Archives for February 2009

Five electric wind turbines might be located on the campus of Clarendon College someday if contract negotiations now underway prove successful.

CC President Bill Auvenshine says the college is currently negotiating with US Wind Energy LLC concerning the possibility of locating the turbines south of the Livestock & Equine Center.

“We have about 50 acres that are being unused and have no plans for,” Auvenshine said.

The deal, which was a topic on last Thursday’s Board of Regents meeting, would be beneficial to the college in two ways.

“We would get a sizeable lease plus the opportunity to train our students in our wind energy program on these towers,” the president said.

The college currently has 12 students enrolled in its wind energy program at the CC Childress Center.

Auvenshine said the energy company has presented Clarendon College with a contract, and it is now being reviewed by the college’s attorneys.

In other college business, the Board of Regents last week approved a contract with an Amarillo company, Run Solutions, to improve and expand the college’s information technology department. The college director of that department will remain in charge, but the company will help expand the use of the current system, Auvenshine said.

The board also continued to discuss building prospects in Pampa. Auvenshine said the college is looking at possible building sites and is in talks with the Gray County Commissioners Court about the possibility of the county carrying the bond to build facilities and then leasing them back to the college. The lease would be paid for with funds from the Gray County Maintenance Tax for Clarendon College, which was approved by voters in that county last year.

Auvenshine said the alternative to that plan would be for the college to form a public facilities corporation to borrow the money for facilities and pay it back with the Gray County Maintenance Tax.
The board also reviewed and approved the college calendar and college catalog for the next two years; approved the purchase of a new nursing mannequin at a cost of $15,362; reviewed a draft of the college’s five-year plan; and authorized moving its March meeting to March 12 to prevent conflicting with Spring Break.

The Clarendon High School Bronco and Lady Bronco baseball and softball teams aren’t the only ones on the field practicing teamwork. While the teams work on running bases and catching pop flies, members of the community have united together to help make long-time visions for the ball fields come true.

In 2005, Clarendon saw members of the community join together in a spirit of cooperation to help make dreams of community leaders, parents, and kids for the ball fields become a reality. Now four years later, this same combined effort continues as upgrades to the fields near completion.

Among the new renovations that are currently in progress are the addition of two new sets of bleachers for all three fields as well as concrete pads under them, safety railing, a new outfield fence in the Little League’s Hart-Moore Field, and safety panels. According to Clarendon ISD Superintendent Monty Hysinger, the labor will be well worth the effort so parents, fans and citizens will have access to a much better viewing area and a nice place to sit when they come to watch the ball games.

“Since I’ve been here, we have completely got two brand new parks,” Clarendon ISD Athletic Director Gary Jack says. “We just need to keep upgrading our facilities because it’s just something continual. The bleachers were a big part of what we wanted to do next.”

Many members of the community have volunteered their time and labor to accomplish this common goal, and many dads have also helped including Stan Shelton, Randy White and Casey Cobb. Local contractors have been hired to help, including Kelly Hill, who is overseeing bleacher and fence construction, and Roy Williams, who is in charge of pouring concrete pads for bleachers and handicap ramps.

“All the work down there has been a joint effort from the school, the Little League, and quite a few volunteers, along with all the donations that have been made. We have some of the nicest facilities in district, and I’m pretty excited about that,” Stan Shelton said.

Local donations have drastically decreased the cost of this renovation. Clarendon College generously donated the new bleachers, since they had some left over from their Equine Center. Greenbelt Water Authority donated sand to help with the concrete. Some labor has been provided by inmates from Childress, under the supervision of Tommy Leeper. Gary Jack drives the bus provided by CISD for the transportation of the inmates to and from Childress.

According to Hysinger, this project could have easily cost $120,000; but with the help of community donations, it should cost only around $40,000.

“It’s a great thing what we’re doing,” Roy Williams says. “There’s a lot of people coming together. A lot of the fathers are doing different things to help out.  It’s a community effort. The superintendent of the schools is the head of it, but it’s just different people joining together and doing things to help make this possible. It’s going to be a nice facility when we finish it.”

