ST. JOSEPH, Mo. – The following is a listing of general highway maintenance and construction work in the Northwest Missouri region planned for the week of Feb. 19 – 25 from the Missouri Department of Transportation. In addition to the work listed below, there may be pothole patching, shoulder work, bridge maintenance, striping, brush cutting, guardrail repairs and other road work conducted throughout the region. Many of these will be moving operations and could include lane closures with delays. All scheduled maintenance and construction projects are subject to change.

MoDOT reminds the public to stay alert, watch for road work, buckle up, slow down, and drive with extreme caution through work zones and in changing weather conditions.

For more information about a project, please contact MoDOT at 1-888-ASK-MoDOT (888-275-6636) or visit modot.org/northwest. You can also follow MoDOT’s Northwest Missouri District on Twitter @ModotNorthwest and on Facebook.

Andrew County

• U.S. Route 71 – Pothole patching from the city limits of Maryville (Nodaway County) to Route B, Feb. 20 – 23

Atchison County

• Interstate 29 – Pothole patching, Feb. 20 – 23
• Route 111 – Bridge maintenance at the Rock Creek Bridge, Feb. 20 – 23

Caldwell County

• Route 116 – Shoulder work from U.S. Route 69 to Route 13, Feb. 20 – 23

Gentry County

• Route H – Drainage work from U.S. Route 136 to three miles south of U.S. Route 136, Feb. 20 – 23

Linn County

• U.S. Route 36 – Pothole patching from the Macon County line to Route 139, Feb. 20 – 23
• Route 5 – Drainage work from the city limits of Laclede to the city limits of Linneus, Feb. 22 – 23

Mercer County

• U.S. Route 136 – CLOSED for a bridge replacement project at the Muddy Creek Bridge. The road will be closed through February 2018.

Nodaway County

• U.S. Route 71 – Pothole patching from the city limits of Maryville to Route B (Andrew County), Feb. 20 – 23

St. Joseph School District preschool screenings begin this week.

According to a press release from the district, the screening is for all children in the community ages 3 to 5. Parents can get developmental information about their child, enroll in SJSD preschool or enroll in Head Start.

Preschool screenings will take place February 22 – February 28 at the Keatley Center.

For more information, or to register for a date and time, click here.

To be eligible for regular education preschool services, children must be four years old by August 1st.

The screening is done in partnership with the St. Joseph School District, Parents as Teachers and Community Action Partnership of Greater St. Joseph.

The Missouri Department of Transportation is planning a bridge replacement project for an I-29 bridge to begin in April.

According to a MoDOT press release, the Nodaway River Bridge was built in 1966 over the southbound lanes of I-29 at the border of Holt and Andrew counties.

Today, more than 6,000 cars and trucks make their way across the span each day, adding to the wear and tear on the bridge’s surface, also known as the bridge deck.

Contractors from Emery Sapp and Sons, working with MoDOT, plan to replace the bridge deck. The first step drivers will see is the construction of crossover lanes in the median just north and south of the bridge. This will allow contractors to replace the bridge deck without closing the road and detouring traffic several miles around the work. Construction on the crossovers will begin in mid- to late April. The old bridge deck will then be removed and a new bridge deck will be poured. The contractor expects to reopen the bridge to southbound traffic at the end of October.

During construction, traffic on I-29 will be head-to-head, one lane in each direction, in the northbound lanes. Traffic is planned to move head-to-head in mid-May.

All schedules are weather dependent and subject to change.

The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art is offering several art classes for all skill levels.

According to Museum Marketing and Communications Director Jane Graves, the first series of classes, Complimentary Color Mixing, a drawing class, is coming up next week and will be taught by Wanda Taylor.

“She does amazing work with pencils and colored pencils,” Graves said. “Animals and flowers that just jump off the page and almost look like a photograph, so she’s an amazing teacher.”

The drawing class from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. starts Wednesday, February 21st, and will be held every Wednesday through March 28th.

Other upcoming classes include a landscape painting workshop with Donna Bland from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. March 7th through the 9th and Landscapes En Pastel with Brent Seevers from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. April 10th through the 12th.

Graves said it’s part of the museum’s mission to offer programs and classes to help nurture regional artists and introduce families to the arts.

“We try to offer something for all ages and a diverse selection. We’re always open to new ideas, so if anyone has a specific subject that they want to study or a certain medium that they want to try to work with, we would love to hear from you and make sure we offer a class that will do something like that,” Graves said. “It’s such a great outlet, if you’ve had a big day at work and you want a chance to escape, there’s nothing better than to come into the museum and just look around and get some color in your life… or give you a hobby that’s lifelong. We’re just trying to get folks to love art as much as we do.”  

Other ongoing programs the museum offers include a Kid’s Media Mix-up class from 4:30-6 p.m. every Tuesday and Arts and Carafes, an evening of painting and wine from 5:30-7:30 p.m. every fourth Thursday of the month.

For more information and pricing on any of the museum’s classes or programs, contact the Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art at (816) 233-7003 or click here.

The St. Joseph School District is working on cutting costs and announced that it has eliminated over one million dollars in administrative positions during the 2017 – 2018 school year.

