Potter County | featured news

It took an extra 24 hours to happen. But despite the anxious wait, Jason Crespin did make the cut.
He is indeed among the top 10 contestants to co-host with Kelly Ripa on “LIVE with Kelly” Friday, October 21.
The list was released on the program’s website, livekelly.com, before the show actually aired. Crespin waited to make the news official until he actually heard Ripa announce it herself.
read more

Members of the legal community adorned themselves in red and gathered together at St. Mary’s Cathedral Tuesday.
The color represents the spirit of God, they filled the cathedral with its various warm hues as if clothing themselves in his Spirit.
Together they prayed for justice and God’s leading in their professional lives.
“Justice will flourish in his time, and fullness of peace forever,” the choir sang, leading the entire sanctuary to remember the justice Christ has brought with his gift of life.

Claiming they were wrongfully passed over for promotion, two members of the Amarillo Fire Department have sued the city.
Nathan Sloan Nurek and Michael Brandon Stennett, both employed by AFD, filed a lawsuit Sept. 22 in Potter County District Court against the City of Amarillo and Interim City Manager Terry Childers. Childers is being sued in an official capacity only, the suit claims.
read more

Dan William Miller celebrated his 48th birthday on Sept. 25. For 34 of those years, he watched his birthday come and go. But for the last 14 years, he has been unable to do that.
The visual clarity that allowed him to enjoy the annual milestone is gone.
Instead, he is learning to adjust to the rapid loss of his vision from a rare eye disease, cone-rod dystrophy.
read more

While Amarillo’s low unemployment rate is a good sign for job hunters, recruiters are dealing with an unpleasant side effect: Warm-body syndrome.
As the unemployment rate in an area falls, the pool of people actively seeking work shrinks. Employers searching for ideal candidates are left staring at the prospect of settling for any warm body that can fill a job opening.
read more

The saga of a crumbling paving job on one of the city’s most-traveled roads might be finally coming to an end as the details of a legal settlement between Advanced Pavement Maintenance and the City of Amarillo have surfaced.
But not everyone on both sides of the agreement is completely happy about it.
“They economically blackmailed us,” APM co-owner Scotty Knutson said Tuesday night after the settlement was brought up again at that day’s Amarillo City Council meeting. “I was already in debt and could not afford to fight them in court for years.”

The family of Alton Rodgers has filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice on his behalf, seeking $120 million in damages.
Amarillo lawyer Jesse Quackenbush filed the suit Tuesday on behalf of Rodgers’ mother, Gwendolyn Delores Patrick.
Rodgers, 31, died on Jan. 19, at the Clements Unit state prison. At the time his death was ruled a homicide after it was reported there was an altercation between him and his cellmate, Joe Greggs.

Jason Crespin won’t find out today if he’s among the top 10 contestants vying to co-host with Kelly Ripa on “Live with Kelly” Friday, October 21.
The Amarillo Little Theater Academy director sent out word on his Facebook page that there was a glitch in the online voting in the competition last Sunday.
As a result, the balloting continues for nine more hours today from 1 p.m. to 9:59 p.m. Texas time. All the information is on the show’s website, livekelly.com, through the “Live with Kelly and You” contest link.

In 2015 the Texas Panhandle provided Christmas gifts to more than 17,000 impoverished children across the globe. The gifts came in the form of simple shoeboxes, filled with dolls, socks, crayons, toothbrushes and soccer balls.
The boxes were dropped off at Saint Stephen Church in Amarillo, the main Texas Panhandle collection center for Operation Christmas Child, before they were taken to a processing center in Dallas and, finally, shipped all over the world.

Today is the final day to register to vote in November’s election, and the League of Women Voters will be registering voters at two locations.
Volunteers will be taking registrations from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at United Amigos supermarket, 3300 East Interstate 40, and also from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Randall County Annex, 4111 S. Georgia St. Residents can also pick up a voter registration application card at any Amarillo public library branch. The form must be postmarked today.