Murphy Monitor kept readers up to date with a variety of 2024 news events including severe thunderstorms that swept through the city on Tuesday, May 28, downing trees, damaging roofs and fences and knocking out power to more than 300 homes. 

The Skyline Acres and Travis Estates neighborhoods were among the last to be restored.

The storms followed a Memorial Day weekend of wild weather across North Texas that included a tornado that rampaged east from Cooke County into Collin County. At seven people were killed in the hardest hit area along I-35 from Valley View to Sanger.  

June brought out mosquitos in Maxwell Creek and the mosquitos brought the threat of West Nile Virus. The city contracted for insecticide and larvicide spraying and no human cases were reported in Murphy.

A news story that ended the year much as it began – in court – was a proposal to build a densely-populated subdivision on 103 acres just north of Rolling Ridge Estates.

Murphy and Parker had refused to provide sewer service to the Restore the Grasslands (RTG) project, so the developer won approval from the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to build a wastewater plant allowed to dump up to 200,000 gallons of treated effluent into Maxwell Creek each day. 

Local residents, who feared up to 666 homes might be built on the site, fought the permit for the plant as well as creation of a Municipal Utility District (MUD) to operate it.

The protests sparked a March 13 town hall meeting in Murphy attended by developer Phillip Huffines and an April 23 Parker City Council meeting at which RTG proposed a settlement offer abandoning the sewage plant.

The Parker City Council took no action on the proposal, RTG filed to withdraw the property from Parker’s extraterritorial jurisdiction (ETJ) and the city filed to join a lawsuit filed by other cities challenging a new state law allowing developers 

To opt out of a city’s ETJ.

“There has been little movement on the lawsuits, the MUD contested case hearing or the Petition for Judicial Review,” Carrolyn Edmonson Moebius of Communities and Creeks United said in November.

Meanwhile, Parker approved a proposal by Centurion American Development Group to build 89 houses on 200 acres of Southfork Ranch property on either side of Hogge Road. 

The Ewing Ranch mansion from the CBS television show “Dallas” would continue in operation as a tourist destination.

In education news, the Class of 2024 graduated from Plano East Senior High School and Wylie High School (WHS), the State Board of Education (SBOE) approved an optional new curriculum for kindergarten through fifth grade and the Murphy Chamber of Commerce Scholarship Foundation awarded scholarships to area seniors.

The Plano East class of 1,353 students graduated May 25 at a commencement ceremony in Ford Center at The Star in Frisco. “One of the many strengths of our community lies in our diverse student body, varying perspectives [and] unique cultures,” said Principal David Jones, himself a Panthers alumnus. “But it is our shared experiences that have enriched us with empathy and understanding.”

WHS conferred diplomas on 691 students in a May 26 commencement at the Credit Union of Texas Event Center in Frisco.

“While today serves as a milestone worth celebrating, it also serves as a reminder of the responsibility that comes with this diploma,” said Kaleigh Wright, the student body president. “We are not just graduating; we are stepping into a world that needs our talents, our passions and our commitment to make a difference.”

In November, the SBOE voted 8-7 to approve the Texas Education Agency’s Bluebonnet Learning curriculum that includes reading lessons drawn from the Bible. Religious scholars had told the board the curriculum favored Christianity over other faiths.

By year’s end, neither the Plano Independent School District nor the Wylie Independent School District had adopted the program.

In May, the Murphy Chamber of Commerce Scholarship Foundation awarded $1,700 scholarships to eight high school seniors from Murphy.

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