Author: KMIZ

Ryan Shiner

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Missouri Board of Education President Mary Schrag resigned from her position on Tuesday, according to a press release from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

Schrag was appointed to the state board in 2019 by then-Gov. Mike Parson. Her term officially expired in 2024, but state law allows that person to serve in the role until the governor made a reappointment or replacement, according to a spokesperson from the governor’s office.

The release says Gov. Mike Kehoe will appoint a replacement, who will then have to be confirmed by the Missouri Senate. State Board Vice President Brooks Miller “will assume the role as State Board President until the State Board holds elections at its June 23 meeting,” the release says.  

“Claudia and I want to thank Mary Schrag for her years of dedicated service to students, families, and educators on the Missouri State Board of Education,” Kehoe said in a statement that was sent to ABC 17 News. “Even after her term expired, Mary continued to serve as president of the board — providing steady leadership, stability, and guidance for new members. Her commitment to education has made a lasting impact, and we wish her the very best in this next chapter.”

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Ryan Shiner

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Black drivers in Missouri were once again stopped at higher rates last year than white drivers, according to the annual Vehicle Stops Report.

The Attorney General’s Vehicle Stops Report is due on June 1 each year. It provides data related to vehicle stops statewide, including an index that measures the rate at which drivers of each race are pulled over in relation to their driving-age population.

Data shows the stop rate of Black drivers — based on the 2024 population – was 47.8%, while white drivers were 28.04%. The total stop rate was 28.93%.

It also shows the arrest rate of Black drivers (5.61%) was higher than white drivers (3.37%). The citation rate was also noticeable with Black drivers having a rate of 51.01% compared to 35.22% for whites. Data also shows white drivers had a higher “contraband hit rate” at 23.79% compared to 20.08% for Black drivers.

Hispanic drivers had a stop rate of 24.41%, while having a 47.83% citation rate and 7.21% arrest rate.

Law enforcement made more stops in 2025 (1,439,086) compared to 2024 (1,282,528).

COLUMBIA

In Columbia, the stop rate for Black drivers (51.72%) was nearly three times the rate of white drivers (14.69%). Both rates increased from 2024, where it was 35.97% for Black drivers and 8.91% for white drivers.

Black drivers (8.01%) were also more likely to be searched than white drivers (3.04%) in 2025 and also saw a higher citation rate of 17.49% compared to 14.82% for white drivers. White drivers (32.02%) had a higher contraband hit rate than Black drivers (24.95%).

The arrest rate for Black drivers (8.26%) in Columbia was more than double the rate of white drivers (3.01%).

Hispanic drivers saw a stop rate of 10.71%, while their arrest rate was 9.13% and a 21.58% citation rate.

JEFFERSON CITY

In Jefferson City, Black drivers had a stop rate of 58.19% compared to 25.93% for white drivers, the data shows. Both figures are lower than it was in the 2024 report, where Black drivers had a 67.08% stop rate and white drivers were at 32.24%.

The arrest rate for Black drivers (1.94%) was slightly higher than white drivers (1.52%). Black drivers had a higher citation rate of 23.72% compared to 20.51% for white drivers, though the contraband rate for white drivers was still higher at 23.39% compared to 20.75% for Black drivers.

Hispanic people had a 22.31% stop rate, a 13.16% contraband hit rate, a 31.69% citation rate and an arrest rate of 0.35%.

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Sam Roe

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Columbia Parks and Recreation discussed plans for renovations to the Rainbow Softball Complex at Cosmo Park during an interested parties meeting Tuesday night.

The city plans to install LED lighting and concrete backstops to all six fields at the complex. The upgrades are expected to cost $750,000 and are funded by the Parks Sales Tax.

The project is expected to start in October 2026 and is planned to be finished by April 2027.

The Rainbow Softball Complex has not seen significant work since 2012. The city also plans to renovate the concession area, playground, and batting cages in the future.

The project will go to the Columbia City Council for final approval.

