The West Liberty University Board of Governors voted Friday morning to hire Timothy Borchers, currently the vice president for academic affairs at Peru State College in Nebraska, as its new president.
Borchers replaces former President W. Franklin Evans, whose contract was not renewed last year after two years on the job. WLU Interim Provost Cathy Monteroso has been serving as interim president since then.
In his role at Peru State, Borchers has collaborated with deans, faculty and staff to provide a personalized, engaging and transformative educational experience for a diverse student population. During his time as vice president for academic affairs, Peru State has achieved its highest first-year retention rate in the past 30 years and has enrolled two of the largest first-year student classes in the past 30 years.
Borchers spearheaded the campus’ migration to new retention software and motivated faculty to use the software to provide regular updates on students’ academic progress. The college has added new academic programs and partnerships to prepare students to meet workforce needs.
— The Intelligencer/ Wheeling News-Register
Ohio County Schools will spend about $250,000 to put new cameras with updated technology in its buses and vans.
The cost involves placing eight cameras on each of the school district’s 55 buses and two cameras on each of its two transport vans, Director of Operations David Crumm told Board of Wducation members Monday night.
The cameras will be purchased from the AngelTrax company of Dothan, Alabama.
Crumm explained how the new cameras will be an upgrade from the current ones.
Each full-size bus presently has just six cameras, which are placed at the front and the back of the vehicle.
“Anything you want to look at … you can see heads above benches. That’s about it,” Crumm said. “And where does the majority of the mischief occur? Down below the seats.”
There will be eight cameras now on each school bus, with some cameras being placed in the middle and providing a better view down and inside the benches, he continued.
Another advantage is that the cameras will be get a better view of vehicles that illegally pass the bus when it is stopped, Crumm added, since the cameras are able to zoom in on license plates.
He noted the new cameras also will provide better video than the current ones when it is dark outside.
— The Intelligencer/ Wheeling News-Register
Public Service District No. 1 approached the Preston County Commission on Tuesday about a service territory expansion.
“This service territory expansion is not intended to expand the Preston County PSD No. 1 water infrastructure at this time,” Thrasher Engineering Project Engineer Cullin Cutright said. “This service territory expansion is proposed to be performed to update the service area maps for PSD No. 1 to encompass their existing infrastructure, as well as areas where residents have expressed interest in receiving potable water.”
The map shown to the commissioners is currently a working document that is in the draft stages. An official map could be submitted to the commissioners in as early as two weeks.
Thrasher has a survey group working on a detailed description of the area PSD No. 1 is hoping to expand into if approved.
“The public service district was created in 1964 and then expanded in 1989,” Cutright said. “This proposed service territory expansion should have been done a long time ago.”
Before anything can go into effect however, the request has to be approved by the County Commission, as well as the West Virginia Public Service Commission, and public hearings will need to be held.
— Preston County News and Journal
The Town of Rowlesburg had a first reading on an addendum to its town charter on Monday evening.
The addendum deals with candidates for town council; it says they must be free of any fines or utility costs due to the town.
The addendum reads: “Town Council Candidates: An individual that wants to be a candidate for a position on the Town Council, that residence in which they live must be clear of any debt (utility/fines) owed to the Town.
“This is determined by the individual’s address on their driver’s license, state and federal tax forms and Voter’s Registration Card.”
When asked the reason for the addendum, council member Eric Bumgardner said the charter is so old, the town needs to update the document.
“As we progress as a town, in order to avoid any problems, we need to have a guideline,” Bumgardner said.
He also said the town has not had any issues with candidates owing fines or fees.
There will be a second reading of the addendum at the June 12 council meeting, beginning at 7 p.m. in town hall.
Also Monday, Thrasher Group representatives said they had ordered a pump from West Electric for the pump station.
As part of the sewer plant project, the engineering firm is going through environmental clearances with the federal government to get the project further along.
— Preston County News and Journal
The Jefferson County Board of Education held its regular meeting on Monday at Washington High School, where it talked about the new racial slur response protocol policy and heard more about the Wild Hill Solar Project.
During citizens comments, Heather Murray spoke about how minorities are treated in schools. As she got up to speak, several other members of the African-American community who came to the meeting stood behind her in support. Murray shared that she has been an educator for 25 years and has two children who attend Jefferson High School.
“Tonight, we stand collectively to demonstrate our unity as stakeholders in the education of our children and just to share a couple things,” Murray said. “No. 1, we are disgruntled by the lack of respect our families have been shown within this system. On a number of occasions, our children have been intimidated, harassed or even physically assaulted by students and staff at rates that are alarming. We will no longer turn a blind eye to this type of behavior.”
Murray also explained that school staff should be held accountable for keeping kids safe in schools. She said that children are being called racial slurs on a regular basis and are not being recognized properly.
During the meeting, the board discussed the new racial slur response protocol policy.
Jessica Beihl, the forensic science teacher at Spring Mills High School, created a unique project for her students.
In an old flower bed behind the school, she set up what she called a “body farm,” where students can watch deceased pigs go through different stages of decomposition.
