Two Republican candidates hope to have a seat on the Logan County Commission by this time next year.
Huff Creek resident Billy Jack Dickerson and Chapmanville resident Jeremy Farley are facing off to win the Republican Party’s nomination for Logan County Commission when voters head to the polls in the May 10 primary election. The winner will challenge the winner of the Democrat Party’s primary (either Ralph Rodighero or Bill Copley) in the Nov. 8 general election.
The general election winner will succeed incumbent Danny Ellis, who chose not to run for a third term. The winner will take office Jan. 1, 2023, and will serve a six-year term.
Billy Jack Dickerson
Billy Jack Dickerson, of Davin, is a retired educator of nearly 32 years who taught environmental science at Man High School and served as the school’s athletic director for six years. Before obtaining his bachelor’s degree in secondary education from Concord University, Dickerson worked jobs in commercial and residential construction and in the mining industry as a certified surface miner.
A survivor of the Buffalo Creek Flood, Dickerson, now 60, said he chose to run for county commission based off his life experience.
Dickerson said he has held a passion for community service, beginning with the Boy Scouts when he was just a child.
If elected, Dickerson would also be the first person from the Man area to serve on the county commission since 1988.
Dickerson said that adding a representative from Man also factored into his decision to run; however, he said the entire county has a line of issues he feels he’d like to tackle.
“Our county as a whole needs help,” Dickerson said, “and I think my experiences through life have provided me with a skillset to where I can be of some help, at least in my mind, and a lot of folks, my family, thinks that as well, so I just thought, well, let’s just see.”
Dickerson cited the region’s drug epidemic, which he described as complex.
“... There’s wealthy folks, people living under a bridge, there’s all races, all age ranges, but in that, there has to be a common denominator,” Dickerson said. “Nobody wakes up one morning and goes, ‘Hey, you know what? I think I’ll start being a junkie today.’ Nobody does that. Nobody goes from never having done anything to sticking a needle in their arm or snorting something up their nose or whatever is going on there. There’s a series of steps that leads to that, so what’s the trigger? Is it despair? Is it an economic situation? What is it? You’ve got to sit down and go, ‘Is there anything in this world that these people have in common?’ And if you can find that, or if you can find those, whatever they may be, or it may be, then you’ve got a place that you can start chipping away.”
Citing the loss of student population he witnessed over the years just as an educator, Dickerson said county leaders need to figure out ways to stem the exodus of young people.
“We’re losing population, obviously,” Dickerson said. “We’ve got to try to figure out how to keep our best and brightest here, because you just see it and these folks are going and they’re getting trained, whether it be a skilled trade or some type of professional degree. There’s not very many of them staying in Logan County.”
Dickerson said people need to feel secure where they live, and the county’s Sheriff’s Department needs to be well-trained, well-staffed and well-supported.
Dickerson said the county has some much-needed infrastructure issues, such as public sewage service at Huff Creek where he currently lives.
“People want to have good solid infrastructure,” Dickerson said. “They don’t want to have water issues. They don’t want to have power outages. They don’t want to have internet issues. They want good dependable utilities. They want clean.”
Regarding litter, Dickerson said mindsets need to change, noting that areas like Greenbrier and Pocahonas counties are much cleaner. He said he often found success with an Earth Day project he held with his environmental science students, describing it as a “gut punch” to them. He said the county needs more free dump days.
Dickerson said he feels the county needs to provide more for its elderly population, speaking from his own experience with his 83-year-old father.
“There is nowhere to go to get any human help,” Dickerson said, “so we had to, basically, hire one of our family members to come in and be with my dad. My brother currently lives with him, but he has to work, and I manage all his paperwork and things, and it was almost impossible, and everybody we called said the same thing, so I think there maybe needs to be some coordination with Southern (West Virginia Community and Technical College) or maybe even the vocational school to train folks so that there is a cadre of potential candidates who can help out with the elderly if need be. I’m sure there’s grant money out there for that kind of things.”
On the other side of the coin, Dickerson said the county needs to come up with more things to provide for the youth, noting that more activities for them usually means less trouble out of them.
On the county’s regional jail bill, Dickerson said he is in favor of utilizing inmates for community service to help offset the cost. He noted that such a program could also help with the litter issue.
“I just don’t understand why we don’t at least try to utilize — and offset some of that cost — utilize the manpower that is those folks that are incarcerated,” Dickerson said. “It makes perfect sense to me because I know it can be done. They do it in other states, they do it in other counties, but if you mention doing it in Logan County, it’s as if you’ve cursed a church or something and there’s always that idea that we ‘can’t do that.’ Why can’t we do it? ‘Well, we don’t have anybody to supervise …’ Well, then let’s get somebody to supervise, and let’s take these folks out here, and this litter problem that we’re talking about and let’s work on that. Let’s do that.”
