To many zipping through rural Dickens County, Texas, toward the Metroplex on four-lane Highway 114/62, the county seat of Dickens might seem a place forgotten in time: a stone jailhouse right out of a John Wayne western, a dozen unpaved streets lined with derelict houses, and more retail and restaurants boarded up than bustling.
But county leadership and residents are well aware that just up the road is the flagship AI data center for a multi-billiondollar corporation about to go public on the Nasdaq exchange (see related story, this issue).
And prospects for the county, and its two incorporated cities, to benefit are on the table even as of this writing.
“The numbers are a game-changer,” said County Judge Kevin Brendle. “We’re not looking a at $200M wind farm, as was the case some years back in numerous West Texas counties, “but upwards of $1 billion, with $2 billion from Galaxy’s CoreWeave hyperscaler, if the investment scales with it.”
Since 2020, the arrival of Argo Blockchain (and its successor, Galaxy Digital) and the Helios bitcoin mining facility that is now being transformed primarily to processing AI (artificial intelligence)–driven data transactions have shaped the county’s employment prospects and tax base. Effects on the horizon look to be even more dramatic.
With careful planning in county policy and budgets, as well as wise city planning, say Brendle and County Attorney Aaron Clements, Dickens County can attract a range of jobs and housing, and help smooth out property tax impacts.
any new property coming on a county’s rolls in a given year is not included in its tax base — in Dickens County, currently about $500 million. Taxpayers’ rates might bump up a bit, to generate the same amount of revenue required to run the county. But in successive years, when new property depreciates fast, the tax rate gradually starts to skyrocket.
The higher property values go, the lower the tax rate would be to raise the same revenue as the year before — everything is based on last year’s revenue, what it takes to run the county.
“Then,” Clements said, “if we’re going to do business as is, we can only raise enough revenue to maintain the status quo; without the abatement they’ll see the yo-yo go way back up.” The county would prefer the tax rate stay stable—and so, likely, would taxpayers.
Brendle observed, “We saw this (in Dickens County) when Argo came in and they didn’t abate the taxes, to $470 million in taxes.”
with a major new industry offers a tax exemption that gives the ability to stabilize taxes over a period of years, but taxpayers see an immediate benefit via an increase in their homestead exemption.
“This is a unique opportunity in our county’s history,” said Brendle. Already, commissioners approved a county tax abatement last month.
Galaxy has entered into non-binding agreement for its Phase II, said Clements.
Taxpayers will see their tax benefit immediately when they get their bills this fall (payable January 1, 2026). With approximately 528 registered homestead exemptions in the county (some 40 percent of all Dickens County taxpayers), all will see the 20% general local option reduction. And 320 taxpayers in the county who are 65+ and/or disabled segment (20 percent more) will get to tack on one.
Brendle praised Clements’ thorough exploration of tax codes to land on a favorable plan for Dickens County.
“It’s not a common impact to see in counties our size,” said Clements acknowledged. And there are “not very many counties that are choosing this solution.”
“We’re trying to be aggressive” in planning, said Brendle. “We want those dollars the Galaxy and CoreWeave are going to be spending out here, to stay here as much as possible.”
Planning ahead for jobs growth and housing is another challenge for communities of all sizes— larger cities with more sophisticated planning organizations in place are often poised to prepare for new industry to come in, or to court industry as part of a long-range strategy. For Dickens County and its communities, such economic development organizations and strategies may be on the horizon, as mechanisms to help with attracting and retaining jobs and homes locally.
“Long-term,” Brendle said, “I believe there is a population that would choose our community off the Caprock” as their residence, given the proximity of Lubbock’s higherincome population. “We’re going to see a population growth, and we’ll see some cultural diversity that we don’t see now,” he said, comparing even Dickens County’s near-term future to the period from 1915 to 1930 when it was a major growth center due to the railroad’s arrival.
That four-lane U.S. and state highway that zips through the heart of Dickens? It could just become the county’s new “railroad,” bringing a pace of revitalization and prosperity that hasn’t recurred in a century.
