Local News – Tuesday, January 26th, 2021

The Dent County Commission met Monday morning at the Dent County Courthouse for their regular meeting. Dent County Treasurer Denita Williams brought in the CART Fund money received this month. She said the county received $55,028.29 which is $1,021.86 less than the 2020 figure of $56,050.15. In the road reports, District 1 Commissioner Wes Mobray and District 2 Commissioner Gary Larson stated that workers would be out checking roads for washouts, downed trees and clogged pipes. District 1 will also be adding materials to county road 6220 if possible. District 2 workers will be servicing Grader #37 which is due for its 1,000 hour service. Larson said he also attended a Tourism Tax Committee meeting on Monday, January 18th. Presiding Commissioner Darrell Skiles said the MRPC Annual Awards dinner rescheduled for this March has been postponed. Skiles said he attended a MAC virtual board meeting last Thursday with County Clerk Angie Curley and said they are looking at holding a regular meeting with participants in the near future. Skiles stated he would be attending a CCAM Board meeting in Jefferson City in person as he is an officer while other board members will be attending via Zoom. Dent County Clerk Angie Curley said once the budget is approved, the commissioners will need to catch up on paying bills. She said the last day to register to vote for the Municipal Election will be March 10th and the first day to vote absentee will be February 23rd. She also said she balanced with the collector and assessor for the month of December on all collections, add-ons and abatements. After the commissioners approved the 2021 county budget, Curley opened proposals from firms who would like to do the improvements on the Dent County Courthouse. Five firms submitted their qualifications to provide the assessment of the courthouse and the ability to complete the work that needed to be done. Those firms were N-Form Architecture from Springfield, Anderson and Associates from Rolla, Buddy Webb and Company from Springfield, AEA Stack Design Group from St. James, and Treanor HL from Lawrence, Kansas. Superintendent Jason Lott of the Ozark National Scenic Riverways was in and wanted to update the commissioners on what is going on. He said there will be a new Roads and Trails Plan that is supposed to come out sometime in March for public comment that will define horse trails, ownership of roads and a UTV corridor trail. He said the Big Spring Lodge in Van Buren will be getting a major overhaul this year, there will be improvements to the group camping at Round Springs damaged from the flood last year and there will be a time for public comment on the needed improvement or replacement of the two bridges in the Round Spring area starting with a virtual presentation next Thursday. He said Alley Mill will be getting two new pedestrian bridges to replace those that were damaged by the flood last year. He went on to say that a two-year project that will begin this year will be for the Ozark National Scenic Riverways to find and identify cemeteries in the park boundaries and then create a plan on how to provide some care for them. Lott said the attendance at the park was up over 30% in 2020 and the camp grounds were full most of the year. He also said he has two staff people who work on eradicating feral hogs and in 2020, there were 325 hogs killed in the scenic riverways and another 23 have already been killed in 2021. The next meeting of the Dent County Commissioners will be Monday, February 1st at 9:00 at the courthouse and the meeting is open to the public.

Dent County Prosecutor Andrew Curley has released a few of reports. The first report was from Thursday, January 21st when Earl Briggs
of Salem pled guilty to a Class C felony for the distribution of a controlled substance and for driving while having his license revoked. Briggs was sentenced to seven years in the Department of Corrections as requested by the state. Judge Nathan Kelsaw presided over that hearing in Dent County. On Monday in front of Judge Michael Randazzo, Chris Gibbs had his probation for a Class D felony for the possession of a controlled substance revoked. Gibbs had previously completed a 559.115 program in the Department of Corrections. Gibbs was sentenced to seven years in the Department of Corrections. Also on Monday, Jesse Wessel of Salem pled guilty to a Class D Felony of the possession of a controlled substance. Wessel was a prior and persistent felony offender and was placed on probation in 2019. A revocation hearing was held and Wessel’s sentence of 10 years in the Department of Corrections was executed due to the probation violation.