Consolidation Will Drive Wetzel County Economy in Reverse

Editor’s note: The Innformer published the following editorial in its Nov. 1 print edition, which is available in Wetzel County locations today. Charles Winslow, the editor of the paper, agreed to this reprint so the editorial can be shared more easily online.

In their rush to consolidate and close high schools, we have to wonder if the five members of the Wetzel County Board of Education have taken into consideration something that will impact everybody in the county?

And no, it’s not the often mentioned, but meaningless, change in school names, colors and mascots. It’s the impact their actions will have on the long-term real estate valuation, small business viability and the county’s tax base, as a whole.

During their Oct. 8 board meeting, administrator Paul Huston was absolutely right when he reminded everyone that “schools are economic drivers.” And they are. Good schools, properly located, make an area attractive to businesses investment, lead to population growth and an increase in property values; which brings in more property and business generated taxes.

But closing schools that are based in a community, even closing bad schools, are also economic drivers. Losing a school makes a town an undesirable place to live, decimates property values, drives down business activity, hits tax revenues and leads to further population losses.

We have heard a lot about school mascots and colors from the school board and administration, but nothing much about what their plans mean to the value of property. And a home is usually the highest valued, single-investment asset most people have.

Nowhere in the much vaunted survey of county residents was the question asked about what respondents thought would happen to the value of their homes if the schools in their communities were closed. And the question should have been asked.

According to the U.S. Census, there are somewhere around 7,300 housing units in Wetzel County. Eighty percent of them are owner-occupied and a large majority of them don’t have any children in school. Not one of these property owners was asked if they were willing to lose wealth.

During the first phase of the proposed consolidation, Hundred High School will be merged with Valley in Pine Grove and Paden City High School will be merged with New Martinsville’s Magnolia. A few years down the road, if this thing goes through, Pine Grove and Magnolia will also be closed and all of the students will end up at a shiny new school centrally located on 60 acres out in the middle of nowhere and equally inconvenient to everyone.

So what will happen to Paden City and Hundred next year? Two large and prominently located buildings will stand empty for all to see. Buildings that used to have students, staff and parents who will no longer spend money at local gas stations, stores, restaurants and on services.

Schools are economic drivers. All of that sales revenue, and the associated sales tax collected (Paden City has an extra 1 percent sales tax) will evaporate and it is likely that some of the small businesses will be forced to close as their customers will no longer be there to stop in. The towns will have to cut services and/ or raise fees as a result.

The schools also pay water and sewer bills, which means that revenue will be lost as well. This puts Hundred in an especially unenvious position as the Hundred-Littleton Public Service District is already in a bad financial state. All the customers of the districts that serve the schools should get ready for even higher rates to make up for the loss of the school payments.

During the second round, Magnolia and Valley high schools will also be shuttered. Two more large and empty buildings. Again, was the loss of sales at local businesses and the loss of revenue for the water utilities given any consideration?

And the big one: Closing schools will make all four communities far less attractive to prospective home buyers and property values, county wide, will certainly take a hit, which means lower property tax revenues for the county. Some statistics for closing community schools in more urban areas show a decline in property values approaching 10 percent. In rural areas, such as Wetzel County, it’s likely to be much worse.

If you had a family with school-age kids and were offered a job at any of the local industries, like at Blue Racer or across the river at any of the new businesses at Long Ridge or the Hannibal Industrial Park, would you want to move to New Martinsville or Paden City knowing your children would have to take a long bus ride over narrow and twisting roads to go to school? We certainly wouldn’t.

Would you want to buy a house in or near Hundred or Pine Grove knowing their future is naught? How about living in Folsom or Smithfield, for that matter.

The consolidation plan will probably lead to more population loss, lower property values and lower tax revenues. Has any of this been factored into the equation?

We are going to point out that neither Sistersville nor Middlebourne prospered following their 1993 consolidation. Both towns experienced sharp population losses and witnessed their once-vibrant downtown business communities wither. Tyler County’s population continues to decline.

We understand the Board of Education’s rush to push through consolidation and snuff out Paden City and Hundred as quickly as possible. Especially in light of the disingenuous failed attempt to “temporarily close” Paden City High School. One of the school board members explained it very clearly, that the board will likely be voted out over their consolidation plan and the next board may decide on a new superintendent.

During the Oct. 8 board meeting, current Schools Superintendent Cassandra Porter said: “We know we want to keep this going and we only have so long. We don’t want our board to change until we get in place what we need to have in place for our students of Wetzel County.”

And we suspect there will be far fewer of those Wetzel County students, again who will want to move to county, or remain if they have a chance to move, when all of the children will be bussed to a campus out in the middle of nowhere?

We are not opposed to consolidation, per se. There is certainly a problem when a district can’t attract qualified teachers, retain the ones they have and when a principal states at a board meeting mere weeks into the new school year that he had to “talk off the ledge” 12 teachers at his school.

And then there are those embarrassing test scores.

Maybe consolidation will fix all of the problems. Maybe the grand consolidation plan won’t.

Regardless, we think the residents and voters in Wetzel County should be given the complete picture of just what consolidation means. That includes what will happen to the values of their homes, the impact on local businesses and the financial ramifications to the budgets to all four municipalities and the county, as a whole.

Where is that information?

To us, it’s not about the Hornets, Wildcats, Lumberjacks or Blue Eagles, nor the school colors. It’s all about the green, the Benjamins. Where are the community and county financial impact projections?

Postscript
This editorial provides the informed level of analysis that Wetzel County taxpayers deserve from its school system. Officials should have provided this depth of research in its impact statements about consolidation. But those state-mandated statements are designed to push an agenda, not objectively gauge the potential impact, economic and otherwise, of consolidating four high schools into two because the board feels the need to do something.

Mr. Winslow provided a valuable public service to his community by publishing this.