Is facial rec school security’s future?

August 11, 2022

Marion County announced this week that it plans to add facial recognition technology to its schools in the near future, in partnership with Rank One Computing. The idea behind the upgrade is to use the tech — which matches the facial features of a visitor to a database of images to identify the person — to pinpoint potential threats to the school or students inside. In the vast majority of schools, visitors — or anyone wishing to enter the building after the first bell rings — have to be buzzed into the front office, where they are supposed to sign in and state their ...

Things to know before you decide to recall council

August 10, 2022

The effort to recall all seven members of Morgantown City Council has stepped up a notch. It seems the more than a month of word-of-mouth recruitment hasn’t garnered the 3,849 signatures required to trigger a recall election, so organizer Todd Stainbrook has said he and others will start going door-to-door. (Stainbrook ran as a write-in candidate for Morgantown’s 7th Ward during the 2019 council race and ran for a seat in the West Virginia House of Delegates in 2020 — and was unsuccessful both times.) Stainbrook has narrowed his focus to the “low morale and mass ...

Get ready — WVU students coming to Morgantown

August 9, 2022

In case you haven’t noticed the uptick in traffic or the proliferation of fresh-faced youth in the grocery stores — West Virginia University students are coming back to Morgantown this week. “Welcome Week” at the university begins tomorrow and extends through Tuesday, with classes starting Aug. 17. So here are some things to keep in mind as students flood the University City. Traffic will be much worse. We get spoiled every summer with 30,000 fewer cars on the roads and drastically shortened commute times. But, now that students are back, it will take longer to get, well, ...

Taxpayers spent a lot for special session flop

August 6, 2022

The Legislature’s special session that concluded Friday, July 29, was a massive waste of taxpayers’ money — at $35,000 a day for five days for a grand total of $175,000, to be exact. You likely don’t need us to tell you what that kind of money could have paid for, other than a week of legislators squabbling and producing nothing of value. Even with wasteful spending put aside, the special session was a total flop. Legislators had been clear that Gov. Jim Justice’s income tax cut proposal was virtually a nonstarter. And then, to throw instructions for the Legislature to ...

Tax holiday is your opportunity to save

August 5, 2022

If you need to do any kind of back-to-school shopping, this is the weekend to do it. As of yesterday and extending through Monday, West Virginia is having a sales tax holiday on back-to-school related items, which means you won’t be charged the 6% (or 7% within certain municipalities) tax on certain items. The hope is to encourage people to shop at local businesses. Broadly, the tax holiday covers clothes, school supplies and instructional material, sports equipment, computers and tablets. The specific list of what is covered is extremely long, but we’d like to make your ...

IRA a mixed bag, but seems to be worth it

August 4, 2022

Sen. Joe Manchin’s support for the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 has given the general populace hope for progress on climate change, health care and tax reform, though Sen. Kirsten Sinema, D-Ariz., could still potentially sink the bill. (The Koch network is lobbying both Manchin and Sinema to change their minds.) However, climate activists decry that it is not enough. The compromise bill pulls back on the more ambitious climate measures and the price of Manchin’s support was to funnel government money to fossil fuels. But, the legislation offers incentives to individuals and ...