LEWISBURG- West Virginia state treasurer Larry Pack spent Thursday, June 26 hanging out in Lewisburg for much of the day before making his way back to Charleston.
Pack, who has a home on Teaberry Road in Ronceverte with his wife, spent Thursday doing several different things before making his way to the Greenbrier Valley Airport midafternoon.
“It’s been a great day,” Pack said.
This is my second home, we own a home in Ronceverte, and we love it up here so any opportunity to get to Greenbrier County is a good day.”
Pack started the day meeting with Lewisburg mayor Beverly White to discuss issues and improvements the area is facing.
“We talked about all things Lewisburg and the challenges and what they’re working on,” Pack stated.
After the meeting, Pack and his team went to the water plant then had lunch downtown at Del Sol with a couple commissioners where they spent the time talking a little more in depth about Greenbrier County.
“A lot of the things I knew but I didn’t know as much detail, so I learned a lot of the little things that I didn’t know,” Pack said.
The next stop at the offices of the Meadow River Trail excited Pack as he said he spends a lot of time on the Greenbrier River Trail so another trail that will follow the Meadow River will be something that the “area should be excited about.”
When asked about the traffic issues that Lewisburg faces, he confirmed that it has gotten rather tough to get from point A to point B in Lewisburg.
When my wife and I try to get to Wal Mart, we do all kinds of back roads trying to get there and it’s tough. It’s gotten a lot worse since we bought our home up here about 25 years ago. “We’re going to have to do something, but it’s going to have to take state help,” Pack explained.
Speaking of his job as treasurer, Pack has a certain part of the responsibility that he prefers but also knows the challenges he is faced with frequently.
“The best part of the job is getting to travel around West Virginia and mingle with people and get a better understanding of the challenges in other areas. Our state is small, but it’s so diverse as some people have too much water, some don’t have enough, but just the way it’s growing in certain areas is what I like learning about and is the best part.”
“I think the most stressful part is trying to work through the bureaucracy and trying to explain to the bureaucracy why we need to help these people. The bigger government gets, the more they decide their way is the right way and just trying to break through that is really what stresses me out.
Pack shared his thoughts on the future of social security, Medicaid, and Medicare before he began his tour of the airport.
“So much of it depends on what’s in the ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’ as they call it in D.C. I’ve had a lot of discussions with both senators (Shelley Moore Capito and Jim Justice), and they are fighting hard to make sure West Virginia doesn’t get hurt. We’ve got about 400,000 West Virginians on some form of Medicaid so it’s a huge responsibility for our state government. So, what we are hoping is that the changes will be small and it seems like it’s going that way. This bill is thousands of pages so we’re really not going to know until they pass it, but we’re definitely not going to relax,” Pack said.
Before Pack concluded his day, he shared a message that he wanted to make clear.
“I love West Virginians, I love fighting for West Virginians, and any day in Greenbrier County is a good day.”
