Forum Flashbacks: Jan. 28 – Feb. 3

FORUM FILE PHOTO
25 YEARS AGO: Little Miss Northwest, Xaviera Love, center, Taylor Wilmes, left, first runner up, and Jessica Greene, right, second runner up wave at the crowd.

25 years ago

• The Northeast Nodaway R-V School District has been listed as a defendant in a sexual discrimination and violation of civil rights under color law suit in which a former principal is suing for $1.5 million.
  Along with the R-V district, board members have been named in the action as defendants.
  Marcella Goslee filed suit in the United States District Court for the Western District of Missouri, St. Joseph Division, Jan. 4, 1996.
  She was hired by the district for the 1992-1993 school year. At that time, she was given a one-year contract to fill the position of elementary principal. The one-year contract was renewed in 1993 and 1994. However, in the spring of 1995, the board voted not to offer Goslee a contract for the position of principal in 1995-1996.
  In a charge of discrimination filed with the Missouri Commission on Human Rights, Goslee states: “I believe I was discharged due to my sex, female, in that (1) the male principal of the high school had the same employee turnover rate as I did. He was not discharged. (2) Respondent’s board members have made numerous sexist remarks, such as, “what we need up there is a man,” and “they show more respect for a man.” (3) My job was given to a male with less experience. He is being hired for more money than I was paid this past year.”

15 years ago

• Weekend rains were a blessing for the Maryville Fire Department, which responded to several blazes last week, some of them attributed to dry conditions.
  The worst of these was a grass fire near Mozingo Lake on Friday afternoon.
  According to Phil Rickabaugh of the Maryville Department of Public Safety, fire crews were called in after a controlled burn got out of hand. …
  About 50 acres were burned. Firefighters from Maryville, along with Jackson Township crews from Ravenwood and Union Township firefighters from Pickering worked for over an hour to put out the blaze. With no fire hydrants nearby, crews were forced to return to Maryville at least once for more water.
• A building in the 400 block of Market Street was torn down recently, and Nodaway County officials are looking at the possibility of constructing an administrative facility at the site.
  Nodaway County owned the building, which was most recently occupied by Law Electric and is located right next door to Maryville City Hall.
  Presiding Commissioner Lester Keith said the commission is going to be talking to builders to see how much a new building on the site would cost, but the commission does not appear to be in a hurry to add a new county facility.
  “Until we find out what it’s going to cost, we’re not building anything,” Keith said.

5 years ago

• When Nodaway County citizens vote on March 15 in the first of this year’s four elections, they may notice something a little different about their polling places.
  Earlier this week, Nodaway County Clerk Karen Leader and her staff received training on how to set up and operate 19 new ImageCast Precinct automated ballot counters recently purchased from Colorado-based Dominion Voting.
  When attached to their ballot-storage drums, the shiny black machines stand about waist high, and aside from their dark color voters won’t notice much difference between the new devices and the electronic vote counters deployed for years on Election Day in Maryville and Nodaway County’s 15 townships.
  But for Leader and her team, consisting of Deputy Clerk Lorraine O’Donnell and assistant Julie Farnan, the devices offer a number of new-tech features that should make tabulating ballots easier, faster, and less prone to errors.
  According to Dominion representatives, the machines offer touch-screen controls; high-resolution scanning of each ballot; automatic detection of fraudulent ballots; a multi-feed detector that keeps the counter from accepting more than one ballot at a time; and dual memory cards that provide redundancy in case one of the cards is lost, damaged, or corrupted.
• City of Maryville staff members said goodbye Friday to a longtime colleague as Utility Billing Clerk Cindie Hansen celebrated her retirement during a reception at City Hall.
  Hansen had been with the city for 24 years.
  “Her friendly face will be missed at City Hall,” said City Manager Greg McDanel.
  Hansen said she doesn’t have any immediate plans for retirement, but is looking forward to living closer to family.
  Following the reception, Hansen planned to finish her move to the Kansas City area, where she has already been living part of the time.
  “I’d been warning the office for a while,” Hansen said in jest. “Really, it just seemed like a good time to retire.”
  Hansen, originally from New Mexico, moved to Maryville after getting married. She worked at the Energizer factory until she had her children. Once they were all in school, she wanted to return to work and found the city’s meter reader position was open.
  After working in that position for 10 years, she assumed the utility billing clerk’s job when her predecessor retired.
  Ashley Turner, who has been working as the water meter reader, is taking over Hansen’s position after training under her for the past month.