POWER STRUGGLES
School Board Meets
 

   Clay County's School Board convened their Oct 28th public meeting at the Pentagon beginning at 6pm. All five Boardsters were present with around 5 in the peanut gallery. With the agenda properly posted, here goes with a few nuggets of knowledge from that gathering.
  CHS Band Director Dolly Morgan was on hand to present her case for receiving $6700 to be used to repair band instruments. After discussion, Ms Dolly received $5000 toward the repairs. Additional $$ will be raised thru school fundraisers. That's Morgan Dolly just below, on the left.

  Phil Dobbins has resigned as Asst Basketball coach at Clay Middle School (CMS)  As did Bob Morris from Asst wrestling coach at CMS. Superintendent Joe Paxton said that theere was no friction causing the resignations, just that, both men's kids were no longer involved in those programs.
  Kim Workman resigned from Lizemores Elem
  Judy Morris Smith was hired as a Guidance Coordinator for three grade schools. Smith will be at Big Otter two days a week; 1 day at Lizemores; and 1 day weekly at H E White Elem. Her chief function will be health and PE
  Joshua Ferrebee was hired as an enrichment teacher at at CHS
  The just mentioned Dolly Morgan was hired as an after school enrichment teacher at Clay High for choir and brass instruction.
  Other hires or transfers were Dian Fields, Dianne Lyons, and Holly Nine.
  Now for the fun stuff...

   Clayberry's school system a received a gob of FEMA flood money a couple years. One of the FEMA projects was building a new school bus garage on the same lot that was flooded in June 2016. Albiet a couple feet higher in elevation, but still, right beside the old block bus garage that had three feet of flood water.. The new building and concrete parking pad was completed back mid Summer 2019. Nice looking expanded facility with everything except electromacity. Yelp, the engineer plans call for upgraded electric service there to fit the needs of the structure.
   Seems simple enough but that's never the case in County Clay. The local power supplier appears to have held on what the plans call for and refused to supply that needed juice. With a stalmate on hand, the Engineer reconfigured the main control panel to fit existing power availabilities.
  Weeks went past. wait wait wait.
  All along, yellow extension cords were strung from the still in use old garage over to parts of the new building including power for the fuel tank.
  Stumbling along, even the outside lights were rigged up which lit up the place like a Wal Mart parking lot. Looked good too.
  Then something happened. Some kind of surge or blow out happened a few weeks back. Since then, we've yet to see the return of the outside light system.
  Months have gone by without power needs being met. Never a word came of the issues during School Board meetings. Mums was the word.
  Last Wed, Oct 23rd, a worker for Elk Power Company (his initials are Rodney Nutter) slipped, goofed up, and dropped a tree limb on a high power line in downtown Clay which sent a power surge racing all over the county including the bus garage. Inside the new building, the sound of crackling power was heard. It's our understanding that the recently changed out control panel breaker box system, went up in smoke to the sound of popcorn popping.
  During the Oct 28th meeting, Boardster Dave Pierson reported, one of his employees, just down river from the bus garage saw a bolt of light race along the power lines in that area of the county. That Oct 23rd surge, since then, no juice at the new facility.
  When that high power line dropped in downtown Clay, damage was done to a street level, just down below,  high dollar ATV.
   Brought up by a member of the peanut gallery during the Board meeting, Superintendent Paxton provided: there is an issue at the bus garage; he was not sure of the damage from the Oct 23rd surge , that an engineer will have to do that evaluation; and, all issues will have to be fixed before the school system actually takes ownership of the place.
  Here it is readers. Paxton advanced: the W Va Public Service Commission is looking into the issue. He didn't say which issue but we're guessing, the building contractor and the Pentagon are fed up with service and accomodations by the local power company, Elk Power (AKA Black Diamond Power).
  He also added, that mid Summer problem that the contractor had to work around , ... that was a Elk Power transformer issue.

   The School Board had no plans to make public the long standing juice problem and delays at the bus garage. It took a question from the gallery to get that out in public.
  And here's the grand finale. During the meeting, there was no mention of the most recent problem.
  On that very day, Oct 28th, mid afternoon, Elk Power crews raised to the pole yet another transformer (see above). Just as the boom truck operator ( that would be Rodney Nutter) had everything in place and with the boom back down to truck level, the other guy, still up in the air in the other truck, yelled down, Hey Rodney, better order another transformer. You just hit the ceramic insulator and broke it with the boom on your truck. The response from the ground is unprintable but along the lines of $$##@@@ !!@@**^^^^ and @@!!###!!@##
  None of that last part , the new screw up, was mentioned during the meeting.
  Here's what we think is happening. The School Board is taking Elk Power to task thru some formal PSC complaint process. The peed off contractor is doing likewise or maybe ready to take the local power company to some civil proceeding to recover their losses.
  Any way you look at it, we're still without that new bus garage and management of the power company has had a rotten five days.
AW

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