Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Hometown News For Orange County, Texas
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 437
Commissioners Court Tuesday didn't hesitate to spend $101,000 on an item that has gone over budget for the year. Orange County Mosquito Control will be getting more pesticide to spray from the special plane. "We've had a very active first eight months of this fiscal year" and the supplies are "critically low," said Mosquito Control Director Patrick Beebe told commissioners. The county's fiscal, or budget year, goes from October 1 through September 30. Usually, the mosquito pop...
Golden Triangle Polymers, the Chevron Phillips chemical plant under construction, spent $39.3 million dollars locally in the first quarter of 2024. The report given to Orange County Commissioners Court Tuesday is part of the requirement for the new plant's tax abatement with the county for the $8.5 billion petrochemical plant between Highway 87 South and FM 1006, known as Chemical Row. And in a separate report, Jefferson Energy Terminal along the Neches River side of the...
Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan barely hung onto his position as District 21 representative Tuesday night with 366 more votes as he battled challenger David Covey in a runoff. The runoff total for the three counties in District 21 had 12,813 votes for Phelan and 12,447 for Covey. Orange County went with Covey in the March primary race and again in Tuesday's runoff. The county Elections Administrator's Office reports a preliminary runoff final of 5,842 votes, or 836 more than...
Spin the Wheel of Fortune and see if what name it lands on. Will it be Beryl, Rafael, or William? Those are some of the 2024 names for hurricanes and the National Hurricane Center is predicting a busy year for tropical storms and even major hurricanes. Hurricane season officially starts June 1 and will run through the end of November. The National Hurricane Center is part of NOAA, the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, operated by scientists through the...
Challenger David Covey holds the Orange County lead in early voting against incumbent Dade Phelan for the Texas House of Representatives District 21 Republican runoff race. The Orange County Elections Administration Office reports Covey has 4,071, or 53.56 percent of the early votes, with Phelan getting 3,530, or 46.44 percent. The district also includes part of Jefferson County and all of Jasper county. Election Day was today and those ballots have not been tabulated as of...
Four members of the Orange City Council have gotten into a Facebook disagreement that has their fans in a tizzy. One man even compared Councilor Paul Burch to Jesus in the way that people talked about him. The comments were triggered by a letter Councilor Terri Salter wrote to the editor of a weekly mailed subscription newspaper. Salter commented about the close friendships on the council and compared them to nepotism. Mayor Larry Spears Jr. posted a professional photograph...
Tuesday, May 28, is the date of the runoff race for the Texas House District 21 that includes Orange County. The only registered voters who cannot cast a ballot in the runoff are the 981 who voted in the March Democratic primary. The race is between incumbent Dade Phelan of Beaumont, who is the powerful Texas Speaker of the House, lost the vote to David Covey of Orange in March. A third candidate forced the runoff. After two days of early voting on Monday, May 20, and Tuesday,...
Most of the entities collecting sales taxes had big increases in March sales compared to last year, with Bridge City now having nearly 13 percent in sales taxes compared to last year. The city of Orange is the only entity down for the year. All five of the largest cities in Orange County have a 1.5 percent sales tax, or 1.5 cents per dollar. The Orange County Emergency Services District No. 3 also has a 1.5 percent sales tax. The county has a 0.5 percent sales tax, or a...
River flooding has become so common in Orange County that the "Great Flood of 1953" isn't so great now. But the rising Sabine on May 22, 1953, 71 years ago, brought thousands of volunteers together build sand levees and sandbags along the Sabine in the Simmons Drive area. The emergency was so bad the Orange Independent School District to let the white high school out of classes so the boys could make the sandbags and the girls could make and serve sandwiches. Hundreds of...
Fans of politics from across the country will be watching Southeast Texas next week as early voting begins in a Republican primary race that has even drawn an endorsement from former President Trump against the incumbent. Nearly 53,900 registered Orange County voters are eligible to vote in the runoff. Early voting will begin Monday morning for the Texas House of Representatives District 21 seat. The district includes Orange County, part of Jefferson County, and Jasper...
The high society and dog fanciers were shocked in 1910 as the East Coast terrier who had won Best of Show at the Westminster Dog Show three years running was beaten by a terrier from Orange, Texas. Sabine Rarebit, a smooth-haired terrier raised by F.H. Farwell's Sabine Kennels was the Best in Show. The final judging was between best of male and best of female. For the first three years the dog show gave a Best in Show award, a bitch named Warren Remedy from a kennel in New...
Work continues on the design for a levee-seawall system in Orange County, Commissioner Kirk Roccaforte said Tuesday after Commissioners Court approved a contract to allow representatives access onto some properties. Commissioners Court met with three of the five members and Precinct 4 Commissioner Robert Viator serving as judge pro tem. Also present were Roccaforte from Precinct 3, and Precinct 2 Commissioner Chris Sowell. County Judge John Gothia and Precinct 1 Commissioner...