Senior Devin Noble expresses his appreciation for the hard work and dedication of the community to benefit the baseball program and McClellan Field.
“I remember playing in the field in Little League, and it was horrible,” Noble says. “There were stickers everywhere, and the fence and dugouts were bad. But now we have one of the best fields in the Panhandle. Come out, enjoy the new facilities, and support us because we’re really good this year and have a great chance of going to state.”

Two Hedley men were working to clean up county roads this week after pleading guilty to charges of illegal dumping.

Charlie Jaramillo, age 68, and Robert Jaramillo, age 51, were charged with a Class A Misdemeanor after they dumped more than 200 tires in four places along County Road X last fall, according to the Donley County Sheriff’s Office and County Attorney Landon Lambert.

“We want people to know we are prosecuting for illegal dumping,” Lambert said. “This is a violation of the health and safety code, and it can get up to a felony level depending on the weight and volume of what is dumped.”

Officials say the Jaramillos were hired to clean up a property that had been repossessed last year and assured the owner that they had approval from a property owner to dispose of the tires. But the tires ended up along CR X and were discovered by County Commissioner Donnie Hall in September.

A subsequent investigation led to the arrest of the men on October 10, and their case was adjudicated this month in county court before Judge Jack Hall. County Attorney Landon Lambert said the men received 40 hours of community service each to be served picking up trash on county roads starting with CR X.

The Jaramillos started their service Tuesday morning under the supervision of county employees and the sheriff’s office.

Chief Deputy Randy Bond said illegal dumping on county roads is a problem that seems to be getting worse but said this case was not like any he had seen before.

“We’ve never had dumping of this magnitude before,” he said.

County employee Billy Holman was supervising the Jaramillos and said the county has to clean parts of CR X nearly every week.

“It’s really gotten worse since the city stopped allowing its residents to dump once a month for free,” Holman said.

Furniture and appliances seem to be the most common items dumped on the county road, but every day trash gets thrown out there also. As the Jaramillos worked Tuesday, among the trash was an empty Coors case and ice bag that was still half full of ice.
Lambert says people need to contact their city or county officials to find out the proper way to dispose of items, and the sheriff’s office reminds everyone that illegal dumping offenders will be arrested and prosecuted without tolerance.

AUSTIN – Christmas sales boosted tax revenues in Clarendon, according to Texas Comptroller Susan Combs.

In her monthly allocation to local cities last Friday, Clarendon posted a 4.32 percent gain for its February allocation with a rebate of $34,492.64 to City Hall.

January state sales tax collections and February’s local sales tax allocations represent sales made in December, but also include earlier sales by businesses that report sales tax to the Comptroller on a quarterly or annual basis.

The increased revenue almost brought Clarendon to the breakeven point for the calendar year-to-date, but the city is still just slightly behind, down 0.44 percent at $52,252.67.

Other local cities did not fair nearly as well for the current allocation. Hedley was down more than 16 percent to $877.60, and Howardwick was down by almost 23 percent to $1,063.77.

Both of those cities are down more than 20 percent for the year-to-date.

Statewide Combs’ office collected $1.92 billion in sales tax revenue in January, up 3.9 percent compared to January 2008.

“Growth in state sales tax collections remains modest,” Combs said. “While overall growth has continued for the first five months of fiscal 2009, collections from important sectors such as retail trade and construction have decreased.”

The Comptroller sent $445.2 million in sales tax to Texas cities, up 2.5 percent compared to February 2008 payments.

For details of February sales tax payments to individual cities, counties, transit systems, and special purpose districts, locate the Monthly Sales Tax Allocation Comparison Summary Reports on the Comptroller’s Web site at www.window.state.tx.us/taxinfo/allocsum/compsum.html.
The Comptroller’s next local sales tax allocation will be made on Friday, March 13.

Osburn Appliance received the first cash award this year from the Clarendon Economic Development Corporation’s Façade Grant Program.

