(Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection - Letter to the Editor)

It seems to me the Parkersburg City Council and our Mayor continue to dig their own graves. As the Multi-Cultural Festival continues to grow and attract more vendors, visitors and attention, the City Park again lost the opportunity to host it for the second consecutive year. This is absolutely unacceptable. The City should be doing whatever it can to attract events like this and the money they create. To allow our beautiful City Park to be destroyed by construction for so long and fail to install Port-a-potties or temporary restrooms for us is a dereliction of duty. Mayor Joyce, and by extension the City Council, should be doing everything they can to attract money, people and businesses to Parkersburg, an objective they’ve failed to do in several years.

Secondly, City leaders continue to wrangle with citizens over the festering sanitation issue. Rather than letting it play out and be voted on in November’s general election, Council continues to flame the fire by getting into unnecessary legal battles with petitioners who, Council President Andrew Borkowski has admitted, have every right to do so. Why our City Attorney Blaine Myers felt the need to voice his opinion about the interpretation of the City Charter is beyond me. As far as I know, Myers is not an elected official and only a judge — in this case, Judge Beane — has the power and authority to interpret the law.

After losing the Pre-Council Meeting Prayer case a few years ago in court, Mayor Joyce has vowed to waste additional tax dollars to fight it as the Council spends our money fighting the Petitioners, who are now going after the Mayor and six of the nine Council members to get them recalled (fired by the citizens) for their gross incompetence. Interestingly, the Council totally ignored the Charter language stating that the City shall provide essential services — including sanitation — to our residents. Now, the City has foolishly entered into a temporary, emergency contract with Waste Management — the same company they wish to contract with — who is helping them out in this disastrous mess the Mayor created over the past few years by allowing valuable city employees to leave without doing anything to retain them. The Mayor brags that he hasn’t fired any of them without admitting that he’s done absolutely nothing to try to keep them. Except for a feeble attempt to implement a too little, too late pay raise last summer, Council was complicit in the Mayor’s blatant sabotage of the Sanitation Department.

This Council has accomplished next to nothing in the past eighteen months, as evidenced by skeletal agendas at most meetings, including just one single item on the June 9 agenda. Because it is obvious they are not really concerned with doing their jobs, I sent them a list of twenty items they could address, including sidewalk and pothole repair, addressing storm water remediation and funding issues, reviewing and updating the Strategic Plan 2030, hiring an agency to conduct a salary survey to update pay rates in the aftermath of COVID-19, studying the possibility of creating a tiny home village for our homeless population, replacing street signs (as Council member Wendy Tuck is addressing), reviewing Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) compliance issues such as the aforementioned City Park restroom problem, attracting businesses to the vacant lot on 29th Street that is amusingly known as a business park, and conducting both employee and citizen climate (satisfaction) surveys.

In sum, the Mayor and Council are failing the citizens of Parkersburg. A recall petition is underway, though some citizens are afraid to sign because they fear reprisals from our Mayor or their Council member (which implies they are being intimidated, which is both unethical and illegal), and our garbage disaster lingers. As I’ve written in the past, I think it’s time to revisit and update our Charter and consider changing to a Council-Manager form of government, with a professional City Manager in charge.

Russ Bowers

Parkersburg