Tag Archives: Amarillo City Manager

local news, political news

Amarillo council ballot is filling up … good deal!

Amarillo voters won’t lack choices when they troop to the polls in May to elect their five-member City Council.

This, I submit, is an early victory for the cause of representative democracy.

Three residents are running for mayor. I’ve got my favorite picked already, but I’m just one voter.

All five council seats are up, as they are every odd-numbered year. This year’s election could produce a unique set of issues for voters to consider.

You’ll recall that two years ago, the prevailing issue appeared to be some grumbling among voters about the performance of the council and the city’s top administrative staff. The anger, to my mind, seemed misplaced. Municipal property taxes remain low, the city is growing, downtown is improving, projects are getting done. But there was anger out there.

Two incumbents got bounced out of office; a third incumbent, who was appointed to fill a seat vacated by the death of Jim Simms, decided not to run for election. So the city welcomed three new guys to the council.

Then the trouble got serious. City Manager Jarrett Atkinson quit; the council picked a combative interim manager, Terry Childers, who quit near the end of 2016; and some of the new guys squabbled openly with Mayor Paul Harpole.

Ugghh!

Now the new guys’ seats are on the ballot. Another incumbent who was re-elected in 2015 resigned his seat. The council chose Lisa Blake to succeed Brian Eades. Blake says she’s undecided about running for election. I hope she runs.

As for Harpole, he says he’ll announce soon his intention. I quite sure he’s going to pack it in to pave the way for someone else.

I’m anticipating a full municipal ballot for voters to consider on May 6. That’s how it should be.

As for the issues that voters might have to ponder, they likely will include the occasional flare-ups that occur among certain council members. Is it good for the city for its elected council members to bicker as they have done from time to time? What about the most recent dust-up involving the mayor and someone on the council who allegedly “leaked” information from an executive session to the media?

This kind of open sparring has been rare, indeed, on Amarillo’s governing board.

Municipal governance has become a contact sport at times. I’m going to bet that harmony vs. conflict is going to become one of the issues that candidates will get to discuss among themselves.

Ah, yes. Choices. Won’t this election be fun?

environmental news, local news

Water management must remain a top city priority

Maybe I am preaching to the proverbial choir, but I’ll preach this “sermon” anyway.

Amarillo City Council members’ decision to hire Jared Miller as our next city manager came after a discussion of issues that lacked one critical component: water management and conservation.

I don’t know, of course, what council members discussed in executive session with Miller and the four other finalists for the city manager job. Perhaps they talked openly, candidly and freely with them all about an issue that had become a top priority of the man they succeeded, Jarrett Atkinson.

It needs to remain there.

I say this feeling a bit strange, given all the moisture that’s fallen on the High Plains during the past 24 hours. It’s only a drop in the grand scheme of our water needs.

Atkinson came to the city after serving as a water planner for the Panhandle Regional Planning Commission. He is an acknowledged expert on water resources and knowing how to conserve what is without question the most valuable resource we have in this region. I am quite certain he is going to bring that knowledge to bear in Lubbock, where he has just begun as that city’s manager.

The city — working with the Canadian River Municipal Water Authority — has done a great job of securing water rights to keep us flush with water (pun intended, I suppose) for the next couple hundred years. Atkinson played a big role in securing those rights.

The city’s aggressive water-rights-acquisition policy has helped us forestall many of the mandatory water-use restrictions that have been implemented in many cities throughout the state.

The city’s need to conserve and protect this resource doesn’t diminish even with the acquisition of those water rights and the relationship the city has with CRMWA and other water planning entities.

One of the Amarillo city manager’s many duties must be to keep both eyes focused intently on water we’re pulling out of the Ogallala Aquifer and from Lake Meredith.

I will anticipate hearing Jared Miller’s perspective on how we manage the one resource that gives life to the High Plains of Texas.

business news, local news

Downtown dining district taking shape

Some interesting news is coming forth about downtown Amarillo’s future … which coincides nicely with the City Council’s decision to hire a new city manager.

The two things aren’t necessarily related directly, but City Hall’s new top hand — Jared Miller — is going to oversee a development that holds tremendous potential for the city he is about to manage.

They’ve broken ground on a new restaurant at the corner of Seventh Avenue and Polk Street. An established eatery, Crush, is moving across the street.

What does this mean? From what I understand, it moves forward the development of what’s been called in recent days a new “dining district” for the city’s downtown area.

We’ve got that brew pub being developed nearby. We’ll see another new structure going in with a couple of other dining establishments also in the immediate area. Napoli’s does business at the corner of Seventh and Taylor.

All the while, work on the Embassy Suites hotel is ongoing next to the parking garage.

