{"id":12175,"date":"2016-01-01T00:53:45","date_gmt":"2016-01-01T00:53:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12175"},"modified":"2016-01-01T00:53:45","modified_gmt":"2016-01-01T00:53:45","slug":"amarillo-council-sets-down-rules-of-conduct","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=12175","title":{"rendered":"Amarillo council sets down rules of conduct"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"ama<\/a><\/p>\n

Does a governing municipal council really need to be told — in writing — how to behave when\u00a0it’s conducting the public’s business?<\/p>\n

I guess the Amarillo City Council needs such rules spelled out.<\/p>\n

Whatever. It’s good to know the council has accepted the rules on how to behave in public.<\/p>\n

The council adopted a set of rules that requires council members to, um, act like adults. Interesting, yes?<\/p>\n

The new rules require council members to: maintain order and decorum at council meetings and obey the mayor’s edicts; treat each other and city staffers with courtesy and respect; refrain from using their position to obtain special privileges; and refrain from condoning illegal or unethical behavior.<\/p>\n

It fascinates me in the extreme that the council felt the need to adopt these rules and codify them in writing.<\/p>\n

Every single one of those guidelines seems as though they always would be understood from the beginning.<\/p>\n

A lot of things changed when the City Council took office this past spring. Three new guys joined the five-member council. They promised “changed,” and delivered it in spades. Some of it was good. Some of it was, well, not good. <\/em>One of the not-good elements emerged quickly as at least one of the new council members began arguing publicly with Mayor Paul Harpole about this and that policy matter.<\/p>\n

What’s more, the call for former City Manager Jarrett Atkinson to resign right out of the chute was seen as, well, far less than respectful\u00a0 . . . not to mention the demand that the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation board be fired summarily.<\/p>\n

Change? Yeah, we got it, all right.<\/p>\n

Now, though, the change that voters said they wanted has been tamped down a bit to require a level of decorum.<\/p>\n

The Amarillo City Council is acting like a collection of grownups — even as it puts its rules of behavior in writing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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Does a governing municipal council really need to be told — in writing — how to behave when\u00a0it’s conducting the public’s business? I guess the Amarillo City Council needs such rules spelled out. Whatever. It’s good to know the council has accepted the rules on how to behave in public. The council adopted a set … Continue reading Amarillo council sets down rules of conduct<\/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":[288,290,5822,2418,3519],"class_list":["post-12175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-amarillo-economic-development-corporation","tag-jarrett-atkinson","tag-paul-harpole"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12175","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=12175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12176,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12175\/revisions\/12176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}