BUT...WHAT'S THE PROBLEM LOCALLY?

Despite community opposition, Parkersburg has chosen to privatize sanitation and eliminate our local recycling program- a facility powered in part by solar panels. The work is being contracted to private operators, stripping us of good-paying city jobs. Worse yet, we're now increasing pollution by hauling recyclables two hours away when they could be processed right here at home.

Despite public outcry, Parkersburg City Council unanimously approved a $384,380 armored vehicle. The funding comes from a $200,000 federal grant earmarked specifically for emergency vehicles, with the remaining $184,000 drawn from asset forfeiture (property and cash seized from citizens) and 'law enforcement support money.' Residents questioned the need for an armored vehicle when Wood County already has access to one through a mutual aid program. The community has criticized the council for rubberstamping the decision without public support, prioritizing paramilitary equipment over the social programs this community desperately needs.

While Parkersburg invests in armored vehicles, the housing crisis at home grows out of control. In Wood County, only about 2,200 subsidized housing units exist (USAFacts), and West Virginia as a whole faces a staggering shortfall of affordable homes for its 54,816 poorest residents (NLIHC Gap Report via WVCEH). Purchasing homes has become largely unattainable, and now so has renting. Average rent in the area is over $900, with many people paying $1,200/month plus utilities (which are also on the rise). Simply put, residents are being priced out of their homes.

Even people experiencing homelessness are being forced out of their camps, such as what happened in Marietta when the city chopped down trees providing comfort and shelter to a small homeless community. The city then continues to vote down overnight shelter options, citing concerns over mental health and background check issues (WTAP). What can you even say when the displaced get displaced? Rather than offering more support and more services, we demonize people who are just trying to survive and push them out of our view. 

West Virginia consistently ranks among the worst states in the nation for disability-friendliness, usually hovering around 46th - 49th out of 50 (AAA State of Play). This is in a state where 37% of adults live with some type of disability (WVU Center for Excellence in Disabilities). These aren't statistics, these are people being underserved and underrepresented by their community.

In our schools, the situation is even starker. The cost of serving special education students in West Virginia exceeded available revenue, pushing some counties into debt (WV MetroNews). Thinking the HOPE Scholarship will help people access specialized schools? Think again. Private schools have limited oversight and are able to pick and choose what students they accept. Under IDEA, the obligation to provide specialized services falls on the public school district, not private schools, meaning private schools have no obligation to offer specialized services, despite their claims otherwise. There is also a lack of schools in the area even able to provide comprehensive disability services. All of this is concerning enough, but the fact that scholarship expansion is costing our schools precious funding and resources (WV Policy Brief) should make us collectively halt and re-examine. 

Head Start has also been threatened, with rumors that some centers are being shut down due to funding cuts. The children in West Virginia are at risk of being intentionally left behind in their academics and opportunities. One must ask themselves, who does an undereducated community benefit?!

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has weakened federal protections for community-based services. Advocates call this "a direct, frontal assault on the rights of people with disabilities" (Washington Post). At least 25 states are suing over new Medicaid work requirements that threaten coverage for the most vulnerable people (New York Post). In West Virginia, local providers like Open Doors Inc. are doing what they can with limited resources, but they're fighting against a system stacked against them. Just across the river in Ohio, the picture looks drastically different. While not perfect, Ohio has a statewide County Board of Developmental Disabilities that provides case management, service coordination, and support at no cost to families of/people with developmental disabilities regardless of their waiver status (Ohio DODD). West Virginia has nothing comparable. Here, case management is gated behind waiver approval... and if you don't have one, you're on your own.

In Parkersburg, the relationship between City Hall and the people they serve continues to be unnecessarily dismissive.  At the October 2025 meeting, residents showed up to oppose a $384,380 armored vehicle- council voted unanimously for it anyway (WTAP). Months later, more than 3,000 residents signed petitions against privatizing sanitation (News & Sentinel) and over 100 people attended the Jan 2026 meeting- council voted 6:3 to advance the contract anyway (WTAP). And this is just a few examples of the overwhelming lack of regard or concern City Council has had for the residents of Parkersburg. 

City Council meetings have run the gamut from open public forums, to restricted ones, to barring public comment altogether, and generally being at contentious odds with the community that shows up with concerns or criticisms. Now, we are allowed to speak again, but when residents show up, speak out, sign petitions, and then watch their representatives make the decisions based on their own interests... well, at what point does public input just become theater to those in power? 

