Archives for September 2012

Members of a divided Clarendon Board of Aldermen aired their differences as the struggled with taxing and spending issues at their regular meeting last Tuesday, August 28.

A project to lay new water and sewer lines under streets that have been targeted for paving was the first issue to cause rifts at the meeting. In May, city voters approved issuing $700,000 in bonds to pave the streets, but city aldermen later decided to replace the utilities first.

City Administrator Lambert Little presented the board with a professional agreement with KSA Engineers for design work on the utilities and said he hopes to have pipes in the ground by the end of next June. Aldermen accepted the agreement with one nay vote, that of Alderman Tommy Hill.

Little also asked the board to rescind a resolution that was passed earlier last month that authorized both the voter approved $700,000 street bonds and an additional $700,000 in tax notes for the utility replacements. The board had amended that resolution to require that any revenue the city gets from the sale of groundwater to Greenbelt Water Authority be applied to the debt. But Little said City Hall had discovered that it is improper to bind future councils in that way, and that such a requirement would be a budget decision from year to year. Aldermen Will Thompson, Terry Noble, and Abby Patten agreed to rescind the resolution, and Aldermen Hill and Jesus Hernandez voted against the measure.

Little then presented the same authorizing resolution without the amendment for the board’s approval. Thompson, Noble, and Patten approved the resolution; and Hill and Hernandez voted no.

The board then moved into budget matters, and Little said the city’s working budget was built largely by putting an expected $100,000 from groundwater sales into the city’s Enterprise Fund, which covers maintenance and operations of city utilities, i.e. the water department. Little said if the board chooses to put all of that revenue towards debt service, it would require them to cut $100,000 from the proposed budget and he had City Secretary Machiel Covey propose cuts in that amount.

Covey said making the cuts were difficult because in her words, “There has been no progress for so long that now everything is broken.”

Greenbelt Water Authority Board Representative Gary Campbell also raised concerns about the city’s proposed use of the money. He said he hated to see the city spend money it doesn’t have yet and also that he hated to see any of that revenue used for general purposes and preferred it be spent on pipes in the ground.

Alderman Patten said she felt like the city had promised citizens that the groundwater revenue would be used for pipes, and she moved to dedicate those funds to the utility improvement debt and accept Covey’s budget cuts. Thompson, Hill, and Hernandez voted with her. Alderman Noble voted no.

Aldermen again divided when Little asked the board to propose a 72-cent ad valorem tax rate for fiscal year 2013 to generate $35,000 in new revenue. The rate would be the maximum the city could go up without facing a rollback election and would increase average taxes in the city by $26 per year. The current rate is 65 cents.

Alderman Hill objected to raising taxes at all, but Alderman Noble pointed out that the city has not raised taxes for four years and is now facing the added problem of a sharp decline in water sales revenue due to drought restrictions.

Patten said she though water sales would recover next year and said she hated going up the maximum on taxes when the city is also looking at increases in water and sanitation rates.

Hill said he was fine with raising everything but taxes and moved to adopt the same rate as last year. Aldermen Hernandez voted with him, but Patten, Thompson, and Noble voted the measure down.

Patten then moved to adopt a 69-cent rate supported by Thompson and Noble, and Hill and Hernandez voted no.

The city will hold public hearings on the proposed tax increase on September 13 and September 18 and will meet again to adopt a tax rate and approve the budget on September 25.

In other city business last week, the board approved Ordinance 414 to allow the sale of bonds to be paid for by Greenbelt Water Authority to activate former city wells and lay a pipeline to the authority’s filter plant. Aldermen also heard from Chandra Eggemeyer, Clarendon’s new director of tourism and economic development, who outlined her goals for her office in the first two years. And resident Laura Paul addressed the board in public comments regarding her concerns about people living near her in substandard housing without proper sewer service and urged the city to condemn said property.

One of the new faces at Clarendon College plans to make a big impact on the community this fall with a rodeo that is sure to be full of entertainment.

Cody Heck is no stranger to rodeos. Growing up in Perryton he started riding cutting horses when he was ten years old at the urging of a neighbor. His love of the competition would stay with him right up through the collegiate level.

Now in his first year as the rodeo coach at CC, Heck is busy preparing to host the National Intercollegiate Rodeo Association (NIRA) competition here this October 25-27, and he says he is up to the task.

“This event will really boost our community and bring money to our town,” Heck said. “It will also provide our students an opportunity to interact with the community.”

More than 400 contestants and their families are expected to attend the three-night rodeo, which will feature all the traditional favorite contests – barrel racing, steer wrestling, team roping, saddle bronc riding, bareback riding, bull riding, and more.

For Heck, the NIRA rodeo is a chance to give today’s students the same experiences he had in college.

“I owe my success to my college rodeo coach, and I want to give to these kids what that coach did for me,” he said. “I want to see them develop into young adults who provide community service and leadership.”

And Heck has plenty of experience to share, including qualifying for the College National Finals Rodeo in steer wrestling in 2008 and being a member of the Crutch Ranch team that won the Working Ranch Cowboys Association (WRCA) finals four times and the $50,000 All Around Ranch Rodeo Challenge that was held in Glenrose this summer.

