Amarillo, Potter County | featured news

Amarillo College is poised to eclipse 10,000 officially enrolled students for the first time since 2013.
A preliminary 12th-day headcount tallied 10,034 students, according to Vice President of Student Affairs Bob Austin.
“I think that efforts to improve enrollment processes for students have made a difference there,” Austin said. “I think also the student response to our eight-week course format probably had something to do with it.”

Potter County officials raised the bay doors Friday afternoon to its newest fire station, a $2 million state-of-the art building that technically will be unmanned.
Assistant Fire Chief Pat Fitzpatrick said the station — which houses five bays, a chef’s kitchen, lounge, gym, media room and four bedrooms — was built with the future in mind. The station on North Soncy Road will replace Station No. 3, a dirt-floored tin barn just down the road.
“Our stations are in bad shape,” Fitzpatrick said about the need to rebuild.

Truth be told, the City of Amarillo has no idea how many unsheltered homeless are in the city, but a group tasked with addressing homelessness is looking to change that.
The group, known as the Amarillo Continuum of Care, appointed 10 team leaders at its Friday board meeting to better tackle the annual Point in Time homeless count, which will be held in January, said chairwoman Kelly Stephens. Each team leader will be responsible for finding 10 volunteers to assist in the count, she said.

Danny Stewart and his wife, Deedee, were feeding their horses when they heard a dog barking in their pastoral area.
“We couldn’t find this dog barking until we came upon it,” Danny said. There, at the base of a septic tank last week, they found a 50-pound, black mixed-breed dog.
Not thinking the septic tank was too deep, he jumped approximately eight feet down into the tank.

In just one day, Norma Flores’ family doubled in size. “I was taking care of my nephews, my sister’s kids, and I’m the only one that could take care of them,” Flores said, “so I told my kids I’m going to bring my nephews so I could take care of them until I can’t. I took five boys and one girl, and then plus mine.”
That was a year ago. Flores already lived with her own five children, one grandchild and one more on the way. But she did not say “no” to her niece and nephew.

Just before last Christmas, my wife Kathy and I stood in line with hundreds of people, most wrapped in coats, warm hats, gloves and scarves, in cold New York City. We waited to enter a gleaming new building. Reassuringly in this age of terrorism, New York police officers in black helmets were stationed nearby, each with both hands on his military-style weapon.
One of many signs directing foot traffic toward the building was an orange one that said, “9/11 Families, 9/11 Rescue & Recovery Workers and Museum Members … Enter Here.”

One of my fellow Amarillo High Sandies came into first period class a little late that Tuesday morning. She said we should turn on the news because the radio said a plane had crashed in New York City.
At first, I imagined a smaller, personal plane flying too low and crashing into the urban jungle of the nation’s largest city, which no doubt would have been a newsworthy event. But as soon as the classroom television came on, we all knew that something much, much larger had happened.

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (AP) — Police say a Texas A&M student has died after her bicycle was struck by a garbage truck in College Station.
College Station police identified the victim as 21-year-old Alannah Rose Ritch of San Marcos.

Sergio Alcantara walked into the Amarillo EnterPrize Challenge orientation on Thursday with an idea: Specialized cattle feed mixtures. If things play out in his favor, he could walk away in March with as much as $100,000 to start his business.
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The voices behind Amarillo Economic Development Corp. are looking to redefine the way outsiders view Amarillo.
For years, infrastructure and workforce were the main components businesses looked for when choosing an area in which to develop, Doug Nelson, AEDC senior vice president, said Thursday during a media roundtable. And while that still holds true, Nelson said the millennial generation is pushing quality of life to the forefront of the want list.