News – Thursday, September 25th 2025

The City of Salem Board of Aldermen held its regular meeting Tuesday evening in the Auditorium at 202 N. Washington Street. Following approval of the agenda and consent agenda, the board appointed S. N. Ball IV to the Library Board of Trustees. Under new business, the board approved $5,000 allocations to four organizations: Sleep in Heavenly Peace, for its continued efforts to provide beds, mattresses, and bedding to children in the community; the Fireworks Committee, for the Independence Day celebration on July 4; the University of Missouri Dent County Extension, for youth programs including 4-H; and SACBA, for their continued efforts of city beautification. These appropriations will be funded from the Non-Departmental Community Support line item, which currently has a balance of $20,000. The board also approved the purchase of eight new HP Mini 800 desktop computers for the police department at a cost of $7,744, along with eight refurbished laptops totaling $8,795. These expenditures will be funded through the Capital Improvement Projects budget, which currently has a balance of $21,725. In addition, the annual Laserfiche Cloud software contract with SumnerOne was approved at a cost of $6,077, to be paid from the Computer Software budget line, though the current balance of that fund was not specified. The annual contract with Trumpia for the city’s text-blast service was also renewed at a cost of $6,000, with funding distributed as follows: $500 from Parks and Recreation, $1,500 each from the water, electric, and sewer funds, and $1,000 from the General Non-Departmental fund. The board heard first readings of three bills: Bill No. 3689, an ordinance establishing fees for dusk-to-dawn lighting services provided by the City of Salem; Bill No. 3690, an ordinance setting criteria for utility service disconnections during extreme weather conditions; and Bill No. 3691, an ordinance amending utility deposit requirements. During reports from city officials, Public Works Director Steve Paine discussed last Saturday’s scheduled outage and the outage that occurred yesterday at approximately 5:00, noting the latter was caused by a fault in a line operated by Show Me Electric that supplies power to the city’s substation. He added that further investigation will be conducted to determine the exact cause. Finance Director Stacy Houston presented the financial report, while Parks and Recreation Director Melissa DuBois provided updates on the flag football program and the upcoming hot air balloon festival. Mayor Greg Parker reminded citizens of the community yard sale scheduled for October 4 and the citywide cleanup taking place October 6–10. The meeting adjourned into executive session to discuss personnel matters. The next regular meeting of the City of Salem Board of Aldermen is scheduled for Tuesday, October 14, at 6:00 in the Auditorium, and is open to the public.

Dent County Prosecutor Andrew Curley has charged Salem residents Michael Sean Moore and his wife Brittany Kiona Moore with a felony charge of Arson in the 2nd degree for a house fire that occurred on July 6th at their property at 712 North Hickory Street. According to the probable cause statement, the investigation into the fire by the State Fire Marshall’s office revealed the only reasonable cause of the fire was the application of an open flame or heat source to available combustible material on or near the southwest corner of the bed by a human hand. With this discovery, the fire was classified as incendiary. Other alleged discoveries that led to this charge included a 2:28 minute phone call when Brittany Moore contacted Michael Moore at 8:24 in the evening after which Michael Moore did not call the fire department but contacted an on-duty law enforcement supervisor. Thus, the fire department was not summoned until 8:31 that evening, arriving at the scene at 8:44 PM. The state investigator also was able to retrieve a number of photographs taken documenting the stages of the fire. One of the body cam videos supposedly shows Michael Moore purposefully throwing an object through a second-floor window introducing oxygen to the fire at 8:28 PM. According to the investigator, the introduction of oxygen changed the situation from a fire in a room to a room on fire, causing greater damage to the home, destroying evidence of the fire’s origin and the increased danger to responding fire personnel. The Moore’s will appear in the Dent County Courthouse on October 6th at 9:00 in front of Judge Patrick J. Horsefield. Charges set forth in an indictment are mere accusations and do not constitute proof of guilt.