{"id":19075,"date":"2017-01-08T17:24:31","date_gmt":"2017-01-08T17:24:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19075"},"modified":"2017-01-08T17:24:31","modified_gmt":"2017-01-08T17:24:31","slug":"city-did-well-in-casting-its-manager-search-net","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19075","title":{"rendered":"City did well in casting its manager search net"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Amarillo City Council members will have a difficult choice to make soon.<\/p>\n

It’s a difficulty made possible for the correct reasons.<\/p>\n

Amarillo council members looked across the nation for someone to become its city manager and has come up with a strong field of finalists. One of them, interim City Manager Bob Cowell, is among the five men the council will consider for the job.<\/p>\n

I want to offer a brief analysis on a couple of fronts.<\/p>\n

The first is that I’ve long believed that local governments shouldn’t restrict their search options, particularly when the search involves finding someone to do as critical a job as administer the operations of a government that serves 200,000 residents and spends about $300 million annually to serve those constituents.<\/p>\n

Back when I worked for the Amarillo Globe-News as editorial page editor, we urged the city to cast a wide net as it looked for a successor to former City Manager John Ward. The city instead looked inward and promoted Alan Taylor to the top job. The paper was critical of the choice … but the paper’s criticism had nothing to do with Taylor’s ability. The G-N merely thought that the city would have served itself better by collecting a large field of qualified candidates and then have Taylor compete against them for the job he would get.<\/p>\n

Taylor took the criticism personally and I regret that to this day;\u00a0 I told him repeatedly that it was never about him or his skill set. He did well in the job.<\/p>\n

The city looked inward again when it promoted Jarrett Atkinson to the manager’s post after Taylor retired. The G-N argued again for a national search. You know my feelings already about Atkinson and the job he did. I am sorry he couldn’t work with the new City Council majority, but I also am delighted that he has scored a new gig as Lubbock city manager.<\/p>\n

Here we are again. All the finalists have municipal and\/or county government experience. Some of them are Texans, which bodes well for someone who must be familiar with our state’s own municipal codes.<\/p>\n

If the council chooses Cowell — who knows the city’s unique political landscape — that would be fine, too. He will have been asked to rise to the challenge of competing against four other qualified men for the top job.<\/p>\n

The second point is the timing of this appointment. The Globe-News believes the current council should give way to the next one, which will take office after the May 6 election. I disagree with that notion, just as I disagreed with U.S. Senate Republicans’ insistence that President Obama’s pick for the U.S. Supreme Court be denied a hearing and a vote because the president also was a lame duck.<\/p>\n

In the case of the city, all five of these individuals stand for election every two years.<\/em> At what point — given that brief time span — are these council members not<\/em> facing potential lame-duck status?<\/p>\n

The city charter gives the council the authority to act in its own time to\u00a0deliver the only hiring decision\u00a0it is empowered to make. If there is a concern that the council could change hands — as it did in May 2015 — then council members need to ask all the finalists how they would handle a potential change of political philosophy on the governing body. That seems like a direct question and it requires candor and honesty from the city manager candidates.<\/p>\n

The city has gone too long already without a permanent city manager. Let these individuals make the call.<\/p>\n

Good luck, council members. Study hard and be\u00a0damn\u00a0certain you\u00a0get this one right.<\/p>\n\n

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Amarillo City Council members will have a difficult choice to make soon. It’s a difficulty made possible for the correct reasons. Amarillo council members looked across the nation for someone to become its city manager and has come up with a strong field of finalists. One of them, interim City Manager Bob Cowell, is among … Continue reading City did well in casting its manager search net<\/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],"class_list":["post-19075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-amarillo-city-manager"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19075","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=19075"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19075\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19077,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19075\/revisions\/19077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}