Speakout 3/20

Call 471-6636

I just want to say good luck to the Matthews residents. I am a Portageville resident and we love having our own schools.

Mike, I fully agree with your assessment of Chante Mallard, the hit and run driver in Texas. However, lumping her together with Andrea Yates is way off the mark. Yates evidently suffers from schizophrenia, one of the most devastating forms of mental illness known. Perhaps you should have done some research about the condition before making your comparison. Sick people like Yates deserve compassion, not condemnation.

I am looking for a good, spirit-filled, caring church that cares about lost souls and a church that is concerned about the sick and hurting, people with broken hearts and stuff. Please put information in the paper. Some of the churches we go to these don't seem to care about people. They just go in their own little world and their own concerns and what happens in their own lives. It's a shame. I am one of the hurting.

I know of a hospital where when someone goes in sick and upset, they get handcuffed and chained and hauled off to Poplar Bluff or to a mental institution when there's nothing wrong with them. Is there anywhere we can get a lawyer or fight back on those who are doing this to these people? It's actually ruining people's lives. I have a daughter who was done that way and it's really bad. Her life is ruined because of this and there are several others who have been shackled and taken off by the police. How can they do people like this?

Does anyone in town break up gardens? I also need my patio painted. Please leave a phone number in SpeakOut.

I lost my wallet at Kmart. Please call George or Mary at 471-8376. We really need the cards real bad. You can keep the money but please mail the cards. Call for the address.

The New Madrid R-1 School District has opened a bottle and let the genie out. I bet they'd like to put it back since they have stirred up such a tempest. A board member was quoted in the paper as saying they would save half a million dollars a year. In five years, that would be $2.5 million to come back to the taxpayer to spend on their homes, etc. Is this a promise to lower the tax rate since this is the only way the money would revert back to the taxpayer? If so, that will be a strange position for this board. You have raised the tax rate every year since you got this new superintendent.

Can anyone tell me when the spring cleanup is? I missed it last year and I'd like to know when it is this year.

Monday and Thursday clean-ups began Monday and the final day for these areas is Thursday. Tuesday and Friday pickups will be collected on March 26 and 29.