This region’s NIRA rodeo has traditionally rotated locations between Canyon and Perryton, but this year Clarendon has been given the opportunity to host the event. Heck says he looks forward to putting on a successful rodeo in front of his students’ peers and wants to see the rodeo do well on the local level by boosting local businesses.

The college is anticipating an attendance of about 1,000 to 1,200 over the three days, and CC representatives are actively seeking sponsors to help defray the cost of bringing the rodeo to Clarendon. For more information or to sponsor the event, call Heck at 806-874-4844 or Ashlee Estlack at 806-874-4808.

By Bill Bishop and Roberto Gallardo

Donley County has experienced a brain gain in the last 40 years, joining the rest of the country in what has been a massive increase in the number of adults who have earned college degrees.

In 1970, 6.7 percent of those over 25 years of age had college degrees in Donley County. By 2010, 16.6 percent of adults here had completed college.

The percentage of adults with college degrees in Donley County was less than the national average of 27.9 percent in 2010. The college-educated rate here was less than the Texas average of 25.8 percent.

The number of adults in the United States with college degrees has nearly tripled since 1970, when only 10.7 percent of adults had graduated from college. But the percentage of adults with degrees in rural counties, such as Donley County, while increasing, has generally fallen behind the proportion of college-educated residents in urban counties.

The loss of young, well-educated residents has posed a long-standing difficulty for rural communities.

“One of the problems that rural areas face is that in order to get a college education, young people often have to leave,” says Judith Stallmann, an economist at the University of Missouri. “Once you leave, that introduces you to other opportunities that you might not have seen had you not left.”

The good news for rural America is that it has caught up in every other measure of education.

In 1970, 7.8 percent of adults in rural counties had some education after high school, but less than a college degree. By 2010, 27.4 percent of rural adults had attained some post high school education without earning a college diploma. That level of education was close to the national average of 28.1 percent.

In Donley County, 12.3 percent of adults had some college in 1970, rising to 30.8 percent in 2010. The Texas average in 2010 was 28.3 percent. Donley County had 2,357 adults (those over 25 years of age) in 1970 and 2,374 adults in 2010.

Overall, Stallmann says, the trends show that “rural people have responded to the demand for increased job skills by the increasing their post secondary education.”

Only 17.8 percent of the adult population in Donley County had failed to graduate from high school in 2010. Nationally 15 percent of adults had not completed high school; in Texas, the rate was 20.0 percent.

Mark Partridge, a rural economist at Ohio State University, says that regional differences in college graduation rates have increased in recent years. Partridge said his studies have found that rural counties and counties with small cities in the South and West didn’t fare as well as those in the Midwest and Northeast in attracting college graduates. Even though the Sunbelt has seen tremendous growth over the past few decades, the South’s rural counties haven’t kept up in terms of attracting adults with college degrees.

But the problem of keeping college graduates in rural America is a national issue and one that is also enduring.

Missouri economist Stallmann said this is a reflection of the kinds of jobs that are generally available in rural communities. If there are fewer jobs demanding college degrees in a community, there are likely to be fewer college graduates.

“It’s a big deal in a lot of rural counties because you don’t see a lot of jobs that require a college education,” Stallmann said. Young people graduating from high school don’t see many jobs that demand a college diploma, so they don’t think about coming home once they leave for the university.

There can be a “self-reinforcing cycle” in rural communities, Stallmann said — young people leave to gain higher education, they don’t come back after college because there aren’t jobs that demand such education, and their absence diminishes the chances that more of these kinds of jobs will be created.

Nationally, rural counties and counties with small cities have caught up with urban counties in the percentage of adults who have some post high school education. Stallmann sees this as a sign that “there are perhaps more jobs in rural areas that require post secondary education but not college.”

Both Stallmann and Partridge said the data on college education rates told them that rural communities should consider the kind of jobs being created locally.

“Rural communities may need to think about the types of jobs” being created, Stallmann said. “There are some communities that are doing things like getting local businesses to put an emphasis on hiring local kids who got a college education.”

“It really suggests that rural communities that aren’t thinking about making themselves attractive to educated people are really going to suffer,” Partridge said.

An October trial date has been set for Gayle Edes, who is facing a felony charge in the 2011 death of four-year-old Chance Mark Jones.

During a district court hearing last Wednesday, August 29, District Judge Stuart Messer set October 23, 2012, as the date for Edes’ trial, and attorneys for both sides said they expect the trial to last four days.

Edes did not appear at last week’s hearing. Her attorney, Selden Hale, had requested that her presence be excused due to a number of health issues. Hale told Messer he believes Edes will be recovered enough to be at the October trial date.

Edes was indicted by the Donley County Grand Jury on January 4 of this year on the first degree felony charge of Injury to a Child by Omission. Her indictment and subsequent arrest came exactly one year after local authorities were called to the rural Donley County residence of Edes’ son, Robert Babcock, where they found Jones unresponsive and obviously beaten.

Jones died the next morning at Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo, and court records allege that Edes intentionally or knowingly, by omission, caused serious bodily injury to Jones by her failure to get medical attention for the boy.

In June, a Hall County jury found Babcock guilty of capital murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. If convicted, Edes could face a sentence of five to 99 years or life in prison and a fine up to $10,000.