Tag Archives: Amarillo

Uncategorized

Potter-Randall merger: Is it remotely possible?

Nancy Tanner is running for Potter County judge.

I’m seeing an increasing number of her lawn signs cropping up on yards — in Randall County.

The appearance of these signs begs a question I’ve been kicking around in my noggin for the nearly two decades I’ve lived in Amarillo: Why don’t the counties merge?

Here’s a bit of background for readers of this blog who live far away.

* Amarillo straddles the line dividing Potter and Randall counties. It serves as the Potter County seat; the Randall County seat is about 12 miles south on Interstate 27 in Canyon. The city’s population is now very close to 200,000 residents. Roughly 60 percent of whom live in Potter County, the rest in Randall County.

* Randall County’s main courthouse complex is in Canyon, but the bulk of its business is done at its annex in south Amarillo, which collects about 80 percent of all the revenue for the county and adjudicates a similar percentage of all the small-claims crimes decided by the justice of the peace.

* Amarillo, indeed, comprises about 85 percent of Randall County’s population and generates about 80 percent of the county’s property tax revenue.

* The Randall County jail sits on the southern edge of Amarillo, next to the Youth Center of the High Plains.

All that said, the Potter County judge race featuring five candidates running for the Republican nomination is of interest to Randall County residents because many of them work in Potter County. As for Tanner’s yard signs showing up in a county where residents cannot vote for her, that’s just good politics on her party. They put her name out there and give her more of a ubiquitous presence. I’m quite sure the other candidates — those with the money to spend — will do the same thing eventually.

Back to the question of a merger. It’s always made sense to me to meld the counties into one, given their common interests and the fact that Amarillo sits atop the line dividing them.

It’s an immensely complicated process politically. How would one merge the county governments? Who gets to keep their job? Who would lose theirs? How do you settle the obvious turf fights? How do you accomplish this thing legally? Would Canyon residents want to lose their status as the county seat? Lastly, what would you call this new county and how do we settle on a name?

It would require at minimum a constitutional amendment election, meaning that all Texans would have to vote to allow the counties to merge in a statewide referendum. We’ve amended the Texas Constitution for far less consequential things than this, so this is a natural.

I know this topic has been nibbled at for many years. Nothing ever happens for obvious reasons. Merging the counties would step on too many political toes and there would be too many battles to fight. No one seems to have the stomach for fighting them.

I get all that.

Lawn signs, though, for candidates running for office in a neighboring county seem to make as much sense as having two counties of nearly identical size sharing a single significant city.

Which is to say it makes little or no sense at all.

Uncategorized

Commissioners asking: Show us the money

Potter County commissioners are asking some tough questions of a man who’s been raising money for a railroad museum in Amarillo.

The questions are valid and need an answer.

http://www.connectamarillo.com/news/story.aspx?id=986819#.UrxAUVKA2t8

They involve an amount of money, $400,000, that the county has contributed to the creation of a Santa Fe Railroad museum. Walter Wolfram, an Amarillo lawyer who’s been leading the fundraising effort, has been asked by commissioners to give a full accounting of the money he’s raised. He spoke to commissioners recently and bristled a bit at the implication from the panel that he may have done something wrong.

I’m not going to second-guess or speculate on what’s happening here, but the commission is asking a legitimate question. It’s given a lot of public money for the past five years and wants to know the status of the contribution and wants to know the progress — if any — toward the creation of the museum.

Wolfram initially sought to put the museum on the second floor of the Santa Fe Building on Ninth Avenue, between Tyler and Polk streets. He gave up on that idea and apparently has targeted the old Santa Fe Depot just east of the Amarillo Civic Center.

The commission is wanting to know what’s happened to the money the county has given. It’s a simple query, right?

Uncategorized

Re-thinking single-member districts

I am reconsidering my long-standing opposition to single-member districts to determine who represents Amarillo municipal government.

