Paperless News for Columbia's Blogs and Listservs
County Countdown: 44 Days to August 5th
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people
UNDER THE SCHOOL BUS: Miller Flags Elkin Over Vemer
BACK TO HAUNT: Profanity Incident Dogs Boone Assessor
KIDS QUESTION CANDIDATES: Karen Miller, County Commission
THE CHANGE GANG: Germond Scolds Developers over City Council Ads
SKALAWAG? Parry says councilman "lobbying" with Maguire email
places
URBAN ARCHAEOLOGIST: Brian Pape's Mule Barn makes national auto magazine
IF ASHLAND CAN DO IT: A Tale of Two School Districts
WEIRD TALES (FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE): Class Notes, Lynn Barnett, and
-- Saint Francis of Assisi?
things
NON-PROFIT PROPHETS: Tre Helps Social Entrepreneurs
ANNOUNCEMENTS: Orr Street Sneak Peak/County Candidate Meet and Greet
READERS RITE: Sex Offender at 802 Wilkes; Saying No! to Progressives
PARTING THOUGHTS: The Crowd
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OPENING THEME SONG: "Just one more thing, ma'am."
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I agree that it doesn't look very good and I'm not sure it was the best thing to do.
-- Auto dealer Gary Drewing on the tree clearing that turned CrossCreek into a moonscape Sunday Morning KFRU Roundtable
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UNDER THE SCHOOL BUS: Miller Flags Elkin Over Vemer
Eliciting audible groans at last Friday's Muleskinner Meet, southern district county commissioner Karen Miller responded to a criticism from her opponent, planned growth advocate Sid Sullivan.
Reiterating a mantra that "governments must work together," Sullivan (D-Columbia) noted that Miller (D-Columbia) did not weigh in with her constituents' concerns on the ill-fated Vemer site for the new high school, a location that would have cost county taxpayers "millions of dollars for new infrastructure," had it been approved.
"Commissioner Miller did not involve herself in the discussions with the school district," Sullivan said. "She stayed silent."
As part of her closing argument, Miller responded. "I want to explain why I was silent about the Vemer site," she told a packed house at the Stamper Commons dining hall in Stephens College. "The Vemer site is part of commissioner Skip Elkin's district."
Noting that it was up to Elkin to interact with the school board, Miller said county commissioners routinely stay out of each others' jurisdictions and that it "wouldn't have been appropriate" for her to become involved. Sullivan used the response to hammer home his message of governmental cooperation.
"If Karen is saying that county commissioners don't even work among themselves on a project that would affect the entire county, then I wonder how well they could be expected to work with any city or school district in the county," Sullivan noted after the event. "We have to start sharing our resources. The days of governments not working together and then looking to taxpayers to pick up the slack have to be over."
Noon at the Muleskinners this Friday: County Assessor Candidates Tom Schauwecker and Barbara Bishop.
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BACK TO HAUNT: Profanity Incident Dogs Boone Assessor
"I see your opponent has been known to use some pretty colorful language."
With that colorful lead, KSSZ radio talk show host Gary Nolan kicked off a recent discussion of property taxes and the public record of county assessor Tom Schauwecker (D-Columbia) with studio guest Barbara Bishop (D-Ashland), who's running to replace the 20-year incumbent in the August 5th Democratic primary.
Referring to a Dec. 2005 F-bomb brouhaha between Schauwecker and Hallsville constituent Dena Ray, Nolan read from a Columbia Tribune article after hunting around for a new F-word. He settled on "firetruck."
"Give me a firetrucking telephone number where I can reach you at," Nolan read. "Then on the tape, the assessor summons an employee to his office. During a dialogue with the worker, Schauwecker said, 'She’s got a firetrucking - she’s crazy. I’ve left three firetrucking messages for her.'"
The issue of constituent intimidation played out again at two events this past Friday. In response to a question about assuring that the county's Board of Equalization that hears property tax appeals contains no county employees, candidate Sid Sullivan said that given the board's judicial function, it should not contain members of the executive branch.
Currently, the county assessor and at least two county commissioners sit on the board. Previously, its makeup was virtually all county commissioners and the assessor. Sullivan cited tales of taxpayer intimidation in the assessor's office to support the idea of a citizens-only board."I've heard several stories about people being intimidated out of filing property tax appeals," Sullivan said.
Schauwecker took issue with Sullivan's assertion at Friday night's Cosmo Park Farm Bureau event, but Sullivan stood by the assertion.
RELATED:
Assessor apologizes after leaving profane voice mail
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KIDS QUESTION CANDIDATES: Karen Miller, County Commission
Many thanks to the students of Grant Elementary 5th Grade teacher Jennifer Wingert for providing these questions to all of our 2008 candidates. Today, Karen Miller answers their questions.
How will you ALL work together to improve Columbia and Boone County?
Over the past several years the Commission has tried to reach out and collaborate with the other cities within Boone County. Our very first road improvement tax in 1993 shared the funding with the rural communities who couldn't tax themselves enough to make necessary road improvements. Since then, we have included the city of Columbia as well as the Centralia Special Road District in the funding formula.
The County Commission meets with Columbia City Manager Bill Watkins on a monthly basis and the Superintendent of Schools, Dr. Chase in quarterly meetings. I also personally meet with the Mayors of communities within my district and the Ashland City Administrator and Superintendent of Southern Boone R-1 School District regularly.
During these meetings, we discuss relevant issues and concerns we need to solve together.
In addition, County staff and Columbia's city management meet periodically to discuss pertinent issues such as, roads, planning and emergency management. The planning and building inspections department contracts with smaller communities to do their building inspections. The county's animal control enforcement includes rural communities who have petitioned for that particular service. There are many collaborative efforts continually occurring, and we expect to continue that.
Why is Columbia continuing to build apartments/buildings when so many are vacant -- like empty shopping centers -- at this time?
The State of Missouri is a property rights state. If you own the property, you should have a reasonable expectation you can use your property consistent with other property in the area. Legally, we can not turn the request down just because we think the developer will not be successful due to overbuilding. In the county, many times the land is already zoned for multi-family use and we are not able to stop construction if that is what the landowner desires.
As far as empty shopping centers, the city council, along with the rest of the community should work towards an acceptable incentive plan to encourage the redevelopment of these properties. This is another opportunity to use the existing infrastructure-which has already been paid for- to create improved structures and new jobs.
How does the city and county decide what streets get salted/plowed during bad weather?
Every jurisdiction develops a snow plan with the equipment, labor and material resources available in mind. In the county, our snow plan first clears the arterial and collector routes- as they feed all of the roads coming off of connecting subdivisions and intersecting roads. We use the motor graders and dump trucks with snowplows loaded with the proper material, sand, salt or a combination.
Many of the larger subdivisions are contracted out to private operators, as the county equipment is too large to get through the subdivision especially when cars are parked on both sides of the road. The priority order is paved roads, and then gravel roads with the remaining subdivisions last.
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THE CHANGE GANG: Germond Scolds Developers over City Council Ads
"Scanning across this fictitious radio dial in recent months, listeners heard from a new broadcaster we'll call Station CMDC. The initials stand for Central Missouri Development Council, which this month ran a series of newspaper ads questioning the City Council's priorities during its annual retreat at the Lake of the Ozarks.
"While the business community would probably concur on some of the issues raised by Station CMDC's ads, I believe the community has also questioned the tenor of these messages and wondered whether there's a more seductive "format" the station should adopt in order to accomplish what the group wants to do.
"A real radio station is always tweaking its format. Maybe that's what Station CMDC should consider doing. Rather than trying to bell the figurative, adversarial cat known as the Columbia City Council, Station CMDC should take a hint from an old radio programmer and sweeten its format with a touch or two of conciliatory catnip and see what happens.
"There's been much ado about the purported anti-business composition of the Columbia City Council as it is presently constituted, but that's a canard. To the surprise of some of us, this council has already begun to deal with issues that have been troubling the business and development community. Changes in procedure are already under consideration. At the same time, individual council members are ramping up contact with their constituents through something as basic as periodic neighborhood forums."
-- Al Germond this week in the Columbia Business Times
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SKALAWAG? Parry says councilman "lobbying" with Maguire email
After an email last week from 3rd Ward city councilman Karl Skala inviting commentary on the controversial Maguire Blvd. extension,KFRU radio talk show host Fred Parry accused Skala of "lobbying" -- presumably against the project -- asking listeners if they thought it appropriate for Skala to send the email.
We forwarded the email to our readers and received several responses back.
"I support the Maguire extension," wrote builder Gary Larkin.
"I am for the Maguire extension," replied storage magnate Mike Burnam.
We dutifully bundled those responses and sent them to every member of the council. The idea that land developers should approach local politics in a populist fashion probably originated with an online petition from Jay Lindner, the younger half of the Forum Development Group.
But the uproar over the Central Missouri Development Council's newspaper ads and the accusation that Skala was lobbying could dampen populist spirits. Skala's email actually stimulated more supportive than opposing responses.
And reading it bears out the idea that it was not lobbying, but a call to speak up. That a few prominent developers took up the call themselves is both ironic and promising. With fewer attorneys and hired spokespeople, getting folks together to talk directly is good medicine for a divided public whose battles only enrich the hired guns.
SKALA'S EMAIL:
"Two bills regarding the Lemone/Maguire Extension and Bridges project are coming before the City Council tonight, 6/16/08 @ ~7:45 p.m. in the Council Chambers (B162-08 regarding a call for bids & B163-08 regarding the final easement acquisition prior to commencing construction). This will be your last opportunity to express your opinion before the Council renders its decision as to whether to proceed. I would cordially invite you to offer your comments to the Council regarding this proposed expenditure of >$9M of your taxpayer dollars. And thank you for your continued civic interest." Best Regards, Karl Skala, Third Ward City Councilman
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URBAN ARCHAEOLOGIST: Brian Pape's Mule Barn makes national auto magazine
Local architect Brian Pape, his trusty Subaru, and his Mule Barn renovation project near Columbia College are featured in this summer's edition of Drive Magazine, the national magazine of Subaru, the car maker.
From the story:
RESTORING A NEAR-CENTURY-OLD WAREHOUSE HE OWNS IN THE COLLEGE TOWN OF COLUMBIA, MISSOURI, ARCHITECT BRIAN PAPE IS BOTH UNDAUNTED AND EXHAUSTED. REPAIRING DAMAGE FROM TERMITES, FIRE, WEATHER, AND AGE IN THE 40,000-SQUARE-FOOT BRICK BEHEMOTH “... HAS BEEN ONE HECK OF AN ORDEAL,” HE CONFIDED.
Brian Pape and the Stubborn Mule Barn
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IF ASHLAND CAN DO IT: A Tale of Two School Districts
An 18% reserve fund? A 4.6% pay increase for teachers? The school district absorbing a 7.9% health insurance increase? The addition of several new positions? A new middle school science lab and several costly facilities projects? All done on time and on budget.
Some kind of unattainable school district nirvana? Not at all. Turns out it's business as usual for our southern neighbor, the Ashland Public School system. Compared to worries over a 16% reserve and a hand-wringing that threatens to dislocate a few shoulders at Columbia Public Schools, Ashland seems a comparative paradise for teachers and staffers.
"That is money spent on classrooms and teaching. It is important that we stay competitive for our area and work to attract the best teachers," Ashland superintendent Charlotte Miller told the Boone County Journal last week. "We have a great benefits package and a strong professional development."
RELATED:
Where they spend your tax dollars at school
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WEIRD TALES (FROM THE BLOGOSPHERE): Class Notes, Lynn Barnett, and -- Saint Francis of Assisi?
Last week, assistant CPS superintendent Lynn Barnett tried to tweeze a thorn in her side -- the District's Darling of Democracy, Class Notes blogger and Tribune reporter Janese Heavin. Heavin posted a few words about the tweezing cum hazing on that blog:
"I approached Barnett after yesterday's press conference to ask her about a rumor I'd heard. I told her that I've been fielding a lot of questions lately about various school district issues.
"You're going to get that more and more because of the blog," she snapped. "People feel empowered. You did that to yourself."
"I stammered for a minute, confused as to why she seemed so angry about this, but went on to ask my question. After she told me I should already know the information, she answered my question, calling the rumor 'ludicrous' before storming off."
In an unusual rejoinder, school board president Michelle Gadbois posted the famous Prayer of Saint Francis on Class Notes.
"One set of calls and e-mails concern the board vote to reinstate two days into faculty and staff contracts and the other is about what one person referred to 'the Barnett Affair on the Blog,'" Gadbois wrote, referring to Class Notes' new bi-name fame -- like "The Donald"people in high places now refer to Class Notes as simply "The Blog."
Gadbois proceeded to leave a cryptic philosophical message that included "The Prayer," and a brief history.
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love...
If it gets any weirder -- move to Ashland?
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NON-PROFIT PROPHETS: Tre Helps Social Entrepreneurs
Calling his firm a "locally owned and operated social entrepreneur enterprise," Tre co-founder Bruce Duncan and his wife Mindy, who previously directed the Regional Aids Interfaith Network (RAIN), have embarked on a mission to "support the development of organizations dedicated to positive social change."
Driven by a large increase in both private and public grants, social entrepreneurship is taking off nationwide. With Tre, Duncan says it's a trend that's arrived in Columbia. A recent post on the Tre blog, for instance, focuses on the concept of how grant-funded green can be good for business.
"A green enterprise not only is politically correct, it’s economically shrewd. From an entrepreneurship perspective, green business ideas can be profitable and rewarding. Many of these ideas come through our center, or we read about them in the many trend publications we see.
"Here in Missouri, the EIERA Market Development Program offers opportunities for small businesses to expand their use of recycled materials in their production processes and provides grant funding to assist in those efforts. Grants of up to $50,000 are available to assist with the purchase of equipment to be used in processing recyclables into new products."
Tre testimonials include notes from the Foundation for Higher Good and the International Breast Milk Project (IBMP)."Tre is the only company that offered complete, individual solutions for my rapidly growing organization," wrote IBMP director Jill Youse. "Tre’s attention to detail, professionalism, efficiency, and affordability cannot be found anywhere else in the industry."
Read more about Tre ______________________________________________________
READERS RITE: Write, Right
I like your news email. We get daily industry updates from another source and I think the concept is great. No doubt it is the future and I appreciate someone doing it for Columbia. Thanks. -- Bruce Odle, Columbia
I will be glad to stick my size 14 shoe straight up their progressive liberal ass . Vote for something other than higher taxes and a free lunch for all those who are not willing to take care of their own future. The world does not need Greenpeace and a just say no attitude to progress.
