Out of the past: Dec. 16

1997

An expanded hotel-motel-restaurant tax and 13 proposed fee increases on everything from cat and dog licenses to sewer hookup fees will go before Cape Girardeau voters in April; the City Council approved placing all those items on the ballot for the April 7 municipal election at a meeting last night; a proposal for a vote on the hotel-motel-restaurant tax, which would make bed-and-breakfast establishments eligible for collecting the city's 3% hotel-motel tax and would require convenience stores and supermarkets to collect the 1% restaurant tax on some items, was approved on a 5-1 vote.

May Greene and Washington elementary schools probably will remain open for an extra year, superintendent Dr. Dan Tallent told the Board of Education last night; slow progress on a new elementary school near the Bertling-Sprigg intersection is to blame for the delay.

1972

PERRYVILLE, Mo. -- Allegations that Perryville City Councils over the past decade have been negligent in the construction of a new sewage disposal plant have erupted into a heated controversy here; the present council has been given until Jan. 31 to comply with requirements of the Missouri Clean Water Commission if it is to receive state and federal grants to help finance the long-proposed, estimated $1.9 million plant; the city, however, hasn't yet set a date for a special bond issue toward construction of the plant.

Cape Girardeau has its lowest temperature of the young winter season in the morning, a frosty 8 degrees, following in the wake of Friday morning's snowstorm.

1947

A flash 6-inch snowfall, its intensity centered in this immediate area, bogged down traffic, caused at least one fatal accident and played havoc with long-distance telephone communication yesterday afternoon and night; hundreds of motor vehicles on highways were stranded for hours as they slipped into ditches trying to negotiate slippery hills; in the most serious of the series of accidents, Ernest R. Austin, 42, employed by Magnolia Pipeline Co., was fatally injured on Highway 25, three miles south of Perryville, Missouri, at 6:15 Monday night when his 1946 DeSoto automobile collided with a bus of the St. Louis-Cape Bus Line.

A man past 30, from out of town, in possession of a youth's coasting sled, was cited downtown last night by the police, who contend he was inebriated; the man was making no special effort to coast when the officers made the arrest; it couldn't be determined if the subject had the sled for transportation on the snow or had just purchased it.

1922

The state organization of circuit clerks and recorders, which has been maintained jointly, will be separate hereafter, according to a decision made at the final meeting of the association last night in the Cape Girardeau Chamber of Commerce rooms; the clerks will meet at Springfield the second Monday in August of next year, while the recorders will meet Jan. 24, 1923, at Jefferson City.

Just as they did in the Pecan Grove community, Allan H. Hinchey and Professor H. Gehrs of the Teachers College last night organized a community club at Egypt Mills; officers chosen were president, Mary Bray; vice president, John Daume, and secretary, Frank Schwettman.

-- Sharon K. Sanders