State Delegate and State Senate Redistricting in Pocahontas County Explained

At the Pocahontas County Commission’s regular meeting held at 5:30 pm on October 19th, the commissioners discussed several issues prior to addressing their agenda items.

Commissioner Helmick announced that the redistricting of the county will divide the county into two House of Delegate districts. The northern end of the county will be in the 66th district along with portions of Randolph County, while the southern half of the county will share the 46th district with the Eastern part of Greenbrier County. In the State Senate redistricting, Pocahontas County will share the same State Senate District with Braxton, Upshur, Barbour, Randolph, and Pendleton counties.

Helmick also announced that as of October 25th, ten prisoners from the Huttonsville Correctional Center will be transported by the MTA daily to work at the Beckworth Lumber Company in Slatyfork. He said they will be paid $11.00 per hour to start which will increase to $12.00 per hour in a month if the worker performs well. These are trustees who will be transported back to Huttonsville each day after work. This will help alleviate a shortage of workers at Beckworth. A similar program is already in place at Interstate Hardwoods in Bartow.

Helmick additionally discussed the efforts of the commission to have the old jail building behind the courthouse removed from the National Registry of Historic Places so that it can be torn down to make room for his proposed project to build a new Courthouse Annex on the site of that jail. Helmick said he wants the Pocahontas County Historic Landmarks Commission to vote to allow the removal of the jail from that registry of historic places.

Several items on the agenda were pulled out of it or tabled to the next meeting.

  • A discussion of the purchase of Frontier Service and Maintenance plan was removed since Frontier just sent the commission an email saying they will no longer be selling those systems or plans.
  • Consideration of a lease renewal of office space at the Former shoe Factory building by the West Virginia Division of Forestry was put off until a future meeting because the commissioners want to factor in the increased cost of utilities into the lease charge and need more information about that.
  • The selection of the winning bid from the architectural firms who were interviewed at the special commission meeting held earlier that day and of the engineering firms who were also interviewed at the special meeting was moved to another special meeting to be held this Monday at 5:30 pm.

They did discuss or take action on the following items:

  • They received an update from Laura Finch, Fiduciary Commissioner, about the status of referred estates. She said there are several cases where she will be issuing an Order to show Cause because of inaction by the estate representatives and none of the cases she has can be closed administratively.
  • They issued a resolution for the Greenbrier Valley Economic Development Corporation’s annual assessment of the West Virginia Community Development Local Economic Development Grant and the invoice.

 

Story By

Tim Walker

Tim is the WVMR News Reporter. Tim is a native of Maryland who started coming to Pocahontas County in the 1970’s as a caver. He bought land on Droop Mountain off Jacox Road in 1976 and built a small house there in the early 80’s. While still working in Maryland, Tim spent much time at his place which is located on the Friars Hole Cave Preserve. Retiring in 2011 as a Lieutenant with the Anne Arundel County Police Department in Maryland, Tim finally took the plunge and moved from Maryland to his real home on Droop Mountain. He began working as the Pocahontas County Reporter for Allegheny Mountain Radio in January of 2015.

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