I’ve long held that the Amarillo City Council was served best by having all its members elected at-large. Each of its five members — including the mayor — represents the entire city. They’re all elected from the same citywide voter pool. Call one or all of them if you have a problem. Someone will tend to your concern.

Well, on Saturday I crossed paths with someone who’s been involved for years in the single-member-district campaign in Amarillo. Janie Rivas formerly served on the Amarillo school board. Her husband, J.E. Sauseda, is a lawyer who’s been at the forefront of the effort to change the city’s voting plan.

Janie and I visited for a few minutes, got reacquainted and ventured a notion to her about this whole idea of electing folks from single-member districts. Why not, I reckoned, split the difference? Sauseda and others keep arguing for a governing council with all members elected from districts. Elect the mayor at-large, of course, but expand the council by two seats and divide the city into six districts.

My idea is to expand the council to six council members, with two of them elected at-large and four elected from single-member districts. Many cities in Texas elect their councils from those kinds of voting plans. Beaumont, where I lived for nearly 11 years before moving to Amarillo, is one of them. The system works well.

Amarillo’s population is about to surpass 200,000 residents. Its demographic profile is changing dramatically, with significant increases in Latino residents. The city still has many neighborhoods with disparate socio-economic levels. Plus, there exists this nagging perception among residents that the city pays too much attention to high-end neighborhoods’ needs at the expense of those who live across town.

Another option might be to adopt a cumulative voting plan approved years ago by the Amarillo Independent School District. AISD started that plan to settle a lawsuit that had been filed by the League of United Latin American Citizens protesting AISD’s at-large voting plan. If AISD has three seats being contested, you can cast all three votes for a single candidate. That system has worked well for AISD.

I’m thinking that the time has arrived for Amarillo City Hall to revisit the idea of how we elect our city council members.

Think also of this: Electing council members from single-member districts gives the mayor more actual standing than he currently has in Amarillo, given that he would perhaps be the only council member elected at-large. Or … the mayor would be one of, say, three individuals elected at-large, while the other four come from these districts.

Amarillo is growing up right before our eyes. Is it time for the city to keep pace with that growth by reforming its electoral system? I believe it is.

Uncategorized

Amarillo is snow-wise on the road

I am happy to report that I live in a city where drivers actually do know how to drive in the snow and ice.

Amarillo, Texas is the place.

It snowed today. Not a lot, but it snowed for most of the afternoon. Not sure when it’ll stop. I think I heard a forecast that called for 3 to 4 inches.

Here’s what I saw on my way home from work this evening: Cars streaming down three busy streets very slowly and carefully. That was a good thing to see.

Amarillo gets usually a total winter snow accumulation of about a foot every winter. Last winter, we got nearly twice that amount in one heap. It paralyzed the city, which is really saying something. It takes a great deal of snow to close school systems here. Last winter, they closed for three or four days before enough snow melted to make the streets passable.

This evening was not an unusual event. I call attention to it only because I hear so many stories — constantly, it seems — about folks in cities where residents do not know how to handle the snow. I’ve lived in a couple of them, actually: Portland, Ore., where I was born and where I grew up, and Beaumont, Texas, where snow and ice are quite rare, but not totally out of the question.

Portland gets snow most winters. However, for some reason Portlanders seem to get caught on hilly streets with cars skidding out of control. Beaumont? That’s another story altogether. I remember just one winter during our nearly 11 years there when snow fell and ice coated the streets. You would have thought the world had just come to an end.

We moved to Amarillo in early 1995 and we’ve seen our fair share of severe winters. We’ve had some mild winters as well, but the long-timers around here remember the old days when blizzards would blind everyone. Highways would close. Livestock would freeze to death.

Through it all, they managed to get through in their vehicles.

It’s still true. Yes, I know some folks have seen madness on the streets during snow storms on the High Plains. I’ve seen it, too.

Still, I’m glad my normally five-minute drive home from work tonight took me 30 minutes to complete. Go slow and be very careful out there.

