I attended the September 11, 2025, Camden County Commission meeting at 10:00 a.m.
Commissioners Skelton and Gohagan were present.
The first agenda item was “1st Public Hearing – Reduction of Speed Limit on Purvis Road-.”
Presiding Commissioner Skelton confirmed that notice of the proposed speed limit reduction had been posted.
The residents who were present wanted the speed limit reduced from 45 MPH to 25 MPH. There are children living in the neighborhood and it is currently a bus route for the school district.
There was nobody present in opposition to the speed limit change.
The second agenda item was “Jolene Kellogg – Request to Reduce Speed Limit on Tall Timbers Drive-.”
According to residents, the gravel road is currently 35 MPH. The county recently posted a speed limit sign on the road and they were worried that the new sign will encourage renters for the four AirBnB’s on the road to drive faster. The road dead ends in the neighborhood, is a single lane wide in some spots, and is only a half mile long. They want the speed limit reduced to 15 MPH and asked for the posting of a “Kids Playing” sign.
Commissioner Gohagan advised them that per state statute, the default speed limit for gravel roads is 35 MPH.
Since this was the initial request, the Commission will schedule three public hearing for this road before making any decision to change the speed limit.
The third agenda item was “Update – TCLA funds; discussion w/Heather Brown of the CVB.”
(The TCLA lodging tax and the advisory boards for the lake area business districts were declared unconstitutional by the Missouri Supreme Court. The court ordered that a trustee be appointed to wrap up the lake area business districts that were associated with this tax. Once their financial commitments were resolved, the trustee would decide what should be done with the remaining revenue that was collected.)
County Attorney Charlie Dickman informed the Commission that $2,067,000 in lodging tax revenue was available for release. Another $707,000 was pending and might take another month to be released. There are no conditions placed on the use of these funds.
Presiding Commissioner Skelton stated that he would like to set up an account to keep the money to use for requests where the county is asked to provide matching money for lake tourism funding.
Heather Brown is the Executive Director of the Lake of the Ozarks Convention and Visitor Bureau (“CVB”). Brown told the commissioners that the lodging tax itself is legal. The taxes were raised for promotion and marketing. She strongly urged them to use the funds for tourism. The CVB recently received $280,000 in matching funds from Missouri so the CVB would need $280,000 to match that. She claimed that several local businesses in the community were down this year because of a lack of marketing.
Skelton observed that any assertion that tourism business is down because of a lack of promotional spending is anecdotal. He asked Brown if there was any statistical evidence of that? Did the CVB usually get $280,000 in state tourism money each year? Skelton also felt that perhaps it was the responsibility of a business to promote itself.
Brown explained that the amount changes every year. The highest they ever received was a little over $400,000, but historically it’s been in the range of $200,000-$300,000.
Commissioner Gohagan complained that in the past, the TCLA would come to the Commission with a short deadline to get approval for fiscal approval. He wanted to have a better awareness of the timeline required for final approvals.
Brown stated that she could get early budget information to the Commission in Spring.
Commissioner Gohagan asked her where Bikefest ranked for tourist events? Brown said that Harley Davidson ranks bike events and Sturgis is the only Tier 1 event. The Lake’s Bikefest is ranked as a Tier 2 event along with Daytona.
Heather Brown reiterated that their goal is to bring in tourists from outside the Lake Area who will rent lodging space for extended periods of time and spend their dollars in the Lake economy. It wasn’t just about hosting great events, but hosting great events that would attract those tourists.
County Auditor Laughlin mentioned to the commissioners that any transaction would require a budget amendment because it was new money. Commissioner Gohagan seemed irritated by this comment and asserted that Laughlin wanted to use the lodging tax money to build a new building for the Health Department.
Laughlin denied that, but Gohagan seemed pretty adamant that this was the case.
Commissioner Gohagan asked Brown if Miller or Morgan counties had contributed any money to the CVB this year? She told him they had not contributed yet. Gohagan told her that he was tired of Camden County contributing more than its share of the expenses in all of these tri-county organizations. Skelton joked that maybe Camden County should redraw the county lines and annex The Strip.
The Commission voted unanimously to give the CVB $300,000 from the remaining TCLA funds to match the money they would receive from Missouri’s Department of Tourism.
The fourth agenda item was “2026 Tax Levy.”
(This levy is usually presented to the Commission each year by the County Clerk. Camden County earns 11 cents for each $100 of assessed property value for County General Revenue and 11 Cents for each $100 of assessed property value for Road and Bridge. A calculation of the current sales tax revenue is compared with the anticipated property tax revenue to determine if the county is able to raise the property tax levy rate.)
Rowland Todd told the Commission that sales tax revenue was down 2.4% this year. The total assessed property value of Camden County increased $74 million. The current road and bridge property tax levy is 11 Cents (per $100 assessed value).
According to Todd, the tax levy could be raised to 35 Cents per $100, but that has to be approved by the State of Missouri.
Presiding Commissioner Skelton asked to see the Levy Worksheet prepared by the Clerk’s Office. Skelton mentioned that a previous advisor had suggested in 2024 that the Commission raise the tax levy to 14 Cents. He commented that he did not like the idea of property taxes. Skelton wanted more money for Road and Bridge but he was not inclined to increase the tax levy.
The Commission decided to table the item so they can review it.
The final agenda item was “Review of 2024 Audit.”
This was a review of an external 2024 audit.
County Auditor Laughlin told the Commission that the audit produced no findings or recommendations.
In spite of this, there were some interesting issues included in a letter that was part of the audit.
The highlights were the discovery that several federal agencies are conducting an investigation of Camden County Sheriff’s Office COPS hiring grant. These investigations involved information that the county provided on its initial application for the grant. Camden County has received $285,000 from the federal government from this grant. The investigation might result in the county being forced to return the money and/or becoming ineligible for future similar grants. (This potential fraud was self-reported by the new Sheriff when he discovered the discrepancy.)
The county was also singled out for its failure to segregate the incoming LEST2 sales tax revenue from the LEST1 sales tax revenue even though LEST2 was explicitly intended to be used solely by the Sheriff’s Office.
There was then a discussion of the county’s budget situation.
Regarding the marijuana tax, the county and city are not allowed to stack two sales taxes on top of each other. Dispensaries inside city limits will only pay the state and municipal marijuana sales tax. The county sales tax money collected from those dispensaries could be returned if the marijuana purchasers went to the businesses and asked them for the county sales tax they paid. It appears that almost every dispensary that was set up in unincorporated county areas had been quickly annexed by municipalities.
It wasn’t anticipated that this would be a big hit to the budget since the tax money would be returned only when and if marijuana purchasers became motivated to come in and ask for their refunds. Commissioner Gohagan wondered if any taxpayer had ever come back to a government office and asked for their [illegally] levied taxes to be returned to them?
The Treasurer commented that the county had actually received $11,000 more in marijuana sales tax from the Department of revenue just this month.
And that was that.
Among the Dogwoods 