What appears to be taking shape, as I see it, is a fundamental remaking of Amarillo’s downtown personality.

My wife and I arrived here in early 1995. To be candid, the downtown district didn’t have any kind of identity that either of us could recognize. Polk Street was in a moribund state. The Santa Fe Building sat empty at the corner of Ninth and Polk; that structure’s fortunes changed dramatically later that year when Potter County purchased it for a song and rehabbed it into a first-class office complex.

Now, though, the city is going through an extreme makeover.

Think of it: Embassy Suites will open soon; Xcel Energy is finishing work on its new office complex; that parking garage will open as well; West Texas A&M University is tearing the daylights out of the old Commerce Building to transform it into a new downtown Amarillo campus; this new dining district is now beginning to take some form.

Oh, and we’ve also cleared out the former Coca-Cola distribution center to make room for a ballpark that many of us want to see built eventually.

It’s not all entirely peachy. Many floors in the 31-story Chase Tower are going dark when Xcel and WT vacate the skyscraper. But I understand that the leasing agents working to re-fill those floors remain highly optimistic that the building will get new life.

The pace of change is a bit mind-boggling. I am prepared to keep watching — and waiting — for it all to bear fruit for the city.

local news

Welcome aboard, Jared Miller

So, it’s going to be Jared Miller taking his post as Amarillo’s next city manager.

I’ve spoken already about the process that brought Miller and four other city manager finalists to city residents’ attention. The process worked well and the City Council blessed itself with a good pool of five finalists from which to choose.

Miller is the current San Marcos city manager. The budget he handles there is a bit less than what he’ll manage in Amarillo; he supervises an employment payroll of a good bit less as well.

The council will pay him about a quarter-million bucks a year. He’ll earn it.

I’m going to make one request of the new guy: Find a way to keep Bob Cowell on your management team.

Cowell was another finalist for the permanent city manager’s job. He’d been named interim manager after Terry Childers popped off in November at a constituent and then quit abruptly. Childers had been brought in as an interim manager after City Manager Jarrett Atkinson quit a little more than a year ago.

Cowell knows the ropes. He knows the players, including the five people who serve on the City Council. He brings institutional knowledge of Amarillo’s recent political turbulence. He could be a valuable resource for City Hall’s new man of the house.

I am going to offer a word of trust that the council has chosen well as well as a word of hope that the council will allow him to exercise the administrative authority — without interference from the council — that the city charter mandates.

Welcome to Amarillo, Jared Miller.

You’ll need to get busy. In a big hurry.

local news

City close to a new manager era

Amarillo appears poised to have a new city manager, perhaps not long after the sun rises Thursday.

It’s going to be one of five men who have answered the call by the Amarillo City Council for someone to become the city’s chief administrator, the go-to guy who will run a city government that answers to 200,000 residents. The council reportedly has tendered an offer to one of the men.

I’ve been thinking a bit about who the city should choose. I’ve come to a conclusion that involves one of the applicants: If the council doesn’t choose current interim City Manager Bob Cowell, then it’s my hope that Cowell remains part of the city’s top municipal management team.

I don’t know Bob Cowell, who came on board after I resigned my job at the Amarillo Globe-News.

All five of the candidates appear to have solid experience and backgrounds in municipal and county government. Any one of them — from what I’ve read about them through the media — would be good picks.

Why focus on Cowell? As someone with intimate knowledge of city government told me Monday night at the meet-and-greet session with the five candidates at the Civic Center, City Hall has a number of key positions to fill. A lot of top hands have left the city as a result of the tumult that has occurred at Seventh and Buchanan.

If the council has chosen Cowell to be the top man, then he would step in with a substantial bit of what’s commonly called “institutional knowledge.” He knows the lay of the land, the principal players and the direction of the political winds.

If the council goes with someone else, then perhaps Cowell could be persuaded to stay on as deputy manager, a post he held until assuming the interim job … again, according to my friend with all the knowledge of city government and politics. Cowell’s knowledge of the local landscape would be a valuable asset to whomever takes over as City Hall’s top hand.

So, with that … we shall see who the council picks. It’s a major decision that will have tremendous impact on those of us who live here and depend on the city serving our needs.

local news

City Council gets an ‘A’ for effort

I’m going to assign the Amarillo City Council a letter grade for its attempt to present five qualified city manager candidates seeking to become the individual chosen to manage City Hall’s complex government machinery.

That would be an “A.” For effort. The council brought the five individuals out tonight to a meet-and-greet reception at the Civic Center’s Heritage Room. My best guess on the number of folks who attended? About 120.

As for the community’s response to the council’s outreach effort, let’s lower our sights. I’ll give the rest of Amarillo a “C+.”