According to a press release from the district, three director positions have been eliminated during the 2017 – 2018 school year: the Director of Technology, the Director of Data Management and the Director of Food Service. In each case, the position was replaced by a lower-paying coordinator or supervisor position. At the same time, those departments have been restructured to reduce the number of full-time employees, causing further savings.

The District will also be eliminating two principal positions during the upcoming school closures, which will be replaced with assistant principals, for a total cost savings of $71,305, including salaries and benefits.

“Administrative costs make up only six percent of our overall operations budget, a number that has decreased over the last three years,” said Superintendent Dr. Robert Newhart. “That includes our building principals, administrative assistants, human resources department and business department, in addition to district administration. The community has a perception that we have high administrative costs, but in actuality we have one of the smallest administrative cost-to- operation cost percentages in the state for public school districts, or other private or non-profit businesses for that matter, and we have worked hard to make that number even smaller with efficiency.”

The district has also eliminated about $125,000 by restructuring curriculum advisors, moving from sixteen curriculum advisors (three full-time and 13 part-time) to five full-time advisors.

Most of these changes have been made through attrition, by restructuring a department after retirements or resignations. The rest have been realized through administrative restructuring.

The overall reduction in administrator salaries was $1,073,178.  Including the curriculum advisor restructuring, this is a net reduction of $926,557, figured using this year’s salaries.

 

(Missourinet) – A proposal in the Missouri legislature would do away with mandatory vehicle safety inspections.

Currently, state law requires mechanical inspections every other year once a vehicle is five-years-old, with certain exceptions. They’re also necessary in order to renew a motor vehicle license.

During a hearing of the House Transportation Committee in Jefferson City, Republican Representative J. Eggleston of Maysville, the bill’s sponsor, noted 34 states do not have mandatory inspections in place.

He presented the committee with insurance data he gathered that showed inspections have no influence on fatality rates in states.

“There really doesn’t seem to be, at that glance, any correlation between safety inspections and actual safety,” said Eggleston.

The two-term northwest Missouri state representative said road safety is chiefly affected by conditions outlined in a recent report from a legislative task force on transportation – seat belt usage, distracted driving from handheld devices and impaired driving – as well as speeds traveled.

Eggleston also presented the committee with research on traffic fatalities in New Jersey, which eliminated vehicle safety inspections in 2010.

“The numbers after inspections are actually as good or better than the numbers before they got rid of inspections,” Eggleston said.  “I don’t think that not inspecting makes a car safer. But I think that does show the irrelevance of the car inspections.”

Eggleston received support on the committee from Republican Kevin Corlew of Kansas City, who also chaired the transportation task force.  Corlew thinks the state government overly burdens its citizens with unnecessary and time-consuming requirements.

“I think just in the pure frustration that we put onto our citizens if this really doesn’t have a strong correlation to safety, I think it’s certainly worth a discussion to have.”

Republican Representative Tom Hurst of Meta said vehicle inspections are troubling because their results vary widely, depending on where they’re performed. He described a situation where a dealership had given his Jeep approval during an inspection, but a week later after he brought it back because a sound he was hearing, told him his brakes were shot.

Only one interest group, the Missouri Farm Bureau, came out in favor of repealing vehicle safety inspections at the committee hearing.  A spokesperson said the Bureau’s policy state’s that the examinations don’t improve highway safety.

David Overfelt, Executive Director of the Missouri Tire Industry Association and the Missouri Retailers Association, told the committee that drivers would neglect wear and tear items without mandatory inspections.

“Tires and breaks, they’re very important,” said Overfelt. “We really feel that there would be so many constituents out there driving on bald tires if they never had to worry about getting inspections, or would not replace those tires until they were so shot that they couldn’t keep air.”

Overfelt noted that a federal law established in the 1960s requiring safety inspections was repealed in 1976 under pressure from numerous states. He also stated that a study conducted by the state of Pennsylvania showed fatalities would increase by 130-to-180 persons a year if its safety inspections were done away with.

States requiring periodic safety inspections are largely congregated on the east coast, bordered by North Carolina to the south and Maine in the northeast. Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas to the south of Missouri and Utah to the west also conduct mandatory inspections.

Ronald Reiling, Executive Director of the Alliance of Automotive Service Providers of Missouri directly rebutted the claim by Representative Eggleston that there is no connection between safety inspections and fatality rates.

“States that do not have the safety inspection program, their fatality rate due to mechanical failure, is twice as much as Missouri is,” said Reiling.

Mike Right with the American Automobile Association of Missouri said his organization opposes the measure because it considers the inspections a plank in the overall traffic safety platform of the state.

“In addition to providing some assurance of the roadworthiness of the vehicle fleet, it also provides significant consumer protection for anybody who is purchasing a used vehicle.”

The bill was also opposed by Ben Steinman of Ben’s Auto Body in mid-Missouri’s Mexico.

The state would lose nearly $4 million in fees per year if the vehicle inspection law were to be repealed. The $12 fee for an inspection largely goes to cover the cost incurred by the dealership or shop performing the examination.

According to bill sponsor Representative Eggleston, about $1.50 of the fee is directed to the Missouri State Highway Patrol which oversees the inspection process and prints out the renewal decals, with a small portion going to the Missouri Department of Transportation.

The bill would not impact emissions inspections, which are required for residents who live in four St. Louis area counties – St. Louis, St. Charles, Franklin, and Jefferson.