Fire Code Violations Cause House Condemnations

[Coramoor]

As a member of Beta at WVU, I'll be the first to say that some of the houses were not in the greatest shape by any means.

However, the school is under a land crunch right now with the Fraternities occupying some of the most valuable land in town.

Right now the school is trying to promote a 'Greek Village' which will displace fraternities that have a 100+ year heritage in their current location.

This is just another example of a land grab by schools at the cost of displacing Greeks.

[33girl]

Do the Greek houses currently pay property tax to Morgantown? If they go into the Greek Village, will that be considered on campus (i.e. no property tax needs to be paid)?

If that's the case, I would make the townspeople aware that they may lose beaucoup $$$ if that plan goes through...

[Coramoor]

As far as I know, there is no property tax. However I could be completely mistaken.

I don't think that it would matter in any event b/c WVU OWNS Morgantown. Whatever they want, they get.

Even in the event that we do pay taxes, the new location would still be within city limits so no tax revenue would be lost.

[kchaptergphib]

I don't pretend to know the specifics of WVU, but at many schools, the land under the fraternity houses is owned by each respective fraternity/house corp board, and thus pays taxes to the city like other homeowners. If the university were to buy the land, however, the university would not pay taxes (or would pay significantly less than the current hcb pays). And, the value of the new land ( = tax assessment) that the fraternities would move to would likely not be as high as the value of the land closer to the university where they used to be.

They were trying to sell people on the idea of a Greek Village a few years ago when I was at Minnesota. Tear down 120 year-old mansions for a greek village/dorm style housing??!! No, thank you!

A problem we're having at Wisconsin now is that ( in an effort to crack down on house parties) the fire department has attached an arbitrary number of 99 members as being each house's capacity. The thing is, many houses have more than 120 members. Obviously, they don't all live-in, but just at weekly meetings they could be breaking the fire codes by having all their members present and in one area!

[Tom Earp]

I often wonder if this is not just a way for the Town to see how far they can force the GLOs off of campus?

What about nursing homes or appartments with out sprinkler systems?

Do they hone in on Greeks? Of course they do.

The town and schools are under the impresitions that We are laden with money!

Morons!