Category Archives: local news

local news

Pumping water saves water? Sure it does

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Allow me this admission.

Sometimes — maybe more often than I care to admit — I’m a bit slow on the uptake when it involves certain elements of science.

I’m not a scientist. Or a mathematician. Or an accountant. Numbers and scientific theories boggle me.

So it is with that caveat that I suggest that I am beginning to accept the notion that pumping water out of Lake Meredith to 11 cities throughout the Panhandle actually saves surface water that collects in the lake.

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/29161212/pumping-lake-meredith-2015-outlook

The Canadian River Municipal Water Authority is starting to pump water out of the lake in the wake of recent rainfall that has continued to restore the lake levels to something far greater than puddle designation.

Kent Satterwhite, general manager of CRMWA, said: “Everything we pump out of the lake is one gallon less than we pump out of the (Ogallala) aquifer.” He said it is “really important. The aquifer as you use it, it’s gone. It recharges to some slight degree … So it’s really important to try to preserve it and that’s why the lake is here to take some of the heat off the aquifer.”

Who knew?

Pumping water also maximizes the quality of the water, Satterwhite said. The Canadian River contains salt that evaporates more easily during dry periods.

Lake Meredith’s levels have risen fairly dramatically in recent days. It’s nearly at 50 feet, which is far greater than the 26 feet it measured in 2013. OK, so the lake is now about halfway toward its historic high of 100-plus feet set back in the early 1970s.

I guess I’m trying to express some appreciation of the knowledge that water managers must have to monitor this priceless resource.

The region depends on it at almost every level imaginable. There must be some faith placed in the individuals charged with ensuring we keep it as close to forever as we can.

local news, State news

Red-light cameras to stay in operation

Let’s put the effort to ban cities from deploying red-light cameras on ice for another two years.

And then let us hope the Texas Legislature fails again to impose its will on cities who are seeking ways to prevent motorists from running through stop lights and endangering other motorists and pedestrians.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/05/01/amid-investigation-activists-critical-red-light-ca/

The 2015 Legislature won’t enact a statewide ban on the cameras. It fell short of efforts to take that authority away from cities, where officials — including in Amarillo — have deployed the cameras.

I happen to be glad that Amarillo will be able to maintain the cameras.

What’s more, I am hopeful the next Legislature will decide in the state’s best interest to let cities control their own traffic destiny.

Of all the arguments I keep hearing in opposition to the cameras, the one that angers and amuses me the most is that the cameras “violate the rights” of motorists. What rights? Privacy? The right to “face an accuser”? The right of “due process”?

If we’re going to accept the rights violation argument, then let’s just tell cities to disband their police departments. Let’s take down speed limit signs. While we’re at it, let’s take security cameras out of stores that protect businesses against theft; those cameras, after all, violate our “rights,” too, by watching our every move while we’re shopping.

Amarillo should be hailed for its insistence that the red-light cameras are helping deter motorists from endangering others, not to mention themselves, when they run through stoplights. Other cities haven’t demonstrated that kind of backbone.

So, for now, thanks also belong to the Texas Legislature for leaving cities alone and letting them determine what’s best for the motor vehicle-driving public.

local news, State news

‘Tsunami’ flood inundates Central Texas

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott isn’t usually prone to mutter hyperbole.

So, when he says the floods over much of the state are the worst in anyone’s memory, then he is taking aim at the extreme hardship thousands of Texans are enduring from this crazy weather.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/governor-says-deadly-flooding-is-worst-ever-seen-in-texas-area/ar-BBkeRNz

A dam in Bastrop County apparently has failed; water has poured over the land. People are missing along the Gulf Coast. Texans have died as they’ve been swept away by raging water.

Abbott compared the flooding to a tsunami.

He’s declared disasters in 24 Texas counties.

Federal emergency management officials need to take notice of what’s happening here.

We’ve been bemoaning the local flooding here in the Panhandle, but it pales in comparison to what’s happening downstate.

Allen, where my son and daughter-in-law live with our grandkids, has been inundated along with much of the rest of the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area. The city had imposed watering restrictions; I haven’t heard whether they’ve been lifted. My family is safe, I’m happy to report.

Abbott has toured the area south of Austin from the air. He said: “This is the biggest flood this area of Texas has ever seen. It is absolutely massive — the relentless tsunami-type power of this wave of water.”

What can the rest of us do? Pray for their safety and for a break in this thing for which we’ve prayed already. The rain has arrived. But enough, already!

 

local news

Get rid of work sessions

Believe it or not, I am going to agree with an editorial published in the newspaper where I worked for more than 17 years.

