Amarillo City Council members have put the brakes on a search for a city manager.
This is an interesting — but I’m not yet sure it’s a necessary — development in the rebuilding of the city’s top administrative infrastructure.
Interim City Manager Terry Childers came on board after Jarrett Atkinson resigned a job he held for about six years. Childers then got entangled in an embarrassing kerfuffle involving the city’s emergency communications center. HeĀ apologized for bullying a dispatcher over an incident involving a misplaced briefcase.
Then the search commenced.
Why the delay … now?
Mayor Paul Harpole said the city has a lot of big projects in the works that require some administrative continuity.
He noted that the city has a potential bond election coming to seek voter approval on a number of big construction projects; plus, the city is in the midst of negotiations to bring a AA baseball franchise top play hardball in the to-be-built downtown ballpark; and … the city is enacting a series of administrative overhauls within the police department.
Childers is leaving his footprint on City Hall. He’s selected an interim police chief, Ed Drain, to succeed former Chief Robert Taylor, who recently retired.
As an outsider sitting in back row of the peanut gallery, though, I wonder about the status of the individuals the city has examined for the city manager’s post. The delay in hiring a permanent manager could take as long as a year. Do the individuals already looked at hang around, waiting for the phone call from City Hall?
My initial concerns about Childers centered on that silly exchange over the briefcase. He blundered and blustered his way into local headlines over that tempest and, to my mind, it seemed appropriate for the council to proceed with all deliberate speed in finding a permanent city manager.
I’m guessing the waters have calmed a bit at City Hall. If that’s the case, then the council is moving with all deliberate prudence in this search.
However, if the interim manager is here temporarily, then the council needs to get on with the search for someone who’ll take his or her post permanently.