Dateline: January 31, 2008

City agrees patience is best course with sheriff

Clarendon aldermen last Tuesday agreed that they must be patient with a drop in city revenue while the Donley County Sheriff’s Department deals with a labor shortage.

The sheriff’s office is short one deputy. City officials had expressed concern early this month that a lack of traffic tickets was hurting revenue from the municipal court, and they asked Sheriff Butch Blackburn to come before the board of aldermen.

But during last week’s city meeting, aldermen were congenial to the sheriff.

“We have to work together,” Alderman Chris Ford said. “We just can’t get our feathers too much in a ruffle. We don’t have the money to start something ourselves.”

Blackburn agreed and said his office was doing the best it could while trying to find a qualified deputy to move to Clarendon.

Alderman Janice Knorpp asked if Blackburn and Chief Deputy Randy Bond could not “pick up the slack” during the day shift, which bristled the sheriff.

“I wish you’d just come sit (at my office) for day,” Blackburn said. “We’re not sitting there playing darts.”

Blackburn said he and Bond are usually busy with criminal cases, and he detailed one recent case where a suspect had to be hospitalized in Amarillo with a local officer on duty there around the clock. He also said that he usually has one deputy and sometimes two gone to district court during the day shift.

The board ultimately agreed with Ford’s position that the city should be patient while Blackburn looks for a new deputy.

In other city business, the board nominated Steve Carter to fill a vacancy on the Donley Appraisal District Board.

City Secretary Linda Smith said Fire Marshal Kelly Hill had talked to Lou Ann Gregory, the owner of the old pharmacy building at Second and Kearney, who said she would get the building’s windows repaired.

Smith also said Hill had reported talking to Landon Lambert about a propane tank at the old Jamz building at Third and Kearney. Lambert will have the tank removed.