ELKINS — During Elkins City Council’s first regular meeting of 2020 the city entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Monongahela National Forest.

Resolution 1297 is an agreement between Elkins and the Monongahela National Forest to “create a shared outdoor recreation vision for each county and the greater regions surrounding the Mon Forest,” said Taira Landavere, marketing director for Elkins-Randolph County Tourism and a representative of the City of Elkins within this memorandum.

“In 2016, the Monongahela National Forest, with the U.S. Forest Service in partnership with the West Virginia University Extension Service of Rural Tourism office as well as the USDA Rural Development, began bringing ‘Mon Forest towns,’ per say, together,” Landavere told The Inter-Mountain.

“A lot of the towns that are involved in this partnership are located within the forest, or at least are considered gateway communities, where they’re maybe 10 to 15 minutes away from the forest,” she continued. “They’re the ones that have the dining, the shopping and are just kind of a link between the forest and the towns.”

Landavere, who attended Thursday’s Council meeting, began working for Elkins-Randolph County Tourism in April 2018 and has been involved with this project from the beginning.

“During that time, we had multiple community meetings to gather ideas on what it looks like for Elkins and, this past year, the main facilitators of the partnership, which is basically the Forest Service and the WVU Extension office, had asked the towns to nominate a representative,” said Landavere. “A survey was sent out for the individuals who had been involved in these community meetings and that’s kind of how I became nominated.”

The other towns included in this partnership are Thomas, Davis, Parsons, Franklin, Petersburg, Marlinton, White Sulphur Springs, Cowen and Richwood.

“We all want the forest to be marketed better so the facilitators kind of had this idea and they’ve been a big part in getting everybody together, getting a shared vision,” said Landavere. “(The MOU) wanted City Council to just give their blessing, to basically say, ‘We do want this to happen, we see the benefit of it.”

“The City of Elkins does not provide any types of financial help for this partnership,” Landavere explained. Instead, a three-year Benedum grant will fund aspects of the partnership, such as hiring a professional to build a website.

• Also during the meeting, city council took up Resolution 1298, pertaining to a raise in compensation for the Elkins Fire Department’s Chief Tom Meader from $48,000 annually to $55,000 per year. Meader had not received a raise since August 2015.

This resolution passed unanimously, and Second Ward Councilman Charlie Friddle noted, “I’d like to thank Chief Meader for his service and we really appreciate the job you do and, unfortunately, we didn’t respond the way we should have in a timely manner (…) for your compensation.”