HERMANN – The other shoe has dropped.

Gasconade County faces the loss of more than $46,000 after the only marijuana retailer — at the time — in the county filed for a refund of the sales taxes it paid to the county. CODES, the marijuana dispensary that operated in Village Square on Highway 100 West before leaving Hermann a year ago for a Jefferson City location, had paid the 3-percent sales tax to the county, as well as a 3-percent sales tax to the city of Hermann, until the issue of whether both taxes were legal was settled.

A court ruling several months ago said a tax paid to a county and a municipality amount to “stacking” and was illegal, unlike the county and city sales taxes applied to purchases of other products within a municipality. That ruling set the stage for requests for refunds by the marijuana retailers.

Mindful that refund requests were a possibility, the Gasconade County Commission received the 3-percent sales tax but had not included it in county government’s operating budget, setting it aside and collecting interest.

Whether the county loses the entire $46,367 at one time or if it can be deducted from the county’s regular monthly sales tax reimbursement checks from the Missouri Department of Revenue in a series of installments — to lessen the financial hit — was unclear when County Treasurer Mike Feagan talked with the Commission about the matter at last week’s session.

Feagan said he would request a series of withholdings. That wasn’t the case in recent years when it was determined that sales tax remittance by Loutre Market was inadvertently sent to Gasconade County, rather than to Montgomery County. In that instance, the Department of Revenue pulled the total amount — about $40,000 — from a single monthly General Fund Sales Tax reimbursement to Gasconade County.

“I’m OK with three months (of installments)…if you can set it up,” said Presiding Commissioner Tim Schulte. R-Hermann.

Providing the refund through deductions to the county’s monthly reimbursements would allow the county to avoid having to physically write a check — or checks. County Clerk Lesa Lietzow pointed out that writing a check would mean officials would have to decide from where in the budget to take the money.

“There was no line item made in January for paying that,” she said, referring to specific areas within the budget from which funds are taken and accounted for.

Southern District Associate Commissioner Ron Hardecke noted that the official opening of the county’s portion of the Rock Island Trail is set for 10 a.m. Saturday, May 30, at the parking lot of Lakeside Book Company. The county’s portion of the trail runs from the eastern limit of Owensville to the Soap Creek bridge near Rosebud.

Meanwhile, the County Commission last week accepted the bid of Gleeson & Sons Masonry for cutting a door into the newly created Recorder of Deeds Office on the first floor. The proposal of $68,100 was the only bid received. The work to create the new county government office is scheduled to be done by Oct. 1. County voters in November will be electing the first recorder of deeds. Since the county’s beginning, the office has been part of a hybrid department: Circuit Clerk & Recorder of Deeds Office.

The two offices — one a state-run agency, the other a county government office — were separated last summer by the County Commission as a way to improve county government efficiency. Leading the call for splitting the offices was Circuit Clerk & Recorder Jennifer Schneider, who explained that her caseload as circuit clerk had increased to the point where she was unable to give the Recorder of Deeds Office as much attention as it deserved.

The arrival of a couple Amish families in Maries County is prompting the installation of HORSE & BUGGY signs on Holt Road near Bland alerting motorists to the slow-moving mode of transportation in the area.