COMMITTEE AGAIN WILL CONSIDER LAKE

JACKSON - After about eight months of dormancy, the Cape Girardeau-Bollinger County Lake Committee will meet next week with county commissioners to discuss whether a once-considered 7,700 acre lake has a future.

"The only purpose of this meeting is to see if there is any future at all to the lake," said Cape Girardeau County Presiding Commissioner Gene Huckstep. "We just want to see if there is any merit to continuing with the committee."

Huckstep said he has been contacted often by members of the committee who want to know exactly where the project stood.

"I don't want to speculate one way or the other on what might come out of the meeting, but we owe the members of the lake committee an answer one way or the other," he said.

"I want to go into the meeting and listen to what people have to say and think about the project. From our (Cape Girardeau County Commission's) end, we will be observing what everyone thinks the future is."

Huckstep said he contacted Bollinger County Presiding Commissioner Elwood Mouser recently about calling a meeting. Huckstep said Mouser had no problems with a meeting being called and indicated that commissioners from his county would participate in a meeting.

Final plans for a meeting were made Thursday and members have been notified of a June 25 meeting at 6:30 p.m. in the Cape Girardeau County Administration Building in Jackson.

Charles Haubold, who is chairman of the 4-year-old lake committee, said he has no idea what the meeting will bring but looks forward to knowing whether the lake idea has a future.

"I'm not sure what all has been said or discussed between the two commissions," said Haubold. "I think we as a committee want to know what the future holds and what we need to do, if anything."

Haubold said he has been asked about the lake's status by a number of people, and several members of the committee have asked when they planned to meet again.

"I told them we would have to wait for the county commissions to make the next move and tell us what they would like," said Haubold. "I am assuming it is sort of positive or we would not be meeting."

At this time last year, the project appeared headed toward a November election so citizens in Cape and Bollinger counties could decide whether to pass a 1-cent sales tax to fund the $73 million project.

But on July 23, the Bollinger County Commission decided not to submit the sales tax to a vote until after legislation that outlined the powers of a lake authority to oversee development and maintenance of the project had been revised to comply with concerns raised by citizens in their county.

Ashcroft signed the legislation, sponsored by Sen. John Dennis of Benton, on July 13.

A committee had already been meeting to prepare an election strategy for November in the two counties to win approval of the project.

The lake committee had also chosen an engineering firm, a bond counsel and bond underwriters to assist with the campaign and proceed with the project if the election was successful.

The project hit another snag in November when Charles Hawn, who had expressed support for giving voters in his county the right to vote on the lake, was defeated for re-election as presiding commissioner by Mouser.

In his campaign, Mouser was critical of the lake project and many attributed Hawn's support for the lake as the main reason for his defeat.

Since the election, there has been little discussion about the lake; however, Huckstep said once Mouser got acclimated in his role as presiding commissioner he hoped to meet and discuss the lake's status.

Meanwhile, 17 changes in the legislation creating a lake authority that had been agreed to by the lake committee and county commissions were never drafted into legislation for the 1991 session of the General Assembly. No bills pertaining to the lake project were introduced during the last legislative session.

Members of the Cape County Commission have expressed support for giving voters an opportunity to decide whether they want the lake.

About 28 percent of the lake would be in Bollinger County, with the remainder in Cape County.