Page 24 - Considering College

Stanley T. Greer discusses in a January 2019 research report, Local Tax Abatements and the Texas
Wind Industry published by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, the impact of Chapters 312 and 313

of the Texas Tax Code which creates burdens that are “scarring rural Texas.” Mr. Greer carefully
rehearses the costs and benefits, with a legitimate emphasis on “costs” that impact the long-range

stewardship and utilization of an abundant resource in Texas—wind. While the benefits of
renewable energy resources are difficult to dispute, the costs of environmental degradation,

deleterious impacts on human health, the high costs of transmission to urban areas and the
sporadic reliability of wind energy all require thoughtful assessment of ultimate value.

Stewardship and appreciation of costs and benefits will lessen negative impacts on small
communities in West Texas. Public awareness and accountability are required to balance the

precarious equation of what is ultimately good for communities. Tahoka and dozens of other
independent school districts get immediate benefit from wind energy seemingly unavailable from

any other source.

Schools in many small communities are the glue, the pride of place, the last

bastion of public purpose that bonds the community together.

In part, what I saw in Tahoka, heard from Principal Don Worth and experienced through a

pragmatic sense of purpose was memorialized in the school’s motto: “We Serve, Students Win.”
Intentionally caring for what a community possesses sustains near and long-term value.

Schools in many small communities are the glue, the pride of place, the last bastion of public
purpose that bonds the community together. When visiting Booker High School, I was told by the

former school librarian that the school district (with less than 140 students, pre-k through 12) was
essential to the community. “Without it,” she said, “Booker would be boarded up.”

Purposefulness and stewardship take on heightened priority in the sparsely populated, windblown,

yet vital communities of the Panhandle and the South Plains.

If a family visits a college campus and finds indicators of a lack of stewardship of any kind, from

cleanliness of the restrooms to deliberate utilization of increasingly scarce resources—state
funding, tuition and fee dollars, gifts, grants and other means of material support—look elsewhere

for an institution that “gets it” like Tahoka does.

Clean restrooms may seem trite, but they are the tip of the stewardship iceberg.