Tag Archives: Amarillo

local news

Conspiracy theories are for the birds

Conspiracy theories drive me nuts.

I mean it. I think I’m going crazy listening to any and all of them.

The latest spate of conspiracy theories centers around downtown Amarillo. There’s a segment of our city population — and I’m not convinced it comprises even a significant minority of residents — who keep concocting nefarious schemes dealing with business relationships within (a) city government (b) the business community or (c) between them both.

These theories are coming from individuals — or perhaps small groups of individuals — who don’t believe the city’s master plan for reviving downtown is going to work. They won’t give it a chance. They are willing to toss it out at the front end because, by golly, they just know something underhanded is going on.

I forged a fairly decent career in daily journalism over the span of 37 years. I am wired to be skeptical of matters at a lot of levels. However, I am not such a cynic as to believe out of hand that a high-dollar business deal is simply a bad thing because it involves a fair amount of money.

And yet, that’s what I keep hearing.

Conspiracy theories have this way of growing legs and even wings. They feed on themselves. They produce conspiracy spawns, that themselves grow into full-fledged conspiracies.

Here’s one that came to me today — second-hand to be sure, but I trust the source who mentioned this tidbit to me: A young member of my family told another member of my family that “it has been proven” that a Secret Service agent killed President Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. It wasn’t Lee Harvey Oswald. It wasn’t any of the other so-called conspiracy theories: the mob; the Cubans; hell, it wasn’t even Lyndon Johnson. The killer was a member of the Secret Service, the agency charged with protecting the life of the president of the United States. And it’s been proven that the Secret Service did it.

I’m glad I didn’t hear my young family member make that idiotic assertion. I would have stroked out.

That’s the kind of thing that has infected much of the discussion surrounding the downtown Amarillo story.

How about we just keep our eyes peeled and our ears open and actually witness and listen carefully to the things being discussed?

 

local news

‘Underrated cities’ have something in common

You can find a list for almost anything, it seems.

A friend of mine posted this list to social media, so I thought I’d share it here.

It’s a list of the “most underrated small cities” in America.

They appear to have something in common.

A vibrant urban life. Meaning, a thriving downtown district.

http://www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/underrated-us-cities-small-markets-like-cincinnati-mobile-and-Chattanooga

It’s worth mentioning here because of the talk about Amarillo’s future seems to be turning once again on whether the city is making the right decisions while concentrating so much effort in restoring its downtown district.

All the cities noted in this survey are roughly the size of Amarillo. Our population stands a shade more than 197,000 residents. We aren’t some Podunk, one-horse burg — although some of us seem to think we are and are strangely anxious to keep it that way. Of course, no one admits to it, but the concept being discussed to breathe life into downtown Amarillo is getting resistance.

I’m not going to suggest the resistance is all that significant, that it represents a majority view of our city’s residents. Yes, we have three new members serving on our City Council (with the third new guy to be determined by the June 13 runoff election).

However, if this list of “underrated small cities” serves as a guide to anyone, then it’s important that the downtown restoration effort not be derailed by those who believe the city has misdirected its energy toward a loser.

Take a peek at the list, read the summaries of why these cities deserve more attention and you’ll likely appreciate what a little vision and imagination can bring to little ol’ Amarillo, Texas.

 

local news, State news

Red-light cameras to stay in operation

Let’s put the effort to ban cities from deploying red-light cameras on ice for another two years.

And then let us hope the Texas Legislature fails again to impose its will on cities who are seeking ways to prevent motorists from running through stop lights and endangering other motorists and pedestrians.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/05/01/amid-investigation-activists-critical-red-light-ca/

The 2015 Legislature won’t enact a statewide ban on the cameras. It fell short of efforts to take that authority away from cities, where officials — including in Amarillo — have deployed the cameras.

I happen to be glad that Amarillo will be able to maintain the cameras.

What’s more, I am hopeful the next Legislature will decide in the state’s best interest to let cities control their own traffic destiny.

Of all the arguments I keep hearing in opposition to the cameras, the one that angers and amuses me the most is that the cameras “violate the rights” of motorists. What rights? Privacy? The right to “face an accuser”? The right of “due process”?

If we’re going to accept the rights violation argument, then let’s just tell cities to disband their police departments. Let’s take down speed limit signs. While we’re at it, let’s take security cameras out of stores that protect businesses against theft; those cameras, after all, violate our “rights,” too, by watching our every move while we’re shopping.

