Southern Illinois Tourism Office Opens

WKMS | By The Associated Press

Published September 14, 2012 at 9:28 AM CDT

A tourism office in Southern Illinois has reopened two years after it was shut down by state budget cuts. The Rend Lake South Tourism Information Center will operate every day except Tuesday and Wednesday. Staff will help visitors with travel information, hotel reservations and other services to boost tourism.The state's economic development agency estimates the center will provide a $2.9 million boost to the local economy. Money to run the center comes from a state hotel tax.This makes the 11th tourism center to reopen. Three remain closed.The Rend Lake tourism center is just off Interstate 57, halfway between Mount Vernon and Benton.

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Dave Shinall

Dave is a retired Army tank platoon sergeant. During Desert Storm, he helped overrun a Republican Guard bunker complex in Iraq's Euphrates Valley. In the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, he commanded a mountaintop UN Preventive Deployment Force observation post on the Macedonian frontier with Serbia. In Bavaria, he served as news director at the American Forces Network radio station in Wurzburg, on special duty assignment from December 1981 to March 1984. He's a 2003 magna cum laude graduate of Western Kentucky University.

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