Today's Feature

Special Use Permit Consideration.

The City Council will this evening hear the first reading of an ordinance adding a new section to the Special Use Permits of the City Code. The ordinance would allow restaurants to sell liquor by the drink if the restaurants receive at least 60 % of gross income from food or prepared meals.

This item was initiated during a rezoning request for 1926 South Garrison. The request was made by owner Vince Scott, who told Council he wished to open a restaurant with the capability to sell wine with dinner. Neighbors surrounding the property had spoken against the re-zoning. Some neighbors were against the building housing a bar, and some were concerned about the open-ended change that would be brought on by a rezoning. The special use permit solution was proposed by Tom Short, as an alternative to meet a compromise.

If granted to a business, Council would also be able to modify the restraints of permits to tailor to the needs of the neighborhood and requesting entity. Other benefits of a special use permit for this purpose would include the expiration if the business changed purposes.

The approval of a new Special Use Permit would have no direct bearing on the specific case of 1926 South Garrison.

Other items on the agenda include the designation of Hazel Avenue from HH Highway to Fairview as a temporary truck route until the completion of the Fairview/71 Highway Interchange.

Stench Report:
Monday,
4/10/06

Multiple Reports of Stench
over the Weekend

‘Course most of those who are acquainted with the Mayor just call him Kenny. He’s the first mayor to serve two terms since the late forties and has put in a good honest eight years. There weren’t many days durin’ that time that you couldn’t find the Mayor in City Hall, or servin’ in some official capacity.

For those of us in the media, Council meetin’s haven’t been near as excitin’ as some of the surroundin’ communities. Nobody gettin’ thrown out, no fist fights after the meetin’. Kenny has done a good job of keepin’ on track and movin’ forward. Good job.

This is some fact, but mostly,

Just Jake Talkin’.

Tests for Heart Disease Can be Falsely Positive

DEAR DR. DONOHUE: My doctor wanted me to have a stress test. After a few minutes of the test, the doctor stopped it and sent me to a cardiologist. He told me upfront that I had blockage in my heart arteries but, to be sure, he wanted a nuclear stress test. That was more abnormal than the first test, so he went ahead with a heart cath. Nothing wrong was seen on the heart cath. How could I have had a false positive stress test? Now I am afraid to exercise. -- G.M.

ANSWER: It’s a kick in the head to learn that such an involved test as a stress test can yield erroneous results, but no medical test is 100 percent reliable.

A basic EKG -- one of the more simple heart-illness detection tests -- identifies heart disease only 50 percent of the time.A stress test -- a continuous EKG taken while a person is on a treadmill -- gives better information. Every three minutes the treadmill speeds up and the incline increases. The increasing pace of exercise "stresses" the heart and determines if the heart gets enough blood when it must pump harder.But it misdiagnoses heart disease 20 percent (false positive) of the time, showing changes that look like a heart problem when there is no heart problem. This is especially the case for women.

A nuclear stress test -- a stress test done along with the injection of a radioactive tracer to take pictures of the heart and its arteries -- can reliably detect true heart disease 85 percent of the time. Still, there are misdiagnoses even with it.

A cardiac cath -- injecting dye directly into heart arteries -- is the most trustworthy test available. You can believe its results, and you can exercise if your doctor says so.