I cannot shake this feeling that Amarillo’s supposedly “interim” city manager is in it for a longer haul than he or the Amarillo City Council is willing to acknowledge.

Terry Childers announced a big hire the other day when he appointed Ed Drain as the city’s new chief of police. Drain had been brought aboard as “interim police chief” from the Plano Police Department.

Drain took some recommendations offered to make the Amarillo PD a better unit and enacted them. Perhaps the most notable reform has been a re-emphasis on community policing, namely the use of bicycle patrols.

Good deal, yes? Of course it is.

Back to Childers.

The police chief appointment is a major obstacle that the city manager has just cleared. Does he just pack up and leave the administration of the city — and its appointment of the city’s top cop — to someone else? My gut tells me no.

My gut — along with my occasionally reliable trick knee — also tell me that the City Council is quite happy with the way Childers is running the city.

Recall that the city embarked on a city manager search. It collected some resumes from a nationwide job posting. Looked them over — I am going to presume — and then tabled the search.

Am I the only one inclined to think the City Council is decidedly less interested now in looking for someone other than Childers to operate the city’s government machinery?

I’m wrong more than I’m right.

Something, though, tells me that Terry Childers is here to stay a lot longer than he and/or his immediate employers are letting on.