JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A Missouri task force wants to know more about solar farms and how they can be taxed.

Instead of a farm with corn, soybeans, or livestock, a solar energy farm is covered in solar panels. A new task force made up of lawmakers, local county tax assessors, and agriculture and renewable energy groups are working to resolve tax issues on renewable energy projects.

“Of course, I have driven down I-70, and it’s just goes on forever, as far as your eye can see in some areas,” Sen. Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina, said to the group Wednesday. “Thousands of acres of productive farmland is being up with solar panels.”

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According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, there are more than 400 megawatts of solar installed in the Show-Me State. That’s enough solar to power 44,598 homes. There are a total of 114 solar companies within the state, but less than .1% of the state’s electricity comes from solar.

“I’ve got some basic questions, for instance, how many megawatts do you get per acre?,” chairman of the task for Sen. Mike Cierpiot, R-Lee’s Summitt said during the meeting. “Another is the life of the panels. Is there an appreciation schedule on that the public should know? Does the industry have that?”

While Wednesday’s meeting was only organizational and no public testimony was taken, the task force was created after legislation was passed last year. The Task Force on Fair, Nondiscriminatory local Taxation Concerning Solar Energy Systems is tasked with putting a report together to find out the economic benefits and drawbacks of solar energy systems for local communities and the state.

“The biggest one [goal] of course is how we are going to assess these for local taxing jurisdictions,” Cierpiot said.

Other items the report must include under the legislation include compliance with existing federal and state programs and regulations, a fair and standardized assessment and taxation of solar energy systems and their equipment and potential legislation that would provide uniform assessments for the renewable energy.

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“Inevitably, what we don’t want to see is the solar industry doing it one way, some assessors doing it another way and some doing it another,” Christian County assessor Danny Gray said.

Gray is one of two assessors on the task force, along with Jefferson City assessor Bob Boyer.

“Those farms that are being leased out, the information on those leases would be beneficial as well to come up with for an income approach,” Boyer said.

Back in August, the Missouri Supreme Court struck down a state law that allowed property tax exemptions for certain solar energy systems. The lawsuit involved a farm that supplied energy to Springfield. The ruling said the tax break wasn’t allowed under the state constitution, which means the company owes Green County hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes.

“Once we hear from the assessors, I think we can mirror other states and build a formula,” executive director of the Missouri Solar Energy Industries Association Jon Dolan said while explaining why the task force needs to find a formula that works across the board.. “Get to a point where megawatt this, formula this, on the demand, on the transmission, on the product and give you a piece of legislation that works very, very well.”

Dolan, also a member of the Missouri Public Service Commission, said Wednesday that solar panels cover a little more than 1% of the state’s farmland.

Back in 2017, the largest solar power farm in the state was built in southwest Missouri. The 72-acre farm near Nixa has more than 33,000 solar panels which generates 7.92 megawatts of AC power, roughly 9% of Nixa’s annual energy consumption. The facility is owned by Gardner Capital. Some on the task force though are concerned that solar panels taking up farmland is not a good idea.

“It would be one thing if they were placed on land that you’re not using for something else, but it’s another thing when it’s taking up productive farmland,” O’Laughlin said. “I don’t know if that matters to anyone else, but it does matter to me.”

The group plans to tour a solar farm next week before meeting in November to take public testimony. The goal is to submit a report to the General Assembly by the end of the year.

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MONTGOMERY COUNTY, Mo. – A hunt for veterans with mobility impairments will start in the Big Spring area Friday.

The Ozark National Scenic Riverways is hosting the Exceptional Warrior Mobility-Impaired hunt along with the Foundation for Exceptional Warriors, the Missouri Department of Conservation, S&T Taxidermy, Quilts of Valor, Ourdoorsmen with a Mission, and Ozark Riverways Foundation.

The hunt is from Friday to Sunday. Portions of the Big Spring area will be temporarily closed to the public this week due to safety concerns. Closed areas include the Big Spring Campground, Peavine pavilion area, all hiking trails within the Big Spring area and Peavine Road. All areas will reopen on Monday.

Big Spring and the boat ramp will remain open during the hunt and can be accessed from Hwy 103.

