News

Less than a month after West Texas Utilities closed its local office, the electric company has announced it is seeking to raise its rates.

According to a press release, skyrocketing natural gas prices have forced American Electric Power’s West Texas Utilities (AEP-WTU) to file a request with the Public Utility Commission of Texas (PUCT) to recover through a surcharge approximately $19.6 million in uncollected fuel costs and interest from retail customers. 

At the same time, WTU requested permission to increase fuel factors used to calculate the fuel charge portion of customer bills in order to recover a projected increase of $42.6 million in fuel costs that will be incurred to provide electric service in the future.

“The price of natural gas used to generate electricity at AEP-WTU’s power plants has increased nearly 100 percent from January through August,” said David Carpenter, AEP director of Texas regulatory services.  “Since 60 percent of the electricity produced by AEP-WTU is generated using natural gas as a boiler fuel, these price increases have a tremendous impact on our cost of producing electricity.

“Fuel costs are an expense that AEP-WTU must pay to fuel suppliers,” Carpenter continued.  “It’s important to remember that AEP-WTU does not earn any profit or return on fuel costs.  In the past when fuel costs have declined, AEP-WTU made refunds to customers.”

Investor-owned electric utilities in Texas, like AEP-WTU, are required by the PUCT to use fuel factors based on cost estimates to collect the projected cost of fuel used to generate electricity at their power plants.  When actual costs of fuel significantly exceeds that which customers are paying in their monthly bills, PUCT rules require the utility to request permission to surcharge the additional amount. 

When the actual costs of fuel are significantly lower than what customers are paying in fuel charges, the electric utility is required to issue a refund.  And when the fuel costs are anticipated to change from their current levels for an extended period of time, the electric utility must request permission to adjust the monthly fuel factors used to determine the fuel charge portion of customers’ bills.

Without the increase in fixed fuel factors, AEP-WTU projects that it would under-recover fuel and purchased power costs by approximately $42.6 million for the period from October 2000 through September 2001.  Consequently, AEP-WTU is requesting permission to adjust the fuel factors used to calculate the fuel charge portion of customer bills.

Since fuel under-recoveries and interest already have totaled approximately $19 million for the period from August 1999 through June 2000, AEP-WTU also has requested permission to implement a new fuel surcharge in November to collect the under-recovered balance through June 30, 2000.

The surcharges are designed to collect the under-recoveries as of June 30, 2000, plus approximately $600,000 in interest costs incurred over the collection period.

If approved as requested, the new fuel factors would go into effect in October, and the new surcharge would go into effect in November.  The new fuel factor and surcharge would increase bills for typical residential customers using 1,000 kilowatt-hours a month by $20.53 per month for the period from November 2000 through April 2001, with the fuel factor equaling $8.69 and the surcharge equaling $11.84 of that amount.

Persons with questions can contact AEP-WTU at 1-888-226-3523 (English) or 1-888-216-3505 (Español) during normal business hours.

Persons wishing to express their comments concerning the petition should contact the Public Utility Commission of Texas, Office of Customer Protection, PO Box 13326, Austin, Texas 78711-3326, or call 1-888-782-8477.

The death of a Howardwick man that first fueled speculations of murder was ruled a suicide last week.

Roger Howerton of 2200 Carroll Creek Acres in Howardwick was found dead in his home last Tuesday afternoon, August 15, by Chief Deputy Butch Blackburn.

Howerton’s father had not heard from his son for about a week and contacted the Donley County Sheriff’s Office. Blackburn entered the home on a welfare check, and the man was later officially pronounced dead by Justice of the Peace Jimmy Johnson.

An autopsy was performed on August 16 in Lubbock, and a preliminary report gave the cause of death as a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Blackburn said the 40-year-old man had probably been dead for six or seven days before being found.

Sheriff Jimmy Thompson and Texas Ranger Gary Henderson assisted with the investigation.

Looking for some good barbecue?  Come on over to St. Mary’s Parish in Clarendon at the corner of Montgomery and McClelland to take part in the third annual St. Mary’s Day Celebration on Sunday, September 10. 

The meal will be from 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., and tickets will be $6 for adults and $3.50 for children.  In addition to the meal, there will be entertainment, a country store, and quilt raffle. 

St. Mary’s Day originated three years ago as an event to recognize the history of the parish and to serve as a fundraiser for a much needed parish hall. 

