The Cabell County Public Library Main Branch in Huntington, West Virginia, on Thursday, July 27, 2023. (Lexi Browning | West Virginia Watch)
Voters in Cabell County on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved an excess school levy that will give more than $30 million for the county’s public schools, parks and libraries, according to unofficial election results from the Cabell County Clerk.
The levy passed with more than 24,000 votes, equating to about 74% of voters approving it in the 2024 general election, according to the results. Its passage comes after months of organizing by local activists, who successfully urged voters to deny a different levy in the May primary that would have reduced funding to the Cabell County Public Library and the Greater Huntington Parks and Recreation District.
Following that failure and after a judicial battle that reached the state’s Supreme Court of Appeals — where justices sided with the school district’s argument that it was under no obligation to pay for parks and libraries — the proposed levy was amended through negotiations with community advocates.
The new one, which voters approved on Tuesday, continues funding for both the parks and libraries at current levels over the next five years.
Overall, the parks will receive nearly $600,000 annually and the libraries will get about $1.86 million in funding. The parks district will also receive 1.8% of any surplus excess levy collections each year while the libraries will see 6.1% of those potential proceeds.
In May, about 64% of voters rejected the levy, marking the first time in about 60 years that an excess education levy had failed in the county. The failure came, at least in part, from organizing by community members, upset by the diminished funding and who felt neglected and left out of the process to create the levy proposal.
That levy would have provided some funding to the parks and libraries — about $200,000 and $1.4 million respectively.
It was an increase from an initial proposal that was approved by the Cabell County Board of Education in August of last year, which would have zeroed out funding for the parks district and cut library allocations down to $195,000 from the $1.7 million the library system received previously.
The attempts to cut the funding came in the face of a $4.5 million budget shortfall for the school district, which leaders have said is the result of enrollment declines as well as the expiration of one-time COVID-19 relief dollars.
Former Cabell County Schools Superintendent Ryan Saxe was a vocal proponent for the cuts to parks and libraries. Saxe served as the district’s superintendent from 2017 to June of this year, when he left to accept a position as the education head in Berkeley County for the 2024-25 school year.
Tim Hardesty, the former superintendent for Mason County, took the position in Cabell County this school year and supported continued funding for parks and libraries under the excess levy.
Just a portion of the excess levy goes toward the parks and libraries; a vast majority of the funds pays for services in schools, including salaries, athletics, job development programs, security and safety measures and more.
If the levy failed on Tuesday evening, the school district would have been unable to propose another one until the next scheduled election in May 2026.
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