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ST. LOUIS – St. Louis City officials submitted an application to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) requesting more than $1 million to potentially buyout dozens of homes damaged by floods in the Ellendale neighborhood.

The historic flood in July caused damage to many homes in the St. Louis region. Homeowners that were displaced will discuss a potential buyout with city officials.

Many residential properties were condemned by the city.

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“Our basement was completely floor to ceiling submerged, no time to get anything out,” said Jeffrey Boschans, an Ellendale homeowner.

The Boschans have lived in the neighborhood for 30 years. Now, they are displaced and have to live at a friend’s home.

“Continuing to pay a mortgage and insurance and taxes on a place that you can’t even live, that’s very discouraging,” said Debbie, Jeffrey’s wife.

After years of potential buyouts, city officials are officially trying to get homeowners in the most high-risk part of Ellendale out of harm’s way with help from FEMA.

City officials submitted a request to FEMA for $1.7 million to buy at least 20 homes in the floodplain.

“They may not wish to experience flooding again, some people like where they live. It’s a big process for somebody to consider to move, so that’s why we’re trying to give the homeowners as much information as possible to make that decision,” said Sarah Russell, City of St. Louis Commissioner of Emergency Management.

The Metropolitan St. Louis Sewer District (MSD) is looking to buy roughly four homes with its own funding. The plan is to turn the lots into a stationing space for sewage projects in the area.

“Mother nature is kind of telling us that some of these homes shouldn’t be there, and so there’s no way to engineer our way out of this,” said Sean Hadley, a spokesperson for MSD.

“The buyout is a ray of hope, a ray of light,” said Boschans.

The city is awaiting approval from FEMA. Then they will continue the discussion with homeowners to decide whether they would like to buyout.

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ST. LOUIS – St. Louis takes a leading role in powering our future. In a live-streamed event at the White House on Wednesday, President Biden announced the first grants from the Infrastructure Bill he signed into law in November.

The announcement put a St. Louis manufacturing plant in the spotlight. The first person called upon by the President and Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, was Phillip Brown in St. Louis. Brown is the St. Louis-based Managing Director of North American operations for Israel Chemicals Limited (ICL). The Carondelet plant in south St. Louis was once home to Monsanto.

“We’ve been manufacturing here on the Mississippi River for over 140 years,” Brown said.

Last year, ICL added a new plant-based meat division. It is now receiving $197 million of $2.8 billion in federal infrastructure grants for 20 companies, announced by the President. ICL will use its grant to build a new $400 million lithium iron phosphate battery plant on what is now a greenspace at the Carondelet campus. ICL plans to make components for batteries as demand soars for electric vehicles (EVs). The goal is to develop a complete North American supply chain and end dependence on China for batteries and battery components.

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The St. Louis plant will add 150 manufacturing jobs, plus a couple dozen science and engineering positions.

“For this material that we’ll be producing, lithium iron phosphate, there is none produced in the western world,” Brown said. “This grant really shows our support for bringing energy security for these new, innovative technologies for clean energy to the United States.”

Minutes later, Brown echo those words in response to President Biden.

“How is this plant going to strengthen our battery supply chain in the United States?” the President asked Brown at the event.

“It’s really going to utilize our abundant resources that we have here in North America and the USA to develop a secure supply chain that the entire industry can rely upon,” Brown said.

“We’re ready. We’ve got a whole group of people who are ready to go,” he said.

The project is now being “fast-tracked.” About two years from now, phase one of the new batter components plant should be operational, with the second and final phases coming online a year later.

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JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Roughly 8,000 Missouri teachers make less than $35,000 a year, according to a report released by the Teacher Recruitment and Retention Blue Commission. 
For months, the commission has been researching what can be done to combat the teacher shortage, and pay is an urgent priority.

On Tuesday, the Missouri State Board of Education accepted the handful of recommendations from the commission and soon will be asking the General Assembly to make immediate changes to help educator recruitment and retention.

“More pay for more work, which sounds like a simple concept but one we still need to work toward,” State Board of Education Vice President Carol Hallquist said during Tuesday’s meeting.

