Dateline: January 24, 2008

Childress, Gray voters may look at CC tax

By Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

Clarendon College officials are in Austin this week as the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board considers whether to allow residents of Gray and Childress counties to vote on a new tax that would fund college facilities in those locations.

CC President Bill Auvenshine said the commissioners’ courts in both counties agreed to put a five-cent maintenance tax on the May ballot last August, but state officials must first approve the action.

“Ray (Jaramillo, CC Dean of Administrative Services) has already testified before the subcommittee on this issue,” Auvenshine said. “I and a member of our advisory board in Pampa will be in Austin Wednesday to answer any additional questions that may come up.”

If the coordinating board gives its consent, the path will be clear for voters to approve the tax in May.

Auvenshine said the maintenance tax would not affect residents of the Clarendon College District (which is all of Donley County), but that it could allow the college to reallocate funds now being spent in Pampa and Childress.

“Traditionally local communities have to provide the facilities for community colleges, and the state is supposed to pick up the remainder of the cost,” Auvenshine said. “These citizens (in Gray and Childress counties) want better facilities, but we don’t have the money for that.”

A tax of five cents per $100 valuation could generate about $700,000 per year in Gray County and about $100,000 per year in Childress County, Auvenshine said.

By law the tax could never exceed five cents, and all the money must be spent in those counties. Each county’s commissioners’ court would review the tax rate each year.

Auvenshine also said that, under the law, Gray and Childress counties would not receive any representation on the CC Board of Regents. CC would have an advisory board in each county.

“We are going to have to justify everything we do with that revenue. It’s their money,” he said. “It won’t affect local taxpayers in any way, and money we’re spending (in Childress and Pampa) now could be used to promote the college as a whole.”

Clarendon College is responsible for the higher education needs of eight counties – Donley, Gray, Childress, Hall, Briscoe, Collingsworth, Armstrong, and Wheeler. Taxes paid by Donley County residents are used to maintain facilities in Clarendon but barely cover the utilities at the campus.

Auvenshine said the maintenance tax would give Childress and Gray counties the chance to boost educational opportunities for their residents.

“It gives them an opportunity to have a hometown college – Clarendon College in their hometown, and no other college can do that,” he said.