The Bastrop Advertiser and County News (Bastrop, Tex.), No. 65, Ed. 1 Monday, October 11, 1982 Page: 1 of 8
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Box 45436
Dallas, Texas 75235
Fumbles kill Bears; Tigers edged
Details Page 8
®|t flastroj IMtrtistr
And Cotinty News
TEXAS’ OLDEST WEEKLY NEWSPAPER
MONDAY EDITION
K«Ubli>>htd March 1,1853
Monday, October 11,1982
Number 65
National protest starts here
/
By Eric Williams
A Bastrop woman,
angry over rising deficit
spending by the Federal
government, may have star-
ted a national movement
when she called a radio talk
show and urged people to
send Congressional leaders
a used tea bag in the mail.
Jeannie Krell, who re-
cently moved to Bastrop
from Houston, said that
the message the tea bags
are supposed to send to
Congress is the same that
patriots throwing tea over-
board in Boston Harbor
meant to give to Britain’s
King George III.
“It started out of just
absolute disgust,” said
Miss Krell, a woman bent
with arthritis but retaining
a forceful personality and
voice. “They’re spending
money they don’t have and
don’t have the slightest
idea of where they’re going
to get it,” she complained
in a Thursday interview.,.
In addition to writing a
letter to the editor of The
Advertiser, Miss Krell
called radio station WLAC
in Nashville, Tenn., a week
ago Wednesday to express
her disgust and urged
listeners to send a tea bag,
with no names or messages,
to Congressmen. The idea
was further refined to
being sent to Speaker of the
House, Rep. Thomas
“Tip” O’Neill (D., Mass.)
and Senate Majority
Leader Howard Baker (R.,
Tenn.) The bag is a silent
anonymous protest.
‘Stirred Country’
Talk show host Bill
Steensland said that the re-
sponse on his show has
been tremendous, with a
number of callers pledging
to gather and send tea bags
to Congress. He said the
story has been picked up by
major wire services and
“stirred up the whole
country.”
He said the tea bags to
Congress would have the
same effect as a two-by-
four would to get the atten-
tion of a mule.
He said Americans are
fed up with high taxes and
defecit spending, and the
tea bags are “a warning
shot across the bow.”
Called in Washington,
Ellen Boyle, an aide to
O’Neill, said that over the
last five days the speaker’s
office has received roughly
100 tea bags in the mail.
“The Speaker of the
House is a national figure
and 100 tea bags is not a
particularly significant
amount of mail,” she said
Friday.
Continued on Page 3
Jeannie Krell, a woman who began a campaign to
protest continued deficit spending by the federal gover-
nment, visits in the Advertiser offices Thursday. A tea
bag, the Instrument of her protest which she hopes will
gain steam nationwide, is hanging from her dress pocket.
Staff Photo by Eric Williams
Company offers to take over garbage
Felony child
injury cited
A 23-year-old babysitter
has been arrested and
charged with injury to a
child in an incident in
which a three-month-old
infant was injured so
severely that it required
hospitalization.
Charged in the incident
was Tammy Grimsley,
who was babysitting with
infant Kelli Nicole
Rhoades. She was arrested
Wednesday and released
after posting $10,000
bond.
Charges filed in the
court of Precinct 3 Justice
of the Peace Kathryn
Rogers by Katie Rhoades,
the child’s mother, said
that the suspect injured the
child by striking her on the
face and also on the back,
causing damage to her kid-
neys.
According to Sheriff’s
office accounts, the child
was taken to Bastrop
Memorial 'hdspifal and
then on to Brackenridge
Hospital in Austin after
the mother returned home
to find the child injured.
Sheriff’s Deputy Alvin
Duck investigated the in-
cident, meeting the child’s
family at the hospital after
the injury was reported.
District Attorney Neal
Pfeiffer reported that the
child had been released
from the hospital Friday.
Browning-Ferris Co. to-
night (Monday) will pro-
pose taking over Bas-
trop’s garbage operations,
including providing a dump.
Eddy Lauterback, mar-
keting representative for
the HoUston-based firm,
said Friday he will take a
proposal to the Bastrop
City Council covering both
residential and commercial
garbage collections.
It’s understood the con-
tract would be on a year-to-
year basis with a provision
for raises in line with in-
creases in the national cost-
of-living index. Rates
would probably be signifi-
cantly higher for commer-
cial service and a little
higher for residential ser-
vice.
Provide Dump
Browning-Ferris would
provide garbage trucks,
crews and a place to dump
the garbage and trash.
Garbage would be taken
to an Austin-Del Valle area
landfill, a round-trip from
Bastrop of approximately
50 miles, according to Lau-
terback.
