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Be careful around school buses

Editorials

School is already in session for many students in Ohio and West Virginia. With the beginning of the school year comes the return of school buses and students riding them. Get back in the mindset of giving yourself plenty of time to get to your destination during pick-up and drop-off hours. School buses may be a little slower and make frequent stops, but the drivers are not out to get you, personally. Their job is to make sure kids get to and from school safely. And they can do that because (most) drivers follow a few rules. Never pass a bus while the stop arm is extended and the red ...

West Virginia is moving to offense in the ‘Backyard Brawl’

Local Columns

For too long, West Virginia has sat at the bottom of health, education, and economic rankings. Policymakers have spent decades trying to solve these problems, but frustratingly little progress has occurred. Action, not platitudes, is needed for true growth. If we want to truly move the needle, we must stop treating the symptoms and instead focus on the real disease: for too long, our state simply didn’t do enough to create an attractive enough investment and regulatory climate. That’s why I signed an Executive Order establishing an economic Backyard Brawl on my first day in ...

Improvements at park a good beginning

Editorials

While not nearly as large in scale as had originally been hoped, it is good to see the first phase of improvements at Marland Heights Park approaching its end. Members of the Weirton Board of Parks and Recreation have been looking at upgrades to the park in recent years, with funding being a major stumbling block, both to forward movement and to the size of the work planned. What had originally included plans for a new, all-season shelter was scaled down to a new restroom facility. New lighting has been added, with some of the pathways through the park updated and new water lines ...

Gee continues to serve

Editorials

Ohio State University isn’t letting its former President E. Gordon Gee rest for long, after his departure as president of West Virginia University. They’ve asked him to return to Columbus for a one-year consulting role. According to a report by The Columbus Dispatch, that role will include working with OSU’s new Salmon P. Chase Center to recruit faculty and increase the center’s presence on campus and nationally. Chase was Abraham Lincoln’s secretary of the treasury and later the sixth chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, serving in that role until his death in 1873. ...

Road tripping around West Virginia

Local Columns

One of the great things about being a news reporter is getting to sometimes hit the road and explore parts of the state I’ve never been to, as well as meeting the people who make this state go. Last Wednesday, I hopped in my car and drove from Charleston to Mason County. I’ve been reporting about the impending sale of West Virginia’s state-owned long-term care facilities, so I wanted to take some photos of the one closest to me, which is Lakin Hospital a few miles outside of Point Pleasant along Route 2. I was only a few miles away from Lakin when there it was: a pothole right ...

The water bill will come due, eventually

Editorials

Not long ago, Weirton’s water system – and the people it serves - went through one of the worst winters in its history, with hundreds of line breaks and numerous water outages over a period of several weeks. People weren’t happy, and, eventually, the complaints found their way to the West Virginia Public Service Commission which held a public hearing in Weirton and launched its own studies of the system. Among its findings, the PSC ruled Weirton’s storage tank capacity is not sufficient enough to meet requirements of the city, that approximately 40 percent of the water lines ...