Grants for Greene & Jasper Counties.

Southwest Missouri Congressman Roy Blunt announced today grants totaling more than $210,000 for law enforcement agencies in Greene and Jasper Counties from the Department of Justice’s Byrne Memorial Assistance Grant Program.

The Byrne grant program will finance a $46,132 purchase of a replacement generator for the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office. "We lost our backup generator earlier this year and being in a rural area, reoccurring power outages impair our ability to provide services," Sheriff Archie Dunn said. "This will reduce the impact that power interruptions have on our electric-powered technologies and improve our ability to provide law enforcement services in Jasper County even during bad weather."

The Joplin Police Department will receive more than $11,500 from the Byrne grant program to make improvements for the work release program in the city’s current jail.

The Byrne program supports a wide range of law enforcement activities including personnel, equipment, technology, prosecution, courts, drug treatment, and crime victim and witness protection efforts."Declining revenues often cut into the meat of law enforcement activities and support services," Congressman Blunt said. "The Byrne grants are important to shoring up those vital law enforcement activities during this downturn in the economy."

Springfield Police Chief Lynn Roe agrees. "We are grateful for the funds we received from the Byrne grants when we are hurting as bad as we are. These grants give us the ability to purchase the technology and materials we need to have to keep our personnel on the street."

The Springfield Police Department will receive more than $92,100 to continue the replacement of their record management and field reporting system.

I live next to a dysfunctional pecan tree. It produces an over abundance of pecans each year, then routinely drops them in my yard startin’ ‘bout this time a year. Not only are they worthless as a foodstuff, they’re always green when they fall, they make mowin’ that particular portion of the lawn hazardous.

I’ve always understood that there are male and female pecan trees. They have ta pollinate before the pecans will develop I thought, but that may be the problem.

The tree sits close to the property line between me and the neighbor’s. They got a new metal roof last year and now a little breeze and thump, thump, thump. Sounds like a rock fight in a metal drum. Maybe the squirrels will help clean up the mess.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

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CLICK and CLACK

TALK CARS

by Tom & Ray Magliozzi

Dear Tom and Ray:

I have a 2006 4.7 liter v-8 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 50,000 miles, and we change our own oil every 3,000 miles. This last time we went to change the oil, my husband and I battled for two and a half hours to get the oil filter off! We started with a cap-style oil filter wrench, which started slipping. Then we used every wrench we could find, including a Channellock. A few hours later, the filter looked like a crushed beer can. We finally realized we’d lost this battle, so now our car needs to be pushed out of the garage and towed to our mechanic. But for future reference, are there any other techniques or tricks for loosening stuck filters? - Lasha

Ray: No, you pretty much hit ‘em all, Lasha!

Tom: The one other advantage we have at the shop is that we have some better wrenches to try. We have one that grabs around the bottom of the filter, and attaches to a ratchet. But sometimes even that doesn’t work.

Ray: And then the only option is to grab the air chisel and break it off. And you’re absolutely right to tow it to a professional to have that done. It’s not something you want to try yourself, because if you screw it up and take a chunk out of that mating surface on the engine block, every filter from then on will leak.

Tom: And you want to be able to blame the SHOP for that, rather than your husband.

Ray: I can tell you why the filter stuck: You forgot to put oil on the filter gasket. If you don’t lubricate the seal with oil before tightening it, it will "wed" to the engine, and be extremely difficult to remove.