{"id":15115,"date":"2016-06-08T14:15:02","date_gmt":"2016-06-08T14:15:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=15115"},"modified":"2016-06-08T14:15:50","modified_gmt":"2016-06-08T14:15:50","slug":"city-council-schism-widens-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=15115","title":{"rendered":"City Council schism widens again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"10731514_G\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Amarillo City Council members cannot seem to get past the divisions with their ranks.<\/p>\n

Three new guys got elected a year ago promising “change” in the way the city does business. They want more “transparency,” more “openness,” more “accountability.”<\/p>\n

Good deal. We’re all for it.<\/p>\n

The schism seem to narrow a bit when the council agreed unanimously on some steps to move the downtown revival strategy forward.<\/p>\n

Then a vacancy developed at Place 2. Brian Eades wants to move to Colorado to set up a medical practice. He intends to resign his council seat effective later this summer.<\/p>\n

Now comes yet another controversy to sweep in over the rest of the council.<\/p>\n

One of the applicants for Eades’ seat, Sandra McCartt, has posted some rather blunt and unflattering commentary on Facebook.<\/p>\n

The divide between the three new guys and the two “old-timers” has widened once again.<\/p>\n

The three newbies — Randy Burkett, Elisha Demerson and Mark Nair —\u00a0believe McCartt’s comments do not disqualify her. The other two, Eades and Mayor Paul Harpole, believe they do.<\/p>\n

Harpole walked out of a closed council meeting Tuesday, saying he didn’t “trust the process.”<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.newschannel10.com\/story\/32170046\/online-comments-from-amarillo-city-council-applicant-cause-tension<\/a><\/p>\n

Suppose the council had instituted a vetting protocol that would have discovered these social media posts earlier in the process. Would they have been able to make a determination on the five finalists? Perhaps. Then again, they might have argued vehemently among themselves as they began culling the list of applicants from 14 to the five finalists.<\/p>\n

It’s a new day at Amarillo City Hall, all right.<\/p>\n

The “change”\u00a0that city voters\u00a0sought is looking once again to be something\u00a0quite different from\u00a0the “change”\u00a0they got.<\/p>\n

Pass the peanuts and the popcorn.<\/p>\n\n

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Amarillo City Council members cannot seem to get past the divisions with their ranks. Three new guys got elected a year ago promising “change” in the way the city does business. They want more “transparency,” more “openness,” more “accountability.” Good deal. We’re all for it. The schism seem to narrow a bit when the council … Continue reading City Council schism widens again<\/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],"class_list":["post-15115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-downtown-amarillo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15115","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=15115"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15119,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15115\/revisions\/15119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}