Orange's city planning director was relieved after an announcement from the West Orange-Cove school district. The district will "repurpose" the old North school on Cordrey Avenue and not sell it. "We don't need any more abandoned schools," said Planning Director Kelvin Knauf. He said the state should pass a law making school districts demolish any schools that are no longer in use. West Orange Mayor Randy Branch agrees with Knauf on the issue of abandoned schools. He said he...
Ninety-three-year-old Mavis Worsham was expecting her regular hot meal on a Monday in late April. Instead, she got an envelope with a questionnaire from the Orange Meals on Wheels. Worsham's daughter, Karen Wickham, was one of the people complaining, but she wasn't worried about her mother, who is still mobile and has food in the house. "The main problem was there was no coordination," she said about the program. "The service had been great until now." Others, weren't as...
Bridge City will still have David Rutledge as mayor and the West Orange-Cove school district will be getting a new early learning center school. Those are among the results of the May 4 municipal and school elections in Orange County. Also, the two incumbents on the Orange County Drainage District board fended off challengers to retain their seats. Most of the cities and school districts in the county, along with the Orange County Port and Navigation District, were able to...
Orange County Judge John Gothia told Commissioners Court about a magical spring evening at the Governor's Mansion in Austin as a county-operated disaster rebuild group won an award at the 40th annual state tribute to volunteers. He said First Lady Cecelia Abbott was gracious and friendly to the honored guests and even let her dogs out, all four of them. He recalled one, a puppy about a year and a half old, jumping on the first lady and she pushed it away, "like anyone with a...
The former Jones Elementary School on Fourteenth Street in Orange was sold by the WO-C school district. It served as a church and was then abandoned. The current WO-C Superintendent, Dr. Rickie Harris, announced that if voters approve a bond for a new early learning center, the old North school will not be left vacant. The West Orange-Cove school district superintendent had good news for Orange residents concerned about the construction of a new North Early Learning Center....
Finding a handy place to park is advised for the weekend as families may want to be traveling the county for activities. Crawfish will be celebrated in Mauriceville, drag boat races with food and music will be at the Orange Boat Ramp, and Depot Day will be held at the historic train depot in downtown Orange. The annual Mauriceville Crawfish Bash, the oldest continuing festival in Orange County, will kick off on Friday evening and run through Saturday night. This year, 17...
The chief executive officer of Chevron Phillips along with a senior official from QatarEnergy will speak Wednesday, May 1, at a special ribbon-cutting ceremony at Lamar State College Orange. The college is opening its new hands-on training lab at 2 p.m. Wednesday at the Industrial Technology Building, 409 Fourth Street. Golden Triangle Polymers donated $1.3 million to help establish the new facility, which will be used for LSCO courses teaching chemical processing courses....
Ten years ago, the century-old Southern Pacific Railroad station was long abandoned. Weeds grew a foot high and white paint was peeling off the sides of the brick. Then came former Orange resident Carrie Woliver of Houston, who remembered her grandparents living by the train depot and named her memoir "The Train Stopped in Orange." She started a non-profit group to purchase and restore the train depot-station, which is now an official Texas Historical site. Saturday, May 4, th...
The Elvis and Marilyn sculptures are still standing in the storefront window on Tenth Street at Main in downtown Orange. Maybe if you look closely, they are shedding tears, too, like many real people across Orange County. Local business icon Harry Stephens, who owned Harry's Appliances for 61 years died on Sunday at the age of 82. He was the epitome of a small-town business owner who offered old-fashioned personal service and advocated for supporting all local businesses. Roy...
Glenda Dyer, an educated chemist who developed an affinity for the ink of newspapers, including nearly every paper in Orange County, died at her family farm in Tennessee, where she had moved nearly 20 years ago with her husband, Paul. Her newspaper career began in the 1970s when the now-deceased editor of the Orange Leader gave her a job. She went on to become the first woman editor of the Leader in 1998. In the 1980s, she owned, published and edited her own weekly paper, The...
Sales taxes for the largest entities were down for the month of February, but Bridge City, Vidor, and Pinehurst had increases. Orange County, which has a 0.5 percent sales tax, collected $482,265 for the month, a drop of nearly $103,000, or a decrease of 17.56 percent from February 2023. The county is slightly down for sales tax collections for the year to date, collecting $2.46 million for the first four months of the year, a drop of about $30,000, or a decrease of 1.45...
Most cities and school districts in Orange County were able to cancel their May 4 elections because of no contested races, but the races and issues on ballots are drawing out voters. The current election is not the same as the May 28 Republican primary run-off for state representative. As of Tuesday evening, the second day of early voting, A total of 326 people in the county voted in person, with another 238 from mail-in ballots for a total of 564. The votes casts at the four...
A mother-daughter road trip to follow the sun and the solar eclipse turned into a discovery of longtime family history in Orange County. We are descendants of the Pevoto, Bland, and Harmon families, original settlers. My daughter, Kate Robards, a writer and performer in New York City, flew in to travel with me to see the total eclipse. We invited ourselves to stay with my paternal cousin Judith Garrett Segura and her husband, Avelino, at their home in Lantana, a community in...