Uncategorized

How did we sink the ARC?

It’s one day short of a month since an election in Amarillo that defeated a $30 million-plus recreational center.

I’ve been thinking about why it went down in flames, what factors contributed to its defeat, how the city could have done better to sell it to a skeptical public. I’ve been asking some folks in the know around town.

Here are a few preliminary conclusions:

* The Amarillo Recreational Complex was sprung on voters with little discussion. It would have cost $36 million or so to build. It would have included ball fields, indoor tennis and basketball courts, proximity to public golf courses and swimming facilities. I’m not suggesting here that the Amarillo City Council pulled this notion out of its hat at the last minute. Yes, there was some discussion — but not nearly enough of it.

* The light turnout played against it. Turnout was in the teens, meaning that fewer than two in 10 eligible voters cast ballots on Nov. 5. Who are the most dedicated voters in any community? Old folks like me. The young people who would have the most to gain from the ARC didn’t turn out. That’s just the way it has been in this country for as long as I can remember.

* The city had just spent $2.6 million on an abandoned railroad depot. The timing of the election came just after the city plunked down a big chunk of cash to buy the Santa Fe Railroad Depot downtown, just east of the Civic Center. I realize that the money was available and it wouldn’t affect our municipal tax rate, but there well might have been a feeling among voters that the city was adopting a spendthrift philosophy with public money. Why give the city more of it?

* There well might be a latent tea party movement that stirred to life. The pro-ARC signs became almost part of the city’s landscape in the weeks prior to the election. They were everywhere. It made me think the measure was going to pass by a huge margin. The tea party movement across the country operates largely under the radar. It comprises people who are just fed up with government. There might have been some of that at play in Amarillo.

I hope the ARC — or some version of it — comes back. Quality of life issues are difficult to quantify. The pro-ARC gang did a good job of explaining how the complex would keep business here, how it would attract out-of-towners to Amarillo, how it would benefit the city’s economic well-being while providing families here significant new recreational opportunities.

There will need to be a cooling-off period to be sure of perhaps a year, maybe longer. If and when it returns, I would encourage the city to get ahead of the story in a major way, stay there and put forth a serious marketing campaign to sell this worthy product.

That’s how you win elections.

Uncategorized

Lawsuit may muck up downtown plan

Just when you thought Amarillo was set to take a major step toward downtown revival, something gets in the way … maybe.

The Amarillo Economic Development Corporation announced plans to file a lawsuit to recover $1.6 million from the company that built the CenterPort Business Park in east Amarillo. Yes, it’s some distance from downtown.

But hold on.

The CenterPort site is now vacant. Another business lured here by AEDC gave up on its wind-turbine construction project and left. The city wants to relocate the Coca-Cola distribution center, which is currently downtown, to the CenterPort site. Except that it’s structurally unsound. The foundation is a mess, according to AEDC. It needs to rebuilt.

The firm that built the place, Commercial Industrial Builders, muffed the job. AEDC wants the company to pay back the money that AEDC says it will have to spend to fix the site.

What does this mean for downtown’s revival? Well, the Coca-Cola site is supposed to become home to a multipurpose entertainment venue to be built, along with a downtown hotel and a huge parking garage. The legal action just might gum up those works if CIB fights hard to keep from paying the money AEDC wants.

AEDC President and CEO Buzz David said the agency sought to resolve the dispute without going to court. The efforts so far have failed. Perhaps the threat of a lawsuit might spur CIB to pony up the cash so that AEDC can fix what it says is wrong with the building.

If the threat doesn’t work, I’m afraid we’re in for a lengthy delay on downtown’s move forward.

Uncategorized

Bring on the red-light cameras

Amarillo city officials are about to expand the use of those pesky red-light cameras in use to catch those who ignore the command to stop at red lights.

Go for it, City Hall.

I’ve been all for the cameras since their initial deployment about six years ago. Too many motorists these days seem to believe the red light hanging from the power lines over the intersection is a suggestion, or a request, to stop their vehicle. No, it’s an order. Where I come from, lawful orders are meant to be followed.

