Published: May 06, 2008 11:12 pm         

Beckley annexes Galleria businesses

Beckley got a little larger Tuesday and no one complained about it.

Without a single murmur of opposition at a public hearing, the Raleigh County Commission approved the city’s petition for a minor boundary adjustment that allows it to annex a number of businesses in the Galleria off busy Eisenhower Drive.

“The businesses there had asked to have the minor boundary adjustment to include them in the city, so we’re happy to accommodate them,” commission president Pat Reed said.

County leaders across the state wanted to amend West Virginia’s annexation law to give them more say-so in annexation matters handled through the petition method, but the Legislature this past winter refused to take up the issue.

Other than minor boundary adjustments and the petition method, the third means a city can add to its corporate limits is through an election.

“Minor boundary adjustments are the most favorable,” Reed said.

Any effort to amend the state law would have to be pursued through the West Virginia Association of Counties, Reed said.

Raleigh’s commission locked horns more than two years ago in a bitter struggle with the town of Mabscott over the latter’s bid to take in a portion of Robert C. Byrd Drive in MacArthur. Two courts eventually upheld the town’s petition on the basis of state law, but afterward, some resident property owners took Mabscott to court with a challenge.

Commissioner John Aliff said the newest acquisition by Beckley is the “kind of annexation we like to have here.”

“Everybody has agreed to want to be annexed,” he said. “That’s what we like to deal with.”

Since all property taxes are paid to the county, Reed said no taxes would be lost, but the businesses will have to pay business-and-occupation taxes to the city.

In another matter, David Barnett asked the county to take some action, such as enactment of an ordinance, to deal with signs of political candidates that have mushroomed across the county.

However, Reed pointed out, such action lies within the Division of Highways, since any offending signs would be on state right-of-way. Highway workers already have uprooted a number of political signs since they were in violation.

“It’s just getting outrageous,” Barnett told the commission. “If you offered someone $1,000 to name five names on those signs, they couldn’t do it. It’s just an eyesore.”

On other matters, the commission:

- Approved a request for $40,800 — the same amount as last year — in a grant application by the Women’s Resource Center.

- Accepted a $13,00 drawdown for the Southern West Virginia Convention and Visitors Bureau.

- Approved a $4,425.28 drawdown for the Pine Haven Homeless Shelter.

- Approved a $2,677 drawdown for the Helen wastewater project.

- Acknowledged that the final testing of machines for touch-screen voting for next week’s primary balloting were being performed as the commission met.

— E-mail: mannix@register-herald.com