Morgan Wheatly

Almost 50 citizens attended a public meeting to discuss selling groundwater from the City of Clarendon to Greenbelt Water Authority last Tuesday night, April 17, at the Bairfield Activity Center.

City Administrator Lambert Little welcomed those in attendance and introduced Clarendon’s representative on the Greenbelt board, Gary Campbell, who gave a brief history of Greenbelt and discussed the problems facing the lake as well as a possible solution.

Campbell told the crowd that Greenbelt Lake has only about six or seven months of water remaining if rain doesn’t replenish the reservoir or the area experiences another summer like last year’s.

“We’ve got to do something, and we’ve got to do it quickly,” Campbell said.

Campbell outlined some options for the water authority – water from a gravel pit below the dam, acquiring water rights from the Ogallala Aquifer miles from the reservoir, or buying other water rights. But another option, Campbell said, would be cheaper and easier – re-opening Clarendon’s municipal wells and buying water from the city.

“There is water here in abundance if Clarendon will allow Greenbelt access to it for a price,” Campbell said, noting that by grandfathering the permits for those wells and using an existing easement for a pipeline back to the filter plant, Greenbelt could be pumping the city’s groundwater in a matter of four or five months.

If Clarendon chooses not to sell its water to Greenbelt, the water authority will likely just buy rights from nearby farmers, and pump the same underground pool of water anyway.

“We’re giving Clarendon first right of refusal to sell its water,” he said.

Greenbelt General Manager Bobbie Kidd said the authority has been studying alternative water sources since 2007, and he said alternative solutions are more expensive and would require funding through the state water development board, which doesn’t have money currently. The Clarendon option, he said, would be good supplemental water when mixed with surface water from the lake.

Kidd also said other Greenbelt member cities do not have as good or as plentiful a water source as Clarendon does.

In responding to questions from the public, Kidd said the Clarendon Aldermen would set the price for selling water to Greenbelt, and Campbell said using the city’s water is only a supplemental solution and that the water authority would continue to explore other longterm groundwater solutions.

Asked about sending the water out of Clarendon or across the state, Greenbelt representatives said the water could only go as far as their pipeline, which is five counties. Greenbelt serves Clarendon, Hedley, Childress, Quanah, and Crowell and also provides water to Red River Water Authority, which provides the water to rural systems such as Estelline.

Members of the public expressed concerns about equitable conservation measures among the Greenbelt member cities and a desire to focus on conservation – such as rainwater harvesting. The city using the water for its own consumption was discussed, but officials said the city is bound to Greenbelt through 2026 and doesn’t have the resources to develop its own wells and treatment facilities and hire the people needed to run such a system.

Mayor Larry Hicks said the city should sell Greenbelt its groundwater in order to help neighboring cities and also to bring the city some needed revenue, which would be put back into the infrastructure for its water system.

Addressing concerns about selling water downstate, groundwater board member Jason Green said he sells his own groundwater downstate every day… in the form of hay, and he urged people to stick together so people all down the line can have good water.

The Clarendon Concert Series and second annual Battle of the Bands will be held in City Park this weekend, and organizers are expecting a big crowd for the three-day event.

Trevor Leeper of Digi-Pro Events says the first Battle of the Bands drew between 200 and 300 people to City Park last year, and he expects a much bigger crowd this time.

Activities will begin Thursday, April 26, with a citywide talent show at 6 p.m. Leeper said ten people are signed up for the talent show, but others can enter just by showing up at 5 p.m. The talent show winner will get a cash prize of $100.

Five bands are lined up for the second Battle of the Bands on Friday, April 27, and will be featuring country, blues, and classic rock music with groups from Amarillo, Clovis, Lubbock, and other area communities. Each band will get to perform for 25 minutes, and fans will judge who wins.

“Last year was our guinea pig,” Leeper said, “and we were impressed by the number of people who attended. We’ve had amazing support this year from businesses and everybody in town.”

The Battle of the Bands will begin at 5 p.m., and the winner will get a $500 cash prize.

Saturday’s concert series will feature “A Road Less Traveled,” a Lubbock band which was named the 2008 Contemporary Christian Music’s Number One Independent Artist. Opening for the group will be “No Sugar Added” from Borger, who finished second in last year’s Battle, followed by “Product” featuring Clarendon native Jeff Hearn.

Gates open at 1 p.m. on Saturday, and there will booths and activities each day of the events in the Park.

The Clarendon FFA Livestock Judging Team competed this past weekend at the South Plains judging contest in Levelland and the Texas Tech Area Qualifier at Lubbock.

Friday at Levelland the team judged 9 placing classes and 3 sets of questions. They placed 10th overall and John Pigg was 8th high individual at the contest.

The contest on Saturday at Texas Tech was the qualifier to advance to state for Area I and Area II. There were 92 total teams and 335 total individuals participating. Clarendon FFA placed first overall at the contest which results in them being first at Tech, first in Area I and first in District.

John Pigg was 3rd high individual, Tylee Williams 7th high individual, Jacob Pigg was 8th high individual, and Jayson Pigg was 12th high individual of the contest. This win qualifies the team to go to the State FFA Livestock Judging contest at Texas A&M on May 5.

The fate of a 104-year-old bridge near City Park will not be decided until later this year, according to information presented Monday night, April 16, in Childress.

The Seventh Street bridge was closed by the state in December 2008, and both bridges are scheduled to be replaced under a TxDOT program next year.

TxDOT says it will hold public hearings later this year to determine what local citizens would like done with the bridge at the park. One option that has been discussed is relocating the bridge for use as a pedestrian bridge.

