Tag Archives: Amarillo City Council

local news

City manager speaks to ‘caustic’ political environment

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Terry Childers speaks like a man with no burdens to bear regarding the city government he is administering.

Karen Welch of Panhandle PBS asked him whether Amarllo is having difficulty finding a permanent city manager to succeed Childers — the interim manager. He provided a spot-on answer during the “Live Here” segment.

The city needs to get past its next City Council election next May, when all five members of the council seats will be contested. It’s a quirk in the city charter, I suppose, that puts all five council members on the ballot at the same time. Who would want to take the city manager’s job knowing that after the next election, the city could have a new council — which then might want to replace the city manager? Childers asked.

Ba-da-boom!

Then he launched into what he called the “caustic” environment that has pervaded City Hall since the latest election, in May 2015.

City Council members have attacked each other’s motives, their political outlook, their integrity, Childers said. Those who run City Hall need to “put Amarillo first,” he said,  and dispense with the pettiness and petulance that has too often guided the public discussion.

He also took a clear-and-present shot at the Amarillo Globe-News, which he accused of “assassinating people’s character.” He asked, who would want to be subjected to that?

What he didn’t say in the interview, but which is surely implied, is that city manager candidates do not want to walk into that sausage grinder.

Childers is going to stay on the job for another few months. He told Welch he has “no interest” in becoming the permanent manager. I believe him. He wants to go back home and get on with the rest of his life.

He talks about that environment at about the 20-minute mark of the attached video link.

http://video.kacvtv.org/video/2365817588/

City government has been a significantly less harmonious organization for the past 15 months than it has been for, oh, the past several decades. The interim manager, though, was careful to tell Welch that he works with five “wonderful” council members who disagree with each other and with him. He said he’s fine with that.

If the environment is as “caustic” as the city manager believes it is, well, it’s time for the governing council to look inward and decide whether it really is intent on putting the city’s interests ahead of its members’ own political agendas.

Thanks for your honesty, Mr. Manager.

local news, political news

City is getting its infrastructure act together

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I’ve been yapping and yammering for a year about all the “change” that arrived at Amarillo City Hall with the election of three new City Council members.

Some of it has been good. Some, well, not so good.

I want to address one of the “good” changes that is developing as I write this brief blog post.

Amarillo interim City Manager Terry Childers has laid out the case for the city to ask its residents — the bosses, if you will — this question: How much are you willing to pay for some critical infrastructure needs?

He spoke to Panhandle PBS on Thursday night in a “Live Here” segment that, to my ears, illustrates a fundamental shift in the city’s approach to applying good government.

Here’s the interview:

http://video.kacvtv.org/video/2365817588/

Amarillo has long boasted about its low municipal property tax rate. It’s the lowest of any city “of significance” in Texas, Childers said. The issue, though, is that it’s not enough to take care of those capital needs and “maintenance and operation” the city must meet.

Childers talked about the need to repair and replace roads, sewer lines and to modernize the Civic Center. How is the city going to do that? It has to ask the residents to pony up the dough.

There might be a 1-, 2-, 3-, or 4-cent increase in the municipal property tax rate. Each penny of increase in the amount per $100 assessed property valuation will enable the city to borrow funds to pay for the improvements.

Given that the city is virtually debt free, Childers seems to suggest that the time has come to ask for residents for some help in paying for these needs.

Amarillo already is undergoing a serious makeover of its downtown district. There’s already been some public commitment, but the bulk of the money is coming from private investors. Very soon, the city will start knocking down the old Coca-Cola distribution center to make room for that multipurpose event venue. I remain delighted to see the changes that have occurred already downtown — and await eagerly the changes that are about to come.

But the city needs to do a lot of work to fix its streets, sewer lines and other infrastructure amenities that we all need.

Childers is making a strong case for those needs.

local news

Not so fast, Mr. Manager

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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. He 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.

local news, political news

So long, Dr. Eades, and thank you for your service

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Brian Eades is about to call it a public service career in Amarillo.

I wish he wasn’t leaving, but a man’s got to do what’s best for himself and his family.

The best thing for the City Council member is to pull up stakes and replant them in western Colorado, where he’ll open a medical practice.

He served nine years on the City Council and was on the front row of some fascinating and invigorating debate. He served the community with great distinction.

Lisa Blake is going to take the seat that Eades will vacate and I hope — for the sake of the city — that she continues the level of service that Eades provided.