Parish members continue to be dedicated to building the parish hall and encourage the support of families in the area to attend the barbecue meal on September 10.

For more information about St. Mary’s Day or to acquire tickets, contact Dorothy Harvey at 874-5097 or Leon Church at 874-2926.  Hope to see you there!

The Donley County Commissioners’ Court approved the issuance of $550,000 in tax notes this week to provide matching funds for the restoration of the 1890 courthouse.

The notes issued during Monday’s regular session of the court will be paid off in 2007 and will be funded through ad valorem taxes. The first payment will be August 1, 2001.

All three local banks are participating in the county’s financing. The Donley County State Bank and the Community Bank will each hold $175,000 of the debt, and the Herring National Bank will carry $200,000.

The interest rate on the notes is 6¼ percent, and the notes can be called at any time. In other words, the county can pay the notes off ahead of time if it has the money.

Ken Smith of Southwest Securities set up the tax note offering for the county.

“I think you’ve got an excellent deal from the local banks,” Smith said. “They’ve been real good to you, especially Jerry Woodard [at Herring].”

County Judge Jack Hall said the court appreciates the help from the local banks.

“The commissioners and I are grateful for their support,” he said. “We think it’s a good reflection of the local support for this project.”

Smith said that 6¼ percent was a very good interest rate and that it would have been more difficult to make the notes callable if the county had gone through a public offering.

The money can be placed in an interest bearing account while the county waits for bills to come in on the restoration project, Smith said. Interest earned on the money must be used on the project itself or to pay on the notes.

Earlier this year Donley County was awarded $2.9 million from the Texas Historical Committee to completely restore and refurbish the county courthouse. Money from the tax notes issued this week will be used for the county’s 15 percent match and for other expenses related to the project.

Built in 1890, the Donley County Courthouse is the oldest functioning courthouse in the Texas Panhandle and is one of the most unique structures of its kind in the State of Texas.

Also in Monday’s session of the court, the commissioners considered a contract with Sun City Analytical, Inc., of El Paso for the abatement of asbestos, lead paint, and bat guano from the courthouse.

Sun City’s proposal would have cost the county $23,656. Following a telephone conversation with the court however, Sun City lowered their price by more than $2,300. The commissioners agreed to a contract in the amount of $21,521.

For more information on the restoration of the Donley County Courthouse, click here.

Clarendon High School will field a baseball team next spring following a vote by the school board last week.

The decision came in a unanimous vote of Clarendon CISD Trustees in their regular meeting Thursday, August 10.

School officials had been studying the possibility of adding baseball for sometime, according to CISD Superintendent Monty Hysinger. The enthusiasm of the Athletic Director Roger Hoeltzel and the coaching staff helped finalize the deal, he said.

“The athletic director said we could do it with our existing staff and on a shoestring budget,” Hysinger said. “And we have a group of students who really want to play.”

One of Clarendon’s newest coaches, Danny Brittain, will lead the Broncos onto the baseball diamond with the assistance of Coach Hoeltzel. Brittain was the head baseball coach for three years in Aspermont and was named coach of the year there. Hoeltzel played baseball in college, Hysinger said.

“I took this job with the hope that Clarendon would start baseball,” Coach Brittain said, noting he was glad it happened in his first year here.

“We have a lot of enthusiastic kids,” he said. “At least 18 kids may come out for the team.”

School officials say they plan to play their games at McClellan Field near City Park.

The Broncos will have a very small district this year, facing only Wellington and West Texas High at Stinnett, and should be a shoe-in for the playoffs since three teams advance from the district level.

Hysinger said the school plans to talk with female athletes to determine if there is any interest in forming a Lady Bronco softball team.

Meanwhile, the Broncos will start working out the first of February and will likely play their first game toward the end of that month, Brittain said.

School officials say they do not know when the last time was that CHS fielded a baseball team. Yearbooks in the school library don’t show baseball teams during the 1950s or 1940s, and no yearbooks are on file for the 1930s.

Clarendon High did however have a baseball team in the 1910s and mid 1920s. (Oddly, in 1926, the baseball team was called the Roosters while other teams were known by the more common nickname, the Bronchos.)

The work of one of Clarendon’s most acclaimed talents will be celebrated next month in Canyon.

Clarendon artist H.D. Bugbee in his studio in about 1925.
Photo courtesy Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum
 
The Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum will open a retrospective of the Southwestern artist H.D. Bugbee on September 9, 2000. 

