By Joe Baker

The Kenedy School Board heard a grievance brought forward by Business Manager Janet Lott on March 29 asking for the board to reconsider earlier action ending her employment.

In the end, no hearts were changed. The board voted 4-3 against granting the grievance that would have renewed Lott’s employment contract.

Trustees Leo Valerio, Frank Nieto, Velma Garza and Tony Mejia voted against while Trustees Ed Monson, Dwain Groff and Carl Lundquist voted in favor.

A large group of spectators attended the meeting, most of which were there to show support for the business manager.

By Jason Clay Jansky

Betty Plant doesn’t have to see the work that’s being done around town to get a good idea of where Runge is heading. For fourteen years, she’s been cataloguing books, helping residents with research, and everything else that goes along with being involved in the public library.

As the library director, she’s been doing something new, here lately: giving out directions.

It’s happening more often, these days. Out-of-towners will stop in the library and ask where they can find a business or a city street.

"We see a whole lot of new people walking in," she said.

The census taken in 2000 showed Runge to be a quiet little rural town with lots of folks familiar with the poverty line. They number around 1,080 people living in 395 households with 289 families residing in the town.

By Jason Clay Jansky

Kenedy residents tired of standing in their yard with a water hose all evening will be glad to hear the city’s new water well is close to becoming operational.

Recently drilled by Thomas Moy and Sons Drilling, the 16-inch diameter 645-foot-deep well’s capacity is showing to be about 750 gallons a minute. Kenedy City Administrator Walter Hill said that could mean a reduction in Kenedy’s stage four water restrictions. The well is located on Overby Road just outside Kenedy.

A Kenedy man was pronounced dead at the scene of a fatal car crash on FM 743 April 1.

Isaac Ortega, 47, of Kenedy was driving his 1989 Plymouth Acclaim along that road at about 6 a.m. when the accident happened.

About 8.5 miles south of Kenedy, he attempted to take a left-hand curve at what a DPS accident report described as an "unsafe speed." Ortega lost control as a result and swerved off the roadway, striking a concrete culvert. He was not wearing a seatbelt.

The idea of an RV park at the 700 block of Davidson Street had some council members concerned and some local residents outspoken during Karnes City’s regular meeting March 27.

Karnes City property owner Dave Koehler pitched the idea to council members, requesting they allow his business idea to move forward by removing the ordinance restrictions on parked RVs in town.

"This is a very ambiguous ordinance," City Administrator Larry Pippen told council members, requesting they consider rewriting the ordinance before making any decisions on the RV park idea.