Dickerson also noted transparency as a hallmark of his campaign. He said he is in favor of having a website where every piece of the county’s annual budget and expenditures are listed.
On the budget, Dickerson said his first order of business would be to take a close inspection and discuss possible ways the money could be saved or redirected to something else.
Jeremy Farley
Chapmanville resident Jeremy Farley is currently employed by the Logan County Commission in a substance abuse prevention role, serving as director of the PIECES Coalition, which is now merging with the Logan County Prevention Coalition. Farley has previously served on Chapmanville Town Council and the Logan County Board of Education from 2016-2022, where he served as president from 2020 until his resignation in 2022.
Farley is a 2001 graduate of Chapmanville High School. He has a bachelor’s degree in political science from Marshall University and a master’s degree in public administration from West Virginia University.
“I want to see a brighter future for Logan County,” Farley said. “I think that I can, personally, due to my experience, I think that I’m the best person to serve in that role and help change the direction of the county.”
Farley said the biggest overall goals are economic development, good-paying jobs and more transparency in county government. Other priorities he mentioned include dilapidated housing and littering.
“(Littering is) a topic that there’s been a lot of discussion on over the past 20 years, but very little has happened,” Farley said. “Number one, we need people to actually pick up the litter. We need both paid employees who are assigned to the county or state. We need volunteers, and I think that we need to develop a program for nonviolent offenders to be sentenced to community service to pick up litter on public properties.”
On dilapidated housing, Farley said the number one priority is making sure a clear legal process is in place.
“It should never be easy to take anybody’s property, but the goal would be to have those homeowners clean up the property, the landowners, to clean up the property themselves,” Farley said. “If they fail to do that and go through the legal process, then have money set aside to clean up that property and either have the homeowner or landowner pay that money back or auction that property off and recoup the money and put it back into a system to continue working on those houses.”
Farley said the county can better foster economic development by supporting small businesses and local entrepreneurs.
“I think we need to look at how we can build entrepreneurs and more small businesses and take care of our small businesspeople in the county,” Farley said. “I think, number one, is they (the county commission) give a lot of money to the Economic Develop Authority and we need to have a clear understanding of what that money is going for and a very clear plan of what the EDA is doing to create jobs and make economic development possible.”
Farley said the tourism industry has helped the area substantially, but those jobs are often seasonal. He said he’d like to see more manufacturing jobs in the region.
“Where we can produce something, we should,” Farley said. “For example, we have the wood plant. I don’t know all the economic reasons why the wood plant is not operational now, but we need to be looking at ways to revamp that and get people into those facilities. There is the every two-year Twin Branch Drag Strip that’s a topic of conversation. It would not be a primary manufacturing type of job, but I would be something that, I think, you would get that tourism dollar and it could help build additional restaurants and hotels, motels, and bring travelers into the area who are going to spend dollars and help build additional things here.”
Farley said the area also has agricultural opportunities, noting hemp and food production.
For small businesses, Farley said more opportunities like small business loans need to be available.
“I think trying to get small business entrepreneurs, to get them trained and have small business loans available, to where we can have more people working for themselves and have jobs that they really like,” Farley said. “The old style of going to work for a coal company and working 30 years and retiring is gone. The new economy just doesn’t do that, but we want to make sure that we protect our coal jobs and natural gas, timber, we want to protect those jobs to the extent that we can, but we just have to look for other opportunities. I think we have people looking for a place to land. We just have to be attractive to them.”
Farley said he would like to see commission meetings moved to later in the evening. He also noted technical issues with the commission’s Facebook livestream.
“I think the county needs to publicize all these boards and commissions that are out there that they appoint people to,” Farley said. “The public needs to know what commissions or boards are out there, who is currently serving on them, and how would you be considered, in the future, for an appointment to one of those boards or committees.”
Farley said the regional jail problem needs to be reformed at the state level.
“That has to be addressed with the governor and West Virginia Legislature to find a more equitable solution to the problem,” Farley said. “I think they should remodel it to where the state picks up a majority of the tab, but I do think the counties should have skin in the game so that they can’t just lock everybody up.”
Farley said he’d like to see the county place more emphasis on senior citizens.
“We have a significant aged population, and I know that PRIDE has a program attempting to engage those seniors, as well as the Town of Chapmanville, but I would like to see more programming to try to re-engage a lot of those seniors that have so much experience, that they still have a lot to offer, but lots of times, they just need an avenue to help or a place to go,” Farley said.