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Ryan Shiner

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Three people have filed to run for the open Fourth Ward seat on the Columbia City Council in the Aug. 4 election.

Tuesday was the deadline to file for the August election.

The city clerk’s office confirmed the field includes former Columbia Utilities Director David Sorrell, Ryan King and attorney Sharon Jones, who is also on the Planning and Zoning Commission.

The position is open after Councilman Nick Foster announced that he intends to resign from his position on June 12. Foster announced his family is moving to Atlanta, Georgia, after his wife was hired as a dean at Georgia State University, previous reporting shows.

The winner of the August election will serve the remainder of Foster’s term, which ends in April 2028.

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Ryan Shiner

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The legal guardian of a child with cerebral palsy filed a discrimination lawsuit on Monday against the Russellville School District and a number of its employees.

Daryl Matheis sued the Cole County R-1 School District, along with teachers and paraprofessionals, after claiming disability discrimination, sex discrimination, retaliation, battery, assault and false imprisonment. The Missouri Commission on Human Rights issued Matheis a notice of right to sue on March 3.

The petition makes several claims of abuse, including that employees had restrained the now 9-year-old boy multiple times, one of which resulted in damaging his communication device. The lawsuit claims after the first incident, the district did not follow its own policy of sending a written notification to the boy’s guardian “within a set number of days.”

In September 2024, the lawsuit claims the school nurse and paraprofessionals at the school declined to help the boy use a chair — that allows the youth to use the restroom – because he was a male.

The petition also claims the boy was once punished by being made to stand outside during frigid temperatures while wearing “only socks on his feet.”

The lawsuit also makes an allegation that the boy was verbally berated by staff “to such a severe degree that other students told their parents about the yelling who then then forwarded that information to” the boy’s guardians. The plaintiff claims the district retaliated by “changing the procedure for pickup” for the student.

ABC 17 News reached out to the school district.

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Nate Splater

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is developing Project Green, a new data center in New Florence, Montgomery County, that will draw water from an aquifer deep beneath the city.

And Amazon hopes to tap the source with a high-yield well.

Project Green Site Plan. Courtesy of Amazon Web Services.

The data center complex will be located south of Hudson Road and west of Ellis Road on the eastern side of town. Water will be sourced from deep within the Cambrian-Ordovician aquifer, with wells drilled to depths of 1,500 feet to avoid interfering with local private wells.

According to a report by CDM Smith, a global engineering and construction firm, the Project Green campus will draw 2.9 million gallons of water annually. The full 17-building campus is projected to use approximately 50 million gallons of water each year, which is comparable to the annual water usage of a golf course. Each individual building’s water usage is roughly equivalent to that of a restaurant.

Scott Kaden, the Groundwater Section chief at the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, said this amount of usage is common with several wells across the state. “There are a lot of high-yield wells throughout the country and throughout the state that produce a similar amount of water, whether it’s for a public water supply or irrigation,” he says.

The Cambrian-Ordovician Aquifer. Courtesy of USGS.

The Cambrian-Ordovician aquifer, made of limestone and dolomite sedimentary rock, is extensive and holds more than 23 trillion gallons of groundwater in the region of the data center. This volume is equivalent to more than 1.5 million Olympic-sized swimming pools. About 8% of the Cambrian-Ordovician aquifer is in use, and the data center will contribute an additional 0.03% to this total.

Heavy water users like the Project Green facilities are required to report their water usage to MoDNR. Still, there are no regulations on water use because Missouri is a riparian state, where landowners have the right to use water that flows within or along their property. “But you cannot affect your neighbor’s ability to do the same thing,” Scott cautions. “And if that does happen, if you affect your neighbor’s ability to use the water, then that becomes a civil matter.”

According to CDM Smith’s report, long-term water-level monitoring of the Cambrian-Ordovician aquifer within the data center region shows stable overall water levels, with some monitoring locations experiencing increases. The report cites water levels in a bedrock well in Vandalia, in nearby Audrian County, located about 30 miles north of New Florence, which increased by approximately 5 feet between 2007 and 2017.

