Pocahontas Solid Waste Authority Elects New Chairman and Vice-Chairman

Despite questions about the legality of holding such a vote at this time being raised, but not settled, three members of the Pocahontas County Solid Waste Authority: Darrell Roach, Gail Siers and new member Nancy Harris voted Siers to be the new Chairman of the SWA, and voted Nancy Harris as the new Vice-Chairman. The vote on each was three to two, with only David Henderson and Phillip Cobb voting against Siers and Harris. In a strange twist, Henderson continued to run the remaining meeting almost as if the vote didn’t occur.

Member Gail Siers addressed the meeting during member comments, saying his first choice for the future of the SWA is to haul the trash themselves directly from the green boxes to neighboring county landfills after ours does eventually close. Member Nancy Harris said her first preference is to expand the current landfill, but if that doesn’t work out, she would also support the SWA hauling the trash themselves. Harris also called for a committee to be put together to come up with a future plan. She passed around a sign-up sheet for members of the audience to put their names on to be part of the committee. She said she and Member Darrell Roach will be members of that committee. When the sheet was passed to this reporter, Harris jumped down and grabbed it, fearing it would be photographed. Under the WV Open Meetings Act, any such list becomes public record when it is passed around an open public meeting. There was also no announcement made that membership of that committee will be advertised publicly giving members of the general public the opportunity to join in the decision-making process. As it appears to stand now, only the public who were present at this meeting will be invited to be on the committee and make recommendations for the future of waste disposal in the county. There may be WV Open Meeting Law issues with that and with committee meetings, depending on how those are conducted.

During the public comments portion of the meeting -which happened before the vote, – a number of the forty or so of the members of the public attending the meeting spoke. Several, including Marcy Crabtree, condemned Henderson’s performance as Chairman and wanted him to resign from the board. Others proudly said the board is now under the control of the three newest members, and that the “old board members” are corrupt. Many said they absolutely don’t want a transfer station. Several speakers said they, and the three newest board members, represent the vast majority of the residents of Pocahontas County because if they didn’t, lots of other people would show up at the meetings to oppose their positions. One speaker asked for a show of hands of the audience of the people who support Nancy Harris’s positions. Just about everyone in the audience raised their hands and cheered. No one raised their hands when asked if they supported the decisions of the prior board. It is very rare that any new people of any persuasion show up.at these meetings.

Mike Murphy complained that the green box bills have still not been mailed out, and member Phillip Cobb blamed the audience, saying that two Administrative Secretaries have quit because of nasty phone calls they keep getting, which Cobb implied, came from some of the usual people who attend these meetings. He said these secretaries had been working on getting the bills out. SWA Attorney David Sims said part of the billing problem is that the billing system is 20 years old and they need to manually get the current list of property owners and their current mailing addresses from the Assessor’s Office in order to send out bills, which is time-consuming. One member of the audience identified herself as an employee of the Assessor’s Office, and disputed that saying the names and addresses are computerized so could be made available easily. The date to ensure that early payment discount has been extended from September to November 15^th by the board because of the billing delays.

We also talked to one member of the audience, John Burks, who presented the 2024-2025 Fiscal year SWA Financial Report, saying it shows that the landfill expenses were about $1,100,000 that year with about 7,000 tons of construction or demolition debris being taken to the landfill at a cost of about $153 dollars a ton, but the tipping fee for that was only $95.00 per ton, causing about a $58.00 loss per ton. He said that loss was passed on to the people paying the Green Box fees.

The members also met in Executive Session with Jacob Meck and his attorney but did not take any action when they returned to open session. Meck does have a letter of intent signed by the SWA board at their February 25, 2026 meeting. It guarantees that if the project is cancelled by the SWA, the SWA will reimburse JacMal Industries for up to $200,000 for money that JacMal spent for things like architect drawings and down payments on equipment purchases. Meck has advised us recently that he has spent more than that amount on the project.

The members also voted to scrap the 3-minute limit for public speakers at meetings, and will now require public input be included on all meeting agendas.