Program addressing substance abuse to occupy third floor of courthouse

A new nonprofit group that intends to tackle substance abuse and addiction among young people in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle has won approval to occupy the third floor of the historic Berkeley County Courthouse.

Formed Dec. 28, American Restorative Justice Initiative is expected to pay Berkeley County Council $1,000 per month for the space.


The county council unanimously approved the request Thursday. Council member Douglas Copenhaver Jr. recused himself because he is president of the organization.

Council President William L. Stubblefield said after the vote that the lease rate was proposed by ARJI and that the county did not have standards in place for deciding rental rates.

Last year, the county began charging the Eastern Panhandle Regional Planning and Development Council (Region 9) between $9 and $11 per square foot for the space it occupies in the county’s administration building, according to County Administrator Deborah Hammond.

Other entities such as the Berkeley County Farmland Protection Board and the Eastern Panhandle Inland Port Coalition are provided space in the county’s Dunn Building at 400 W. Stephen St. in return for in-kind services, officials said. Blue Ridge Community and Technical College leases the first floor of the building.

Stubblefield acknowledged that the county did not calculate the square footage of the space being leased by American Restorative Justice Initiative, but said the organization will be “highly complimentary” to the drug court that is being launched in the community.

“We have an epidemic of drug use in the county ... anything we can do to address this, I think we should,” Stubblefield said.

The amount the justice initiative would pay in rent annually — $12,000 — is the amount the group requested from the county in a budget presentation, Stubblefield confirmed.

While the rental rates can be adjusted in the future, Stubblefield said he hoped to establish a precedent for use of the old courthouse, instead of following what has been done at the Dunn Building.

“How soon I don’t know, but somewhere down the line, (County Clerk) John Small is going to be moving over here (to the Dunn Building) ... and then there’s going to be a lot of folks saying ‘let’s get access to the old courthouse.’”

The planned move by Blue Ridge CTC from the Dunn Building this summer to the school’s new campus along W.Va. 45 is expected to make the relocation of Small’s office possible.

Stubblefield said the county has been approached in the past by nonprofits to rent space, but the organizations changed their mind.

The county’s decision to rent space to an organization is dependent upon “the nature of the business” that would be conducted, Stubblefield said.

ARJI said it intends to use community resources and ethics-based intervention education to help individuals struggling with substance and alcohol abuse.

At the end of Thursday’s meeting, county legal counsel Norwood Bentley III said Copenhaver did not have to recuse himself from the vote, given a related advisory opinion from the West Virginia Ethics Commission.