Eades represents — for lack of a better term — the “old guard” on the council. He managed to win re-election in May 2015 while two of his colleagues got booted out by challengers. It likely was a combination of the quality of the challenge he faced and the fact that voters weren’t as outwardly angry with him as they seemed to be with the incumbents who lost their re-election bids.

You can shout all you want about the level of anger that had been expressed at City Hall, but here are a few things to note.

I’ll start by noting that Eades helped make policy decisions affecting these elements.

— The city has continued its steady and robust population and business growth.

— Downtown redevelopment efforts take several key steps forward. It created an agency devoted exclusively to downtown redevelopment. It crafted a Strategic Action Plan to implement certain steps.

— The city has gone on a water-rights purchasing spree, buttressing its water reserves that now will last for the next century or two.

— Amarillo debated whether to enact indoor smoking bans. Two referendums failed narrowly, but the word has gone out to businesses: Don’t allow smoking in your establishments, as it is hazardous to people’s health.

— The city has deployed red-light cameras at intersections in an effort to deter lawbreakers from running through stop lights and posing hazards to other motorists and to pedestrians.

Eades had a hand in all of that.

I join others in wishing him well as he trudges off to rural western Colorado where, I presume, he’s going to deliver more babies into the world.

He served the city well.

Thank you, doc.

local news

Welcome to the arena, Lisa Blake

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Well, that didn’t take long.

Amarillo City Council members interviewed five finalists today for the vacancy on the body that will occur when Dr. Brian Eades hits the road.

Then the council chose the head of Leadership Amarillo, Lisa Blake, to fill the seat that Dr. Eades will vacate.

It wasn’t a unanimous vote. Councilman Randy Burkett voted “no” to appoint Blake.

Whatever the case, I guess we’re getting used to split votes on the governing body, which saw its makeup changed dramatically after the May 2015 municipal election.

This council member selection process was an interesting and enlightening exercise. The five individuals spoke to the council in full public view. They all answered the same set of 10 questions. I wasn’t there today, so I cannot comment on the quality of everyone’s answers.

I did visit today, though, with a community leader who did listen to the interviews and he came away quite impressed with Blake’s presentation, her background and her potential as a city leader.

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/32430303/blake-appointed-to-place-2-seat

What happens now? How will Councilwoman-designate Blake work with this new council?

The City Council has been a contentious group at times. Indeed, it took power amid some fairly shrill rhetoric, which included calls for then-City Manager Jarrett Atkinson to quit and for the dismissal of the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation board.

It’s been a bit of a bumpy ride — at times — for the past year.

So now, we have a fourth new member of the council about to take office.

I am heartened to know that the new council member has a strong record of civic involvement. Leadership Amarillo has been a stellar organization for a long time and Lisa Blake represents the good work that the organization has done to promote a new generation of civic leaders.

Let’s see now what she can do on behalf of her new constituents.

She’s got 200,000 of them out here who need steady, strong and civil leadership at City Hall.

local news

Step right up, City Council candidates

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A fascinating ritual is about to take place at Amarillo City Hall.

Five individuals seeking to become the fifth member of the City Council are going to interview Tuesday in person — in full public view — with those individuals they seek to join.

The city is seeking to fill the seat being vacated later this summer by Dr. Brian Eades, who’s leaving the city to set up a medical practice in Colorado.

http://amarillo.com/news/latest-news/2016-07-10/council-question-hopefuls

I wish Eades hadn’t taken this opportunity for professional advancement. But hey, a man’s got to do what he’s got to do. I wish him well and thank him for his service to this city.

Back to the task at hand.

The council is interviewing five folks who emerged as finalists from a pool of 14 original applicants. The 10 questions they’ve established I presume have been seen by the finalists. They’ve had time to bone up on the answers.

I sense we’ll know who among them have done the best preparation. Then again, we also might get a sense about which of them is the most rehearsed and whether that element of the preparation will present itself when they answer the questions.

Without question, the most provocative question is No. 4: How should a council candidate conduct himself or herself publicly and privately “when they may ultimately serve as the people’s ambassador?”

Pay attention to that one, Sandra McCartt. The question I’m sure is aimed at her, given the tempest that stirred when some social media posts she authored came to light. They weren’t exactly the type of messages that cry out “people’s ambassador!”

This process is new to the city. I hope it works well for the council. More importantly, I hope it works well for the public that will be listening to what these individuals say about how they intend to govern our city.

I’ll make one final point just one more time.

Council members are not obligated to convene an executive — or closed — session to deliberate over who they prefer. State open meetings laws only empower the council to do so.

