andrew dismukes saturday night live. checking out books · 9/19/2020 · buying/selling gold,...
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City of Groves tax rate to decreaseBy Cassandra [email protected]
GROVES — The City of Groves approved a tax rate of 74.91 cents per $100 valued for the upcoming year at this week’s city council meeting.
The rate decreased from 76.16.
“Long story short, it goes up a little bit in maintenance and operation and decreases in debt service,” City Manager D.E. Sosa said. “The increase revenue cannot be more than 3.5 percent by state law, so that was one of the big rea-sons the rate decreased this year.”
The maintenance and op-eration fund includes govern-ment functions and services such as the fire, police, streets, drainage parks, library activi-ty building, garage, and prop-erty maintenance.
“The tax rate that we are going to levy is going to bring in an estimated $5.6 million,” Sosa said. “It costs the city $3.7 million to run the police department and $1.7 million to run the fire department. Those property taxes actually only cover fire and police.”
Out of a $20 million budget, $5.6 million comes from prop-erty taxes.
“The rest is sales tax reve-nue and a multitude of other things,” Sosa said. “I think it’s important for people to un-derstand that their taxes are paying for only 25 percent of general government. The rest is made up from other reve-nue streams.”
By Mary [email protected]
NEDERLAND — After months of closed doors, the Marion and Ed Hughes Public Library is open to the public but with lim-itations.
The library, located at 2712 Nederland Avenue, is open on a preliminary schedule from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday. Curbside service will continue from 10 a.m. to noon on the days they are normally open for those who are a little more conservative about where they go
and time spent there, library director Vic-toria Klehn said.
Not long after the doors opened on Friday, Mary Speight and Brit-tani Maier were busy getting books.
“I’ve missed the library and the ladies and gentleman that work here,” Speight said. “They always steer me in the right di-rection.”
Maier was at the library picking up some Christine Feehan novels, one of her favor-ites, she said.
Checking out books
Nederland library opens to limited number of patrons
See ‘Library,’ page A7 See ‘Tax,’ page A6
Mary Meaux/The News
Mary Speight, left, checks out books with the help of Kristi McCurley at the Marion and Ed Hughes Public Library in Nederland on Friday. The library has officially reopened to limited hours from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Friday.
Locals share stories of SNL funnyman
By Mary [email protected]
Locals have known Andrew Dismukes is a funny guy. Now, his humor will be on a national stage as one of the newest cast members of Saturday Night Live.
A 2013 graduate of Port Nech-es-Groves High School, Dis-
mukes has been a writer for the show for the past three years.
“I’m not surprised,” former broadcast journalism class teacher Lisa (Mitchell) Johnson said. “When I met Andrew, it was, how do you say, he has that innate humor in him. He’s just got it.”
Johnson’s class was responsi-
ble for PNG Prime Time, an in-house Friday morning broadcast where the class would anchor the
announcements, work events, edit highlights and more.
It was during his senior year that Dismukes convinced his teacher to allow him and others to do some fun breaks from the
normal announcements, and anybody in the building at the
time will remember “Advice from Andrew,” Johnson said.
The tongue-in-cheek skit cen-tered around “Dear Abby”-like letters taken from a box in the cafeteria. The box and letters were part of the skit.
“He would read the letter and ad lib an answer,” she said while giggling. “It was dating advice and the most silly thing ever. The bad news about it is the kids in the building over the next three years begged me to get someone else to do it (after Dismukes left), but you can’t recreate it. You have to have it and Andrew
has the talent to understand you have to take it seriously even when you are funny.”
Johnson said Dismukes worked at his comedy and honed his skill.
“He told me he planned to write comedy,” she said. “I thought, ‘Dude, whatever you want to do, you will succeed.’ He didn’t take it
Port Neches amends budget for Hurricane Laura, other expensesBy Cassandra [email protected]
PORT NECHES — Southeast Texas cities dealt with not only one, but two major disasters this year. Throw in the TPC explo-sions late last year, and the City of Port Neches is dealing with three incidents.
All of these unexpected events led to a $440,000 budget in-crease for the city’s 2019-2020 fiscal year.
City Manager Andre Wimer said one issue involves known
and expected expenditures relat-ed to Hurricane Laura. Expendi-tures are in the $250,000 range.
“That will include personnel costs in terms of preparation and response to the storm, addi-tional costs for collection of de-bris and processing that debris,” he said. “It also includes things like overtime for employees that remained here and worked in advance of the storm and subse-quently beyond the typical work-day.”
Wimer said costs could have been much higher.
“We were expecting to be di-rectly hit by the hurricane,” he said. “So I think that in terms of expectation, it was really unknown until the event hap-pened, and the ultimate course of the storm dictated the amount of damage that was incurred in Port Neches. It could have been significantly more. Conversely, it could have been less.”
The city spent $225,000 on emergency preparedness wages for Hurricane Laura.
Due to the last-minute turn in the hurricane’s path, South-
east Texas missed the brunt of the storm. As such, the Mid- and South County cities did not meet the necessary threshold in order to receive monetary aide and re-imbursements.
“Those expenses will be the city’s to bear in terms of prepa-ration, restoration and dispos-able costs, which came primarily from green waste,” Wimer said.
Other changes that resulted in increases in expenditures and revenue include disasters such as the TPC explosion and onset of COVID-19.
Expenditures jumped from $11,453,150 to $11,893,150. Rev-enue increased from an estimat-ed $11,192,650 to $11,407,650.
Purchasing COVID-19 sup-plies added $24,500 to expendi-tures. Disaster protection wages for TPC totaled $131,000 and disaster repairs around $44,000.
Wimer said the town would receive reimbursements for some costs, but not all.
“In terms of the TPC incident, those costs were reimbursed,” he
Andrew Dismukes among new faces of comedy series
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*With approved credit. Some restrictions may apply. Member must be in good standing and receive a loan from Neches FCU in order to qualify. Valid on New Loans only. Loan must be $10,000 or more to receive this offer, not including credit card, line of credit and share secure loans. Receive $100 for loans over $10,000, Receive $200 for loans over $20,000, Receive $300 for loans over $30,000, Receive $400 for loans over $40,000. While supplies last. Prize must be redeemed within 30 days of funding. May not be used in conjunction with other
offers or giveaways. Valid August 17 to October 10, 2020. Must complete the application process for a home equity loan or mortgage loan by October 10, 2020 to qualify.
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Ford Park could be up for bids, againBy Mary [email protected]
BEAUMONT — Ford Park Entertainment Complex is back on the table as Jefferson County Commissioners are set to discuss putting the property out for bid, again.
Commissioners will meet at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday to discuss rebidding the sale of Ford Park.
The public can view the meeting online on the county’s website.
Deborah Clark, purchasing agent for the county, said if commissioners approve the issue it would be advertised twice in local newspapers, then published on a Texas state website
Today’s forecast:
0 percent chance of rain, high of 85, low of 70
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See ‘Dismukes,’ page A7
See ‘Budget,’ page A7
Saturday Night LiveAirs: 10:29 p.m. SaturdaysWhere: NBC (KJAC-12.2; Spectrum channel 50)
Andrew Dismukes
See ‘Park,’ page A7