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The Clarendon City Council named Mandy Smith to take a vacant alderman’s position during their regular meeting last Thursday, September 12.

Alderman John Lockhart stepped down from the council last month, and city officials had received two letters of interest from local citizens.

During last week’s meeting, Smith said she had moved to Clarendon about a year and a half ago and had purchased property here. She has a history with grant writing and non-profit work that she felt could be useful to the city, and she has also been attending council meetings fairly regularly already.

After conferring in closed session for about ten minutes, the council returned to open session and voted to appoint Smith to the vacant seat.

In other city business, the council reversed a vote it took in August and granted a request to close some streets and alleyways on the west side of town.

Ralph Graves had requested that a portion of Leroy, Ninth, and Tenth streets and some adjacent alleyways be closed. The streets are platted but have never been opened; and during the August meeting, aldermen said the platted streets should be left to be available for future use and denied Graves’ request.

Last week, Graves brought pictures and maps showing the area and told aldermen the streets in question were “landlocked.” He said he had acquired the property bounded by the Community Fellowship Church on the southwest and Johns Street on the east and had no plans to develop it other than clearing it of brush.

After discussion, the council granted Graves’ request and closed the specified streets.

The council unanimously approved the ad valorem tax rate of $0.593711 for the coming fiscal year and also approved a budget amendment.

Animal impoundment procedures were amended to require animals pictures be posted on the city website as well as at City Hall. The council tabled action on proposed operating procedures for animal control until the document could be streamlined and simplified.

Aldermen took no action on a golf cart ordinance, choosing not to tackle that subject unless more citizens ask them to look into it.

A motion was approved to apply for an airport improvement grant for fiscal year 2025.

The council completed the annual performance review for City Administrator Brian Barboza and renewed his contract for another year. Mayor Jacob Fangman said Barboza had dealt with many issues in his first year and shown a willingness to learn and improve in his job.

In its continuing tradition of granting requests from regional non-profit groups, Pantex has donated another $117,070.53 to twelve such groups, distributed with the assistance of the Amarillo Area Foundation.

Now in its ninth year, the fund has awarded a cumulative $1.34 million dollars with 164 grants to non-profits in the Texas Panhandle. The CNS Pantex Community Investment Fund is a partnership between Consolidated Nuclear Security, the managing and operating contractor of the Pantex Plant, and the Amarillo Area Foundation.

Among the groups funded this year was the Texas Ramp Project, which works with Texas Panhandle area Lions Clubs to build ADA-compliant ramps, including several in Clarendon and Howardwick.

Amarillo Area Foundation CEO Clay Stribling said “We so appreciate our great partnership with CNS Pantex and their employees. They are fantastic community partners who truly believe in investing in the well-being of residents in our community. This program is an annual reminder of their generosity and commitment to our region.”

CNS first met with the Amarillo Area Foundation in 2014 to create an innovative and effective method for contributing to the community in a way that would also better engage Pantex employees. The Pantex Community Investment team is comprised of about a dozen Pantex employees voluntarily serving a two-year term on the committee, which listens to all the proposals and then makes the decisions regarding Pantex’s philanthropic gifts.

“Our goal is to give Pantexans a voice in determining where corporate dollars are invested in the community where they work,” said Ashlee Estlack, Pantex Site Communications Manager. “As a company, we are extremely pleased to partner with the Amarillo Area Foundation and community organizations for the betterment of Amarillo and the Texas Panhandle – where our employees work, live, and give.”

The 2024 Pantex Community Investment Grant Award recipients are:

Against All Odds Social Services: $10,000 to support cost involved with new clients aging out of foster care.

Amarillo Independent School Foundation: $10,000 to support the Families in Transition Emergency Fund supporting for homeless students & resources.

Amarillo Little Theatre: $8,712 for Check out ALT! covering admission for library cardholders.

Another Chance House: $10,000 to support the self-sufficiency program.

Brothers-Sisters of Our Military Adventures: $10,000 to support Hunting with Heroes Program.

Camp Alphie: $10,000 to support Kid’s Camp for kids with cancers and their siblings.

Downtown Women’s Center: $10,000 for support of program support for DWC’s Recovery Program.

Dumas Education and Social Ministries: $10,000 to support the Senior Food Pantry.

Family Support Services: $10,000 to upgrade the security system at the Safe House shelter for domestic violence survivors.

Martha’s Home: $10,000 to support Present Needs and Future Success helping keep individuals enrolled and completing their education.

Texas Ramp Project: $10,000 to support Texas Panhandle ramp projects.

Transformations by Amarillo Angels: $8,358.53 to support back-to-school support for children and families experiencing foster care.

State Rep. Ken King will be the lone voice representing truly rural Texas when the next Legislative session starts he told a crowd of citizens and students last Tuesday at Clarendon College’s Bairfield Activity Center.

King said his House District 88 is the last remaining rural district in Texas as it has no single community of more than 100,000 people. The district snakes across Panhandle and down into the South Plains from Hemphill County in the northeast to Andrews County in the southwest.

“My job is to remind everyone that rural Texas Matters,” King said. “Elon Musk can build all the cars he wants in Austin, but without fuel, food, and fiber provided by rural Texas, he can’t exist.”

High on King’s list of things coming up in the next session is education funding.

“There’s nothing more dangerous than an uneducated population,” King said, noting that 75 percent of the state budget goes to public education.

King said the last session of the Legislature saw a “horrible fight” over the voucher plan supported by Governor Greg Abbott.

“Abbott polls 90 percent favorable on border security, and that’s why people keep voting for him,” King said.

When rural Republicans defeated the governor’s school voucher plan, King said Pennsylvania billionaire Jeff Yass, who is invested in TikTok and the private school industry, gave the governor a billion dollars to campaign against those fellow Republicans in the primaries.

“I’m one of the few that survived,” King said. “A lot of the rural Republicans who were good for places like Clarendon College aren’t coming back in the next session.”

King said there will be a voucher system approved in the next session because he will be the only Republican against it. He hopes that after that is in place, the state will start helping public education again.

“We’ve got to quit all the negative and start building up teachers again,” King said. “Texas has done a lot to ruin that profession.”

King also warned of the dangers of social media.

“Please, turn off the Hate Book,” he said. “That thing is just destroying us and spreading misinformation.”

Other upcoming priorities will be further enhancement of border security. He said crossings are dropping, but he also noted that “you don’t have border problems three months before a presidential election.”

“There’s lots of politics going on right now,” he said.

Water will continue to be a big issue in Texas, King said, but his biggest focus outside of public education will be improving the state’s response to wildfires.

“This is an area where policy needs to win over politics because people’s lives and property are at stake,” King said.

King said there will be opportunities for Panhandle representatives to work with hurricane area representatives to improve emergency management measures. He also hopes to get state-owned wildfire-fighting aircraft purchased with at least some of them station in the Panhandle. Currently, the state contracts those services from out of state providers or from the federal government. The process to activate those out of state resources takes days, and there’s not a clear chain of command that takes care of that process.

As always, King encouraged people to vote and said a people who don’t vote get the government they deserve. He also said if Donald Trump wins, it is likely that some state officials – like Gov. Abbott or Attorney General Ken Paxton – may go to Washington to serve in his administration.

The public has a few more days to complete a survey for the Texas Department of Transportation to provide feedback on the feasibility of upgrading US 287 to interstate highway standards. The original deadline was September 16, but it has now been extended to September 27.

Members of the public are also encouraged to leave comments about specific locations along the corridor on an interactive map. Both the survey and the interactive map will be available through Sept. 27 on https://www.txdot.gov/projects/projects-studies/statewide/us287-corridor-interstate-feasibility-study.html.