NEWS
County approves budget, tax rate; bans Tik Tok
By BARBARA GREEN
[email protected]
The 2023 tax rate and 2023-24 budget for Montague County were both adopted on Monday.
Commissioners gave unanimous approval to the financial items with Commissioner Roy Darden absent due to illness.
The general fund budget which includes the majority of county offices is budgeted at $11,457,991, while the four road and bridge precincts total $4,695,052 and the rest of the budget encompasses restricted funds.
There were no major purchases in the budget other than two new vehicles for the transport officers in the sheriff’s department. The elections administrator will move her part-time worker to full-time and the jail added a second transportation officer.
In overall expenses there is a pay raise of $5,000 per employee (not the 5% stated in Saturday’s story) and a 5.5% health insurance rate hike. The other increases were inflationary primarily for operations and supplies.
The 2023 tax rate is .5017 cents per $100 in property value, compared to .50360 cents in 2022.
Tik Tok banned
Montague County made adjustments to its employee handbook and policies to ban Tik Tok and related social media use on county-owned devices, as well as personal devices used by county employees. The prohibition makes the county in compliance with Senate Bill 1893.
Read the full story in the mid-week Bowie News.
By BARBARA GREEN
[email protected]
Bowie Independent School District Superintendent Blake Enlow received a one-year extension on this three-year contract following the annual summative evaluation during the June 13 board meeting.
Trustees usually conduct this review in the summer and do a board goals’ review in January. Enlow met with the board in closed session for about 90 minutes, afterwhich, trustees discussed the topic without him for about 30 minutes.
There was no action on a salary addendum and it will consider that during the budget process for all administrators and staff.
Much of the agenda focused on year-end reports for transportation, food service, custodial, maintenance and technology. The board also got their first look at State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness grades in math, reading and reading-language arts in grades three-eighth, fifth and eighth grade science and eighth grade social studies.
Read the full story in the mid-week Bowie News.
The Texas Department of Transportation in late May conducted its virtual public hearings and began accepting public comments on the Rural Transportation Improvement Plan.
TxDOT officials will now review each revised rural TIP proposal and integrate them into the statewide TIP, followed by Rural TIP approval, the first step in the statewide plan.
For Montague County 14 projects were featured in the 2025-29 RTIP spanning road improvements, county road bridge replacements and construction of a new safety rest area on U.S. Highway 81/287, eight miles south of Bowie in fiscal year 2026. The Wichita Falls district of TxDOT includes Archer, Baylor, Clay, Cooke, Montague, Throckmorton, Wichita, Wilbarger and Young Counties.
Read the full story in the mid-week Bowie News.
June 20 is the first official day of summer, although most of Texas has already been sweltering.
Summer begins with the solstice on at 4:51 p.m. on June 20, marking the astronomical first day of summer in the Northern Hemisphere.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the June solstice (aka summer solstice) occurs when the Sun reaches its highest and northernmost points in the sky.
While a heat dome has settled across the country, most of the dangerous heat is in the southwest and the north central part of the U.S. Texas’ forecast shows temperatures in the mid- to high 90s throughout the week.
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