-- Jack Rhoad, Columbia, on the two "progressive" Democrats running for county government
Keep up the good journalistic work. You know how to call a spade a spade. Refreshing! And thanks for publicizing things that Nanette Ward sends out. I say this as a very grateful former member and chair of the Human Rights Commission. Keep up the exposure of this excellent resource!
-- David Finke, Columbia
Mike, I mentioned the fund [for newspaper carrier Mike Cook] at work and a couple of former state social workers said that there is an injury fund out of, I think, the Attorney General's Office. It's for victims of crime. There should be some money there, they said.
-- Elaine Blodgett, Columbia
The widening of Scott Boulevard and the extension of Providence Rd. affect many residents and should be funded. To my knowledge, both of these projects have been approved, and the City needs to move forward on completing them.
-- Mike Maerz, Columbia
Here’s something interesting, Mike:
Sheriff's List of Registered Sex Offenders
There's one “Marcellus M. Smith” shown residing at 802 Wilkes. CaseNet shows 16 cases on Ms. Smith (middle name = Montell), who’s evidently not been listed in the Tribune’s arrest reports. Anyway, it just adds more fuel to this fire. Thanks for the kick in the pants. I’m writing Fenton a letter now.
-- A concerned landlord in the North Central Village, Columbia
Mike, I thought this to be of community interest, perhaps a subject for your newsletter. There is a Zap dealer in Leavenworth KS and Zaps are licensed as a motorcycle in Kansas. I have heard there has been some unexplained difficulty getting them properly licensed in Missouri.
It would be great if we could see some of these kinds of vehicles in use here. And the solar-power electric Zap is such a great idea. Wish the city would support and promote various alternate vehicles.
-- Linda Green, Columbia
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ANNOUNCEMENTS: Orr Street Sneak Peak/County Candidate Meet and Greet
You Are Invited! Meet county commission candidate Sid Sullivan at the Orr Street Sneak Peak/County Candidate Meet and Greet next Thursday, June 26th, from 4 - 5:30 pm. Meet county assessor candidate Barb Bishop at the same place from 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm, then head on over to the downtown Columbia Twilight Festival one block away.
They'll be at Orr Street Studios One, at 106 Orr Street, across from Wabash Station. A first look at Orr Street Studios, Part Two, local engineer Mark Timberlake's fabulous update on a once run-down steel warehouse more commonly known as the old "diaper factory."will be provided from 4-5 pm.
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Watching the Watchdogs
On Wednesday Reynolds Journalism Institute, the Missourian and the Columbia Human Rights Commission's Study Circle program hosts the first of three community events to gauge Columbians' views on the news media."Watching the Watchdogs" will be 6 pm to 8:30 pm Wednesday, June 25th, at the Columbia Public Library. The groups is looking to attract a wide swath of the public, so please invite someone you know. Journalism types, including Missourian reporters, will be able to observe, but the group discussions will be moderated by volunteer facilitators from the Study Circles program.Participants will be eligible to attend the Missouri School of Journalism's Centennial Celebration with a "citizens VIP pass."
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Chat with county commission candidate Sid Sullivan
RENDEZVOUS COFFEE HOUSE
Saturday, June 28 and July 5, 2008
9:00am-11:00 am
3304 W. Broadway, COLUMBIA
(In Business Park west of HyVee)
Future Locations will be posted in July
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OFFICE HOURS at THE COFFEE GROUND
3RD WARD COUNCILMAN KARL SKALA
WHERE? The Coffee Ground, Broadway Shops, 2703 E. Broadway (North side of Broadway just West of Hwy 63)WHEN? 8:30-10:30 a.m.
DATES? July 5 and 19
WHO? Everyone is welcome.
Drop in and share your questions, opinions, ideas, and concerns!
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COFFEEHOUSE CONVERSATIONS with 4th Ward Councilman Jerry Wade
The Rendezvous Coffeehouse
This is a regular event the 1st and 3rd Saturday of each month.
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PARTING THOUGHTS: Soccer
"She always camouflaged herself as a crowd. I've never been lonely, she said, but sometimes it's hard to think above the noise."
-- Brian Andreas, featured at Blue Stem Crafts in the District
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Mike Martin Blogitor-in-Chief
Member: National Press Club
The Columbia Heart Beat
Circulation: Roughly 4,000
ARCHIVE
Monday, June 23, 2008
Thursday, June 12, 2008
The Columbia Heart Beat -- 6/12/08
Paperless News for Columbia's Blogs and Listservs
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people
“RUARACIST?”: In Columbia, slapping critics with The Scarlet Label
SID SULLIVAN: Brings "Coffee House Office Hours" to County Campaign
SUDDENLY SURPLUS: CPS and the Evolution of a Bamboozle
THE CHANGE GANG: Wilson-Kleekamp on CPS' Sudden Surplus; Karl Miller on Police Review
RUMOR HAS IT: Paige Laurie Getting Hitched This Weekend?
NEW WATER AND LIGHT HONCHO: Watkins Taps Texan To Watch our Taps
2008 CAMPAIGN AD: Christopher Walken For U.S. President
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WHEN SEWERS ATTACK: In the Old Southwest, a Stinky Epidemic
VILLAGE VOICEOVER: Code Enforcement Confab Crowded and Productive
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CELTIC ARTS: In Columbia
ANNOUNCEMENTS: Coffee House Office Hours; Celtic Music Fest
MIKE COOK MEDICAL FUND: Injured by Scumbags, Paper Carrier Needs You!
PARTING THOUGHTS: Kindred Spirits
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OPENING THEME SONG: The Epitome of Cool
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg7nwTNJQOQ
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In Columbia, slapping critics with The Scarlet Label
By Mike Martin for the Columbia Business Times
http://www.columbiabusinesstimes.com/
“RUARACIST?” Imagine opening an email – from a Columbia school board member, no less – with that in the subject line. I did not long ago, and it was a doozy.
Responding to a critique of Superintendent Phyllis Chase, the board member told me I was "perpetuating the [Columbia Daily] Tribune's bias against Dr. Chase." The racial implications continued in another email, where this individual noted that if "members of the Waters family were among the biggest beneficiaries of 'urban renewal' in the 1960's" and if the "Tribune building was indeed built where Sharp End was" – a well-known African-American business district – it was all an "interesting coincidence."
"How dare…!" my wife said. I agreed. Criticism is not racism just because its object is the district’s African-American leader. To suggest otherwise is to inject an element of ethnicity where it doesn’t belong. It was just another instance of someone in a position of power applying an inappropriate label – "racist" – to shut down a critic or challenger.
Watershed moment
Former Tribune columnist Tony Messenger wrote about this sort of name calling in his July 20, 2005 column, “Opposition group fights those who too quickly label them." Following a group of citizens called TARRIF who joined forces to fight tax increases they thought unfair, “Traci Wilson-Kleekamp is a nut. A kook even,” Messenger began. “Ditto Ben Londeree, Renee Richmond and DeAnna Walkenbach. And don’t forget Karl Skala. The whole bunch is nuttier than a fruitcake.”
Harsh words for citizens many would just as eagerly label “caring and engaged." But ”that’s what you’ll hear from a few self-appointed city leaders in the next few months, as Columbia debates an expected vote in November,” Messenger admitted. “For their efforts, they’ll be labeled loud-mouthed, anti-growth, not-in-my-backyard troublemakers.”
Why the labels? In TARRIF’s case, City Hall and other establishment players wanted “to do all the talking, and they want us to shut up,” Wilson-Kleekamp opined. But the group pressed on, Wilson-Kleekamp telling Messenger that she was fully aware “the more she spoke out, the more some folks would try to marginalize her views,” which included wanting “the city to develop a comprehensive growth plan before it decided to start seeking tax increases,” Messenger wrote.
Likewise, Skala wanted the Columbia “Planning and Zoning Commission – from which he was recently removed – to have more say in the development process," while Richmond and Walkenbach wanted “developers to treat residents’ property rights as equal to their own.”
In defeating two of six proposed taxes, the group created a watershed moment in our little burg’s political history. Gone were the days of dismissing establishment critics as crackpots. Columbia would never be the same.
The Scarlet Label
Despite a grassroots revolution that three years later has seen once marginalized players like Skala ascend to the city council and several stern status quo rebukes at the ballot box, establishment players – and former players – still play the labeling game. Public hearings “bring out the cranks, the professional complainers and those with an ideological ax to grind,” former Columbia school board member Kerry Crist commented in the Tribune last week, while noting that not enough people attend public meetings.
Largely considered an “august body” of educated and successful elites, the school board has sported many of the labeling game’s most practiced players. At a recent meeting, members slapped several labels – from “alarmist” to “micromanager” – on Ines Segert, a colleague who was challenging proposed budget cuts.
Those labels didn’t make sense, and they rarely do. Tribune publisher Hank Waters did not “kill” the district's tax levy, as a several levy supporters suggested at Flat Branch restaurant on election eve last. Voters killed it, and by a large margin.
At the district’s first “listening forum,” when amidst groping for the message voters intended with that defeat, I suggested they might have fired the superintendent, board member Steve Calloway scolded me for “getting personal." But the superintendent is a high-ranking public official and the discussion had nothing to do with her personal life.
Speak no evil
I often ask myself why the things my mother taught me – and insisted I teach my own children – are so often junked in adult life. Johnny, think for yourself. Johnny, stand up for what you believe in. Johnny, get involved. Vote. Run for public office.
But name-calling – especially in a smallish town – can make getting involved intimidating enough to shut down debate, which often appears the establishment’s end game. Will they think I'm a “crank” if I criticize the tax levy or a “professional complainer” if I report the mold problem at Benton Elementary? Will they think I have an ‘ideological ax to grind" if I advocate for a different math curriculum?
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Is that why violent crime is pounding our town? See no gangs, hear no gangs. Everything, dear citizen, is absolutely fine.
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SID SULLIVAN: Brings "Coffee House Office Hours" to County Campaign
Southern District County Commission candidate Sid Sullivan is introducing the latest flavor of Coffee House Office Hours -- "County Chicory" -- this Saturday, when he'll begin holding office hours at Cafe Berlin on Providence and Broadway. From there, Sullivan will be traveling all around southern Boone County, from Ashland to Rocheport. A progressive Democrat, Sullivan hopes to "meet, share stories, and exchange opinions and dreams of Boone County -- what it is and what it could be."
Populism is sweeping local politics. It has recently placed five members on the city council and two members on the school board. It has split the local Democratic Party into an old-school, ol' boy wing and a new school, progressive wing. And it has prompted all sorts of constituent interactions, including the school board's new "Listening Forums" and Coffee House Office Hours, a morning brew that originated with 3rd Ward Councilman Karl Skala and now comes in several flavors.
A County Commissioner sharing an office with a City Councilman? Years ago, they did -- in the Daniel Boone Building. And should Sid Sullivan become Boone's next County Commissioner, history will repeat, as he and 4th Ward Councilman Jerry Wade both hold "office hours" at the Rendezvous Coffee Shop near HyVee.
Sullivan's Coffee House Office Hours for the next few weeks are:
CAFÉ BERLIN
Saturday, June 14, 2008
9:00am-11:00 am
21 N. Broadway, COLUMBIA
DOWNTOWN CAFÉ
Saturday, June 21, 2008
9:00am-11:00 am
105 E. Broadway, ASHLAND
(2 DOORS EAST OF Broadway and Main)
RENDEZVOUS COFFEE HOUSE
Saturday, June 28, 2008
9:00am-11:00 am
3304 W. Broadway, COLUMBIA
(In Business Park west of HyVee)
RENDEZVOUS COFFEE HOUSE
Saturday, July 5, 2008
9:00am-11:00 am
3304 W. Broadway, COLUMBIA
(In Business Park west of HyVee)
Future Locations will be posted in July and at www.SidSullivan.com
"If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to write me at SullivanForCommission@gmail.com or call 234-2374," Sullivan says. He faces incumbent Karen Miller in an August 5th Democratic primary.
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SUDDENLY SURPLUS: CPS and a Bamboozle Evolution
SKY-IS-FALLING RHETORIC (12/11/07)
"You’re in a downward spiral," Allan Crader, principal consultant with LJ Hart & Co. said, pointing to the district’s dwindling reserve fund.
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2007/dec/20071211news005.asp
DIRE PROJECTIONS (1/13/08)
"It was one of 70 new jobs the district created earlier this academic year, using $10.5 million from district reserves. That’s roughly the same amount as the district’s budget deficit, according to information provided to board members."
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/jan/20080113news004.asp
PAINFULLY PREDICTABLE (3/30/08)
"With a year-over-year average 34.6 percent underestimate of reserve fund balances, CPS could easily have $9.2 million more than it estimates with no tax increase, leaving a far more modest deficit of about $1.5 million that relatively painless budget cuts could cure."
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/mar/20080330comm008.asp
HISTORY REPEATS (6/10/08)
"No, the district will NOT start the year with an $8 million deficit. The deficit...would be about $1.2 million this coming year."
http://blogs.columbiatribune.com/education/2008/06/deficit_surplis_so_confused.html
TAKEAWAY THOUGHT
If funds have been "found" every year for over 10 years, at what point can we safely stop calling them "one time" funds?
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THE CHANGE GANG: Traci Wilson-Kleekamp on CPS' Sudden Surplus
This discovery of a surplus is something I often saw in big city politics in Southern California. Politicians and administrators would wring their hands and say.. woe is me.. there is no money. Taxpayers paying attention and following the excessive spending habits of politicians declined to support tax increases, particularly when proposed increases followed big raises and expanded bureaucracy.
It never ceased to amaze me how many times "one-time" revenues where FOUND at the 11th hour. It was really sickening and twisted how many times politicians came back and said that the "one-time" revenue spending could not be supported with ongoing revenues and expenses. Hence, politicians were back at the table with their hands out asking taxpayers for more. Taxpayers were generally tender-hearted when it came to public education and generously supported increases -- until they grew weary of this trick.
The question now is: does the school board think by spending "one-time" revenues on teacher salaries, they are appeasing teachers and parents; or if they are implementing a decision that impacts the quality of public education in Columbia?
I believe teachers definitely deserve good pay. But it will really be something if in the next few months, the board comes back wringing its hands claiming they need additional cuts because they lack sufficient revenues for the ongoing support of the salary increases.
Seems to me that Mrs. Chase and her rubber stamping crew erred in expanding their own bureaucracy first, not to mention big raises for Mrs. Chase. This is a symbolic act of public contrition to appease the community. Are concerned Columbians that easily appeased?
