The Marfa City Council is expected to revisit which publication should serve as the city’s official newspaper of record after a proposal to formally designate the Big Bend Sentinel failed to advance and the newspaper suspended its weekly print edition for the summer.
A proposed resolution presented to the council in June would have allowed members to continue publishing required notices through the Sentinel’s digital edition or select a qualifying print newspaper in an adjoining county. The council took no action, leaving the city’s prior designation in place for now, according to Councilmember Travis Acreman.
Acreman said the resolution was not requested or promoted by a particular council member. Instead, he said, Mayor Manuel Baeza’s legal consultant, Teresa Todd, reminded the council that the city is responsible for designating an official newspaper each fiscal year.
“That did not occur last October, and the resolution was presented to consider if the digital Sentinel would be a sufficient vehicle for public notice while print distributions are on hold,” Acreman said in an email.
Acreman said he made a motion to officially designate the Sentinel as the newspaper of record, but the motion received no second. The agenda item therefore died without a vote.
“We will likely revisit the question in October, and the city’s previous designation remains in effect until then,” Acreman said.
Resolution No. 2026-06 states that Marfa did not formally designate an official newspaper for the 2025-26 fiscal year but had historically used the Big Bend Sentinel. The proposal was prompted by the Sentinel’s June 18 announcement that it would temporarily stop printing physical copies while evaluating rising printing costs and changes in community journalism.
“Your mailbox will have no print edition this week, but your inbox will,” the Sentinel told readers. The publication said it would continue reporting online and increase its email newsletters from one to two per week.
Marfa will soon begin work on its 2026-27 budget and property tax rate, a process that requires the publication of certain legal notices.
Texas law generally requires a municipality to select an official newspaper and use it to publish ordinances, notices and other matters that must be made public. A qualifying newspaper ordinarily must be published at least weekly, devote at least 25% of its space to general-interest material, have appropriate postal registration and have operated regularly for at least 12 months.
State law considers a weekly newspaper to have published regularly and continuously if it omits no more than two issues during a 12-month period.
In counties without a qualifying newspaper, state law also permits governmental entities to use certain digital publications. Those digital newspapers must have an audited paid-subscriber base, have operated for at least three years, employ staff in the jurisdiction, regularly cover local government and events, provide general-interest news and update at least weekly.
The proposed Marfa resolution presented two alternatives. The council could determine that the Sentinel qualifies for digital publication of notices, or it could use a print newspaper in an adjoining county that covers Marfa and meets the statutory requirements.
The resolution did not identify a publication in the section formally designating the newspaper of record. That space remained blank.
Sylvia Borunda Firth, an attorney with the Bojorquez Law Firm who responded to questions on the city’s behalf, said city staff placed the matter on the agenda because the Sentinel had previously served as Marfa’s official newspaper.
“The resolution presented to city council offered alternatives,” Firth wrote. “No action was taken on the resolution and it will likely be presented to the council again in the future.”
Although the city did not adopt the resolution or approve Acreman’s motion, Acreman said the Sentinel’s previous designation remains effective until the council addresses the issue again, likely at the beginning of the next fiscal year in October.
