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ELKINS – The Randolph County Commission approved a funding request from the Mountain State Forest Festival during its regular meeting this week.
Mountain State Forest Festival Executive Director Heidi Bray gave a presentation to the Commission and requested the amount of $10,000 from budgeted RCC funds.
“The money will help offset costs for all events, and in between this year and next year, we are looking to purchase more folding chairs, the white folding ones,” Bray said. “We have approximately 150 and some of them have been damaged and are sitting in the trash pile.”
Commissioners David Kesling, Cris Siler and Kenna Barger unanimously approved the amount of $10,000 requested by the Forest Festival, with $5,000 coming out of the Forest Festival line item and $5,000 out of the hotel-motel tax line item in the county budget.
“We budgeted $5,000 out of our general budget for this when we did our budget last year, and then we budgeted out of the hotel-motel,” Kesling said. “The hotel-motel is a tax that we collect on the hotels, motels and airbnbs that are outside the city limits of Elkins. We split that money with Anne (Beardslee) at the (Elkins-Randolph County Tourism( CVB. It is stated what we can and can’t use that money for, and one of the things is to help promote tourism with the Forest Festival. So, you have local tax dollars and the local hotel-motel tax helping support the Forest Festival.”
Bray said the MSFF has estimated the price for 150 new chairs and their storage dollies at $7,000.
“We use the chairs for the opening and closing ceremonies, and we are looking to add a little bit nicer chairs for coronation. We currently use the metal chairs for that event and most of them are falling apart and are not safe,” Bray said. “We could also probably use some more 8-foot tables. We lug those things all across Elkins for the entire week of Festival and on Saturday we never seem to have enough.”
Kesling mentioned to Bray that he saw the new Forest Festival flags hanging throughout the downtown area, and asked if people could purchase those flags.
“Not the flags that are on the poles,” Bray told Kesling. “But this year we did get the house flags and garden flags. It’s been 10 years since we had (house and garden flags) and Tammy Dolly at the Delmonte helped make that possible. They can be purchased at the Festival office or the Delmonte.”
Bray said two of this year’s Mountain State Forest Festival events get underway today.
“Our first events are Saturday. We have Woody’s Great Gravel Adventure and it’s our second year with that,” Bray said. “Last year we had 66 people registered for that, and as of this morning we had 83 registered. One guy is coming from Paris, France. So that’s quite a way to come and ride a bike, but we are glad he’s coming to join us… We also have the tennis and pickleball tournament this weekend that will be held in the City Park and the new courts at D&E.”
Woody’s Great Gravel Adventure is an annual bike race that features challenging and scenic routes through the Monongahela National Forest. Part of the course climbs up Bickle Knob. The race is part of the West Virginia Gravel Series.
The next Randolph County Commission meeting will be Oct. 1 at 1:30 p.m.