Independent News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Amarillo News Drop. I'm Keli, with Hast.

HAST The city council locked in Amarillo's tax rate Tuesday — same as last year at forty-three cents per hundred dollars of valuation. But the real hit is coming to water and sewer bills. The city approved an eight percent bump to both, plus another three percent for debt service on a sixty-million-dollar loan the city took for the Hollywood Road Wastewater Treatment plant. That's on top of what you're already paying, and it goes straight through the utility bill.

KELI So the simple read is: tax rate holds steady. The structural move underneath is that the city shifted cost into utilities, which don't draw the same political attention as the property tax rate. Ratepayers who aren't property-tax-focused voters still get the increase — they just don't see it the same way. Watch the utility board meetings in the next two weeks. If there's pushback, it'll come from renters and fixed-income households first, since they can't deduct utility hikes.

HAST Potter County detention numbers came in for the weekly count. Jail population tracking where it's been — no major shift this week.

KELI Different front. A federal judge in Amarillo put a pause on Texas Republicans' push to close the primaries to registered party members only. Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk said he expects the Republicans will succeed when they bring it back during the next legislative session. The ruling doesn't kill the effort — it just stalls it before the 2026 midterms. That's a signal the courts may not block it long-term, which changes the math for primary strategy across the state.

HAST One date marker. On this day in 1971, Walt Disney World opened near Orlando, Florida.

KELI That's the Amarillo News Drop. Full script and sources at inkwell.wiki/news/amarillo.

KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. There's an essay at Gil's Intelligent Version on what actually happened in 1914 — and how a real historical instinct curdled into false certainty the moment someone tried to measure it to the inch.

HAST It's called The Witness and the Ruler. At inkwell dot wiki, slash giv.