Tag Archives: Amarillo City Council

business news, local news

Step by step, downtown moving ahead

I am likely to get the sequence slightly mixed up, but I’m trying to assemble the series of positive steps that have been taken in downtown Amarillo.

— The city commissions a study to assemble a Strategic Action Plan

— It conducts a series of public hearings.

— The City Council approves the plan and then approves creation of agencies dedicated to crafting a strategies to bring the district back to life.

— Debate ensues and it becomes quite, um, lively about the direction the city is taking.

— Three new council members join the governing body after a contentious municipal election campaign.

— The Local Government Corporation agrees to proceed with plans to build a multipurpose event venue, according to the wishes of voters who endorsed the concept in a citywide referendum.

— Construction begins on a convention hotel and a parking garage.

— Now comes the latest bit of good news, which was announced today at noon: plans for new restaurants that will go into the Woolworth Building on South Polk Street.

I’ve likely missed a few points along the way.

But I do sense continuing momentum in the effort to reshape, reconfigure, rehabilitate, revive and restore the city’s downtown business district.

Let’s face the blunt truth here. Downtown has been a moribund place for a good while. My own personal observation of the district, dating back to early 1995 when I first arrived in Amarillo, tells me that downtown is in far better shape than it was when my wife and I arrived here.

I get that there are many more hills to climb. The city must find a new council member to succeed Brian Eades, who’s planning to resign from the council this summer. That selection process has hit a few bumps along the way.

The city is negotiating with a baseball franchise to relocate its operation to Amarillo, where it will play ball at a planned baseball park to be built at the site of the now-vacant Coca-Cola distribution center.

But we’ve heard about convention business already being booked because of the convention hotel’s pending arrival on the scene. City and civic leaders have told us for years about all the convention business the city has lost because of a lack of appropriate nearby lodging for conventioneers.

Is all this activity connected? Is it related to the city’s efforts to resuscitate its downtown district?

It looks that way to me.

To be honest, I am puzzled by the chronic gripers who keep saying all this is somehow bad for Amarillo.

business news, local news

Mayor creates a scene where none was needed

mayor and nair

I know that politicians hate hypotheticals … at least that’s what they say.

Here’s one anyway.

You’re a business owner looking for a place to relocate your business. You hear that Amarillo is a business-friendly city with an economic development agency that parcels out sales-tax revenue to new businesses looking to expand local payrolls.

You think: Hey, that sounds like a good place to live and work.

Then  you hear about the City Council’s current state of dysfunction. You understand that three new council members joined the panel in the spring of 2015. Two incumbents got ousted; a third council member didn’t run for election. The three new guys have butted heads with the two holdovers publicly.

One of the council holdovers then announces he is leaving the city this summer. The council puts out a call for applicants. They get 14 of them; the council winnows them down to five finalists. Then word hits the street one of the finalists has put out some unflattering and insulting social media commentary. The council is getting pressure to rethink whether to interview this individual.

And on top of all that, the mayor storms out of an executive session, declaring to the public that he doesn’t “trust the process.”

Is this still the place where you want to relocate your business?

Maybe … then again, maybe not.

I mention this because of Mayor Paul Harpole’s demonstration of petulance this week. He knows how much I respect him and that I generally support his agenda for the city. He’s a good man with a solid personal history; I consider him a “brother,” given his Vietnam War experience.

Harpole is a passionate advocate for Amarillo and if you’ve ever listened to his speech about downtown redevelopment efforts, you might be inclined stand and cheer.

I just wish he hadn’t made such a show of the executive session episode, which well might have telegraphed to business owners just like my hypothetical example that Amarillo’s municipal government is in a state of serious dysfunction.

Amarillo doesn’t have a “strong mayor” form of government. The mayor casts one vote that carries precisely the same weight as the other four City Council members. The mayor, though, does preside over meetings of the governing council and is in a position to exert his “bully pulpit” authority over the rest of the body.

