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Mowing, school funding and such

Guy Speckman by Guy Speckman
June 27, 2025
in Ponder the Thought
Mowing
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You guys remember when I was excited about firing up my mower back in February? Me too. New has worn off, though. This relationship has grown tiresome; routine and I can’t wait to put her away in October or November. It was a torrid love affair we had for a couple of months there, but the spark is gone and she needs to move along.


I’m a Hustler mower person, for the record. No connection to the former magazine, I suppose. In fact, I don’t even know if it is a “former.” Let’s move along.

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I started to Google the magazine and then remembered that my computer search history would likely be provided to the guests at my funeral and somehow QR coded on my tombstone, so I refrained. I would guess the magazine is now digital, but you find that out for yourself, I can’t do everything for you. It seems unlikely that Larry Flynt would have moved on to building steel mowers, but you never know, entrepreneurs are funny that way. Use your own Google, quit relying on me to answer these questions.


I was lying a bit in the paragraph one up. I don’t plan to have a tombstone and a funeral seems unlikely. My tentative plan is to leave a few random follow up columns just to freak out some people and settle some scores.


That all seems like a reasonable segue to school funding. Governor Mike Kehoe has convened a panel to research and report back to him on revising school funding. Chillicothe State Senator Rusty Black, a former public-school teacher, has been tasked with chairing the committee. Black is a great pick to try to load all these school issues and egos into a group consensus.

I once tried to understand school funding, but it seems like I might have an easier time enriching uranium in the basement.

I’m not sure what the answer might be, but the system needs to be overhauled. We have financial, demographic, and educational inequities that are simply out of whack. School districts that are so cash-strapped and then others that are strikingly too affluent for the task of educating our children.

The system needs reform and hopefully this is a step in that direction.


For the record, I have never enriched uranium in my basement. I don’t want some plane from Knob Noster bombing my house in the middle of the night.


The arrest in the Dennis Sharkey murder should give locals some sort of comfort as it was the result of both a good Samaritan that provided a crucial tip and included some next level police work. The Platte County Sheriff’s Office and cooperating departments appear to have utilized good old fashioned hard work in following up leads as well as CSI level cell phone usage patterns to bring a suspect to the prosecutor.

That random type crime could not be easy to solve and hopefully it will lead to a rightful conviction. Kudos to all involved.

(Guy Speckman can be reached while mowing his yard)

Tags: Guy Speckmanplatte countyPublic Safety
Guy Speckman

Guy Speckman

Guy Speckman is a Landmark contributing columnist with his Ponder the Thought column. Speckman is the former owner of the Savannah Reporter, where the column appeared for nearly two decades. Speckman is a former city government manager, serving as city administrator in Maysville, Plattsburg and Savannah before entering business. He is a graduate of Northwest Missouri State University (1989). He is originally from Plattsburg, Missouri. He and his wife own and operate a real estate valuation firm and a daily legal newspaper and are the parents of two grown children.

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