Viewpoint

With the refinancing of the City of Monett’s tax increment financing (TIF) bonds for one final project, and the official end of the city’s first TIF district declared at the upcoming Monday city council meeting, we can ask if tax increment financing served Monett well...

Dear Editor: In 2017, Lawrence County tax payers showed their support for our County Sheriff by approving (2:1 votes) a new Law Enforcement tax. Unfortunately, our efforts (and money) to help county law enforcement are being undercut by our own State Department of Corrections, which now owes more than $32 million in unpaid reimbursements to counties (Lawrence, Barry, Greene, etc.) that hold inmates charged with state crimes...

Obituaries this week brought the sad news of friends passing, as they usually do. This week two brought up memories of public labors that made life better in three communities. Dan Neal, who died at 62 in Tennessee of cancer on Jan. 3, had been an active figure around Pierce City 30 years ago. Dan had young kids and teens back then, as did his friends and extended family, and they provided the spark that propelled him into the public spotlight...

Now that we’re into a new year, and New Year’s resolutions suggest new directions for the coming months, here’s some ideas for our communities. For the Monett City Council, now that the cost share has jumped the big hurdle for improving Central Avenue and building a roundabout, it would be prudent as soon as possible to unveil the roundabout plan to the impacted property owners. Some businesses may have to move and deserve some time to make plans or even to buy real estate elsewhere in town...

As 2019 draws to a close, it’s time to take stock of where we are and where we’re going. The news of 2018 was so big, with factory renovations and word of a new hospital coming to Monett that 2019 was filled with promise. Indeed, big stuff happened, as EFCO’s new warehouse distribution center took shape; the city’s new public works building has slowly risen near the school’s bus barn, out of sight from daily traffic; the last land purchased for Monett’s airport expansion; and now the city has approved extending the TIF program to transform the intersection on the north side of Lowe’s Lane, eventually connecting to the road that will run around the north side of the new Cox Monett Hospital. ...

The disheartening news that Loaves and Fishes will shut down operations at the end of the year, after 46 years, comes as a shock and surprise — but it shouldn’t have. The hot meal home delivery service to shut-ins has been in free fall for several years now. ...

Christmas is a special time of the year when a lot of rules for social interactions are turned on their head. People are nicer. We look forward to shopping expeditions. Children have that special look of wonder, reflecting what we all felt at one time...

This week, I spoke to two sessions of Amy Sampson’s place-based learning class at Monett High School. Sampson’s class uses local history and today’s landscape as a springboard for research, writing and exploration. I gave students a primer on Monett history, similar in many ways to the talk I give to the Monett Chamber of Commerce’s leadership class each fall. Sampson posted a video of my second presentation on her Facebook page...

Mark Nelson raises some interesting questions in his interview in this issue about community service and why Monett has been so successful sustaining it. There are those rare individuals, like Linn Thornton, who can start a mighty thing, and others will jump in to help. Even Thornton had his first wife, Geraldine, at his side cooking that first community Christmas dinner. Thornton often spoke about how Monett offered the fertile ground that made his undertaking possible, not found just anywhere...

When I was growing up, we had a family tradition at Thanksgiving. Each of us received 10 dried kernels of corn, and we would go around the table saying what we were thankful for during the past year. We’d place the kernels in an orange pottery bowl I made in first grade, crudely shaped and far from even, but fitting somehow for the evolving pattern of our lives, reminding us that we came from something unfinished into something much better...