Board Chairman and Wheeling Mayor Nick Sparachane presided over the Home Rule Board meeting on the campus of West Virginia University on Wednesday. The home rule applications of Wheeling, Charleston, Huntington and Bridgeport were all approved.
This is only the beginning of the process. Now, each city is left to draft and pass ordinances through their respective City Councils that will include more specific information regarding their plans.
"Think about how interesting some of these council meetings will be when the cities want to pass these ordinances. The citizens will probably get pretty excited about a lot of it, but that is why we have home rule - to give power to local elected officials," Sparachage said.
Board Chairman and Wheeling Mayor Nick Sparachane presided over the Home Rule Board meeting on the campus of West Virginia University on Wednesday. The home rule applications of Wheeling, Charleston, Huntington and Bridgeport were all approved.
This is only the beginning of the process. Now, each city is left to draft and pass ordinances through their respective City Councils that will include more specific information regarding their plans.
"Think about how interesting some of these council meetings will be when the
cities want to pass these ordinances. The citizens will probably get pretty excited about a lot of it, but that is why we have home rule - to give power to local elected officials," Sparachage said.
Board members are Mayor Nick Sparachane, Sen. Ed Bowman, D-Hancock; Delegate Jim Morgan, D-Cabell; Jon Amores of the West Virginia Development Office; Brian Jones of the West Virginia AFL-CIO; Chris Fletcher of the West Virginia Planning Association; and Kin Sayre of the West Virginia Business
and Industrial Council.
Bowman and Morgan abstained from voting on any of the applications, and Sparachane removed himself from the chair as well as discussion and voting on Wheeling's application.
Wheeling's plan included: fees for vacant buildings, higher priority status in the collection of liens for demolishing dilapidated buildings, and conditional use zoning and planning permits.
Charleston's plan included : collection of delinquent fees, address problems with dilapidated buildings, revise procedures to procure architect and engineering services, provide flexible Business and Occupation tax rates, provide flexible building and zoning provisions, request relief from the Department of Environmental Protection for testing costs and permitting, sell city property, request relief from the Design-Build Procurement Act requirements, enter contracts with other jurisdictions via resolutions and establish a municipal health care provider tax.
Huntington's plan included: a municipal occupation tax, enforce collection of taxes and fees, address fire damage to residential and commercial structures and establish a land bank for the transfer of delinquent land.
Bridgeport's plan includes: financially participating in public school projects, reduce or increase certain licensing fees for uniform amounts, annex unincorporated territory across another city's borders and issue its own tax increment financing.
The program terminates on July 1, 2013, Jon Amores said, "All of these cities will have to conduct some research to see how they can end the programs they implement because once this home rule pilot program expires, anything they have changed will need to be changed again," he said.
But Bowman is hopeful that the programs the cities implement will be successful so that the Legislature will take action to extend home rule throughout the state on a permanent basis. Bowman noted his pride as a former Mayor, seeing this authority given to the applicants.
"The eyes of all of West Virginia are now upon these four cities to see how they can handle this, so we hope they do a good job," he said.