Koeper's road plans

Cape Girardeau County Commissioner Paul Koeper promised during his first-district campaign to stay in touch with voters. On Friday, he announced plans for four town hall meetings. He originally planned to start them today, but he said the ice storm pushed everything back a week.

The 6:30 p.m. meetings are Feb. 9 at the Fruitland Auction Barn, Feb. 11 at Delta Community Center, Feb. 13 at Burfordville First Baptist Church and Feb. 17 at Daisy Coonhunters Club.

Expect to see at least one member of the county's road and bridge advisory board at each meeting, according to board chairman Larry Payne. He said anyone in the county is welcome to the meetings, which were scheduled on various nights of the week to allow people as great a chance as possible to attend.

The agenda includes an overview of each county commissioner's role, Koeper's explanation of what he's learned since taking office Jan. 1, an explanation of how the Proposition 1 tax is being spent on roads and what other road funding is available to the county. He also plans to talk about long-range planning -- another campaign issue -- and wants to hear what people think about the old federal courthouse as well as the Common Pleas Courthouse. After that, Koeper will focus on highway department-specific points.

He'll cover road maintenance, speed limits and enforcement, the paving and right-of-way policy, road widths, the pros and cons of chip and seal paving, other dust control efforts, the price-per-mile of road preparation and various paving methods.

Then he'll open up the meeting to other topics.

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Michelle Hahn, the woman behind the Channel 5 programming for Cape Girardeau, has resigned from her job as the city's public information coordinator, effective Friday. Since taking over as an interim in January 2007, she's been the city's media coordinator, which included keeping up the city's website and newsletter and employee communications. Her next job is internet sales director for KFVS.

"Michelle was doing a good job and taking care of Channel 5 and all of our news releases," said Ken Eftink, assistant city manager. Her move, he said, is "a bad thing in that we're going to be losing a good person, but the flip side is, it's a career move for her and you always like to see somebody get a job they might be more suited for so it's kind of bad for the city, but good for her and KFVS."

Hahn said she made "a lot of great connections" during her tenure.

"It's a very vital position for the city. It makes it easier for residents to know what's going on with the city, to have a person in that role," she said. "I hope the next person in that role can continue to make improvements on that job."

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The Jan. 22 story on road sign thefts was picked up by a number of news outlets and a few blogs, including a page on the website for the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, where a reader added the following message:

"OK, stoners, no matter how funny, it is wrong to steal road signs. Ambulances need those signs to find people in need."

I suspect the same would be true for another Scott County sign that's gone missing far too often: Weed Lane.

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Doug Sutterfield of Chaffee, Mo., makes a living as a maintenance engineer for Leggett & Platt Inc. of Cape Girardeau. But he's also a volunteer firefighter for Delta. His fellow smoke eaters named him Firefighter of the Year for 2008.

"It meant a lot to me," he said. "I was really tickled by that."

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