DHSS issues licenses for medical marijuana cultivation facilities; Kidder cultivator listed
Robert Mazur accepts position as 43rd Judicial Circuit Marshal
Judge Daren Adkins with Officer Robert Mazur
Robert “Skeeter” Mazur recently accepted the position of 43rd Judicial Circuit Court Marshal and was sworn into office Dec. 30 by Judge Daren Adkins at the Daviess County Courthouse. Mazur will be one of only three circuit court marshals in the state of Missouri. The other two marshals are located in the 19th Judicial Circuit and the 24th Judicial Circuit. Mazur is now the chief law enforcement officer for the 43rd Circuit. As such, his duties will include managing the safety of the judges, court staff and clients of the court, and the security of court facilities. The 43rd Judicial Circuit includes Daviess, DeKalb, Clinton, Livingston and Caldwell Counties. He will provide planning, organization, staffing, di(continued on page 3)
CDs cashed for flood-damaged clarifier; PWSD#2 protests water rate increase Gallatin’s City Administrator Lance Rains has been in contact with Allstate Consultants, the sewer plant engineers with which the city has an engineering agreement. The contract with Allstate provides for an overall wastewater system evaluation. The contract includes a Preliminary Engineering Report (PER) which would give the city some alternatives on how to correct a clarifier problem and an idea of what it would cost to fix it. The clarifier was damaged by flooding in May. According to Allstate’s PER, the sewer plant clarifier replacement is currently estimated at $841,230. Two water/sewer fund CDs mature on Dec. 24. The board reviewed the notices and discussed options. The board agreed to cash out both CDs and deposit them into the water/sewer fund. The CDs were $350,000 each. At least one will be used to match grant funding for the clarifier, according to Rains. A resolution was approved to amend the 2019 budget during the meeting of the Gallatin Board of Aldermen held Dec. 23. The resolution recognizes additional expenditures and/or revenues, and unexpected expenses and/or revenues. An ordinance was approved adopting the budget of the City of
Gallatin for fiscal year ending Dec. 31, 2020. Public Works Director Mark Morey provided an overview of the water plant punch list meeting that was held with Ross Construction and Snyder & Associates. Water district protests utility bill PWSD#2 is protesting their first utility payment at the increased per 1,000-gallon water rate. According to Rains, Daviess County PWSD #2 wrote “paid under protest” on the check. The city sent PWSD#2 a new contract for water sales back at the end of August. “We needed to put that in place because we had two water rate studies performed by two separate firms,” Rains noted. “Both firms gave us their suggestion on what to charge the district and they were only $.04 apart per thousand gallons. The city council used that number and factored in a percentage on top to come up with a rate of $9 per thousand to Daviess County PWSD#2. “We are in negotiations to get the contract finalized and have been waiting for Daviess County PWSD #2’s attorney to contact us with questions.” Mr. Morey commented that city crews have (continued on page 3)
The Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) has issued 60 licenses for medical marijuana cultivation facilities. Mantis9 Harvest Inc. was the only cultivator listed from Daviess County, located in Kidder. Its application was denied. The 60 facilities being licensed are the top-scoring facilities that meet all eligibility requirements as prescribed by the program rules. Focus Partners of Kansas City received the highest scores for both of the licenses it had approved. Vertical Enterprise of St. Joseph was approved; as were Bloom Medicinals of MO, Plattsburg; 1913 LLC, Carrollton; Feelz Good Green Products, LLC, Carrollton, which received three licenses; and CPC of Missouri, Smithville, which was also approved for three licenses. Visit the DHSS website for a list of all 60 cultivators and their rankings.
