By Donnie A. Lucas

ResourceCare is hosting the 4th annual food drive contest for the Albany and Cross Plains locations, with a Chick-Fil-A lunch on the line for the winning class in both towns.

The contest will continue through Monday, Oct. 9, with students competing by grade level at both schools.

The school that collects the highest number of non-perishable foods will be declared the overall winner, with the top class at both schools with the highest number of donations treated to the special lunch.

By Sam Waller

Three Shackelford County 4-H members received awards for their entries in the Fine Arts Division at the West Texas Fair and Rodeo in Abilene.

Carley Kreitler took three first places and a second with her projects. She was first in junior pillow with a jack-o’-lantern reading pillow, junior holiday with a monster decoration, and junior household sewn accessory with a hanging dish towel. She took second in junior clay with gnomes.

By Sam Waller

Albany’s Bradee Stautzenberger had a big weekend at the West Texas Fair and Rodeo.

Albany FFA students stayed busy in the fair’s second week, exhibiting livestock projects and competing in judging contests.

Stautzenberger caught a calf in the calf scramble to finish seventh. She earned $700 to put toward the purchase of an animal for next year’s fair.

In the show ring, Alli McDaniel placed fourth and Chase McDaniel was seventh in Full Blood Boer Goats.

In the ORB Heifers, Stautzenberger was fifth and Myleigh Leveridge was sixth.

By Melinda L. Lucas

Albany city council members voted during the regular monthly meeting time on Monday, Sept. 11 to adopt the tax rate that had been proposed on Aug. 21.

Council members also decided, after a short closed session, to give city manager Billy Holson a raise.

Tax Rate

In a special meeting on Aug. 21, the council had proposed a “No New Revenue” (NNR) rate of 56.39 cents.

The annual “Dollars for Bob’s Scholarships” fundraising drive gets underway later this month.

Sponsored by the Albany Ex-Students Association, the campaign traditionally starts the week of Robert Nail’s birth date, Sept. 13. This is the 56th anniversary of the first scholarship.

Although the annual goal is always set at a minimum of $1,000, fundraising efforts will hopefully bring more in donations.

Regular contributions are very important in keeping the fund stable, according to board secretary Melinda Lucas.

By Melinda L. Lucas

After working through line items for all four divisions of the Shackelford County Hospital District in a special session on Wednesday, Sept. 6, board members ended up with a proposed budget based on the “voter approval” tax rate of 19.55 cents.

By Melinda L. Lucas

After holding the required hearings for the proposed budget for the 2023-2024 fiscal year and then for the proposed tax rate for 2024,  Shackelford County commissioners voted unanimously during a meeting on Thursday, Sept. 7 to adopt both.

The $4,955,169 budget that had been proposed and filed on Aug. 14, as required by law, had been refined since that time, and the amount that ended up being adopted last week was actually $4,713,006, almost $250,000 less.

By Donnie A. Lucas

A ribbon cutting Friday at the Shackelford County Show Barn officially marked the opening of the remodeled facility, giving county officials, donors, volunteers and the public a look at improvements.

The ceremony was sponsored by the Albany Chamber of Commerce, with close to 100 interested parties on hand for the event.

The project was started in the spring with fundraising that totaled $375,000 to bring the 50-year-old structure up to date.

By Melinda L. Lucas

Team and individual pictures of the junior high football teams will be taken on Thursday, Sept. 14, starting at 3:45 p.m.

Those packages, along  with Lady Cubs volleyball, will be ready for pickup in the next couple of weeks.

All cheer packages, high school football and volleyball are ready to be picked up at the news office.

By Sam Waller

Overall, Moran ISD saw higher scores on state-mandated testing for the 2022-23 school year.

“Moran ISD received EOC and STAAR scores for the 2022-23 school year earlier this summer,” Gay Williams, the district’s director of testing, said. “Overall, passing rates are up from the 2021-22 school year.”

In English I, Moran posted 57 percent passing in 2023, compared to 42 percent passing in 2022.

English II saw a drop to 75 percent passing from 89 percent in 2022.

U.S. History produced 80 percent passing, up from 66 percent in 2022.