Tag Archives: Amarillo City Manager

local news

Go ahead, City Council, and pick a city manager

The question has been raised publicly in Amarillo: Should the current City Council select the next city manager or should it hold off until after the May 2017 municipal election?

The city’s daily newspaper, the Globe-News, editorialized today that the council needs to wait for the election and let the next council make the call. Its reason is that the council has dragged its feet for more than a year in finding a permanent successor to Jarrett Atkinson, who resigned and who since has been hired as city manager in Lubbock. So what’s the rush now?

http://amarillo.com/editorial/2016-12-21/editorial-new-council-should-select-city-manager

I’ll take issue with my former employer on this one.

The current council has the authority to act under the city charter. Why not, then, go ahead and make the call?

The council recently announced plans to cull the list of applicants down to 10 or so semi-finalists. From that shortened list, it will select a crop of finalists and then present them to the public. Then it will make the only direct hiring decision the charter allows the council to deliver.

Look at it this way: The council’s authority to make the decision doesn’t diminish just because an election is just six months away. The council’s power to select a city manager is as valid as, say, the power vested in the president of the United States to make an appointment to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Recall that Barack Obama recommended Merrick Garland to succeed the late Justice Antonin Scalia. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell put the brakes on that process by declaring the president is a “lame duck” and that the next president needs to make the appointment. McConnell played pure partisan politics by stonewalling this appointment process.

A City Council delay in naming a city manager could smell just as rank.

The city needs a permanent hand at the municipal till. Yes, the city has a competent interim manager in Bob Cowell, who well might be among the finalists selected by the council when it makes that critical decision.

If the city was to wait until after the May election, then it would just be another two years before the next election, in 2019. One might argue that a two-year window between elections is too brief as it is.

The current council well might face a stout challenge at the ballot box this spring. There are rumblings all over the city that Mayor Paul Harpole is going to step aside. What about the rest of them?

So, my own feeling is that the current council ought to proceed and do what it should have done months ago. It should pick a competent, strong and fair-minded chief city administrator who exhibits the potential to work well with whomever takes office after the next municipal election.

There is no compelling reason to wait. The city charter gives the current council the authority to act.

And it should.

local news

A new Amarillo city manager on the horizon?

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Amarillo might not be wallowing in the administrative darkness much longer, according to Mayor Paul Harpole.

Good deal? Let’s hope so.

The City Council reportedly has culled a list of 30 or so city manager applicants to around 10 … give or take an undisclosed number. Harpole said the council will announce a list of finalists quite soon, maybe next week.

Then the city will interview the finalists in a sort of public audition, Harpole explained.

http://amarillo.com/local-news/2016-12-20/amarillo-city-council-narrows-hunt-city-manager

This public audition more or less falls in line with what has been done at Amarillo College as it has sought to select college presidents. It’s a good way to go. It enables the public to size up the individuals who are competing for a chance to assume a highly public office.

In the case of the city manager, we’re talking about someone who would oversee a significant government bureaucracy. He or she will command a budget of several hundred million dollars, which pay for services for a city comprising around 200,000 residents.

Amarillo City Hall has been through a pretty rough spell for the past year or so.

City Manager Jarrett Atkinson quit more than a year ago. The City Council hired an interim manager, Terry Childers, who immediately got into a significant public relations kerfuffle involving a misplaced briefcase and the Amarillo Emergency Communications Center. The council commenced a search, then called it off. Childers then popped off to a constituent and called him a “stupid son of a b****.” Childers then quit and went back to Oklahoma City.

This is the backdrop that the crop of finalists will confront.

The winner of this contest then will get to steady the municipal ship.

Let’s all hope for the best as the council proceeds with the only hiring decision the City Charter empowers it to make.

The City Council needs to get this one right.

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, Uncategorized

Atkinson needs to get back into the game

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I am pulling for Jarrett Atkinson.

The former Amarillo city manager is now in the running to become the chief administrator down yonder in Lubbock, Texas.

He was run out of a job he was doing well here. There’s no way to sugarcoat what happened to him in Amarillo. Voters elected three new City Council members in reaction to some sense of municipal “anger.” I’m still puzzled by the source of that alleged anger and angst.

Was he the perfect city manager? Did everything he touched turn to gold? No, but if you look at the big picture, you see a city that was on the move in the correct direction. Amarillo enjoyed steady growth, maintained a low tax rate, kept its debt obligation to a bare minimum. The city manager deserves a huge chunk of credit.

Atkinson quit his job not long after the new council took office.

Now he might be on the cusp of getting back into municipal government game.

Lubbock needs some help managing a priceless resource. I refer to water, something about which Atkinson is an acknowledged expert. On his watch at Amarillo City Hall, Amarillo was able to acquire vast water rights, setting the city on course to remain viable for the next century or two.

