Animal control on Rotan City Council agenda

-Buildings to be demolished -

The Rotan City Council will meet Thursday 7 a.m. One of the items on the agenda is animal control.

At the commissioners meeting today, Sheriff Simon Wade addressed the court about the ongoing dog problem in the county. He posited the idea of having a county-wide agency and said he thought it would be helpful to have a working group to look into the issue. Commissioner Micah Evans made a motion to get a group together to come up with a plan to establish a county animal program and the motion was passed.

There have been rumors about demolition of the Family Dollar Store, White's Auto, Rotan Motor and the old teen center buildings. Commissioners court agenda item number seven verified the demo of Rotan Motor and the teen center as there was discussion of where to dispose of the rubble after the buildings are torn down.

Still no word on the other two buildings or the fate of Family Dollar.

Animal control on commissioners agenda

- Stray dogs in Rotan -

Fisher County Commissioners will convene tomorrow 9 a.m. in the county court room for the monthly meeting.

Item number 20 on the agenda is discuss and approve the formation of a working group to establish a county animal control program. This will be presented by Sheriff Simon Wade.

The entire agenda can be found on the Fisher County home page.

Bustle in the downtown blocks

There was a lot of activity this morning in the heart of Rotan. Two main stores that were damaged by a June storm have remained closed since that time, but it looks like there is progress on the horizon.

White's Hardware had bulk items on the sidewalk out front in a very organized manner. The store had an entire section so damaged that it had to be demolished; the east side of the store that was used for storage.

The Family Dollar store looks empty, perhaps from work done by the salvage company that was mentioned at the last city meeting. There has been no word from the city or newspaper about the future of the store. An email sent to the corporate office (by me) asking if the store will be re-opened, rebuilt or closed has not received a reply. There are two large roll-off dumpsters in front of the store.

Further down, close to Ray's on the west end, men were pulling material (plywood and such) off of a trailer and it looked like they were ready to fix something.

Take a cruise around the drag and check it out.

Oil data for Fisher County, January through July

Fisher County produced 2,464,924 barrels of oil in the first half of 2023.

The top two producing operators for that time period are Clear Fork, Inc., at 866,423 barrels, and Moriah Operating, LLC, with 546,254.

The top producing lease is the Jenna Unit, coming in with 313,179 barrels at the half year mark. Moriah operates this lease.

Both Clear Fork and Moriah operate wells in the Garden City, S. (Wolfcamp) field.

Data extracted from the Railroad Commission of Texas website.

Browning backs new acquisition company

Browning Oil Company, Inc. (BOCI), an oil operating company, has partnered with Peak 10 Energy, an oil and gas acquisition and development company that manages investing.

The portfolio building company is listed under many different iterations of Peak 10, LSCP, and Registered Agents Inc. on the Texas Comptroller's website. This endeavor, Peak 10 Energy, is the newest configuration, licensed  in 2023. 

Browning is well known in Fisher County and currently has 53 oil drilling permits listed with the Railroad Commission in the county, and also has local mineral holdings, according to the Fisher County Appraisal District records.

A press release issued in August stated assets had been acquired by Peak 10 Energy in Fisher and Scurry counties.

It matters to me

Here are a few things that I would like people who write to remember:

• There is not an A in cemetery!
• "Weary" and "wary" have very different meanings
• "Who's" is a contraction of "who is"; "whose" pertains to a person

Thank you for your time.

Grass fire burns large acreage north of Rotan

- Fire behind the mountains -

According to information from KTXS News in Abilene, the billowing smoke that could be seen yesterday on the northern horizon near Rotan, behind the Double Mountains, was from the Peacock Fire in Stonewall County, and 2,000 acres burned as of midnight last night.

In the Fire and Smoke section of the Austin American-Statesman, the fire was listed as 75% contained at 2:17 p.m. today. It also says the fire management complexity is a type 5 incident and the fire cause is undetermined.

Wildfires can be tracked on the smoke map provided by the Statesman. 

The  National Interagency Coordination Center also has a fire map.

The Peacock Fire has left a thin haze around the mountains.

County sales and tax allocations down for August

Total dollars returned to a local sales taxing city by the Texas Comptroller's office for their local sales tax collections are used as an economic indicator. 

Roby receives 1% back of the 8.25% it remits to the state for local sales tax, while Rotan receives 2%. 

Rotan received $25,586.60 from the comptroller's office this August, down from the August 2022 amount of $27,007.75. The city's year-to-date amount is also down from last year, $174,768.89, compared to $182,822.13 for 2022. 

Roby's monthly amount is also down at $4,932.58, compared to last year's $6,689.01. That city's year-to-date is higher, at $46,803.70, compared to $39,197.15 at this time in 2022.

Rotan's decrease could be due to the loss of two major businesses, White's Hardware and Family Dollar Store. Both were shut down after suffering excessive roof and building damages from a June storm. 

Rumors have White's not reopening and the Dollar Store being rebuilt at a different site within Rotan.

More figures and facts about sales tax allocations can be found on the Texas Comptroller's website.

Rotan Development Corp sells Boll Weevil

The old Texas Boll Weevil Eradication Foundation site on State Highway 70, south of Rotan, recently changed hands.

The Rotan Economic Development Corporation sold the 4 acre property to the Rincon Property Group on June 28. Half the mineral rights were conveyed in the transaction.

The current market appraisal on this lot, including land and improvements, is $111,180.00.

Information gleaned from Texas File and the Fisher County Appraisal District.

Commissioners to appoint new sheriff

Well, the rumors are true, then.

After an executive session during the April commissioners meeting, people around Rotan were asking each other if Fisher County still had a sheriff. I kept asking them, "What are y'all talking about?", and they would just shrug their shoulders and say "I don't know, I just heard we don't have a sheriff."

Although there was no public record of the subject or decision of that session, that is when people started saying that Sheriff Randy Ford had resigned.

People say gossip is a sin, but it's really the best, and sometimes only, way to hear news.

"Appoint New Sheriff" is number 14 on the agenda for the July 10 commissioners meeting.

 

7/10/2023 update:

Commissioners unanimously voted for Simon Wade, resident of the McCaulley area, to assume duty as Fisher County Sheriff.