Archives for December 2003

The Christmas Spirit is taking hold as Clarendon gets ready for holiday festivities starting downtown this week.

The Girl Scouts will open the season with their annual lighting ceremony at the Lions Hall this Thursday at 6 p.m., which is followed by the start of Late Night Shopping at several local merchants.

The Girl Scouts will be caroling up and down Kearney Street and will have an Open House at their office building with cookies and hot chocolate. They will also be accepting donations of canned goods to go in the Christmas Baskets for the needy that the Lions Club will distribute later this month.

The Chamber of Commerce office will be open, and refreshments will be available.

A wagon and team will be available to give free rides to anyone who wants them. Several local businesses have joined forces to provide this service.

Local Cub Scouts will have a bake sale set up at the Burton Memorial Library.

The kids can visit Santa Claus at the library and have their picture, taken with the jolly old elf for a small fee.

The Clarendon College Chorale has scheduled its Fall Choir Concert for 7:00 p.m. in the Harned Sisters Fine Arts Center.  Admission is free.

The holiday activities continue this weekend with the lighting of the Nativity scene at the Howardwick City Park on Saturday at, which is dusk followed by refreshments and singing in the Howardwick City Hall.

The Saints’ Roost Museum Christmas Party starts at 7:30 p.m. this Saturday in the Clarendon Community Center. Tickets are $50 per couple for beverages, dinner, and dancing and are available in limited numbers from Henson’s. Each ticket has the chance to win $5,000.

Clarendon College will host the West Texas A&M University Opera Workshop performance of “Amahl & The Night Visitors” by Gian Carlo Menotti on Sunday in the Harned Sisters Fine Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free.

This one-act opera is a touching Christmas story about the journey of the Three Kings to see the newborn Christ-child.  Along the way, they stop to rest at the home of a poor widow and her crippled son, Amahl.  Through his selfless act on this holiest of nights, a miraculous gift is given to Amahl. 

The cast includes Landree Woodward of Spearman; Benjamin Oheim of Amarillo; Brian Kuhnert, instructor of music at Clarendon College (WT alum); Justin Loe of Canyon; Michael McBride of Amarillo; and Robert Cardwell of Laredo. Piano accompaniment will be provided by Rolando Salazar from Beeville.

Everyone is welcome at the opera performance. Donations will be accepted. 

Citizens of all ages are encouraged to participate in these local events, and homeowners are urged to decorate since the Clarendon Chamber of Commerce and the Howardwick Beautification Club will judging holiday decorations this year.

Clarendon city officials are reporting that work is nearing completion on drainage and street improvements funded by two disaster grants.

City Administrator Sean Pate says contractor J. Lee Milligan is finished laying down the first course of two-course paving in a ten-block area in the southeast part of town. Workers still have some clean up work to do and will have to return in the spring when warmer weather will allow them to put down the final course.

The project, funded by the National Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) and the Texas Office of Rural Community Affairs (ORCA), includes paving and curbing portions of Hawley, McClelland, Goodnight, and Montgomery streets and part of Wood Avenue.

“It’s been pretty smooth,” Pate said. “Obviously, we would have liked to have seen the project done rather than have to wait until next spring for the final course.”

Pate said gas and electric utilities did not move their lines in a timely fashion in the early stages of the project, which resulted in delays for the contractors.

Another part of the project, which is being done by L.A. Fuller & Sons, should be completed this week. That work includes drainage improvements that tie the new paving into the city’s main drainage system and street and drainage work on Thurman Avenue on the east city limits.

Pate said all the work on this project has been paid for by the NRCS and ORCA grants except for one block of Goodnight Street, which the Board of Aldermen authorized the city to pay for in order to help tie the drainage work together.

In other city news, the Board of Aldermen held its regular meeting last Tuesday, November 25, to address items on a short agenda.

The GreenLight Gas Franchise Agreement was discussed and approved. The only change was that the city will receive its franchise fees quarterly rather than annually.

The board approved a contract with the new Panhandle Revenue Recovery Association, which has been set up by the Panhandle Regional Planning Commission. The new association will be made up of a group of area towns to assist each other in collecting past due utility or waste disposal fees.

Once implemented, the association would set up a system to crack down on persons who leave one city with a past due account and move to another city. For example, if a person is overdue on their water bill in Clarendon and moves to Memphis, then Memphis would be authorized to add that overdue balance to their bill and collect the money. Clarendon would get 75 percent of the collected money, and Memphis would get to keep 25 percent.

Aldermen also heard a report from the city administrator in which he briefly discussed new technologies which are helping cities of all sizes read water meters more efficiently.

“If the city is to be run like a business – which it should be – then we need to make every minute count,” Pate said this week.

Currently, it takes four city employees about four days to read some 960 municipal water meters. That takes those workers away from their usual duties, and sometimes emergency jobs – waterline breakages or animal control calls – can delay getting the meters read.

There are several new methods of meter reading available, but each essentially attaches a device to monitor water usage and then transmits that information using radio waves that could be read with a handheld wand or by other means. Most of Clarendon’s water meters could be fitted with the new technology.

Pate said its possible such an improvement could be phased in over three to five years to allow one person to read the entire town, thus freeing up the other employees for other tasks.

“We have to modernize to a certain extent to become more effective and more efficient,” he said. “If we want to do more work with the same resources, this would be a way to accomplish that.”

No action has been taken on this topic by the board. Pate said he may attend a meeting in Canyon next week which would provide more details about new methods of meter reading.

By Cheryl Johnson, Clarendon Enterprise

The Howardwick Beautification Club is sponsoring its annual Christmas project beginning December 7, 2003, with the lighting of the Nativity scene in Howardwick City Park at 7:15 p.m.

Everyone is invited to attend the ceremony led by Dr. Geona Goad of Howardwick Baptist Church, followed by refreshments and caroling at City Hall.

Judging for the lighting contest will be December 11. Registration will not be required. Turn your lights on that Thursday, and you will be entered. First, second, and third places will be awarded in two categories – general lighting and religious, with houses and trailers judged separately.

New this year will be a grand prize for the one house or trailer judged best overall.

Check out those lights and get them up.  Let’s make Howardwick sparkle again this year.