The editorial published in the Amarillo Globe-News says the City Council needs to, in effect, get rid of its work sessions as they’re currently constituted and do all its business in the City Council Chambers meeting room.

That’s a good idea.

Here’s why. The work sessions, where city council members discuss much of the business on which they will vote in their open session, take place in a cramped meeting room. Most of the space in that room is taken up by a large conference table around which sit council members, senior city administrators and department heads.

The public is invited to attend, as the items under discussion are open to the public — until the mayor calls for an “executive session,” which is closed to the public to enable the council to discuss certain things exempted from public view under the Texas Open Meetings Law.

I’d share the editorial with you here, except that I don’t subscribe to the newspaper and, thus, I am unable to access the online edition because of its “pay wall” restricting access only to those who have paid subscriptions to the printed edition.

I left the paper unhappily in late August 2012, if you’ll recall … but enough about that.

The editorial suggests that the city shouldn’t scrap its work sessions, but merely take them into a room where more people can attend if they desire. If no one attends the work session, well, no harm-no foul. The council can convene its executive session, then open its regular session and pass the ordinances and other measures it has discussed.

I do not believe the city has kept secrets from the public regarding matters of public concern. I believe the mayor and the city administrator are honorable men who do not hide behind the Open Meetings Law to discuss things that must be kept in the open.

However, the work sessions have produced a perception among some in the community that these meetings somehow are meant to keep the public in the dark.

Let me stipulate once again: The City Council cannot keep the public away from its meetings except when it discusses certain items specified by state law Those items include pending litigation, sale or purchase of real estate and personnel matters. One major flaw in the state meeting law is that there’s little way to monitor what’s actually said behind closed doors; but that’s for the Legislature to change when it ever gets around to it.

The City Council work sessions are valuable in allowing council members an opportunity to discuss the pros and cons of issues before them. So, do it in the big room — the Council Chambers — to enable everyone who is interested a chance to hear it all with their own ears.

 

local news, State news

Now … about all that rain

Ama street flooding

In my 20-plus years living on the High Plains of Texas, weather-related conversations usually have fallen into several discussion topics.

They go something like this:

* Boy, how about that wind? You’d better hold on to your hat today.

* Hey, is it hot enough for ya? When’s it going to cool off around here?

* I had to dig my car out of the snow this morning on the way to work. When will it ever stop snowing? When will it warm up around here?

Rarely have I had to talk about rain. Copious amounts of it, to boot. Then again, my wife and I are still fairly new to the area. Long-timers around here have talked about the flooding of the late 1970s. Or they’ll mention the storm-drain lakes built to catch all the water.

The talk all over town — indeed, all across Texas — has been about the rain.

We’ve gone a long time around here without rain being atop our minds’ awareness.

As I scan my assorted news sources this morning, I see that as wet as we’ve been in Amarillo and the Panhandle the past few days, we’re still relatively desert-like compared to places like San Marcos and Wimberley in Central Texas. The Riverwalk in San Antonio has spilled over. Our old haunts in the Golden Triangle, as well as in Houston, well … they’ve been wetter than usual — and that’s really saying something for that part of the state. Dallas-Fort Worth also is soggy beyond belief

My wife and I are hoping to take our fifth wheel out over Father’s Day weekend. Our plan is — or at least was — to go to Eisenhower State Park in Denison, on the Oklahoma border. We called to make our reservation. “Sorry sir,” the young lady said. “We aren’t taking reservations right now. Too much water. The lake is overflowing. Roads are closed. Try again closer to the date when you want to come here … and we’ll see.”

Hey, I know you can’t control the Almighty — which is why we call him “Almighty.”

I’m going to hope for the best. The rain is surely welcome. The playas are full. The rivers are rushing. Lake Meredith, just north of us in Hutchinson County, is going to get a lot of in-flow from its watershed for the next several days as the water continues to drain from Amarillo and other locales.

Perhaps, though, I’ll just ask that it more or less evens out. In fact, I think I might say a little prayer to that effect.

Why not? Someone — such as the Almighty himself — already has answered our prayers for rain.

local news

Words to live by … and to ponder

I know this couple here in Amarillo. They’ve been active in civic and community affairs for a very long time.

They’re both natives of the city and I am totally convinced they love it with all their heart.

They sent me a short blog, which I have attached to this post:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2015/05/a-fool-in-front-of-the-crowd-is-an-inevitable-side-effect-of-work-that-matters.html

It seems to speak directly to the skeptics who harbor thoughts of some conspiracy lurking in the minds of those who have cobbled together a grand vision for the future of Amarillo.

