Sales Tax Revenue Up in 1998.

The Christmas season may have finished off a good year for local retailers. The City of Carthage and Jasper County showed an overall increase in sales tax revenue for the year up to November 1998. This went against the trend for the state overall.

Missouri Director of Revenue Quentin Wilson announced that state sales and use tax collections show a 1.3 percent decrease for November 1998 and a 1.0 percent decrease for the year to date, from $702.8 million last year to $697.5 million this year.

Carthage sales tax collected was up approximately 2.3% through November for the 1998/99 fiscal year that starts in July.

Sales tax collections for the Jasper County General Fund rose nearly $120,000 (2.8%) for the eleven month period. The County fiscal year begins in January. The common road fund shows a year-to-date increase of nearly $100,000 and the Emergency Services Board collections were up just over $43,000 compared to 1997.

Actual revenue received for all entities was reduced by the required repayment of user tax funds to the state. The monthly payments will end late next year.

Special Use Permit Request Will Be Topic At January City Council Meeting!!

by Robin Putnam, artCentral

We hope last weeks column covered everyone we felt needed to be thanked. If we somehow missed YOU please accept our apologies and a very, very sincere thanks for your support!!

Now that it's just packing, painting and shuffling around here we will be keeping these columns a bit shorter.

We still need everyone's support on the zoning issue!! The final reading will be the second Tuesday in January. This would be the time for supporters to speak out in our favor. The City Council gives the public an opportunity to voice an opinion before they call for a vote. We hope everyone is as excited as we are about this wonderful opportunity for artCentral!!

We would very much like to call the Katherine Hyde home our permanent home! Imagine that........artCentral with a permanent place to call home....after all these years bouncing around!! Kind of a shock to our system!! But one we can handle!! It's a good shock!!

If all goes well at the January City Council meeting our Building committee, Ron, Helen and me, will get busy and get the Hyde House whipped into shape as a gallery!!

Of course we have lots of great ideas in our pointed little heads...but for now just simply a fresh coat of paint here and there, some carpeting removed and a bit of wallpaper taken down will give us a shiny new gallery space on the main floor!!

We have at least one volunteer to paint, one to remove carpeting, but unfortunately no one wants to remove the wallpaper in the dining room!! Such a yucky job!!

If you have never been inside this lovely home you haven't seen the pink walls downstairs, in the kitchen and upstairs bathroom or the green downstairs bathroom.... interesting to say the least. We don't feel pink lends well to a gallery so we will be painting those walls however....we will leave the kitchen and bathrooms as they are. Sort of a reminder of whose house it really is!

Like we said earlier...if all goes well with the zoning issue we will be looking at starting our new year with our first opening reception on March 5th!!

All of us here want to wish everyone a Happy New Year and we hope you are all blessed with the very best that 1999 can offer!! A little more next week.

Just Jake Talkin'
Mornin',

This is the time a year when all those pennies ya paid in sales tax start ta be counted up for the year end totals. This is when the old "shop at home" sayin' really starts ta make some sense for ever'one.

Since close to a fourth of the City's income comes from sales tax, it is a critical component of the annual budget.

Jasper County is even more dependent on Sales tax. Around 40% of the general revenue comes from that source, and close to $3 million that goes to keep the County roads up to par.

Due to the volatile nature of that income stream, countin' on sales tax is a little risky. The up side of course is that folks livin' outside of the particular area help support the local government when they do their shoppin.' Spendin' all you can locally helps ta maintain the quality of life we've grown accustom to.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin'.

by

Oak Street health & herb

Sponsored by

Metcalf Auto Supply

Natural Nutrition.

One of our most precious gifts is our eyesight. Something most of us take for granted until something goes wrong. Prevention is a key to keeping our eyes healthy. Two of the main herbs used for nurturing the eyes are Eyebright and Bilberry.

Traditionally, Eyebright has been used for failing vision, inflammation, conjunctivitis, ulcers and eye strain. It helps the nerves and optic tissues stay supple and maintain their elasticity. It can be used as an eyewash or taken internally as a tea.

The use of Bilberry of blueberry was first documented during World War II when it was noted that British pilots had better records as night fliers than anyone else and they were the only ones consuming large amounts of blueberry jam. Research led to the connection between the high amount of flavonoid activity in this fruit which led to better night vision. Flavonoids act as free radical scavengers and have a collagen-stabilizing affect.

Collagen is the most abundant protein of the body and is responsible for maintaining the strength of the tissues. Collagen is destroyed during the inflammatory processes that occur in various forms of arthritis, periodontal disease, and other inflammatory conditions.

It has been noted that Bilberry can help normalize the strength of capillaries, it may assist in muscle relaxing and has several ophthalmological applications including improved night vision, quicker adjustment to darkness, and faster restoration of visual acuity after exposure to glare.

Click and Clack Talk Cars.

Dear Tom and Ray:

I'm an aerodynamics engineer. When I was in the U.S. Air Force a few years back, I worked with folks from the Lockheed low-speed wind tunnel. In the 1970's, aircraft production went into a slump, and Lockheed started looking for other customers for its wind-tunnel services. Prime candidates were the auto makers, and Lockheed was successful in convincing Ford, among others, that the wind tunnel would help them reduce drag and wind noise on their vehicles. Needless to say, in the past 15-20 years, Lockheed has learned a lot about car and truck aerodynamics.

Anyway, they actually performed tests on pickups with the tailgate both up and down, and found that drag was actually LOWER with the tailgate CLOSED! This ran counter to their intuition. The reason is that a closed tailgate sets up a large "bubble" of stagnant air that slowly circulates around the bed of the truck (we aero types call this a "separate bubble"). When air approaches the truck, it "sees" the bubble as part of the truck. So to the air, the truck looks like a nice, flat covering over the bed, and the air doesn't "slam" into the vertical tailgate.

So, believe it or not, it's best for gas mileage to keep the tailgate CLOSED. Hope this information is helpful.

TOM: Sounds pretty convincing. We also heard from none other than Bob Stempel, the former GM president, who wrote us to say that aerodynamically it doesn't make that much difference. But, he says, a pickup truck is structurally much SAFER with the tailgate up.

RAY: So for that reason alone, we suggest you throw away those tailgate nets, folks, and return your tailgate to the upright and locked position.

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