And is it a fiscally responsible decision to spend these "one-time" revenues or is it a politically motivated decision to avoid the discussion about the public's lack of confidence, not only in Ms. Chase but the school board, too?
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THE CHANGE GANG: Civilian Review Board No help to Police
By J. Karl Miller for the Columbia Missourian
I have never made a secret of my opposition to a special civilian review board as sufficient oversight is provided by the mayor and City Council, the city manager, the free press and the Police Department’s internal review process. That policeman need not be constrained in the performance of his duty by the specter of second guessing by a panel of citizens who have never walked in his shoes nor the fear that he may be exceeding some arbitrary racial quota in his arrests.
Read the rest at:
http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2008/06/10/civilian-review-board-no-help-police-department/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUMOR HAS IT: Paige Laurie Getting Hitched This Weekend?
By now, it's all over town: rumors that Waltonian Heiress Paige Laurie is getting hitched at the family farm/ranch/compound south of town. Did Fred Parry tell me about it? Is he going? Is Inside Columbia really getting the Inside Scoop on this Sensational Shindig? I'll never tell.
Planning for hundreds of guests is apparently under way, and once again rumors are flying that a superstar band will appear. Absent the occasional scandal, rumor is about the only thing we hear about our elusive clan of billionaires, so who knows. If it's true, Mazel Tov Paige Laurie. And may you find that amazing life only true love can bring.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW WATER AND LIGHT HONCHO: Watkins Taps Texan To Watch our Taps
City Manager Bill Watkins has appointed J. Kraig Kahler as the new director of the Columbia Water & Light Department, effective July 14, 2008. Kahler presently heads the Weatherford, Texas utility department, 25 miles west of Fort Worth. The K-State grad has an online biography here:
J. Kraig Kahler
http://www.ci.weatherford.tx.us/index.asp?NID=300
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2008 CAMPAIGN AD: Christopher Walken For United States President
In these dark times -- global warming, secrecy, war, foreclosures, terrorism -- there's only ONE candidate....
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2gZa6VEiFAY&feature=related
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHEN SEWERS ATTACK: In the Old Southwest, a Stinky Epidemic
When Old Southwest resident Wendy Murray descended into the carpeted basement of her historic 80-year-old Thilly Avenue home on Memorial Day this year, she got a wet, smelly surprise.
"I turned on the light. I was standing in a foot of sewage," Murray said. "It was the grossest thing I've ever seen." She and husband Bob -- a local attorney best known for his DWI practice -- had to rip out the carpet, replace furniture, and fight a lingering stench. "You walked into the house and it hit you in the face," she said. "It was just raw sewage, and a lot of it. Disease-causing, typhoid-carrying raw sewage."
A week later, when Murray and her family were out of town, the sewage seeped in again. "It sat because we weren't home," Murray said. "Now, the smell is so bad I don't know when we'll ever get rid of it."
Homeowners in the historic Old Southwest are no strangers to sewage seepage and basement backups, problems that have developed because clay pipe designed to last 40 years has been channeling raw sewage for over 80 years. Correcting the problem has been an all-spring event between Maupin and Broadway, where workers have dug up roads, sidewalks, yards, and driveways. Digging a trench down Maupin earlier this year, an excavator for Rackers Construction told me his crew found several places where the clay pipe was simply no more.
So where was the sewage going? I asked. "It wasn't," he said. "It wasn't going anywhere, just emptying in a lot of yards."
Murray's plumber actually saw this problem first hand. "We hired MasterTech Plumbing to scope the sewer line," she said. "They found that it went a few yards and then near the street corner, nothing. No more pipe. I can't tell you how gross that is."
She's joined other grossed-out neighbors to sign a petition requesting the City of Columbia take action. The sewage seepage epidemic has the entire area in its grip, Murray said. Heavy rainfall hasn't helped. "I'm not looking forward to dealing with this, watching all the action on Maupin," she said. "But I know we have to. Handling sewage is probably the most basic thing a city can do."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VILLAGE VOICEOVER: Code Enforcement Confab Crowded and Productive
Tuesday at the Daniel Boone Regional Library, the North Central Neighborhood Association hosted a code enforcement confab, discussing ways to aid and empower the Neighborhood Response Team (NRT), whose director Bill Cantin took questions and educated attendees. Largely responsible for central city code enforcement, the NRT is an official 2008 "Mayoral Priority." But a cumbersome system that relies on liens instead of fines to force property owners to mitigate mostly outdoor building code violations has slowed the team to a crawl when it comes to compliance.
"Everything ends up heading toward court," Cantin said. "We've fantasized about the day when we can just write a ticket rather than file a lien."
First Ward councilman Paul Sturtz was there. So was 3rd Warder Karl Skala, who sat alongside his former campaign opponent Gary Kespohl. The Columbia Board of Realtors sent government affairs director Elizabeth Holden. One of the city's largest rental property owners, Mark Stevenson, offered several ideas to improve a troubled situation. And a group of MU students with a novel weatherization program offered their assistance, too.
Stevenson suggested funding a remediation team to help low-income homeowners and senior citizens fix code violations. Pat Fowler's MU students offered general maintenance help all around the house. Describing scenes of filth and squalor, Fowler said her student weatherization team "walks into some pretty bad situations, in terms of how people are living."
Skala and Sturtz said they strongly support fixing what Skala called "a broken system." Understaffed and under-empowered, the NRT now has double its previous territory, taking in Benton-Stephens and East Campus. A traffic-ticket style system that would fine non-compliant owners "would really speed things up," Cantin said. It should also satisfy civil libertarians, by replacing the threat of a property taking with the fact of a monetary fine.
Neighborhood association leaders Amir Ziv and Linda Rootes agreed. "These enforcement actions need to have some teeth, some real teeth," Ziv said. "They need to hit the wallet."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CELTIC ARTS: In Columbia
by Kate Akers
Central MO Celtic Arts is a nonprofit arts organization that presents concerts and folk dances, offers classes and social jam sessions, fostering traditional music and dance from Ireland and Scotland.
Since 2001 we have hosted an artist-in-residence each summer in Columbia to teach Irish music, dance and Gaelic (language). These teachers have been college students from traditional music and language programs in Ireland who come to both share their talents, culture and knowledge and soak up ours.
This summer our artist-in-residence, Conor Caldwell, is a student at Queens University Belfast, just finishing his undergraduate degree in music with specialization in the traditional music and dance of the northwest region of Ireland. He plays Irish fiddle, mandolin, tenor banjo and tin whistle as well as being an accomplished dancer of Irish social dances (called coutry sets). Conor will be arriving in Columbia on June 11 and in addition to teaching classes, he will be playing music and sharing his talents and skills at Irish music jam sessions, small performances like Twilight Festival, and our local Irish ceili dances (social dance evenings).
Conor will be playing music with us at Twilight Festival from 6 - 7 pm in front of Bluestem Crafts on Ninth St. On Friday June 13, we will welcome him at our monthly ceili (kay-lee) dance and social. This dance and social is free this month -- no door fee -- and we welcome longtime members and new visitors alike to come dance and listen to great music.
RELATED:
http://www.moceltic.org/2008/summer/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MIKE COOK MEDICAL FUND: Injured by Scumbags, Paper Carrier Needs You!
Somebody will undoubtedly jump on me for using the pejorative, Dirty Harry Callahanesque "scumbags," but when you kick a man in his face, breaking his nose,. cheekbone, and eye socket trying to get a paltry few bucks during a robbery where you're armed to the teeth and he's got nothing, you're a scumbag, plain and simple.
To help Post-Dispatch newspaper carrier Mike Cook with his medical bills, which are sure to pile up, please contact Linda McBee at 800-574-8901 or Judy Sapp at Boone County National Bank, trustees for the Mike Cook Medical Fund. You can read more about Mike and the attack he sustained here:
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/may/20080508news006.asp
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/may/20080510news008.asp
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ANNOUNCEMENTS
OFFICE HOURS at THE COFFEE GROUND with 3RD WARD COUNCILMAN KARL SKALA
WHERE? The Coffee Ground, Broadway Shops, 2703 E. Broadway
(North side of Broadway just West of Hwy 63)
WHEN? 8:30-10:30 a.m.
DATES? June 14; July 5 and 19
WHO? Everyone is welcome. Drop in and share your questions, opinions, ideas, and concerns!
COFFEEHOUSE CONVERSATIONS with 4th Ward Councilman Jerry Wade
This Saturday, June 14 coffeehouse conversation will be from 8:00 to 9:30am. PLEASE NOTE THE TIME CHANGE FOR THE COFFEEHOUSE CONVERSATIONS. The Rendezvous Coffeehouse is at 3304 Broadway Business Park Ct., which is on the south side of West Broadway west of HyVee. This is a regular event the 1st and 3rd Saturday of each month.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PARTING THOUGHTS: Kindred Spirits
"You're the strangest person I ever met, she said & I said you too & we decided we'd know each other a long time."
-- Brian Andreas, featured at Blue Stem Crafts in the District
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Martin
Blogitor-in-Chief
Member: National Press Club (www.press.org)
The Columbia Heart Beat
http://columbiaheartbeat.blogspot.com
Circulation: Roughly 3,470
ARCHIVE: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nccna/messages
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
people
“RUARACIST?”: In Columbia, slapping critics with The Scarlet Label
SID SULLIVAN: Brings "Coffee House Office Hours" to County Campaign
SUDDENLY SURPLUS: CPS and the Evolution of a Bamboozle
THE CHANGE GANG: Wilson-Kleekamp on CPS' Sudden Surplus; Karl Miller on Police Review
RUMOR HAS IT: Paige Laurie Getting Hitched This Weekend?
NEW WATER AND LIGHT HONCHO: Watkins Taps Texan To Watch our Taps
2008 CAMPAIGN AD: Christopher Walken For U.S. President
places
WHEN SEWERS ATTACK: In the Old Southwest, a Stinky Epidemic
VILLAGE VOICEOVER: Code Enforcement Confab Crowded and Productive
things
CELTIC ARTS: In Columbia
ANNOUNCEMENTS: Coffee House Office Hours; Celtic Music Fest
MIKE COOK MEDICAL FUND: Injured by Scumbags, Paper Carrier Needs You!
PARTING THOUGHTS: Kindred Spirits
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OPENING THEME SONG: The Epitome of Cool
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg7nwTNJQOQ
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In Columbia, slapping critics with The Scarlet Label
By Mike Martin for the Columbia Business Times
http://www.columbiabusinesstimes.com/
“RUARACIST?” Imagine opening an email – from a Columbia school board member, no less – with that in the subject line. I did not long ago, and it was a doozy.
Responding to a critique of Superintendent Phyllis Chase, the board member told me I was "perpetuating the [Columbia Daily] Tribune's bias against Dr. Chase." The racial implications continued in another email, where this individual noted that if "members of the Waters family were among the biggest beneficiaries of 'urban renewal' in the 1960's" and if the "Tribune building was indeed built where Sharp End was" – a well-known African-American business district – it was all an "interesting coincidence."
"How dare…!" my wife said. I agreed. Criticism is not racism just because its object is the district’s African-American leader. To suggest otherwise is to inject an element of ethnicity where it doesn’t belong. It was just another instance of someone in a position of power applying an inappropriate label – "racist" – to shut down a critic or challenger.
Watershed moment
Former Tribune columnist Tony Messenger wrote about this sort of name calling in his July 20, 2005 column, “Opposition group fights those who too quickly label them." Following a group of citizens called TARRIF who joined forces to fight tax increases they thought unfair, “Traci Wilson-Kleekamp is a nut. A kook even,” Messenger began. “Ditto Ben Londeree, Renee Richmond and DeAnna Walkenbach. And don’t forget Karl Skala. The whole bunch is nuttier than a fruitcake.”
Harsh words for citizens many would just as eagerly label “caring and engaged." But ”that’s what you’ll hear from a few self-appointed city leaders in the next few months, as Columbia debates an expected vote in November,” Messenger admitted. “For their efforts, they’ll be labeled loud-mouthed, anti-growth, not-in-my-backyard troublemakers.”
Why the labels? In TARRIF’s case, City Hall and other establishment players wanted “to do all the talking, and they want us to shut up,” Wilson-Kleekamp opined. But the group pressed on, Wilson-Kleekamp telling Messenger that she was fully aware “the more she spoke out, the more some folks would try to marginalize her views,” which included wanting “the city to develop a comprehensive growth plan before it decided to start seeking tax increases,” Messenger wrote.
Likewise, Skala wanted the Columbia “Planning and Zoning Commission – from which he was recently removed – to have more say in the development process," while Richmond and Walkenbach wanted “developers to treat residents’ property rights as equal to their own.”
In defeating two of six proposed taxes, the group created a watershed moment in our little burg’s political history. Gone were the days of dismissing establishment critics as crackpots. Columbia would never be the same.
The Scarlet Label
Despite a grassroots revolution that three years later has seen once marginalized players like Skala ascend to the city council and several stern status quo rebukes at the ballot box, establishment players – and former players – still play the labeling game. Public hearings “bring out the cranks, the professional complainers and those with an ideological ax to grind,” former Columbia school board member Kerry Crist commented in the Tribune last week, while noting that not enough people attend public meetings.
Largely considered an “august body” of educated and successful elites, the school board has sported many of the labeling game’s most practiced players. At a recent meeting, members slapped several labels – from “alarmist” to “micromanager” – on Ines Segert, a colleague who was challenging proposed budget cuts.
Those labels didn’t make sense, and they rarely do. Tribune publisher Hank Waters did not “kill” the district's tax levy, as a several levy supporters suggested at Flat Branch restaurant on election eve last. Voters killed it, and by a large margin.
At the district’s first “listening forum,” when amidst groping for the message voters intended with that defeat, I suggested they might have fired the superintendent, board member Steve Calloway scolded me for “getting personal." But the superintendent is a high-ranking public official and the discussion had nothing to do with her personal life.
Speak no evil
I often ask myself why the things my mother taught me – and insisted I teach my own children – are so often junked in adult life. Johnny, think for yourself. Johnny, stand up for what you believe in. Johnny, get involved. Vote. Run for public office.
But name-calling – especially in a smallish town – can make getting involved intimidating enough to shut down debate, which often appears the establishment’s end game. Will they think I'm a “crank” if I criticize the tax levy or a “professional complainer” if I report the mold problem at Benton Elementary? Will they think I have an ‘ideological ax to grind" if I advocate for a different math curriculum?
