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SEMO TIMES Editorial - also see our news coverage regading the Health Insurance selection and our Publisher's take on the local Rust-owned daily newspaper's reporting. Here’s a survey question for you: Do you support and encourage parents taking their child to the doctor if a broken bone is protruding from their arm or leg? It’s a question with only one legitimate answer. Late last week, Poplar Bluff Chamber President Steve Halter informed city council that the chamber was going to survey its members to “gauge the level of support…on the ‘shop local’ issue.” The survey question posed to its members by the chamber reads: Do you support City of Poplar Bluff Ordinance No. 7476 §1, 2-3-2014 http://ecode360.com/29105589  and encourage organizations such as our

POPLAR BLUFF – When Kaplan came on board on August 18, he was faced with the city’s self-funded health insurance nearing a $3,000,000 deficit. His first step in getting out of such a huge hole was to find a health insurance consultant. A request for bids was sent out. The city received two qualified bids for insurance consultants. The low bid of $68,000 was submitted by First Community Insurance of Poplar Bluff. A bid of $85,000 was submitted by AON, an international company. To evaluate the two bids, a committee comprised of seven employees from different departments within the city was formed. Committee members included Deputy Chief Jeff Rolland as chairman along with Steven Burkhead, Gail Barriner, Chris DeGaris, Jason

On Sept. 23, a committee of seven city employees unanimously recommended that city council accept AON as their health insurance consultant over a local company’s less expensive bid. The council voted to approve the recommendation. The next day, our Rust-owned daily proclaimed “City shuns cheaper local bid” and misrepresented that it was the city manager who made the recommendation to take the non-local bid. The first eleven paragraphs of the article painted a city council and city manager who did all they could to take the city’s health insurance business “overseas.” Buried on page 2 in paragraph 12, the report finally mentioned the employee committee recommendation. The next day the paper featured a completely uninformed editorial claiming that Kaplan and

We sat down with Heath Kaplan in the council chambers at city hall at 8:30 on Friday morning, September 19th, after his first 30 days on the job as Poplar Bluff’s new city manager. During our hour and a half interview, Kaplan was forthright, knowledgeable and assertive. There wasn’t any issue we touched upon that he didn’t have a well thought out answer for. One cannot help but be impressed by his passion and drive. Kaplan’s now a Poplar Bluffian and talks as though this is his hometown now. Given you’ve been on the job 30 days now, what are your impressions of Poplar Bluff? I’ve been very pleased with the city. There is no shortage of individuals here who

The Poplar Bluff City Council was forced into making a decision at Tuesday night’s council meeting on the issue of rezoning the property at the corner of Northwood Drive and Westmoore Drive. Jared Beaird, owner of the property had requested the rezoning to allow him to use the building as a dental practice. It was zoned residential, and the request was to rezone it as O-1, which would have allowed professional use of the property. Some on the Council had hoped to table the issue, allowing time for more study and more dialogue with both the property owners of the neighborhood and Beaird. But John Scott, attorney for property owner Darlene Hutchison, related to the council members that the residents