Lauterback currently
serves around 2.5 million
residences, including ap-
proximately 18,000 in un-
incorporated subdivisions
around Houston. The
company also services
many commercial
customers, including some
Absentee vote starts
Absentee voting starts
Wednesday, Oct. 13 and
continues through Oct. 29
at the Bastrop County
Clerk’s office in Bastrop
for the Nov. 2 general elec-
tion.
Persons who will be out
of town or for some other
valid reason be unable to
cast ballots on Nov. 2 can
vote by absentee ballot at
the clerk’s office. The clerk
will also mail ballots to in-
valids and others if she
receives a request by mail
to: County Clerk, P.O.
Box 577, Bastrop, Tx.
78602.
Joyce Schaefer, County
Clerk, asked voters who
will be casting absentee
ballots and those voting on
election day to be sure to
have with them a signed
voter registration card. It’s
now too late to register or
SISD taking appeal to state
Smithville Independent
School District Wednesday
will take its appeal to t|ie
State Property Tax Board
over an estimate on the
value of the school dis-
trict’s property -- an esti-
mate SISD said could cost
it needed state funds.
“We’re going to go for
millions of dollars that
day,” SISD Superinten-
dent Don Hestant told the
SISD board last week.
Elaine Seidel, SISD Tax
Assessor-Collector, “has a
case prepared” to show the
state has overvalued dis-
trict property, Hestand
said.
Hestand told The Ad-
vertiser after the school
board meeting that the
district believes the state
has overvalued SISD prop-
erty by "well over 10 per-
cent ” of its true worth.
The valuation by the
state is crucial, he said,
because state,funding is
based partly on the wealth
of a school district. The
richer a school district, the
less money relatively it gets
from the state, he explain-
ed.
The state board is con-
tending SISD has total
property with a market
value of $336,214,633 and
an index value of
$167,997,272. But the Bas-
trop County Tax Appraisal
District puts the value at
$112million.
Hestand said SISD be-
lieves the state board is
placing too high a value on
much agriculture acreage,
lots on the southwest side
of Smithville and business
inventories in thecity.
At Steiner Ranch
First lignite mine plan detailed
The mining plan filed by
the Lower Colorado River
Authority for a 956-acre
mine site, approximately
four miles north, northwest
of Bastrop calls for work to
begin on the site by spring,
and actual mining by the
middle of 1984.
According to Don
Spraggins, Assistant Direc-
tor of Environmental Re-
sources for the LCRA, the
site will be the first for
LCRA lignite mining, and
offers excellent conditions
for such mining.
The mine, which will be
named the Powell Bend
Mine, will have little en-
vironmental impact
because of safeguards in-
stalled by the LCRA, ac-
cording to the mine plan.
For instance, polluted run-
off water should be no
problem according to data
in the massive, three vol-
ume mining plan, because
the mine is designed so that
there will be no runoff
water. The LCRA is build-
ing 16 water retention
ponds, most of which will
catch water after it has
runoff from the mined
area. The ponds are
designed to retain the sedi-
ment and allow the water
to evaporate or be used on-
site. ________—_
According to the data
supplied by LCRA, the
ponds would be sufficient
to hold a 10-year 24 hour
rain, or the biggest daily
rain that would normally
be expected within a 10
year period.
No Draglines
Spraggins said that the
environmental impact will
also be reduced because all
of the coal and overburden
removal can be handled
with bulldozers and scrap-
ers. He said this would
cause less dust and air
pollution than would the
use of draglines, which are
used in most strip mining
operations.
While the mining permit
application covers, a 956-
acre tract, only 157 of
those acres will be mined.
The other area will be used
for stockpile areas for
overburden and topsoil,
water retention ponds and
roads and railroad access.
The mining site is di-
vided by the Missouri-
Kansas and Texas railroad
tracks, which will be used
to haul the coal from this
area to the proposed Fayet-
te 3 lignite fired power
plant. The Public Utility
Commission recently gave
LCRA approval to go
ahead with the power plant
construction.
The mine plans call for a
production of approxima-
tely 200,000 tons of lignite
annually for 10 years. A
single, 39 unit trainload of
lignite is to be produced
each week, to be taken to
the power plant in La
Grange.
According to the mine
plan, the topsoil removal
will be done mostly on an
as-needed basis to cover
previously disturbed areas.
There will also be two small
stockpiles of topsoil made
to cover the final cuts, ac-
cording to Spraggins.
No Blasting
Spraggins said the lignite
in the Austin area.
In addition, the com-
pany also services several
cities in the Rio Grande
Valley, hesaid.
Lauterback said the City
of Bastrop solicited a
proposal from his com-
pany.
Early Takeover
If city councilmen ap-
prove a contract, Brown-
ing-Ferris could take over
the operation as early as
Dec. 1, hesaid.
