PARSONS – Ron Hollis presented an update of the Canaan Valley National Wildlife Refuge during Wednesday’s Tucker County Commission meeting.

Hollis introduced his new staff members including Assistant Manager Matthew Boarman and Park Ranger Ted Hodson. Boarman said he was from Massachusetts and Hodson said he came from Utah.

Hodson shared information he has gathered regarding traffic coming into the CVNWR. “We have daily, weekly and monthly totals,” Hodson said. “We are looking forward to providing data on how much traffic is in the area. We are gathering foot traffic on some of the trails. We will do some trending and projecting work once we have a year’s worth of data.”

Hollis said the last time he presented before the Commission was to report they had decided not to take the Canaan Valley Institute facility as their headquarters.

“There is not much for me to add. Region 5 Fish and Wildlife Service has the Canaan Valley Visitor Center as their number one construction project which helps,” Hollis said. “It is also one of the stimulus projects for Region 5 to be considered when the President speaks about infrastructure. That is all I know about it right now.”

Tucker County resident Jim Nelson spoke before Tucker County Commissioner about ideas he has for the county.

“The first thing we need in Tucker County is a luxury tax,” Nelson said. “We need that on anything we can put it on especially bicyclers, golfers and anything we can get it on. We have all this rails to trails up in Canaan Valley, but how much money do you benefit off of it?”
Nelson said the answer is zero.

“Show me where you benefit off of it,” Nelson said. “Tourists come in here a buy a little bit of gas and a bit of food. That is public land. If you look down to the Hatfields and McCoys, they have 4-wheeler trails. Why can’t Fish and Wildlife open up a little bit and help Tucker County a little bit?”

Nelson said during the summers there are oodles of 4-wheelers. “There are thousands of them. I have counted 300 to 400 that come in from other counties. Why not put a fee on those 4-wheelers like they do out in Colorado?” Nelson said. “I feel Tucker County is down with revenue and I think we need a luxury tax.”

Commission President Lowell Moore said the problem is luxury taxes for the most part must be approved by the legislature. “We can ask for it,” he said.

“I have never seen you approach anybody to get this luxury tax,” Nelson said.

“It’s actually a recreation tax and we did approach our legislators about that,” Commissioner Darlington said. “We pushed for legislators to pass that. Currently, only municipalities can institute a recreation tax and counties cannot. We got no help or traction in Charleston.”
“Do we need to start a rally to get their attention?” Nelson said.

“Our legislators are for it, but it’s hard to get the other legislators in the state behind it,” Darlington said. “Two or three counties are not going to carry legislation through the process.”

“They don’t need to be in office then if they don’t got no pull down there,” Nelson said.
“When we have asked for a tax on anything, we were told the two counties struggling the most with tourism are Pocahontas and Tucker,” Moore said. “The other 53 counties don’t care about Pocahontas and Tucker counties.”

“The worst thing about it is tourism is killing us in Tucker County,” Nelson said. “Everybody thinks tourism brings in a pile of money. They bring a little bit into the State Park in Canaan Valley and hotel and motel taxes but what else does it bring in to us here?”

Commissioner Diane Hinkle said they cannot get any traction to get any additional taxes.
“We have a new administration and the state is broke, so they might take a second look at it,” Hinkle said. “We have to continue to advocate for it. I don’t think a tax or license on 4-wheelers should just be borne by tourists, I think it should be everybody who pays into that.”
Hinkle said it cannot be ignored that the only extra money in the county comes from hotel/motel taxes. “Without that I don’t know where we would be. It is funding our EMS and fire departments. I feel like tourism is critical to this county. I feel we should protect those areas that do not want tourism and I feel we should enhance areas where it is going to benefit the county economically. I think the trails are a critical part of the infrastructure in this county.”

Hinkle said she feels legislators benefit from hearing from residents rather than always hearing from the Commissioners.

Commissioners heard from Tucker County Ambulance Authority President Larry Armbruster. Armbruster presented a preliminary budget saying at first glance it appears the Tucker County EMS is a $1.5 million operation.

“That is a pretty good sized operation, but we are not really that large,” Armbruster said. “Our revenue stream looks like we are taking in $1.5 million a year, but we are not. In our budget, we have $1.1 million in billable ambulance fees, but state law requires us to make Medicare and insurance adjustments of approximately $410,000. So that $1.1 million turns out to be about $695,000 which is considerably less.”

Armbruster said approximately 64 percent of their proposed budget is in personnel costs.
“In our budget for this year, we have added a second $1 per hour pay raise,” Armbruster said. “We have a five-year projection to try and get our employees up to a reasonable salary because they were so underpaid.”

Armbruster said one of the elephants in the room was the voluntary fee the Commission enacted last year.

“Unfortunately, we only received about $15,000 in that,” Armbruster said. “The board has not officially voted to ask Commission to make that a mandatory fee; however, it was the conscience of the board that we will be asking the Commission to make this a mandatory fee for upcoming years.”

Moore said Commissioners are meeting with elected officials regarding the taxation on windmills.

Darlington read a letter from the power company about a planned power outage.
“Mon Power has planned a service interruption of the Parsons Substation to perform maintenance on Saturday, March 11. Customers will experience a service interruption beginning at 8 a.m. and lasting until approximately 4 p.m. This will affect approximately 3,015 customers in the Eastern section of Tucker County. The substation serves the town of Parsons, north of Parsons on Route 72 North through St. George to the Preston County line, and serves Route 38 and the towns of Leadmine, Shaver, Hannahs Town, Location Road, Horseshoe Run, Location Road, Minear, Bull Run Road and Jonathon Run Road. East of Parsons includes Route 219 to the intersection of Sugarlands to Route 72 and through Hambleton and Hendricks and toward the Randolph County line including Moore and Porterwood.”

Tucker County Commissioners met in a 43 minute executive session regarding a personnel issue. They reported no decisions were made regarding the matter following the session.
The next Tucker County Commission meeting is scheduled for 9 a.m. Wednesday, March 8 in the Tucker County Courthouse Courtroom.