Unemployment rates fell in 27 of West Virginia's 55 counties in November.WorkForce West Virginia says jobless rates rose in 22 counties and were unchanged…
Unemployment rates fell in 27 of West Virginia’s 55 counties in November.
WorkForce West Virginia says jobless rates rose in 22 counties and were unchanged in six others.
Mingo County’s unemployment rate at 10.4 percent was the only one in double digits. That’s down from 10.7 percent in October.
Monongalia County had the lowest unemployment rate at 3.2 percent, followed by Jefferson at 3.8 percent at Pendleton at 4.0 percent.
The state’s seasonally adjusted jobless rate fell two-tenths of a percentage point to 6.3 percent in November.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Bloomery Sweetshine Distillery
Bloomery Sweetshine Distillery located in Jefferson County has attracted around 50,000 tourists since it opened in 2011. While Jefferson County has been called the leader in tourism and economic impact in the state, some say the rural economy is struggling, and this distillery could be helping to revive it.
Allison Manderino is one of the fun-tenders, or bartenders, at the Bloomery Sweetshine Distillery. She drives two-in-a-half hours every weekend from Pennsylvania to the eastern panhandle just to work weekends serving drinks.
“You ask anyone here who works here, we all have the same answer, we all love each other,” said Manderino, “and Tom and Linda, our owners, we want them to succeed so much that we will do whatever we need. And if that means that, you know, I drive and live in a different state every weekend, that’s okay. I’ll do it, because I want to see this through, and I know we’re going places, and I just want to help them get there in whatever way I can.”
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Bloomery Sweetshine’s Greenhouse
Bloomery Sweetshine Distillery began after co-founders, Linda Losey and Tom Keifer went on a trip to Italy in 2010. While there, they tasted Limoncello, a very popular lemon liqueur and wanted to replicate it once back in the US. After scouting out various locations, they found a rural spot in Charles Town, where they began to build their business in an old bloomery, or ironworks mill, from the 1700s that was in disrepair.
“So we thought, why not settle in West Virginia,” remembered Losey, “and I came out here, and I texted Tom, I’m like, I’m going to meet the craigslist killer, and he said where are you and what are you doing, and I said, don’t worry if I like it, you’re in trouble, if I don’t like it, it’s no worries. And I liked it, and so here we are, on 12 acres in Charles Town, West Virginia, growing lemons and Hawaiian ginger and raspberries and black walnuts and pumpkins.”
Losey says she’s amazed at the success of the distillery in such a short time, but attributes that success to the fun-tenders who always try to connect to each patron individually and make each customer feel welcome.
Credit Liz McCormick / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Allison Manderino as the Dancing Lemon, the distillery’s mascot.
“Everybody brings their own sort of quirkiness to the team,” Losey noted, “and if you come and get a tasting on a Friday and have one fun-tender, and you come back in on a Saturday, you’re going to get a completely different experience.”
Tom Keifer, the other co-founder, says he thinks it’s the naturalness of the product that’s attractive and keeps bringing in customers.
“Because we have only whole ingredients, there’s nothing artificial, no coloring, no dyes, no flavors, anything like that,” Keifer said, “And there’s this robustness that comes with that. I mean when you taste the ginger you’ll see, I mean, it tastes like liquid ginger root, and when you taste our pumpkin spice, it tastes like grandma’s pumpkin pie. It’s just awesome.”
Bloomery Sweetshine Distillery grows most of its ingredients on-site, but since its products are in such high demand, it gets some ingredients locally in Charles Town and Martinsburg, but some come from farmers as far away as California.
It’s open only four days a week, but the owners say they average 300 customers every weekend. Their products have won American and International awards, and have seen at least one tourist from every state in the US, as well as a handful of other countries.
Annette Gavin is the CEO of the Jefferson County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. She says the distillery is definitely making an impact on Jefferson County’s economy.
“They didn’t just decide to do this, develop it, and, you know, wait for people to come. They market it; they market the heck out of it. You know, they get out there, and it’s literally stomping the pavement to let people know,” said Gavin.
Gavin also says the Distillery is in a perfect location being so close to Washington, DC and Baltimore.