I haven’t discussed the events leading up to this spate of pique with the mayor. They did occur in private session, so he’s not obligated to say what happened when the council was meeting in secret.

Perhaps he thought he was making an appropriate political statement by leaving the session in the hands of his colleagues.

He also well might have made another kind of statement about the quality of leadership that exists at City Hall.

I fear the mayor has inflamed an already inflammatory environment.

local news

City Council schism widens again

10731514_G

Amarillo City Council members cannot seem to get past the divisions with their ranks.

Three new guys got elected a year ago promising “change” in the way the city does business. They want more “transparency,” more “openness,” more “accountability.”

Good deal. We’re all for it.

The schism seem to narrow a bit when the council agreed unanimously on some steps to move the downtown revival strategy forward.

Then a vacancy developed at Place 2. Brian Eades wants to move to Colorado to set up a medical practice. He intends to resign his council seat effective later this summer.

Now comes yet another controversy to sweep in over the rest of the council.

One of the applicants for Eades’ seat, Sandra McCartt, has posted some rather blunt and unflattering commentary on Facebook.

The divide between the three new guys and the two “old-timers” has widened once again.

The three newbies — Randy Burkett, Elisha Demerson and Mark Nair — believe McCartt’s comments do not disqualify her. The other two, Eades and Mayor Paul Harpole, believe they do.

Harpole walked out of a closed council meeting Tuesday, saying he didn’t “trust the process.”

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/32170046/online-comments-from-amarillo-city-council-applicant-cause-tension

Suppose the council had instituted a vetting protocol that would have discovered these social media posts earlier in the process. Would they have been able to make a determination on the five finalists? Perhaps. Then again, they might have argued vehemently among themselves as they began culling the list of applicants from 14 to the five finalists.

It’s a new day at Amarillo City Hall, all right.

The “change” that city voters sought is looking once again to be something quite different from the “change” they got.

Pass the peanuts and the popcorn.

local news, media news

Right idea on council selection; just need more ‘vetting’

social-media two

Amarillo City Councilman Mark Nair is correct to favor a new way of filling vacancies on the body on which he serves.

It needs to be more open, more accessible to the public. Nair helped design the new process for filling those vacancies, which he said used to be done in secret.

The new process also requires a good bit of tinkering and tweaking to avoid the embarrassment that appears to have developed in the search for someone to replace Councilman Brian Eades, who’s leaving the council this summer.

At issue are weird Facebook comments attributed to Sandra McCartt, one of the finalists being considered for the Place 2 seat. There are some doozies out there. The council didn’t see them coming.

According to the Amarillo Globe-News: “’Nothing in the process said if someone said something goofy or bone-headed in the past,’ it would determine their worthiness,” (Nair) added.

“Nair said in the past, council would have appointed a candidate in a back room and none of the conversation would have been public. He said he designed the current process because he wanted the community to be a part of the conversation, and things such as McCartt’s — and other candidates — comments on social media will be part of the discussion.”

Social media platforms are everywhere. Facebook is just one of them. People have Twitter, LinkedIn and Tumblr accounts. They are likely to say just about anything using any of these social media outlets.

This push for openness has created an opportunity for the City Council to work even harder to ensure they find the right people either to fill vacancies on the body, or select a city manager — which is another task awaiting the council.

Indeed, the city manager selection ought to include a thorough vetting of the men and women who make the list of finalists for that job.

The council said it was intent on invoking “change” in the way the city did business. That’s fine. The change, though, also seems to require a bit more care and attention to detail from the folks who are seeking to reform the way City Hall does its business.

A more thorough vetting of social media accounts is a reasonable place to start.

local news, media news, political news

Social media bite a council candidate in the … you know

Social Media speech bubble on white background.

If you’re going to put your name into the public arena and if you intend to present yourself as a candidate for a governing board, you’d better be prepared for extra-meticulous scrutiny.

That means you’d better be ready to have everything you put into the public domain examined with a magnifying glass.

