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Roll up your sleeves, help save a life

If the weather has been a hindrance to your daily (or weekly) routine, think about what it has meant to organizations dependent upon the help of others to fulfill their missions. For the American Red Cross, January can be a difficult month. Weather is factor, yes, but so is the active cold and flu season, which may make it harder for some to keep blood donation appointments or be eligible to donate. “The start of the new year is one of the most challenging times to collect blood products as the threat of severe winter weather builds and can often lead to widespread blood drive ...

Chamber merger will be good for all

The merger of the Follansbee and Wellsburg chambers of commerce into a single organization representing businesses for all of Brooke County will only help to strengthen the ties of our local communities. The two chambers have done well over the years working to promote and work on behalf of their members, which currently include close to 150 businesses from our area, and coming together as one chamber should provide even more benefit for the memberships. That was already shown last year with the expansion of the Follansbee Chamber’s educational grant program, which now is able to ...

Needle programs need second look

Whether it be willful ignorance or a genuine misunderstanding of the broad range of strategies necessary to tackle a dual public health crisis in Appalachia, elected officials and policymakers are handicapping efforts against one of the major dangers spawned by our region’s substance abuse epidemic. A KFF Health News report followed up on federal health officials’ effort a few years back to assess an outbreak of HIV in central Appalachia. The outbreak has been fueled by the shared use of needles among those who inject opioids or methamphetamine. But syringe exchange programs ...

Appreciating the work of our water employees

The boil orders have all been lifted, but challenges remain for Weirton’s water system. Anyone who has paid attention to the affects of cold weather knows this is a time for a higher-than-desired number of water line breaks in our area. Sudden shifts in temperature aren’t necessarily good for metal, especially pipes buried underground where additional pressure from harder, frozen dirt can add to the concerns. Since the Thanksgiving holiday, though, Weirton has suffered from more than 50 water line breaks, leading to the Weirton Area Water Board, on Dec. 18, to issue a mandatory ...

A transition of public leadership

With the beginning of a new year also came a transition for some of those representing our residents in local government. At the county level, Hancock County said goodbye to Jeff Davis as he took part in his final county commission meeting after 24 years. Also a local business owner, Davis’ political career spans almost three decades, first being elected as a member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, where he spent four years representing the county, before being voted into a position closer to home. In Weirton, Harold “Bubba” Miller departed the mayor’s office after ...

Questions remain over college’s grant

At a time when both public and private colleges and universities in West Virginia are struggling financially, does it make any sense to gift $5 million in taxpayer dollars to a private vocational college based in Steubenville, Ohio — essentially to move into West Virginia and offer the same services as the state’s community and technical colleges? Of course not. But that’s where we stand today, as the West Virginia Water Development Authority in October improperly approved a $5 million grant for the College of St. Joseph the Worker to expand into West Virginia. The college’s ...