RIVERBOAT WILL MEAN ROADS AT SCOTT CITY

SCOTT CITY -- Missouri Highways and Transportation Department district engineer Scott A. Meyer told a gathering of Scott City Chamber of Commerce members Tuesday night that once riverboat gambling comes to Scott City the department will start building roads.

"I'll start building the roads when they start building the boats," Meyer said.

Scott City Council member Brenda Moyers said she thought it might be a better idea if the department began making plans for what many in Scott City are calling the inevitable.

"Instead of saying, `When they come we will build it,' wouldn't it be better to say, `If we build it they will come?'" she said. "Once they start building the boats, with all the additional traffic, wouldn't the road construction just add to the problem?"

Meyer was at the chamber's meeting to answer questions about area road improvements. Of major concern to Scott City business owners is another access off Interstate 55 and renovating Main Street into a three-lane road. Meyer told the 18 people gathered at the meeting that Scott City has to think regionally to get the projects completed.

Chamber member Shirley Young supported that statement by saying the road department acted quickly to an extension of Nash Road when representatives from Scott, Bollinger and Cape Girardeau counties presented their request as a team to the highway department.

"They told us, 'At last you all are united in what you want,'" she said. "If we want to see things happen we have to act together. Your voice is so small when you come from a little town."

She agreed with Meyer when he said the communities must present a plan to the department, which will then make designs and together they will raise the money for the projects.

"We have to do it as a community," Young said. "If we don't know where we want the access we can't expect these people to come in and say, 'Here's an access road, where do you want it?'"

Meyer said the department will schedule a community meeting within a few months where his engineers would present aerial photos of the area and collect suggestions from residents about possible locations for the access.

He said the highway department could respond very quickly to developing Main Street because the area is in a good position for the improvements.

Many of those at the meeting expressed some skepticism that Meyer would be able to meet his promise of speedy road improvements to coincide with a gambling boat. He was confident that his department would be able to respond.

"Oh sure," he said. "We're trying to move away from being a bureaucracy and into being a department that can react quickly where there is a need."