I didn’t like what happened to Atkinson here. I don’t have any inside information on how the Lubbock City Council will go with this key appointment.

I just want to put it on the record that I hope for the best for Jarret Atkinson … and for the city that might be about to hire him to do a difficult and demanding job.

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

Interim police chief gets a leg up

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Amarillo has a new interim police chief, who’ll assume his new post on July 1, when Police Chief Robert Taylor retires, climbs aboard his Harley and hits the road.

I join many others in wishing Chief Taylor well and thank him for his 36 years of law enforcement service to the community.

Back to the interim chief selection. The new top cop is Ed Drain, currently on the staff of the Plano Police Department. He got the job after being appointed by the city’s interim city manager, Terry Childers.

The city manager made an interesting statement after he chose Drain to take over as police chief. The question dealt with why Childers went outside the department to find an interim chief. He thought it would be best if he leveled the playing field for all Amarillo PD applicants who might want to seek the police chief’s job.

That’s fine. It levels the field for all the in-house applicants. Ed Drain, though, has a leg up on getting the permanent job if he seeks it, too.

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/32265897/interim-police-chief-named-for-apd

I’m a bit curious as to why the need to go outside the department in the first place.

The last time Amarillo brought in an outsider to run its police department was in the early 1980s, when the late City Manager John Stiff hired Oklahoman Jerry Neal to lead APD.

I wasn’t here in 1981 when Neal got the police chief job, but I’ve heard all about the circumstance he inherited when he came aboard. He took command of a dysfunctional police agency. It wasn’t working.

The police department needed a progressive leader and Stiff found one in Jerry Neal.

Is the Amarillo Police Department in a similar state of disarray now? Hardly. It is working well. Hey, the city witnessed a police department handle a potentially explosive hostage situation just a few days ago with supreme professionalism.

I’m going to presume that the interim chief understands the dynamics that drive a police department such as the one that serves Amarillo. As Drain told NewsChannel 10: “My goal here is to analyze the things that are going on in the department and any areas where I think there needs to be improvement,”  Drain said. “Some of those obviously I’m not going to get done as an interim, but you heard the city manager say incremental improvement, so I want to do that.”

I don’t intend to get ahead of the game here. The new chief is an interim pick, after all. However, his hiring is beginning to look like a done deal.

It makes me wonder: Do we really need a fresh approach to the police department, which I believe is running pretty well?

local news, Sports news

City takes huge step in hunt for baseball franchise

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Terry Childers likely will be retired and resettled somewhere else by the time it all happens.

But Amarillo’s interim city manager seems to be quite excited about the prospect of the city landing an affiliated minor-league baseball franchise.

He spoke today to the Rotary Club of Amarillo about some of the progress that’s occurring in the city. The City Council’s unanimous vote this week to look aggressively for a AA baseball franchise is one of those positive signs.

The multipurpose event venue will be built. City officials hope to break ground later this year on the MPEV/ballpark that will be home to whichever franchise decides to relocate to Amarillo.

The Local Government Corporation has been given the task of developing a design for the ballpark. Childers thinks the time is ripe and the city is ready to play host to a franchise that is tied directly to a big-league organization.

Frankly, his enthusiasm is quite fetching.

I happen to share his outlook for the possibilities that exist for the city if it reels in a franchise. He said today the ballpark — and its multipurpose element — is likely to change the personality of downtown Amarillo. Does anyone really yet know what it will become? I’m not sure that’s known.

As I listened to the city manager’s brief remarks, one of my table mates leaned over and said, “Why not get Nolan Ryan to bring something here?”

Hmmm. Why not?

The baseball Hall of Fame pitcher has baseball organization experience. One of his sons runs a AA franchise in Round Rock. And, hey, Ryan has Amarillo ties, as his daughter is married to a member of a notable Amarillo family: the Bivins clan.

Well, whatever.

The task is at hand. The LGC has its marching orders and I remain hopeful that this city is going to reap the reward of a reconfigured downtown business and entertainment district.

local news

City manager search provides major test of resolve

Amarillomain

Amarillo’s search for a city manager will offer the community a chance to gauge the City Council’s commitment to the future of the city’s downtown district.

I’ve commented already on the huge transition already under way in the downtown area. It’s been a very long time since we’ve seen three construction cranes towering over gigantic projects that have begun there.

It gives me hope that the city truly is committed to the huge effort that’s been done already to provide for a better, more vibrant downtown district. Trust me on this: The entire city is going to reap giant rewards once this work is done.

But the city is on the hunt now for a permanent city manager to oversee all of it. The interim manager, Terry Childers, will depart in due course and the new person will be asked to become the chief executive of a $200 million annual enterprise.

One question the council — which will make this hiring decision — must ask of applicants is: Are you committed fully to ensuring the city proceeds full speed toward the future course it has charted?