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It’s an expensive but necessary plan of attack. In a state that is suffering a teacher shortage crisis, causing some schools to pivot to four-day weeks. Under state statute, the minimum starting salary for teachers in Missouri is $25,000, that’s about $9,000 below the state’s average living wage.

“I don’t know what more evidence we need to suggest that we have a problem with resource deployment,” said State Board of Education member Pamela Westbrooks-Hodge. “If we attack the root cause in the structure and put earnest effort there, then we can see better outcomes overtime.”

The State Board of Education created a commission to study the shortage of teachers and how to keep them in the state. The Teacher Recruitment and Retention Blue Ribbon Commission is made up of 22 members from the business community, lawmakers and educators who were appointed in the spring by the board. After four months of research, the commission has finished its work.

“The commission recommends that the legislature amends the Missouri statute to raise minimum starting teacher salary to at least $38,000 annually,” the Blue Ribbon Commission chairman Mark Walker told the board Tuesday. “Acknowledging that there are many factors that impact retention and recruitment, the commission believes is to increase the starting salary.”

In July, the governor approved nearly a quarter of a billion dollars to increase minimum teacher pay from $25,000 to $38,000. Under the legislation, the state pays for 70% while the rest is on the district, which means schools have to opt into the program, but the funding from the state is only for one year. DESE Commissioner Margie Vandeven previously said that heading into this year, roughly 65% of districts are participating. The commission’s recommendation is to keep it permanent. In total, the commission offered nine recommendations to the board, separated into three categories: immediate, short-term, and long-term. At least half addressed teacher pay.

Immediate priorities:

• Increasing starting teacher pay to $38,000 and have an annual review from the Joint Committee on Education to ensure teacher salaries remain competitive
• Fund the Career Ladder Program which rewards teachers for extracurricular activities
• Establish sustainable funding for Grow Your Own programs, geared towards paraprofessionals, adults or high school students who want to become a teacher
• Encourage districts to implement team-based teaching models

Short-term priorities:

• Establish a fund to help local school districts pay for the increased minimum starting salary and to increase teacher pay overall
• Increase support for educator mental health
• Fully fund the scholarship program that offers tuition assistance to incoming teachers or to educators continuing their education

Long-term priorities:

• Offer salary supplements for filling high-need positions
• Fund salary supplements for teachers with National Board Certification

The commission also recommends that the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE) expand the annual teacher recruitment and retention report to include salary data for each local school district, teacher turnover broken down by student achievement and by race, a comparison of Missouri’s starting and average salaries with surrounding states, and openings that have been posted over the past year and the number of applications each opening received.

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“In preparing this report, we found that teachers are vital not just for student achievement but to the success of the state overall,” said Walker, CEO of TransLand, a trucking company near Springfield. “The strength of Missouri’s teacher workforce has a direct impact on the strength of Missouri’s economic development and quality of life.”

Missouri currently has the lowest starting teacher wage in the country with an average of $32,970. According to the National Education Association, the national average starting wage for educators is $41,163. The commission’s report compares teachers who make less than $35,000 to other wage earners like animal caretakers who make an average of $28,000 a year, bartenders who make around $29,000 and housekeepers who average $30,000.

“We cannot fall behind again like we have and play catch up, it’s just not healthy,” Walker said. “The biggest surprise perhaps for business people serving on the Blue Ribbon Commission is the lack of flexibility you all [the board] has for meeting high-need positions, it’s unbelievable inappropriate in today’s highly competitive market.”

Increasing the minimum starting teacher salary comes with a hefty price tag. According to the report, about 8,000 teachers make below $38,000. In order to increase their wages, it’s estimated to cost $29.5 million which does not address the salary schedule compression issues that might be included.

The cost to expand the Career Ladder Program, which rewards teachers for extra work like extracurricular activities or tutoring is projected to cost $56.2 million. The state statue has also been modified to lower the years of service needed to particpate in the program from five years to two which could increase the cost by $20,000.

For now, the state does not have a cost for increasing mental health resources for educators. The commission recommends additional paid wellness days which would require more substitute teachers.

Tuition assistance for roughly 100 educators would cost the state about $5.8 million, based on the average cost of tuition for higher education in Missouri for the 2020-2021 school year which was $14,564.

