DUNBAR, W.Va. — The idea of a user fee in the City of Dunbar has been tabled and Mayor Scott Elliott says it’s more than likely not coming back.
Speaking to 580-WCHS on Wednesday, the day after the city council decided to not take up the fee proposal, Elliott said it’s not the best decision right now.
“You’ve got a lot of jobs here in town that are part-time or minimum wage jobs. Whenever you start taking $10 a month off of people’s paychecks, they get highly upset,” Elliott said.
The mayor said the fee had to be around $10 per month to get it where the city expected it to be to help pay for roads and other infrastructure. That would equal to $5 per paycheck for the around 1,000 workers in city limits.
Elliott said the city will look towards the nearly $3 million coming from the American Rescue Plan to help pay for upcoming projects.
“That will be used for infrastructure, for sewer, water, and broadband access. That is once we get everything in writing and a check in hand, we can start working on that,” he said.
Huntington has a user fee of $5 per week and Charleston’s is $3 per week. Neighboring South Charleston does not have a fee.
Elliott said the biggest employers in the city is the city itself followed by Kanawha County Schools. He said that the school system already pays a user fee because of the central office in Charleston. Elliott said the third-largest employer is Kroger, which has a lot of student workers. It ultimately didn’t make sense, according to council members.
“We started thinking of the little stores and the mom and pop businesses that we have. Whenever you take three or four employees and make them move over to South Charleston and not have a user fee, we decided not to pursue that,” Elliott said.