Here’s what it says. I attached the link so you might want to look at more items on the blog to try to size up the fellow who wrote these words.

“When you do work that matters, the crowd will call you a fool.

“If you do something remarkable, something new and something important, not everyone will understand it (at first). Your work is for someone, not everyone.

“Unless you’re surrounded only by someones, you will almost certainly encounter everyone. And when you do, they will jeer.

“That’s how you’ll know you might be onto something.”

I think the author of this post is suggesting — while obviously not speaking to our local circumstance directly — that the vision being considered for Amarillo’s downtown goes perhaps a step or two too far for some of us to grasp immediately.

Do I grasp it? Hardly. I’m just anxious to see what develops.

We’ve heard some “jeering” lately from those who think the city is hiding something. They seem to think there’s more “there there,” to borrow a portion of a phrase from Gertrude Stein.

I will continue to hope for the best as the city moves forward with development plans they hope will transform the city’s central business district into something we don’t yet recognize.

However, I strongly suspect we’ll know we’ve found it the moment we see it.

local news

Is the downtown vision 'myopic' or far-sighted?

A recent blog I posted posed the simple question of “why” regarding the opposition by some to efforts to revive downtown Amarillo.

It drew a thoughtful response from a reader who said this, in part: “Why” the myopic focus on “downtown” when only a very small minority of the populace even has this on their radar?

The term “myopic” caught my attention. The dictionary defines “myopia” as a defect in vision, blurriness at things seen at some distance.

The downtown Amarillo effort, in my view, remains sound in principle and its concept is more than doable.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2015/05/22/event-venue-facing-increased-scrutiny/

I’ll tell you about another city that launched a downtown renewal about four decades ago.

That would be my hometown of Portland, Ore.

The city elected a young man as mayor in 1972. Neil Goldschmidt had served on the city council and then was elected to lead the city’s strong-mayor form of government; he was just 32 years of age, one of the younger big-city mayors in America.

One of his campaign themes was to revive downtown, which at the time of his election wasn’t anything to boast about. It had its share of retail outlets, but that’s about it.

Then the mayor did something quite extraordinary. Looking into the future with his own “myopic” vision, he unilaterally vetoed a highway project that would cut a swath through the southeast quadrant of the city and carve its way to the Cascade Range east of town. The Mount Hood Freeway, as it was called, was going to improve traffic flow through southeast Portland and boost retail and other commercial development all along its route.

Goldschmidt would have none of it. He said, in effect, “We’re going to focus our efforts on rebuilding downtown and developing a mass transit system that is second to none in the country.” He said the city would not sanction the construction of what I believe he called a “50-mile-long strip mall all the way to Mount Hood.”

There wasn’t a huge groundswell of support for Goldschmidt’s idea in the 1970s, but he told us — come hell or high water — we were going to get a downtown district that will make us proud.

The city invested lots of public money to build a park along the waterfront; it enticed developers to erect multi-family housing units on the outskirts of the downtown district; it lured a whole array of eating and drinking establishments; it created a “fareless square” for buses to carry passengers through the downtown core free of charge; it renovated run-down hotels into four- and five-star establishments; it made improvements to a rotting downtown ballpark that used to be home to a AAA baseball club but which now is home to a major league soccer franchise.

So … the vision of one mayor a lifetime or two ago may have seemed “myopic” to some. To others — including the mayor himself — the vision was as far-sighted as it could get.

I do not know if Amarillo’s vision for its downtown will produce all that has come to pass in Portland. The city wants to build a ballpark downtown; it wants to erect a parking garage and a convention hotel. It likely will seek to improve its Civic Center in due course. The city’s intent is to turn downtown into a business and entertainment center.

The vision I’ve seen of what the city intends for its downtown is nothing short of spectacular.

I could make the case that Amarillo’s civic, political and community brain trusts need to do a better job of selling its concept to those who remain skeptical.

I’m telling you, though, the project as I see it can work and I continue to have faith that it will.

 

local news

Might it be time to examine flood control?

flooded street

Is it just me, or are others out there wondering about the quality of our storm-drain system in Amarillo?

My wife and I have lived here now for slightly more than 20 years. My memory at times is a bit foggy, but I’m pretty sure this is the worst rain event we’ve seen since we moved here from the Gulf Coast — where we used to get a lot of rain in a very short period of time.

The city has its hands full this Memorial Day weekend. We just came back from a grocery run and discovered water had flooded from McDonald Lake, across Coulter. Motor vehicles were stalled as motorists tried to slosh their way through the muddy water.