However, there is an older well in New Florence that doesn’t reflect the same trends. Records at this well date back to 1981 and show a steady, though slightly decreasing depth in water level. “But when you look at the thickness of the aquifer, the aquifer goes down 1,400 feet,” Scott explains, “so there’s still over 1,000 feet of water in the aquifer in this area of New Florence.”

Scott says that while the aquifer is vast, water levels can still vary from well to well. “You can’t just pick one spot and say that the whole aquifer is behaving like it is at this one spot. You have to look at all of them.” Another well in Graham Cave State Park, a few miles west of New Florence, shows a steadier trend in water levels since at least 2009.

CDM Smith, citing MoDNR projections for 2060, indicates that the aquifer will naturally refill at a rate of 406 million gallons per day. Total water withdrawals from all other wells using this aquifer, excluding the data center, are estimated to be only 71 million gallons per day.

MoDNR predicts that only about 17% of the water naturally flowing into the aquifer each year will be used in the region where the data center is located by 2060. The aquifer will essentially gain more than 600 Olympic-sized swimming pools of water daily, while about 100 pools will be pumped out for all other combined uses, aside from the data center use.

Amazon water studyDownload

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Matthew Sanders

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche told a House subcommittee Tuesday that the Trump administration will not establish a $1.776 billion fund to benefit its allies.

Blanche said during testimony before the subcommittee that “We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” according to The Associated Press.

Congressional Republicans had expressed opposition to the fund in recent days. A federal judge last week temporarily blocked the formation of the fund, and the Justice Department had said it would follow the order.

The fund was part of President Donald Trump’s settlement with the IRS over the release of his tax returns. Trump sued the IRS for $10 billion. The fund would have awarded payments to people the Trump administration says were targeted by a politically “weaponized” criminal justice system.

Blanche said the part of the settlement that shields the Trump family from audits will remain in place, according to The AP.

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Ryan Shiner

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Columbia’s parking revenue is up substantially in the first six months of this year after the city raised parking rates in January.

On-street parking rates increased to a $1 an hour on during the first week of January and has resulted in a 50.4% gain in revenue compared to the same time period last year, according to information that was obtained to a records request with the city’s Public Works Department.

Meter parking revenue collected from Jan. 6-June 1 of this year totals $727,886.02, compared to the $483,906.73 that was collected from Jan. 6, 2025-June 1, 2025.

Previous reporting shows the rate adjustment this year was the first since 2013.

The overall increase follows a similar trend that was seen earlier this year, when the city saw a 12% jump during January.

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Ryan Shiner

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The City of Eldon was placed under a boil order by the state’s Department of Natural Resources, the city announced in a Tuesday social media post.

A letter from the DNR says the city “has exceed the E. coli Maximum Containment Level” in May. The DNR’s website lists fecal coliform/E. coli as the contaminants of concern.

A routine sample that was collected on May 20 from the distribution system tested positive for E. coli, as did three samples that were taken in the same area on Monday.

The city will hold an emergency City Council meeting at 6 p.m. to discuss the boil order, the post says. More than 4,400 people live in the city.

Eldon went through a three-week boil order this past winter.

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Ryan Shiner

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

A Holts Summit man was sentenced to 25 years in prison on Monday after he pleaded guilty to several child sex crimes.

Memphis Dils, 24, pleaded guilty to three counts of second-degree statutory sodomy, one count of possessing child sex abuse material and a count of attempted sexual exploitation of a minor. He is currently listed on the Callaway County Jail’s online roster.

Court documents in previous reporting say Dils was older than 21 years old and the victim was younger than 16 years old when the assaults started. The statement says a witness called Callaway County Joint Communications to say Dils sexually assaulted a youth.

The witness confronted Dils over Facebook messenger and he allegedly “admitted to everything,” court documents say. Law enforcement viewed the conversation and saw Dils admitted to the assaults, court documents say.

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