Cabell County School Levy Passes; Reversal from May Primary 

Voters approved a revamped excess school levy that now will help fund Cabell County’s library and park systems. Only a year ago, that was in jeopardy. 

After failing in the May primary, the levy passed with a greater than two thirds majority vote. It delivers more than $30 million to Cabell County’s public schools, parks and libraries.

The vote reversal from May comes after the Cabell County Board of Education reinstated shares of levy funding to the county library and park systems.  

Every five years for decades, Cabell County voters had passed a Cabell Board of Education Excess Levy to fund school district operations. In 1967, the state legislature added funding for the Cabell County Public Library System onto the School levy. In 1983, they added funding for the Greater Huntington Parks and Recreation District to that same levy.  

Citing declining enrollment, rising costs and the loss of federal COVID-19 funding, the Cabell Board of Education voted in the summer of 2023 to take away combined $2 million from the Parks and Library systems in connection with the excess levy. 

The Library and Park systems filed suit. The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals sided with the school system. In the May primary, community outrage sparked an overwhelming levy failure.

Following the primary, with a new Cabell County School Superintendent in place, the School Board unanimously voted to return to the decades long allocation of levy funds to the three entities.    

Overall, the parks will receive nearly $600,000 annually and the libraries will get about $1.86 million. 

Covering 40 percent of their annual budget, Cabell County Library System Executive Director Breana Bowen said levy passage means survival.

“We get to survive the next five years,” Bowen said. “We get to continue offering traditional programs like story hours and book clubs. We also do notary, faxing, copying and free internet access. We do databases, language, software, ancestry, DNA, access to local newspapers. We also offer electronic resources, e-books, e-audio books, e-magazines, which are highly popular right now with people, and highly expensive for public libraries to purchase.”

A majority of the levy goes to the schools, funding salaries, athletics, job development programs, security and safety measures and more.