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. Is that why violent crime is pounding our town? See no gangs, hear no gangs. Everything, dear citizen, is absolutely fine.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SID SULLIVAN: Brings "Coffee House Office Hours" to County Campaign
Southern District County Commission candidate Sid Sullivan is introducing the latest flavor of Coffee House Office Hours -- "County Chicory" -- this Saturday, when he'll begin holding office hours at Cafe Berlin on Providence and Broadway. From there, Sullivan will be traveling all around southern Boone County, from Ashland to Rocheport. A progressive Democrat, Sullivan hopes to "meet, share stories, and exchange opinions and dreams of Boone County -- what it is and what it could be."
Populism is sweeping local politics. It has recently placed five members on the city council and two members on the school board. It has split the local Democratic Party into an old-school, ol' boy wing and a new school, progressive wing. And it has prompted all sorts of constituent interactions, including the school board's new "Listening Forums" and Coffee House Office Hours, a morning brew that originated with 3rd Ward Councilman Karl Skala and now comes in several flavors.
A County Commissioner sharing an office with a City Councilman? Years ago, they did -- in the Daniel Boone Building. And should Sid Sullivan become Boone's next County Commissioner, history will repeat, as he and 4th Ward Councilman Jerry Wade both hold "office hours" at the Rendezvous Coffee Shop near HyVee.
Sullivan's Coffee House Office Hours for the next few weeks are:
CAFÉ BERLIN
Saturday, June 14, 2008
9:00am-11:00 am
21 N. Broadway, COLUMBIA
DOWNTOWN CAFÉ
Saturday, June 21, 2008
9:00am-11:00 am
105 E. Broadway, ASHLAND
(2 DOORS EAST OF Broadway and Main)
RENDEZVOUS COFFEE HOUSE
Saturday, June 28, 2008
9:00am-11:00 am
3304 W. Broadway, COLUMBIA
(In Business Park west of HyVee)
RENDEZVOUS COFFEE HOUSE
Saturday, July 5, 2008
9:00am-11:00 am
3304 W. Broadway, COLUMBIA
(In Business Park west of HyVee)
Future Locations will be posted in July and at www.SidSullivan.com
"If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to write me at SullivanForCommission@gmail.com or call 234-2374," Sullivan says. He faces incumbent Karen Miller in an August 5th Democratic primary.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUDDENLY SURPLUS: CPS and a Bamboozle Evolution
SKY-IS-FALLING RHETORIC (12/11/07)
"You’re in a downward spiral," Allan Crader, principal consultant with LJ Hart & Co. said, pointing to the district’s dwindling reserve fund.
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2007/dec/20071211news005.asp
DIRE PROJECTIONS (1/13/08)
"It was one of 70 new jobs the district created earlier this academic year, using $10.5 million from district reserves. That’s roughly the same amount as the district’s budget deficit, according to information provided to board members."
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/jan/20080113news004.asp
PAINFULLY PREDICTABLE (3/30/08)
"With a year-over-year average 34.6 percent underestimate of reserve fund balances, CPS could easily have $9.2 million more than it estimates with no tax increase, leaving a far more modest deficit of about $1.5 million that relatively painless budget cuts could cure."
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/mar/20080330comm008.asp
HISTORY REPEATS (6/10/08)
"No, the district will NOT start the year with an $8 million deficit. The deficit...would be about $1.2 million this coming year."
http://blogs.columbiatribune.com/education/2008/06/deficit_surplis_so_confused.html
TAKEAWAY THOUGHT
If funds have been "found" every year for over 10 years, at what point can we safely stop calling them "one time" funds?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE CHANGE GANG: Traci Wilson-Kleekamp on CPS' Sudden Surplus
This discovery of a surplus is something I often saw in big city politics in Southern California. Politicians and administrators would wring their hands and say.. woe is me.. there is no money. Taxpayers paying attention and following the excessive spending habits of politicians declined to support tax increases, particularly when proposed increases followed big raises and expanded bureaucracy.
It never ceased to amaze me how many times "one-time" revenues where FOUND at the 11th hour. It was really sickening and twisted how many times politicians came back and said that the "one-time" revenue spending could not be supported with ongoing revenues and expenses. Hence, politicians were back at the table with their hands out asking taxpayers for more. Taxpayers were generally tender-hearted when it came to public education and generously supported increases -- until they grew weary of this trick.
The question now is: does the school board think by spending "one-time" revenues on teacher salaries, they are appeasing teachers and parents; or if they are implementing a decision that impacts the quality of public education in Columbia?
I believe teachers definitely deserve good pay. But it will really be something if in the next few months, the board comes back wringing its hands claiming they need additional cuts because they lack sufficient revenues for the ongoing support of the salary increases.
Seems to me that Mrs. Chase and her rubber stamping crew erred in expanding their own bureaucracy first, not to mention big raises for Mrs. Chase. This is a symbolic act of public contrition to appease the community. Are concerned Columbians that easily appeased?
And is it a fiscally responsible decision to spend these "one-time" revenues or is it a politically motivated decision to avoid the discussion about the public's lack of confidence, not only in Ms. Chase but the school board, too?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE CHANGE GANG: Civilian Review Board No help to Police
By J. Karl Miller for the Columbia Missourian
I have never made a secret of my opposition to a special civilian review board as sufficient oversight is provided by the mayor and City Council, the city manager, the free press and the Police Department’s internal review process. That policeman need not be constrained in the performance of his duty by the specter of second guessing by a panel of citizens who have never walked in his shoes nor the fear that he may be exceeding some arbitrary racial quota in his arrests.
Read the rest at:
http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2008/06/10/civilian-review-board-no-help-police-department/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
RUMOR HAS IT: Paige Laurie Getting Hitched This Weekend?
By now, it's all over town: rumors that Waltonian Heiress Paige Laurie is getting hitched at the family farm/ranch/compound south of town. Did Fred Parry tell me about it? Is he going? Is Inside Columbia really getting the Inside Scoop on this Sensational Shindig? I'll never tell.
Planning for hundreds of guests is apparently under way, and once again rumors are flying that a superstar band will appear. Absent the occasional scandal, rumor is about the only thing we hear about our elusive clan of billionaires, so who knows. If it's true, Mazel Tov Paige Laurie. And may you find that amazing life only true love can bring.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW WATER AND LIGHT HONCHO: Watkins Taps Texan To Watch our Taps
City Manager Bill Watkins has appointed J. Kraig Kahler as the new director of the Columbia Water & Light Department, effective July 14, 2008. Kahler presently heads the Weatherford, Texas utility department, 25 miles west of Fort Worth. The K-State grad has an online biography here:
J. Kraig Kahler
http://www.ci.weatherford.tx.us/index.asp?NID=300
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2008 CAMPAIGN AD: Christopher Walken For United States President
In these dark times -- global warming, secrecy, war, foreclosures, terrorism -- there's only ONE candidate....
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=2gZa6VEiFAY&feature=related
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHEN SEWERS ATTACK: In the Old Southwest, a Stinky Epidemic
When Old Southwest resident Wendy Murray descended into the carpeted basement of her historic 80-year-old Thilly Avenue home on Memorial Day this year, she got a wet, smelly surprise.
"I turned on the light. I was standing in a foot of sewage," Murray said. "It was the grossest thing I've ever seen." She and husband Bob -- a local attorney best known for his DWI practice -- had to rip out the carpet, replace furniture, and fight a lingering stench. "You walked into the house and it hit you in the face," she said. "It was just raw sewage, and a lot of it. Disease-causing, typhoid-carrying raw sewage."
A week later, when Murray and her family were out of town, the sewage seeped in again. "It sat because we weren't home," Murray said. "Now, the smell is so bad I don't know when we'll ever get rid of it."
Homeowners in the historic Old Southwest are no strangers to sewage seepage and basement backups, problems that have developed because clay pipe designed to last 40 years has been channeling raw sewage for over 80 years. Correcting the problem has been an all-spring event between Maupin and Broadway, where workers have dug up roads, sidewalks, yards, and driveways. Digging a trench down Maupin earlier this year, an excavator for Rackers Construction told me his crew found several places where the clay pipe was simply no more.
So where was the sewage going? I asked. "It wasn't," he said. "It wasn't going anywhere, just emptying in a lot of yards."
Murray's plumber actually saw this problem first hand. "We hired MasterTech Plumbing to scope the sewer line," she said. "They found that it went a few yards and then near the street corner, nothing. No more pipe. I can't tell you how gross that is."
She's joined other grossed-out neighbors to sign a petition requesting the City of Columbia take action. The sewage seepage epidemic has the entire area in its grip, Murray said. Heavy rainfall hasn't helped. "I'm not looking forward to dealing with this, watching all the action on Maupin," she said. "But I know we have to. Handling sewage is probably the most basic thing a city can do."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
VILLAGE VOICEOVER: Code Enforcement Confab Crowded and Productive
Tuesday at the Daniel Boone Regional Library, the North Central Neighborhood Association hosted a code enforcement confab, discussing ways to aid and empower the Neighborhood Response Team (NRT), whose director Bill Cantin took questions and educated attendees. Largely responsible for central city code enforcement, the NRT is an official 2008 "Mayoral Priority." But a cumbersome system that relies on liens instead of fines to force property owners to mitigate mostly outdoor building code violations has slowed the team to a crawl when it comes to compliance.
"Everything ends up heading toward court," Cantin said. "We've fantasized about the day when we can just write a ticket rather than file a lien."
First Ward councilman Paul Sturtz was there. So was 3rd Warder Karl Skala, who sat alongside his former campaign opponent Gary Kespohl. The Columbia Board of Realtors sent government affairs director Elizabeth Holden. One of the city's largest rental property owners, Mark Stevenson, offered several ideas to improve a troubled situation. And a group of MU students with a novel weatherization program offered their assistance, too.
Stevenson suggested funding a remediation team to help low-income homeowners and senior citizens fix code violations. Pat Fowler's MU students offered general maintenance help all around the house. Describing scenes of filth and squalor, Fowler said her student weatherization team "walks into some pretty bad situations, in terms of how people are living."
Skala and Sturtz said they strongly support fixing what Skala called "a broken system." Understaffed and under-empowered, the NRT now has double its previous territory, taking in Benton-Stephens and East Campus. A traffic-ticket style system that would fine non-compliant owners "would really speed things up," Cantin said. It should also satisfy civil libertarians, by replacing the threat of a property taking with the fact of a monetary fine.
Neighborhood association leaders Amir Ziv and Linda Rootes agreed. "These enforcement actions need to have some teeth, some real teeth," Ziv said. "They need to hit the wallet."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CELTIC ARTS: In Columbia
by Kate Akers
Central MO Celtic Arts is a nonprofit arts organization that presents concerts and folk dances, offers classes and social jam sessions, fostering traditional music and dance from Ireland and Scotland.
Since 2001 we have hosted an artist-in-residence each summer in Columbia to teach Irish music, dance and Gaelic (language). These teachers have been college students from traditional music and language programs in Ireland who come to both share their talents, culture and knowledge and soak up ours.
This summer our artist-in-residence, Conor Caldwell, is a student at Queens University Belfast, just finishing his undergraduate degree in music with specialization in the traditional music and dance of the northwest region of Ireland. He plays Irish fiddle, mandolin, tenor banjo and tin whistle as well as being an accomplished dancer of Irish social dances (called coutry sets). Conor will be arriving in Columbia on June 11 and in addition to teaching classes, he will be playing music and sharing his talents and skills at Irish music jam sessions, small performances like Twilight Festival, and our local Irish ceili dances (social dance evenings).
Conor will be playing music with us at Twilight Festival from 6 - 7 pm in front of Bluestem Crafts on Ninth St. On Friday June 13, we will welcome him at our monthly ceili (kay-lee) dance and social. This dance and social is free this month -- no door fee -- and we welcome longtime members and new visitors alike to come dance and listen to great music.
RELATED:
http://www.moceltic.org/2008/summer/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MIKE COOK MEDICAL FUND: Injured by Scumbags, Paper Carrier Needs You!
Somebody will undoubtedly jump on me for using the pejorative, Dirty Harry Callahanesque "scumbags," but when you kick a man in his face, breaking his nose,. cheekbone, and eye socket trying to get a paltry few bucks during a robbery where you're armed to the teeth and he's got nothing, you're a scumbag, plain and simple.
To help Post-Dispatch newspaper carrier Mike Cook with his medical bills, which are sure to pile up, please contact Linda McBee at 800-574-8901 or Judy Sapp at Boone County National Bank, trustees for the Mike Cook Medical Fund. You can read more about Mike and the attack he sustained here:
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/may/20080508news006.asp
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/may/20080510news008.asp
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ANNOUNCEMENTS
OFFICE HOURS at THE COFFEE GROUND with 3RD WARD COUNCILMAN KARL SKALA
WHERE? The Coffee Ground, Broadway Shops, 2703 E. Broadway
(North side of Broadway just West of Hwy 63)
WHEN? 8:30-10:30 a.m.
DATES? June 14; July 5 and 19
WHO? Everyone is welcome. Drop in and share your questions, opinions, ideas, and concerns!
COFFEEHOUSE CONVERSATIONS with 4th Ward Councilman Jerry Wade
This Saturday, June 14 coffeehouse conversation will be from 8:00 to 9:30am. PLEASE NOTE THE TIME CHANGE FOR THE COFFEEHOUSE CONVERSATIONS. The Rendezvous Coffeehouse is at 3304 Broadway Business Park Ct., which is on the south side of West Broadway west of HyVee. This is a regular event the 1st and 3rd Saturday of each month.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PARTING THOUGHTS: Kindred Spirits
"You're the strangest person I ever met, she said & I said you too & we decided we'd know each other a long time."
-- Brian Andreas, featured at Blue Stem Crafts in the District
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mike Martin
Blogitor-in-Chief
Member: National Press Club (www.press.org)
The Columbia Heart Beat
http://columbiaheartbeat.blogspot.com
Circulation: Roughly 3,470
ARCHIVE: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nccna/messages
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
The Columbia Heart Beat -- 6/3/08
Paperless News for Columbia's Blogs and Listservs
__________________________________________________
people
PECKHAM AND FRIENDS: Bring Eco to Edu At Grant Elementary
BISHOP FOR BOONE: County Assessor Candidate Plans for Change
QUESTIONS FROM KIDS: To County Commission Candidate Sid Sullivan, Part 2
UNDER FIRE: Former CPS Superintendent on Getting the Super Boot
THE CHANGE GANG: CPS Boarder Ines Segert Blogs on Math
MIKE COOK MEDICAL FUND: Injured by Scumbags, Paper Carrier Needs You!
places
AT CITY HALL: A One-Man Department Fights Crime by Fixing Broken Windows
FED UP WITH CRIME AT: 802 Wilkes Blvd., Brought to You by Fenco Rentals
VILLAGE VOICEOVER: Code Enforcement Confab Planned
things
PAINLESS DENTISTRY: MU Researchers Use Chemistry for Serenity
READERS RITE: On the economy, and social entrepreneurs
THE TRIPARTISAN: Local DemoLibeRep ("demolibberrep") Events
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OPENING THEME SONG: "Is that you, Mrs. Peel?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUQzNIxGLyM&feature=related
PARTING THOUGHTS: My Twin
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PECKHAM AND FRIENDS: Bring Eco to Edu At Grant Elementary
Sometimes, people and circumstances come together at precisely the right time.