I understand that the ultimate policy decisions rest with the five members of the City Council. Still, we do have a strong manager form of government here. The council hires the city manager to take control of the levers of government. It puts final administrative authority in that person’s hands. The manager, of course, must do what the council directs. There needs to be constructive synergy between the manager and his or her bosses on the governing council.

To be honest, I am heartened by the direction this new council has taken with regard to downtown. It has honored — so far — the wishes of the electorate that in November endorsed the concept of a ballpark to be build across the street from City Hall.  It has marched forward with construction of the convention hotel and parking garage. Momentum is building.

The next city manager must be committed to continuing that march.

What’s more, the City Council must be on board as well.

The City Council’s search for the new manager — and the decision it makes — will reveal a great deal about its commitment to Amarillo’s future.

 

local news

Let’s get busy with city manager search

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Amarillo interim City Manager Terry Childers has made it official.

He doesn’t want the permanent job. He doesn’t want to be considered for it. He wants to go home when the city finds a permanent replacement. Mayor Paul Harpole made the announcement Tuesday.

So, let’s get busy, gentlemen of the Amarillo City Council.

The city charter empowers the council to make precisely one hiring decision. This is it.

It hires the city’s chief executive officer and entrusts that individual to manage a payroll of several thousand individuals and oversee a budget of something in the neighborhood of $200 million a year.

Someone mishandled the appointment of Childers. The headhunting firm the council hired, Strategic Government Resources, failed to provide a large pile of documentation supporting its recommendation that the city hire Childers as the interim manager.

The city has decided to retain SGR to look for the permanent manager.

OK. So can the firm get it right this time?

Childers’ rocky start as the interim doesn’t mean he should be pushed out the door quickly. The city has time to consider who it wants to run the government machinery. It should be thorough, but shouldn’t dawdle.

Granted, Amarillo’s city government staff has virtually zero institutional knowledge in conducting a national search for a city manager. The last three managers all came from within the staff. This time it appears that the next manager will be someone who wants to come to Amarillo and oversee a city in transition.

And that transition is huge: downtown is undergoing a major makeover, street and highway construction is disrupting traffic flow, the city is embarking on a plan to revive neighborhoods.

It falls, then, on the council to make the most critical single decision it will make in deciding which individual is the best fit for the city.

This decision is big, fellows. Let’s get it right.

local news

City begins search for new manager … good!

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Amarillo is about to commence its search for a permanent city manager to take the reins of a government that has been beset with a few hiccups and headaches of late.

We’ve got an interim manager on the job. Terry Childers came aboard a few months after Jarrett Atkinson quit. The initial word about Childers was that he is a take-charge guy, a thorough administrator and a hands-on sort of chief executive.

Then he made that fateful 911 call after misplacing his briefcase, threw the emergency call center into an uproar and became the object of considerable, um, discussion — and perhaps some derision — throughout the community.

OK. What now?

Mayor Paul Harpole said the search will be national.

Allow me a brief hand-clap here. That’s a good call.

“We think it’s time and I think Mr. Childers thinks it’s time too.” said Harpole. Yes, it certainly is, Mr. Mayor.

The governing body doesn’t have much institutional knowledge in conducting that kind of search. John Stiff served as city manager from 1963 until 1983. Then came John Ward, Alan Taylor and Atkinson, all of whom were promoted from within. The city limited its search.

A wide-ranging national search will serve the city well — if it’s done thoroughly and with proper vetting of all the applicants who want to relocate to the Texas Tundra.

The council — which has the sole authority in making this hiring decision — is going to get a lot of unsolicited advice from its bosses. That would be you and me. The folks who pay the bills with our tax money.

Here’s a suggestion: Consider following a model adopted by the Texas A&M University System and Amarillo College when selecting campus presidents.

West Texas A&M University, for example, has done a good job of introducing campus president candidates to the community before they are hired. The A&M regents have selected finalists and then trotted them out one at a time to meet with campus faculty, student body officers and then the public. All interested parties are given the chance to size up the finalists before the regents make the call.

City Hall can go through the same process with the finalists selected by the council.

It’s not a radical approach. It merely infuses the process with the kind of transparency the public was told had been missing in earlier critical policy discussions. You’ll recall the campaign pledges by some of the newest members of the council, yes? We’re going to make city government more “open,” more “accountable,” more “transparent.”

Well, gentlemen, here’s your chance.

Now that the interim city manager has issued his apology for the clumsy manner he handled that 911 call in February and has pledged to behave himself for the rest of the time he’s on the job, the council can proceed with all deliberate speed in finding a permanent chief administrator.

It’s going to take a few months. Be careful, council members. Be diligent, too. Be open and be sure you keep us — your employers — in the loop.