aolson@theintelligencer.net
MOUNDSVILLE –Â Staring down the barrel of increased debt service, rising operation costs, and with the prospect of government intervention if they took no action, Moundsville’s city council voted to raise the sanitary rates to the city.
Council voted unanimously to pass the increase at the third and final reading, introducing a 35.4 percent hike. Based on an average residential use of 4,000 gallons of water per month, this is projected to raise the monthly rate from $19.08 to $25.83. City Manager Rick Healy stated that this increase brings Moundsville up from the second-lowest rate in the state to the ninth-lowest among municipalities. The last increase was enacted in 2010.
aolson@theintelligencer.net
MOUNDSVILLE –Â Two familiar faces will be returning to the city council table in 2021, and fond wishes were shared between council members new and old at their recent final meeting of 2020.
At the November election, Randy Chamberlain and Denny Wallace, both council members in decades past, were called upon to return by voters, defeating incumbents Phil Remke and Brianna Hickman. Chamberlain spoke briefly during public comment at the council’s last meeting, thanking both Remke and Hickman for their service to the city and its citizens.
“They have done an outstanding job, they’ve been very dedicated, committed to serving the people on their time of council, and I hope I can do as much for the people as those two have done,” Chamberlain said. Chamberlain, a former three-term councilman in the 1970s and 1980s, said he now hopes to return “older and wiser.”