Us? We were OK, as we drove our big ol’ 3/4-ton truck through it without any difficulty.

In our two-decades plus here, this is the first time we’ve seen that much water across Coulter.

The other traditional trouble spots I’m quite certain are disasters this morning.

Well, once City Hall gets through this situation, I’m hoping the city’s senior administrative staff sits down and has a serious after-action meeting to discuss ways to improve matters for the next big rain event.

It also might be good for City Manager Jarrett Atkinson and Mayor Paul Harpole to conduct a press conference to explain — in detail — what happened out there and whether the city has any plans afoot to try to correct it. You know, things like drainage construction or perhaps fine-tuning its emergency response — if it’s needed — to help folks cope with what this most unusual weather event.

It’s been a long time coming. Most of us are quite grateful for the moisture (a term that seems quaint, given the volume of water that’s fallen from the sky).

Residents of a modern American city, though, shouldn’t have to worry about flooding every time it pours.

Or is this what we can expect — all the time?

local news

Event venue facing increased scrutiny

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Of all the elements of Amarillo’s effort to revive its downtown district, the one aspect that seems to be drawing the most criticism is the multipurpose event venue … or MPEV.

The scrutiny is making me ask the simplest of questions: Why?

Not “why” on whether we should build the place, but why the concern over it in the first place?

The city is about to launch a three-pronged effort: building a parking garage, development of a convention hotel and construction of the MPEV, which also is known as “the ballpark.”

Officials have said until they’ve run out of breath that the $113 million combined cost of the package will be financed through user fees. Hotel-motel taxes collected by people who pay for lodging in Amarillo’s hotels will finance the projects.

The MPEV? It’ll be paid with the lodging tax.

The hotel? Same thing.

The parking garage? Ditto on that.

No tax money will be spent on these projects. That’s what City Hall has pledged. Is the city’s record on such pledges perfect? No. The Globe-News Center for the Performing Arts was supposed to be paid entirely with private donations. It fell a million or so dollars short, so the city ponied up the rest to finish off the $30 million project. The deal still was a sweet one for the city.

What the MPEV critics say should happen is that the city should refurbish the Civic Center, make it more attractive for larger-scale conventions that now pass Amarillo by in favor of cities with more spacious meeting rooms.

How much will that expansion cost? A friend of mine who’s been active in downtown revitalization efforts told me privately that the “best estimates” of improving the Civic Center to a level desired by those who want it expanded would be 10 times the cost of the MPEV. Who would pay for the Civic Center, a publicly owned building? Taxpayers would foot the bill. Every nickel and dime of it.

The city could issue general obligation bonds without a vote, or it could put the issue up for a vote in a bond issue election. How do you suppose an election would turn out? Amarillo voters demonstrated two years ago they aren’t in the mood to spend tax money on “quality of life” projects, such as the huge recreation center proposed for the southeast area of the city; voters rejected that bond issue request handily.

I’ve visited with city leaders repeatedly over the years about the downtown plan. I like the concept. I endorse the vision the city has put forth. I believe it will work and it will create a downtown business and entertainment district that will make our residents proud.

I also am willing to trust that it can be done the way its proponents say it will be done: through lodging revenue collected at our hotels and motels.

Will there be some public investment? Sure. Streets and lighting must be made suitable. They belong to us already. But the heavy lifting — construction of the sites under consideration — will be borne by those who come here from other places.

And yet, the City Council has members who now might want to throw all of this in reverse because, by golly, they’re just plain mad.

I ask once again: Why?

 

local news

Not complaining about the rain

As a boy, the rain drove me batty.

I grew up in the dank, damp and sometimes dreary Pacific Northwest, where it rains three or four days before you ever notice it.

Now that I’m older and now that my wife, one of our sons and I live in this so-called semi-arid region I refer to as the Texas Tundra, you won’t hear me complain about the rain we’ve been getting of late.

More of it is falling tonight. Even more of it is expected through Friday and perhaps over the weekend.

You won’t hear me gripe. Nope. Not me.

I know the sun will return in due course, just as I (more or less) knew we’d get the rain we’ve all sought through prayer.

These things run in cycles.

Our playas are full. McDonald Lake — which is just about a mile north of us on Coulter, is practically overflowing. I saw some video of fish that had ended up on the street next to the lake. Now that’s weird.

The closest thing to a gripe I’ve heard has come from cotton farmers who need to start planting their crops, but cannot do it because the ground is too wet.

Be patient, folks. The sun will return.

Oh, and the drought? It’s still with us.

I’ll guess that Amarillo’s daily water use gauge is down … considerably. That, too, is a good thing.