(Meeting Updates - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

PARKERSBURG — The county levy rate will remain unchanged for the upcoming fiscal year, but county officials are worried about increasing jail bills.

The Wood County Commission held a special meeting Tuesday to set the county levy rate for the 2025-26 fiscal year.

“It is the same as last year and the year before that and the year before that and the year before that,” said commission President Blair Couch. “It is exciting to be able to continue to work inside our budget with the same dollars we have had over the last five years.”

The levies were laid on each $100 valuation of each class of property at 13.81 mills for Class I property, 27.62 for Class II, and 55.24 for Class III and IV.

The levy is expected to raise $17,002,147 of the county’s over $29.4 million budget that was approved March 27. A mill is one one-thousandth of a dollar or $1 per $1,000 of assessed value.

The excess levy for the libraries approved by the voters of Wood County on Nov. 8, 2022, has rates of 0.54 mills for Class I property, 1.08 for Class II and 2.16 for Class III and IV.

The excess levy is expected to raise $681,340.

Commissioner Jimmy Colombo said Wood County remains the third lowest-taxed county in West Virginia.

Couch said the county was able to accomplish a lot over the last year with getting the Resiliency Center completed with one-time dollars and improving the Wood County 911 Center for public safety.

The hope now is “that our jail bill stays in line,” he said.

Officials said the bill for housing prisoners from Wood County in regional jails is expected to go up from $150,000 to over $200,000 per month, based on a 2023 bill passed in the West Virginia Legislature.

Regional jail costs have been a challenge for some counties. Wood County has been auditing their jail bill for a number of years now which has resulted in credits and other savings.

According to a letter from the West Virginia Department of Homeland Security Division of Administrative Services, the base per diem rate for each prisoner will be $57.46 for the month of April.

Each county has a number of pro rata shared inmate days, based on a ratio between the total population of the State of West Virginia, the number of prisoners and a county’s population in the 2020 U.S. Census.

Counties receive a 20% discount for the first 80% of their pro rata days, for a charge of $45.97 per inmate per day. Once they cross the 80% threshold, they’re charged the full amount of $57.46. When the days exceed their prorated share, the charge increases by 20%, to $68.95.

According to the letter from Homeland Security, Wood County reached 80% of its pro rata days on March 31, moving to the base rate after that.

Wood County has averaged 182 prisoners a month over the last nine months of the current fiscal year and has been billed for an average of 3,912 days a month, according to county Administrator Marty Seufer.

The rates will increase with the start of the new fiscal year on July 1. The discounted rate will be $53.82, the base rate will be $67.27 and the rate for going over will be $80.72.

Couch said the bill, in theory, is supposed to help smaller counties who traditionally have a lower number of prisoners. But he thinks it will now unfairly penalize Wood County for arresting more people as the county’s rate is higher with more people incarcerated.

“If we arrested nobody, we would have a zero-dollar jail bill,” he said.

Couch thinks the bill would reward some counties for not arresting more people.

“I would like to think that our law enforcement does not even consider (the jail bill) when they make an arrest,” he said. “Our magistrates and circuit judges do not consider our jail bill when they convict people, and our prosecutor is the same way. The bad guys need to go to jail.

“They are dangerous and they need to be there. We are on track to be paying the highest dollar amount for all the counties to be housing prisoners at the (North Central) Regional Jail.”

Couch said there needs to be more communication between commissioners and state lawmakers so these things don’t happen.

Regardless, the county will move forward with the law as passed.

“We will deal with what we have and go from there,” Couch said.