Month: May 2011

Nixon proclaims day of prayer, remembrance after Joplin tornado

Posted by mpoletti – May 27, 2011

The eyes of Northeast Missouri, the nation and indeed the world remain on Joplin, Mo., in the wake of the massive, deadly tornado that leveled a large chunk of the southwest Missouri city last weekend. Now comes word that Sunday will be set aside as an official State Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the tornado’s victims while a community memorial service is held in Joplin that day.

The Joplin memorial service, which President Barack Obama will attend, will coincide with flags at half-staff at all government buildings in Missouri Sunday.

Nixon said in a proclamation today that the tragedy has touched all Missourians and that Sunday’s dedication gives all Missourians the opportunity to think and pray on its impact.

“In the most trying times of disaster, grief and loss, Missourians come together to provide support, strength and assistance,” Nixon said in a proclamation. “During this day of prayer and this memorial service, I invite all Missourians to pause and remember their neighbors and draw upon the resources of their faith in support of their fellow Missourians.”

I know I often wonder what happened when I see a flag flying at half-staff. If you’re wondering yourself on Sunday, this should answer your question.

Please keep remembering Joplin in your thoughts and prayers, and help as you feel led. And if you know anybody on the most current list of 156 missing persons there, please contact the authorities.

VIDEO: Knox City international volunteer shows off artistic souvenirs

Posted by mpoletti – May 24, 2011

Bill Eyman, a retired farmer and banker from Knox City, has traveled to roughly 80 countries to counsel banks and farmers on a variety of agricultural finance topics. Many of his trips, particularly to developing countries with pervasive poverty, have affected him deeply. But all of his trips have given him a broader understanding of the world, which is reflected in the art and artifacts on the walls and shelves of his beautiful home just south of Knox City.

Below, Eyman gives us a quick tour of the beautiful paintings and other items of interest in his office and the master bedroom.

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Final numbers for Missouri state education funding

Posted by mpoletti – May 19, 2011

There has been much talk this year about what school districts, particularly in this rural corner of the state, can expect to see in the way of state funding cuts. As of May 6, the speculation ended. The Missouri House of Representatives and Senate finalized their operating bills for fiscal 2012, including K-12 education funding.

Numbers were available for the first time at Wednesday’s Hannibal Board of Education meeting, where a breakdown of finalized state education funding was included in a handy-dandy media packet. Here are the new numbers and how they compare to fiscal 2011 appropriations:

Foundation Formula: $3.004 billion (FY11: $3.004 billion)

Small Schools Program: $15 million (FY11: $15 billion)

Transportation: $107.798 million (FY11: $152.798 billion)

Early Childhood & Special Education: $144.66 million (FY11: $135.21 million)

Career Ladder: 0 (FY11: $37.467 million)

Career Education: $50.069 million (FY11: $50.069 million)

Parents as Teachers: $16.2 million (FY11: $13 million)

School District Trust Fund: $760.6 million (FY11: $760.6 million)

Virtual Education: $390,000 (FY11: $715,000)

These numbers echo what school districts have been told for several months: that foundation formula funding — those dollars distributed through the mechanism that, when fully funded, is designed to equalize education funding throughout the state — will be held flat. That’s good news for districts that were anticipating big cuts and had been advised to use their last shot of stimulus funding to make up the difference; now they’ll use that money as a surplus, essentially.

However, it’s not such good news for education fund watchers who had hoped the legislature would do something to address the formula’s inadequate funding. It’s been widely said that if the formula is not addressed within the next year, school districts will face a “funding cliff,” and rural districts will take it on the chin.

Elsewhere in the funding breakdown, the most noticeable cut is the elimination of Career Ladder funding, which provides financial incentives for teachers to tutor or perform other qualifying activities after school. Most of the districts in Northeast Missouri saw this coming. I’ve heard concerns from some, particularly in Lewis County C-1, that it will cut down on tutoring opportunities and potentially jeopardize the students who depend on those. It’s not clear how schools around the region will address that change.

Transportation funding also took a $45 million hit. That’s bad news for rural districts that have extensive transportation needs.

On the bright side, early childhood and special education funding jumped by more than $9 million, which seems to make sense given the increasingly high profile of special education. And Parents as Teachers got more than $3 million back of the massive cuts it previously had taken. Hannibal’s PAT director had noted earlier in the year, when talk of the new early childhood center first began to circulate, that it might all be for naught if the state zeroed out PAT, so this is very good news for them, although she said at Wednesday’s Board of Education meeting that the program would still love to get the rest of their funding back. (Who wouldn’t?)

So that’s the final word from Jefferson City. Time will tell, of course, how each district puts that money to use — and how each district faces next year’s very real threat of even greater cuts.

