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Times photo/Jessi Dreckman This drainage ditch alongside the Ozark County Volunteer Library’s side wall on Second Street in Gainesville is causing water issues with the library. Representatives of the library were at this month’s city council meeting asking the city to help find a remedy.
Joanne and Ken Krupp attended the April 8 Gainesville City Council meeting, asking the council members to help find a remedy for a water issue that is continually causing the Ozark County Volunteer Library building to flood.  “There’s a situation that has been going on for many, many years and that...

Times photo/Jessi Dreckman City council members sworn in From left, Gainesville city councilman and councilwomen Dana Crisp, Treva Warrick and Amanda “Mandy” Rodgers were sworn in to new two-year terms during the April 8 Gainesville City Council meeting. Crisp (east ward) and Warrick (center ward) were already serving on the board when their seats came up for re-election this year. They both chose to refile for the positions, and no one filed against them. Rodgers filed as a new candidate in the west ward, filling an empty seat vacated by former city councilman Seth Collins, who resigned last year. They will each serve a two-year term.
The council continued a discussion that has been ongoing since early this year when the city received correspondence from a company that is seeking a partial sales tax refund on behalf of the Gainesville Health Care Center.  The company (who is hired by businesses to help them save money) believes...
City Maintenance Supervisor Mike Davis said that contractors have begun the process to build the city’s new wastewater treatment facility.  “They’ve started laying blocks on the new building and making pretty good headway. They have a new generator pad poured and pad for other electrical stuff...
The Gainesville City Council approved Gainesville Fire Chief Kevin Piland’s request to spend up to $1,000 for a required ladder truck certification.  Piland was at the meeting and said that the National Fire Protection Association requires that all ladder trucks be tested and certified each year...

photo submitted As Dan Schmucker from White River Valley Electric Cooperative was driving around the Gainesville square Friday morning, he noticed one of the large phase switches on the pole was hanging down by a wire. The phase switch had been hit by lightning sometime during the recent bouts of severe weather. The crew from WRVEC was able to change all three phase switches on the pole at the southeast corner of the courthouse, preventing a city-wide power outage.
As Dan Schmucker from White River Valley Electric Cooperative was driving around the Gainesville square Friday, April 11, he looked up at the power lines and noticed that something wasn’t right, said Eastern District Commissioner Jim Britt on Monday. “He was just driving around the square that day...
Around 10 a.m. last Saturday, April 12, local first responders and emergency personnel came to the aid of a man who was trapped inside his car after driving over a curb at Town & Country Supermarket in Gainesville and overturning the vehicle on the steep embankment below. The responders pulled...

This photo shows the entrance to “Silhouette City,” where survivalists practiced shooting at cardboard enemies at the Covenant, Sword and Arm of the Lord compound, south of Pontiac in the late 1970s. This photo was published in the Los Angeles Times in 1981.
It has now been four decades since hundreds of lawmen stormed a 224-acre compound located on a peninsula just across the Arkansas line near Pontiac, home to the far right wing, anti-government and white supremacist religious group, the Zarephath-Horeb Church, otherwise known as the “Covenant, Sword...

Ozark County Times Editor Jessi Dreckman, left, and Graphic Designer Regina Mozingo are pictured here holding three of the six statewide awards the Times won at the 2025 Missouri Press Advertising and Marketing Executives meeting in St. Louis last week - including the “Best in Show” award for The Real Ozarks magazine. The award is given to the judges’ favorite entry from all submissions in the entire show from class 1 and class 2 newspapers across the state.
The 2025 Missouri Press Advertising and Marketing Executives meeting was held last week in St. Louis. Ozark County Times staff members were  honored at the meeting with six advertising awards including best in show of all Missouri class 1 and class 2 newspaper submissions - and Times owner Norene...

Brynlee Johnson, daughter of Laramie and Brianna Johnson of Howard’s Ridge, loved visited with the Easter Bunny at Pontiac’s egg hunt last year.
Editor’s note: Share information about a local Easter egg hunt for next week’s Times by emailing jessi@ozarkcountytimes.com.   If you feel like Easter is later than usual this year, you’re right. The holiday will be celebrated next Sunday, April 20, almost as late as it can possibly fall.  Unlike...

Brandon Watkins shared this amazing shot of a lightning strike hitting a power pole near Watkins Auto Plus in South Fork during last week’s round of severe weather April 2. The National Weather Service confirmed an EF-1 tornado touched down northeast of South Fork that day.
It’s been a wild spring in Ozark County, with storm after storm rolling through, battering these old hills and leaving a brutal trail of destruction behind. Time and time again, it feels like the bullseye of the storm has been drawn right over southeastern Ozark County, zeroed in on the town of...

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Ozark County Times

504 Third Steet
PO Box 188
Gainesville, MO 65655

Phone: (417) 679-4641
Fax: (417) 679-3423