With an array of flavors to choose from and an ever growing number in tourists, the Bloomery Sweetshine Distillery continues to do well in Jefferson County.
Earlier this week, the Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board celebrated the addition of 76.5 acres of protected farmland. Jefferson County’s Protected Farmland now expands to 4,038 acres with the addition of their 40th farm.
The property, owned by William and Deloris Nicewarner, includes more than 93% prime and statewide important agricultural soils. The farm supports grain crops, hay production, and beef cattle.
John Reisenweber is the executive director of the Jefferson County Development Authority. He says, although it may seem like protecting farmland would limit production of other developments such as housing and other structures, for Jefferson County and most of the eastern panhandle, protecting farmland helps economic development.
“There’s intrinsic value to having green space in a community. You’re talking to a guy who loves to backpack and hike and mountain bike, and you know, be outdoors. So it’s important to protect green space, and farmland protection does that, and we’re starting to see the growth of micro-farming, smaller agricultural businesses in the community, and if we can protect farmland and allow our farmers to make a profit, then that’s good for the economy, and that’s good for economic development.”
The addition was made possible with the recent $290,640 bargain sale purchase of an agricultural conservation easement for the Circle N Farm in the Charles Town District. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service and the Jefferson County Farmland Protection Board provided matching funds to make the purchase possible. The Land Trust of the Eastern Panhandle is the co-holder of the easement.
An “agricultural conservation easement” is a voluntary, legally-recorded deed restriction that is placed on a specific property used for agricultural production. It enables landowners to permanently protect the agricultural, historical, and scenic values of their property.
As the demand for Internet resources increases, libraries are the starting place for free information. However, budget cuts have forced libraries across the state to scale back drastically on operating hours and access to services, just when it seems those resources are most needed. The Jefferson County branch of the League of Women Voters hosted a public forum on ways the community in the Eastern Panhandle can support the public libraries in their area. These libraries say they have much to offer the public but need more funding.
At the public forum, five directors of the Berkeley and Jefferson County libraries gave insight on the services their particular library provides. From delivery services, to early literacy programs, to collections of distinctive Eastern Panhandle history, all five libraries spoke on the uniqueness of what their library has to offer. Gretchen Fry, the director of the Bolivar Harpers Ferry Public Library, argues that while online bookstore rentals may seem great, they can’t compete with what a library can do for its patrons.
“Libraries are able to provide a large selection of eBooks because of the fact that they actually have access to a number of vendors,” said Fry, “whereas Amazon actually is more restricted in what vendors they can provide, because a lot of them won’t sell to Amazon, so we actually can purchase a larger variety of eBooks.”
Fry says some publishers of certain bestsellers choose to sell to libraries over resources like Amazon. Because of this, libraries tend to provide a larger amount of online and physical collections.
“People would prefer to actually go to their library, because they can get a wider selection and it’s free–they don’t have to pay anything.A nd the way the current situation actually with libraries is set up, they don’t have to pay fines either for library books, like a traditional library book. What happens is after you check out the book, it just expires, you don’t have to pay a fine.”
Pam Coyle, the director of the Martinsburg-Berkeley Public Library, spoke on the upcoming November 4th levy in Kanawha County. If the levy would pass, the libraries in the county would receive over $3 million for five years sponsored by the Board of Education. While the pass of the levy would not directly affect the libraries in the Eastern Panhandle, Coyle does think it could send a very prominent message throughout the state.
“Kanawha County has its own levy that’s going out. That’s not, other than interlibrary loan, will not affect us, but it will affect the attitude of, when we have to go out probably for our own levy, which may or may not happen in the future, depending on what happens with the school board, and libraries across the state. Because if it can get passed in Kanawha County, then it can hopefully pass in every county that they could have their own levy, that’s dedicated specifically to the library and not dependent on any other agency,” noted Coyle.
With big dreams of expanding, the Jefferson and Berkeley County libraries hope to receive more funding in the near future. And if the November 4th levy passes in Charleston, they hope it will provide a ringer to the rest of the state that libraries need help.