A hue and cry over the unsustainable design of a new high school. A fiery tragedy that forced 5th grade teacher John Nies from his Grant Elementary classroom trailer last December. An idealistic grandfather whose company is celebrating its 30th anniversary just as his granddaughter is graduating from John Nies' very same 5th grade class. Another idealist, an engineeer who created a series of art studios out of dull, grey, metal clad warehouses. Plenty of community volunteers and donors.
And a Little Red -- no, make that Green -- Schoolhouse. Unveiled at last night's 5th grade graduation at Grant, architect Nick Peckham's solar-powered "EcoSchoolhouse" will replace a charred classroom trailer while generating its own electricity; capturing and reusing rainwater; and reducing waste from its own June-to-August 2008 construction a full 97%. Peckham -- whose granddaugher Nora graduated from Grant last night -- sees the Little Green Schoolhouse as a 21st century update to the one-room schoolhouses of yesteryear -- and an excellent alternative to generally unpopular classroom trailers.
"The photovoltaic panels not only provide a net-zero electrical use, but will also be seen each day" by students, Peckham notes. So will the classroom's bamboo floors and double-paned, argon-filled windows.
"The community is donating the designs, the labor, and the materials to make this a state of the art classroom," Grant principal Beverly Borduin told parents in a recent letter. Engineer and Orr Street Studios proprietor Mark Timberlake is joining Peckham -- whose firm, Peckham and Wright Architects, is celebrating 30 years in business -- to make the schoolhouse LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified.
"The Eco-Schoolhouse," Peckham writes, "shows what can happen when a community works together toward a common goal."
RELATED:
http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2007/12/30/fire-damages-grant-elementary-trailer/
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/mar/20080331news003.asp
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/Jun/20080603News004.asp
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BISHOP FOR BOONE: County Assessor Candidate Plans for Change
Why, people wonder, do county assessors in Missouri seem to have near-lifetime tenures? Our own Tom Schauwecker has been in office for 20 years. Two decades! That's One Bush Senior; Two Bill Clintons; and Two Bush Juniors!
Bottom line: it's hard to find qualified people. How many candidates combine public service with the credentials of an appraiser? Boone County Assessor candidate Barbara Bishop -- Schauwecker's Democratic challenger for the August 4th primary -- says she comes to the job well-prepared.
"There's no requirement that a person be an appraiser to hold the job of assessor," Bishop notes. "But I like to go that three better. There's a real estate appraiser, a licensed real estate appraiser, and a certified real estate appraiser." In other words, a hierarchy. "I'm a certified real estate appraiser."
In Ashland -- our fast-growing neighbor to the south -- Bishop has also held the positions of alderwoman (city councilperson): planning and zoning commissioner; and parks board member. Her reputation -- as an outspoken populist or more affectionately, "feisty redhead" -- stems from her willingness to question the status quo in defense of the little guy (or gal).
The issues she's tackled mirror Columbia on a smaller scale: Should Ashland build more parks before it takes care of basic infrastructure, like sewers and roads? Is "spot zoning" a good idea? How does a city combat blight? How does government balance the needs of businesses that create good jobs with services -- like schools -- that need good funding?
Bishop isn't afraid to tackle the big guys, either. In a recent case involving her family, she questioned the State of Missouri, Medicaid, and Representative Ed Robb.
Caring for her mother after colon cancer surgery, Bishop wanted to know why Medicaid wouldn’t provide a nurse to come to their home; why they were told to go to Walgreens if they wanted to check her mother’s blood pressure; and what happened to money from Missouri’s share of a national settlement with tobacco companies that was supposed to be used for health care (Robb answered that "in recent years the state used that money, one-time funds and bond proceeds to plug ongoing holes in the state budget," according to a Columbia Tribune article).
"Luckily, my mom has us to care for her," Bishop said. "But do you know how many are out there that do not have an advocate?"
For the office of county assessor, Bishop advocates a balance between populism and professionalism. She wants to rethink using Vehicle Identification Numbers (VIN), for instance, to tax cars and trucks.
"My opponent made that decision in a vacuum," she says. "He did it with no input from the people, no input from taxpayers." The result has been a net tax increase for thousands of Boone County residents, Bishop notes, largely because VIN's are blind to considerations like how much a person actually paid for their car. "I might have received a fire sale price on my fully loaded Jeep," Bishop says. "But the VIN only looks at the words 'fully loaded.' It doesn't take into account the fire sale price."
Bishop also wants to jettison the so-called "Certificate of Value," a voluntary concoction that reads suspiciously like the county's mandatory personal property declaration. Arriving like clockwork from the county assessor every time a person buys property, the certificate asks a series of voluntary questions, including the property's price. "I don't like it because I've seen it used to paint a bullseye on the people who fill it out," Bishop says.
Bringing "precision appraising" to the assessor's office would also add an element of fairness that a "one size fits all" approach undermines, Bishop says. Older neighborhoods, for instance, often have a mix of homeowners and investors, especially in areas such as Benton-Stephens and the North Central Village.
Appraising an owner-occupied home two doors from a rental house "requires very different criteria," Bishop says. "It's not fair to judge the value of a retired senior's personal residence the same way I would judge the value of a landlord's rental property."
Finally, Bishop says she wants a transparent, open-door office where all appeals procedures -- both formal and informal -- are well advertised and well-explained.
That transparency sensibility includes changing the makeup of the appellate body that hears property tax appeals -- the Boone County Board of Equalization (BOE)
-- not much more than the County Commission itself.
"In all first class counties not having a charter form of government...there may be a board of equalization consisting of three taxpaying, property-owning citizens," reads Missouri Revised Statutes Section 138.085, Equalization and Review of Tax Assessments as of August 27, 2007.
Rather than three property owning, taxpaying county commissioners, Bishop says she'd rather see John and Jane Q. Public on the BOE, real estate and legal expertise more than welcome. It's not a decision she can make, but it's a position she's decided to take.
"Having the County Commission staff the Board of Equalization is like having the foxes watching the hens," Bishop says. "I'm looking at the future of our county, and I think we can do better. I certainly think we should try."
Barb Bishop on the Web:
http://bishopforboone.blogspot.com/
RELATED:
http://www.moga.mo.gov/statutes/c100-199/1380000085.htm
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2005/sep/20050930news005.asp
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CAN YOU TALK STRAIGHT TO A FIFTH GRADER: County Commission Candidate Sid Sullivan, Part 2
Many thanks to Jennifer Wingert's Fifth Grade Class at Grant Elementary for providing these questions to local political candidates. And many thanks to the candidates for answering. This week, we hear again from Southern District Commission Candidate Sid Sullivan. His opponent -- Commissioner Karen Miller -- did not return or respond to the survey. Northern District Commissioner Skip Elkin responded, and his answers were posted earlier:
http://columbiaheartbeat.blogspot.com/2008/03/can-you-talk-straight-to-fifth-grader.html
QUESTION: How does the city and county decide what streets get salted/plowed during bad weather?
The County has decided to ensure all 800 miles of county roads are cleared starting with the more than 200 miles of paved roads. Priority is given to clearing paved roads because they have the most traffic. The remaining subdivision streets and gravel roads are cleared afterwards according to plan. There are a lot more than 800 miles of roads in Boone County but the highways and state routes are cleared by the state (MoDOT) trucks and city streets are cleared by the various cities including Columbia.
The Maintenance Department of the Boone County Public Works Department has divided the county into 8 geographic snow and salt districts. They have 18 trucks equipped with snow plows and salt dispensers to clear the paved roads and 8 road graders to clear snow (and leave the gravel) from gravel roads. They have forty employees assigned to get this job done. Each district has a set of roads and priorities. In addition, the County has contracts with 10 private companies to clear the snow in the various subdivisions when snow exceeds 2 inches.
In addition to all the plans that are made in advanced, the Maintenance Operation Manager has to plan for the unplanned. He never knows which of the 18 snow plows will break down in the middle of the storm. So, he has to be able to communicate with all his drivers to know when conditions change or the unexpected happens.
The county has a set of plans for clearing the roads. With a limited number of trucks, truck drivers, chemicals and money to pay for all this they have to have different plans for different weather conditions and forecasts. It may seem like a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors but they need a plan and everyone needs to know their job in the “fog of a storm.”
Contact Sid Sullivan at sidsullivan@att.net
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SURVIVING THE END GAME: One Superintendent's Advice
By Russell Mayo, CPS Superintendent
American Association of School Administrators
Remember the bought-out superintendent who left three envelopes in the desk drawer for his successor to open when the first three major crises hit?
The message in the first envelope advised, "Blame it on the last superintendent." He did, and the crisis disappeared. During the next crisis, he opened the second envelope and read, "Call in a consultant." He did, and the crisis evaporated. Midway through his second year, as conflicts grew, he reached for the third envelope. Its advice was, "Prepare three envelopes."
The superintendent's job is that tenuous, sometimes. Increasing influence and involvement by federal agencies, the states, the courts and teacher unions have reduced the superintendent's authority, leaving the position conflict-ridden and ever-changing. It's like a tridimensional game of chess. In the opening and middle game, the job holds promise and challenge. Like the end game, though, the potential for checkmate is real.
My recent end game experience, at the conclusion of my second year as a superintendent, may help others as they inevitably pass this way.
It is essential to be able to recognize when the end game is near. One reliable early indication is a feeling of increased apprehension. Your staff members seem to know more than you about the future. The board seems bent on micromanaging and the executive sessions without the superintendent become more frequent. The clearest of all signs is when the board votes not to extend your contract.
Refine Your Thinking
Four survival moves are critical when contract termination seems near.
* No. 1: Compile a clear and concise summary of conditions when you arrived, accomplishments, plans for future initiatives and the long-term needs and challenges of the school district. Emphasize where money was saved. Listing accomplishments on paper refines your thinking and builds self-confidence. Share credit for the accomplishments with your staff.
* No. 2: Contact superintendent search consultants and relate your situation. The extent of their help will depend on the time of the year, which tends to dictate the availability of vacant positions.
* No. 3: Hire a personal attorney with expertise in school law or labor relations and contracts. Your state affiliate of AASA will be able to refer you to the best. Make certain the attorney will litigate against school boards. Some will not litigate if boards provide most of their income.
* No. 4: Hire a personal public relations adviser to assist with news media coverage and image. It may not be appropriate for the adviser to speak on your behalf, but you need this advice. A local person will know the environment and the politics. On the other hand, he or she may be obligated to the group that wants you out.
Legal Protection
The contract is your only safeguard, your lifeline between jobs. Therefore, a careful review of your proposed employment contract by an attorney who represents your best interests is essential before signing. Consider adding a clause that requires a hearing by an arbitrator before a board can suspend, terminate or take any direct action against the superintendent that will halt income. Establish a timeline for the process so the board and the superintendent have reasonable time to consider the situation.
Don't assume that removing an unwilling superintendent will take the board months or years. Serving at the pleasure of the board means just that. Once the board decides to change superintendents, the timeline may be, condensed dramatically. Due process may be ignored or, at best, fabricated. Above all, the board may feel no obligation to be fair to you in the same sense that you must be fair with an employee.
Reasons for dismissal are seldom clear, except when illegal, immoral or unethical behavior has occurred. If the board membership and philosophy have changed, the board may want a leadership change. Usually the reasons are fuzzy. Reconciling the reasons in your mind will be difficult. Work for a buyout and move on.
Emotions Under Check
A measured response is critical. During the end game, all the emotions that encourage fear and insecurity peak. Focus calmly on all of the responsibilities of the job. High visibility is important. Ignore the desire to crawl into a hole. Rely heavily on the advice of your attorney and a public relations adviser, but never allow the dispute to become personal. A board has the right to choose its superintendent--it's their community, their children and their money. Continue to look outside for other job opportunities. Remain positive when relating to your family, the district staff and the public. Smile and be pleasant, regardless of how you really feel.
Try to avoid a gap in contracts by holding off your resignation until the buyout agreement is signed. The latter will void the original employment contract. If a superintendent resigns before settling the buyout pact, a board that is bad-tempered about this episode may take its time refining the agreement knowing you are without income.
Expect a full-fledged attack from an aggressive board. To avoid or reduce the cost of a buyout, a board may launch a major offensive to fire the superintendent for incompetence (termination for cause). Asking questions will help determine the strength of the written charges: Do the minutes show the board approved the actions being targeted? If not, was the action within the prerogative of the superintendent? If cost was involved, was the money in the budget? Did the board express concern to the superintendent about any of the actions before the current charges were presented? If so, did they caution the superintendent of possible consequences?
The fight-or-flight dilemma peaks if charges are presented. Now the choices are to resign or litigate. Never resign without a settlement. Search consultants agree that the resignation of an innocent superintendent creates suspicion. With litigation, however, consider that time, legal fees and news media coverage will be extensive. Being right will matter little when the verdict is two or three years away. Settlement could occur any time during that period, leaving the superintendent short on cash. Further, the ongoing media attention will reduce job opportunities.
Remember, too, that board members have jobs outside of their district service. Their legal fees are paid by the school district. Yours are nor. The attorney is the best source of advice on the merits of litigation, which in my view should be the least desirable strategy for the superintendent.
A Quiet Departure
The end game lurks as an ever-present threat. You must recognize it and respond appropriately. The goal should be to leave as quietly as possible. If a quiet exit is impossible, a buyout of the contract may be the next best thing.
Firing for the right reason (or no reason) is no disgrace. The board has the right to change superintendents. Once the issue of the superintendent's departure is resolved, move on with the understanding that it can happen to anyone. Perhaps the time will come when the role of superintendent is defined more precisely. Until then, every superintendent is subject to the end game.