I’m talking about what you say on social media. If you’ve said something you might regret, then it’s best you not say it.

Social media have all but eliminated potential public officeholders’ zone of privacy.

There. Now I need to mention one Sandra McCartt, who’s one of five individuals being considered for a spot on the Amarillo City Council.

It appears there might be a problem with some of the things this person has said on her Facebook account.

She seems to have said some things about others that might come back to bite her.

McCartt is vying for the chance to succeed Place 2 Councilman Brian Eades, who’s leaving office in July.

I do not know Sandra McCartt. Nor am I willing to say that these things she’s reportedly said are a deal-breaker as the City Council considers her among the other finalists who are seeking to join the council. She’ll need to have her answers ready when the council starts peppering her with questions about why she said these things.

http://amarillo.com/news/local-news/2016-06-04/posts-spur-questions-about-council-candidate?utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook_Amarillo_Globe-News

According to the Amarillo Globe-News: “Facebook comments by Sandra McCartt, a professional recruiter vying for the Place 2 position on council, picked at Amarillo, referring to it as ‘Jackass Flats,’ mocked Chinese people and compared the mayor to ‘a psychotic trunk monkey.’

“McCartt refers to Millenials as a generation of ‘entitled little shits.’ In other comments, she mocks blonde women, uses a slur against Jews to label a landlord with whom she was arguing, repeatedly refers to a woman as a ‘kid’ and ‘little girl’ and discounts the participation of entire groups in the political process.”

Amazing, yes? Well, I believe it is.

I find this new council-selection process fascinating in the extreme. It marks a radical departure from what’s been done before. Previous council appointees were chosen by the council basically with little public input. The new process is designed to be more transparent.

City Councilman Mark Nair, who helped develop this new selection process, acknowledged to the newspaper that there was no “vetting” involved with selecting the finalists.

Maybe there ought to have been some vetting.

In one of her Facebook posts, she said there were things she do for $10 per City Council meeting, but that listening to “all the crap from the dear public is not one of them.”

There are some other, um, revealing statements as well.

It looks me as though the City Council has given itself a large array of traps to run if it is going to “open up” the machinery of this selection process to public review.

One place it needs to start is to ensure that the individuals it is considering for membership on the five-member panel haven’t put thoughtless or careless statements into the public domain.

Once they’re out there, it’s impossible to take them all back.

legal news, local news

Texas Open Meetings Act can serve as shroud

TOMA-Slider

Amarillo City Council members are going to hold a series of public hearings to interview five individuals who’ve applied for an opening that’s about to occur on the five-member governing board.

It should be interesting to hear the five hopefuls make their case in public, in front of those they want to serve.

Then it’s going to get interesting.

Council members likely then will huddle in private to talk about who they want to join their ranks. They’ll declare their intention to discuss “personnel matters” that are exempt from public review.

I wish they would finish the job in the open, too.

The Open Meetings Act allows governing bodies to meet in secret only under certain circumstances. It’s quite clear:

Personnel issues; real estate transactions; potential or pending litigation. There also are a list of other subjects that might or might be covered under those general provisions.

https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/files/og/openmeeting_hb.pdf

I totally understand the reason for hiding many of these provisions from public scrutiny. The governing body doesn’t want to reveal their negotiating strategy involving the sale of real estate, which could cost a lot of money. Nor does the body want to talk about privileged legal information given to it by legal counsel; they have this attorney-client provision to honor.

Personnel-related issues also are spelled out. If a city employee is being disciplined, then that person has a right to have his or her privacy protected. The Open Meetings Act, though, does allow the affected employee to request — or demand — that the discussion occur in public.

The interviewing of City Council candidates, I submit, doesn’t fall into the same category of “personnel” matters as the example I just gave.

These individuals aren’t being disciplined. They are seeking a public service job — and a volunteer job at that, given that council members earn a whopping 10 bucks per meeting.

