Amarillo News Drop

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

HAST Canyon's commissioners adopted their two-thousand twenty-six and twenty-seven budget yesterday. Wage increases for police, three part-time firefighters standing up a community wildfire protection program, a part-time bailiff. The city is set for a public hearing on the twenty-sixth tax rate August eighteenth.

KELI That's the structural move — they're spending first, rate-setting after. Means the commission is committing to services before the taxpayer sees the bill. It's a common sequence in Texas municipal budgets, but it puts the cart before the conversation. Watch the eighteenth hearing: if property owners push back hard on the rate, the commission will say the services are already approved. The pressure shifts to defending what's already in motion rather than debating whether it should be.

HAST Amarillo City Council is hunting odor control for North Heights and other areas getting sewage-smell complaints. They asked for pricing on options and also heard feedback on a proposed ordinance about vegetation blocking sight lines — that's a separate live-fire issue with Flock cameras and surveillance gear already in some council members' sights.

KELI On a different front, Booker Fire Department crews are working a grass fire in Lipscomb County near Duke Road and County Road 10 as of Wednesday afternoon.

HAST Panhandle update: Pampa Police have a man in custody after a shooting Tuesday morning at Recreation Park in the sixteen-hundred block of East Highway 60. One person is dead. That investigation is moving.

KELI Road note for I-27 and I-40 — a cattle truck blowout caused an overturn during rush hour Tuesday, blocked both directions on I-40 and northbound I-27. At least one bull got loose on and around the highway.

HAST Mill and overlay work on northbound Buchanan Street from Northeast 3rd to Northeast 11th Avenue — crews are finishing that now. Expect northbound Buchanan closed at Southeast 3rd, traffic detoured west on Southeast 3rd to South Fillmore.

KELI Before we close, a history note. On this day in nineteen forty-four, Alençon became the first French city liberated from Nazi occupation by French forces, under General Philippe Leclerc.

HAST 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.