QUALITIES OF LIFE, CAPE GIRARDEAU; SURVEY NOT JUST A NUMBERS GAME

A Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce committee has painted a statistical picture of the city's quality of life.

But it isn't just a numbers game. The committee's goal is to provide the chamber with concrete evidence of both the community's good qualities and those that need improvement.

"Information without recommendation is worthless," said John Mehner, chamber president.

Mehner said the chamber wants to use the information to develop partnerships with others in the community to address community problems.

It also will be used for industrial recruitment, he said. Many of the statistics in the report are positive ones, such as job growth and retail sales.

Keith Russell co-chaired the Quality of Life Committee that spent the past year putting together the statistical report.

"The quality of life is good in Cape Girardeau. This document supports that," he said.

Russell said the committee annually will track high school graduation rates, crime rates, teacher salaries, voter turnout and other statistics.

After a year or two, the committee will look at the trends and begin setting targets or goals for addressing problem areas and improving the quality of life in Cape Girardeau, Russell said.

No specific goals have been identified yet, but Mehner said chamber officials would like to see a higher graduation rate. Currently, the high school graduation rate is 90 percent, down slightly from 1990.

"That is one thing that I think disturbs everybody in terms of what our dropout rates are," he said. "It is not where we want to be."

The chamber report isn't a public relations gimmick, chamber officials said.

"This document is as factually based as we can get and leaves the opinion out of it," said Mehner. "The main objective on this project was accuracy."

He said community leaders shouldn't feel threatened by the information. "People in leadership positions should never be afraid of what the information is," said Mehner.

Good leaders, he said, recognize problems and address them.

Mehner said the chamber wants to make its Quality of Life report widely available to the public.

The chamber report will be available to the public at the chamber office. The Southeast Missourian plans soon to put its weeklong series "Special Report: Qualities of Life" on its www.semissourian.com web site.

The series focused on the chamber study.

Mehner said the report also may be placed on file at the Cape Girardeau Public Library.