Olney library, school arts programs see windfall

Young County Commissioners approved payouts to the Olney Community Library and Arts Center and the Olney Independent School District arts and music programs as part of a windfall from the Capital Credits for Counties Fund. Each of the programs will receive $63,207.04 within the next couple of weeks, Precinct 3 Commissioner Stacey Rogers said. The county commissioners allocated the $568,000 to nine county literacy and arts programs, libraries and child advocacy programs at its Sept. 26 meeting. including OCLAC and the One Act Play and band programs at Olney public schools, Mr. Rogers said.

The commissioners seemed surprised at their Sept. 12 meeting at the amount that they had to distribute this year from the Capital Credits Fund, which usually yields about $3,000 a year.

“We’ve had a windfall,” Judge Bullock told the commissioners. “We thought it was a mistake but it wasn’t. What we’re going to do is cover Olney, Newcastle, Loving, Graham, and a bunch of these other communities [with the funds]. We need to distribute that before the end of the budget year [on Sept. 30].”

Electric cooperatives that have lost contact with a previous customer who has earned capital credits sometimes report those uncashed checks to the state Comptroller’s office as unclaimed property. Texas law allows counties to claim a portion of unclaimed capital credits originating from their county and use them for specific programs, the state website said.

Although the funds can be used for economic development and disadvantaged businesses, the commissioners decided to focus on the arts, literacy, and children.

“We are just really fortunate to receive this kind of money to be distributed,” Mr. Rogers said. “There were criteria that was given to us – part of it was supporting comprehensive literacy programs and programs that supported arts and music, organizations that supported children’s advocacy centers. These are some organizations that we already support but we were glad we could put some new groups together and give them some support.”

Fort Belknap Electric Cooperative Chief Executive Kendall Montgomery said some of the additional funds could have come from the co-op’s “sincere effort to clean up our unclaimed capital credits.”

“As a result of retiring previous years’ capital credits, we did have a significant amount of unclaimed monies that were escheated to the state this year,” Mr. Montgomery said. Escheated funds are unclaimed funds that revert to the state.