BUCKHANNON – The Consolidated Public Works Board approved event requests for the Really Really Free Market and Narcan Day.

Heather Schneider and Missy Daugherty spoke during the March 23 CPWB to highlight the details of their events and receive approval to use city property. Schneider with Really Really Free Market said this would be the seventh year their event has taken place in Buckhannon.

“The Really Really Free Market is here is a quarterly event, once a season, and we typically do our spring, summer and fall events at Jawbone Park, and our winter one at Stockert Youth Center and people get together and give freely to one another, whether that’s goods or services,” Schneider said. “We also like to have a potluck along with it, which we just reinstated since things have been developed as far as COVID goes, like vaccines, but we do keep an eye on things for safety reasons.”

They are hoping to schedule their first market of the season for April 16.

“We do have it penciled in on the calendar just in case you, as the board, agree to us doing these again for 2023; we’ve been doing this for about seven years now,” Schneider said. “The timeframe is usually from about 2 to 5 p.m., but people arrive a little ahead of time to set up, and we stay afterward to clean the park, so we always leave the space better than we found it.”

Daugherty said this would be the second time Narcan Day or Save a Life Day took place in Buckhannon.

“We did it last year for the first time, and we had great success; last year was the first year West Virginia as a whole did it,” Daugherty said. “Every county in the state did it, and we came fifth in the state in the number of kits that we handed out that day – we handed out 626 Narcan kits.”

“We want to do it again this year,” she added. “It’s growing; it’s now not just West Virginia, it is Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio – it’s becoming Appalachia Save a Life Day. As you all are perfectly aware, there’s an opioid crisis in Appalachia, and we’re trying to address it. We’d like to do it again in Jawbone Park this year on Sept. 14.”

The board approved both event requests unanimously.