Ben Estlack

The search for the next City Administrator for Clarendon narrowed to one finalist last week after the city council conducted four interviews.
Brent Spier, former City Administrator at Clear Lake Shores, Texas, will be coming to Clarendon May 29-31 for a tour of the city and an in-person interview.

Spier was one of four candidates interviewed last Wednesday by the city council. Other candidates included Steve Coles, manager of Lowe’s Family Center in Clarendon; Brian Barboza, City Administrator at Knox City; and Melissa Fields-Allgeyer, Director of Human Resources at the City of Levelland.

City officials say they were impressed by Spier’s virtual interview and his knowledge of city administration. The search for the next administrator has been ongoing for several months after City Administrator David Dockery announced his intention to retire almost a year ago.

Dockery had hoped to retire in April, but the council’s first search for a replacement was unsuccessful, which resulted in him extending his employment with the city.

In other city business, the council met in regular session last Thursday, May 11, with several agenda items.

Election results were canvassed and certified from the May 6 election. Mayor Jacob Fangman and Aldermen Terri Floyd and Eulaine McIntosh were unopposed and re-elected. The city’s quarter-cent sales tax for street maintenance was re-authorized by the voters by a margin of 111 for to 30 against.

A proclamation was read for Peace Officers Week and Peace Officers Memorial Day.

The council considered and adopted an amendment Article 13.02 of the Code of Ordinances adjusting the dates on late fees and disconnections for water service. The disconnect is generally five days after the late bill on the 16th, but the dates change with certain holidays and other factors. The exact disconnection dates will be posted on the Calendar of Events on the city’s website at CityOfClarendonTx.com.

Final disposition for the property at 600 S. Bugbee Avenue was discussed, and the council voted to take bids for the property with a minimum bid of $10,000.

In his report, Dockery discussed an upcoming project with SROC Coaching of Amarillo, which will paint over graffiti in the city’s main drainage canal. J&W Lumber is donating mis-mixed paint, and the city will donate brushes and rollers to the project.

Dockery also reported that the aquatic center is fully staffed and that grant projects are moving forward.

A New Mexico man is in the Donley County Jail this week on charges of evading arrest and terroristic threat after he ran from law enforcement last Thursday, May 11.

Daniel Adrian Barraza, age 19, of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, was still being held on 11,500 bond Tuesday morning.

According to the Donley County Sheriff’s Office, a male subject was reported to have stolen items from Allsup’s and, when confronted by an employee, he stated he would shoot them all if he had a gun.

The subject was gone when Deputy Wes Christopher arrived, but he soon learned the subject was parked in the turning lane on the east end of Clarendon. Christopher located the vehicle and approached the subject, but he said Barraza brandished a box cutter. Christopher drew on the subject and told him to put the box cutter down, which he did, but then he got back in his car and fled.

Deputy Christopher shot out the subject’s left rear tire and then pursued him east on US 287. Sheriff Butch Blackburn got in front of the subject east of Lelia Lake and put the subject’s vehicle in the ditch there. The subject’s vehicle ended up in the creek east of Lelia Lake, and he was apprehended there without incident.

He was arraigned Friday by Justice of the Peace Sarah Hatley with bond set at $10,000 for evading with a motor vehicle and $1,500 for terroristic threat.

Clarendon High School has announced Catherine Word and Britton Cottrell as the top students for the Class of 2023.

Catherine Word is the Valedictorian and has a GPA of 5.9. She is the daughter of William Word and Tanya Word and has attended all four years at Clarendon High School.

Word is the class president and CHS Student Council president. A National Merit Commended Scholar, she also participated in varsity tennis, annual staff, National Honor Society, and accumulated 60 dual credit hours at Clarendon College. Word advanced to the UIL Regional Academic and Speech contest three years in a row in five different events and qualified for State in Ready Writing her senior year.

Word helped found Clarendon High School’s history club — the Babble-On Historical Society — and served as its president for two years. She has received several Honor-C awards and amassed over 250 hours of community service throughout high school.

She plans to attend the University of Texas at Austin as a biomedical engineering major. Her hope is to attend medical school and volunteer for Doctors Without Borders.

Britton Cottrell is the class salutatorian with a GPA of 5.9. He is the son of Zak and Jade Cottrell and was a three time regional qualifier in UIL academics. He qualified in number sense three straight years, accounting his junior year, and math and science his senior year.

