Tim Walker
AMR Reporter
Pocahontas County Convention and Visitors Bureau Executive Director Chelsea Faulknier, delivered that organization’s annual report to the Pocahontas County Commission at its October 1 meeting.
She said the bureau received two awards from State Tourism – an Advertising Award; and a Digital Marketing award for their outstanding website and social media efforts to promote tourism in Pocahontas County. Faulknier also said that spring, summer and fall tourism visits to the county continue to increase. Mountain biking, motorcycling, hiking, fishing and other outdoor activities are the draw during those seasons.
She said the bureau continues to work with Nature’s Mountain Classroom which is designed to not only help students with their STEM education, but to introduce them to outdoor activities and hopefully encourage them to remain in the county after graduation.
Faulknier also said the trail development and maintenance program has been very successful this year.
Sheriff Jeff Barlow received authorization from the commission to hire Bethany Lovelace as full-time Law Enforcement Administrative Assistant with a start date of October 15. The commission also authorized the Sheriff to award Chief Deputies Troy McCoy and Dave Walton their service weapons upon retirement. Barlow said this is authorized by West Virginia law. Barlow said that after these retirements, there will only be three deputies in the Sheriff’s Department, but they are interviewing new applicants.
Eula Harper, the Membership Manager for the AirMedCare Network (AMCN,) gave a presentation about their membership program. She said AMCN is the largest network of medical air transport companies in the country. She explained that if someone is injured and requires an air transport to a hospital, the cost of that transport can be huge, in some cases $50,000 or more and sometimes insurance won’t pay for all or even most of it. She said that AMCN has partnered with a number of medical air ambulance companies and for a small fee people can become a member of AMCN which will pick up the cost of emergency medical air transports that exceeds what their insurance pays, or the entire cost if the patient does not have medical insurance. She said that the coverage includes everyone living in the member’s household. Harper told the commission that they would offer membership to all county employees and their household members for a cost of $75 per year, which can be directly withheld from their paychecks.
She said the cost for non-county employees would be $99 a year for their households. She said AMCN is not an insurance company but shares the cost of air transports among all its members. She also said the coverage only includes medevac flights conducted by AMCN affiliated medical air flight companies.
Commissioner John Rebinski pointed out that, although one of the AMCN affiliated medevac flight service companies does sometimes respond to emergency medical air evacuations in Pocahontas County, most are done by unaffiliated providers. He mentioned that for a higher cost there are insurance companies that will cover all emergency medical transport flights, no matter which air ambulance service responds.
In other matters, the commission:
• approved draw request #11 in the amount of $8.382 from the Pocahontas County ARC Broadband project grant to pay invoices and they authorized a letter requesting a time extension on that grant.
• approved Resolution #6 for the Pocahontas County PSD Thornwood Water Project.
• approved the 2023 – 2024 Pocahontas County financial statement.
• appointed Susan Davis to a 4-year term on the county Farmland Protection Board
• rescheduled their November 4 commission meeting to 4 p.m. Tuesday, November 12, due to the General Election. The meeting will be held following the canvass of election results which begins at 8:30 a.m. November 12.
