Huntington is now the fourth city in the Mountain State to ban conversion therapy.
In a 7 – 4 vote, Huntington city council banned conversion therapy for minors within city limits.
The updated city ordinance says that attempting to change the gender identity or sexual orientation of a minor is discriminatory.
Huntington joins Wheeling, Morgantown, and Charleston in banning the practice.
“Everyone, from the American Medical Association to the American College of Physicians, all of these subject matter experts have said that this is nothing more than abuse,” said Vice Chairwoman Sarah Walling,
More than 30 residents came to speak. Resident of Huntington, and board member for the West Virginia Psychological Association, Sheila Robinette told the council that conversion therapy is ineffective and causes harm to minors.
“The youth of our city, this includes not just LGBTQ youth but all youth, deserve and have the right to be able to receive mental health treatment in a safe, ethical manner free from discrimination and in a manner that makes people better, not worse,” said Robinette.
City of Huntington
Sheila Robinette speaking to Huntington City Council
Before hearing from the public, Councilmember Dale Anderson motioned to table the ordinance and wait for the state legislature to act.
“Mr. Anderson, we are not going to lay down and wait for the state, because they’re slow and sometimes ineffective,” said Huntington resident Joseph Crutcher. “The International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims has labeled conversion therapy torture.”
Interactions between a child and their parent or someone in their religious group about sexual orientation or gender identity are not part of the ban.
Jaylan Mobley is the new West Virginia National Guard Fellowship at Marshall University’s Institute for Cyber Security.
Marshall University
Jaylan Mobley
Jaylan L. Mobley is the first cyber officer in the West Virginia Army National Guard and he is now going to act as Marshall University’s first West Virginia National Guard Fellow.
Mobley’s position at Marshall will involve teaching a class every semester, research, and designing programs. He currently serves at the Joint Forces Headquarters in Charleston as deputy team chief of the Defense Cyber Operations Element.
According to the director of the Institute for Cyber Security, David Dampier, Mobley’s extensive experience will help the school build a program based on real life scenarios.
Mobley earned an associates degree in homeland security and emergency management and in cyber security from Georgia Military College, where he served as regimental commander, for which he received an Excellence in Leadership commendation.
In 2021 he graduated from the Army’s Cyber Basic Officer Leadership Course, and earned a master’s degree in cybersecurity from West Virginia University.
The West Virginia National Guard has previously partnered with Marshall to assist with cyber range simulations.
Supply chain issues and rising gas prices are worsening food access in the Mountain State. West Virginian entrepreneurs are looking to meet the demand for food.
The American food retail landscape is structured around hypermarkets, such as Walmart, which carry out large scale food distribution for population centers. Smaller grocery stores have provided services for rural communities. But that may be in jeopardy.
Bridget Lambert is the president of the West Virginia Retailer Association. She says smaller grocery stores are disappearing partly due to an unstable supply chain.
“They rely on food distribution networks that deliver to rural areas,” Lambert said. “About several years ago we had a large distribution center close in the Cabell County area.”
And that has filtered down to smaller locations. On April 1st, 2022, the Poca Foodfair permanently closed its doors, meaning residents have to travel to neighboring towns for the bulk of their groceries.
Jackie Dolan lives in Poca. She travels to Dunbar, Nitro, and Eleanor for her grocery shopping.
“You can’t make 2, 3, or 4 trips, you know I have to plan one whole day,” Dolan said.
The rising price of gas, and the rising costs of products are changing the shopping habits of the state’s rural residents.
“So instead of going to the store weekly, they may go bi-weekly, or once a month,” Lambert said. “Of course, the increased cost of gasoline, that money will come out of a family’s budget somewhere, and it may well come out of the food budget.”
For a long time, residents of Clay County have lived without ready access to a full service grocery store. Clay County is often considered one of the worst food deserts in the state.
In November 2021, a Par Mar store fitted with grocery products opened in Maysel to help meet the demand for a grocer.
“Usually you have to go either to Elkview or Sutton; at Kroger or the Save-a-lot, but since we got this place here, it’s helped out a whole lot,” Par Mar cashier Ethan Smith said.
Grocery aisle at the Par Mar in Maysel. Credit: David Adkins/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Aside from the Par Mar, local businesses in Clay County have helped expand food access.
Stores like House’s Supermarket in Brickmore meet the community’s grocery needs, minus certain types of fresh meat.
There’s also Legacy Foods: Market and Bakery in Indore, and the Clay County Farmers Market in Clay.
“Food desert situations have created some very unique opportunities for small business owners in West Virginia to open niche markets, ” Lambert said. “Communities are stepping up and addressing this situation in a multitude of ways.”
According to Lambert, those investing in a local food market need to know the local food landscape, such as demand, population size, store location, and distribution networks. She noted that consumers appreciate shopping close to home, meaning there is a steady demand.
A federal judge ruled in favor of three drug distributors that were accused of fueling the opioid epidemic in Huntington and Cabell County. Local leaders are considering their next step.
Judge David Faber ruled that opioid distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health, and McKesson did not create a public nuisance by distributing 81 million pills over the span of eight years in Huntington and Cabell County.
“The distribution of medicine to support the legitimate medical needs of patients as determined by doctors exercising their medical judgment in good faith cannot be deemed an unreasonable interference with a right common to the general public,” Faber wrote.
