CHARLESTON, W.Va. — President of the Kanawha County Commission Lance Wheeler is looking back on 2024 and what they’ve managed to accomplish so far, as well as looking ahead to opportunities to come in 2025.
Wheeler said on 580 Live with Dave Allen the day after Christmas on Thursday that being his first year as commission president, he was proud of how far they have come given the fiscal challenges they have faced along the way with inflation, but he said they were able to make it work.
Lance Wheeler
“We were able to pass a flat budget, but not only were we able to pass a flat budget, we were able to do a multitude of projects, whether it’s water, sewer, whether it’s recreational activity, whether it’s our first responders,” said Wheeler.
He said they had to be extra meticulous in meeting project goals while also saving taxpayers money.
Wheeler said they did a lot to upgrade the county’s infrastructure that was drastically needed.
A major he said was a total of six water projects that will be bringing clean drinking water to over 1,000 homes once bids go through and construction gets underway.
Wheeler said they also just recently appropriated funding for a major sewer project out in Tornado.
He said the first phase of the project will go toward 125 homes and the second phase will go to an additional 400 homes.
Wheeler said these are projects with a significant need but also a significant cost, so for the commission to be able to work together to get this done is a very big accomplishment.
“Being able to dive deep into a budget, find those cost savings that is again, taxpayer money, and then to be able to use that money into services that we feel like are a need here in the Kanawha Valley, I think that it’s something important and something I want to be proud of that we were able to do here in 2024,” he said.
Wheeler said when he started on the county commission in 2020, he saw a lot of improvements that needed to be made, a major one of which was to the demolition of dilapidated structures program.
However, he said after putting a million dollars in federal funding into the program, it has been successful ever since, even kind of serving as a pilot program for the state.
Wheeler said just this year alone, they have been able to demolish over 150 dilapidated structures. He said this has really lowered the number of fires in vacant homes and buildings.
“One of the things I always used to see was vacant fire structures, how many of these vacant buildings were catching on fire and we were using resources through our fire department and Metro 911and all of our first responders just to take out a fire of a dilapidated structure,” he said. “Well, we looked back at the numbers and we’ve seen that this year compared to when we first started this program, vacant fires are down 30-percent.”
Recreation-wise, Wheeler said the expansion of the Hatfield and McCoy Trail in Tornado was a significant milestone this year.
Back in August, the commission welcomed in a new 30-mile stretch of the trail designed specifically for dirt bikes and e-bikes. It was the first of the Hatfield and McCoy Trail system to come to Kanawha County and known to be the largest of its kind east of the Mississippi.
Wheeler said new developments on this project just continue to come through.
“We’re going to be marketing that, we haven’t even marketed it yet and we’re getting hundreds and hundreds of people coming in from Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, South Carolina, North Carolina, the list goes on,” he said.
He said attracting riders from multiple states has been a huge boost to economic development.
Wheeler said amenities like the trail system not only draw in more visitors, but also people who possibly even want to stay and live here.
“Having the Salango Lights, having the Christmas at Coonskin, having the Hatfield and McCoy Trail, when you start looking at that and say you know what, that’s a place I do want to live, that’s a place I want to grow with my children, those are the amenities that I think are the unseen facet of economic development,” he said.
Wheeler said they are now going to continue being efficient and continue to look at ways they can save taxpayer dollars while also bringing in necessary services and attractive amenities to the community.
He said it’s about continuing what they’ve already started.
“What we started in the year 2024 isn’t over, it’s not done,” said Wheeler. “We have a lot more work to do, there’s a lot more infrastructure including sewers I mentioned previously, but we also need to look at economic development, we’ve done a lot for the recreational, but now it’s time to work with the state.”
Wheeler said he’s excited to work with the soon-to-be new governor Patrick Morrisey in 2025.