Town of Anthony Texas
Anthony Texas started out with the name La Tuna as a dusty dirt colony made up of a cluster of homes that used shallow well water for all purposes, including drinking water. In time, the community residents banded together to petition the State of Texas to allow their community to incorporate. Starting with limited municipal services as well as limited financial services, the Town of Anthony Texas, was officially charted by the state of Texas in 1957.
In 1984, as the mayor of Anthony, I along with a delegation from the town met with Texas Governor Bisco at his Austin office. He wanted to know what this small town at the tip of the panhandle of his state needed most. We went prepared to inform him of all the frightful hardships our constituents were having to bear. The governor patiently listened while we detailed the frightful impoverished conditions our constituents were going through. We included pictures of our town’s worn-out sewer plant, unreliable town utilities, dirt streets lacking sidewalks or curbing, a worn-out underground sewer system that kept breaking down, and a lack of police and fire protection such as fire hydrants. We informed that our town’s residents were still having to rely on shallow well water for all their purposes, and how this situation was unable to meet the minimum Texas state standards for consumption.
In our presentation, we included correspondence from our town’s consulting firm who kept urging the town that we needed to take immediate action to replace all the town’s worn-out utilities. At the end of listening to the oidia’s conditions of our town, the governor obviously showed he was disturbed to learn how one of his state’s municipalities could continue to survive under such a hideous lack of basic municipal utilities or services to its residents. He stated that no one living in his state should have to bear such impoverished living conditions.
After our presentation, Governor Brisco graciously committed to assigning one of the municipal consultants from his Community Affairs Department to come live in Anthony for one year. The consultant would advise and assist the town. The consultant would start by assisting the town in developing a master plan that mainly consists of a framework for the town’s growth in a responsible way. We started by holding public meetings to encourage the town citizens to attend and voice their opinions as to what the town needed most—as it turned out the public was not shy in giving their opinions and expressing frustrations about the town failing to provide the basic municipal utilities and services. Taking into consideration the public input, in the end, we had to reduce all the town's wants into the town’s realistic priorities.
The state municipal consultant and town officials were successful in receiving various federal and state grants for the overdue improvement of the town priorities. Those grants made it possible for the town citizens to start seeing long-awaited improvements in the town's public works and services that for years, had alluded to its ability to make all those improvements a reality.
For the first time in Anthony’s history, the town residents were able to have peace of mind when the town discarded the original shallow well water that was always susceptible to bacteria contamination. With the help of grants, the town was able to provide potable water to all its citizens. Finally, the town would provide its residents and businesses with new deep-water wells that at some 2000’ deep made it possible to reach the underground clean water strata. Thus, the town assured its residents that thereafter they would be able to depend on fresh clean potable water for all their needs, including potable water for drinking purposes, as well as for their well-being and enjoyment.
Besides the importance of providing potable water to its residents and a better impression to travelers passing through the corner of the state, we were able to apply for state and federal grants to make it possible to replace all the town’s obsolete municipal utilities and services. With state and federal assistance, The town of Anthony was able to replace all the town’s underground sewer system, upgrade the sewer plant, and pave all the town's dirt streets including adding sidewalks, gutters, high-pressure hydrants throughout the town that help lower the town housing and business sector fire insurance premiums by over one third.
These improvements automatically attracted new businesses, different national chains, and new housing that brought over 500 new jobs to Anthony. The national statistic indicates that for every dollar spent in a community, it, in turn, turns around 3 or 4 more times when money is spent locally on businesses such as drug stores, restaurants, doctors, taxes, utility payments, food items, and other local establishments. Thus, every dollar spent locally would circulate several times in that community increasing the value and profits of the local business and city’s income.
Two years after Governor Dolph Brisco had sent one of his municipal planners to live in Anthony to help our improvised town and replace our obsolete utilities, the governor was invited to a tour of Ft. Bliss by the commanding General. On that same day, the citizens
of the Town of Anthony had also prepared a reception for the governor to express their gratitude for believing in the town that had become stagnated, but that was now changing to become a dynamic growing municipality.
The commanding general, realizing the tour was going to make the governor late for the town ceremony to honor the governor, quickly had a helicopter pilot fly the governor to the town park and save the ceremony that was specifically to thank the governor. In his remarks, the governor praised the town citizens for uniting for one cause and for working together in a short time to convert their town into a modern progressive town.
In his closing remarks, the governor stated that The Town of Anthony should serve as an example for other small towns to follow the lead.
תגובות