I returned home Saturday with a heavy heart, thinking about a friend of the region, a friend of Marlinton, who had become a close personal friend over the last 11.5 years, as I have served as Mayor.
Many of you knew, or at least knew of John Tuggle. John was Executive Director of the Region 4 Planning and Development Council, located at Summersville. John had recently attended an Economic Summit at Snowshoe Resort. He left the conference and arrived home Friday evening September18, in time to attend the Homecoming game at Oak Hill High School to see his granddaughter in the homecoming court.
John was all about faith, family and his work.
John was at the ballgame when he passed away.
He was a tireless advocate for the communities he served and was widely respected for his knowledge, leadership and com- mitment to moving West Virginia forward. He was set to retire at the end of the year.
On a much lighter note, it was good to get home early enough to see good weather and a great turnout for the Autumn Harvest Festival/Rook-Kill Cookoff.
Back to business – My primary Zoom meeting this past Monday morning was to discuss, with other Team members about how best to apply remaining ARPA funds that I have held onto for this project, which is really three projects, Water/Sewer/and Stormwater.
The meeting focused on allocating unallocated ARPA funds toward the town’s water project. This strategy aims to reduce loan components and lower customer rates. To meet the year-end expenditure deadline, we plan to approve a resolution at the October town council meeting and process payments to a wa-ter project account by the November MTC Meeting.
In addition, we addressed ongoing easement challenges and emphasized the need for thorough title research to ensure accurate property ownership documentation. These will all be agenda items at the October MTC meeting on October 5.
Looking forward to the end of the project, I inquired if any leftover funds could be used for equipment, such as automatic hydrant flushers or valve wrenches. Both Thrasher representatives believed this to be a reasonable request, during the contingency phase.
Other issues were reported by the engineer regarding one easement required for the water project, specifically mentioning a problem exacerbated by existing 60-inch culverts under SR39 and road embankments. The project may have to use boring methods to avoid Department of Highways (DOH) restrictions.
Until next time,
Sam
