Alcohol, County Issues Dominate News In 2009

It did not take a hard, long thinking session to select the top story of 2009 in Van Zandt County.

It was obvious.

It was on nearly everyone’s mind, on many residents’ voting ballots and in some people’s beverage glasses.

Without a doubt, 2009 in Van Zandt County will be remembered as the year of the alcohol election.

Many county officials expect more hotly debated questions of whether to sell beer, wine or liquor to follow in 2010. But for right now, let us look back and raise a toast — whether you prefer to do so with Michelob or milk — to the 10 biggest news stories of the year now drawing to a close.

The election some Van Zandt County residents thought they would never live to see actually happened — twice, in fact.

In May, voters in Wills Point put the city on the historical map by making it the first in Van Zandt County since the Prohibition Era to legalize alcohol sales. The option to sell beer and wine for off-premise consumption passed by almost a 2-to-1 margin, and sales began in late June.

Six months later, though, voters in Van Zandt County Justice of the Peace Precinct 1 rejected proposals to sell beer and wine, to allow full package stores and to allow alcoholic beverage sales in restaurants.

A petition in Wills Point to hold an election in May 2010 to allow restaurants to sell alcoholic beverages failed due to a number of ineligible signatures. Meanwhile, groups in Grand Saline and Fruitvale are gathering signatures for possible local option elections in those cities in May.

A county salary grievance committee hearing for constables was nothing new, but the fact that all four county constables filed for salary grievance in August certainly was something different.

To the chagrin of Pat Jordan, C.B. Wiley, Mickey Henson and Robert Tisdale, their requests for a higher salary did not get enough support from the nine-member committee of other elected officials to even present back to the county commissioners.

Relations between Jordan and the commissioners’ court was further strained when his request to buy a sport utility vehicle — he offered to make up the price difference from a county-proposed Ford Crown Victoria purchase with his office’s drug seizure fund — was denied.

In November, county commissioners begrudgingly approved a bill for re-striping of Jordan’s county-provided Crown Vic even though the car had already been striped with official markings.

Ongoing plumbing problems at the Van Zandt County Jail resulted in a sudden two-month closing of the jail’s kitchen after Sheriff R.P. "Pat" Burnett said the facility failed a health inspection in late July.

The county hired one area plumbing firm to resolve the situation, but ended up having the work finished by another company amid questions about time charged on site and the final cost of the project. While the kitchen was closed, jail inmates were fed with meals purchased by an outside provider — at about three times the normal daily cost.

Proving that ill feelings about elections never really die, a group petitioning for a new election to determine the fate of the Van Zandt County Emergency Services District No. 2 got a hearing before the district’s board of directors in September.

The nearly two-hour public hearing included a presentation from attorneys for the petitioners, lots of accusations of constitutional voting rights being denied and other election improprieties in 2006 and an equal amount of defense of the ESD as it stands.

In the end, the five-member board of directors cast a 3-2 vote to deny the petition, meaning no new election for now.

Van Zandt County has always been proud of its local school districts, but in 2009, Fruitvale and Canton school districts both earned the Texas Education Agency’s top rating of "exemplary," based on Texas Assessments of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) test scores and other annual criteria.

Both districts also had individual campuses that achieved the sought-after "exemplary" rating.

On Nov. 2, Grand Saline Police had the sort of day nobody wearing the blue really wants.

Having just answered a bomb threat called in that morning to Grand Saline High School, the police suddenly had an armed robbery of Mineola Community Bank to deal with. Turns out the two incidents were related, the bomb threat being a diversionary tactic for two men who were found and arrested within 24 hours of the robbery.

Negotiations went on through most of the year between the Canton Fire Department seeking more money to cover unincorporated areas around the city and a Van Zandt County Commissioners’ Court unsure if it could make a suitable offer.

With a Jan. 1, 2010, deadline looming for a decision, the county commissioners opted instead to assign South Van Zandt Volunteer Fire Department to the area after that department agreed to station firefighting vehicles in Canton.

In March, the dam at the old Edgewood City Lake collapsed, sending water across property and streets throughout the south end of the city. Police and city employees quickly set up barricades to close off flooded roadways and some afternoon school buses had to be rerouted.

In July, Van Zandt County opened its long-awaited new office annex in downtown Wills Point. The building became the new home for the Precinct 3 Justice of the Peace and courtroom, Precinct 3 Constable and Van Zandt County Tax Assessor/Collector Substation after those offices had been in rented spaces for a number of years.

Wills Point had two other notable moments in 2009. On Oct. 31, residents marked the 100th anniversary of President Howard Taft’s train stop in Wills Point with a recreation of the event. In November, the city became the third in Van Zandt County to be granted a Main Street Program, following Canton and Grand Saline.