“The actual implementation of that, the funding piece, that iskind of going to be on your plate,” Walker told the board when asked when these recommendations will go into place and be funded. “You all get to decide the timing, utimately and what will work legislatively and which year.”

According to researchers at the Missouri State University College of Education, 141 districts in 2022 will have four-day school weeks, an all-time high.

Back in June, the State Board of Education voted to expand testing scores in hopes of getting more teachers certified. By tweaking the state’s qualifying score, more than 500 teachers could be added to the workforce.

According to DESE, roughly 550 teachers miss the qualifying score on the certification exam anywhere between one to four questions. Those candidates have already completed their accredited program but didn’t score high enough on the exam.

Back in April, the board approved to expand the test scores for elementary certification exams by a -2 standard error of measurement (SEM) after a new assessment was implemented in August and enough educators weren’t scoring high enough.

In June, the board agreed to change the qualifying score to -1 SEM starting immediately. This means someone that missing a handful of questions would be certified.

Teachers aren’t the only ones leaving the education field. During the 2022–2023 school year, the state faced one of the largest numbers of openings for superintendents in recent history. Of the state’s 518 school districts, 104 of them spent the summer searching for superintendents. More than 53% of those openings are due to retirements from the last school year.

According to the Missouri Association of School Administrators (MASA), 56 superintendents retired this past school year, that number is up from 43 in 2021, 41 in 2020, and 36 in 2019. Compared to years past, in 2019 there were 76 superintendent openings going into the school year. By 2020, when most districts finished the school year virtually, that number increased to 86 but decreased back down to 83 in 2021.

Of the 104 superintendent openings, all have been filled, but some with interims.

To view the map made by Jon Turner at Missouri State University showing the districts that are implementing a four-day week for the 2022-2023 school year, click here.

The Blue Ribbon Commission and the State Board of Education will host eight town halls throughout the state over the next month to talk about the report and get feedback from the community and school districts. All meetings start at 6 p.m.

• Knob Noster Middle School Cafeteria – Oct. 24
• Dix Road Education Center, Jefferson City – Oct. 25
• Maplewood Richmond Heights High School Auditorium – Nov. 7
• Osage Trail Middle School Cafeteria, Fort Osage – Nov. 9
• Gary Dickinson Performing Arts Center, Chillicothe – Nov. 10
• Parkway Welcome Center, Parkway – Nov. 15
• Nixa Junior High – Nov. 16
• Kay Porter Theatre, Poplar Bluff – Nov. 17

Click here to see the commission’s full report.

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ST. LOUIS – Nearly 2,000 industry and government transportation experts were in attendance for the first day of the annual National Defense Transportation Association and United States Transportation Command meeting.

United States Transportation Command Commander Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost delivered a 30-minute speech at Union Station, just 25 miles away from Scott Air Force Base, where the United States conducts all of its transportation missions.

Van Ovost pleaded for new ideas form the crowd ahead of a “decisive decade.”

“We need to work on our will,” Van Ovost said. “This is going to be a different fight. We need to think differently, and we need to recognize that we don’t have a lot of time. We need you to produce options.”

The goal of the four-day convention is to bring together two sides of the transportation equation: the private sector and those in the government.

“The risk of staying the same is worse than the risk of changing,” Van Ovost said.

Van Ovost also spoke about how big of a role USTRANSCOM plays in foreign affairs, most recently in Ukraine.

“You’re all coming up with new ideas to move very hazardous equipment,” she said. “We are making sure truck drivers are safe and we have not moved that much stuff at that kind of pace maybe since World War II.”

The convention wraps up on Thursday.

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ST. LOUIS – The Hazelwood School District Board of Education meets Tuesday.

The meeting comes after the head of the Jana Elementary School Parent-Teacher Association called on the school district to discuss the elevated radioactive waste levels recently found at the school in open session.

The school sits in the flood plain of Coldwater Creek, contaminated by nuclear waste from World War Two weapons production, according to our partners at the Post-Dispatch.

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Hazelwood School Board President Betsy Rachel previously said they would discuss the report in a closed session, but expected “a lot of comments” during the public portion of Tuesday’s meeting.

Meanwhile, the school district said it is working with local experts to determine the next steps they should take.

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