{"id":18763,"date":"2016-12-22T02:26:16","date_gmt":"2016-12-22T02:26:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18763"},"modified":"2016-12-22T02:26:16","modified_gmt":"2016-12-22T02:26:16","slug":"a-new-amarillo-city-manager-on-the-horizon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=18763","title":{"rendered":"A new Amarillo city manager on the horizon?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Amarillo might not be wallowing in the administrative darkness much longer, according to Mayor Paul Harpole.<\/p>\n

Good deal? Let’s hope so.<\/p>\n

The City Council reportedly has culled a list of 30 or so city manager applicants to around 10 … give or take an undisclosed number. Harpole said the council will announce a list of finalists quite soon, maybe next week.<\/p>\n

Then the city will interview the finalists in a sort of public audition, Harpole explained.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/amarillo.com\/local-news\/2016-12-20\/amarillo-city-council-narrows-hunt-city-manager<\/a><\/p>\n

This public audition more or less falls in line with what has been done at Amarillo College as it has sought to select college presidents. It’s a good way to go. It enables the public to size up the individuals who are competing for a chance to\u00a0assume a highly public office.<\/p>\n

In the case of the city manager, we’re talking about someone who would oversee a\u00a0significant government bureaucracy. He or she will command a budget of several hundred million dollars, which pay for services\u00a0for a city comprising around 200,000 residents.<\/p>\n

Amarillo City Hall has been through a pretty rough spell for the past year or so.<\/p>\n

City Manager Jarrett Atkinson quit more than a year ago. The City Council hired an interim manager, Terry Childers, who immediately got into a significant public relations kerfuffle involving a misplaced briefcase and the Amarillo\u00a0Emergency\u00a0Communications Center. The council commenced a search, then called it off. Childers then popped off to a constituent\u00a0and called him a “stupid son of a b****.” Childers then quit and went back to Oklahoma City.<\/p>\n

This is the backdrop that the\u00a0crop of finalists will confront.<\/p>\n

The winner of this contest\u00a0then will get to steady the municipal ship.<\/p>\n

Let’s all hope for the best as the council proceeds with the only hiring decision the City Charter empowers it to make.<\/p>\n

The City Council needs to get this one right.<\/p>\n\n

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Amarillo might not be wallowing in the administrative darkness much longer, according to Mayor Paul Harpole. Good deal? Let’s hope so. The City Council reportedly has culled a list of 30 or so city manager applicants to around 10 … give or take an undisclosed number. Harpole said the council will announce a list of … Continue reading A new Amarillo city manager on the horizon?<\/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":[288,290,292,3519],"class_list":["post-18763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-amarillo-city-manager","tag-paul-harpole"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18763","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=18763"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18765,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18763\/revisions\/18765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}