If they are dedicated to full transparency and public accountability they now have the chance to demonstrate it.

Deliberate in public, gentlemen of the City Council.

Good luck to you all.

local news, Uncategorized

Council is pulling a shroud over transparency

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Am I understanding this correctly?

The Amarillo City Council — that bastion of transparency and public accountability — is trying to keep secret the process it uses to select its fifth member. Council members are disagreeing over how to proceed.

If memory serves, city voters elected three new fellows to the council in large part because they promised to be more answerable to the public. They were tired of what they alleged was a good ol’ boy star-chamber system of doing business.

Things were going to change, dadgummit!

Well, here we are, more than a year after that election. Councilman Brian Eades is quitting the council effective Aug. 1. The council will have to pick his successor.

I’ve said before that the council makes one hiring decision: the city manager. It now gets to make another one by selecting someone to join its ranks.

This transparency pledge that the new council members made along the campaign trail isn’t that hard to keep.

The council has selected five finalists from a longer list of applicants for Dr. Eades’ seat. We all thought the council was going to interview the finalists in public, asking them a set of questions.

I think that’s a fine idea.

It’s an equally fine idea for the council to deliberate in public about who they like. As I’ve noted before, the Texas Open Meeting Law doesn’t require governing bodies to meet in secret to discuss “personal matters”; it only empowers them to do so. I also could argue that selecting a council member doesn’t fall within the realm of “personnel.”

Who doesn’t favor a more transparent government?

The Amarillo City Council took office this past summer with a new majority of members committing to shining the light on the way it does its job on behalf of the public.

Well, do they — or don’t they — still believe in what they promised?

local news

Still pondering effects of City Hall’s ‘change’

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I keep rolling around in my noggin the notion of the “change” that the May 2015 municipal election brought to Amarillo City Hall.

Specifically, I keep thinking about how the governing City Council changed so dramatically with the election of three new members.

Not a single one of the candidates I wanted elected to the council made the cut in last year’s election. Two incumbents got tossed out by challengers. A third incumbent was a place-holder and didn’t run for election after the council appointed him to finish out the late Jim Simms’ term.

Councilmen Randy Burkett, Elisha Demerson and Mark Nair all promised to be agents of “change.” They brought it, all right.

To my way of thinking it’s been a mixed blessing — at best!

I’m a bit torn by what has happened at City Hall. On one hand, I don’t mind spirited debate and dissent. I do mind, though, when the debate promotes dysfunction and discord among the governing body.

There’s been a bit of distrust expressed by Mayor Paul Harpole at the conduct of at least two of his colleagues on the council. He stormed recently out of an executive session because he said he didn’t “trust the process” of discussing the selection of someone to succeed his sole ally on the council, Dr. Brian Eades, who’s planning to leave Amarillo this summer to set up a medical practice in Colorado.

From my perch, there appears to be a large divide among council members: the Agents of Change vs. the Status Quo.

I keep asking myself, was the change really necessary?

The city is rocking along. It has the lowest unemployment rate of any metro area in Texas; residential construction has been booming; businesses are expanding; sales tax revenue is up; the city is (or was) functioning well; it was continuing to purchase vast amounts of water for future use and growth.

And oh yes, downtown revitalization was proceeding at a brisk pace.

Most of those who voted this past year, though, said they wanted “change.”

I respect the results of the election, even though I don’t agree with them.

As for the change that has arrived, I am waiting to be persuaded that it’s all for the good of the city. We need a new city manager and a new chief of police. The city is seeking to land a Class Double AA baseball franchise. It needs a blueprint for a new ballpark to be built downtown.

It’s my fervent hope my fears are unfounded that the new guys who are running the City Hall dog-and-pony show know what they’re doing.

However, they’ve got to show me that’s the case.

local news

Time flies at Amarillo City Hall

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Where does the time go?

A year has passed since the Amarillo municipal election occurred that seated three new City Council members.

It’s worth noting this month as the first anniversary, given that the final new guy — Mark Nair — had to win his seat in a runoff that occurred more than a month after the initial balloting.

I’ve tried to give the city the benefit of the doubt as the new folks have settled in.

I am left, though, to give them a mixed rating — at best.

I’ll stipulate up front that I am acquainted with just two of the new councilmen — Elisha Demerson, who I have known from a distance for many years, and Nair, who I only met recently and with whom I had an informative and cordial conversation. I have not yet met Randy Burkett, although I’ve been quite aware of his presence on the council.

What continues to trouble me is the discord that seems to have infected the council. There once was a time when the council sang in nearly perfect harmony on the big issues.

