Roger Estlack

The Donley County Senior Citizens will hold their 50th Anniversary Celebration and Fundraiser Saturday, August 16, from 5 to 8 p.m. at 115 E. 4th.

Activities will include dinner and a show, music, cowboy poetry, comedy skits, a 50/50 raffle, and a quilt raffle. Cookbooks will be for sale also.

Bring your chair, appetite, and a sense of humor to celebrate this milestone.

Donley County Commissioners filed a proposed $4.5 million budget this week for fiscal year 2026 as well as supplemental budgets for courthouse restoration work and FEMA-funded emergency generators.

The new budget proposal increases several line items, but County Judge John Howard notes that the county’s tax rate is again going down thanks to higher revenues brought in by rising property values.

The county is also continuing to receive state funds to help fund the Donley County Sheriff’s Department, and law enforcement will also benefit from sales taxes generated by voter-approved County Assistance Districts 1 & 2 – in the City of Howardwick and the unincorporated areas of the county to the tune of an estimated $22,000.

The county’s total proposed tax rate for FY 2026 is $0.5588672 per $100 valuation compared to the current rate of $0.5839820. The proposed rate will bring in $80,163 more than last year’s budget with $20,747 coming from new property added to the tax roll. An estimated $2,001,551 will be collected in property taxes with fees, fines, grants, and other sources bringing in the additional revenue.

On the expense side, health insurance will cost the county about $38,000 more in the new fiscal year, and other insurance costs will be up by about $26,000, including a 20 percent increase in liability insurance.

County officials’ combined salaries will be going up by about $4,400 altogether, with no raises for commissioners or the county judge. The county’s judge’s supplemental salary from the state is increasing, however, from the current $25,000 to $37,800. The budget also includes $14,000 for increases in other salaries of non-elected employees.

The supplemental budget for the courthouse restoration work totals $3,052,911 with almost $2.6 million coming from the state and the balance of almost $458,000 coming from the county’s capital reserves. Howard said that work will include a steel beam to reinforce the original 1890 main staircase, brick repair on the south wall, and stone conservation work.

Another supplemental budget includes $883,977 for emergency generators to be installed in key facilities in the county with FEMA providing almost $800,000 of that cost. The project was approved last year but has been stalled because the cost of equipment increased dramatically from the time the grant application was originally put together. The county is negotiating with the government to see how best to proceed either by rebidding, acquiring more funding, or scaling back the project.

Another grant-funded program also continues to help employ a second highway safety officer for the county to patrol highways since the DPS presence here has been reduced.

Commissioners will hold a public hearing on its proposed budget and tax rate on August 25 at 9 a.m. See the notice in this week’s Enterprise for more information.

Clarendon posted strong growth in sales tax revenue when Acting Texas Comptroller Kelly Hancock delivered August allocations to local governments last week.

The city brought in $51,580.16 for the month, which was up 8.76 percent compared to the same period last year.

The August allocation pushes the city’s calendar year-to-date total to $368,913.89, an increase of 8.30 percent over this point in 2024.

Hedley’s sales tax revenues dropped 45.57 percent to $1,461.98 this month, but the city is just slightly behind on the year-to-date, down 0.78 percent with collections of $10,705.35.

Howardwick also slipped this month, down 7.32 percent for August at $2,043.28, but the lakeside city is still 21.17 percent ahead for the year at $15,751.16.

Donley County Assistance District No. 1, still in its first year of collections, received $1,490.55 for August in the City of Howardwick with collections for the year-to-date of $10,241.02.

Statewide, Hancock delivered $1.3 billion in local sales tax allocations for August, 5.2 percent more than in August 2024. These allocations are based on sales made in June by businesses that report tax monthly and on sales made in April, May and June by quarterly filers.