The city will impose a grace period that will last until Nov. 1. After that date, the city gets serious with the new cameras.

I’ve long thought that public knowledge of the red-light cameras has enhanced motorists’ awareness. If a motorist knows — or believes — an intersection is being patrolled by an electronic device, he or she is likely to be more obedient when the red light glows at them from above.

No, the cameras aren’t the perfect solution. Indeed, the city is deploying the new devices because of continued law-breaking by motorists. The city has used the revenue generated to help pay for the additional cameras as well as enhance other areas of traffic management — which state law requires of cities that use these cameras.

Past city commissions have shown a tendency toward passivity at times when issues like this arise. The current commission has taken on the challenge, just as those who sat on the commission immediately prior to them.

One bit of good news comes from City Traffic Engineer Jerry Bird, who says recidivism is low, meaning that those who get cited by the city aren’t repeating. Fine. Keep them deployed.

Uncategorized

AMA to stay in the game with new airline

American Airlines and US Airways want to merge. Texas officials had protested their merger … until Tuesday.

The state has reached an agreement with the potential new airline giant that seeks a guarantee that the airline will serve 22 Texas cities for at least the next three years. The announcement came from Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott — who also is running to become the state’s next governor.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/10/01/abbott-appear-american-airlines-ceo/

What does this mean for Rick Husband Amarillo International Airport? It means AMA stays in the American Airlines network of terminals now being served.

AMA has some additional skin in this game, given Amarillo’s unique relationship with American Airlines. The city once poured several millions of public dollars into keeping jet service at AMA. It came in the form of sales tax money collected by the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation. Some communities, even some media, scoffed at Amarillo for paying more than $1 million annually to American Airlines to keep the jets flying between AMA and Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. The strategy served to boost the city’s business climate.

That was then. American flies jets exclusively now in and out of AMA.

The merger likely now will go through, even though the federal government is protesting it. The feds contend the merger likely would be bad for competition and would drive the already-expensive cost of air travel even farther upward.

American Airlines and its parent company AMR have been huge corporate partners in Texas. The deal also means the airline will keep its headquarters in the Metroplex and that D-FW Airport will serve as the airline’s major hub.

Communities such as Amarillo, though, need the service to D-FW. Let’s hope the deal struck between the state and the company will lead to a longer-term commitment to this growing community.

Uncategorized

NM knows how to build highways

Albuquerque, N.M., along with the New Mexico Department of Transportation, ought to market themselves as the highway interchange construction champions of the nation.

They know how to do it.

Albuquerque is home to what the locals call the Big I, which is shorthand for the Interstate 40/25 interchange in the middle of the city. The state rebuilt the Big I over the course of many years. My wife and I drove through it a couple of times when it was under reconstruction. The experience was harrowing to say the least.

It’s done now and the Big I actually is a thing of beauty, if you consider highway projects to be works of art.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:I-40_approaching_the_Big_I.jpg

The link here really doesn’t do the Big I justice. Suffice to say, though, that NMDOT has done a fabulous job of creating a piece of civil engineering that is quite pleasing to the eye.

The landscaping is quite spectacular, featuring native flora — desert cactus and other plants that require little irrigation. One overpass on I-40, just a big west of the Big I, actually has multi-colored indirect lighting that glows at night.

I bring all this up because the major interchange in Amarillo, where we live, is far less appealing aesthetically than the one in Albuquerque. I’ve heard complaints from Amarillo residents over many years who say, in effect, that the I-40/27 interchange — which also was rebuilt some years ago — as in “eyesore” to motorists passing through the city.

One friend, a local lawyer, once griped to me about the terrible impression the Amarillo interchange leaves on motorists who may never come back through the city again.

I happen to agree with him.

Albuquerque has done it the right way.

Other cities should take note and follow the Albuquerque’s lead.