Granted, it wasn’t always pitch-perfect. The late Jim Simms was known to be a contrarian on occasion, as was the late Dianne Bosch in the late 1990s. They would make their objections known and then would back whatever decision the majority of their colleagues made.

That doesn’t seem to be the case these days.

The new guys took office and immediately began damning the performance of then-City Manager Jarrett Atkinson. One of them called for the termination of the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation board. Then came a temporary truce.

The truce came undone when Atkinson resigned. The council brought in Terry Childers to serve as interim city manager.

AEDC executive director Buzz David quit, as did City Attorney Marcus Norris. Assistant City Manager Vicki Covey retired. Other senior staffers bailed.

The council seated new members on the Local Government Corporation. One of the founders of the LGC, Richard Brown, walked away, taking with him a trove of experience at business development and promotion.

The director of Downtown Amarillo Inc., Melissa Dailey, also walked away from a job that had produced some stunning progress in the evolution of the downtown district.

What’s left? Who’s running the show?

Terry Childers will be gone eventually. He might get to hire a new police chief to replace Robert Taylor, who is retiring in just a few days.

Meantime, the City Council must choose a new council member to replace Dr. Brian Eades, who’s leaving town to set up a medical practice in rural Colorado. That selection process has been something of a cluster hump, too, with the council deciding how to handle some pithy and crass social media posts delivered by one of the finalists for the council appointment; there appears to be disagreement among them over the significance of those comments and whether they should be considered as the council ponders this decision.

Yes, we’ve seen considerable progress in the city.

Construction is proceeding on the Embassy Suites Hotel and the parking garage. Xcel Energy’s new office complex is well underway. The council has instructed the LGC to negotiate a deal to lure a Class Double A baseball franchise to Amarillo, where it will play ball in the ballpark to be built across the street from City Hall.

The fate of the MPEV, though, might be in doubt if the council cannot learn to at leat pretend it is working together.

Not long ago, Mayor Paul Harpole stormed out of an executive session to protest what he said was a lack of “trust in the process” of selecting a new council member. Although I generally support the mayor on most policy matters, I am dismayed at the public pique he exhibited — and the message it might send beyond the city’s borders.

The three new council members vowed to bring “change” to City Hall. They brought it all right.

I won’t give up on them just yet.

However, my own patience is wearing a bit thin.

Let’s step it up, shall we?

legal news, local news, national news, political news, Uncategorized

Seeing some symmetry between SCOTUS and APD chief picks

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Am I hallucinating, or do I see a certain symmetry between two appointments: one at the highest level of government, the other right here at home on the High Plains of Texas?

One of them deserves the opportunity to do his duties as an elected public official. The other one also has earned the right to perform his duty as an appointed one.

Amarillo interim City Manager Terry Childers has selected Ed Drain to be the city’s interim chief of police; Drain is set to succeed retiring Police Chief Robert Taylor on July 1.

There might be a point of contention, though. You see, Childers won’t be city manager for very long. The City Council already has begun looking for a permanent city manager and Childers has declared his intention to retire completely from public life.

The council, though, has given Childers all the authority that the city manager’s position holds. Childers can hire — and fire — senior city administrators. He also is able to enact municipal policy changes when and where he sees fit. What the heck? He was able to bring changes to the city’s emergency communications center because he misplaced his briefcase at an Amarillo hotel, right?

Now, for the other example.

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President Barack Obama has named Merrick Garland to a spot on the U.S. Supreme Court to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia. The voters delivered the president all the power he needs to do his duty when they re-elected him to his second and final term in 2012.

Republicans in the U.S. Senate, though, have said: Hold on a minute! The president’s a lame duck. We don’t want him appointing the next justice. We want the next president to do it. They, of course, are hoping that Donald J. Trump takes the oath next January. Good luck with that.

Here’s the question: Should the city manager be allowed to appoint the permanent chief of police, or should the council demand that the decision be left to the permanent city manager?

My own take is this: I’ve railed heavily against the GOP’s obstructing Obama’s ability to do his job. Republicans are wrong to play politics with this process and they are exhibiting a shameless disregard for the authority the president is able to exercise. The president is in the office until next Jan. 20 and he deserves the opportunity to fulfill all of his presidential responsibilities.

Accordingly, the Amarillo city manager will be on the job until the City Council hires someone else and that permanent manager takes over.

Thus, Terry Childers ought to be able to make the call — if the right person emerges quickly — on who should lead the police department … even if he won’t be around to supervise the new chief.