Morgantown receives grant to renovate city hall

The city of Morgantown has received grant funding to make Morgantown City Hall handicapped-accessible, which will allow government meetings to be held there after several years off-site.

State Sen. C.B. Embry, R-Morgantown, recently announced that the city would receive a $237,700 Community Development Block Grant from the Kentucky Department of Local Government.

"I'm excited and I think that will give them the opportunity to make their building compliant with current standards," Embry said.

In recent years, Morgantown has not been able to hold government meetings at City Hall because the building is not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, which requires public accommodations to be accessible to people with disabilities, Embry said.

In a Facebook post, Embry said "the city plans to add a new elevator, upgrade restrooms, visual and audio aids, ramps and other necessary actions to comply with present standards. These funds will go a long way to ensuring that Morgantown and Morgantown City Hall have the necessary capacity to adequately serve the entire community under modern standards."

City council member Russell Givens said City Hall needs to have an elevator installed because the second-floor city council chambers is inaccessible to anyone who can't climb a flight of stairs.

"It's got a second floor that, if you're handicapped, you can't get up there," he said.

For several years, all Morgantown government meetings have been at the Eva J. Hawes Agriculture Exposition and Community Center. As a result, the city cannot lease the center as an event venue as often as it would like, Givens said.

"If someone wanted to rent the building out the second Thursday of the month, they can't because there's a council meeting that night," he said. "This will help out our community and it will put a little money on the city side."

According to city administrator Jerrod Barks, the city holds about seven meetings a month in the Hawes Center.

Both Barks and Mayor Billy Phelps said they otherwise could not comment on the grant because neither has received official word from the Department of Local Government regarding the grant.

City council member Sterling White said renovating City Hall will figure into Morgantown Renaissance, an initiative to revitalize downtown Morgantown.

Morgantown hopes that renovating city hall makes the town more attractive and encourages others to invest more in their businesses in the downtown area, he said.

"It's about having a plan and saying we want to clean up our image and present ourselves to the world," he said.