The West Texas Justice of the Peace & Constable Association has chosen Gray County to host their annual conference set for April of 2026, a first ever for Gray County.
The conference is a four-day event that brings together JPs, clerks and constables from all over Texas where they can get to know one another, brainstorm, and train, all while taking in a plethora of knowledge about how each county and their precincts work based on their demographic, and perhaps even be inspired to try something new that would benefit their own county.
Jennifer Hartman, the Chief Clerk for Justice of the Peace Precinct 2 & 4, is already working on the schedule of events that will take place over those four days, and although it seems like she has plenty of time from now until the conference next April, there’s a ton that has to be done to make the Gray County experience memorable.
“We do this every year in April when the clerks, JPs and constables can all come together,” she said. “We do trainings, community time to kind of just get away and decompress, learn things, and meet the new JPs, constables and clerks.”
“This is our time first hosting this. Because we’re such a large area-we cover 103 counties, all the way from the top of the panhandle down to El Paso and over to just southwest of Wichita Falls-what they try to do is one year have it up north and one year have it down south. So this year in April it was in Midland and last year it was held in Borger, so we were able to secure the bid and get it this year.”
For this particular area in the panhandle, there’s expected to be between 60-80 people attending the conference, so Jennifer and the entire JP’s office is hard at work reserving venues and planning out the schedule of events.
“I’ve kind of spearheaded the whole thing, but Judge Ogle and Judge Sims are helping, Michelle my co-clerk and Kim, Judge Sims’s clerk are also helping me. Constable Montgomery and Constable Rushing-Rushing has put together the training for the constables and he has already been on foot asking for donations. We’ve also already secured some venues for our evening activities.”
While there’s plenty of work to be done during the four-day event, there’s also time to have some fun.
“We have venues for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday night, just for fun little themed nights we’ll be doing this year, and we’re really enjoying putting all that together.”
“We’ve spoken to Weekends Sports & Entertainment and we are going to go out there and have Monday Night Madness to play games and have fun competitions. On Tuesday night, we are in talks with Ate-Oh-Six for Taco Tuesday and on Wednesday night, Vista Rich is donating their venue to us. That’s going to be our big theme night because that’s when we’re opening up the Gavels and Guns Saloon, so it’s going to be an Old West theme. It’ll be a time to just let loose, hang out and get to talk with all these people who are going through the same things we’re going through in these jobs.” The conference is completely self-funded, so the JP’s office is asking for donations to help make this annual event a success, and in turn help support our Justices of the Peace, clerks, and constables who tend to work behind the scenes and don’t get near the credit they deserve. It’s not every day that you see them asking for anything at all, so by actively supporting this once in a blue moon event, it shows how much they are appreciated for an otherwise thankless job.
“The money is for our lunches and dinners for everyone, but we also look for donations as far as silent auction items or gift cards, anything like that because on our Wednesday night, we have a silent auction and a raffle, and that money goes for scholarships for the WTJPCA members’ families. This year in Midland, they were able to award nine $1,000 scholarships, and last year in Borger they awarded eight $1,000 scholarships. I know last year Constable Montgomery’s granddaughter received one and Judge Ogle’s granddaughter received one as well. We try to get as many donations as we can to help put on something really great so people are like, ‘this was awesome, we love coming to Pampa!’ and so that we also have plenty of money to give out as many scholarships as we can.”
“We do have three levels of sponsorships so if people would like to donate that way. We are a 501(c)(6) organization, so the donations are tax deductible. Our levels are: the gold level which is $1,000 to $2,000 and within that level you get a vendor booth, the meals with us and access to all the activities we do in the evenings; the silver level which is $500 to $999 and the bronze level which is $250 to $499.”
The office is getting ready to send out letters to the public explaining what the organization does and what the donations are for, and for anyone who would like to donate to the event can contact the office at 806-669-8015.
“If anyone wants to donate, all they have to do is give us a call here at the office and we will be glad to take a donation from them. If anyone wants to help support this organization, we would really appreciate it.”
“I really like this organization because this conference is a time for all of us to come together and we sit and talk and get our training, and we’re able to learn-especially up here, we are such a rural court. A lot of the classes we take aren’t really geared toward rural courts, but in these classes held by the conference, we are able to sit and talk and see how they might do something this way in their office and we might do it another way, but we can go, ‘hey, that’s a better way to do that!’ It’s really nice and it really helps.”
