Briefly

Garden club designs fence for Red House

The Red House Interpretive Center has a new entrance thanks to the Rose Hills Garden Club. The club has spent the past two years planning and designing a fence around the garden on the north side of the museum. The Rose Hills Garden Club spent $1,500 of a grant to build a fence true to the Lewis and Clark period.

MoDOT announces road work, upcoming meeting

• Traffic on the southbound lanes of Interstate 55 between mile markers 100 and 103 will be reduced to one lane today, weather permitting. The reduction will be from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m. while crews continue grinding pavement as part of the East Main Street/LaSalle Avenue interchange project.
• Both lanes of Interstate 57 southbound in Mississippi County could be open today, MoDOT reported Thursday. The road has been reduced to one lane for a resurfacing project. Northbound lanes will remain reduced to one lane until traffic control devices are removed from the northbound side, where southbound traffic was routed while the work took place. Work will resume next spring on resurfacing the existing lanes with concrete and adding new shoulders.
• MoDOT will host a public meeting from 4 to 7 p.m. Jan. 10 at the Millersville Baptist Church to get public input on three bridge replacements along Highway 72: the Whitewater River Bridge and Byrd Creek Bridge in Cape Girardeau County and the Little Whitewater River Bridge in Bollinger County.

For more information, call MoDOT at 888-275-6636.

Regents to consider new hall, audit reports

The Southeast Missouri State University Board of Regents will vote on whether to move forward with plans to build a residence hall at Henderson Avenue and Broadway at a meeting at 2 p.m. today in the north meeting room of the Show Me Center. University officials have dropped plans to construct a Greek Village near the aquatic center. Gov. Matt Blunt will discuss funding for higher education at 3:30 p.m. Regents will also consider accepting audit reports for the fiscal year ending June 30 and will hear the final budget request submitted to the Department of Higher Education for the 2008-2009 school year.

-- From staff reports