Tag Archives: Amarillo City Hall

local news

City manager search might get really complicated

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Amarillo needs a city manager more than its governing council might realize.

Then again, perhaps the five individuals on the City Council do realize it. Still, the search for a permanent chief municipal executive might get complicated in a major hurry.

Given that I don’t get out as much these days as I did when I was working full time for a living, I am not privy to all the chatter and clatter that rattles around the city. But I did hear a thing or two today that makes me think about the upcoming city manager search and the issues that might complicate it.

The City Council makeup might be changing. The buzz I heard is that Mayor Paul Harpole won’t seek re-election. He’s had enough. He’s done. It’ll be back to selling cars full time for His Honor. Councilman Mark Nair might be on the fence about running for re-election next May. I have heard that Councilman Elisha Demerson wants to be mayor. Councilman Randy Burkett, I’m told, is a cinch to seek re-election. No word on the newest council member, Lisa Blake, and her plans to seek election to the seat to which she was appointed.

The council has this reputation for dysfunction. The former interim city manager, Terry Childers, laid it on the line a few months back. He scolded the council for contributing to the “caustic” atmosphere at City Hall. He blamed council members for the “dysfunction” that infects local government. Does the headhunter the city hired to recruit a qualified pool of candidate expect to deliver a top-quality corps of candidates given what’s been transpiring at City Hall?

The city election looms large. Childers was supposed to stay on until after the May municipal election. Then he popped off at a constituent and quit. He cleared out his desk and returned to Oklahoma City, from where he came a year ago. If the council undergoes another wholesale change in its makeup in 2017 similar to what it got in 2015, that in itself might be enough to dissuade qualified manager candidates from seeking the job.

Why is finding a manager so critical? Well, the city is in the midst of a wholesale change downtown. I drove along Buchanan Street this afternoon en route to an appointment on the other side of town and I was struck once again by the incredible change in the appearance of the street.

From 10th Avenue north to Third Avenue, you see all that major construction: the Excel Building, the multi-story parking garage, the Embassy Suites convention hotel. Then you see the demolition of the Coca-Cola site still ongoing just south of City Hall to make room for the multipurpose event venue/ballpark.

The city is negotiating with a minor-league baseball franchise to relocate in Amarillo.

Amarillo needs a firm hand on the till to guide all this to a successful conclusion.

Dysfunction. Uncertainty. Continued change. It’s all there to make municipal government an even more complicated and challenging endeavor than it already is.

My optimism that the city can navigate through this mess keeps ebbing and flowing. At this moment, I’m feeling the ebb — but I am hoping for the flow.

local news, political news

Is it time to look ahead to city election? Sure, let’s do it!

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The presidential election has been decided … to the satisfaction of a minority of Americans who voted for the winner.

I won’t get into the ongoing discussion about the Electoral College.

Instead, let’s take a brief look at our own next election cycle, right here in Amarillo.

We’re going to elect our City Council next May. Our city charter puts all five seats up for election at the same time. We get to keep ’em all, toss ’em all out or decide on some variation in between.

The May 2015 election produced a pretty radical shakeup on the council. Voters elected three new guys: Randy Burkett, Mark Nair and Elisha Demerson. Voters re-elected two others, Mayor Paul Harpole and Brian Eades; then Eades quit and moved to Colorado and he’s been succeeded by Lisa Blake, who emerged as the frontrunner after a highly public interview process with four other finalists selected by the council.

To say we’ve had a rough time of it at City Hall since the May 2015 election would be the height (or depth) of understatement.

City Manager Jarrett Atkinson quit, along with a number of other senior city administrators.  Then the council hired Terry Childers as the interim city manager. That didn’t turn out too well, as Childers this past week quit his job one year to the day after being named the interim manager.

Childers messed up one time too many.

Now the council has to get busy and find someone who wants to take hold of the city’s administrative reins. This is the only hire the council makes directly. It whiffed with Childers. Are these folks capable of filling this critical job? We shall see.

The council has gotten involved in some disputes among its members. The mayor has been at odds openly with the three new fellows, and they have been with him. All this has occurred as the city has embarked on a major makeover of its downtown district. Holy cow, dudes!

So, the question of the moment is this: Will the three new council members face a serious challenge from someone — or from an organized group of residents — if and/or when they seek re-election?

They all promised “change” when they were elected to the council. They certainly have delivered on their promise. Collegiality has given way to chaos. Decorum has been replaced by dysfunction.

The issue that awaits voters, though, is whether the change has been worth the tumult that has boiled over at City Hall.

