Speakout 7/13

Tuesday, July 13, 2004

Thank you for the most awesome fireworks! They were a million times better than last year. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

What happened to animal control for the City of Sikeston. I have called the city three and four times a day for someone to come get a stray cat out of my basement. I am not able to go down into the basement and was given the runaround every day. Animal Control didn't come out so I'm calling the newspaper. Please publish this. Maybe then they'll come out.

I would like to say this about our "fair city." It stinks. We get letters and fines to clean up our town and yet the town does nothing about cleaning up its own mess. If we don't pay our fines, we lose our property to the town. We go down to pay our fines and that isn't good enough. We have to appear in court. The only reason I haven't left this fair city is because by the time I pay to live here and get paid to work here, I'm totally broke. This town doesn't want factories to make it a thriving community. This town wants to dry up and blow away. We can't afford to move, so we get stuck here. Sikeston wants to merge with Miner. I say, don't do it. Miner has a lot going for itself. The businesses there are growing, the community is growing. Don't let Sikeston ruin it for you. It would take me winning the lottery just to be able to leave here. Don't let your young ones get stuck here. Encourage them to move on, where they can grow and make a financial future for themselves, where they can have families all their own without worrying about the city taking their rights and property. Sign me miserable here and stuck.

Dear miserable here and stuck. If you obey city ordinances, you won't have to deal with city court. The city of Sikeston is working hard to clean up our image so that those factories you mentioned will hopefully come. Are you part of the solution or the problem?

I think the Scott County Highway Department needs to change its name to the New Hamburg-Kelso Highway Department. When it says "Scott County," you are to serve all of Scott County, not just a few. Just drive up that way some time and see what we mean. The people in Vanduser have been trying to get the road paved that connects Vanduser to Oran for a long time so we can use the stores in Oran instead of having to drive all the way to Sikeston, but we have been told there are not enough people living on that road to get it paved. There are several houses and we know this can't be true because there have been roads paved with one or two houses on them. Voters, remember all this the next time election for those commissioners comes around.

To the person who wanted to know why the soup kitchen is in a high-crime bad part of town, it is because, generally speaking, the poor people are the ones who need the food the soup kitchen provides and the places the poor live tend to be the high-crime, bad areas. So the soup kitchen is located in the area where these people can have easy access. It wouldn't make any sense to move the soup kitchen to another part of town because they wouldn't be able to serve the people who need it the most.