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Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas
Tuesday, June 7, 2005
Summer golf in full swing
Grade school golfers were out on the driving range last week, the first week of the Pecos-Barstow-Toyah ISD summer golf program.
Coach Tina Doan said she had about 60 boys and girls sign up for the program, which runs through the week of June 20 at the Reeves County Golf Course. Doan and former Pecos Eagle golfer Lauren Martinez are serving as instructors for the course.
“We are going to have a little tournament on the 21st and 22nd, and I’ll get notices out as to who plays when,” Doan said.
She said most of the golfers in the program are elementary school players. “I think of the first graders and second graders we have about 14-17. We don’t have as many in the high school group, due to a few of the who are playing in the Northwest Texas Junior Tournament group.
“We have a few junior high golfers who have shown up. I think 10 showed up in eighth grade through high school, so we ought to have a really good turnout overall in every group,” Doan said. “A lot of the kids are back from last year, and you can see their improvement.”
The tournament coming up in two weeks will be anywhere from two to nine holes on the main course. But before then, Doan had the golfers working out on the driving range during the first days of the class.
“We’re dividing them into chipping and putting, and we’ll take them out in groups. We won’t take them out onto the course until we’ve worked on that,” she said.
Reeves County residents can expect more thunderstorms and rain this week according to National Weather Service meteorologist Alec Lyster stationed in Midland.
“We will see some more thunderstorms, hopefully not tornadic and without the large hail,” he said.
According to NWS a family of tornadoes struck the area around Lake J. B. Thomas Sunday evening. Preliminary reports indicate up to four tornadoes developed from a super cell thunderstorm near the Borden and Howard County line north of Big Spring around 7:00 last night.
So far, there have been no reports of damage from the tornadoes and NWS in Midland will dispatch a team of meteorologists to survey the tornado tracks early Monday morning.
“We’re still looking at severe weather for Monday and Tuesday afternoon with the possibility of high winds and hail,” Lyster said.
Lyster explained that the current weather pattern was likely to continue to create afternoon and evening thunderstorms for the rest of the week.
This pattern draws moisture from the Gulf of Mexico into the region where it is confronted with hot, dry air.
The result is thunderstorms and severe weather.
“Usually we aren’t this moist until July,” Lyster said, “but a persistent upper level trough over most of the United States is setting up our current conditions.”
The storms will form at the “dry line” the area where the dry air from the west collides with the wet air coming out of the Gulf.
Lyster said that today NWS expects the dry line to form over the Guadalupe and Davis mountains.
“Thunderstorms will form over the mountains and we expect them to move into the Trans-Pecos and Permian
Basin,” he said.
Tuesday should bring a similar situation with the dry line forming over the New Mexico-Texas state line and storms expected to track through the lower Trans-Pecos and the Permian Basin.
Lyster said that a dry line can be as wide as several miles to as narrow as a few hundred feet.
“The narrower the zone the more likely it is that thunderstorms will develop,” he said.
While the storms have the potential to be violent and drop heavy amounts of rain they do not necessarily cover a wide area.
Last Thursday’s storm dropped as much as an inch in local rain gauges from Pecos to Monahans but dropped less than two-tenths in Odessa while Midland collected nearly an inch.
The storms that spawned tornadoes near Big Spring Sunday night skirted Pecos to the north with the area getting only a trace of rainfall and Wink reporting three-tenths of an inch.
“This pattern will be with us throughout the week and we expect to see more rain throughout the region,” Lyster said.
Early votes in School Board tie-breaker near 250
By ROSIE FLORES
Staff Writer
Early voting in the Pecos-Barstow-Toyah School Board tie-vote election is coming along smoothly with more than 200 votes cast since voting began last week.
Early voting for the special tie-vote election between Billie Sadler and David Flores for the Pecos-Barstow-Toyah ISD school board started on Wednesday, June 1, at the Pecos Community Center in Pecos.
“We’ve had a good number of people that have already cast their vote early,” said election coordinator Debbie Thomas.
Thomas said that 243 individuals had cast their vote early as of Friday at 5 p.m. “That’s in just three days, so it’s great,” said Thomas.
“We’ve had 11 voters this morning,” said Thomas. “We had 67 vote early on the first day, which is a really good number,” she said.
The special tie-vote election was called after Sadler, the school board president, and Flores received the same number of votes following a recount. Sadler won in the initial ballot count by a three-vote margin, but the recount left both candidates tied with 404 votes.
Two three-year terms were up for election in the May 7 vote. Incumbent Paul Deishler won the other contested seat by a 140-vote margin.
“It’s coming along smoothly,” said Thomas.
Election day will be Thursday, June 16. “It’s unusual to have it on a Thursday, but these are unusual circumstances,” said Thomas. “Because of the tie vote election, we had to have it between 20-30 days, from the day of the recount,” she said.
This meant that the schedule to have the special tie-vote election was really tight, according to Thomas.
“But it’s been a great learning experience,” said Thomas. “One we probably won’t do again,” she said.
Thomas said that they are urging everyone to come out and cast their vote.
Individuals need to bring some kind of identification, such as their voter’s registration card, their driver’s license, or some other form of I.D.
“It’s state law, so they really need to bring some I.D. with them,” said Thomas.
Early voting will be continue from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m., and will end on June 10.
The special tie-vote election will be held June 16, at the Pecos Community Center - 508 S. Oak; Barstow Community Center in Barstow; Multi-Purpose Center, Saragosa; Toyah Senior Center in Toyah.
Applications for ballots by mail must be received no later than the close of business on June 8.
Awards earned by local TxDOT drivers
Thirty-two Reeves County employees of the Texas Department of Transportation recently received safety awards presented to TxDOT’s safest drivers. All had accident-free driving records during the past year.
Balmorhea's Tommy Dominguez continues to lead by example, extending his safety record to 25 years without an accident.
The annual awards ceremony, held at the Reeves County Civic Center in Pecos just as construction and maintenance activities on the state’s highways shift into high gear with the summer season, honored TxDOT employees in the 12-county Odessa District for outstanding safe driving and safe work records.
“Safety has always been our top priority - for ourselves and for the driving public,” said District Engineer Lauren D. Garduño, who handed out the safety awards. “Our goal every year is to work 365 days without a single injury or accident.”
“When an employee does that, we think that it deserves notice,” said Garduño. “That is why we have a safety awards event -to say to those employees, ‘Congratulations and thanks’.”
The 350-employee district, covering a 12-county area in West Texas, has one of the top safety records in TxDOT -which has more than 14,000 employees statewide.
Pecos and Balmorhea employees receiving safe operator awards included:
Tommy Dominguez, 25 years; Manuel V. Gonzales Jr., 24 years; William Brown, 23 years; Larry G. Levario, Manuel Muniz, and Israel P. Rubio, 22 years; John Salcido, 20 years; Guadalupe Rede and Gary Rumbaugh, 18 years; Benjamin Hinojos, Victor Mondragon, Samuel Natividad, Daniel Reyes, and Mike Rodriguez, 17 years; Gilberto V. Gonzales and Ruben Salcido, 15 years; Jesus Matta and Kelli Williams, 14 years; Javier Lozano, Manual Mendoza, and Arturo Vasquez, 11 years; and Gilbert Herrera, 10 years.
Pecos Enterprise
York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
324 S. Cedar St., Pecos, TX 79772
Phone 432-445-5475, FAX 432-445-4321
e-mail news@pecos.net
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