Consolidate Ohio County, Wheeling
Editor, News-Register:
This will probably be my last letter to the fine editors of the Wheeling newspapers and the good people of the City of Wheeling because as I read the online editions of the Intelligencer and the News-Register, it becomes increasingly obvious to me that the new Wheeling City Council is about committees and the appearance of doing something, which in the end will end up being more of the same, which is spending money and accomplishing nothing.
A glaring example of a non-consequential issue is the trans-gender and LBGTQ discrimination issue which has absolutely no business taking up the time of city officials and others, when at the least this is a state issue and at the most is a federal issue. Other examples are the retention committee and the business committee which in a word can be answered with “gainful employment.”
The previous McKenzie administration had idle dreams of Wheeling becoming a second Singapore, or an entertainment capital, and the money they wasted on these ridiculous ideas would be criminal if it had occurred in the private sector. It is also worth mentioning the money wasted, and in fact never properly accounted for, that went into the special interest project known unofficially as the Central Catholic High School, East Wheeling football practice field.
Someone, somewhere along the line has to get it through their thick sugar plum heads that Wheeling has never been an industrial center, but rather was a retail and small (at best) manufacturing hub, supplying goods and services for the blue collar workers that plied the coal mines and the outlying Wheeling Steel mills.
Wheeling’s downtown no longer exists, and offers no attractions beyond farm team hockey games and events at the river front designed to make residents believe downtown Wheeling still exist. To find downtown Wheeling one has to travel east to The Highlands, that oasis of retail shopping developed by the obviously unconscious Ohio County commissioners, that some would say progressed because certain commissioners had a vendetta against certain city officials. Of course that is only rumor, but regardless, they destroyed downtown Wheeling.
City officials have over the years turned the former downtown into a tax exempt mecca and with their tax increment financing schemes, yes schemes, they have burdened city taxpayer’s with debt that will be extended to eternity.
I again suggest that Wheeling city officials, now and for the long term, dedicate themselves to rebuilding the infrastructure of the entire city, request and reward civic involvement for beautification projects, get merchants to power wash their storefronts, sidewalks, and street gutters, concentrate on Elm Grove as an adjunct to the Highlands offerings antique boutiques, and specialty shops. I urge council to pass an ordinance that when a business closes it must remove all signage and leave a suitable storefront. I urge plantings and the removal of old overgrown plantings. Paint everything that needs painting, rebuild fallen retaining walls, and remove fallen trees from tree copse areas. So much can be done and so many blind eyes.
If city and county officials could put aside their egos and study the consolidation plan for Wheeling and Ohio County, as put forth by Mr. David Rusk, the author of the book, “Creating a Greater Wheeling,” they would therein find the solution to the horribly depressed conditions that haunt the entire county. This idea was first put forth in 2007, and is a valid solution, however, it must be understood by everyone in the county so that those that are dubious can be satisfied and all the wrinkles ironed out before implementation. One meeting will not bring understanding but a panel of city and county officials, and business interest, other than the run of the mill old has-been names, holding frequent public hearings over a period of one or two years maximum would bring this excellent plan to implementation.
The new insurance center being built in the former downtown Wheeling is not a cure, it will make the 1100 block more attractive, but it will add little, and I wonder what the city gave up to get it.
I say it is time to quit talking, quit forming committees, and the council and county supervisors get on with the work they were elected to perform.
William H. Hefner
Palm City, Fla.
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