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THE CHANGE GANG: CPS Boarder Ines Segert Blogs on Math
"Columbia voters know that Columbia’s tradition of excellence has already been significantly harmed by decisions taken by the district with regards to the math curriculum. Clear declines in test scores coincide with the adoption of "integrated math" in Columbia. For example, in each of the past 6 years, the difference between CPS MAP averages and Missouri averages have significantly decreased. For the data on MAP scores, ACT scores, and other objective performance indicators for CPS students, please see the summary on my website:
http://www.yourcps.org/mathcurrQ1.html
The problem is the actual “integrated math” curriculum. We can’t fix this problem by “coaching” teachers to adhere to a fatally flawed curriculum. We are wasting district money, increasing class size by replacing teacher positions with integrated math coaches, while ignoring the underlying problem."
- Posted by: Ines Segert May 31, 2008 03:39 PM on Class Notes
http://blogs.columbiatribune.com/education/
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MIKE COOK MEDICAL FUND: Injured by Scumbags, Paper Carrier Needs You!
Somebody will undoubtedly jump on me for using the pejorative, Dirty Harry Callahanesque "scumbags," but when you kick a man in his face, breaking his nose,. cheekbone, and eye socket trying to get a paltry few bucks during a robbery where you're armed to the teeth and he's got nothing, you're a scumbag, plain and simple.
To help Post-Dispatch newspaper carrier Mike Cook with his medical bills, which are sure to pile up, please contact Linda McBee at 800-574-8901 or Judy Sapp at Boone County National Bank, trustees for the Mike Cook Medical Fund. You can read more about Mike and the attack he sustained here:
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/may/20080508news006.asp
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/may/20080510news008.asp
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AT CITY HALL: A One-Man Department Fights Crime by Fixing Broken Windows
By Mike Martin
For the Columbia Business Times
http://www.columbiabusinesstimes.com
They stopped his life “in its tracks,” two thugs who robbed Columbia newspaper carrier Mike Cook last week with a shotgun, a pistol, and a senseless beating.
"Every time I bend over, my nose starts bleeding," Cook told Columbia Daily Tribune reporter Sara Semelka. Instead of gardening as planned this spring, Cook will meet with surgeons to decide whether or not he needs a metal plate in his broken cheek to hold his damaged eye in place.
”What is happening to our city?” wrote a Tribune blogger. “This is the town where I was born, raised, and educated, and I hope to one day raise a family here. But the alarming number of violent acts plaguing the city has me second-guessing. Why hasn't the police force hired more officers? Why aren't there increased patrols?”
Good questions. Instead of pouring money into new parks, new city offices, and new parking garages, City Hall desperately needs to reprioritize. Adequately funding crime fighters like the police department – and a lesser-known city entity called the Neighborhood Response Team (NRT) – has never been a more critical priority.
Broken Windows
Borrowing help from Columbia’s police, health, and building inspection departments, the NRT works to abate dilapidated buildings that blight the central city. Motivating everything from Columbia's chronic nuisance property laws to the North Central Overlay Ordinance, dilapidation -- according to the so-called "Broken Windows Theory" -- also encourages crime.
"Consider a building with a few broken windows,” wrote the theory’s creators, public policy professors James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. “If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters, light fires,” or steal copper.
Fixing broken windows, keeping up houses, cleaning sidewalks, and erasing graffiti helps prevent crime, the theory holds, an idea New York mayor Rudy Giuliani tested and proved when he and a much larger neighborhood response team transformed the Big Apple. But where Giuliani was committed, our city government is sinking in a quicksand of commitment phobia. It expanded the NRT’s duties last Monday night without also expanding its budget. It presides over two of the central city’s most dilapidated buildings – the Blind Boone home and Heibel-March Store.
It has stood largely idle as a widening cesspool of criminal contempt threatens to swallow our quality of life.
Chronic Offenders
With the heart and persistence of a social worker, NRT director Bill Cantin is a one-man department, overseeing a vast central city territory that includes most of the First Ward and his newly-added domains: Benton-Stephens and East Campus. In a yearly report, Cantin details individual instances of blight. In North Central Columbia alone, it was eighteen pages long in 2007 and involved some 150 properties.
Coordinating three departments and a troubled property owner can make follow-up code enforcement a problematic ordeal. Take the case of the Shoddy Shed on Sixth. Its crumbling concrete walls and caved-in roof posed an immediate hazard to schoolchildren who climbed around it as a shortcut through an open lot. But with the property owner in prison on drug charges, getting the shed demolished – a protective inspection function – took about a year. Getting the debris removed – a health department function – took another six months.
At 807 Washington – a small apartment building owned by the Hinshaw Family Partnership – Cantin’s report noted “several areas with peeling paint that need to be repainted; portions of the exterior siding that are deteriorating and need to be repaired or replaced; and a driveway that is deteriorated and needs to be repaired.”
“4/13/07 – letter mailed” the report continues, referring to an official correspondence sent to building owners about required repairs. But one year later, the only thing that’s changed at 807 Washington is that the paint is now peeling as badly as it is at the Blind Boone home.
Mayoral priority
Columbia Mayor Darwin Hindman has made “stepping up the Neighborhood Response Team” one of this top three priorities for the 2008-09 budget year. That’s a good thing. Too many dedicated people – like Bill Cantin and the many central city neighbors who want safe streets and quality housing – work virtually alone.
It’s also mission critical in this community, as another Tribune blogger pointed out after reading about Mike Cook. “I lived in Columbia for 10 years during and after college, but will never move back. Residents need to open their eyes and see how bad it’s become. Drive-by shootings in downtown. Armed robbery and rape. My wife and I live in a similar size college town now that has zero crime. It makes Columbia look like St. Louis.”
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FED UP WITH CRIME AT: 802 Wilkes Blvd. (Dec 07 - May 08)
Columbia police officers were dispatched at 9:56 p.m. after receiving reports of a disturbance in the front yard of 802 Wilkes Blvd. and found the victim with a stab wound in his side.
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2007/dec/20071228news002.asp
Charles Edwin McCoy, 28, 802 Wilkes Blvd., failure to appear in court, possession of a controlled substance, trafficking
Charles Edwin McCoy, 28, 802 Wilkes Blvd., driving with a suspended license
Charles Edwin McCoy, 27, 802 Wilkes Blvd., assault, armed criminal action
Charles Edwin McCoy, 27, 802 Wilkes Blvd., use or possession of drug paraphernalia, failure to appear in court, possession of marijuana
Terry Allen Simmons, 20, 802 Wilkes Blvd., trafficking, possession of a controlled substance, child endangerment
Terry Allen Simmons, 20, 802 Wilkes Blvd., failure to appear in court
Terry Allen Simmons, 20, 802 Wilkes Blvd., driving while license is revoked
Marcus Montez Smith, 35, 802 Wilkes Blvd., Apt. A, domestic assault, $1,000 bond.
Marcus Montez Smith, 35, 802 Wilkes Blvd., Apt. A, domestic assault, failure to appear in court, probation and parole violation
Marcus Montez Smith, 35, 802 Wilkes Blvd., driving with suspended license, failure to observe traffic controlled devices.
Marquale Walter, 18, 802 Wilkes Blvd., possession of marijuana
Jada Marie Laquitte, 37, 802 Wilkes Blvd., use or possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of marijuana
LANDLORD/OWNER:
K WAYNE FENTON
FENCO RENTALS LLC
4736 ROEMER RD
COLUMBIA, MO 65202
(573) 875-7073
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VILLAGE VOICEOVER: Code Enforcement Confab Planned
Facing down the central city's biggest problem -- serious, hazardous code violations that contribute to crime and urban decay -- the North Central Neighborhood
Association in the Village is planning a public code enforcement meeting for 7 pm Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at the Daniel Boone Regional Library, Conference Room A. Guests include city council members Paul Sturtz and Barbara Hoppe; Columbia Board of Realtors director Carol van Gorp; and Neighborhood Response Team (NRT) director Bill Cantin. Largely responsible for central city code enforcement, the NRT is an official 2008 "Mayoral Priority."
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PAINLESS DENTISTRY: MU Researchers Use Chemistry for Serenity
By Mike Martin
For the Columbia Business Times
http://www.columbiabusinesstimes.com
With a $250,000 National Science Foundation grant, University of Missouri-Columbia assistant engineering professors Qingsong Yu and Hao Li want to make getting a great smile something to smile about. Their new technology, a so-called "plasma brush," brings the serenity of low-temperature chemistry to procedures that use the spinning, whirring, grinding, and dreaded dental drill.
The plasma brush also reduces a huge waste that bites into nearly every dental practice: replacing failed fillings. By modifying the surface of the tooth, the brush improves the composite bond.
“Most composites are made of polymers and ceramic,” Li told me. “They last, on average, 5 to 8 years before they shrink and break,” after which bacteria, acids, and enzymes infiltrate and cause more decay. “The plasma brush should greatly improve the bond and eliminate those problems,” he said.
Resembling its low-tech counterpart, the toothbrush, but with a slightly larger handle hooked up to a few gas tanks, the plasma brush uses argon gas to create a flaming “tip” known as a plasma. But this flame isn’t hot. Through the magic of chemistry, it operates at room temperature.
The heat-free flame “saves healthy tissue,” Yu told me. Conventional cavity prep – mechanical drilling and acid etching – often harms surrounding gums and nerves.
Park Avenue reconstructive dentist Daniel Noor, whose Manhattan office employs the latest laser instrumentation – told me that plasma dentistry “makes a lot of sense – no shots, no drills, no pain, no fear. I would certainly use it after FDA approval.”
Calling tooth decay “the most chronic health problem in children,” pediatric dentist Santos Cortez, who chairs the Long Beach (Calif.) Children's Oral Health Task Force, said he, too, supports the concept.
More children miss school for problem teeth than for any other reason and fear of the dentist – aka odontophobia – is a major reason they have problem teeth. The plasma brush, Cortez told me, “would be wonderful for pediatric dentistry. One of the most frightening issues for children is the noise of the drill.”
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READERS RITE: On the economy, and social entrepreneurship
Mike,
I really liked the Flagging Economy article. As you may be aware, I have only recently relocated to Columbia. Do you have any awareness of any local social entrepreneurs? I am interested in creating a collaboration network between businesses interested in making positive social change. Thanks.
-- Bruce Duncan, Tre www.treweb.org, Columbia
Hi,
I purchased a home on Rogers St. in October in the Village and have been renovating it. My fiancee and I are getting married in July and hope to enjoy
ourselves in this neighborhood!
-- B. Sherman, Columbia
Mike,
Good piece on the local economy. Do wonder where the school district is going to get the money to operate a new high school and new elementary school, particularly since they did not have enough money to operate the status quo this year. Add together a slow growing tax base to a stingy public, and it seems to me a big crunch is coming in 2010.
-- Bob Pugh, Columbia
Dear Mike,
Thank you so much for writing, compiling, seeking out information, reporting, etc. in The Columbia Heartbeat. Very timely, informative, sometimes funny, occasionally appalling. I was glad to get the info re: the Otts' award and event.
-- Susan Marshall, Columbia
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THE TRIPARTISAN: Local DemoLibeRep Events
The Boone County Libertarians meet for lunch at noon on the first Thursday of each month in the back room at Angelo's Pizza and Steakhouse, 4107 South Providence Road. For more information, please send an email to chair@boone.lpmo.org or call (573) 777-7908. http://boone.lpmo.org/
The Boone County Women's Democratic Club usually meets every third Monday of the month at 6pm at the Upper Crust Bakery on Greenmeadows road next to Murry's. (Those wishing to order food, may come at 5:30.) Our meetings provide informative discussions with current legislators and other individuals shaping Missouri’s political future, candidates and other individuals addressing issues which impact the citizens of Missouri. For more information on the next meeting and the schedule of topics or speakers, contact Carolee Wood at caroleew@centurytel.net.
Central MO Young Republicans June Meeting Thursday, June 12, in Columbia, 7 PM, at Jazz: A Louisiana Kitchen (1605 Chapel Hill Road, Suite B, corner of Chapel Hill and Forum Blvd.) We will meet in their private dining room. Scheduled speakers: Blaine Luetkemeyer and Danie Moore, candidates for the 9th Congressional District. Please RSVP to zweifelmr@hotmail.com - invite your friends to attend as well. All ages welcome to attend; free and open to the public.
The Boone County Muleskinners meet each Friday at noon in the Stamper Commons Windsor Lounge on the Stephens College campus at College and Broadway (see map below), to hear a speaker on some aspect of government or public affairs. All programs are free and the public is invited. Parking is free at the adjacent lot on Willis. Lunch is available for purchase ($8 adults, $5 students). For more information, please contact Kay Callison by email at aaplinc@centurytel.net, or by phone at 449-7075.
Columbia Pachyderm Club Upcoming Guest Speakers
May 30 - Kevin Crane, 13th Circuit, Circuit Judge, Division 3
June 6 - Kurt Schaefer, 19th State Senate candidate
Meetings are at Jack’s Gourmet Restaurant on the Business Loop in Columbia. Meetings start at 11:45 A.M. and last until 1 P.M. Lunch may be purchased for $5 for salad, $7 for full meal.
Pack Day for the MarineParents.com Care Package Project -- Saturday, June 7 They ship care packages to Marines serving in Iraq and Afghanistan five times a year, all from here in Columbia. The next pack date is June 7 starting at around 8:30 AM and usually goes until a little after noon or 1 PM, depending on how many packages (usually around 1000) are going out and the number of volunteers. They also take volunteers to help sort product on Thursdays and are always looking for donations of either cash (for example, the recent postage increase bumped the price of the APO/FPO flat-rate Priority Mail box by about $1) or items that can be sent to the troops. More information can be found at http://www.carepackageproject.com/
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PARTING THOUGHTS: My Twin
"When I was young, I told everyone I had a twin sister. One day, after we had been to see relatives, my mother told me I was too old to play that game any more.
So I stopped talking about her and after a while she finally went away. But I'm grown up now. I still miss her. I wish she would come back."
