Looking at Amarillo City Hall from some distance — given that I’m no longer employed as a full-time print journalist — gives me some fresh perspective.
It also doesn’t diminish my own — or anyone else’s in a similar position — ability to discern dysfunction when I see it.
That’s what I’m seeing at City Hall these days. And, no, I don’t — as some have suggested on social media — have any skin in this game.
The City Council met this week to discuss the upcoming municipal budget and also to discuss how to fill three posts on the Local Government Corporation board.
The meeting got a bit heated, based on what I read about it.
Therein may lie the dysfunction that well could upend a lot of well-laid-out plans for the city’s future.
Ron Boyd, Richard Brown and Lilia Escajeda all cycled off the LGC board. I know two of them — Boyd and Escajeda — pretty well. Finding suitable successors apparently provided some significant friction among the newly constituted City Council.
Is this what we can expect on all matters that come before our city’s elected governing board?
It’s an interesting development that one of the three new members of the LGC is Councilman Randy Burkett, who took office in May and has suggested that he wants to derail the multipurpose event venue project planned for downtown. He voted to put the issue to an advisory vote in November and although I do not know Burkett I’d be willing to bet real American money that he’s going to vote “no” on whether to proceed with the MPEV as it’s been proposed for the city.
For the record — yet again! — I believe in the project that’s been presented.
Now he’s on the LGC board, which is up to its armpits in helping shape the course and the nature of downtown’s proposed redevelopment.
Two lawyers, Bryan Poff and Richard Biggs, have joined Burkett on the board. I’m only casually acquainted with those gentlemen. The council vote was 3-2, with Mayor Paul Harpole and Councilman Brian Eades voting “no” to change the LGC board.
And isn’t it interesting that Councilman Burkett was allowed to vote in favor of his own nomination to the board? Is that how it’s always been done?
I’m fearing more head-butting along the way as the City Council’s new majority tangles with the two veteran council members who managed to win re-election in May.
The council sits divided into two camps: those who liked the way things got done and those who vowed drastic “change” in the city’s modus operandi.
If the change is going to produce more bickering and back-biting just for its own sake, I’ll endorse the view expressed by Amarillo resident Cindi Bulla, who said: “Get over it. Work together and get the job done and get it done right.”
