The Fayette County Appraisal District certified the 2021 taxable property values for the various local governments last week. These are the numbers that local governmental bodies will use to calculate property tax revenue for next year’s budgets.

The Czech Heritage Society of Texas’ Summer State Meeting and Genealogy Conference was held Saturday at the Texas Czech Heritage & Cultural Center in La Grange. The event was hosted by The Fayette County Czech Heritage Society, which was celebrating its 35th anniversary this year. Shown above are, left, Destiny Hollingsworth, the 2022-23 CHS Miss Texas Czech-Slovak Queen & her Little Czech-Slovak Sister Glorianna Hollingsworth, right, enjoying some kolaches before the start of Saturday’s festivities. The girls sang the U.S. and Czech and Slovak national anthems during the morning program. See Page B3 for more photos from Saturday’s program. Photo by Jeff Wick

The Round Top town courthouse’s 100th birthday is coming up in 2025, and town leaders are trying to come up with a way to improve the area around it. “We’re generating a lot of sales tax revenue and we wanted to think about what we could do to give the town square the TLC it deserves,” said Round Top mayor Mark Massey.

State and federal pandemic food programs provided free lunches at nearly all schools in America last year. Those programs are coming to an end, and some schools will resume charging students for lunch. That won’t be the case is La Grange, however.