We’ll find out in due time.

local news

Amarillo needs City Hall boss to shepherd its future

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I don’t think I’m alone in believing this, but Amarillo has reached a critical juncture in its development without a full-time, permanent city manager on hand to guide the city’s journey into the future.

The interim city manager, Terry Childers, quit his job this past week after muttering a profane epithet at a constituent. He cleared out his desk, his office and then he hit the road. The city has elevated assistant manager Bob Cowell into the interim post.

Now the city has to restart its search for a permanent manager.

Time seems to be a critical matter.

Demolition crews are knocking down a vacant building to make room for the planned construction of a downtown ballpark and event venue. Construction crews are working nearby to finish work on a convention hotel and a parking garage. It’s all good stuff and it speaks to the city’s desire to achieve a bright future.

The $45 million ballpark is the lynchpin, of course. The city is in the midst of negotiating with a San Antonio minor-league baseball team that reportedly wants to bring that team to Amarillo.

Given the city’s governing charter, the city manager is invested with a tremendous amount of authority and power. This individual makes all the major hires: police chief, fire chief, assistant city manager. The manager also should be involved in determining who fills other key positions.

Taxpayers fork over a good deal of money to pay the city manager and the individual earns every nickel of the six-figure salary if he or she does a good job.

The city has gone more than a year without a permanent manager. It started a search, then stopped searching. Childers was going to stay on until the May 2017 elections concluded. Then it all went to hell with that expletive muttered into a hot microphone.

All this has occurred against a backdrop of serious change afoot in the city. Amarillo is seeking to remake its downtown district. It involves some public funds as well as substantial private investment. The public part of it requires the city have a strong hand at the City Hall helm.

There needs to be some stability returned to City Hall.

My hope now is for the City Council to expedite its search for a permanent city manager. Time is critical, lady and gentlemen of the council. A lot of things are happening all at once and the city’s administrative staff needs a firm hand.

Let’s get busy.

local news

Childers is gone; let’s get busy finding permanent manager

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Terry Childers’ sudden departure this week as Amarillo’s interim city manager brings to mind the question that has been nagging at a lot of us around the city.

What’s taking the City Council so long to find a permanent manager?

Childers came on board exactly one year ago after Jarrett Atkinson — Lubbock’s brand new city manager — quit as Amarillo city manager. Childers was seen as a fixer, someone who could repair what supposedly was broken at City Hall.

The council started looking for a permanent manager. Then it stopped looking. Childers would stay on until after next spring’s municipal election, or so it was supposed to go.

Then he popped off one time too many. He called a constituent a “stupid son of a b****.” No can say such a thing, Mr. Manager. You may go now.

So, he did. Childers tendered his resignation and then skedaddled back to Oklahoma City. This brings up a side issue. Childers’ resignation letter mentioned his final day being Dec. 16, but he cleared out his office and left. My understanding is that he’s done … but do we pay him for his final month anyway?

Amarillo ought to be able to attract top-drawer administrative talent. We’re a city on the move. We’ve been in constant growth mode for several decades. We’re in the midst of an extreme makeover downtown. The position pays well, about a quarter-million bucks a year, give or take a few thousand.

Is it the “dysfunction” on the City Council, which Childers himself described some months ago, that keeps quality applicants from seeking this job? It’s reasonable to wonder such a thing, given that the council majority changed dramatically after the May 2015 election.

Amarillo has to get its municipal government structure straightened out. I’ve long believed we’re better than to wallow in the kind of back-biting, sniping, griping and petulance we’ve heard coming from City Hall over the past year or so.

This might be a good time for Mayor Paul Harpole to conduct one of those “rolling quorums” designed to get everyone aboard the same ship. The council cannot meet as a group and talk privately about public issues without violating state open meetings laws.

So, it might be wise for the mayor — who fancies himself as a take-charge guy — to talk to each council member one at a time and persuade each of them that the time has arrived for the five-member choir to start singing from the same hymnal.

A city of 200,000 residents doesn’t run itself. Especially now, with so much work to be finished … and so much more to do.

local news, Uncategorized

Childers needed to go; here’s why

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If I had been given the opportunity to write an editorial explaining why Amarillo’s former interim city manager needed a boot in the backside, I might have written something like this:

Terry Childers overstayed his welcome in Amarillo and it was time for him to hit the road.

It wasn’t that he was doing a bad job administratively. By many lights, he had infused City Hall with a renewed can-do attitude and had made some key decisions involving key personnel. He hired a police chief, Ed Drain, who has committed his department to community policing. Good call … and Childers deserves credit for recognizing that initiative in the new police chief.

But, oh man, the city manager revealed a mouth that he at times couldn’t control.

His resignation this week came after only the latest example of Childers engaging his pie hole without thinking first. He muttered “stupid son of a b****” into an open mic in the direction of a constituent. That was the last straw.

