WHEELING — As Wheeling’s homeless have taken up residence at the exempted campsite near the maintenance trail along Wheeling Creek, city officials have released the total cost of previous camp cleanups, which falls just under $90,000 for seven months.

The cleanup money was taken from the city’s General Fund and Sanitation Fund, with City Manager Robert Herron explaining that these funds would have been committed to other city projects. The total amount of taxpayer funds spent is $87,846.11.

The wide-scale cleaning effort began in September 2023 when city crews took to Wheeling Heritage Trail to clean up a “major campsite” that had developed along it, according to Herron. All cleanups occurred after a minimum of 14 days’ notice.

Cleanup sites were located along Heritage Trail, on Wheeling Island, in East Wheeling near the Nelson Jordan Center, the King’s Daughters Child Care Center, the Wheeling Central Gymnasium and in Fulton. Once city crews had cleared one site, they advanced to the next area that needed cleaning.

According to Herron, cleanup efforts included using backhoes, a dump truck and a loader to remove “just under 200 tons” of material from the sites.

“The cleanup was basically just taking all the material off the public property of various sites around town,” explained Herron. “This involved picking up a lot of tents, bicycles and other general items left behind (by the homeless).”

One notable item on the bill was the cost of significant damage to a fence owned by the state at the first exempted campsite for the homeless in Wheeling on 18th Street. The $1,190 cost of repairs for the fence was added to the total.

In addition to removing tents and other possessions left behind, needles and feces had to be cleaned from the sites. Due to the presence of these hazardous materials, cleanup could be performed “only by machinery,” noted Herron.

With cleanups completed this month, Herron described the total released by the city on Tuesday afternoon as the “accumulation of all the compiled cleanup information.”

“We had some people ask us, ‘What was the cost of cleaning up these camps?’ So we decided to put that information together now that we’re done,” explained Herron. “The goal here is that we should not incur this expense going forward because the ban on camping on public property ordinances is in place.”

The exempted site on the maintenance trail is the only active site or camp on public property in Wheeling.

Herron said that “things are going well so far” at the new exempted site, which opened on April 9.

Wheeling Homeless Liaison Melissa Adams could not be reached for comment on Tuesday regarding the homeless site cleanups.

In addition to the cost of camp cleanups, city officials released data from Ohio County’s Point-In-Time survey conducted by the Northern Panhandle Continuum of Care. The survey measures the number of people experiencing homelessness who are sheltered in emergency shelters, transitional housing and Safe Havens on a single night. Each count is planned, coordinated and carried out locally.

The CoC’s Wheeling survey was completed on a single night in January, with a preliminary count of 125 people. According to the CoC, 88 were believed to be associated with outdoor homelessness.

The complete survey data will be available from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in November.