The farmers feeding our communities continue to face mounting challenges due to a combination of trade disruptions (tariffs), drought (climate change), and spiking fertilizer & feed costs (climate change & tariffs). Despite most of these issues being caused or exacerbated by MAGA policies, many farmers still support this administration. Meanwhile, the U.S. decided not to renew the trade agreement with Mexico and Canada (USMCA- more info here), the same deal that supports nearly half a million American farm jobs and a third of all U.S. ag exports (Bloomberg & The Economic Impacts of USMCA). While many farmers do indeed support the current government, over 2,300 farmers begged the administration to renew the USMCA. Between ironic countervailing Duties (ironic because they were supposed to level the playing field and were called for by Mosaic, a US producer of 2/3 most important nutrients in agriculture) and the America-Iran war, fertilizer has skyrocketed (The Heritage Foundation).  While the Heritage Foundation seems to remember history differently than the rest of the world- the Countervailing Duties were researched by Trump's own Commerce Department who initially approved them in 2020, under Trump...not Biden as they attempt to claim (Federal Register). In fact, Trump's own Commerce Department started collecting cash deposits from importers in November 2020- before Biden was even sworn in. Ohio soybean farmer and American Soybean Association president Scott Metzger called fertilizer "one of the most significant expenses soybean farmers face each year" (Successful Farming). 70% of farmers surveyed and 36.7% of corn growers surveyed said they couldn't afford to apply full fertilizer to their crops this season (Houston Public Media). 

This is INCREDIBLY complicated and of course nuanced, but essentially: tariffs make fertilizer expensive... fertilizer makes grain expensive... climate change driven drought also makes grain expensive... both things hurt farmers and creates expensive feed... expensive feed = financial hardship for a lot more farmers. And this doesn't even address the money Trump gave to Argentina or his executive order expanding Argentine beef imports (National Cattlemen's Beef Association).

Trump is kind of like a cat trying to play chess- pieces just get swatted everywhere and no one wins. 

So what's the fix? Trump asked Congress for $11 billion in farm aid to cushion the blow from policies his own administration created or made worse (Des Moines Register). They break it, we buy it (in a few different ways), and then we praise them for their "help" solving a crisis they are fueling.

The Resiliency Center- a lovely, 13 million dollar, boutique event venue dressed up as a place for the community. And, much like our city council, our county commission allows limited community input and dismisses any criticisms or critiques as being the meaningless groans of "C.A.V.E people."  What are C.A.V.E people you ask? Citizens Against Virtually Everything," according to our own Commission President Blair Couch (WCHS). 

The Washington County Commission is not without controversy. Residents have organized against rising property taxes, fracking waste brine injection wells, and a largely hated data center project. The community even voted out the incumbent Eddie Place in May, which sends a strong message to the dismissive elected officials in the area (WTAP).

So unlike Wood County, where the commission mocks critics and faces no electoral consequences, Washington County's commission is hearing the feedback loud and clear through the democratic process. Washington County's commission isn't more blatantly corrupt or otherwise worse than Wood County's- the difference is that their voters refused to take it. It is the duty of the community to hold their elected officials accountable and that seems to be exactly what the people of Washington County are doing. 

We know we live in a resource rich area- coal, gas, timber, water, cheap labor, and an even cheaper dumping ground. And this means lots of folks have their hands in our pockets trying to "develop" these resources while simultaneously and intentionally "under-developing" our communities. They promise us jobs, wealth, and funding for important services. Yet, somehow, we remain among the poorest people in the nation with some of the worst academic and health outcomes. Economists have a name for this, it is known as the resource curse.  A resource curse is a globally recognized phenomena where an area generates untold riches for a select few, often headquartered somewhere else. These "select few" are the type that leave a little bit of money on the nightstand for our elected officials on their way out of town. 

Appalachia doesn't have a poverty issue, we have a policy issue. Period.

The money has always been here, it just never gets invested in us. We get fractions of pennies when everyone else gets dollars; that's the value our government puts on our lives, our land, and our children. And not only are we ok with it, we actually defend it. We have been so well starved for resources and hope, that we surrender our allegiance to our abusers, the very ones who are starving us in the first place. This isn't new and it isn't our fault. Extraction industries are experts at economic exploitation- like ticks getting fat off of us, numbing the area a little so they can go unnoticed. But it stops as soon as we see them for what they are and pull them out, head and all. 

Both states will face new challenges as the feds have cut funding and are instituting an "error payback" system for SNAP (CAP). Essentially meaning that as errors from the offices are discovered, at a certain percentage, states will have to reimburse the federal government. But these mistakes aren't rooted in fraud like the feds want us to believe (CBPP & Maryland Matters & (NJPP). The threat to funding and budgets coupled with additional restrictive eligibility requirements paint a concerning picture for the coming years and people's access to these life-saving programs. Not to mention the pressure it puts on already economically strapped states. 

 It is vital that we know that these restrictions don't save taxpayers money and they don't encourage or help people find living wage employment- they are just needless barriers specifically used to cut people off programs or delay access. People then go to the ERs to get care at much higher cost to tax payers, food pantries become strapped for resources, bills go unpaid, and so on... but the costs get paid somewhere (RWJF & NACO & CBPP). The difference is in what dignity we afford those who are struggling and how we view the people in our community trying to access help in economically exploited areas with few opportunities for education or advancement.