They seek to sell themselves on their commitment to public service. Why not, then, allow the public access to the views expressed by those who make the appointment?

I’ve noted before that most of the current City Council members were elected in May 2015 on a promise to bring more transparency to city government.

Here’s their chance to show they mean what they said.

And please, gentlemen, do not use the Open Meetings Act in a manner that is contrary to the principles on which it was enacted. Let’s not hide behind some provision that empowers you meet in secret.

Empowerment doesn’t make it mandatory.

 

local news, political news

City enters new era of council selection

eades

I’m going to get something off my chest right off the top.

The person I wanted the Amarillo City Council to select to join its ranks didn’t make the cut; he’s not one of the five finalists chosen from a pool of 14 applicants.

Given that his name already is out there, I will just tell you it was Cole Camp. He’s the one I was hoping would get the job. He’s a friend of mine who, in my view, would have served with great distinction.

OK. That’s out of the way.

Now, about the selection process, which is a most fascinating departure from what has been the norm at City Hall. In the past, council members would solicit replacements privately, consider the individuals who’d expressed interest, meet and then announce the selection to the public. That’s what happened a couple of years ago when Councilman Jim Simms died and the council appointed Ron Boyd to serve until the next municipal election.

Council members are going to interview the five finalists — all fine folks, I’m sure — in public. They’re going to ask them questions prepared in advance. Each candidate is going to have 30 minutes to answer them.

Then the council members will consider their selection. The person they pick will succeed Dr. Brian Eades, who’s leaving the council this summer when he moves to Colorado. I presume they’ll declare it to be a “personnel discussion,” so they’ll have that deliberation in private, in executive — or closed — session.

You know what? With all this talk about “transparency,” I wonder why council members need to have that discussion in secret. It they were discussing, say, the job performance of a senior administrator and were considering terminating that individual, I get how that would qualify as an exemption under the Texas Open Meetings Act.

Selecting a City Council member, though, doesn’t qualify as a “personnel” matter in that context. They’re selecting someone who would answer to the council’s constituents. That would be about, oh, 200,000 of us who live here. Many of us pay property taxes that fund city government.

Why not open the process the rest of the way, to allow us to hear from the elected governing council how they’re deliberating? What factors are they considering as they ponder this important decision?

One of the aspects of the Texas Open Meetings Act that few of us ever seem to grasp is that the act doesn’t require governing bodies to convene these executive sessions. It only empowers them to do so. Some governing boards are more apt to convene executive sessions than others.

If the Amarillo City Council now comprises a majority of its members who got elected a year ago as agents of change, well, here’s a chance for them to demonstrate some serious change in the manner in which they decide to appoint one of its members.

local news, Sports news

Amarillo inches closer to a bigger league

baseball

It’s not big-league baseball.

But what the Amarillo City Council has endorsed has taken the city closer to a bigger league-brand of hardball.

The council today voted 4-0 to proceed with the pursuit of a Class AA baseball franchise that would play in the yet-to-be-built ballpark in the city’s downtown district.

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/31882848/aa-baseball-vote-passes-lgc-to-move-forward

Will it be the San Antonio Missions, a franchise that would vacate the Alamo City as it seeks to welcome a AAA franchise?

Possibly.

The council has decided to accept the more expensive price tag attached to the multipurpose event venue, which city voters endorsed with a citywide referendum this past November. The MPEV price tag was listed at $32 million on the ballot measure, but the price has increased to more than $40 million as the AA franchise became part of the community discussion.

The council’s decision instructs the Local Government Corporation to proceed with the design and construction of the ballpark. City Councilman Randy Burkett said construction won’t begin until the city has a signed contract with a franchise.

I happen to be quite pleased with this development.

The city has been jerked around by the owners of the independent franchise that is still playing its home games at the Potter County Memorial Stadium. This season, though, the Amarillo Thunderheads are going to play half of their “home” games in Grand Prairie.

