Jan. 2—A handful of charter changes, a successful Home Rule application leading to passage of a 1 % municipal sales tax and whole lot of Holland Avenue held Westover City Council’s attention in 2023.

Charting the course While changes to a city’s foundational document are necessary from time to time, such actions are typically pretty rare.

Westover was an exception to that unwritten rule in 2023 as the city’s council took up four charter changes. The body passed three by ordinance. The fourth will go before the city’s voters.

In order for the charter to be changed by ordinance, the proposed changes can receive no public opposition.

In June, two changes came before council.

One, eliminating the city’s standalone election—held on the second Tuesday in June in even-numbered years—and moving it in-cycle with the county’s May primary election, passed through council without objection.

The second, doubling the term of office for mayor from two to four years, received opposition from within council as well as from a single Westover resident.

Even so, council voted 5-2 to move forward with the proposed change, meaning it will be on the ballot when city residents go to the polls in May.

In November, two more charter changes appeared on council’s agenda, this time pertaining to pay for the positions of mayor and city councilor.

Council voted to increase the annual salary for mayor from $55, 000 to $75, 000 and make the mayor eligible for future cost of living raises passed for city employees.

The body also raised the per meeting pay for council members from $80 to $120.

There was no public input on either item.

Home rules In December, Westover City Council finalized passage of a 1 % tax to be added to purchases of taxable goods and services within the city.

The municipal sales tax will take effect July 1, 2024, and is expected to generate approximately $3.3 million annually for the city.

The ability to implement such a such a tax was provided in October, when the city’s application was approved by the West Virginia Home Rule Board.

That application also gave the city the ability to take up a number of code enforcement matters.

As previously reported, Home Rule began as a four-city pilot program in 2007 with the goal of giving the state’s municipalities freedom within the law to tackle unique challenges. It was made a permanent program in 2019 and opened to all the state’s cities.

In October 2014, the pilot cities of Bridgeport, Charleston, Huntington and Wheeling were joined by 16 additional municipalities, including Morgantown, as part of the expanded program.

As of January 2019, Home Rule is permanent, and now has nearly 60 municipalities participating statewide, according to the West Virginia Department of Revenue.

Westover’s application also included code enforcement changes that would allow the city to:

— Issue on-the-spot citations for reoccurring exterior sanitation and common nuisance violations like trash /rubbish, overgrown weeds and grass, junked cars, broken windows and others.

— Place a lien on a property violating the city’s public nuisance ordinance without first obtaining an order from the circuit court.

— Shorten the time for forfeiture of structures when owners refuse to address code violations. This change would allow the city to address dilapidated properties in a total of 16 months rather than the current 28 months.

— Manage longstanding blighted and vacant properties after due notice to the owner and place liens on city-remediated properties without a court order.

— Collect liens for demolition expenses. The high bidder at a tax lien auction must pay the city’s demolition lien before the sheriff could issue a certificate of sale.

Council has yet to take any of these changes up.

Holland daze From Jan. 1 on, the one issue that dominated conversation among Westover leadership in 2023 was the Holland Avenue project.

The long-coveted improvements will address about 2, 000 feet of the roadway, replacing broken down sanitary sewer and stormwater lines beneath the street’s surface as well as the large retaining wall that runs along its lower portion.

But we learned in February that work was being tied to an even more critical, but less visible, project to replace the failing heart of the city’s wastewater system—the No. 1 pump station that sends all flows from the city beneath the Monongahela River and into the Morgantown Utility Board system.

In March, Westover City Council approved the smaller of two planned rate increases for the city’s sanitary sewer customers, bumping the minimum monthly charge for up to 2, 000 gallons used from $15.78 to $17.18.

The second increase will come once the projects are substantially complete.

Both projects remain on pace to be bid out in early 2024 and under way during the spring construction season at a combined cost of $8.25 million.

About $3.8 million of that total will be financed through the Department of Environmental Protection over 20 years at 3 % interest.

The rest will come covered by the city’s American Rescue Plan Act dollars ($1.9 million), anticipated grant funding from the West Virginia Water Development Authority ($2 million) and contributions from the county and state.

The city is also exploring additional improvements to address beautification and pedestrian safety estimated at $250, 000.