NEWS
Energy values fall 51% across Montague County
2020 Montague County preliminary property values
By BARBARA GREEN
editor@bowienewsonline.com
As energy production values dropped 30-40 percent across Montague County, tax entities are seeing significant reductions in their preliminary property values, which doesn’t bode well for this year’s budgets or tax rates.
This past week property owners began receiving the more than 14,000 real estate and business property preliminary value statements mailed out by the Montague County Tax Appraisal District. An additional 75,000 were mailed out by mineral appraisers Pritchard and Abbott to those property owners.
Kim Haralson, chief appraiser for the MCTAD said this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions protests can only be done by teleconference or through paper affidavit, which is what Haralson suggests. The last day to protest real estate and business is May 15, and for oil and gas properties May 22 is the last day.
.The appraisal district handles appraisals for all the taxing entities in the county which includes all cities, school districts and watersheds.
As oil and gas prices plummeted to new lows during late 2019, that trend continued to historic levels into spring 2020 when oil hit a negative level at one point. During the third week of April it was $14.99 a barrel.
Property appraisals are based on the values as of Jan. 1, 2020, and do not reflect any activity after that point.
Read the full story in the weekend Bowie News.
After nearly three months of no rain, Mother Nature brought the showers this past week.
Downtown Bowie rain reports varied from 7 to 8 inches, while the Saint Jo area reported a 10-inch total. The city water plant in Bowie reported 5.55 inches on Sept. 30 with 1.6 Oct. 1-3.
Nocona saw a total of 6.31 inches of rain across Sept. 26 to Oct. 3.
On Oct. 6, Lake Amon G. Carter saw a level of 917.39 mean sea level rising to 81.31% full. Just one week earlier the lake was 73.6% full, while one year ago it was 94.01%. The lake is full at 920msl.
Lake Nocona was 73.7% full at 823.02 on Oct 6. One week earlier it was 70.41% full and one year ago it was 92.41%. The lake is full at 827.5 msl.
By BARBARA GREEN
editor@bowienewsonline.com
One Montague County City has joined the battle against any data centers being built in this county and there is a petition drive underway to urge the commissioner’s court to keep data centers out of Montague County.
At a Sept. 28 called meeting of the Saint Jo City Council, officials unanimously approved a resolution stating its opposition to the “siting, permitting, construction or operation of data centers and similar hyperscale computing facilities within the city limits or the city’s extraterritorial jurisdiction.”
City Secretary Debbie Dennis said several citizens approached Councilor Jack Dunn about their data center concerns and he helped prepare a resolution. The council gave unanimous support.
Read the full story in your Thursday Bowie News.
Montague County Judge Kevin Benton has signed an order lifting the outdoor burn ban effective Oct. 7.
Persons are still urged to be cautious when they are out working in the countryside to avoid any spark that could cause a wildfire.
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