Amarillo is a more sophisticated and complicated city than many of its residents care to acknowledge. They like the old days when it was a one-horse town fueled by farmers and ranchers’ income with help from the Santa Fe Railroad.

But it now comprises nearly 200,000 residents. City Hall’s budget – taken all together – runs about $200 million annually.

I’ve preached this before in a previous life, but the mayor ought to deliver an annual State of the City speech, giving residents a candid update on the condition of things at City Hall. I broached the subject publicly when Debra McCartt was mayor and she obliged by having some kind of Q-and-A on KACV-TV. It was a one-hit wonder. She didn’t do it again and her successor, Paul Harpole, hasn’t bothered to resume it.

The one particular problem I had with McCartt’s stab at offering a State of the City commentary was that the questions came from the likes of Gary Molberg, head of the Amarillo Chamber of Commerce. Think about that for a moment. Molberg is a nice guy but he gets paid by the chamber to be the city’s leading non-governmental cheerleader. If you run into Molberg out and about and ask him how he’s doing, he launches immediately into “things couldn’t be going better for the city.” He recites all the positive business activity occurring in Amarillo, telling you how “diversified” we’ve become. That’s all fine.

But a State of the City speech ought to be a more comprehensive assessment of where we stand today, how we got here and where we’re going.

Mayors of comparably sized cities offer these annual speeches to their constituents. Lubbock is one of them. I think the head guy in the Hub City delivers it to an annual public meeting. I’ll admit I haven’t heard one of those speeches, and I can’t offer detail on the content.

But we ought to be brought up to speed many critical matters, such as: the specifics of: downtown revitalization and its progress; the future of water development and what the city plans to do to ensure we have enough of it for many generations; infrastructure improvements; whether the red-light cameras are here to stay; how the city plans to enforce several new bold ordinances, such as the ban on handheld cellphones; whether the city can keep its tax rate low.

There ought to be a singular event, kind of like what the governor provides at the start of every legislative session or what the president delivers at the annual State of the Union speech on Capitol Hill.

I submit that what happens at City Hall has much more direct impact on people’s lives than anything that comes out of either domed building in Austin or Washington.

And even though Amarillo’s mayor gets paid virtually nothing and serves the same citywide constituency as his or her fellow commissioners, the mayor is still the city’s front person. Speak up, Mr. Mayor, and give us a full report on the State of the City. Put it on the record and then let your constituents decide whether we’re meeting our goals.