Voters approve cabaret tax

November 05, 2008 12:28 am

— By Susan Redden
sredden@joplinglobe.com
CARTHAGE, Mo. — Jasper County voters on Tuesday elected the Republican candidate as county coroner and approved a countywide proposal to impose a 10 percent gross-receipts tax on any adult cabaret that opens in the county.
Ballots were cast by nearly 62 percent of the county’s registered voters. A total of 48,440 of the 78,743 registered voters turned out at the polls, according to election statistics.
The coroner’s race was the only general-election contest in the county. All the other offices were decided in the Republican primary in August.
According to complete, unofficial totals, Rob Chappel received 25,927 votes for coroner, to 19,979 for J.D. Love, his Democratic opponent. Jerry Neil, the current coroner, announced he would not seek another term. Chappel has worked for three years as chief deputy coroner under Neil, who endorsed him and served as his campaign treasurer.
Chappel, 36, of rural Joplin, owns Chappel Casket and Crematory and is co-owner of Thornhill-Dillon Mortuary.
Voters also endorsed, with 28,019 votes in favor and 15,640 opposed, a proposed 10 percent gross-receipts tax on adult cabarets. The tax was advanced by the County Commission as a way to discourage the adult businesses from locating in the county. If one is opened, commissioners said, revenues would be used to pay for background checks and other law-enforcement costs for policing the operations.
Given the large turnout, County Clerk Bonnie Earl said reports of voting problems were limited. She said she is looking into a number of questions, including one instance of what appears to be voter fraud.
She said one Joplin voter arrived at her polling place to find that someone else had signed her name in the polling book and voted.
The voter was allowed to go ahead and cast her ballot, then was asked to make a police report.
“We asked her to contact law enforcement,” Earl said. “I hope the prosecutor or some other authority can follow up.”
Earl said there also was some confusion about polling places that she thought may have been caused by voters using locations listed on out-of-date voter cards. She said she also had heard from residents who were not allowed to vote because they said they had registered through state offices, and their registrations could not be found among county records.
Carthage voters approved an annexation proposal, which was rejected by residents of the area that is the annexation target. The vote in Carthage was 2,606 in favor and 1,724 opposed, while residents in the annexation area rejected the measure 25-1.
The proposal called for annexing Southwind Acres, a commercial and residential development at Grand Avenue and Fir Road that is entirely surrounded by the city. For first-round approval, the question needed approval by a simple majority of voters in Carthage and in South Wind Acres. Since the proposal failed Tuesday in the annexation area, the city may place the issue on the ballot a second time, with the threshold for passage in that election being two-thirds of the total vote.
In Airport Drive, voters rejected a proposal to levy a half-cent sales tax to pay for street work and other transportation projects. The vote was 163 in favor and 220 opposed.