News – Monday, December 15th 2025

At the Dent County Commission meeting Thursday morning, Grant Wilson from Representative Jason Smith’s Rolla office was in attendance and reported that Missouri has been approved to receive funding through the Rural Health Transformation Program from the Big Beautiful Bill designed to help rural areas with healthcare needs including help to rural hospitals. Representative Smith will be keeping an eye on the program to ensure that those funds actually go to rural health systems and not get re-allocated. He also reported the Secure Rural Schools Re-authorization Act has passed congress and has been sent to President Trump’s Desk to be signed. This act will provide money to counties that have significant federal lands on them that cannot be assessed for taxes such as National Forests or grasslands. This money is in lieu of the tax money and will be distributed to schools, county governments for road maintenance, and law enforcement services. The program expired in 2023, but this act will reimburse the counties with retroactive payments for the years 2024 and 2025 and will also be in place to pay counties in 2026. Those payments may be received before the end of the year. In the road report, District 1 Commissioner Keith Green said crews were still partially rebuilding Dent County Road 2440 with the members from District 2. Green went on to say workers were also changing out blades and tires on graders. District 2 Commissioner Jimmy Williams said workers would be working with District 1 crews on county road 2440 by hauling rock and grading, plus they will be grading county roads 2450 and 4300. Presiding Commissioner Gary Larson stated he attended the Ozark Rivers Solid Waste Management District meeting and banquet Tuesday night at the MRPC offices. Dent County Clerk Angie Curley said candidates can now file for offices for the April 7th Municipal Election for school boards, hospital boards, City of Salem alderman positions, etc. They have until December 30th to do so and many of the entities will have special holiday office hours around Christmas. She also said her office would be working on the budget. Jack Williams with the SBA Office of Disaster and Resilience was in to let the commission know there are funds available through the SBA that governments can apply for when disasters hit to help cover what FEMA and SEMA doesn’t reimburse and leaves to the county to fund on tight budgets. Williams said these funding mechanisms are not only for governments, but local businesses as well as those that are hurt physically or financially by disasters. These monies can be made available through disaster loans or mitigation to cover expenses not yet reimbursed by FEMA or SEMA. The commission was looking to at least get their name in the system to apply for these funds if needed. The Dent County Extension Office submitted their budget to the county commission and asked for an increase in their funding. Brandi Richardson, Janet Brannan and Samantha Riley were all in attendance. Richardson reported the city cut their funding from $8,400 in 2025 to $5,000 in 2026, and they will receive $5,000 from the Judson Young Foundation. They asked for $60,000, but also stated that it may be possible for them to get some of that funding paid for through the opioid settlement funds which has been done in other counties because of the established drug-free education through 4-H. Richardson stated she would also submit an application to that board to see if they can be awarded some of those additional funds requested in their budget. The next meeting of the Dent County Commissioners will be this morning at the courthouse at 9:00 and the meeting is open to the public.