According to Lauter-
back, his company would
prefer that the city bill res-
idential customers while
the company takes care of
billing and collecting from
commercial customers.
However, Browning-Ferris
can work in whichever way
the city wants, he added.
' Lauterback’s proposal
will include separate con-
tracts and fees for com-
mercial pick-up and resi-
dential service.
Money Loser
Bastrop is believed to be
losing money currently on
its garbage operations. The
city has three garbage
trucks, one of which is old
and rundown.
The city’s most pressing
problem on garbage is the
fact that its dump on Hoff-
man Road has only a few
more months of use be-
fore it may have to be
closed.
Meanwhile, rural areas
around Bastrop, within
Precinct 1, have no dump
to use. Residents of these
areas are hauling garbage
into Bastrop and deposit-
ing it with business firms
and in other places. The
rural deliveries by residents
are adding to the cost of
garbage pick-up and hand-
ling for the city. It could
not be determined Friday
how the Browning-Ferris
firm would deal with this
problem since it would in-
crease costs to the company
without an easy method of
collecting money.. .
obtain those cards for the
election, she added.
Mrs. Schaefer also
reminded voters that there
will be a second election in
November. On Saturday,
Nov. 6, statewide voters
will decide on six amen-
dments to the Texas Con-
stitution, including
Proposition 3 which will
exempt farm implements
and machinery from
property taxation.
Legal office closes
At the meeting, trustees
also called for bids Oct. 25
on a new roof for the
Smithville High School
gymnasium and adopted a
tax rate of 89 cents per each
$100 of assessed property
value for the next fiscal
year. Of the total, 85.5 cen-
ts will go to maintenance
and 3.5 cents for retiring
bond debt. The old rate
was 80 cents.
The Bastrop office of
the Legal Aid Society of
Central Texas has stopped
taking new cases and will
shut down at the end of the
year.
Susanne Covington, an
attorney in the local office
said that because of budget
and staff cutbacks, the
society will consolidate its
Bastrop office into its
Austin office, and the of-
fice there will be taking
local clients after Jan. 1,'
1983.
Paralegal
She said that she expects
that a paralegal will come
to Bastrop one day each
week in order to do a full
day of intake and the legal
aid office would have a toll
free number in Austin for
any persons who need to
contact it.
Ms. Covington said the
office would be closed to
all intake after Monday
because of the number of
cases that will be in
litigation for the remainder
of the year. She said the
staff attorneys, herself and
Marilynn Bailey, “can’t
keep running from county
to county. ’ ’ She added that
a cutback in the staff of the
two attorneys, two
paralegals and a full-time
and a part-time secretary is
likely in the very near
future.
Ms. Covington said the
society would still try to
serve those who need its
services in the Bastrop
area, but there might be a
reduction in the amount of
service simply because it
would be a little less con-
venient for persons to con-
tact it.
She said that the Bastrop
area would be served in
much the same way that
persons in Lee, Fayette and
Caldwell counties are ser-
ved from the Bastrop of-
fice.
Cutbacks in the legal
service offices are a direct
result of federal budget
cutbacks in the area of free
legal services, accor^lingto
Ms. Covington.
Well permits possible
You may have to get a
permit to drill a water well
inside Smithville city
limits.
Smithville City Council-
men tonight (Monday) will
discuss an ordinance regu-
lating water well drilling.
The city has ordinances
covering gas and oil wells.
would be removed through
a ripping process, and
there would be no drilling
or blasting.
The average depth of the
overburden in the strip
mining area is 37 feet, ac-
cording to the report, and
the depth of the seam of
coal to be mined is seven
feet.
The LCRA saia that
there will be water spraying
to reduce the dust that
would be expected along
the roadways within the
mining area, as well as
spraying of the lignite
holding and loading areas
to reduce the dust output.
The Powell Bend Mine is
not associated with the op-
erations proposed to be
located within the bound-
aries of the Camp Swift
Military Reservation.
Touring Bastrop Saturday and looking for places that might make prime wild-
flower exhibits were (from left): Artist-designer Chapman Kelley, Joe Emmert,
Susan Perrin and David Block, Kelley’s associates from Dallas; Tommy Vasquez,
Allle Alexander and Dr. Tom Allen, retired beautification and landscape expert for
Texas Department of Highways. Vasquez and Emmert are considering a proposal
for massive planting in Bastrop, designed by Kelley.
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Williams, Eric. The Bastrop Advertiser and County News (Bastrop, Tex.), No. 65, Ed. 1 Monday, October 11, 1982, newspaper, October 11, 1982; Bastrop, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth735812/m1/1/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Bastrop Public Library.