City VFD and their ambulance service straightened out before they create enough confusion that someone doesn’t get the emergency treatment needed.

The other day, I was approached by a man who is simultaneously a nice enough guy and a world-class crank. He lives out toward the western end of the county and we hang out very occasionally. When we do, he insists upon talking local politics. The only thing he’s more passionate about is his golf. 

During our conversation the other day, he informed of the duplicitous underbelly of the proposed local baseball stadium. “It’s not about building a baseball stadium,” he warned. “It’s about the coal on the other side of the highway. Some local developer is trying to get at those properties because of what’s underneath, either to mine it or maybe to frack it. Mark my words. You can’t trust these developers.” 

I had no idea what he’s talking about. I have no idea how building a baseball stadium on one side of the highway is going to free up properties (potentially properties laden with either coal or natural gas) on the other. I’m also baffled that a man who spent his life in the coalmines, a man considerably to my right politically (like, way, way to my right) is suddenly suspicious of local developers and extraction industries. 

All of that said though? I believe him. Not necessarily on the specifics of the details, because I can’t work out how the entire conspiracy functions, but because of that final comment, “You can’t trust developers.” He forgot to include the part about not being able to trust local politicians either. 

The plan to build the baseball stadiums involves locals paying higher taxes to underwrite the construction of this stadium. Predictably, the locals who have turned out at meetings to discuss this plan have rightly been suspicious of who it benefits and how. Local politicians have scoffed at such concerns, because that’s what they do. 

Time and time and time again, developers in this county have willfully and egregiously mislead us about what they’re going to do and how they’re going to develop it. The only people who ever believe these people are the ones we empower with our local political responsibility. In the face of unrealistic assurances that local citizens repeatedly disbelieve, local politicians are forever saying, “Why of course the McCoy 6 developers are going to build a mini-downtown on Falling Run Road and of course we should give them loans of all sorts to help them deliver upon their vision!”

To put that another way, I’ve got two choices: I can believe the people who grumble quietly to themselves about the lies or I can believe the people who repeatedly spout the lies. I can’t easily do both. So for the time being, I’ll assume that nefarious business is afoot in Granville, that somebody we don’t yet know about is going to get obscenely wealthy as a result of this baseball field’s construction, that the greatness of the baseball field as it is currently conceived will never actually be achieved, and that the entire game is rigged to benefit particular individuals at the expense of the rest of us. 

Good luck following this story about Tom Bloom, the Board of Education, and the County Commission. It isn’t that it is poorly written. It’s simply that it gets to be so confusing that it becomes almost impossible to track. 

As I understand it, this is what happened:

1. Tom Bloom ran against Joe Statler for a seat on the County Commission.

2. This county’s old guard didn’t like that, and backed Joe Statler for the position.

3. At the same time, the county’s superintendent of schools, Frank Devono, started filing professional complaints against Bloom as a form of retaliation for his campaign. 

4. Bloom won anyway, and was then immediately barred from using his own personal days to attend meetings of the County Commission that he’d just won a seat on.

5. Bloom then sued, basically saying that he ought to be allowed to use his time to serve in his political position, even if Devono didn’t personally approve of Bloom’s victory.

And here we are, with Bloom and Devono facing off against one another. But it is more than that really, because Devono is basically the face of this county’s old guard, a group that thought its backing of Statler in a campaign was all that would matter. Statler was a former representative on our odious Board of Education (a group of people who are almost entirely awful). Statler lost though, and that group’s response has been a ham-fisted attempt to make Bloom’s work on the County Commission as difficult as possible.

This isn’t terribly surprising. As the county’s demographics change - as new people move in and as old people die off - the mechanisms of power are going to change too. It isn’t just in the County Commission’s races that we’re going to see this. We’ll also see it other places throughout the county, including the recent blitzing of the Morgantown City Council, where the same old-guard assumed that simply tarnishing its opponents could win re-election. That strategy didn’t work any better than Devono’s attempted intimidation of Bloom did. 

Unfortunately for our local politics, ham-fisted retribution is all the older guard has got. There are rumors abound - rumors which I keep trying to confirm - that at least one of Devono’s responses to Bloom involved cutting funding for projects Bloom supported. I have yet to find individuals interested of saying much more than “I heard that Devono…” but still, that such talk is even occurring troubles me. I’ll look more into it.

And as a sidebar, we probably ought to discuss the following: Bloom, although the victim here, has never been any great shakes. He was a City Councilor who treated disliked constituents in exactly the same way that he’s now being treated and you don’t have to look far to find University High School alumni (where he was a counselor for 30+ years) who say that he ignored them and their needs for students that he personally preferred. 

So what we have here is a pissing match between unlikable people. I have higher hopes for this county than such stupidity - and I genuinely believe that the county’s changing demographics may end up being quite useful leaders who recognize that their constituents actually matter - but in the meantime, this scandal is going to waste time and money that could have been saved (and been put to better use) if certain people were willing to recognize that the world is changing.