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Volume 104 • Number 64 • Thursday, April 3, 2014 • PO Box 188 • 111 E. Jenkins • Maryville, MO
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Tax, bond issue, council race issues at forum
TONY BROWN/DAILY FORUM
Getting their points across
Left: Robert Stiens, South District county commissioner, gestures while making a point this week during an election forum at the Nodaway County Administration Center. Pictured to his right is Presiding Commissioner Robert Schieber. All three commissioners attended the forum, where they argued in favor of a proposed half-cent sales tax that would increase revenues available for the purchase of road gravel. The measure is one of several tax proposals and town council and school board races that will be decided in Tuesday’s municipal election. Above: Maryville City Council candidates Tim Shipley (left) Rachael Martin (center) and Adam Switzer address a small gathering of voters Tuesday during a campaign forum hosted by Maryville Citizens for Community Action and the Greater Maryville Chamber of Commerce.
Council candidates would reverse bar-age rule By TONY BROWN News editor
Fewer than 30 people — nearly a third of them on the agenda as speakers — attended a candidate’s forum Tuesday at the Nodaway County Administration Center. In addition to an extended question-and-answer session featuring the three candidates for two open seats on the Maryville City Council in next Tuesday’s municipal election, the evening also included presentations on a proposed half-cent county sales tax and a proposed $10.25 million bond issue that would finance capital improvements for the Maryville R-II School District. First up were the three members of the County Commission,
who each said that the sales tax, projected to raise about $1 million a year, is needed to increase revenues available for the purchase of gravel for township-maintained roads. South District Commissioner Robert Stiens said the current system, under which the county spends $525,000 a year for “maintenance rock,” and the county’s 15 townships provide another $150,000, is no longer sufficient given the rising price of gravel. Nodaway County has about 1,000 miles of gravel roads, so the formula works out to $525 per mile for the county and $150 per mile for each township, enough to apply about 45 tons of road rock per mile each spring, an amount that Stiens said is less than half the
optimum tonnage. “We cannot do this any longer,” said Steins, who explained that if the sales tax passes, the townships’ contribution would be eliminated, and the county would roll its current gravel allotment over into its Road and Bridge Fund, primarily used to construct and repair bridges and drainage tubes. That means the $1 million in projected new revenue, assuming the tax passes muster at the polls would add about $325,000 to the current gravel budget. Presiding Commissioner Robert Schieber made a plea for Maryville residents to support the tax, even if they rarely drive the county’s unpaved byways. Maintaining gravel roads, he said, is essential for school buses, mail carriers, work-
ers commuting to jobs in town, and first-responders summoned to fires and injury accidents. “It’s just deteriorating to the point where it’s become a problem,” Schieber said. As for the R-II bond issue, Superintendent Larry Linthacum, as he has been doing for months during a series of public meetings and service club presentations, laid out the case for a new performing arts center and a second gymnasium at Maryville High School along with an enlarged cafeteria and commons area at Eugene Field Elementary School. The proposal’s centerpiece is a $5.5 million, 670-seat auditorium that would serve as a performance venue for the district’s bands and choirs. Other uses, Linthacum
said, will likely embrace all-district staff meetings, assemblies, large-group testing and community events. If built, Linthacum predicted, the auditorium would see use “almost daily.” “All of the districts we talked to that have built a performing arts center said that they use it more than they thought they would,” Linthacum said. The district has been touting the ballot measure as a “no tax increase” bond issue, which is only true because the R-II Board of Education raised the debt-service portion of its property tax levy last year from 69 cents per $100 of assessed valuation to 79 cents. The 10-cent hike was less than the See CANDIDATES, Page 3
Rice won’t file charges in Lobdell shooting By TONY BROWN News editor
Nodaway County Prosecuting Attorney Robert Rice issued a statement Wednesday saying that no charges would be filed in the Dec. 27, 2013, shooting death of Mickey Lee Lobdell near Clearmont in northern Nodaway County. In issuing his decision, Rice cited Section 563.031 of the Missouri Revised Statutes, commonly referred to as the “castle doctrine,” which allows citizens, under certain circumstances, to use deadly force in defense of their homes. Specifically, rice quoted from a portion of the law that renders lethal violence acceptable when a person “believes such deadly force
Mickey Lee Lobdell is necessary to protect himself against death, serious physical injury, or any forcible felony …” Lobdell was killed by Lewis Schrodt, then 51, during a late-night confrontation outside the Schrodt family home. During the investigation, Sheriff Darren
White described Lobdell, 34 at the time of his death, as the older man’s nephew by marriage. Reports by law enforcement following the shooting stated that at least seven people, most or all of them family members, witnessed the incident and backed up Schrodt’s claim of acting to protect himself from attack. White said the shooting occurred after Lobdell, who had been drinking heavily, turned abusive and threatening. At that point, Schrodt, who the sheriff described as suffering from an arthritislike condition, armed himself with a .38-caliber revolver and followed Lobdell outside, ordering him off the property. The victim, White said,
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then started walking toward Schrodt while making verbal threats. White said Schrodt fired two spaced warning shots into the air as Lobdell approached then fired a third bullet at point-blank range into the victim’s upper left chest. The bullet exited from the middle left of Lobdell’s back. Investigators determined that death was likely instantaneous. Rice’s written statement issued Wednesday essentially repeated the sheriff’s version of events. Rice also cited another portion of the statute, which states that after a suspect “injects the issue of self-defense” the burden of proof falls on the prosecution “to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused did not rea-
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sonably believe that the use of such force was necessary …” By way of explaining his decision, Rice said that at the time of his death Lobdell was the subject of an outstanding warrant issued by Kansas authorities, had been drinking, and “had a history of criminal convictions which included battery, aggravated battery, domestic battery, and obstructing legal process.” “Schrodt was aware of Lobdell’s criminal past with violence and was not drinking alcohol,” Rice said. “Lobdell got into an argument with (a Schrodt’s family member) that evening that escalated to the point Lobdell was told to leave the residence.” As the altercation grew
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increasingly tense, Rice said Lobdell “would storm out of the house, return, and repeat, during the course of the argument” while threatening Schrodt and his family. Finally, Rice said, Lobdell grabbed a coat belonging to someone else and exited the house for the final time. Schrodt, armed with a handgun, reportedly followed Lobdell outside and confronted him about the coat, firing two warning shots in the air as Lobdell approached him. “When Lobdell was approximately an arm’s length away from Schrodt, Lobdell reached back to strike Schrodt, and Schrodt fired a third time into the left side of Lobdell’s chest,” Rice See LOBDELL, Page 3
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