Forum Flashbacks: Aug. 11-18
FORUM FILE PHOTO
25 YEARS AGO: Identification please – Ryan Phillippe, 5, gets his fingerprints taken by Sgt. Rick Smail of Maryville Public Safety Saturday afternoon at Wal-Mart. Smail and Officer Brad Sullivan fingerprinted and photographed 63 kids and gave packets to their parents to aid in identification purposes.
5 years ago
The small stuff counts — especially when it comes to ballot language.
That’s a lesson the Nodaway County Commission and Independence Township officials learned this week after the office of Missouri State Auditor Nicole Galloway essentially invalidated voter approval last April of a road maintenance tax levy.
Independence Township is one of 15 political subdivisions in Nodaway County set up primarily to collect taxes used to gravel rural roads. Roughly rectangular, Independence Township takes up the northeast comer of the county and includes the town of Parnell.
How the ballot gaffe happened is still a mystery, South District Commissioner Robert Stiens said Wednesday. But what happened is fairly simple.
A decimal point that shouldn’t have been there means voters mistakenly approved a tax levy set at about a third of a cent per $100 of assessed valuation instead of 35 cents per $100.
Here’s how the ballot question read: “Shall Independence Township issue its general obligation .35-cent road levy for the purpose of road and bridge maintenance, machinery repair and cost?” That’s “.35-cent,” not 35 cents, meaning, according to what Galloway staffer Jill Wilson told the commission on Aug. 7, that the township can only collect 35/100 of a penny for each $100 of assessed value assigned to real and personal property.
The commission asked the auditor’s office to reconsider, but was told Wednesday that wasn’t going to happen.
Independence Township has an assessed valuation of a little more than $5.5 million, and Stiens said the error means levy revenues due starting in November will total only $193, rather than the nearly $20,000 intended when the ballot question was formulated.
25 years ago
Elementary students in the Jefferson School District will have to think twice about skipping school after the district’s school board passed a new attendance policy at their Aug. 11 meeting.
Superintendent Jim Davis said the new policy aligns the elementary school with the high school.
“Anyone who misses more than 10 days in the year, or five days a semester, will have to make up that class time,” Davis said. “Whether it is staying after school, missing recess or coming in Saturdays, the student will have to make-up the in-class time they have missed.”
Davis explained that the students themselves had forced the policy to be put into effect.
“In the previous past, certain fifth and sixth graders have chosen to blow school off and skip classes,” Davis said. “This will hold those students accountable.”
100 years ago
WILL ORGANIZE
A BATTERY HERE
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Captain E. A. Maynor, New College Coach, Will Have Charge of Coming National Guard Battery
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BATTERY WILL BE WELL EQUIPPED
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Capt. E. A. Maynor of the 128th Field Artillery is in Maryville today to begin his duties as organizer of Battery C of the 128th Field Artillery. Captain Maynor will organize the battery in connection with his duties as athletic coach at the State Teachers College.
The battery will bring to the State Teachers College a number of young men who otherwise could not afford to attend college.
The battery will consist of fifty men and four officers who will be given lodging and board. Each member of the battery will receive one dollar for each drill attended. Along with the money received from drilling the horses and material belonging to the company will be cared for by the certain members who will be paid for their services. The battery will have thirty two horses and several field pieces and automatic rifles. The field pieces will be of the French 75 type which were used in the World War. A field will be rented and a rifle range set up for practice. Captain Maynor said that when the battery was organized at Columbia, Mo., the lists were filled to overflowing with applicants for places in the battery.
The battery, according to Captain Maynor, will be something of a social affair along with the regular duties. The thirty-two horses will be available for riding by members of the battery. The men will not be required to stay in any special barracks, but may stay at the private homes. Any business man in Maryville who wishes to join the battery may do so, but will be subject to the rules of the battery. The drill will probably be held in the evenings when the business men may attend.
The 100-year flashback is courtesy of the Missouri Digital Newspaper Project from the State Historical Society of Missouri, viewable at shsmo.org/collections/newspapers/mdnp. The original column ran in the Aug. 15, 1922, edition of The Maryville Tribune, a predecessor of the Maryville Forum.