You see, I didn’t notice a lot of, oh, “regular folks” at tonight’s reception. I didn’t recognize any auto mechanics, grocery store clerks, shoe salespeople, fast-food restaurant managers, beef processing plant employees … well, you get the idea.

I did see some lawyers, some folks involved with local government in some form or fashion; I noticed one well-heeled residential and commercial developer; I shook the hands of some City Council candidates; I noticed one Potter County commissioner and another former county commissioner; and a retired college administrator.

My wish as I drove downtown tonight to attend this reception was to see a larger representation of the community at-large. Those who didn’t attend missed an interesting and engaging interaction with the five men the council is considering for the city manager’s job.

This is a huge deal, folks. The city manager will be asked — according to a friend who’s fairly familiar with the atmospherics at City Hall — to “fill a lot of holes.” A lot of key personnel have departed City Hall in recent months, given all the turmoil that’s erupted there — with the resignation of City Manager Jarrett Atkinson and several key senior staff associates and then the sudden departure just a few weeks ago of the interim manager, Terry Childers.

The next manager will have to oversee a budget of several hundred million dollars. He will have to manage the progress of downtown’s extreme makeover. He’ll have to figure out how to implement the expenditure of money to repair and rehabilitates streets.

The city manager will become the face and the voice of the city’s administration. He will have tremendous responsibility to serve a city of 200,000 souls who depend on the city to deliver services paid for with taxpayers’ money.

If only more of the community had come out tonight to get an up-close look at the men vying for this critical job.

The City Council is now faced with the kind of “headache” elected governing bodies always seek. It gets to choose from among five competent, experienced and seasoned municipal and county administrators.

A little birdie told me tonight the decision could come quickly.

I encouraged one of the council members tonight only to “choose well.” He smiled.

local news

City did well in casting its manager search net

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Amarillo City Council members will have a difficult choice to make soon.

It’s a difficulty made possible for the correct reasons.

Amarillo council members looked across the nation for someone to become its city manager and has come up with a strong field of finalists. One of them, interim City Manager Bob Cowell, is among the five men the council will consider for the job.

I want to offer a brief analysis on a couple of fronts.

The first is that I’ve long believed that local governments shouldn’t restrict their search options, particularly when the search involves finding someone to do as critical a job as administer the operations of a government that serves 200,000 residents and spends about $300 million annually to serve those constituents.

Back when I worked for the Amarillo Globe-News as editorial page editor, we urged the city to cast a wide net as it looked for a successor to former City Manager John Ward. The city instead looked inward and promoted Alan Taylor to the top job. The paper was critical of the choice … but the paper’s criticism had nothing to do with Taylor’s ability. The G-N merely thought that the city would have served itself better by collecting a large field of qualified candidates and then have Taylor compete against them for the job he would get.

Taylor took the criticism personally and I regret that to this day;  I told him repeatedly that it was never about him or his skill set. He did well in the job.

The city looked inward again when it promoted Jarrett Atkinson to the manager’s post after Taylor retired. The G-N argued again for a national search. You know my feelings already about Atkinson and the job he did. I am sorry he couldn’t work with the new City Council majority, but I also am delighted that he has scored a new gig as Lubbock city manager.

Here we are again. All the finalists have municipal and/or county government experience. Some of them are Texans, which bodes well for someone who must be familiar with our state’s own municipal codes.

If the council chooses Cowell — who knows the city’s unique political landscape — that would be fine, too. He will have been asked to rise to the challenge of competing against four other qualified men for the top job.

The second point is the timing of this appointment. The Globe-News believes the current council should give way to the next one, which will take office after the May 6 election. I disagree with that notion, just as I disagreed with U.S. Senate Republicans’ insistence that President Obama’s pick for the U.S. Supreme Court be denied a hearing and a vote because the president also was a lame duck.

In the case of the city, all five of these individuals stand for election every two years. At what point — given that brief time span — are these council members not facing potential lame-duck status?

The city charter gives the council the authority to act in its own time to deliver the only hiring decision it is empowered to make. If there is a concern that the council could change hands — as it did in May 2015 — then council members need to ask all the finalists how they would handle a potential change of political philosophy on the governing body. That seems like a direct question and it requires candor and honesty from the city manager candidates.

The city has gone too long already without a permanent city manager. Let these individuals make the call.

Good luck, council members. Study hard and be damn certain you get this one right.

local news

Get this one right, City Council

Amarillo’s city charter gives the City Council the power to make precisely one hiring decision: the council hires the city manager.

The five individuals who comprise the council, therefore, have to get this one right. There shouldn’t be any do-overs. They cannot foist it onto someone else. The strong-manager form of government for Amarillo gives the manager the authority to hire all other department heads.

