Chambers County Virtual Meeting Cont.
VOL 20 • ISSUE 17
the meeting went smoothly. Most of the items were placed on the consent agenda to assist in getting through the somewhat abnormal gathering of the Court and only a few were “pulled” for discussion by the Commissioners. The revised Emergency Conditions Pay Policy was
consent agenda and the Court agreed to continue to monitor the policy going forward to try to make pay amounts fair to all employees. A couple of questions were raised about the newly created Chambers County EMS and Director Ron Nichols jumped on the video chat to inform
was purchased was indeed a brand new unit and was a four wheel drive model to answer one of the Commissioners questions. He also informed the group that the department was fully staffed with full time employees and had been and were able to continue to respond for calls
a thank you to the Court for all of the support that the department had received during the current pandemic. Commissioners approved the consent agenda. The rest of Court was some housekeeping items and a couple of proclamations for April 2020 as Child Abuse
and Fair Housing Month. A financial agenda item dealing with enrollment and participation in year 4 of the QIPP program with the Arboretum of Winnie was approved. The meeting had no public comments and no executive session and was adjourned at 10:21 am. The next reg-
one of the items pulled from the
the Court that the new ambulance that
for assistance and he also expressed
Prevention Awareness
ular meeting of the Chambers Coun-
and Month
ty Commissioners Court will be Tuesday, April 28, 2020 at 9:30 am. and will more than likely once again be held via video conferencing due to the current situation involving the Covid-19 pandemic.
First Responders Show Appreciation to Medical Staff By Wade Thibodeaux First responders from all over Chambers County participated in a “Parade” from medical facility
to medical facility throughout C h a m b e r s County last Friday afternoon to show support
and appreciation for the medical staff that is on the front lines of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Groups of firefighters, paramedics, and police officers started their parade
at the Winnie Community Hospital and then made their way over to Anahuac and then on to facilities on the West side of the County. The purpose of the entire venture was to
say “Thank You” and show support for the Doctors, Nurses, and all medical staff who are treating the patients and dealing with the Covid-19/ Corona Virus situation.
Medical staff and first responders pose for a picture after the parade of emergency vehicles pulled into the parking lot of Winnie Community Hospital.
8 • Neighborhood Net • April 21, 2020
Emergency vehicles from all over Chambers County converged on the parking lot of the Winnie Community Hospital to say Thanks to the medical staff.
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East Chambers Trustees Change Grading System By Wade Thibodeaux The East Chambers ISD Board of Trustees met in regular session last Monday, April 13, 2020 at 6:00 pm. via teleconference to conduct their monthly business meeting. One of the agenda items that generated the most discussion was the changing of the way the grades were figured for the GPA (Grade
Point Average) of the Valedictorian, Salutatorian, and subsequent honor students. The normal way of digesting all of those numbers would be to cut off the grades at the end of the fifth six weeks and then add in the college level grades when available to determine the final order of classmates. However, due to the Covid-19 situation
and the fact that students have been on remote instruction since March 16, 2020, the administration and the Trustees felt like a tweaking was in order. The Board approved changing the end of the fourth six weeks to the last day before remote instruction began and that moved the end of the fourth six weeks to
March 16 instead of February 28th. The fifth six weeks will now be the remote instruction period which has since the meeting been extended for the remainder of the academic year and will have no bearing on the class ranking. The calculations for the top spots in the 2020 graduating class will now end with the grades
s s s u e o n r m i a F FOR Fa
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earned up until the end of the fourth six weeks and then college grades will be added into the mix if available and if no college grades are available due to the University changing their system to a Pass/ Fail status(Due to their own remote instruction situation) then the college grades will be left out of
the equation. The remainder of the meeting was mostly housekeeping items that dealt with paperwork for the State for funding associated with the Corona Virus situation and the paying of the District’s bills. No public comments were received and no executive session was needed. All (Cont. on page 4)
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I don’t think that I have ever been as frustrated as I was this afternoon. I’m not talking about the Covid-19 stay at home can’t go to the restaurant kind of frustration. I’m talking about looking for something and knowing that you did the work and can’t remember just exactly where you filed it kind of frustrated. I have been looking for some paperwork since last week and I couldn’t find it at my Winnie office, so I just assumed that it was at my Huntsville office......and, you know what happens when you assume......you make an a** out
of u and me. I’m in Winnie now on Monday evening finishing up getting the articles gathered up so that my editors can arraign everything in it’s proper place so that it looks somewhat like a newspaper should. When I was in Huntsville at the end of last week, I searched High and Low for those dead gum papers and just could not find them. When I returned to Winnie yesterday, I promised myself that I would look again for those papers. I searched this file box and I searched that file box and no luck. I had one more
