{"id":10060,"date":"2015-07-07T14:32:28","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T14:32:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10060"},"modified":"2015-07-07T14:32:28","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T14:32:28","slug":"big-day-awaits-at-city-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10060","title":{"rendered":"Big day awaits at City Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This could be a big day at Amarillo City Hall.<\/p>\n

No matter how it turns out.<\/p>\n

City Council members have this item on their agenda, to discuss the “status” of City Manager Jarrett Atkinson.<\/p>\n

At least two council members — new guys Mark Nair and Randy Burkett — want Atkinson to quit. The third new guy, Elisha Demerson, hasn’t stated his preference. Two other council members, Mayor Paul Harpole and Councilman Brian Eades, want him to stay. The council is facing a potentially serious fracturing among its members. All that harmony has given way to a cacophony of voices trying to outshout each other, perhaps reflecting the mood across this city of 200,000 residents.<\/p>\n

Does\u00a0the city manager\u00a0quit? Does he stay on the job? Does he force the council to vote to fire him? If he gets canned, how much of a severance package is he going to demand, if he even deserves one?<\/p>\n

And what does all of this mean for Amarillo’s march toward the future with its downtown revival plan already started. Construction has begun on a new Xcel Energy office complex. A large tract across the street from City Hall has been vacated to make room for a planned multipurpose event venue. Another tract has been wiped clean to make room for a downtown convention hotel. The hotel developer is waiting to see what happens with the MPEV.<\/p>\n

All those plans are really what’s at stake here.<\/p>\n

The new guys — or at least two of them — have acted recklessly with their call for Atkinson to quit. They barely know their way around City Hall, yet they’ve demanded radical change. City Attorney Marcus Norris is out, having given the city two weeks’ notice before he clears out.<\/p>\n

My own hope — from my perch out here in the peanut gallery — is that the new guys will have settled down a bit from their giddiness at having been elected to the council. Councilman Eades has asked them to rethink their Atkinson-must-go mantra.<\/p>\n

Yes. A big day awaits us at Amarillo City Hall.<\/p>\n\n

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This could be a big day at Amarillo City Hall. No matter how it turns out. City Council members have this item on their agenda, to discuss the “status” of City Manager Jarrett Atkinson. At least two council members — new guys Mark Nair and Randy Burkett — want Atkinson to quit. The third new … Continue reading Big day awaits at City Hall<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[288,290,1436,2418,3153],"class_list":["post-10060","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-downtown-amarillo","tag-jarrett-atkinson","tag-mpev"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10060","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10060"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10060\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10060"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10060"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10060"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}