Amarillo should be hailed for its insistence that the red-light cameras are helping deter motorists from endangering others, not to mention themselves, when they run through stoplights. Other cities haven’t demonstrated that kind of backbone.

So, for now, thanks also belong to the Texas Legislature for leaving cities alone and letting them determine what’s best for the motor vehicle-driving public.

national news, State news

Rain offers new appreciation

2 Comments

I awoke this morning to the sound of rain beating on the front of my house.

It was music to my ears.

The sound used to be like fingernails on the chalkboard. It annoyed me. I was a lot younger then, growing up in a community known for its incessant rain.

Portland, Ore., is a lovely city. It’s full of tall timber and lots of flowers. It’s called the City of Roses and every June, it stages a festival honoring the roses that are in full bloom. The highlight of the festival, for me, was the Grand Floral Parade through downtown Portland. Mom and Dad would take us every year. We’d get there early, find a nice spot on the parade route and wait for the sounds of the drums.

It seemed to rain every year on our parade, though.

Which brings me to my point.

I hated the rain as a kid. I griped about it constantly. My parents tired of me always complaining.

Then I grew up, went away for a couple of years to serve in the Army, came home, got married and eventually my bride and I moved to Texas.

We gravitated to Amarillo more than 20 years ago.

It doesn’t rain nearly as much here as it does in Portland, or in Beaumont, where my family and I lived for the first 11 years of our Texas residency. It’s not that Portland gets a lot of rain each year, it’s that it seems to drizzle constantly. We could more rain in Beaumont in an hour than would fall in Portland in a month.

I’ve come to appreciate the rain much more now. The Panhandle drought has awakened me to the value that rainwater brings to everything. To the economy, to our ability to function as a society, to the fulfillment of our basic needs — such as quenching our thirst and, you know, bathing.

I won’t complain ever again about too much rain.

Growing up teaches us the value of things that used to annoy us.

Today, I intend to enjoy the sight and smell of the rain.

State news

Railroad Commission has nothing to do with trains

Elizabeth Ames Jones used to serve on the Texas Railroad Commission.

Once, while visiting Amarillo, she paid a visit to the Globe-News, where I worked as editorial page editor.

During our conversation, the Republican former state legislator, made a fascinating and totally sensible proposal. The Railroad Commission needed to change its name. It has nothing to do with railroads or trains. It doesn’t have anything to do with trucking regulations, which it used to have. The name “Railroad Commission” is an archaic term that has zero relevance to what the agency does today, which is regulate fossil fuel production.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/04/20/texas-mulls-railroad-commission-name-change-again/

Why not change the name, she said, to something like the Texas Energy Regulatory Commission — or TERC, for short?

Why not, indeed?

The RRC is the state’s oldest regulatory agency, but as the Texas Tribune noted, it scrapped railroad regulation long ago.

That hasn’t persuaded the hidebound interests who still run many things in Austin to change the name of an agency devoted to energy-related issues.

It’s not an easy solution, as the Texas Tribune reports: “The change would require an amendment to the Texas Constitution, since the document mentions the agency by name. That means two-thirds of lawmakers in each chamber must approve before putting the question to Texas voters.”

Why not refer it to the voters in the form of a constitutional amendment proposal? The Legislature needs a super-majority of lawmakers to do it. My hunch is that too many of them are strangely devoted to the Railroad Commission, perhaps out of nostalgia if no other reason.

If Texas is going to continue its evolution into a modern state that recognizes that change occurs here from time to time, then it should change the long-ago obsolete name of an important regulatory agency.

Oil and natural gas are important to this state’s economy. Why not give its governing agency a name that everyone would recognize?

 

local news

Community grows … while shrinking

Amarillo’s population is just a hair less than 200,000 individuals.

It’s not the biggest city in Texas, let alone America. But it’s not an insignificant burg. It’s no one-horse town. It’s got plenty of stop lights, strip malls (even a few strip joints), plenty of eateries and drinkeries. It has an opera, a symphony, an indoor football team, a hockey team and a minor-league baseball team. Its downtown has a 31-story skyscraper. Amarillo has produced its share of celebrities and assorted characters.

OK, now that we’ve established all of that, I have this query.

Why is it that one cannot seem to be more than two — maybe three — degrees separated from every other person in this city?

The city’s been on a steady growth path for decades, but it seems to be getting smaller.