West Virginia can actually thrive under new U.S. Environmental Protection Regulations that aim to reduce greenhouse gasses, according to three panelists participating in a public forum last week in Shepherdstown.
West Virginia must cut back its carbon emission rate by 20 percent by the year 2030 under the EPA regulations. The panelists leading the forum, entitled EPA Carbon Rules: How Can West Virginia Lead? voiced confidence that the state can meet that goal and create jobs as well. The West Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club organized the event. Jefferson County resident Mary Anne Hitt is director of the organization’s Beyond Coal Campaign
“There is a lot of misinformation out there about this rule, and what it requires of coal or gas or energy efficiency,” Hitt noted, “and the fact of the matter is, here in West Virginia, we can meet the standard through energy efficiency, through wind and solar. Through clean energy that’s going to provide a lot of new jobs in the state, and it’s a really exciting opportunity, and we all know that we’re struggling with low employment here in West Virginia, and we need more economic opportunity, and this is a great way to bring it to the state.”
Aside from Hitt, two other panelists seemed to get the most reaction from the audience. One was David Levine who is a leader in the West Virginia solar industry. Levine is founder and CEO of the company Geosteller Solar which is based in Martinsburg.
“This regulation is not job killing regulation,” said Levine, “It really is going to spur a whole new energy economy, which is really good for consumers, and that’s actually going to lower their utility bills, and it’s going to spur jobs, because solar creates many more jobs per Megawatt than big centralized nuclear power plants or coal plants, or natural gas power plants.”
Levine says that the installation process is frighteningly simple.
“Our business is solar energy marketplace, and the idea is we match people who want to go solar with the right solutions. We tell you exactly how much energy you can produce on your particular rooftop, and then the value of that energy based on the energy you’ll displace. So if I used to have a monthly energy bill of $120 a month, it says your new total electricity cost with your solar, plus what you’ll still paying your utility company for a reduced usage might be down to $80 a month, and that’s what we compare.”
Levine says once Geostellar Solar does a site assessment of your home, it takes a licensed contractor about a day to install the panels. But if it’s so easy, why aren’t more people taking advantage of it?
“The reason people aren’t going solar today is because they don’t have role models, where it’s still so sparse, there’s not a sense of oh, it’s common. It’s hard to say when the tipping point is going to be, it’s like the movement from the horseless carriage to the automobile. You know, cars were foreign, it was like, how can this possibly move without this horse. It’s going to be the same thing at some point. People aren’t going to talk about solar energy, it’s just going to be energy.”
Marketing Consultant and Jefferson County resident Sean O’Leary, says the numbers involving jobs in coal just don’t add up.
“From the time West Virginia hit its peak in employment in 1940 with about 130,000 jobs, we have dropped down to only about 19,000 jobs now,” explained O’Leary, “but in the meantime, the extraction of coal has actually increased. The bottom line is that employment in the coal industry has not ever, at least since 1929, been driven by the volume of coal that’s being extracted, and so consequently when politicians say that by defending the industry and increasing the…helping to increase the use of coal, they’re defending West Virginia jobs, it simply isn’t true.”
The conversation about how the new EPA regulations will impact the country will continue at a public hearing in Washington DC on July 29th. The Sierra Club is sponsoring a bus to take Eastern Panhandle residents who are interested in attending.
Jefferson County commissioners are considering banning large music festivals in the county.
County commissioner Dale Manuel tells The Herald-Mail of Hagerstown, Md., that problems at the 2011 All Good Festival in Preston County prompted the commission to look at banning such events.
Organizers of the festival had planned to hold it near Kabletown in Jefferson County in 2014. They notified the commission earlier this month that they were withdrawing those plans because the owners of the property were unable to come to terms on a lease.
Manuel says the 2011 festival cost Preston County taxpayers $250,000. He says there also were traffic problems and festival goers filled three area jails.
Masontown was home for The All Good Festival from 2003 to 2011 before moving to Thornville, Oh. in 2012 and 2013. Festival organizers recently announced they will take a year off in 2014 with plans to return in 2015 at an unspecified venue.
Lead organizers Tim Walther and Junipa Contento say they hope to bring All Good back to the mid-Atlantic region in 2015.