The first hiring decision that the council makes, though, involves the individual who will grab the levers of government and implement council policy. The council is blessed — surprisingly so — with a strong stable of finalists from which to choose.

Thus, the council has only one thing it ought to consider as it ponders the choices for the city manager job: Which one of the five men selected as finalists is the best individual for the post.

The council, though, is getting a bit side-tracked. Imagine that. It’s arguing over how to structure the salary it will pay the manager.

Forget that stuff, council members!

The city paid its previous city manager and the guy who served as interim a handsome salary of more than $200,000 annually. Whoever gets the job next presumably will be the most qualified of the individuals who are competing for the job as chief municipal administrator.

Settle on that matter exclusively, council members. Don’t get caught up in some nickel-and-dime dickering over whether to negotiate a salary package based on an individual’s qualifications.

This is a huge deal, council members.

Get … it … right!

local news

Wrong again … for the right reasons

I am not too proud to admit being mistaken and heaven knows I’ve had plenty of opportunities during the recent election season to acknowledge as much.

For instance, Donald J. Trump is going to become president of the United States over my intense belief that he didn’t have a prayer of defeating Hillary Rodham Clinton.

What do I know?

Accordingly, I was mistaken in fearing that Amarillo’s City Hall turmoil would make it next to impossible for the city to attract top-drawer candidates for the job of city manager. One critic of my blog sought to put words in my mouth by asserting I said the city would fail miserably in that effort. I actually didn’t make that prediction.

My fear was aimed at the potential for failure.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/11/atkinson-lands-on-his-feet-amarillo-still-on-the-deck/

This is a case — unlike the presidential election example — where I am glad to have been wrong in my speculation.

Amarillo had drawn a candidate pool of around 30 applicants. The City Council then culled that pool down to five finalists, whose names were announced this week.

I’ve had a chance to pore through the resumes that were posted at Amarillo.gov and I find these individuals to be — to a man — seemingly qualified to become Amarillo’s chief administrator.

The council has been debating among its members about how it will decide on a salary for whomever council members select. Do they offer a salary or do they negotiate with the individual chosen based on the person’s experience? I’ll wait for another day to possibly offer a comment.

Today, though, I want to offer an ever-so-humble mea culpa.

My optimism is being restored a little bit at a time that the council will find someone who can do the tough job of shepherding the city through its myriad changes and challenges.

I don’t like being wrong about the city’s ability to find a good crop of candidates. Liking it is far different from acknowledging it — and I acknowledge my error with a healthy dose of hope that Amarillo can continue its journey toward a brighter future.

local news

City manager slate looks solid, competent

Amarillo City Council members might have delivered their constituents an early Christmas present.

It comes in the form of a slate of five finalists for city manager, each of whom appears qualified, competent and able to lead the administration of a city on the move.

To be totally candid, the on-paper quality of the finalists surprises me, given the tempest, turmoil and tumult that’s been City Hall’s curse for the past year. Councilman Mark Nair believes the quality of the finalists is a testament to the perception beyond the city limits that Amarillo is a fine place to work and do business.

One of the finalists, interestingly, is Bob Cowell, the current interim city manager. It’s interesting to me because Cowell didn’t apply for the permanent job when it came open after City Manager Jarrett Atkinson quit shortly after the City Council — with its three new members — took office in the summer of 2015. He thinks City Hall has achieved a level of stability that makes the manager’s job more attractive.

The finalists comprise a number of individuals — all of whom are white males, by the way — with many years of municipal government experience. Some have been city managers; others have county government exposure. Four of the finalists have extensive experience in Texas local government, which in itself is a positive element to bring to this job.

Who’s the favorite? I haven’t a clue. I won’t go there, given my abysmal track record of predicting such things.

Check out the link below. It contains the resumes of all five finalists.

http://amarillo.com/local-news/2016-12-23/amarillo-city-council-selects-city-manager-finalists

I do, though, want to restate an earlier comment about who should make this selection. I believe the current council needs to move on this; it need not wait for the May 2017 election and hand this task off to the next City Council. The city charter gives the council the authority to make this hiring decision, which is the only one the council makes under our strong-manager form of government.

I get that the city has gone too long as it is without a permanent chief administrator. The former interim city manager, Terry Childers, was supposed to stay on the job until after the next election. Then he exhibited some profoundly bad form by mouthing off with a profane epithet to a constituent during a City Council meeting.

Childers submitted his letter of resignation, cleared out his office and hit the road.

He’s a goner.

Amarillo’s future — with a big downtown redevelopment project already underway, along with initiatives throughout the city — awaits the next city manager, whoever he is.

Merry Christmas, y’all.