Almost without fail each week, I run into someone who knows someone I know. Or I’ll encounter someone who’s kin to someone I know. I don’t think it’s necessarily that I have an inordinate array of acquaintances throughout the city, although my former job as a print journalist did put me in touch with a lot of individuals over the course of two decades.

It’s just that I meet people I’ve never seen before. We talk for a minute or two and then I find out they’re acquainted with someone I know.

It happened again today in a strange manner.

I was at work today at the auto dealership where I hold down a part-time job. I met a new colleague. I introduced myself to her, she to me. We later ended up in the break room. We chatted a few more minutes. I asked her about her previous jobs. She told me she’d worked in sales at this company and that one.

“How long have you worked here?” she asked. I told her nearly two years. I then mentioned to her that I had a career that ended a couple of years ago. “I was a journalist,” I said. “Oh, really?” she responded. “Maybe you know my boyfriend.”

I asked, “What’s his name?” She told me.

I damn near fell over. “Yes, I know your boyfriend. Very well.” I laughed out loud. So did she. I told her that I worked closely with her boyfriend for a number of years and after that little exchange I felt as though I’d known this delightful young woman far longer than less than an hour.

Life is full of mysteries. They’re too numerous to mention.

I am inclined after today to add one more to the infinite list of unknowable things

Such as: How is it that a city this size can produce such familiarity, even among people who only moments earlier were total strangers?

 

environmental news

Texas city becomes environmental pioneer

Who would have thought that a Texas city would blaze an impressive environmental trail?

Georgetown has announced plans to become the first city in Texas to use renewable energy sources for all its power needs.

Is this the start of something environmentally revolutionary?

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/03/18/georgetown-goes-all-renewable-energy/

Georgetown is in Central Texas. It owns the utility company. Thus, it is able to convert to wind and solar energy exclusively, no longer over time relying on fossil fuels.

Are you paying attention to this, Amarillo, which has abundant sun and even more abundant wind.

OK, the cities are different. Amarillo does not own the utility company that provides electricity to the city’s 200,000 residents. Xcel Energy controls the source of fuel it receives to power its energy plants.

It’s a hopeful sign nevertheless to see a Texas city — which happens to be near the capital city, Austin — engaging in this kind of ecological pioneering.

According to the Texas Tribune: “Because of its size and intense radiation, Texas leads the nation in solar energy potential, but the solar industry has long struggled to get a foothold in the state, as policymakers have provided fewer incentives than other states, and solar energy currently makes up a tiny percentage of the state’s energy portfolio.

“That’s beginning to change.

“Improving technology has driven down the price of solar power, making it more competitive with other resources­ — even without extra incentives, developers say. That trend has sparked what some industry experts describe as a small “land rush” in West Texas, and it’s increasingly convincing utilities that solar power is workable.”

Texas already has joined California among the nation’s leading producers of wind energy. That’s a hopeful sign as well of a commitment to renewables in a state that has relied for more than a century on fossil fuel — oil and natural gas — to fill its energy needs.

Here’s hoping this decision by a single Texas city is a harbinger of a cleaner energy future.

 

local news, media news

Getting yet another new lease

Chance meetings with friends can — and do — produce opportunities one never expects to receive.

So I was a few months ago when my wife and I stumbled into a meeting with a friend of mine who happens to run a television station here in Amarillo. That meeting has evolved into a marvelous opportunity for me to get back into the journalism game I “played” for 37 years.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been writing a blog for NewsChannel10.com, the website for Amarillo’s CBS-TV affiliate.

News Channel 10 calls the feature “Whatever Happened To …” and it involves news stories I get to sniff out and write for the website. The stories are of an unfinished nature, the kinds of stories that gained traction, but might have dropped off the public grid. They involve promises and pledges. They seek to answer whether those pledges have been met. A recent story involved a cold case at the police department involving the disappearance of a 9-year-old boy in 1998; the boy, Dorien Thomas, would be 26 years of age and the police have found nothing, not a trace of him, since he vanished.

The chance meeting occurred in the summer of 2014. My wife and I were garage-sale shopping. We walked into the garage of Brent McClure, the general manager at News Channel 10. “Hey, what are you doing these days?” McClure asked. I said I was working a couple of part-time jobs, including a blogging gig at Panhandle PBS, the public TV station affiliated with Amarillo College.