place to look and sure enough...... there they were, at my house in a pile of stuff from last year that needed to be filed. Now, you tell me why any sane person would file his business papers at his house instead of at his office.....Yep, I can’t explain that one either, so it goes back to that sane person.....or lack of in this situation. Anyway, I found what I needed and I can move on. Another subject that’s on my mind this evening is this crude oil price situation. Today’s big news was that oil futures went negative......now,
in my simple little mind.....that means that you got to pay somebody to take the oil. I’m sure that’s not exactly how it works, but it’s not a good situation. Crude oil futures for a few months down the road seem to be a little better, but this situation is not good at all folks. I know, I know......a lot of people are happy that prices at the pump are coming down and are some of the lowest that we have seen in several years, but this is NOT good. Oil companies need about $50-$60 a barrel oil prices to even start to break even or make money and if they can’t make money then a LOT of jobs are going to be gone. We could get to a situation where gas
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is so cheap that we don’t have any money to buy it with. Remember, oil companies employ a lot of people, a lot of people buy groceries, eat out at restaurants, buy new cars, and lots of other things where you work. If those oil people aren’t buying stuff from the place that you work, then maybe you don’t have a job and then you can’t afford that really cheap gas. All of the experts are saying that the reason the oil is so cheap is that our storage capacity is almost full and there’s no place to stack up the continuous supply coming up out of the ground. So, here’s what I need you guys and gals to do.......everybody go out and buy as much gasoline as you can
possibly afford today. Don’t wait for the price to go down tomorrow, buy it today...... and then go back and do the same tomorrow. Just go out driving around in the country to burn up some of that gas.....you will be social distancing and helping the oversupply of crude oil at the same time. Maybe, just maybe, if everybody does this and then the Corona Virus pandemic eases, we may be able to save this economy and all still have a job. Be safe out there..... wash your hands and follow the guidelines so that we can come out of this situation sooner rather than later. Till next time, I’m...... Wade in the Shade.
April 28, 2020 • Neighborhood Net • 7
WOODS, WATERS, and WILDLIFE
day Mon cial! pe s t h nig Any g in topp one- only a z iz p 9 $7.9
By John Jefferson
OVERLOOKED FISHING OPPORTUNITIES
Late one afternoon, I hitched a ride in a small plane with a friend who was also returning from Dallas to Austin. Needless to say, we weren’t flying at 30,000 feet. Texas is known as a dry, droughtprone-state. But flying over Central Texas, I was struck by the amount of water below. Every glance out the window revealed five to ten water features glinting up at us in the setting sunlight. It shouldn’t have surprised me - Texas is still an agricultural state, and livestock needs water. Land fragmentation and ag tax exemptions have turned
many new, small landowners into ranchers. And their ponds have FISH! Floods, waterspouts, birds, and humans stocked them. Pond and lake management became a business. “Pond Boss” owner Bob Lusk, in Whitesboro, became a leader in the field (pondboss.com). Others followed. Landowners realized pond habitat could be improved and fish could be stocked, if needed. My first experience in pond fishing was at “Brickyard Lake” and several farm ponds around Beaumont. That was enriched when I moved to Alice. Friends introduced me to landowners, most of whom had ponds for cattle and allowed us to fish. Many of these ponds – or tanks
6 • Neighborhood Net • April 28, 2020
--as most were called -- were overpopulated with fish due to under-fishing. Catching bass on lures was exciting and put food on the table. Small spinner baits worked like fish magnets. Black and white or chartreuse H&H lures were our favorites. “Shyster” inline spinners worked, too, as did topwater “Chuggers”. Catching 20-30 or more in an afternoon was common. In public waters, the limit is now five/day. If you know a landowner, it wouldn’t hurt to ask if he permits fishing. County Agents or Parks and Wildlife employees might help, too. Some commercial operations offer fishing memberships on managed ponds and lakes. Ask around. Sever-
al deer leases I’ve been on had ponds. To fight acute cabin fever, we piled into the truck and drove to one an hour away last Sunday after church (online). Vicky headed one direction around the sixacre- pond, and I chose a shorter path toward the shallow end. A two-inch rain had muddied the water, so I tried a topwater “Whopper Plopper” since its splashes could attract a hungry bass
that couldn’t see lures in the chocolate-colored water. That didn’t work so I changed weapons. In April, crappies spawn in shallow water near shore and I decided to test that. Leaning my bait-casting rig against a liveoak, I tied a 1/16-ounce chartreuse Roadrunner jig onto my spinning rod. Crappies like small lures and bright colors; that could help in dark water. On my third cast,
I felt a small “bump”. When I applied pressure, the rodeo began. Crappies bite softly, but fight fiercely, especially on light spinning gear. I landed a handsome 15inch black crappie -- a quarter-inch shy of the state record. Vicky eventually joined me. We fished until calling it a day with three meals worth of crappies and bass. And a refreshed outlook on “sheltered” life.