-- Brian Andreas, featured at Blue Stem Crafts in the District
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Mike Martin
Blogitor-in-Chief
Member: National Press Club (www.press.org)
The Columbia Heart Beat
http://columbiaheartbeat.blogspot.com
Circulation: Roughly 3,470
ARCHIVE: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nccna/messages
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people
PECKHAM AND FRIENDS: Bring Eco to Edu At Grant Elementary
BISHOP FOR BOONE: County Assessor Candidate Plans for Change
QUESTIONS FROM KIDS: To County Commission Candidate Sid Sullivan, Part 2
UNDER FIRE: Former CPS Superintendent on Getting the Super Boot
THE CHANGE GANG: CPS Boarder Ines Segert Blogs on Math
MIKE COOK MEDICAL FUND: Injured by Scumbags, Paper Carrier Needs You!
places
AT CITY HALL: A One-Man Department Fights Crime by Fixing Broken Windows
FED UP WITH CRIME AT: 802 Wilkes Blvd., Brought to You by Fenco Rentals
VILLAGE VOICEOVER: Code Enforcement Confab Planned
things
PAINLESS DENTISTRY: MU Researchers Use Chemistry for Serenity
READERS RITE: On the economy, and social entrepreneurs
THE TRIPARTISAN: Local DemoLibeRep ("demolibberrep") Events
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OPENING THEME SONG: "Is that you, Mrs. Peel?"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUQzNIxGLyM&feature=related
PARTING THOUGHTS: My Twin
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PECKHAM AND FRIENDS: Bring Eco to Edu At Grant Elementary
Sometimes, people and circumstances come together at precisely the right time.
A hue and cry over the unsustainable design of a new high school. A fiery tragedy that forced 5th grade teacher John Nies from his Grant Elementary classroom trailer last December. An idealistic grandfather whose company is celebrating its 30th anniversary just as his granddaughter is graduating from John Nies' very same 5th grade class. Another idealist, an engineeer who created a series of art studios out of dull, grey, metal clad warehouses. Plenty of community volunteers and donors.
And a Little Red -- no, make that Green -- Schoolhouse. Unveiled at last night's 5th grade graduation at Grant, architect Nick Peckham's solar-powered "EcoSchoolhouse" will replace a charred classroom trailer while generating its own electricity; capturing and reusing rainwater; and reducing waste from its own June-to-August 2008 construction a full 97%. Peckham -- whose granddaugher Nora graduated from Grant last night -- sees the Little Green Schoolhouse as a 21st century update to the one-room schoolhouses of yesteryear -- and an excellent alternative to generally unpopular classroom trailers.
"The photovoltaic panels not only provide a net-zero electrical use, but will also be seen each day" by students, Peckham notes. So will the classroom's bamboo floors and double-paned, argon-filled windows.
"The community is donating the designs, the labor, and the materials to make this a state of the art classroom," Grant principal Beverly Borduin told parents in a recent letter. Engineer and Orr Street Studios proprietor Mark Timberlake is joining Peckham -- whose firm, Peckham and Wright Architects, is celebrating 30 years in business -- to make the schoolhouse LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified.
"The Eco-Schoolhouse," Peckham writes, "shows what can happen when a community works together toward a common goal."
RELATED:
http://www.columbiamissourian.com/stories/2007/12/30/fire-damages-grant-elementary-trailer/
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/mar/20080331news003.asp
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/Jun/20080603News004.asp
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BISHOP FOR BOONE: County Assessor Candidate Plans for Change
Why, people wonder, do county assessors in Missouri seem to have near-lifetime tenures? Our own Tom Schauwecker has been in office for 20 years. Two decades! That's One Bush Senior; Two Bill Clintons; and Two Bush Juniors!
Bottom line: it's hard to find qualified people. How many candidates combine public service with the credentials of an appraiser? Boone County Assessor candidate Barbara Bishop -- Schauwecker's Democratic challenger for the August 4th primary -- says she comes to the job well-prepared.
"There's no requirement that a person be an appraiser to hold the job of assessor," Bishop notes. "But I like to go that three better. There's a real estate appraiser, a licensed real estate appraiser, and a certified real estate appraiser." In other words, a hierarchy. "I'm a certified real estate appraiser."
In Ashland -- our fast-growing neighbor to the south -- Bishop has also held the positions of alderwoman (city councilperson): planning and zoning commissioner; and parks board member. Her reputation -- as an outspoken populist or more affectionately, "feisty redhead" -- stems from her willingness to question the status quo in defense of the little guy (or gal).
The issues she's tackled mirror Columbia on a smaller scale: Should Ashland build more parks before it takes care of basic infrastructure, like sewers and roads? Is "spot zoning" a good idea? How does a city combat blight? How does government balance the needs of businesses that create good jobs with services -- like schools -- that need good funding?
Bishop isn't afraid to tackle the big guys, either. In a recent case involving her family, she questioned the State of Missouri, Medicaid, and Representative Ed Robb.
Caring for her mother after colon cancer surgery, Bishop wanted to know why Medicaid wouldn’t provide a nurse to come to their home; why they were told to go to Walgreens if they wanted to check her mother’s blood pressure; and what happened to money from Missouri’s share of a national settlement with tobacco companies that was supposed to be used for health care (Robb answered that "in recent years the state used that money, one-time funds and bond proceeds to plug ongoing holes in the state budget," according to a Columbia Tribune article).
"Luckily, my mom has us to care for her," Bishop said. "But do you know how many are out there that do not have an advocate?"
For the office of county assessor, Bishop advocates a balance between populism and professionalism. She wants to rethink using Vehicle Identification Numbers (VIN), for instance, to tax cars and trucks.
"My opponent made that decision in a vacuum," she says. "He did it with no input from the people, no input from taxpayers." The result has been a net tax increase for thousands of Boone County residents, Bishop notes, largely because VIN's are blind to considerations like how much a person actually paid for their car. "I might have received a fire sale price on my fully loaded Jeep," Bishop says. "But the VIN only looks at the words 'fully loaded.' It doesn't take into account the fire sale price."
Bishop also wants to jettison the so-called "Certificate of Value," a voluntary concoction that reads suspiciously like the county's mandatory personal property declaration. Arriving like clockwork from the county assessor every time a person buys property, the certificate asks a series of voluntary questions, including the property's price. "I don't like it because I've seen it used to paint a bullseye on the people who fill it out," Bishop says.
Bringing "precision appraising" to the assessor's office would also add an element of fairness that a "one size fits all" approach undermines, Bishop says. Older neighborhoods, for instance, often have a mix of homeowners and investors, especially in areas such as Benton-Stephens and the North Central Village.
Appraising an owner-occupied home two doors from a rental house "requires very different criteria," Bishop says. "It's not fair to judge the value of a retired senior's personal residence the same way I would judge the value of a landlord's rental property."
Finally, Bishop says she wants a transparent, open-door office where all appeals procedures -- both formal and informal -- are well advertised and well-explained.
That transparency sensibility includes changing the makeup of the appellate body that hears property tax appeals -- the Boone County Board of Equalization (BOE)
-- not much more than the County Commission itself.
"In all first class counties not having a charter form of government...there may be a board of equalization consisting of three taxpaying, property-owning citizens," reads Missouri Revised Statutes Section 138.085, Equalization and Review of Tax Assessments as of August 27, 2007.
Rather than three property owning, taxpaying county commissioners, Bishop says she'd rather see John and Jane Q. Public on the BOE, real estate and legal expertise more than welcome. It's not a decision she can make, but it's a position she's decided to take.
"Having the County Commission staff the Board of Equalization is like having the foxes watching the hens," Bishop says. "I'm looking at the future of our county, and I think we can do better. I certainly think we should try."
Barb Bishop on the Web:
http://bishopforboone.blogspot.com/
RELATED:
http://www.moga.mo.gov/statutes/c100-199/1380000085.htm
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2005/sep/20050930news005.asp
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CAN YOU TALK STRAIGHT TO A FIFTH GRADER: County Commission Candidate Sid Sullivan, Part 2
Many thanks to Jennifer Wingert's Fifth Grade Class at Grant Elementary for providing these questions to local political candidates. And many thanks to the candidates for answering. This week, we hear again from Southern District Commission Candidate Sid Sullivan. His opponent -- Commissioner Karen Miller -- did not return or respond to the survey. Northern District Commissioner Skip Elkin responded, and his answers were posted earlier:
http://columbiaheartbeat.blogspot.com/2008/03/can-you-talk-straight-to-fifth-grader.html
QUESTION: How does the city and county decide what streets get salted/plowed during bad weather?
The County has decided to ensure all 800 miles of county roads are cleared starting with the more than 200 miles of paved roads. Priority is given to clearing paved roads because they have the most traffic. The remaining subdivision streets and gravel roads are cleared afterwards according to plan. There are a lot more than 800 miles of roads in Boone County but the highways and state routes are cleared by the state (MoDOT) trucks and city streets are cleared by the various cities including Columbia.
The Maintenance Department of the Boone County Public Works Department has divided the county into 8 geographic snow and salt districts. They have 18 trucks equipped with snow plows and salt dispensers to clear the paved roads and 8 road graders to clear snow (and leave the gravel) from gravel roads. They have forty employees assigned to get this job done. Each district has a set of roads and priorities. In addition, the County has contracts with 10 private companies to clear the snow in the various subdivisions when snow exceeds 2 inches.
In addition to all the plans that are made in advanced, the Maintenance Operation Manager has to plan for the unplanned. He never knows which of the 18 snow plows will break down in the middle of the storm. So, he has to be able to communicate with all his drivers to know when conditions change or the unexpected happens.
The county has a set of plans for clearing the roads. With a limited number of trucks, truck drivers, chemicals and money to pay for all this they have to have different plans for different weather conditions and forecasts. It may seem like a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors but they need a plan and everyone needs to know their job in the “fog of a storm.”
Contact Sid Sullivan at sidsullivan@att.net
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SURVIVING THE END GAME: One Superintendent's Advice
By Russell Mayo, CPS Superintendent
American Association of School Administrators
Remember the bought-out superintendent who left three envelopes in the desk drawer for his successor to open when the first three major crises hit?
The message in the first envelope advised, "Blame it on the last superintendent." He did, and the crisis disappeared. During the next crisis, he opened the second envelope and read, "Call in a consultant." He did, and the crisis evaporated. Midway through his second year, as conflicts grew, he reached for the third envelope. Its advice was, "Prepare three envelopes."
The superintendent's job is that tenuous, sometimes. Increasing influence and involvement by federal agencies, the states, the courts and teacher unions have reduced the superintendent's authority, leaving the position conflict-ridden and ever-changing. It's like a tridimensional game of chess. In the opening and middle game, the job holds promise and challenge. Like the end game, though, the potential for checkmate is real.
My recent end game experience, at the conclusion of my second year as a superintendent, may help others as they inevitably pass this way.
It is essential to be able to recognize when the end game is near. One reliable early indication is a feeling of increased apprehension. Your staff members seem to know more than you about the future. The board seems bent on micromanaging and the executive sessions without the superintendent become more frequent. The clearest of all signs is when the board votes not to extend your contract.
Refine Your Thinking
Four survival moves are critical when contract termination seems near.
* No. 1: Compile a clear and concise summary of conditions when you arrived, accomplishments, plans for future initiatives and the long-term needs and challenges of the school district. Emphasize where money was saved. Listing accomplishments on paper refines your thinking and builds self-confidence. Share credit for the accomplishments with your staff.
* No. 2: Contact superintendent search consultants and relate your situation. The extent of their help will depend on the time of the year, which tends to dictate the availability of vacant positions.
* No. 3: Hire a personal attorney with expertise in school law or labor relations and contracts. Your state affiliate of AASA will be able to refer you to the best. Make certain the attorney will litigate against school boards. Some will not litigate if boards provide most of their income.
* No. 4: Hire a personal public relations adviser to assist with news media coverage and image. It may not be appropriate for the adviser to speak on your behalf, but you need this advice. A local person will know the environment and the politics. On the other hand, he or she may be obligated to the group that wants you out.
Legal Protection
The contract is your only safeguard, your lifeline between jobs. Therefore, a careful review of your proposed employment contract by an attorney who represents your best interests is essential before signing. Consider adding a clause that requires a hearing by an arbitrator before a board can suspend, terminate or take any direct action against the superintendent that will halt income. Establish a timeline for the process so the board and the superintendent have reasonable time to consider the situation.
Don't assume that removing an unwilling superintendent will take the board months or years. Serving at the pleasure of the board means just that. Once the board decides to change superintendents, the timeline may be, condensed dramatically. Due process may be ignored or, at best, fabricated. Above all, the board may feel no obligation to be fair to you in the same sense that you must be fair with an employee.
Reasons for dismissal are seldom clear, except when illegal, immoral or unethical behavior has occurred. If the board membership and philosophy have changed, the board may want a leadership change. Usually the reasons are fuzzy. Reconciling the reasons in your mind will be difficult. Work for a buyout and move on.
Emotions Under Check
A measured response is critical. During the end game, all the emotions that encourage fear and insecurity peak. Focus calmly on all of the responsibilities of the job. High visibility is important. Ignore the desire to crawl into a hole. Rely heavily on the advice of your attorney and a public relations adviser, but never allow the dispute to become personal. A board has the right to choose its superintendent--it's their community, their children and their money. Continue to look outside for other job opportunities. Remain positive when relating to your family, the district staff and the public. Smile and be pleasant, regardless of how you really feel.
Try to avoid a gap in contracts by holding off your resignation until the buyout agreement is signed. The latter will void the original employment contract. If a superintendent resigns before settling the buyout pact, a board that is bad-tempered about this episode may take its time refining the agreement knowing you are without income.
Expect a full-fledged attack from an aggressive board. To avoid or reduce the cost of a buyout, a board may launch a major offensive to fire the superintendent for incompetence (termination for cause). Asking questions will help determine the strength of the written charges: Do the minutes show the board approved the actions being targeted? If not, was the action within the prerogative of the superintendent? If cost was involved, was the money in the budget? Did the board express concern to the superintendent about any of the actions before the current charges were presented? If so, did they caution the superintendent of possible consequences?
The fight-or-flight dilemma peaks if charges are presented. Now the choices are to resign or litigate. Never resign without a settlement. Search consultants agree that the resignation of an innocent superintendent creates suspicion. With litigation, however, consider that time, legal fees and news media coverage will be extensive. Being right will matter little when the verdict is two or three years away. Settlement could occur any time during that period, leaving the superintendent short on cash. Further, the ongoing media attention will reduce job opportunities.
Remember, too, that board members have jobs outside of their district service. Their legal fees are paid by the school district. Yours are nor. The attorney is the best source of advice on the merits of litigation, which in my view should be the least desirable strategy for the superintendent.
A Quiet Departure
The end game lurks as an ever-present threat. You must recognize it and respond appropriately. The goal should be to leave as quietly as possible. If a quiet exit is impossible, a buyout of the contract may be the next best thing.
Firing for the right reason (or no reason) is no disgrace. The board has the right to change superintendents. Once the issue of the superintendent's departure is resolved, move on with the understanding that it can happen to anyone. Perhaps the time will come when the role of superintendent is defined more precisely. Until then, every superintendent is subject to the end game.
