If I had been given the opportunity to write an editorial explaining why Amarillo’s former interim city manager needed a boot in the backside, I might have written something like this:
Terry Childers overstayed his welcome in Amarillo and it was time for him to hit the road.
It wasn’t that he was doing a bad job administratively. By many lights, he had infused City Hall with a renewed can-do attitude and had made some key decisions involving key personnel. He hired a police chief, Ed Drain, who has committed his department to community policing. Good call … and Childers deserves credit for recognizing that initiative in the new police chief.
But, oh man, the city manager revealed a mouth that he at times couldn’t control.
His resignation this week came after only the latest example of Childers engaging his pie hole without thinking first. He muttered “stupid son of a b****” into an open mic in the direction of a constituent. That was the last straw.
He had earlier scolded the City Council — the very people who hired him — for creating a “dysfunctional” atmosphere at City Hall. And before that — not long after he got hired — Childers berated an emergency services dispatcher after he misplaced his briefcase at a local hotel and all but called out the National Guard to find it.
The city manager is something of an ambassador for the city he serves, for the people to whom he answers. Whether it’s the elected body that hired him or taxpayers who foot the bill with their own money, the city manager is a hired hand. He works for us, not the other way around.
In that regard, the interim manager fell short of the mark.
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I didn’t get to write that editorial, quite obviously. So I have decided to state my piece here.
The Amarillo Globe-News didn’t say it, either. Instead of offering a high-minded editorial that took Childers to the woodshed and delivered a whuppin’ he deserved, the newspaper cleared out the Opinion page and blasted a sophomoric “Goodbye Terry” farewell message that accomplished nothing except perhaps make Childers a sympathetic character in an ongoing feud in which has been engaged with the publisher of the newspaper, Lester Simpson.
Maybe the G-N will get around — eventually — to offering some words of wisdom about what we have all just witnessed.
Childers was right about a few things during his time in Amarillo. One of them related to the “caustic” political atmosphere at City Hall, which Councilman Elisha Demerson suggested might be at the heart of the “stupid SOB” comment the other evening. The environment frustrated Childers, according to Demerson, who suggested that the manager was venting.
The events of the past few days — with all the characters involved in this soap opera — have made the city’s task of finding a new permanent city manager even more difficult.
Amarillo is undergoing some pretty radical changes at this very moment, starting with the effort to reshape, revive and remake its downtown district. The city needs a strong, steady hand to guide the municipal ship. It also needs a City Council that acts as a team, rather than a collection of individuals each with his own agenda.
I am going to say a prayer or two that the city will find that individual — whether he or she lives elsewhere or perhaps already is on board within the current administrative staff.
I believe most of us who have been watching City Hall over the years would agree on at least one critical point: The city has a serious mess on its hands.
