Public Private Partnerships Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Private Company To Operate All Summersville Lake State Park Facilities

ssions like horse stables and zip lines have operated in state parks. Recently passed legislation now allows a third party to be a full partner in overall park concession financing, development and operations. Department of Natural Resources Director Brett McMillion said Summersville Lake State Park was created and designated to be the target park for this project.

For years private concessions like horse stables and zip lines have operated in state parks. Recently passed legislation now allows a third party to be a full partner in overall park concession financing, development and operations.

Department of Natural Resources Director Brett McMillion said Summersville Lake State Park was created and designated to be the target park for this project.

“We have an opportunity to utilize some of those private sector dollars in funding,” McMillion said. “And not be such a strain on our tax dollars and our operating funds.”

McMillion said input from Tuesday’s public meeting on the proposal will be critical to development. He said the goal is creating an outdoor recreation showplace that capitalizes on the unique activities in the Summersville Lake area.

“Summersville Lake is nationally known for its rock climbing, so we’re certainly going to be a listening and willing partner with that side of it,” McMillion said. “We’d like to see camping, unique lodging opportunities, maybe some nearby cabins.”

Other public comments included using green energy and creating safe access to the park from busy Route 19.

The lake shoreline is controlled by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The Corps boundary around the lake does not put any of the 177 park acres to the water’s edge. McMillion said there may be a property leasing agreement down the road.

“That is not uncommon at all with the Corps of Engineers and the DNR,” he said. “So that’s a possibility.”

McMillion said the next steps will be to collect more public comments, comments and create a draft agreement before soliciting proposals from potential vendors. He said he’d like to see some activity on the ground for the next operating season.

“I think it would be possible since we’ll be utilizing some of the private sector’s financing and speed as far as purchasing procurement construction goes,” McMillion said. “We could realize some camping, certainly by next season’s outdoor recreation activities. We may be able to do a prefab visitor center for the interim period until the big one is actually constructed. There’s a strong desire to have a great visitor center right in that area.”

He said there has been a strong push in the park system over the last several years to do as much West Virginia contracting development and employ West Virginia residents as much as they can.

“So, I don’t see any reason this would be any different at all,” McMillion said.

Experts: W.Va. Child Care System Needs More Public/Private Partnerships

West Virginia Child Care providers hope a high-profile partnership convinces more in-state businesses to help subsidize a struggling system.

Directors with the state Bureau for Family Assistance say they help provide child care for nearly 17,000 children a month. About two thirds of the children subsidized by the state child care system are six years old or younger.

During legislative interim meetings, Child Care Program Manager Deidre Craythorne told members of the Joint Committee on Health about 1,300 child care facilities statewide, including homes, established day and evening care centers, and head start centers, are not enough.

She said the Bureau for Family Assistance budget runs at about $60 Million a year. The bureau will lose more than $340 million in combined federal COVID-19 relief funding by fall of 2023. That money has been used to recruit and retain employees, maintain facilities and subsidize client families.

Craythorne said it’s often a challenge for child care centers to remain viable – with enough steady clients to get the bills paid, staff retained and fulfill commitmments of services offered. She hopes more businesses will aspire to the public/private partnership child care model now being forged between the state and steel producing giant Nucor.

“That will help expand things,” Craythorne said. “If we can get more businesses in West Virginia to really understand and appreciate the impact the lack of child care has on their workforce.”

Craythorne had no answer when asked why only about a quarter of potentially eligible West Virginia families take advantage of child care subsidies. About a third of families in the system are at or below the poverty level.

Public Private Partnerships Could Speed Up Corridor H Construction

An economic impact study presented to lawmakers says the state would see a more than $1 billion increase in its economy if Corridor H was completed by 2020 instead of its current 2036 end date. Supporters of the accelerated plan say the money to complete the federally funded roadway is already available.

“I always get this question, well how are you going to pay for it? Well, you folks were able to give us another tool last year that we can now use to accelerate the completion of that highway,” said Steven Foster, president of the Corridor H Authority. “That is the concept of public private partnerships.”

Foster presented the implications of the study released last month to lawmakers during interim meetings at the Capitol.

Today, the construction of the corridor is 100 percent funded by the federal government at a rate of $40 million a year.

By utilizing the public private partnership model, Foster said the Authority would bid out a contract to design, construct and finance the additional miles of highway needed. With private funds, the state could build 10 miles of highway over the next four years and collect the federal dollars over the next 10 years to pay it back.

“(It’s) like buying a house. Very few people have the opportunity to save up all the money it’s going to take to buy their house. They usually have a mortgage and that’s basically what this does,” Foster told the committee.

“It allows you to go ahead and build the highway and let the contractor finance it and be able to put it in place over 10 years of pay back as opposed to the four years that it’s going to take to build it.”

Foster assured legislators through the model the private entity has no ownership claim to the roadway they finance for the state.

Corridor H will be 75 percent complete by next year.