TxDOT says replacement of the Seventh Street bridge will cost $250,000, not including any work to repurpose the existing bridge, and replacing the Rosenfield Street bridge will cost $230,000.

Other transportation projects planned in Donley County this year include overlaying Hwy. 70 from Howardwick to Interstate 40 and reconditioning some of the driving lanes on US 287 in Clarendon.

TxDOT will also let a contract for overlaying the southbound lanes of US 287 from the Armstrong County line to the west city limits of Clarendon next spring.

Donley County Commissioners took no action on a request to put a Ten Commandments marker on the Courthouse Lawn when they met in regular session last Wednesday.

In discussion on the matter, commissioners indicated that they had not received information that they requested from those wanting the marker and said they were not going to rush to make a decision.

Two members of the court expressed concerns about the proposed monument.

“It is not proper on the courthouse square,” Commissioner Dan Sawyer said. “Let them put it on main street or somewhere else.”

Commissioner Donnie Hall said he felt the court needed more input but also worried about future requests.

“You will set a precedent if you approve this,” he said.

Commissioner Andy Wheatly said he was not opposed to the marker and that he was “tired of the trail” that the country is on, and Commissioner Mark White said he felt like the county needed to take its time on the issue.

Judge Jack Hall agreed with White and said the count did not need to “rush into” a decision and that the issue “needs plenty of time and consideration.”

In other county business, commissioners heard from rural resident Johnny Cooper regarding an effort by Burlington Northern Santa Fe to close a railroad crossing near his home near Ashtola. Cooper said he stands to lose property value and business when people can’t bring their horse trailers to his place. He said the railway has agreed to improve a nearby county road, but he asked the county to provide a cost estimate for that work. The court took no formal action on the matter.

The court also heard from Greenbelt Water Authority Board member Gary Campbell, representing the City of Clarendon, who asked the county to support an application for Community Development Block Grant funds that could provide $300,000 to develop the city water wells for use by Greenbelt. Commissioners agreed to support the grant application as long as the county bears no financial obligation and is not responsible for any of the accounting associated with the grant application.

Sales tax revenue for the City of Clarendon fell more than 50 percent when State Comptroller Susan Combs made her April allocations last Friday, but the drop is due to accounting errors by both the city and the state and not a reflection of the local economy.

City Hall received $11,011.40 for the month, which is a drop of 50.35 percent compared to the $22,181.70 during the same period in 2011.

But city officials say the comptroller’s office actually withheld $12,853 from this month’s payment to the city because of an overpayment to the city by the state earlier this year. The city’s annual audit revealed an overpayment to the state in sales taxes on sanitation services, but state officials said Tuesday that the comptroller’s office had refunded too much money to the city when it returned about $54,000 earlier this year.

Clarendon’s actual sales tax revenue for this period should have been $23,864, which would have been an increase of about 7.6 percent over the same time last year.

With the state’s deduction of funds, however, Clarendon’s year-to-date sales tax collections dropped 11.06 percent to $97,200.28.

Also in Donley County, Hedley’s sales tax revenue for the month was also down 20.61 percent to $321.66, bringing that city down 25.22 percent for the year at $1,651.25. Howardwick, which increased its sales tax rate in October, posted increased collections of 27.8 percent at $1,274.35 for the month and was up 17.43 percent on the year at $5,016.22.

Statewide, Combs announced that sales tax revenue in March was $1.87 billion, up 16.9 percent compared to March 2011.

“The latest sales tax revenue numbers mark a continuation of recent trends we have seen in sales tax receipts,” Combs said. “Strong collections continued in oil and gas-related sectors, while growth in revenue from the retail sector and restaurants also accelerated.”

Combs will send April local sales tax allocations totaling $488.7 million to cities, counties, transit systems and special purpose taxing districts, up 17 percent compared to April 2011.

The sales tax figures represent monthly sales made in February and reported to the comptroller’s office in March.

Clarendon citizens will have an opportunity to learn more about the proposal to let Greenbelt Water Authority have access to city-owned water wells next Tuesday, April 17, during a public meeting.

The gathering at the Bairfield Activity Center will serve to inform the public about the project as well as discuss the history of the Greenbelt Water Authority, the current drought contingency plans, underground aquifers, surface water supplies, and short- and long-term water solutions.

City Administrator Lambert Little says he knows citizens have concerns about the city’s water supply and he feels a public meeting would be an opportunity for everyone to ask questions.

“I have heard so many rumors about ‘giving our water away,’ but this is an opportunity to get out of the Stage 4 drought contingency and generate some revenue for the city,” Little said.

Little said using Clarendon’s wells is the “cheapest, quickest, and easiest long-term solution that can be done in the short term.”

Attending the meeting will be Little, Mayor Larry Hicks, Greenbelt Board Member Gary Campbell, and Greenbelt General Manager Bobbie Kidd. The public is encouraged to attend.

Greenbelt Water Authority has been studying and testing two wells formerly used by the city; and during this week’s city meeting, the Board of Aldermen discussed a possible contract with the water authority regarding the wells. Little would likely include provisions to make the wells available to Greenbelt, allow the authority access to city rights of way, and propose a price for the water.

All expenses to develop and maintain the wells would be on Greenbelt’s shoulders, Little said.

Campbell, who represents Clarendon on the Greenbelt Board, says he has had a lot of feedback about the proposal, and he also hopes people will attend the meeting.

“If anyone has questions, I sure hope they will come,” Campbell said. “I will stay as long as they want and try to answer all of their questions.”