Don’t let the little fish pictured on the line fool you; bass, catfish crappie and perch grow large in ponds and small lakes throughout Texas. Lack of fishing pressure on many private water bodies has created outstanding fishing on the myriad waters once created primarily as livestock watering holes. Photo by John Jefferson.
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April 28, 2020 • Neighborhood Net • 3
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Sunday observations
Deciding to veer a little from Covid19 talk, but it does tie in. Follow me if you will. This week, the findings were released on Roy Hallidays fatal plane crash. For those of you who dont follow the baseball world, Halliday was a phenomenal pitcher, aged 40, when his plane went nose first into the Gulf of Mexico near Fort Lauderdale, in 2017. Many people saw him doing stunts, and flying recklessly prior to impact, so it was pretty much known that “Pilot Error” would be the cause. The
final mechanical cause not yet fully released, this week the report showed enough to let you know he had no business flying an airplane. Large amounts of amphetamines, morphine, and an anti-depressant were found in his system. The NTSB doesnt need to say any more. His family knows what happened. They have said they seek privacy, as they are not a perfect family, and this shows that. Cant blame them there. Reading this, and thinking of the current world situations, I was reminded once
Tues thru Fri: 10 to 6 Sat: 10 to 1
again, that we make heroes out of normal people. Then get angry when they fail. With the Covid19 situation, all of your sports stars, movie stars, and internet stars are cooling their heels. Those people you and your kids idolize. The same ones, that daily show they are humans. Playing on an enormous stage, for an enormous paycheck. They have substance issues, they have marital issues, they have pets that die, they have tragedies, health problems, mental issues, and everything else that the rest of us do.......
East Chambers Grading Cont.
evaluations were approved due to the inability to complete the P TESS(for Principals) and the T TESS(for Teachers) and no recommendations for hiring new teachers and/ or coaches were
received from the staff. The next regular meeting of the East Chambers ISD Board of Trustees will be Monday, May 11, 2020 at 6:00 pm. and will more than likely be another teleconference
4 • Neighborhood Net • April 28, 2020
meeting unless the Covid-19 situation eases.
on a larger scale. They also make mistakes. Be it that they cheat at their game, get caught in extramarital affairs, take performance enhancing drugs, get speeding tickets, or worse, violent offenses. So how does this play into todays world? I hope when we emerge from the current quarantine situation we are all in, that we rethink who we idolize. I also hope we show our children that idolization should be given to the person that does things from their heart, not for a paycheck. I am not saying sports stars
are bad, as I am one of the biggest baseball freaks you could find. But I also acknowledge, they are humans, playing a game, for a paycheck. They fail, just like we do. Yet most hold them to a higher standard than themselves, due to their public persona. Happy Sunday peeps...... if you are looking for something to idolize, please look at your hospitals right now. Your first responders, your grocery workers, your agriculture world, your everyday person that goes in makes sure supplies are bought, paychecks
are given, and the wheels of government continue to roll. Your Office managers, plant workers, truck drivers, your janitorial staffs, restaurant workers, delivery personnel, and educators. We have a LOT of essential workers, that are keeping this country rolling right now......... without an ounce of professional sports, movie stars, or over paid people we keep on pedestals. Remember that, when whatever our new normal is, emerges.
Chambers County Commissioners Hold Virtual Meeting By Wade Thibodeaux
Chambers County Commissioners met in regular session on Tuesday, April 14, 2020 at 9:30 am. via a video conference. It was the first time for Court to be held via
a video conference as opposed to the Commissioners and the Judge being in the same room. The meeting got off to a little bit of a rough start as the link for the public to attend
the meeting was not working and an alternative link had to be sent out in short fashion. Chambers County IT quickly fixed the problem and the rest of (Cont. on page 8)
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Baby girl clothes,car seat and toys for sale, call Reenay 4092010399 Modern glass coffee table and 2 end tables also bakers rack for sale as well as some lamps an mirror. House for sale on Boondocks road. Small house on 1.5 acres. Recently remodeled, ready to move in. Call 409-659-1877
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April 28, 2020 • Neighborhood Net • 5