Today's Feature

Budget First Reading.

The Carthage City Council will meet this evening at 7:30 p.m. in the Council Chambers of City Hall. Items on the agenda include the first reading of the ordinance adopting the Annual Operating and Capital Budget for Fiscal year 2008-2009. The proposed budget is recommended by the Budget Committee, which refined and balanced the budget over the last two months. Following the approval of the comprehensive City salary study the budget is estimated to have an ending balance of $300,000.

First readings are also scheduled for the City contracts with the Chamber of Commerce, the Convention and Visitors Bureau, the Carthage Over 60 Center and the Carthage Humane Society. Funding for these organizations will be appropriated via the 2009 budget.

Council is also scheduled to vote on an amendment to City code that would allow the City to hire an entity to remove trash or solid waste from properties, and recoup expenses from the property owner by way of a tax lien. If approved the changes would mirror the current Missouri statutes. The item is recommended for approval by the Public Works Department.

Mornin'

Some things just sound worse than they really are.

I’ve known some folks who live in pink houses, and they weren’t what I’d call unusual in any way. After a while ya even forget they live in a pink house. You even use it to your advantage from time to time. Givin’ directions is a lot easier when you can use the pink house as a reference. "Just past the pink house and turn left" leaves little doubt as to where to turn.

I’ve even had the occasion to see a pink house or two that was unusually attractive. I really don’t dislike ‘em, just never thought about paintin’ my own residence pink. Maybe if I thought of it as rose colored it would be more of a consideration.

It’s all in the eye of the beholder.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

Agent Orange and Hypertension

If you suffer from hypertension and believe it to be service-connected and related to Agent Orange, get ready to file your claim.

A 2006 Institute of Medicine report hinted that Agent Orange plays a role in the number of veterans having hypertension. The report, requested by Congress in the Agent Orange Act of 1991, was part seven of an ongoing study to determine the long-term health effects of exposure to Agent Orange. It added hypertension as a condition with "limited or suggestive evidence of association with exposure." Unfortunately, a committee couldn’t agree, and hypertension was left in the "inadequate or insufficient evidence of an association" category.

Now it appears that the Department of Veterans Affairs is leaning toward accepting hypertension as a service-related illness. There’s nothing on the VA site yet, but then it still has information dated 2003 and 2004.

At this point, no one is saying that all claims will be automatically approved, but the door is open. If your claim is filed and the VA decides to approve hypertension as a service-connected illness, you’ll be that much ahead.

And you didn’t have to be in Vietnam to be exposed to Agent Orange. A chart on the VA Web site lists Florida, Georgia, Arkansas, Indiana, Texas, Maryland, Hawaii and others as places where Agent Orange was used. This chart is 10 pages long and lists dozen of chemicals as well as the dates, including the original experiments to test Agent Orange as an herbicide, going back to the 1940s and 1950s.

To see the chart where Agent Orange was used, go to www.va.gov/agentorange and click on DoD Report on Herbicides Used Outside of Vietnam.