Heard On The Street

WHAT'S THE FREQUENCY, KENNETH? KBFL, 99.9 FM, is now broadcasting into Springfield from its Buffalo tower. The station started as a training facility for Buffalo High School students with an antenna tied to the city's water tower. But with the construction of a new, 450-foot tower 17 miles north of Springfield, the station's coverage area now includes the Queen City. KBFL is owned by the same folks who own KSWM 940 AM in Aurora and is building a new station in the Shell Knob and Kimberling City area. A letter from KBFL President Galen O. Gilbert said the Buffalo station plays hits from the '60s and '70s with full news, weather and sports programming. The station's reach, according to a coverage map provided by Gilbert, now includes not only all of Springfield, but north to Camdenton, west to Fair Play and east beyond Lebanon.

OTC VOTE. Ozarks Technical Community College's Workforce 2000 Executive Committee is recommending to the full 50-member committee that the school put a tax-levy increase to public vote in November. OTC's board of trustees will make the final decision regarding a ballot issue Aug. 10. If approved by trustees, the 5-cent proposed increase would go before voters Nov. 3. An OTC release said the increase would be used to match a $3 million state appropriation from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to construct a new Job Training Center and renovate Lincoln School on the OTC campus. The school's tax levy stands at 9 cents, rolled back from the original 10-cent levy by the state's Hancock Amendment.

WHY DON'T YOU WRITE ME? Letters in general, and of the to-the-editor variety in particular, are always nice to get. We here at the Springfield Business Journal would like to get some more. SBJ readers are a smart lot; discerning, articulate and often opinionated. So it's hard to figure why more don't take pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard) to write. If you have something to add, criticize or praise, please commit it to prose. Your letters will be run (edited only for style, grammar, spelling and space) prominently and reach our thousands of other smart readers. Merely sign your name, print it and include a daytime phone number so that we may call you. Mail letters to PO Box 1365 65801, fax them to 831-5478 or send them via e-mail to sbj@sbj.net.

SEWERAGE. Missouri's Public Service Commission will consider an application from Schell Sanitation Inc. to sell its sanitary sewer system to the city of Springfield. The 190-customer entity in Greene County said its permit from the state requires Schell to cease operating as soon a publicly owned treatment system becomes available. With recent improvements in the sanitary sewer collections systems of the city, publicly operated treatment is now available, a release from the PSC said. Though some Schell customers may have increased rates, Schell told the PSC the transfer will not harm the public interest. Applications to participate in the PSC's decision must be filed before July 27. Further information is available from the Office of the Public Counsel, 573-751-4857.

SEWERAGE II. The state's Department of Health is getting out of the on-site sewage-system inspection business. A July 6 release from the department said it has begun to train and license other folks to do loan evaluations once conducted by state employees. "The Health Department had assumed the responsibility for the loan evaluations over time at the request of various federal and state lending institutions. The fact that DOH's on-site sewage loan evaluation responsibility is not mandated by law, and a variety of other reasons ... compelled DOH to initiate the new licensing program," according the department's release. Increasing workloads and increasing home sales became too much for DOH officials to perform the evaluations in some parts of the state. "At times these delays have caused home purchase closing dates to be postponed or sales to fall through completely," the release said. Training was completed by 70 people by July 1. Another 100 inspectors are expected to be certified by the end of the summer. In 1997, the state estimated that 4,000 loan evaluations were conducted by state or county personnel. About 300,000 on-site sewage systems exist in the state, according to state estimates.

SLICE OF NICE. As part of its "Month of Sundaes" donation drive, Ozarks Food Harvest will hold its final sundae give-away at Smitty's at 400 N. Massey Blvd. in Nixa July 26. Between 1 and 3 p.m., bringing a nonperishable food item to donate to Ozarks Food Harvest will earn you a free sundae made with Blue Bunny ice cream. For more information on Ozarks Food Harvest or the ice cream social, please call Elizabeth March at 865-3411.

[[In-content Ad]]