By a unanimous vote, the Huntington City Council on Monday approved a resolution showing support for the Healing Place of Huntington, an abstinence-based drug treatment program modeled after one with a similar name in Louisville.
Last month, Councilman Scott Caserta recommended that the resolution be delayed after a Healing Place volunteer gave a presentation to council members. He said at the time that he did not know enough about the proposal to make an informed decision. The resolution was delayed again two weeks ago when Councilman Jim Ritter said he was confused about what the Healing Place is and what it offers.
Monday night, Caserta said he attended the Huntington Healing Place's monthly planning meeting last week and is confident that the recovery center would be a benefit to the area.
While it may have taken a month, Caserta and the other members of City Council did the right thing in adopting the resolution in support of the Healing Place of Huntington.
There is a lesson here for other nonprofits seeking to fight the city's various problems. They must bring City Hall -- the mayor and the City Council -- into the planning discussions early if they want to avoid any delays such as the one the Healing Place encountered.
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Mike Garrison, president of West Virginia University, appeared before his school's Faculty Senate on Monday to explain why professors should not demand his resignation, despite the fact his closest advisers gave away an MBA degree last year as a political favor.
The professors were unmoved and reacted to Garrison's speech with silence. It's hard to blame them. Judging from news reports, it appears Garrison still doesn't understand (or refuses to admit) what the degree scandal has done to the school.
Garrison has a lot of work to do to restore WVU's reputation -- and his, too. He will keep a relatively low profile this weekend during various graduation ceremonies. It's a shame that the president of the state's largest university must stay so far from the spotlight at such a time, but it's for the best.
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After years of work in which one proposal after another fell though, a groundbreaking ceremony on Monday marked the start of construction for a new hotel at KineticPark.
The three-story TownePlace Suites, a branch of Marriott hotels, will serve guests visiting for extended stays of a week or more. The hotel will have 87 suites featuring full kitchens, flat screen TVs and free high-speed wireless Internet service. The developers building the hotel say it could open in spring 2009.
While it's good to see work on the lower, commercial area of KineticPark, there's still the nagging question of whether the upper level will be the high-tech and corporate office park it was envisioned to be a decade ago. The original vision may have been faulty. But the city has spent $18 million on KineticPark. It can't sacrifice the entirety of the original vision just to get something on the upper level.
As this year's municipal elections play out, it's something candidates for public office should address.
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