The CEDC Board at its February 2 meeting approved Shirley Osburn’s improvements to her storefront at 319 S. Kearney and the adjacent storefront at 321 S. Kearney.

The addresses share a common front and doing only one side would not have looked good, Osburn said.

“It would have been just awful not to do both sides, so I got permission from the owner and did her building also,” Osburn said.

Both storefronts were constructed about 60 or 70 years ago to house Frank White’s Clarendon Hatchery, which operated at that location for many years. Osburn said she can remember going in to see White’s chicks as a girl and not knowing until years later that he was not just selling chicks in Clarendon but actually shipping thousands of them out of Donley County.

After the Hatchery and feed business closed, Osburn and her husband, Rabbit, who passed away last year, opened their business in that location in 1988.

Work under this façade grant application included puttying and patching deteriorating cement, caulking, priming, and painting both fronts. The project received $506.24 from the CEDC, which is half of the amount of the improvements.

Osburn said she had wanted to get rid of the buildings’ old green front for a long time and said the CEDC’s Façade Grant Program really “kick started” the improvements.

“I got a couple of letters about the (grant) program, and then San (Thompson) did his building next door, and June (Hinojosa) did hers across the street, and they both just looked so nice,” she said.

Osburn said she likes the CEDC’s program and believes improvement projects spur others to make improvements.

“I came in the other day and they were sweeping the street, so I got out there and started sweeping the sidewalk.”

The CEDC has budgeted $10,000 for this fiscal year’s Façade Grant Program, which provides fifty-fifty matching grants up to a maximum of $2,000 per project for properties on a three-block stretch of Kearney Street.

Projects eligible for consideration could be anything from a coat of paint to new signage to a complete rehabilitation of a storefront. Those interested in the grants are asked to apply prior to beginning a project, and applications are available from CEDC Secretary Roger Estlack at The Clarendon Enterprise.

To date the CEDC has awarded more than $5,500 in façade grants.
The CEDC Board will next meet to consider grant applications on Monday, March 2, at 6:00 p.m. in City Hall.

A break-in at the historic Bugbee House last week turned out to be anything but routine mischief and has cost the Donley County Sheriff’s Office one deputy.

Sheriff Butch Blackburn said his office received a report of the security alarm going off last Thursday about 9 p.m. When authorities arrived, six college-age young women were at the house and were taken in for an investigation into the break in.

But as the investigation continued last Friday, new light was shed on the case.

“After a thorough investigation, it was decided no charges would be filed on the girls,” Blackburn said. “Also through that investigation, it was learned that some of the policies of the sheriff’s office had been compromised, which has resulted in the Donley County Sheriff’s Office’s being short one deputy.”

Blackburn confirmed that the deputy in question resigned immediately at 11 p.m. last Friday.

“The deputy in question used poor judgment that led to the girls’ being at that location at that time,” Blackburn said.

The sheriff would not identify the deputy for the record.

The Bugbee House northwest of Clarendon was the lifelong home of Harold Dow Bugbee, one of the greatest Western artists of the 20th century. Bugbee, whose works are in collections everywhere from local homes and businesses to the Smithsonian Institution, died in 1963 and left everything to his widow, Olive Vandruff Bugbee, and to the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum (PPHM) in Canyon.

Mrs. Bugbee was an acclaimed artist in her own right whose patrons included President Lyndon Johnson and Governor Dolph Briscoe. She carefully maintained her husband’s estate, kept detailed records on everything, and then also bequeathed all her belongings to the PPHM when she died in January of 2003.

Since that time the museum has been working to catalog the possessions in the house and move the valuables to Canyon.

Blackburn said Tuesday that the head of the PPHM was in agreement with his office that no charges be filed on the girls. The sheriff’s office is now working to expunge the records of the girls.

“Unfortunately it takes longer to clean up a mess than it does to start it,” Blackburn said. “We are going to work diligently until the records are clean.”

Blackburn also issued a warning about those who might be interested in tampering with the house.
“This does not give a green light for kids to trespass at the Bugbee House,” the sheriff said. “It is monitored, and trespassers will be arrested.”