“Why don’t you write for us?” McClure asked. Huh? Are you kidding? “No, I’m serious,” he said.

We chatted for a few more minutes, then we left. I told him I’d call him later.

Well, I did … later that day. My question went like this: “Hey, Brent, was that request for real or were you just making conversation?” He assured me he was sincere. With that, I made an appointment to visit him at his office, where we chatted in general about what he might want to create at the station. We agreed to take it forward, but not until McClure finished a couple of huge projects at News Channel 10.

Near the end of the year, we got back in touch. I drove back out to the TV station and we chatted more specifically. Then he made his pitch: Why not write a blog for our website? We then can take that text and we can develop an on-air news report and we can reference the “Whatever Happened To …” feature on NewsChannel10.com; how does that sound?

http://www.newschannel10.com/

The proverbial light bulb flashed on. I can do this. We shook on it.

I’ve been writing the blog since early February.

I’m still writing for Panhandle PBS, which I’ve been doing since October 2012, about two months after my daily print journalism career came to a crashing halt. That gig remains a huge kick for me and I enjoy the relationships built at Panhandle PBS. The beauty of writing for two TV stations — one commercial, one public — is that they aren’t competitors. The PBS work involves writing about public affairs TV programming; the News Channel 10 work involves more straight reporting, which I believe is a skill journalists never lose once they learn how to do it.

McClure’s hope, as I understand it, that we’ll be able to blend print and broadcast journalism into a new creature that hasn’t yet been defined.

I’m still trying to grasp the impact of all this. I tell people I see all over Amarillo how good it feels to get back into the game.

I am having a serious blast.

local news

City cuts ties with developer, then marches on

So many questions, so few answers — at least not yet.

Amarillo’s Local Government Council, which is overseeing the city’s effort to breathe new life into the downtown business district, today cut its ties with an outfit it had hired to be the “master developer” for this project.

Wallace Bajjali, based out of Sugar Land, apparently has gone dark. It closed its office in Joplin, Mo., where it had another redevelopment arrangement. Its phone line in Sugar Land is disconnected. The company is gone, or so it appears.

The LGC met this morning in closed session, then reconvened in open session to vote unanimously to put Wallace Bajjali in “default.”

What gives? Where does the city’s downtown plan stand at this moment?

Well, LGC chairman Richard Brown said the parking garage that Wallace Bajjali was supposed to manage is proceeding anyhow. It’s fair to ask: How does it proceed without a managing developer?

Oh, and what about the ballpark and the downtown hotel? Those projects were assigned to new developers and they, too, will proceed, Brown said.

The private financing for all this work reportedly has been collected — or is about to be collected. No worries. The work will get done.

Wallace Bajjali has been paid more than $1 million in public money for work it has completed for the city, so there won’t be any recovery of funds. So, what does “default” mean in that context?

I recall meeting some years ago with David Wallace — the “Wallace” in this former partnership — and was taken aback by the absolute confidence he expressed in his company’s ability to do this project on time and on budget. Wallace, who resigned from the company effective immediately, told us at the Amarillo Globe-News about all the successes his development company had achieved.

He said something about how his company wouldn’t be in business today if it had racked up a string of failures.

Well, the company that Amarillo has come to know no longer exists.

That leads me to yet another question: What in the world happened between the partners — Wallace and Costas Bajjali — that blew this self-described “success story” apart?

Given the public investment already laid out, the public deserves some answers.

 

local news

Amarillo has just been decked

Something tells me that Amarillo has a budding crisis of confidence on its hands.

Wallace Bajjali, the developer hired by downtown business and civic interests to ramrod the development of the downtown business district, has vaporized — or so it appears.

http://www.newschannel10.com/story/27943700/development-group-hired-to-renovate-downtown-amarillo-has-closed-offices

The company, based in Sugar Land, was supposed to spearhead the effort to collect enough private investors to build (a) a downtown hotel, (b) a multi-story parking garage and (c) an athletic field, aka “multipurpose event venue,” or MPEV for short.

As of today, or perhaps as of some undisclosed time prior to today, the company has closed up shop. Its office in Joplin, Mo., has been shuttered. Its headquarters phone number is Sugar Land has been disconnected. David Wallace, one of the principal owners of the firm, has quit.

Many of us throughout the city are likely wondering: What the hell has just happened?

Someone will need to explain this thoroughly and in language we all can understand.

I’m all ears.