Jefferson County lost a truly fine citizen with the death of Dale Manuel a couple of weeks ago.

I served with Dale for 12 years in the House of Delegates, from 1992 until 2004. We worked together on many ideas to make West Virginia and Jefferson County better, and brought some of them to fruition.

Dale helped me get elected to the Legislature in 1982. While I was defeated for re-election in 1984, Dale was elected (from a different district) in 1988, and the Jefferson County Commission wanted to be able to levy impact fees on new development.

Charlie Clendening, then president of the Jefferson County Commission, asked me if I would lobby the Legislature in Charleston for the passage of a bill to be called the “Local Powers Act.” It was to be sponsored by Dale and State Senator Sondra Lucht. Even though I was to be paid barely enough to cover my expenses, I eagerly agreed. Dale and Sondra were masterful in getting the bill through, and to this day Jefferson is the only one of the state’s 55 counties eligible to levy impact fees.

I was once again elected to the House of Delegates in 1992, and a few years later I worked with Dale to get state money to build a second high school for our county. Jefferson High School, which was built in 1970 for 900 students, had seen its student population grow to over 2,000. But the state School Building Authority refused the high school’s request for help, arguing that since West Virginia was losing population we didn’t need more high schools. How nonsensical! Jefferson County had grown from 21,000 population in 1970 to 42,000 in 2000, and was still growing.

Dale and I looked for a workaround. Governor Bob Wise promoted a bill to take $200 million of Lottery Fund surplus money to bond dozens of economic development projects around the state. Dale and I persuaded the legislative leadership to make K-12 education eligible for that money. Jefferson County got $6 million to build what became Washington High School. People all over the state were apoplectic that our county got “economic development” money for a high school. The Charleston Gazette skewered us editorially. Our response was that education is the key to economic development.

Another issue upon which we worked together was a constitutional amendment that would have reduced the terms of the county commissioners in our state from six years to four. The idea got nowhere. Dale left the Legislature in 2004 to serve the first of two six-year terms on the Jefferson County Commission. He continued to believe that those terms should have been for four years each.

Dale and I also began working for locality pay for teachers and other public employees. That still needs to be accomplished.

Dale was active with the Jefferson County Senior Center, the Boys and Girls Club, the Animal Welfare Society and many other volunteer endeavors. After leaving the Jefferson County Commission, he served on the county’s Parks and Recreation Commission.

Jefferson County could use a few more Dale Manuels.

John Doyle is a 26-year former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates. He can be reached at rjohndoyle@comcast.net.