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THE CHANGE GANG: CPS Boarder Ines Segert Blogs on Math
"Columbia voters know that Columbia’s tradition of excellence has already been significantly harmed by decisions taken by the district with regards to the math curriculum. Clear declines in test scores coincide with the adoption of "integrated math" in Columbia. For example, in each of the past 6 years, the difference between CPS MAP averages and Missouri averages have significantly decreased. For the data on MAP scores, ACT scores, and other objective performance indicators for CPS students, please see the summary on my website:
http://www.yourcps.org/mathcurrQ1.html
The problem is the actual “integrated math” curriculum. We can’t fix this problem by “coaching” teachers to adhere to a fatally flawed curriculum. We are wasting district money, increasing class size by replacing teacher positions with integrated math coaches, while ignoring the underlying problem."
- Posted by: Ines Segert May 31, 2008 03:39 PM on Class Notes
http://blogs.columbiatribune.com/education/
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MIKE COOK MEDICAL FUND: Injured by Scumbags, Paper Carrier Needs You!
Somebody will undoubtedly jump on me for using the pejorative, Dirty Harry Callahanesque "scumbags," but when you kick a man in his face, breaking his nose,. cheekbone, and eye socket trying to get a paltry few bucks during a robbery where you're armed to the teeth and he's got nothing, you're a scumbag, plain and simple.
To help Post-Dispatch newspaper carrier Mike Cook with his medical bills, which are sure to pile up, please contact Linda McBee at 800-574-8901 or Judy Sapp at Boone County National Bank, trustees for the Mike Cook Medical Fund. You can read more about Mike and the attack he sustained here:
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/may/20080508news006.asp
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2008/may/20080510news008.asp
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AT CITY HALL: A One-Man Department Fights Crime by Fixing Broken Windows
By Mike Martin
For the Columbia Business Times
http://www.columbiabusinesstimes.com
They stopped his life “in its tracks,” two thugs who robbed Columbia newspaper carrier Mike Cook last week with a shotgun, a pistol, and a senseless beating.
"Every time I bend over, my nose starts bleeding," Cook told Columbia Daily Tribune reporter Sara Semelka. Instead of gardening as planned this spring, Cook will meet with surgeons to decide whether or not he needs a metal plate in his broken cheek to hold his damaged eye in place.
”What is happening to our city?” wrote a Tribune blogger. “This is the town where I was born, raised, and educated, and I hope to one day raise a family here. But the alarming number of violent acts plaguing the city has me second-guessing. Why hasn't the police force hired more officers? Why aren't there increased patrols?”
Good questions. Instead of pouring money into new parks, new city offices, and new parking garages, City Hall desperately needs to reprioritize. Adequately funding crime fighters like the police department – and a lesser-known city entity called the Neighborhood Response Team (NRT) – has never been a more critical priority.
Broken Windows
Borrowing help from Columbia’s police, health, and building inspection departments, the NRT works to abate dilapidated buildings that blight the central city. Motivating everything from Columbia's chronic nuisance property laws to the North Central Overlay Ordinance, dilapidation -- according to the so-called "Broken Windows Theory" -- also encourages crime.
"Consider a building with a few broken windows,” wrote the theory’s creators, public policy professors James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. “If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters, light fires,” or steal copper.
Fixing broken windows, keeping up houses, cleaning sidewalks, and erasing graffiti helps prevent crime, the theory holds, an idea New York mayor Rudy Giuliani tested and proved when he and a much larger neighborhood response team transformed the Big Apple. But where Giuliani was committed, our city government is sinking in a quicksand of commitment phobia. It expanded the NRT’s duties last Monday night without also expanding its budget. It presides over two of the central city’s most dilapidated buildings – the Blind Boone home and Heibel-March Store.
It has stood largely idle as a widening cesspool of criminal contempt threatens to swallow our quality of life.
Chronic Offenders
With the heart and persistence of a social worker, NRT director Bill Cantin is a one-man department, overseeing a vast central city territory that includes most of the First Ward and his newly-added domains: Benton-Stephens and East Campus. In a yearly report, Cantin details individual instances of blight. In North Central Columbia alone, it was eighteen pages long in 2007 and involved some 150 properties.
Coordinating three departments and a troubled property owner can make follow-up code enforcement a problematic ordeal. Take the case of the Shoddy Shed on Sixth. Its crumbling concrete walls and caved-in roof posed an immediate hazard to schoolchildren who climbed around it as a shortcut through an open lot. But with the property owner in prison on drug charges, getting the shed demolished – a protective inspection function – took about a year. Getting the debris removed – a health department function – took another six months.
At 807 Washington – a small apartment building owned by the Hinshaw Family Partnership – Cantin’s report noted “several areas with peeling paint that need to be repainted; portions of the exterior siding that are deteriorating and need to be repaired or replaced; and a driveway that is deteriorated and needs to be repaired.”
“4/13/07 – letter mailed” the report continues, referring to an official correspondence sent to building owners about required repairs. But one year later, the only thing that’s changed at 807 Washington is that the paint is now peeling as badly as it is at the Blind Boone home.
Mayoral priority
Columbia Mayor Darwin Hindman has made “stepping up the Neighborhood Response Team” one of this top three priorities for the 2008-09 budget year. That’s a good thing. Too many dedicated people – like Bill Cantin and the many central city neighbors who want safe streets and quality housing – work virtually alone.
It’s also mission critical in this community, as another Tribune blogger pointed out after reading about Mike Cook. “I lived in Columbia for 10 years during and after college, but will never move back. Residents need to open their eyes and see how bad it’s become. Drive-by shootings in downtown. Armed robbery and rape. My wife and I live in a similar size college town now that has zero crime. It makes Columbia look like St. Louis.”
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FED UP WITH CRIME AT: 802 Wilkes Blvd. (Dec 07 - May 08)
Columbia police officers were dispatched at 9:56 p.m. after receiving reports of a disturbance in the front yard of 802 Wilkes Blvd. and found the victim with a stab wound in his side.
http://archive.columbiatribune.com/2007/dec/20071228news002.asp
Charles Edwin McCoy, 28, 802 Wilkes Blvd., failure to appear in court, possession of a controlled substance, trafficking
Charles Edwin McCoy, 28, 802 Wilkes Blvd., driving with a suspended license
Charles Edwin McCoy, 27, 802 Wilkes Blvd., assault, armed criminal action
Charles Edwin McCoy, 27, 802 Wilkes Blvd., use or possession of drug paraphernalia, failure to appear in court, possession of marijuana
Terry Allen Simmons, 20, 802 Wilkes Blvd., trafficking, possession of a controlled substance, child endangerment
Terry Allen Simmons, 20, 802 Wilkes Blvd., failure to appear in court
Terry Allen Simmons, 20, 802 Wilkes Blvd., driving while license is revoked
Marcus Montez Smith, 35, 802 Wilkes Blvd., Apt. A, domestic assault, $1,000 bond.
Marcus Montez Smith, 35, 802 Wilkes Blvd., Apt. A, domestic assault, failure to appear in court, probation and parole violation
Marcus Montez Smith, 35, 802 Wilkes Blvd., driving with suspended license, failure to observe traffic controlled devices.
Marquale Walter, 18, 802 Wilkes Blvd., possession of marijuana
Jada Marie Laquitte, 37, 802 Wilkes Blvd., use or possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of marijuana
LANDLORD/OWNER:
K WAYNE FENTON
FENCO RENTALS LLC
4736 ROEMER RD
COLUMBIA, MO 65202
(573) 875-7073
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VILLAGE VOICEOVER: Code Enforcement Confab Planned
Facing down the central city's biggest problem -- serious, hazardous code violations that contribute to crime and urban decay -- the North Central Neighborhood
Association in the Village is planning a public code enforcement meeting for 7 pm Tuesday, June 10, 2008 at the Daniel Boone Regional Library, Conference Room A. Guests include city council members Paul Sturtz and Barbara Hoppe; Columbia Board of Realtors director Carol van Gorp; and Neighborhood Response Team (NRT) director Bill Cantin. Largely responsible for central city code enforcement, the NRT is an official 2008 "Mayoral Priority."
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PAINLESS DENTISTRY: MU Researchers Use Chemistry for Serenity
By Mike Martin
For the Columbia Business Times
http://www.columbiabusinesstimes.com
With a $250,000 National Science Foundation grant, University of Missouri-Columbia assistant engineering professors Qingsong Yu and Hao Li want to make getting a great smile something to smile about. Their new technology, a so-called "plasma brush," brings the serenity of low-temperature chemistry to procedures that use the spinning, whirring, grinding, and dreaded dental drill.
The plasma brush also reduces a huge waste that bites into nearly every dental practice: replacing failed fillings. By modifying the surface of the tooth, the brush improves the composite bond.
“Most composites are made of polymers and ceramic,” Li told me. “They last, on average, 5 to 8 years before they shrink and break,” after which bacteria, acids, and enzymes infiltrate and cause more decay. “The plasma brush should greatly improve the bond and eliminate those problems,” he said.
Resembling its low-tech counterpart, the toothbrush, but with a slightly larger handle hooked up to a few gas tanks, the plasma brush uses argon gas to create a flaming “tip” known as a plasma. But this flame isn’t hot. Through the magic of chemistry, it operates at room temperature.
The heat-free flame “saves healthy tissue,” Yu told me. Conventional cavity prep – mechanical drilling and acid etching – often harms surrounding gums and nerves.
Park Avenue reconstructive dentist Daniel Noor, whose Manhattan office employs the latest laser instrumentation – told me that plasma dentistry “makes a lot of sense – no shots, no drills, no pain, no fear. I would certainly use it after FDA approval.”
Calling tooth decay “the most chronic health problem in children,” pediatric dentist Santos Cortez, who chairs the Long Beach (Calif.) Children's Oral Health Task Force, said he, too, supports the concept.
More children miss school for problem teeth than for any other reason and fear of the dentist – aka odontophobia – is a major reason they have problem teeth. The plasma brush, Cortez told me, “would be wonderful for pediatric dentistry. One of the most frightening issues for children is the noise of the drill.”
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READERS RITE: On the economy, and social entrepreneurship
Mike,
I really liked the Flagging Economy article. As you may be aware, I have only recently relocated to Columbia. Do you have any awareness of any local social entrepreneurs? I am interested in creating a collaboration network between businesses interested in making positive social change. Thanks.
-- Bruce Duncan, Tre www.treweb.org, Columbia
Hi,
I purchased a home on Rogers St. in October in the Village and have been renovating it. My fiancee and I are getting married in July and hope to enjoy
ourselves in this neighborhood!
-- B. Sherman, Columbia
Mike,
Good piece on the local economy. Do wonder where the school district is going to get the money to operate a new high school and new elementary school, particularly since they did not have enough money to operate the status quo this year. Add together a slow growing tax base to a stingy public, and it seems to me a big crunch is coming in 2010.
-- Bob Pugh, Columbia
Dear Mike,
Thank you so much for writing, compiling, seeking out information, reporting, etc. in The Columbia Heartbeat. Very timely, informative, sometimes funny, occasionally appalling. I was glad to get the info re: the Otts' award and event.
-- Susan Marshall, Columbia
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THE TRIPARTISAN: Local DemoLibeRep Events
The Boone County Libertarians meet for lunch at noon on the first Thursday of each month in the back room at Angelo's Pizza and Steakhouse, 4107 South Providence Road. For more information, please send an email to chair@boone.lpmo.org or call (573) 777-7908. http://boone.lpmo.org/
The Boone County Women's Democratic Club usually meets every third Monday of the month at 6pm at the Upper Crust Bakery on Greenmeadows road next to Murry's. (Those wishing to order food, may come at 5:30.) Our meetings provide informative discussions with current legislators and other individuals shaping Missouri’s political future, candidates and other individuals addressing issues which impact the citizens of Missouri. For more information on the next meeting and the schedule of topics or speakers, contact Carolee Wood at caroleew@centurytel.net.
Central MO Young Republicans June Meeting Thursday, June 12, in Columbia, 7 PM, at Jazz: A Louisiana Kitchen (1605 Chapel Hill Road, Suite B, corner of Chapel Hill and Forum Blvd.) We will meet in their private dining room. Scheduled speakers: Blaine Luetkemeyer and Danie Moore, candidates for the 9th Congressional District. Please RSVP to zweifelmr@hotmail.com - invite your friends to attend as well. All ages welcome to attend; free and open to the public.
The Boone County Muleskinners meet each Friday at noon in the Stamper Commons Windsor Lounge on the Stephens College campus at College and Broadway (see map below), to hear a speaker on some aspect of government or public affairs. All programs are free and the public is invited. Parking is free at the adjacent lot on Willis. Lunch is available for purchase ($8 adults, $5 students). For more information, please contact Kay Callison by email at aaplinc@centurytel.net, or by phone at 449-7075.
Columbia Pachyderm Club Upcoming Guest Speakers
May 30 - Kevin Crane, 13th Circuit, Circuit Judge, Division 3
June 6 - Kurt Schaefer, 19th State Senate candidate
Meetings are at Jack’s Gourmet Restaurant on the Business Loop in Columbia. Meetings start at 11:45 A.M. and last until 1 P.M. Lunch may be purchased for $5 for salad, $7 for full meal.
Pack Day for the MarineParents.com Care Package Project -- Saturday, June 7 They ship care packages to Marines serving in Iraq and Afghanistan five times a year, all from here in Columbia. The next pack date is June 7 starting at around 8:30 AM and usually goes until a little after noon or 1 PM, depending on how many packages (usually around 1000) are going out and the number of volunteers. They also take volunteers to help sort product on Thursdays and are always looking for donations of either cash (for example, the recent postage increase bumped the price of the APO/FPO flat-rate Priority Mail box by about $1) or items that can be sent to the troops. More information can be found at http://www.carepackageproject.com/
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PARTING THOUGHTS: My Twin
"When I was young, I told everyone I had a twin sister. One day, after we had been to see relatives, my mother told me I was too old to play that game any more.
So I stopped talking about her and after a while she finally went away. But I'm grown up now. I still miss her. I wish she would come back."
-- Brian Andreas, featured at Blue Stem Crafts in the District
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Mike Martin
Blogitor-in-Chief
Member: National Press Club (www.press.org)
The Columbia Heart Beat
http://columbiaheartbeat.blogspot.com
Circulation: Roughly 3,470
ARCHIVE: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/nccna/messages
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