The judge stated that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate that the wave of addictive painkillers were because of unreasonable conduct, and that the defendants were acting in a legitimate response to keep up with the demand set by doctor prescriptions.
“I don’t know what more that we needed to prove,” Huntington Mayor Steve Williams said. “It was a collaborative effort of the manufacturers, the distributors, and the pharmaceutical companies.“
Huntington and Cabell County asked for more than $2.5 billion in order to fund opioid response programs as part of a 15-year abatement plan.
According to Williams, the defendants denied responsibility to assist in the community’s recovery.
“One thing that frankly aggravated me in the trial is when the defendants were indicating that the City of Huntington should be paying for all these recovery programs,” he said.
Williams indicated that the plaintiffs plan on meeting with legal counsel to discuss their next steps.
Students are preparing for a new aviation maintenance technician, or AMT, school in Wayne County.
Thirty students are preparing for a new aviation maintenance technician (AMT) program through Mountwest Community and Technical College and Marshall University in the Fall 2022 semester.
The program has been certified by the Federal Aviation Administration and is now the first AMT school for the region and the 189th in the country. The school will be located at the Huntington Tri-State Airport.
Students enroll into the program through Mountwest and are counted as transient students with Marshall University.
“Mountwest could deliver the associate degree; in the state of West Virginia there are limitations on what a four year school can do in terms of a two year degree,” program director James Smith said.
Upon graduation from the 18-month program, students will receive an Associate of Applied Science (A.A.S.) degree under the names of both institutions.
Students who complete the program will also be eligible to take FAA Airframe and Powerplant certification exams.
Applications for the program opened in May, but the program was unable to process them until now.
“They’ve just been kind of in limbo until we could get the FAA to give us that final approval,” Smith said. “With the final approval, we were able to flip that switch and work on the formal processing of their applications.”
According to Smith, a quarter of the students who come out of aviation programs go to work in industries such as oil and gas, maritime, or automotive.
“The skills we teach in this program have direct impacts on other manufacturing and trade skills industries,” Smith said. “It’s not aviation centric specifically.”
Applicants on the waiting list will be considered for an additional 30 students for the Spring 2022 semester.
The first commercial farm to be staffed and operated by foster care youth is being built at the Stepping Stones Residential Treatment Facility in Wayne County.
After loading up their crops and setting up a stand at the Ceredo Farmer’s Market, youth from the Stepping Stones Residential Treatment Facility sold their first $100 dollars of produce that they grew on their commercial farm, Growing Hope.
Stepping Stones Residential Treatment Facility
First dollar earned by Growing Hope
Located in Lavalette, West Virginia, Stepping Stones is a child welfare and behavioral health provider for Cabell and Wayne County. The program helps young adults in the foster care system transition into adulthood.
Many Appalachian youth who age out of the foster care system fall into homelessness or substance use disorders. According to Susan Fry, the director of Stepping Stones, transitioning from foster care is harder when the children don’t have trade skills or access to education.
“You can’t go out and be a productive member of society if you haven’t had the opportunity,” Fry said. “Whether it be through a university, a community college, or trade so that they can achieve employment that pays a livable wage.”
It doesn’t help that some of these youth are transitioning into a food insecure community. The closest grocery store for rural Lavalette is a 20 minute drive to Huntington.
The Growing Hope farm began in partnership with Green Bronx Machine, a New York City based nonprofit that teaches children about agriculture and science while creating sustainable sources of employment and nutrition for underdeveloped communities.
“The same economic hardships, the same lack of education opportunities, the same nutrition and health disparities that face the young men in Appalachia are precisely what are facing young men and young children here in the South Bronx,” the CEO of Green Bronx Machine, Stephen Ritz, said.
Growing Hope uses aeroponic tower gardens to grow plants like cucumbers, peppers, eggplants, and a wide variety of leafy greens and herbs. Aeroponics is a process of growing crops without soil, which allows plants to be grown year-round.
Stepping Stones Residential Treatment Facility
Growing Hope’s aeroponic farm
According to Ritz, the skill to operate an aeroponic farm is a trade skill that is uncommon throughout Appalachia.
“Growing food in Appalachia, as these young men are learning, is a license to print money,” Ritz said. “I’ve met a lot of kids who are allergic to vegetables, but I’ve never met a young man who’s allergic to money.”
Stepping Stones is also building a community of tiny houses for young adults from foster care to have a place to rent. The tiny homes will act as a place where foster youth can have a personal space, while still being part of a larger community.
“Young people in foster care, especially in residential treatment, they’ve never even had a room by themselves, let alone their own home,” Fry said. “To be able to have a home that is theirs, that they’re paying rent on, that they decide how they want to change the decorations and set it up, and not to have all those roommate issues.”
According to Fry, giving less restrictions and more opportunities to these young adults allow them more freedom to grow into themselves.
“We want to, at least by the time they’re age 17, be able to get them in a less restrictive living situation, and give them more control over their decisions. ”
Stepping Stones Residential Treatment Facility
Stepping Stone’s tiny homes
Stepping Stones is looking at their program as a model that can be adapted for other communities.
“We’re very rural, and what would work with us where we don’t have zoning may not work in Charleston, but the structure of the model; the community wrapping their arms around these kids in foster care, that can apply anywhere in the world,” Fry said.
The foster youth employees with Growing Hope are looking to expand from selling at the farmer’s market toward selling to individuals and restaurants.