To observe the 100th anniversary of Bugbee’s birth, the museum will bring together 100 of Bugbee’s finest works in oil, watercolor, pen-and-ink, and sculpture. 

Bugbee, who lived much of his life in Clarendon, portrayed historic and then-contemporary Southern Plains life, including cowboys, American Indians, and flora and fauna of the region.

At the suggestion of his cousin, cattleman T.S. Bugbee, Harold Dow Bugbee came to the Texas Panhandle from Lexington, Massachusetts, in 1914 with his parents.  He studied at Texas A&M College in 1917 and the Cumming School of Art in Des Moines, Iowa, in 1920.

Advised by cattlemen Frank Collinson and Charles Goodnight, Bugbee rendered the landscape and wildlife of the Texas Panhandle, as well as nostalgic paintings of Indians and cowboys.  Each fall, until the late 1930s, the artist traveled to Taos to paint with his fellow artists “Buck” Dunton, Frank Hoffman, Leon Gaspard, and Ralph Meyers, often packing into the mountains to paint with either Meyers or Dunton.

By the mid-1920s, galleries in Denver, Chicago, Kansas City, and New York handled Bugbee’s work.  With the Depression and decreasing picture sales, in 1933 Bugbee turned to magazine illustration, a practice he maintained for some eighteen years.  He did pen-and-ink illustrations for Ranch Romances, Western Stories, Country Gentleman, and Field and Stream, among others.  Additionally, Bugbee also illustrated a number of significant books on Western history including J. Evetts Haley’s Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman, Willie N. Lewis’s Between Sun and Sod, and S. Omar Barker’s Songs of the Saddleman and others.  He also continued to make easel paintings.

Under Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” Bugbee painted the first of five murals for the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum’s Pioneer Hall in 1934.  He later painted additional murals for the Amarillo Army Air Field and a set of murals on Native American life for the museum.

Bugbee exhibited at the Tri-State Fair at Amarillo, Fort Worth Frontier Centennial Exposition in 1936, the Greater Texas and Pan-American Exposition at Dallas in 1937, and in the annual West Texas art exhibitions at Fort Worth.  He also had numerous solo exhibitions in Texas and exhibited at Taos.

In 1951, Bugbee became the first Curator of Art of Panhandle-Plains, a position he held until his death.  Over two hundred thirty Bugbee works are part of the Museum’s art.  Exhibits of Bugbee’s illustrated letters, his work in Taos, NM, and his illustrations for J. Evetts Haley’s books will be ancillary to the larger retrospective.

H.D. Bugbee: 100 at 100 will include works from the museum’s collection as well as objects from public and private collections across the United States.  The exhibition will run through February 18, 2001.

AUSTIN – Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander last week allocated $275.5 million in sales tax revenue to 1,107 Texas cities and 119 counties.

Locally, Clarendon saw its rebate slip by nearly five percent from the same period last year for a total of $25,315.18. Hedley’s rebate was up 2.62 percent to $695.18, and Howardwick was down more than 43 percent to $916.40.

For the year to date, Clarendon’s rebates are up slightly while Hedley and Howardwick are running behind.

August sales tax rebates represent sales taxes collected in April, May and June and reported to the Comptroller in July.

For more details of August sales tax payments go to the Texas Comptroller’s website.

Trustees for the Charles E. and Thelma A. Bairfield Memorial Foundation awarded $8,000 to four local groups last week.

 
The Bairfield Foundation awarded a total of $8,000 to four different groups last week. Shown here are (back) Jimmy Swinney of the VFW, Clarendon FCA Choir co-sponsor Mike Ray, Bill Holden of the VFW, (front) Bairfield Foundation trustee Rev. James Ivey Edwards, Clarendon FCA Choir co-sponsor Michelle Ray, and Hedley Community Choir director Bruce Howard. Not pictured is Jack Moreman of the Adamson-Lane chapter of American Legion. 
Enterprise Digital Photo.
 
The Hedley Community Choir and the Clarendon High School FCA Choir each received $3,000.

The Hedley choir will use its money to purchase ties and vests for its members, and the Clarendon choir plans to use the grant to help offset the cost of sending its kids to either a leadership camp or a mission camp.

