League City’s celebration of its 50th anniversary continued last Saturday with a gala at South Shore Harbour Resort. The affair featured the Ezra Charles Band, the Fuzion Contemporary Dance Company, a choir group from the Clear Creek school district and it brought together old and new residents of League City.

Many past mayors and council members were there as well as many of the city’s current leaders, said city spokeswoman Kristi Wyatt.

If you missed the gala, Wyatt said there are still more events coming up this year. There is an interdenominational Thanksgiving service being planned for later in the year. A time capsule is also being worked on and will be buried later this year to be reopened in 2037. If you want to be part of the time capsule follow the contact information at the city’s website.

Wyatt also said the city will be collecting and sharing people’s stories and memoires of League City throughout the year.

If you missed the night’s fun here is a chance to catch up. The first person speaking on video is state Rep. Larry Taylor, Wyatt said.

LEAGUE CITY — The League City Chamber of Commerce now has a drive-through, joked Jason E. Ebey, the president and CEO of the chamber. The chamber’s office, 1101 West Main Suite R, is without a front wall after a Nissan Frontier plowed into the building at about 6:30 p.m. Sunday.



The driver pulled into the parking lot and accidently hit the accelerator instead of the break, said League City police Sgt. John Jordan. Nobody was hurt, he said.

The truck only had a few scratches and lost a mirror, Ebey said. His office, on the other hand, lost two desks, four chairs, three computers and an eight-foot postage machine.

“All that was in gobs of pieces,” he said.



It was fortunate no one was in the office at the time, Ebey said. Normally he would be there on a Sunday night doing a little work but on that particular night he decided to stay home and watch the Academy Awards with his wife, he said.

He ended up missing the award’s show since he had to deal with a truck in his office, he said. “Had it not been for the Academy Awards who know what it would have been like,” Ebey said.

Despite the accident the chamber and the visitor center are still up and running, Ebey said. A new wall should be up by the end of the week, he said.

Turn around, don’t drown are the four words Dena Mahan, emergency management coordinator for League City, wants drivers to remember as thunderstorms batter the county.

The flash flood warning issued by the National Weather Service was extended to 4:30 p.m. If you are going to be out driving around League City check out the city’s Facebook page. The public information office is updating the status of flooded and closed streets.

In response to Saturday's home invasion by a man posing as a utility worker, League City has posted a video to help residents spot a real city employee versus an imposter.

A utility worker never needs to go inside your house, said Nancy Massey, the city's utility billing manager, in the video. The video has a slide show of city employees in their uniforms and name badges while they stand in front of city marked vehicles.

Anybody suspicious about a city worker can call the police department's nonemergency number, 281-332-2566, to verify their employment, the video states.

The video is informative and the music is pretty good, too. Hopefully the city's marketing department comes up with a web game next. Something like whack-a-mole but where you get to whack thieves posing as city employees.

The residents in League City think they’re pretty smart. It turns out they may have some proof to back up that claim.

The Business Journals’ On Numbers, a division of American City Business Journals, ranked League City as one of the top ten smartest cities in Texas, and 99th in the U.S., with a population between 50,000 and 99,000.

The Journal decided that League City residents were smarter than most by looking at 2009 data from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Turns out a little less than 6 percent of residents 25 or older dropped of high school and an impressive 40 percent of the residents have at least a bachelor’s degree.

Other Texas cities on the list were College Station, The Woodlands, Frisco, Flower Mound, Sugar Land, Allen and Pearland.

But of course the bright folks up in League City didn’t need the Journal to tell them how smart they are.

“This survey shows what many of us already know here in League City, that our residents are intelligent and forward-thinking individuals,” said Rich Oller, acting city manger, in a news release.

Now it’s time to put those smarts to good use.

“We hope that they will continue to use their brainpower to help guide the city by participating in the government process,” Oller said.

LEAGUE CITY — In what reads like a real life episode of the popular TV show “Glee,” the students in the Symphonic Treble Choir at Clear Creek Intermediate have won a $1,500 classroom make over by putting together their own classroom musical.



The students in Skyler Yancey and Summer Brauer choir class entered and won a competition hosted by the nationally syndicated Kidd Kraddick radio morning show. Their song was broadcast on the radio and they got to turn in a list of improvements they’d like for their classroom: new paint and fabric on the walls, a projector, a karaoke machine and a disco ball.

What’s the disco ball for?

“So we can dance,” said Lauren Radcliffe, a seventh grader in the class.

Below is the video the students sent in to the Kidd Kraddick show. Brauer and Yancey said the students in the Symphonic choir and the boys in the sixth grade choir class worked to adapt a song from the “Hairspray” musical, “Mama I’m a Big Girl Now,” to fit the competition.

Related Story: Students win contest to fund classroom makeover

LEAGUE CITY — After years of relying on an entirely volunteer fire department, Brad Goudie was recently hired as League City’s first full-time fire chief.

The department, which counts on a roster of about 125 volunteer members, will stay a volunteer force, but the new chief does have some challenges and important tasks ahead of him.

After his first couple of weeks on the job, Goudie sat down with The Daily News to talk about how his experience will serve him as the fire department’s first full-time chief. Below is the interview with Goudie.

Related Story: Chief tasked with combining emergency services

A city budget is one of the most important guiding documents a city has. A budget is a prediction and a guide to where a city will be and what it will accomplish in the coming year. But budgets can be incredibly dense and complicated.

League City wins awards for their open budget process but nonetheless the nearly $94 million proposed budget document is quite a tome.

See the Proposed Budget FY 2012 here

In an effort to help our readers get an idea of where the money is going, we took all that information and created an interactive series of charts to compare city spending by different categories, such as infrastructure, public safety and debt payments. Or you can compare the 2012 proposed budget to the estimates of 2011 spending and the actual 2010 budget.



See the Interactive League City Budget FY 2012

The interactive chart also lets you drill down by department. Want to see how much the city spends on the police department? Click on the Public Safety pie chart and then on the Police Department. What you see will is a chart that shows you how much the city spends on personnel, supplies, repairs, etc.

We got the idea after we saw a similar chart for the City of Chattanooga. It’s a great tool and we hope more budgets start popping up online this way. The Daily News is working to do the same thing with other municipal budgets in the area — League City is just the first — and then the county budget and even school board budgets.

In a time when money is tight, it’s good to have a look under the hood and take a peek at where the money is going. League City’s budget will come before the city council at their next meeting. Council members have been looking over and debating the city’s proposed spending for the last couple weeks. At that meeting, city residents will also have a chance to comment on the budget.

Related story: League City budget calls for spending increase