The Wheeling City Council convened to address the impending closure of the homeless camp on December 1st, approve emergency water tank repairs, and discuss major infrastructure projects. A significant portion of the meeting focused on approving opioid settlement funds for the Life Hub and Salvation Army to operate a temporary housing shelter, with Council members insisting on strict performance benchmarks before releasing full funds. The Vice Mayor and City Manager also provided updates on leaf collection schedules, the Washington Avenue Bridge closure, and downtown lighting improvements.
I could go on all day. I'll leave it at that. But if we're going to invest this kind of money, which I think is not a bad investment, I think we need to make sure that we put the right guardrails around it to ensure that people are actually getting help and not just funding new jobs by Katie City. Thanks, Mayor. Thank you. Councilor King. I would like to penny back off of what Ben, Mr. Saddler said today. This is an opportunity for the city and all the organizations that came out against us at the last meeting regarding the camp. There's people out here who actually has gotten housing and they've been put back out because they don't have the social skills or the information how to keep their apartments and clean and stuff. So some people are getting in there, but they're back out here. And we need some services to teach them how to maintain their apartment. And I'm with then, you know, we have to see movement to come in here and may have because we closed the camp up on December 1st, but there's no other alternative because nobody is helping, you know, and we keep taking taking more people in and more people in. We have to worry about what we have now because if we don't, we're gonna be like California where nobody can get around nowhere because there's gonna be too many people. And at this point, we need to focus on what's out there now, what's at the Life Hub now, and get that moving forward. We're willing to work with anyone, but we have to see that not just come here at a meeting to say we're doing the wrong thing or we're mean or non-godly, but that you're willing to move forward to help these people move forward. And like Ben said, it's it's just a paycheck for someone to babysit. That's not helping people. We need to help them get back on their feet. Now you can't help everybody, and we understand that. But there is people out here that can get help and will maintain as seen on street moms, two people to sleep are in recovery and bought new cars. So it is possible to get people help and get them going. So we have to work together, and that's all I have to say. Thank you. Uh next on the agenda, we have the court of the city manager. Oh, got the vice mayor. One jury, it's okay. We didn't already have a new chair. Uh thank you, uh, mayor. Um, I'm uh gonna change the subject to leaves. I've been getting a lot of phone calls and my ward and people stopping me. Uh the city is is going to be picking up the leaves in Woodsdale. We don't have to worry, it'll start tomorrow and it'll go into Thursday. So if you have any leaves that need to be picked up in Woodsville, it the truck will be there on tomorrow, Wednesday, and Thursday for two days. Uh, thank you very much. And um, you know, I the homeless issue is just one of these situations where no matter what we do, people are not gonna be happy with us. It it's one of the it's an unfortunate um circumstance that wheeling and the rest of the country is going through. Uh and you know, whatever we can do as a city council to alleviate the problem, we will do that. But please remember we're city council members, we're not social workers, we're not on the ground floor. The only thing we can do is is write basically the rules, allocate funds in ways that we think is appropriate. Um that's all we can do. I mean, we we're trying our best here, and we're open to any solutions that these service providers have. We provided that exempted area with the hopes that someone would step up and manage the camp numerous times. The city and service providers spoke about managing the camp, but for whatever reason it never happened, and now here we are. There's a lot of blame that we could um I think go around for everyone, and I understand that, but we as we are not um the only player in this. Uh we need to come together as a community and offer some solutions short-term and long term. Uh but we're in this together, and I gotta say the last time we were here, it the tone was a lot better than two years ago. So I appreciate that very much. It's not something that I could that went on that did not go unnoticed. Um, but you know, I think we need to do hopefully take a step forward together.