That’s some commitment to Amarillo, yes? Well, no.

The AA franchise being considered most actively is affiliated with the San Diego Padres of the National League. The Padres could bring some serious professionalism to the baseball climate here.

I am gratified that the council has decided to move forward with seeking to lure a serious baseball franchise to this city.

There remains much work to do and many commitments to be collected. The LGC has been handed a huge task.

My hope is that the organization is up to the challenge that’s been delivered.

business news, local news, Sports news

Amarillo to make bid for AA baseball

baseball

I love it when public officials seek to remove doubt about their commitment.

A bit of doubt removal has taken place at Amarillo City Hall, where the City Council and its appointed Local Government Corporation appear headed toward building a better future for the city’s downtown business district.

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/31825077/amarillo-to-move-forward-with-bigger-costlier-mpev

The LGC has come up with a formula to build a baseball park downtown that won’t cost property taxpayers any more than what they’re paying now for municipal services.

The multipurpose event venue cost has been revised downward a bit, from $48 million to $44 million. Yes, it’s more than the $32 million stated on the city referendum ballot measure that voters approved this past November.

The payoff, though, well could be a AA minor league baseball team that would play in the shiny new MPEV set to be built across the street from City Hall at the site of the old Coca-Cola distribution center.

LGC officials are going to pitch the idea of hotel occupancy tax footing the bill, along with money There will be those who do not believe the city can support a AA baseball team.

I remain hopeful that the city is able to move this project forward and bring an Major League Baseball-affiliated minor league team to a city that has supported such an activity in the past.

As Mayor Paul Harpole has noted, there remains a lot of work ahead to make this deal come to fruition.

Some of us had concerns about the council’s commitment to continuing all the work that had been done to this point. Voters elected three new council members a year ago, all of whom had expressed some reservations about the MPEV and whether the downtown redevelopment proposals were worth the effort.

The LGC board, which bears the stamp of the new council, appears to be looking hard for ways to keep the momentum going.

As Harpole said: “When we look at the economic impact of this in our city and what it could bring,  it’s really an important way for us to move forward. I think we are looking at a bit of an historic day this day and next week when this is ratified.”

Let’s keep moving this project along.

 

business news, local news, political news

Amarillo’s political divide has been exposed

mayor and nair

Just when some of us had hoped the Amarillo City Council’s five-man lineup might learn to cooperate among themselves, we see an exhibition of non-cooperation.

Let’s see how this goes.

The council was going to consider two appointments to the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation, the city’s publicly funded development arm. The debate got a bit rowdy, as I understand it.

Two council members, Mayor Paul Harpole and Councilman Brian Eades, objected to the appointments being considered. The other three supported them.

Then came a motion from one of the other three, Councilman Randy Burkett, to shut down the public meeting and vote without any further public discussion.

Then the council voted 3-2 to seat the two new members — Craig Gualtiere and Brian Heinrich.

That was it.

I’m not going to comment — at least not today — on the individuals who’ve been seated. I know one of them pretty well. I consider him a friend.

What does trouble me are two aspects of this selection process: the effort to shut down the public discussion and the division that splits the three newest members of the council from the two more experienced hands.

Burkett, Mark Nair and Elisha Demerson all were elected to bring change, openness and transparency to the council. Their actions this week in shutting down the discussion speaks to other instincts that look a lot like what they accused the former council of doing.

Public comment be damned!

As for the division that laid itself wide open this week, that will need to be dealt with as the council moves forward on a number of citywide projects and policy decisions. I don’t mind tension among governing officials if it leads to constructive conclusions.

My hope here is that the division that erupted over the AEDC selection doesn’t stymie the work of the economic development agency, which in my view has done well for the city since voters approved its creation in 1989.

As for shutting out the public’s views on who should serve, let us also remember: The AEDC parcels out public money collected from a portion of the sales tax revenue contributed by, um, the public.

That is our business being conducted. The public has every right to have a say in determining who is making these decisions.