HERMANN – Gasconade County R-1 Superintendent Geoff Neill isn’t worried about the dump trucks and semis loaded with rock entering Highway 100 from a local quarry directly across from the Hermann High School campus. He’s not all that worried about his district’s bus drivers transporting students with the big trucks going back and forth to the data centers in Montgomery County.

Both the truck drivers and bus drivers are professionals, Neill said. They know what they’re doing when it comes to sharing the road. That’s not necessarily the case for some others who will be on the highways with those trucks.

“My bigger concern are our 16-year-olds who are new drivers,” he told the R-1 board of directors at last Tuesday’s session.

The board was meeting a few days later than usual this month to give the administration enough time to gather property value assessment figures in preparing this year’s property tax rate. Neill has to gather the information from the four counties that make up the R-1 District, which includes portions of Gasconade, Montgomery, Warren and Franklin counties.

The heavy-truck traffic in Hermann resulting from the development of the data centers has been a major topic of discussion in the community – more so as the calendar edged closer to the start of another school year.

Neill told the board that life with big trucks will be unavoidable for a while, saying bottlenecks in certain areas – such as the intersection of highways 100 and 19 – will be commonplace, making it difficult for some of the buses to begin delivering students home at the end of the day.

“It’ll be our new normal for a while,” the superintendent said.

Neill added that he might request additional police presence near the intersection of Saw Mill Road and Highway 100 – directly across from the entrance to the high school and middle school campuses.

Regarding the district’s tax rate, after a brief public hearing that attracted no public comment, the board approved a rate of $4.2359 per $100 assessed valuation for this year’s property tax bills.

According to the figures provided to the board, the R-1 district has a total assessed valuation of real and personal property of $164,098,955. That’s $3 million more than was posted a year ago, all of which is attributed to new construction. The bulk of that occurred in the Franklin County portion of the district. Here’s how the assessed valuation figures break down: $11,464,681 in Gasconade County; $34,722,969 in Montgomery County; $6,585,799 in Warren County; and $11,325,506 in Franklin County.