VIDEO: Living history performers find audience at Palmyra Heritage Day

Posted by mpoletti – May 17, 2011

Monday evening marked the fifth annual Palmyra Heritage Day, with its lineup of re-enactors, music and food. A few new additions this year were crafts, tours of the old Civil War-era Marion County Jail, and an expansion to the block between Big Spring Park and the jail. Still, the living history vignettes in Big Spring Park were the cornerstone of the festivities.

Below is a video with a few highlights of those vignettes.

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MoDOT’s “Bolder Five-Year Direction”: What’s closing, when and where

Posted by mpoletti – May 13, 2011

The Missouri Department of Transportation is unveiling the details of its “Bolder Five-Year Direction” in the coming days at community briefings across the state. Meetings were held yesterday in Monticello and Kahoka; another was scheduled early this morning in Edina, and others are scheduled next week in Monroe City, Bowling Green and Shelbina. Click here for the details on where those briefings will be held (opens in Microsoft Excel).

The details, in short: MoDOT will cut 1,200 jobs (including the 340 it has already cut in the past year), drop more than 740 pieces of equipment and close 135 facilities, including three district offices and 111 maintenance sheds. These moves are expected to save $500 million. The agency has said its current $1.2 billion program scope will contract to $600 million in the face of uncertain state and federal funding; the term “funding cliff” has long been used.

MoDOT’s very helpful Bolder Five-Year Direction page includes current and proposed maps of the agency’s districts and facilities. For comparison’s sake, I drew up a map overlaying the new district boundaries over the current boundaries and noting the facilities closing in the Northeast District. The current boundaries are in black/gray, the new ones in red. (Click to enlarge.)

my-modot-map4As you can see, District 3 — the Northeast District — will keep its Hannibal headquarters but will nearly double in size as it absorbs most of District 2, whose Macon district office will close. The Northeast District will lose two counties to the St. Louis District and one to the Central District, headquartered in Jefferson City.

The new district will lose a total of 15 maintenance sheds, including 10 within the current district’s boundaries. Within the nine Missouri counties The Herald-Whig typically covers, the following maintenance sheds will close (denoted on the map by a black X and listed down the side in my chicken scratch):

• Monroe City (Marion)

• Monticello (Lewis)

• LaBelle (Lewis)

• Luray (Clark)

• Novelty (Knox)

• Frankford (Pike)

• Louisiana (Pike)

• Eolia (Pike)

• Shelbyville (Shelby)

Other sheds closing in the proposed district include one in Audrain County at the district’s southern edge and a total of five in Macon, Linn and Sullivan counties to the west. This leaves each county in the entire district (except Marion) with one shed.

It’s unclear how the maintenance shed closings will affect jobs in each county, but at yesterday’s Lewis County meeting. District Engineer Paula Gough said it’s “reasonable to assume,” for example, that all Monticello and LaBelle employees will be eligible for transfer to the Canton shed (unless they’d prefer to be transferred to a different county because of where they live or other considerations).

Assuming the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission approves the new five-year plan at its next meeting June 8, all of the facility closings and staffing and equipment cuts will be implemented by Dec. 31, 2012, Gough said Thursday.

School stimulus funds in action

Posted by mpoletti – May 12, 2011

Much has been made of the $187 million in federal stimulus funds — owing to the so-called jobs bill — that public schools in Missouri received or are set to receive this spring, their final shot of money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. School districts initially had been advised to hold on to the funds for next year as the legislature slashed an equal amount of money from next year’s budget, but now that school funding has been held flat for next year instead, districts have a little more breathing room.

Canton R-V Superintendent David Tramel said Monday he would use some of that money, which has left the district with a surplus this year to the tune of more than $400,000, to plug a deficit next year. The Lewis County C-1 School District offered a more immediate take on their stimulus funds in a budget amendment approved Wednesday.

The budget amendment includes $41,450 in extra revenue labeled “Title I ARRA.” Lewis County C-1 receives Title I funding because of the proportion of students who receive free or reduced-price lunches, typically the benchmark for poverty. The Title I stimulus funding they received went primarily to employee salaries that are paid with Title I funding — many schools, for example, have reading teachers who focus on Title I students — allowing the district to reduce the money it had budgeted for those salaries. Other stimulus funds were directed to special education purchases. Meanwhile, the Central Office Purchase Service for Technology Improvement was padded.

Other changes in the budget were dollars moved among funds, with the exception of a district match for a grant awarded to the Family and Consumer Science department.

Seeing the much-ballyhooed jobs bill money in action in one of the most cash-strapped Missouri school districts we cover was an interesting glimpse into what this high-level legislative move means to schools and students on the ground.

VIDEO: Hannibal poet demonstrates his craft

Posted by mpoletti – May 9, 2011

Most of the denizens of downtown Hannibal know Jerry Welch as the longtime proprietor of American Decor, but the fixture on South Main has a more enigmatic side as a poet, artist and author of six books. Below, he recites the words of his first children’s book, “Illume and the Moon.”