He had earlier scolded the City Council — the very people who hired him — for creating a “dysfunctional” atmosphere at City Hall. And before that — not long after he got hired — Childers berated an emergency services dispatcher after he misplaced his briefcase at a local hotel and all but called out the National Guard to find it.

The city manager is something of an ambassador for the city he serves, for the people to whom he answers. Whether it’s the elected body that hired him or taxpayers who foot the bill with their own money, the city manager is a hired hand. He works for us, not the other way around.

In that regard, the interim manager fell short of the mark.

***

I didn’t get to write that editorial, quite obviously. So I have decided to state my piece here.

The Amarillo Globe-News didn’t say it, either. Instead of offering a high-minded editorial that took Childers to the woodshed and delivered a whuppin’ he deserved, the newspaper cleared out the Opinion page and blasted a sophomoric “Goodbye Terry” farewell message that accomplished nothing except perhaps make Childers a sympathetic character in an ongoing feud in which has been engaged with the publisher of the newspaper, Lester Simpson.

Maybe the G-N will get around — eventually — to offering some words of wisdom about what we have all just witnessed.

Childers was right about a few things during his time in Amarillo. One of them related to the “caustic” political atmosphere at City Hall, which Councilman Elisha Demerson suggested might be at the heart of the “stupid SOB” comment the other evening. The environment frustrated Childers, according to Demerson, who suggested that the manager was venting.

The events of the past few days — with all the characters involved in this soap opera — have made the city’s task of finding  a new permanent city manager even more difficult.

Amarillo is undergoing some pretty radical changes at this very moment, starting with the effort to reshape, revive and remake its downtown district. The city needs a strong, steady hand to guide the municipal ship. It also needs a City Council that acts as a team, rather than a collection of individuals each with his own agenda.

I am going to say a prayer or two that the city will find that individual — whether he or she lives elsewhere or perhaps already is on board within the current administrative staff.

I believe most of us who have been watching City Hall over the years would agree on at least one critical point: The city has a serious mess on its hands.

local news

Atkinson lands on his feet; Amarillo still on the deck

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It’s official.

Lubbock’s municipal management leadership team is whole again, while Amarillo’s team has taken a header into the crapper.

Jarrett Atkinson — the former Amarillo city manager — is taking the helm as Lubbock city manager. The Lubbock City Council voted unanimously Thursday night to offer Atkinson the job. He’ll take it and he’ll then bring his substantial expertise on city issues — notably water management and development — to his new job.

Amarillo’s municipal future is decidedly less rosy at the moment.

Its interim city manager, Terry Childers, has quit after mouthing off into a “hot mic” about a constituent, calling him a “stupid son of a b****.” It’s only the latest intemperate remark that Childers has delivered during the year he served as interim manager, a post he took after Atkinson was forced to quit the top job at Amarillo City Hall.

To worsen matters, the Amarillo Globe-News took a decidedly unprofessional approach to chastising Childers by publishing a two-word “editorial” on its Opinion page. “Goodbye Terry” the paper blared on the page in gigantic type. That’s it. Nothing else.

Childers clearly needed to be taken to the woodshed, but it should have occurred in the form of a studied, well-researched and stern editorial commentary.

I would laugh out loud at the paper’s ridiculously chickens*** approach, except that it saddens and disgusts me that the paper’s publisher has taken his personal feud with Childers onto the page in such a manner.

What cannot yet be determined is whether such stupidity has inflicted a mortal wound on the city’s effort to lure a top-tier administrator to become its next city manager.

Childers’ exit in this manner all by itself quite likely could be enough to dissuade such applicants from wanting anything to do with Amarillo’s dysfunctional governance. I’m still shaking my head over what the newspaper has done to potentially worsen matters.

Congratulations belong to Jarrett Atkinson and his new employers in Lubbock. Amarillo, meanwhile, deserves wishes of good luck as it staggers back to its feet in the wake of its latest embarrassment.

local news

Karma reveals changing municipal fortunes

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You’ve no doubt heard the saying: Karma’s a bitch.

As such, it works in the strangest ways one can imagine. Consider the fortunes of two leading West Texas municipal government operations.

Amarillo is now looking once again for a city manager to replace the interim manager the City Council appointed to navigate the city through some rough water. Interim manager Terry Childers is out after he muttered a profane epithet into an open mic at a constituent. Childers resigned his temporary job and is slated to depart no later than Dec. 16.

City Hall is roiling yet again in controversy at the highest levels of its municipal administration. Sheesh. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

B’bye, Mr. Manager.

