Roger Estlack

Clarendon’s seventh annual Trash To Treasures Garage Sale Event will be held Saturday, June 2, 2012. Watch this space and the Enterprise for details and when sign-ups will begin. Get ready to clean out some trash and make some cash!

Two Clarendon men are out on bond this week facing charges of terroristic threats.

Donley County Sheriff Butch Blackburn said Jeremy Blake Jeffers, age 23, and Joshua D. Harrison, age 28, were arrested last Thursday evening, March 29, on Class B Misdemeanor charges.

Blackburn said Jeffers allegedly made public threats to kill peace officers, and Harrison is accused of making threats about burning county buildings.

Both men were arraigned the next day by County Judge Jack Hall and were later released on bond of $1,500 each.

Staff Sgt. Benjamin Colt Floyd, of Durant, Okla., recently received a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.

Floyd, formerly of Clarendon, received a Purple Heart medal for wounds received in action on Sept. 15, 2011, and he received a Bronze Star for exceptionally meritorious service in support of Operation Enduring Freedom from March 30, 2011, to March 27, 2012.

Floyd is a member of Company A, 1st Battalion, 179th Infantry and he has used the Oklahoma Army National Guard Tuition Fee Waiver to attend Southern Nazarene University in Bethany, Okla. This was Floyd’s second deployment with his previous deployment to Afghanistan with the 1st Battalion, 180th Infantry in 2006-2007.

Floyd has been in the Oklahoma Army National Guard for more than 10 years. He was one of more the 2,200 Oklahoma Army National Guard soldiers to serve in Afghanistan for the past eight months.

Let the people decide.

That was the unanimous decision of the Clarendon Board of Aldermen last night, February 28, as they voted to put a $700,000 street improvement bond issue on the May 12 ballot.

City Administrator Lambert Little presented his street improvement plan to the board and said the city could pay the debt off in seven years.

“I’m going to have to earn the trust of the citizens, and that will be tough,” Little told the board. “But this is our best shot to get something done.”

City Aldermen expressed concern over the state of East Fourth Street, which was torn up this past summer with the promise of being re-done, and they pressed Little on when that project would be finished, asking specifically if it could be done before the election.

“Even if I have to go do it myself, yes,” Little said. “I know we can do this.”

This month the city finished paying off bonds from a $1 million street project that was completed in 2006. The new project, as Little proposes, would focus on Sixth Street from Koogle to Goodnight, Third Street from Allen to Bugbee, Carhart Street from US 287 to Sixth, and a one-block stretch of Wood Ave. between Jackson and Faker that the administrator described as “a mess.”

Work would also be done on Allen and Sims streets adjacent to Broncho Stadium, and also, if Clarendon College officials agree, on Clarendon Avenue and Regents Avenue, which only need seal coating.

Little said city crews would do the base work for the street and a contractor would be hired to do curbing and the two-pass tar and gravel seal coat. A section of Sixth Street from Parks to Kearney, which carries a lot of drainage by the baseball parks, would be done in two-inch hot mix.

In 2003, city voters turned down a $2.5 million project after petition forced an election on the matter. The city later went ahead with a $1 million project funded by tax revenue bonds, which do not require voter approval. In voting unanimously to put the new proposal on the ballot, city leaders say this time they are taking the issue directly to the people.

“It is not like last time,” said Alderman Tommy Hill. “This time it’s up to the citizens.”

Mayor Larry Hicks also vowed that if the citizens do not approve the bond election, the city will not try to side step them and do the project anyway. Hicks also said he personally supports Lambert’s proposal.

“I believe we can make it work,” the mayor said. “This is one of the main things people want to see done.”

The pressure is now on Little and city employees who have just two months to turn Fourth Street into what the administrator calls “a crown jewel” and show the citizens they can deliver what has been promised.

Voting in favor of putting the issue on the ballot were Aldermen Terry Noble, Ann Huey, Jesus Hernandez, Tommy Hill, and Will Thompson. Voting against the measure: none.