Five years ago, I had the opportunity to hear then-Poet Laureate Ted Kooser give a reading. Everyone in the room had read something of Kooser’s, and yet, hearing the poems in his own voice stilled the room. In much the same way, hearing one of Welch’s nearly 300 poems in his own voice is nothing like reading it on the page. To hear a poem in the writer’s voice is to hear the writer’s vision. (The recovering English major has spoken.)

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VIDEO: Palmyra Middle School hosts historic naturalization ceremony

Posted by mpoletti – May 6, 2011

A historic and moving scene unfolded at Palmyra Middle School Friday when 10 Northeast Missouri residents — including a British-born art and reading teacher at the middle school — took their oath of U.S. citizenship in the first-ever naturalization ceremony in the Northern Division of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri.

If you ever have the chance to attend one of these, I strongly encourage you to do so. (They’re held at least weekly at the federal courthouse in downtown St. Louis; obviously, not quite so often around these parts.) It will renew your patriotic pride like nothing else.

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Excited to be here: Draper begins City Council service

Posted by mpoletti – May 4, 2011

hark-cruse-draper

Hannibal Municipal Judge Frederich J. Cruse, center, swears in Fifth Ward Councilman Jim Hark, left, and Sixth Ward Councilman Richard Draper at Tuesday's Hannibal City Council meeting.

I have never seen a person as excited to attend a city council meeting as Richard Draper was Tuesday night, when he was sworn in as Hannibal’s new Sixth Ward Councilman.

Draper, a political newcomer, took a decisive victory from Jeff Lyng in last month’s election. The Hannibal Regional Medical Group medical director was gracious in all my interactions with him during the campaign, and he spent a lot of time surveying his would-be constituents in door-to-door stumping and online polls. A coworker who is well-connected in Hannibal has said Draper has a reputation as a great guy.

On Tuesday, his excitement to begin his public service as part of the council was almost palpable.

Draper personally introduced himself to every official he hadn’t yet met in the minutes before the meeting began. He also introduced his son, his daughter-in-law and especially his infant grandson, who had all come along for his big night; his wife already had taken a seat in the back of the council chambers.

His wife and kids took turns wielding a camera and camcorder as Municipal Judge Frederich J. Cruse swore him in alongside Jim Hark (elected to his first full term for the Fifth Ward). They had the three men pose for a grip-n’-grin photo before they took their seats. Draper’s son continued to train the camcorder on his father throughout the meeting.

The best part? When Draper offered a second to the first motion he heard as a seated councilman, he grinned like a kid in a candy store.

Deliberating the city’s business isn’t always the easiest job, but I hope Draper always remains this excited about his service on the council.

A lesson in timeliness

Posted by mpoletti – May 3, 2011

Not having covered many court cases in my day, I’m not exactly qualified yet to make the statement “You can’t make it up.” Still, Monday’s arraignment for Stephan D. Mattox took an interesting turn when his attorney, Riff Scholz of Quincy, initially failed to appear.

Mattox faces second-degree assault charges on allegations that he brutally beat his then-neighbor Adam “Doc” Clark on March 1. The beating allegedly occurred moments after Clark’s fiancee, Monica Williams, allegedly fired a shotgun at Mattox’s house in what she has said was the climax in an ongoing neighborhood feud. (Williams has admitted to the shooting but has not been charged.)

After last week’s brief, occasionally contentious preliminary hearing, Mattox was set to face a formal reading of his charges in Marion County circuit court Monday morning before Circuit Judge Rachel Bringer.

The appointed hour of 9 a.m. came. Several of Mattox’s friends and family members were in attendance, as were Clark and Williams, but no Mattox. He and his fellow Marion County Jail inmates eventually filed in, as scheduled. No Scholz, either. That was more difficult to explain.

It wasn’t until 10:30 a.m., after two recesses and apparently multiple phone calls to Scholz’s law office, that Bringer announced that Scholz — who had two cases on Monday’s criminal docket, and whose tardiness she had noted more than once in the morning’s proceedings thus far — would arrive in about 30 minutes.

When Scholz walked in, Bringer finished the case she was on and immediately threw to him for Mattox’s arraignment — but not without first acknowledging his tardiness one more time.

Bringer asked everyone who had been waiting for Mattox’s arraignment since 9 a.m. to stand up. About eight people — the bulk of the courtroom audience — rose. Then Bringer asked Scholz to turn around and take a look at them. She then chastised him, telling him that court had begun at 9 and he needed to be prompt.

Scholz apologized for his lateness, but did not give a reason for it before continuing with his client’s appearance.

Might not be unusual in America’s Hometown, but it certainly struck me as unusual — and memorable.