BUCKHANNON — City of Buckhannon utility customers will see a $3 decrease in their bill come April 2020.

Buckhannon City Council formally voted Thursday to retire the Municipal Public Safety Complex fee effective March 31.

Mayor David McCauley said that the citizens had paid the fee for roughly the last 15 years to pay off the bonds used to renovate the former Foodland into the Buckhannon Public Safety Complex housing the Buckhannon Fire Department and Buckhannon Police Department.

“We have the best Public Safety Complex in all of West Virginia in an old Foodland supermarket,” McCauley said.

The property had appraised for $2 ¢ million and the city made an offer to the bank which foreclosed on the property for $600,000. The bank countered at $607,500 and the city bought the Foodland building and site.

Renovations took another $2 million with the BFD moving in first and the BPD later.

“Over the past 15 years, the citizens of our community have largely paid the freight to make those bond payments,” he said. “As of the end of March, we will have paid off our bonds and the fee is scheduled to be sunset. It will go away automatically unless this council were to renew the fee.”

McCauley teased the idea in his State of the City address of not retiring the debt in full, but establishing some financing for the maintenance of the Public Safety Complex and Stockert Youth and Community Center.

“Further conversation with Amby [Jenkins, director of finance and administration] has revealed something important,” he said. “The amount of $3 a month we had been realizing over the last 15 years from our citizens had not been enough to completely pay the bonds.”

Roughly $40,000-$45,000 a year came from the General Fund to make up the difference to pay off the bonds.

That means when the city makes its final bond payment, that frees up that money from the General Fund.

“Recognizing that, my recommendation to the council is we retire the Public Safety Complex bonds in their entirety and we not renew any part of that indebtedness towards any maintenance fee, but as part of the upcoming budgetary process we look closely at those line items for repairs and maintenance to the Public Safety Complex and to the Stockert Youth and Community Center,” McCauley said.

Councilman David Thomas agreed with McCauley that the mayor’s recommendation made sense but also pointed to another revenue source the city will begin seeing later this spring when the municipal sales tax installments begin coming to the city.

Thomas said, “I think we also have to take a look at we have a sales tax that has been implemented. We need to take a look at our finances over the next 12 months to see what the impacts are going to be everywhere. Let it (the Public Safety Complex fee) be sunset and we will move forward and take a look at the sales tax impact for our future.”

Councilman C.J. Rylands moved to retire the Municipal Public Safety Complex fee as of March 31, 2020, seconded by councilman Robbie Skinner. The motion passed unanimously.

Two more motions were also approved unanimously.

Thomas moved, seconded by city recorder Randy Sanders to not establish a maintenance fee for the Public Safety Complex.

Lastly, Thomas with a second from Skinner moved to not establish a maintenance fee for SYCC.