Meanwhile, down the road about 120 miles in Lubbock, the man Childers succeeded as city manager, Jarret Atkinson, reportedly is about to be named that city’s new city manager. The announcement is likely to be made public on Thursday.

Atkinson was drummed out of office in Amarillo because — it has been reported — he couldn’t work with the new majority elected in May 2015.

Atkinson has become a superior water development expert, and he brought his valuable expertise to bear during his years as Amarillo city manager. Now he gets to deploy his vast knowledge of water management and development in Lubbock.

The former Amarillo city manager has done well for himself and Lubbock has likely done well for itself if it selects Atkinson as its next chief administrator.

Amarillo’s municipal future? It has been thrown into doubt once again. Karma does have this way of biting back … hard!

local news

‘Caustic’ City Hall environment just got more caustic

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Amarillo’s interim city manager once scolded the City Council for creating a “caustic” political environment.

Interesting, yes? Why, of course it is. Because today, the manager in question — Terry Childers — resigned his post after calling a city resident a “stupid son of a b****” during a council meeting.

You want a caustic environment? There it is.

What happens now? The city is going to resume its search for a permanent city manager. It is going to launch an effort to find the best and the brightest city administrators it can find to operate City Hall’s machinery.

The question that continues to nag at me goes something like this: How does the city attract the best candidates possible when it operates in a dysfunctional environment?

Indeed, who wants to plunge into this setting, seeking to steady a ship that is heading on a bold, new course?

Childers has about 30 days to vacate the office. He need not take that long to hit the road and drift back into whatever life he had before he came on board a year ago to repair what supposedly was wrong with City Hall’s machinery.

His tenure hit some potholes early. He misplaced a briefcase at an Amarillo hotel and called the emergency dispatch center to report a “theft.” It turned into a top-shelf cluster hump.

Then came his stern lecture in September about the dysfunctional nature of municipal government, in which he blamed the council for creating a less-than-healthy atmosphere at City Hall.

This week was the last straw as he muttered an epithet into a “hot mic” about a critic of city policy.

Welcome to the hot seat, Assistant City Manager Bob Cowell, who will be asked to step into the interim post.

City Hall is making many of us around Amarillo a bit crazy. The City Council acts like it intends to set aside the city’s intramural squabbles and move forward as one in the effort to revamp and revitalize the downtown district. Then the city’s top administrator utters a profane insult at a constituent — one of the city “bosses” — and it falls apart … yet again.

Meanwhile …

The most recent permanent Amarillo city manager, Jarrett Atkinson, is set to take a similar post down the highway a bit, in Lubbock.

Atkinson quit his Amarillo city manager’s job because of an inability to work with the newly elected council majority. He has just stuck his landing in Lubbock.

Good for him.

What lies ahead for the city he leaves behind … well, it remains anyone’s guess.

local news

Calling all city manager applicants: Step right up

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This story will need some fleshing out, but I cannot help but offer a quick-hit comment.

Amarillo interim City Manager Terry Childers has submitted his resignation. It appears he got angry with a resident and called him an SOB during a City Council meeting on Tuesday.

Mayor Paul Harpole asked Childers for his resignation and Childers delivered it today. The city is going to appoint Assistant City Manager Bob Cowell to the interim post.

This is big news for an important reason. The city needs a permanent city manager. City Hall has been the picture of dysfunction since the May 2015 election of three new council members. Former City Manager Jarrett Atkinson quit –and now is about to be hired as the city manager in Lubbock; good for him! The council was looking actively for a new manager, then suspended its search; then it renewed it only recently.

The issue facing the City Council now is simple: How does it present a city government that is functional, efficient and cohesive to the next band of city manager candidates willing to assume the awesome job of running a city of 200,000 residents — and more than its share of soreheads?

Let’s all stay tuned. This might get real good.

local news

Public safety, streets get city voters’ endorsement

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Parks, ball fields, the Civic Center and administrative needs are “frills,” apparently, according to Amarillo voters.

Public safety and street repair? Bring it on!

This is a bit of a disappointment to me that only two of the seven measures on the city’s ballot passed on Tuesday. I considered all of them to be “quality of life” issues that needed voters’ endorsement.

City residents, though, apparently are continuing their crankiness about spending issues.

They did approve the largest single measure among the propositions presented by City Hall: the $90 million street repair, rehabilitation and maintenance project. Also getting voters’ approval is a $20 million project that seeks improvements in fire and police protection.

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/33662878/only-2-of-7-local-propositions-gained-support

Voters made some significant strides in seeking improvements in city services. I’m sorry to say they weren’t quite enough.

It might be that City Hall has more public-relations work to do to assuage voters’ apparent angst over the way its management is doing its job.