“Throughout this entire process, it has been important to us to be fair and transparent as we implement all pieces of this program,” said Lyndall Fraker, director of the DHSS Section for Medical Marijuana Regulation. “This is why we chose to employ a ‘blind’ application scorer who had no access to applicants’ identifying information.” Initial applications for cultivation, manufacturing, dispensary, testing, transportation, and seed-to-sale licenses were accepted until an extended deadline of Aug. 20, 2019. DHSS is currently evaluating applications, and must complete the process to approve or deny all applications by Dec. 31, 2019. Infused Products Manufacturing facilities will be awarded license notification by Jan. 10. For dispensaries, the number of initial licenses will be limited to 192. Each of Missouri’s eight (continued on page 3)
Essay contest poses question: Where to drive electrically? Sophomores and juniors from area high schools have the opportunity to win all-expense paid trips this summer. Members of the junior class will be competing to win one of two trips to Washington, D.C. Three sophomores will win trips to the Cooperative Youth Conference and Leadership Experience (CYCLE) in Jefferson City. Youth Tour will be held June 19-25, while the CYCLE program will be July 15-17. The essay contest is open to all sophomores and juniors at-
tending a high school located within the service area of Farmers’ Electric Cooperative (within Caldwell, Carroll, Chariton, Clinton, Daviess, DeKalb, Livingston, Linn or Ray counties). Students do not have to be a member of the Cooperative to participate. Children of co-op employees and directors are not eligible to participate in the contest. Sophomore and junior class English and history instructors received essay contest guide(continued on page 3)
Weaving together a mystery upon rocker-beater loom discovery by T.L. Huffman, GNM staff writer
“Where did it come from? “Why was it at the Kulis Building? “ “Who did it belong to?” These are questions that intrigue Jan Stout about a barn loom recently discovered in a lean-to behind the Kulis building, located next to Gallatin’s Courter Theater. In the meantime, Mark Gay has the loom set up in a shed on their farm north of Gallatin. He isn’t sure how the contraption works. He says he’ll figure it out. He’s learning a lot of terms he never thought he’d use in his lifetime …like heddle and treadle and warp and weft. Mark can identify most of the parts of the loom; there are back beams and cross beams and beaters and rollers. Standing upright next to the frame is a large polelike structure with pegs that has not yet been attached to the main frame. “I thought it might be a torture rack,” Mark says.
He’s joking, of course, but he’s thoroughly intrigued. Consider the warp roller. It is 8-sided and probably made of walnut. He’s figured out that it goes vertically instead of horizontally as he first thought. “All the pieces are handmade and I’m amazed that the warp beam was carved so nicely,” Mark says. “It’s not as heavy as it looks. It weighs about 80 pounds. It’s a spool for the thread. You wound as much thread as you could get on it. Sometimes 24 spools at once. “ A (nearly) lost treasure Weaving is pretty much a lost art, and this loom was almost a lost antique. The Kulis building was acquired by the Gallatin Theater League about four years ago. The owners of
Warp roller
the Kulis building had no use for it and no resources to fix it up. It sets right next door to the Courter Theater building. So, they asked the theater league if they’d like to have it. The theater board said yes and it was signed over. “The Kulis building was a disaster,” says Jan. Both she and Mark are members of the theater league. “It was full of stuff, including an upstairs apartment. We went in and ripped it all out. There was a building not attached, a sort of lean-to. We went to see what was in that. Mark saw these pieces of wood. He and his brother Keith talked about what it could be. They had no idea.” Mark laid the pieces aside. That brings us to late fall 2019
when the theater league had the Boy Scouts clean up the alley behind the Kulis building. The scouts threw the old wood in a scrap pile. “I came out of play practice and saw it laying there in the grass,” Mark says. He asked if he could have it and gathered it up and took it to his work shop. Research reveals unique loom “I started researching online to figure out what it was,” says Jan. “I thought it might be something industrial. Mark started putting it together. With no model to go by, he just guessed where the pieces would fit. And suddenly we realized… it’s a loom!” She came across an internet site, Rocker Beater Loom Site - Ohio University. Jan realized the loom pictured on the site was exactly what they had, and that it was quite rare. “Barn looms are so called because they were made by carpenters who (continued on page 12)