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Volume 104 • Number 39 • Thursday, February 27, 2014 • PO Box 188 • 111 E. Jenkins • Maryville, MO
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South Main plan a priority for Maryville’s city council By TONY BROWN News editor
When the Maryville City Council meets on Monday following a brief February hiatus, one of the topics on the agenda will likely be hiring a firm to take a long-range look at the South Main retail corridor, where heavy afternoon traffic, lack of pedestrian access and a hodge-podge of retail parking lots have been nagging problems for years. Not that anyone is comparing Maryville’s “rush hour,” which seems to max out between 3 and 3:30 p.m., to Kansas City or St. Louis. But aging traffic signal controls, a lack of
east-west streets, and nonaligned curb cuts can still make negotiating the city’s main retail district an occasional pain in the neck. So next week, the council is expected to hire one of two consultants, interviewed earlier as finalists, to come up with a plan for fixing South Main, or at least for making some significant improvements over both the short and long term. The price tag has yet to be negotiated, but City Hall plans on spending up to $50,000 for the study, the contract for which will apparently go to either BHCRhodes engineering, in conjunction with RDG Planning & Design, or to
SK Design Group Inc. Both firms have worked with the city before, with SK designing last year’s South Munn Avenue reconstruction and a proposed streetscape overhaul along West Fourth Street, and RDG serving as consultant for the city’s comprehensive development plan, which was approved by the council in 2012. City Manager Greg McDanel said Wednesday that a blueprint for improving traffic flow and addressing other issues on South Main, mostly between Route V and South Avenue, is an important step for the city, in part because the busy retail See SOUTH MAIN, Page 3
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Hurry up and wait
Westbound vehicles wait for the light to change at the intersection of South Avenue and South Main Street, a busy crossroads which has been at the center of discussions about what the city should do to improve traffic flow through town.
Parshall joins race for 1st District seat TARKIO, Mo. — Tarkio businessman Roger Parshall announced Wednesday that he has filed paperwork with the Missouri secretary of state’s office declaring his candidacy in the August primary for the Republican nomination for the District 1 Missouri House seat now held by Rep. Mike Thomson. Thomson will leave the House next January after serving eight years, the maximum allowed under Missouri’s term limits law. “I’m running for state representative to offer common-sense solutions for creating jobs and grow-
MHS Speech and Debate
SUBMITTED PHOTO
The Maryville High School Speech and Debate Team placed second in the Midland Empire Conference Tournament last weekend. The group has three tournaments remaining this year on each of the next three weekends.
MHS Speech/debate team is now the talk of the town By KEVIN BIRDSELL Staff writer
When most people see the abbreviation NFL, they immediately think of Sundays and professional football. But for a group of students at Maryville High School, the letters NFL hold a whole different meaning. The National Forensics League is a speech and debate organization that serves middle school, high school and college students across
the country. “It’s a speech and debate honor society based on competition in tournaments,” NFL sponsor Trudy Kinman said. The “honor” designation comes from the fact that students must have at least a 2.7 grade-point average on a four-point scale in order to compete. “The beauty of the program is that a basketball or volleyball player could do two or three (NFL) tournaments and still work it in their
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schedule,” Kinman said. “On the other hand, some people come into high school and want this to be their main sport. So they can do 10 or 12 programs a year.” Competitions are divided into several different categories — dramatic readings, humor, debate, oratory and extemporaneous speaking — so that students can compete in the areas where their strongest talents lie. However, Kinman also encourages participants to stretch outside their See SPEECH/DEBATE, Page 6
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‘People are worried about the direction the state is heading … We need less government regulation on businesses, which will get Missourians back to work.” — Roger Parshall ing our economy,” Parshall said in a prepared statement. “Creating jobs is what I’ve done for more than a decade as a small business owner, and it’s what I’ll do as your representative.” Parshall, who owns Parshall Concrete in Tarkio, grew up on a farm in western Nodaway County and
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Roger Parshall attended high school at Burlington Junction. After high school he raised hogs and row crops on the family farm, which he still owns and operates. He founded his concrete business in 1995. Parshall, who was elected to the Tarkio R-I Board of Education in 2010, said his campaign will focus on reducing the number of regulations affecting business. “People are worried about the direction the state is heading,” Parshall said. “We need less government regulation on businesses, which will get Missourians back to work.” He added that his school board tenure has given him a “firsthand” look at “the problems facing our schools.” Parshall and his wife, Nikki, have one son and three daughters. Nikki Parshall works in the special education department of the Tarkio school district. The couple has one son and three daughters.
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