Cottrell played baseball all four years of high school and ran cross country his freshman year. He was also involved in many academic activities. He was inducted into the National Honor Society his junior year. During his time in the National Honor Society, Cottrell worked over eighty community service hours doing everything from yard-work to organizing fundraisers for the senior center.

Along with being involved in those activities, he was also an A Honor Roll student all four years of high school. After high school Britton plans on attending Texas Tech University and majoring in mechanical engineering.

Word and Cottrell will be recognized with the CHS Class of 2023 during commencement Friday, May 26, at 7 p.m. in the Harned Sisters Fine Arts Center.

The Adamson-Lane, Post 287 of The American Legion, Hedley, Texas will hold its annual Memorial Day service at the Rowe Cemetery, Monday morning at 10:00 a.m. on May 29, 2023.

In the event of inclement weather, the ceremony will be held at the Hedley Lions Club.

The Post members will place American Flags on the graves of 249 Veterans buried in the Rowe Cemetery. The Flags will be placed on the graves at 9:00 a.m., Friday May 26, 2023, and remain till Tuesday, May 30, 2023 in honor of those departed comrades that have served this country.

The Memorial Day program will be conducted by members of the American Legion that will include the raising of the colors, the National Anthem, Pledge to the Flag and the ceremony honoring the missing in action and the Prisoners of War still unaccounted for.

The Memorial Day address will be given by Will Thompson, American Legion Post 287 Post Commander. Carlton Turvaville will read the names of the 248 Veterans buried in the Rowe Cemetery. The program will be concluded with the laying of the memorial wreath and the playing of taps.

The sky is the limit for science, technology, engineering, and math educational efforts for Clarendon High School and four other schools in the Texas Panhandle.

Through $1,000 grants provided by Consolidated Nuclear Security (CNS), the managing and operating contractor for Pantex, the schools will soon be advancing STEM education with projects ranging from robotics to drones. These grants fund STEM activities in the classroom and represent one of the many ways Pantex is investing in the development of the future workforce.

Pantex Education Outreach Specialist Darla Fish visited CHS Monday afternoon to present the $1,000 check to science teacher Timothy Leeper.

Leeper’s students will study drones and learn about education opportunities and occupations related to operating and designing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). CHS students will also be qualified to take the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Unmanned Aircraft Systems Drone Knowledge Test, receiving a two-year license for UAV operations in a variety of fields.

This year’s other grant recipients and projects are as follows:

Boys Ranch High School students will use four programmable drone sets to learn piloting, foundations of coding, and how to use the engineering design process to solve real-world challenges. Students will experience the role that technology and automation play in our world, and market themselves and the application of their skills to various career fields.

Fort Elliott CISD has already implemented robotics and engineering into the curriculum, and will use its grant to increase these programs and advance STEM opportunities for upper elementary students. This grant will help purchase coding design skill cards, coding robot sets, and STEM Bins.

Pampa High School’s program will instruct students how a computer works and how to repair a Personal Computer. It can be downloaded onto classroom computers, supporting an unlimited number of users. The application will instruct Principles of IT, Computer Maintenance, and Practicum of IT classes, using gamification to apply gaming strategies, improve learning, and create an engaging environment.

Rogers Elementary project in Amarillo is to offer students more opportunities in critical thinking, problem solving, and creativity. They will be tasked to collaborate with their peers, improve social skills, and work together through engineering and coding challenges. Students will gain knowledge of the four pillars of computation thinking: decomposition, pattern recognition, abstraction, and algorithms.

The goal of the CNS grants is to foster advancement of STEM activities in the classroom and to help develop Pantex’s future workforce. This is the second year that Pantex has offered STEM classroom grants to Amarillo and the top 26 counties of the Texas Panhandle.

Dozens of submissions were received and evaluated by a panel of knowledgeable employees at Pantex. The group carefully reviewed all the applications and narrowed the impressive list down in order to recommend the five winners.

“To help increase the number of young men and women entering STEM fields, Pantex has offered region-wide grants for the last couple years,” Fish said. “Often times, these successful students become part of the Pantex workforce as we are continually searching for talented professionals to join us in our ongoing mission of securing the nation.”