Oil activity in Reeves County has given the area such a boost that entities can now add some amenities to Pecos, a city of about 14,000.
A new county hospital, paid for in cash, new schools and facilities for Pecos-Barstow-Toyah ISD, an expanded golf course, sports complex and rec center to name a few, are all in the works or complete, said Ken Winkles Jr., executive director of Pecos 4B Economic Development Corporation.
The hospital is going to be a replacement for the current building. Winkles said the Economic Development Corporation sold the hospital the land it’s being built on. Winkles said his predecessor, William Oglesby, started the process in late 2014 or early 2015.
He said they probably sold the hospital land sometime in the early part of 2016.
“… I’m glad the new hospital is coming online. They’ve had their challenges due to the supply chain issues,” Winkles said.
Brenda McKinney, administrator/CEO of the Reeves County Hospital District, said they are shooting for a mid-June opening. They plan an open house before that.
“It’ll be badly needed. It’s twice as large, give or take, almost twice as large as the current facility,” Winkles said.
In the last three years, Winkles said, Pecos has spent over a third of a billion dollars in quality of life items.
“You got a $178 million bond for the school. You got a $114 million new hospital. The county spent $18 million on the rec center. The city spent $15 million on the sports complex. The county spent another $8 million on the expansion of the golf course, two and a half million dollars on the senior citizens center, and another million dollars on the new library. If you add all those up, it approaches $350 million dollars for a town of 14,000 people. So yeah, when you actually put it down on paper, it’s a significant amount of expenditures by the taxing entities here to bring in the quality of life issues,” Winkles said.
Most entities had significant increases in taxable value, except the City of Pecos.
“… The city only owns the minerals underneath itself, which is the smallest part of Reeves County. They’ve seen a small increase,” Winkles said.
For 2021, the City of Pecos received about $773 million in tax revenue.
“… I learned this from a previous city councilman, the city has the most infrastructure to take care of with the least amount of tax money,” Winkles said.
“… If you take these increases in values and the property tax that is brought in. That’s where you get the third of a billion dollars worth of new quality of life amenities,” Winkles said.
With the new hospital, the $114 million price was paid in cash.
“There’s no debt … so there’s no debt for the citizens of Pecos at all on this new hospital. So that’s a good thing,” Winkles said.
He added that the amount of money the county has brought in has allowed them to finance the engineering of the first part of the Eastern Reliever Route, or the loop.
“Again, they’ve spent their money wisely. Everybody has, actually. Like I said, when you come up with $350 million worth of new quality of life items in Pecos, that’s a significant number,” Winkles said.
These are all facilities that the county did not have before.
“We had no recreation center. We had no sports complex. We did have a hospital that was 40 years old. The schools. Pecos High School was built 54 years ago and it’s still going to be there because it’s not one of the schools on this bond. But Bessie Haynes (Elementary) is being replaced, along with Austin Elementary. So it’s two new schools coming in. The $350 million doesn’t include the $20 million for the new football stadium,” Winkles said.
He added that a $20 million stadium, complete with purple track with yellow lines — for the school colors — is being paid for out of PBT ISD’s fund balance.
Winkles said the oilfield has slowed down over the past few years like everyone else, but activity is starting to bounce back, as has the rig count.
“We are at 30. We hadn’t been at 30 since March of 2020. We’ve seen a significant increase over the last two months. City sales tax is stabilized,” he added.
He said one of the things he’s learned in economic development is that without rooftops, retail doesn’t come.
“… We didn’t have the rooftops. So over the last six years, we’ve added 330 some-odd new housing units. That’s duplexes, triplexes, apartments and housing. I’ve got a 72-unit subdivision going right now that we’ve already sold 48 lots. We’ve got 30 new houses on the ground. We brought a new apartment complex online of 144 apartments. We hadn’t had a new apartment complex in 50 years. Kind of like the same thing with the grocery store. It took three years to get United here. But we now are no longer a one grocery store town. That was a great achievement by everybody that was involved in getting them here,” Winkles said.
He added that he is currently in negotiations with new to national chains to bring new locations into Pecos. He said one of them is Burke’s Outlet to replace Bealls. He added that other area small towns have done the same thing.
“… I’m trying to always deal with national chains. But in my job, everything takes so long. Like United, it was three years, but it was well worth the wait. Good things come to those who wait,” Winkles said.
The Texas Department of Transportation has already taken over the yet-to-be-built reliever route from U.S. Highway 285 south to Highway 285 North.
TxDOT told Reeves County they should do the engineering and the studies and then TxDOT would see if they would take it over.
The county hired Frank Spencer of Spencer and Associates in El Paso and they conducted the studies. Winkles said the takeover is sometime around 2026. It includes about two and a half years of right-of-way acquisition.
“So somewhere around ‘26, we should see the Eastern reliever route start by TxDOT. They’ve officially taken it off of Reeves County’s hands and got it in their pipeline. Now, the city or the county is working on the second section being a connector from south to 285. Over to Highway 17, so that would be section two of the loop,” Winkles said.
He added that the whole loop will probably happen in about 20 years.
The Eastern Reliever Route, or loop, will bring the traffic count down, he said.
The intersection of U.S. 285 and Business I-20 has averaged 11,400 vehicles a day in the last four years. Of that, about 20 percent of it is truck traffic.
“There’s about 2,500 trucks that come through that intersection a day … It (the loop) will highly bring the truck traffic down in downtown Pecos,” Winkles said.
North 285 used to be referred to as the “highway of death,” but Winkles said accidents have been cut significantly with the installation of Super 2’s in the last roughly four years. Super 2’s are rural highways that include periodic passing lanes.
He added that he understands that TxDOT has plans to expand 285 South all the way to Fort Stockton.
Winkles also looks at drilling permits and through the first three months they are up 120 percent over last year.
“Here’s the way I look at it is drilling permits tell you what’s going to happen. So if you don’t have any drilling permits, ain’t nothing happening. This year through March 31, we’ve had 284; last year 144. So it’s up 120%. We were at 30 rigs last week and a month ago, we were at 22. That doesn’t sound like much, however, that’s a 20% increase. The last time we were at 30 was March of 2020, exactly two years ago,” Winkles said.
They were at 85 rigs in November 2018.
“So the more rigs, the more sales tax, the more activity. And what I look at, again, is the drilling permits,” Winkles said.
The drilling permits tell you that sooner or later companies will be drilling because “they don’t get those drilling permits for nothing,” he added.
