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Wood County Commission discusses hiring Resiliency Center director

By Brett Dunlap 5 min read

PARKERSBURG -- The Wood County Commission will be looking to hire a director to oversee operations at the new Wood County Resiliency Center.

The Wood County Commission unanimously agreed on Monday to start accepting applications to find someone to run the new building where construction is finishing up in downtown Parkersburg.

The building, which cost over $13 million, was funded through American Recovery Act funds. It addresses issues the county had during the pandemic and will be able to handle other concerns. It was designed by ZMM Architects & Engineers of Charleston and is being built by United Construction Company (UCCI) of Parkersburg.

"We want to hire a director to supervise the operations of that building," Commission President Blair Couch said. "It is a nice building."

During emergencies, the building can provide temporary shelter and food distribution. In the event of another pandemic event, they would be able to hold social distancing trials at the building as the facility has two holding cells in place, a sally port to bring in defendants as well as space that can be used for jury deliberations. There are drive-through lanes in the new maintenance department that could be used for vaccinations/flu shots, distributing PPE, emergency food distribution and more.

"It is not going to be used every day for those things," Couch said.

There are plans to use it as an "event space."

The Greater Parkersburg Convention and Visitors Bureau will be able to promote the space for events such as weddings and other events as the building's kitchen can be utilized for food preparation and the sally port entrance can be used for event set up.

The large meeting room can accommodate around 400 people. There are smaller meeting rooms where breakout sessions can be held during larger meetings.

Officials view the building as an opportunity to hold conventions, being able to host interim legislative sessions, training events, conferences, statewide association meetings and more as there were few other spaces locally that could accommodate such events.

County officials had hoped the center would be ready in time to host some of the legislative interim meetings this week but was not able to be done as the building has not been handed completely over to the county by the builder.

Officials believe the county will have the building in its possession soon.

"We have to have someone in that building to manage it," Couch said.

They want to hold a grand opening event to be able to show the building off to the community.

Commissioner Jimmy Colombo also praised the work on the recently completed new Wood County 911 building near the intersection of U.S. 50 and Interstate 77 in the former Suddenlink call center building.

The new 911 center went live recently with emergency calls coming into the new center.

County officials are looking at a new space for the Mid-Ohio Valley Health Department, having decided recently to move out of the building they were in on Sixth Street.

"The building is broken," Couch said of a waterline break and other maintenance issues that are facilitating a move. On Memorial Day Weekend, a waterline broke that impacted all of the floors in the building.

The county is planning to rent space at St. Joseph's Landing to move the health department to.

The county is looking for bids to tear down the old health department building as well as handle the connector at the back of the building to the Campbell Plaza building. The connector sits on land owned by the Roman Catholic Diocese of Wheeling and officials are looking to see what might have to be addressed there.

Mason County Clerk Diana Cromley and Jonathan Adler, executive director of the West Virginia Association of Counties, appeared before the commission as they were in town for the Legislative interim meetings.

They were in town to talk about pay raises for elected county officials. They are supporting a bill to take that control from the Legislature and put it back with the counties.

The state has approved three raises for elected officials over the last 30 years, Adler said. Although elected officials and counties can approve raises for their employees, the elected officials' pay is under the control of the Legislature.

"We want to be sure we can bring in good quality people to run the county government," he said.

Cromley said they want to put the ability in place for county governments to give the elected officials a raise if needed.

What they are proposing would be a cost of living increase every two years as long as county finances can allow it.

The two are also looking at trying to get legislative action taken with the Quit Claim Deed process. The process is supposed to help families to pass down property, but it is being used by businesses and others to avoid paying county transfer taxes. They want lawmakers to introduce a bill and take action addressing this.

"We have seen others using it and not paying their fair share of the taxes," Cromley said, adding a similar bill has been introduced in the past and they want another introduced that lawmakers can take action on.

"Over the last five years county clerks have seen an influx of misuse of the quit claim deed where some are not paying the transfer tax to the county," she said. "We want the county to get its share of the tax."

Wood County Clark Joe Gonzales said they have had some of these situations come through his office.

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