The Donley County Memorial Post #7782 of the VFW received $1,500 to purchase flags for veterans’ graves around the county. Another $500 was awarded to the Adamson-Lane Chapter of the American Legion in Hedley for flags at the Rowe Cemetery.

The Bairfield Foundation was set up in 1993 and has awarded approximately $58,000 to just causes since that time. Previous recipients have included the Saints’ Roost Museum, the Clarendon Volunteer Fire Department, the “Something More” After School Program, Clarendon Little League, Clarendon Girl Scouts, the Donley County Capital Fund (for the courthouse project), and the City of Clarendon (for the City Park renovation).

An evening wreck near Clarendon sent two people to the hospital after an RV ran into a semi-truck last Friday.

 
This RV came to rest just a few feet from the BNSF railway about a mile west of Clarendon after it collided with a semi-truck late Friday night.
Enterprise Digital Photo.
 
The RV, driven by 74-year-old Alice Milner of Lake Dallas, Texas, was westbound in the right-hand lane of US 287 about 0.4 mile west of Clarendon. At the same time, Ronald Joe Bulger of Quiln, Missouri, was driving the semi-truck in the left-hand lane, passing Milner.

According to a Department of Public Safety official, Milner began to pull into the left-hand lane to turn around and come back to town when she ran into the semi-truck at approximately 8:42 p.m. The RV ran off the highway, coming to rest a few feet from the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad tracks.

Milner was transported by ambulance to Northwest Texas Hospital in Amarillo where she was listed in stable condition, DPS Trooper Chris Ward said. Milner’s passenger, 67-year-old Bobbye Riney of Lake Dallas, was not injured.

Bulger was also uninjured, but his 22-year-old daughter, Melissa Bulger, suffered minor injuries. She was transported to Northwest Texas Hospital where she was treated and released.

A citation was issued to Milner for unsafe passing, Ward said.

The county food pantry had to turn away a family seeking help for the first time last week.

A sharp influx of people needing help has nearly tapped out the resources of both the local and area food banks, according to Robbie Hill, Center Coordinator of Panhandle Community Services.
 
“We have just about depleted our food bank,” Hill said. “It’s just taking more for people to live now between bills, sending their kids back to school, and the high price of gasoline.”

Last week, a family of eight came by Hill’s local office and were told they would have to wait a week before they could receive any assistance. Hill said that was the first time in more than ten years that the food pantry could not help someone.

The First United Methodist Church stepped in last week and has the pantry ready for the rest of the month, she said.

“The help from the Methodist Church has just been superb.”

Local community members have reportedly donated about $400 worth of canned goods to the food pantry and 48 ten-pound bags of chicken leg quarters have been donated. Hill also said B&R Thriftway has been very helpful.

“The way this town has responded has just been a blessing.”

But despite last week’s donations, Hill said more is needed if the pantry is to last until year’s end.

“There is just a bigger need now,” she said. “We’ve had triple the requests for assistance as we did this time last year.”

The Panhandle Community Services / Donley County Food Pantry serves 25 to 50 families each month, and last week they served 25 people in just one day. Hill said the food pantry is only used in emergency cases, and they have very few people come more than once.

The pantry receives funds from the county, and other local groups contribute annually also.

“The Lions Club pays for food baskets at Christmas, and the elementary school kids usually have a contest to see who can donate the most food. The Scouts also help us around Thanksgiving. But this year we’ve run out before those groups can help us.”

Items that are needed include canned goods (meat, vegetables, and fruit) rice, flour, dry beans, corn meal, sugar, tea, coffee, jelly, peanut butter, and two- or five-pound packages of frozen hamburger meat. Dry foods may also be purchased in bulk to be repackaged by Panhandle Community Services.

Bread and meats are reportedly the hardest items to get from the food bank in Amarillo.

“We can also use personal hygiene items,” Hill said, citing laundry soap, toothbrushes, and deodorant as examples.

To make a donation, send a check or money order to the First United Methodist Church, PO Box 157, Clarendon, TX 79226. Checks should be earmarked or made payable to the Donley County Food Pantry. Donations can also be brought to the First United Methodist Church at 420 S. Jefferson or to the Panhandle Community Services Building at 416 S. Kearney.

Collection points for food items have been set up at the office of the Methodist Church, the Herring National Bank, and Panhandle Community Services.

If you have items you’d like to donate and would like them picked up, call the Methodist Church at 806-874-3667.