Roger Estlack

It’s election time again, and voters will be casting their ballots Saturday to determine who will make decisions on their behalf for Clarendon CISD and the City of Clarendon.

Voters across Texas are also casting ballots on two proposed state constitutional amendments, which each promise to reduce your property taxes in some form or fashion. That’s a recurring theme of our state leaders – cut local property taxes. Your editor is all for lower taxes, but he’s also for educated children so that hopefully society will be run by people smarter than we are in a few years. Cuts in property taxes – although always accompanied by pie in the sky talk of the state helping out more – almost always ends up with our schools and local governments having their hands tied. And of course, cutting your tax rate is of little consequence if your appraised values eat up your savings, and our fearless leaders in Austin do nothing about that except perhaps encourage it.

But I digress. The point of this column was not to wax forlornly about our pitiful state “leaders” but to instead discuss the local issues on the city front.

Regardless of the outcome of Saturday’s election, change is coming to City Hall. Mayor Sandy Skelton has been pretty upfront that his days in office are coming to an end with the pending sale of his home and plans to move out of state. And then at the last city meeting, City Administrator David Dockery announced his intention to retire next April.

Dockery started in 2015 and has served Clarendon as its administrator longer than any other person. In fact, when Dockery retires next year, he will have served longer than the previous three administrators combined and four times longer than any one of them. There are several factors that have led to this longevity; most of which will be saved for discussion at a later date. But without a doubt, one of the biggest secrets to his success has been the presence of Mayor Skelton and the general support of the city council through the years.

There will be time for tributes later, but for this week, it is important that voters consider what has been accomplished since 2015 and that list is considerable.

For starters, the city’s water infrastructure is vastly improved thanks in part to long-range planning and studies that actually began while Lambert Little was city administrator from 2010-2012. Those early efforts led directly to the city successfully securing and carrying out a $4 million project largely funded by the US Department of Agriculture, which led to about five miles of new waterlines being installed and a new standpipe being erected on the east side of town. This took care of dirty or stained water that some citizens had been dealing with for years and also helped replace some of the oldest water lines in the city.

The USDA project had the unintended consequence of bringing to light the old City Hall’s shortcomings with regards to accessibility under the Americans with Disabilities Act. Ultimately, city leaders decided to purchase and move into a new location on the Courthouse Square. The new City Hall provides employees with more space to work, is more accommodating, and provides a better venue for public meetings. It was a move that will serve Clarendon well for many years to come.

Some limited paving was accomplished in the last eight years and measures were taken to preserve and protect the city’s best streets. An election that would have paved most of the streets in town about 20 years ago failed at the time by 25 votes with the “Nays” most vocal about the need to replace old water lines before doing paving. It took some time, but now that’s been done. The city is now working on plans with an engineer to try again for another big project to pave streets. Time – and this election – will tell if Clarendon residents really want that kind of progress.

The professionalism exhibited by the current council and administration likely helped prompt the anonymous benefactor to offer half a million dollars towards building a city pool. It wasn’t offered for any other purpose, and city officials would have been fools to turn it down. Working together over six years, Skelton, Dockery, and the members of the city council helped raise money and ultimately saw the wisdom in committing public funds to close the gap at make the Clarendon Aquatic Center a reality.

Coupled with the final completion of renovations to the Mulkey Theatre, the aquatic center has helped bring new “quality of life” attractiveness to Clarendon and downtown in particular. Both of those features as well as downtown merchants will benefit from the city’s next big project – downtown revitalization. Grant funds will pay the largest part of new sidewalks and new lighting that will make our city prettier, more accessible, and more appealing.

All this has been done while our property tax rate has actually gone down quite a bit over the last eight years. The city has zero control over your appraisals, so talk to your state leaders if you’re upset about that. Yes, some utility charges have gone up; but on the whole, this city is much better off than it was in 2015. It’s in a better financial position, it’s planning for more improvements, and it’s better prepared for the future. Is everyone happy? No, but when has everyone ever been happy? A look at the big picture though shows Clarendon making progress. Our challenge is to keep that progress going.