{"id":11505,"date":"2015-11-04T03:49:16","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T03:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=11505"},"modified":"2015-11-04T03:49:16","modified_gmt":"2015-11-04T03:49:16","slug":"lets-play-ball-at-the-mpev","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=11505","title":{"rendered":"Let’s play ball … at the MPEV!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"amarillo<\/a><\/p>\n

I am not going to do my happy dance just yet.<\/p>\n

Yes, I am delighted with the results of tonight’s Amarillo referendum that endorsed a $32 million multipurpose event venue that includes a ballpark for the city’s downtown district.<\/p>\n

The City Council has a slam-dunk decision awaiting it: whether to ratify the results. Most of the council members opposed the MPEV. Yet, they campaigned on a platform of listening to their constituents. Well, gentlemen, they have spoken.<\/p>\n

I trust our elected council will follow the will of the people who bothered to vote.<\/p>\n

It was a 4-percent margin of victory for the MPEV. It’s not exactly a landslide. Nor\u00a0does the total number of voters who cast ballots, 22,444 of them,\u00a0represent any kind of profound statement of voter participation.<\/p>\n

The turnout was better than it usually is. It’s still far from good … let alone great<\/em>.<\/p>\n

But what the heck. This isn’t really a time to second-guess. It’s instead a time to get ready for a bright new future for our city’s downtown district.<\/p>\n

They’ve broken ground on a four-diamond, state-of-the-art convention hotel. We’ve got a parking garage coming to the downtown neighborhood. Xcel Energy has started construction on a new office complex.<\/p>\n

Now … we’re going to proceed with\u00a0a ballpark that pro-MPEV spokespersons have assured us will be on organized professional baseball’s “radar” as it looks for places to locate — or relocate — minor-league franchises.<\/p>\n

It’s going to require a lot of detailed work to get this project built. There will be t’s to cross and i’s to dot. Lots of them, in fact. The Local Government Corp. has to step up and, oh yeah, we need to get a city manager\u00a0and a city attorney hired to shepherd all of this tedium.<\/p>\n

But we’ve cleared a huge hurdle with tonight’s vote.<\/p>\n

Well done, Amarillo.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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I am not going to do my happy dance just yet. Yes, I am delighted with the results of tonight’s Amarillo referendum that endorsed a $32 million multipurpose event venue that includes a ballpark for the city’s downtown district. The City Council has a slam-dunk decision awaiting it: whether to ratify the results. Most of … Continue reading Let’s play ball … at the MPEV!<\/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":[288,1436,3153],"class_list":["post-11505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-downtown-amarillo","tag-mpev"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11505","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=11505"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11505\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11506,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11505\/revisions\/11506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11505"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11505"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11505"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}