Beihl started with just a few classes, but after teaching for seven years, she now has around 180 students and seven classes. With her class growth and the continued interest in forensics, Beihl is always trying to find new ways to get her students engaged in the classroom.
In the past, as she taught her students about the stages of decomposition, she would use a piece of pork to show them how bodies decompose. This year, she saw that she could get special kits with pigs to teach students about the stages of decomposition.
“I thought it was cool,” Beihl said. “It was something different and is something they will remember.”
There are five pigs, each in different conditions. One is kept mostly uncovered; another is wrapped in plastic; another is lightly buried; one is submerged in water; and the last is in a box. Students who choose to participate in the project get to look at how insects decompose the body and how real forensic scientists determine how long a body has been dead.
A project to permanently repair a troublesome sinkhole in the town of Hinton is among 29 projects in a bid letting conducted by the West Virginia Division of Highways on Tuesday.
The repair project will be funded with money from Gov. Jim Justice’s $2.8 billion Roads to Prosperity program.
In June 2022, a massive sinkhole opened along W.Va. 20 in Hinton, the result of a 90-year-old drainage structure failing.
The structure carried water under W.Va. 20 from Brier Branch, but the old drainage system collapsed, allowing water to wash away dirt and rock from beneath the highway. In a two-day construction blitz in January, DOH work crews refilled the hole, installed a temporary drainage pipe and built a temporary bridge to detour around the hole.
The May 9 bid letting includes a project to replace the temporary pipe with a permanent drainage system to carry Brier Branch under the road and fix the sinkhole for good.
“The WVDOH is excited to see the project move to this step,” said Joe Pack, DOH chief of district operations.
The Wood County Commission will be looking at the possibility of hiring a full-time finance director following an audit of the county’s finances.
Jodey Altier and Brett Burns of Perry & Associates appeared before the Wood County Commission on Thursday to discuss the financial audit of the county.
Altier handled the findings, while Burns talked about recommendations. Both said they kept their findings independent of each other.
Overall, the audit went smoothly without any notable “red flags” about anything done that raised significant concerns, Altier said.
“We look at all the numbers and issue an opinion that your numbers are accurate,” she said. “That is a clean audit.”
They next looked at the internal controls, checks and balances in how the work is done. Altier found no material weaknesses that would cause the numbers to be wrong.
The county is doing what it is suppose to be doing in terms of federal grant requirements.
Staff in the County Clerk’s Office and the Sheriff’s Tax Office are doing work to verify a number to make things balance out, since some discrepancies were discovered in capital assets (keeping track of the county’s assets). Years ago, accountants would come in and help the clerk’s office figure out the depreciation of assets. The office did not change the internal schedules, and somewhere that creates beginning and ending balance discrepancies.
— Parkersburg News and Sentinel
Parkersburg City Council voted on three resolutions and presented one ordinance at Tuesday’s council meeting.
The first resolution was to allow the temporary vending of beer and/or wine during Parkersburg Homecoming, on Aug. 18-19.
Council member J.R. Carpenter said he thought council had already passed all the vending-related bills for the year and that they should all be passed at one time. Parkersburg Development Director Ryan Barber said he had contacted the Homecoming Committee a few months prior, but the issue hadn’t materialized until now.
“If council wants to vote on these once a year, I think it needs to be codified,” Mayor Tom Joyce said. “Right now we can pass an ordinance related to streets today, we can pass one in July.”
The measure passed 6-3, with Carpenter, Council member Ray Eubanks, and Council President Sharon Kuhl voting against.
The second resolution was to reappoint Andrew Woofter III as administrative law judge. It passed unanimously without questions.
For the third resolution, the Parkersburg News and Sentinel had previously reported that a public hearing of Community Development Block Grant and HOME Consortium was scheduled at 6:30 p.m Tuesday. City Attorney Blair Myers advised that a formal notice for a public hearing needed to be published if it was legally required. Since one hadn’t been issued, it wasn’t required.
— Parkersburg News and Sentinel
The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources and Department of Environmental Protection have identified a number of water systems in the state with detectable levels of select perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) compounds.
Using data from the U.S. Geological Survey, which recently concluded sampling of West Virginia water systems, DHHR and DEP have identified 27 public water systems with detectable levels of select PFAS compounds in their finished drinking water.
Of these 27 systems, 19 had detections above at least one of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed regulatory standards.
“While a determination of risk for consumers cannot be made based on the preliminary results of this study, this data helps us plan for when final testing is complete and the EPA rules are finalized,” said Dr. Matthew Christiansen, state health officer and commissioner of the Bureau for Public Health.
Under the direction of DHHR, USGS sampled the finished drinking water of 37 systems previously identified as having certain PFAS compounds in their raw water (pre-treated water) source in order to determine which systems need additional or upgraded treatment.
A chart depicting West Virginia’s finished water testing results for the 19 systems, Public Water System Drinking Water PFAS Study, may be viewed on DHHR’s website.