CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Charleston Mayor Danny Jones was sworn in for a record fourth term Monday night just hours after the state Supreme Court appointed a three-judge panel to hear a petition calling for his removal.
Jones mainly addressed the city and state’s worn-down roads in his swearing-in speech.
“It’s the biggest problem we face in West Virginia and it’s one we’re going to deal with directly here,” Jones said. “The problem is people don’t want to have to do the painful things that it takes to come up with revenue to do the work.”
Jones also asked for council to set aside $1.1 million for roads projects out of a “rainy day” fund.
“We got projects in line right now. We’re ready to go as soon as council approves it,” he said.
A resident at the city council meeting criticized Charleston’s $2 user fee, especially to senior citizens. Jones countered saying to get rid of such a fee was in his mind completely unreasonable.
“If we didn’t have the user fee we wouldn’t have any road programs,” he said. “We’d have to lay off about 20 to 30 police officers. I talked to the lady who spoke before council. We don’t have the ability to do anything she asked and I think now she understands that.”
Jones also talked about his great-great-grandfathe Henry Clay Dickinson, who served the shortest term as Charleston’s mayor in 1871, dying after one month in office. Jones acknowledged the irony of their disproportionate tenures.
“I didn’t know who my great-great-grandfather was. I had never researched any of that,” Jones said. “Then somebody gave me a biography of him and then I read the biography. Then somebody told me well he was the mayor of Charleston. So I looked at the pictures and there he was.”
All Jones would say about the petition calling for his removal was “I’m going to deal with it as it comes.”
The court set a two-day hearing for late August. The petition was filed by J.T. Thompson, who lost her run for mayor. Only 25 signatures are needed to file such a petition.