Follansbee eyes new grant to tackle dilapidated properties
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FOLLANSBEE - City officials are considering applying for another round of state funding to address dilapidated structures in the community.
The issue was among those discussed during Monday’s Follansbee Council-as-a-whole meeting, where Ward 3 Councilman Nick Cekinovich, who also chairs the city’s Building Enforcement Committee, raised the possibility of seeking additional funds through the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection’s Dilapidated Properties Program, also known as DLAP.
“We’ve been talking about this the last few months,” Cekinovich said, noting the city had exhausted the funds from its previous grant.
Follansbee previously was awarded nearly $170,000 through the program, which is administered through the DEP’s REAP program and is geared toward building demolition and waste disposal, asbestos testing and removal, and title work, if needed.
Cekinovich said he hopes to renew the 50-50 approach the city used previously, under which any grant funding would cover half the cost of a demolition, with the property owner paying the other half.
His hope is to have property owners with buildings in poor condition that could qualify for DLAP funding come to the city, particularly through the Building Enforcement Committee, so an assessment can be performed and officials can determine how much funding to seek.
“We’ll come up with a scoring sheet,” Cekinovich said. “We’ll have to list a certain number of properties, anyway, to apply.”
City Attorney Michael Gaudio asked whether commercial properties could be considered for grant funding. Cekinovich said that when the city received its previous grant, officials were discouraged from including commercial sites because the emphasis was on residential properties.
Follansbee was awarded its initial grant in 2024, with a portion of the funding most recently used to demolish the former American Legion Post 45 building on Main Street. A total of eight structures were demolished in Follansbee through the grant program, which was launched in West Virginia in 2021.