{"id":19102,"date":"2017-01-10T01:30:04","date_gmt":"2017-01-10T01:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19102"},"modified":"2017-01-10T01:30:58","modified_gmt":"2017-01-10T01:30:58","slug":"city-council-gets-an-a-for-effort","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=19102","title":{"rendered":"City Council gets an ‘A’ for effort"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I’m going to assign the Amarillo City Council a letter grade for its attempt to\u00a0present five qualified city manager candidates seeking to become the individual chosen to manage City Hall’s complex government machinery.<\/p>\n

That would be an “A.” For effort. The council brought the five individuals out tonight to a meet-and-greet reception at the Civic Center’s Heritage Room. My best guess on the number of folks who attended? About 120.<\/p>\n

As for the\u00a0community’s response to the council’s outreach effort,\u00a0let’s lower our sights. I’ll give the\u00a0rest of Amarillo a “C+.”<\/p>\n

You see, I didn’t notice a lot of, oh, “regular folks” at tonight’s reception. I didn’t\u00a0recognize any auto mechanics, grocery store clerks, shoe salespeople, fast-food restaurant\u00a0managers, beef processing plant employees … well, you get the idea.<\/p>\n

I did see\u00a0some lawyers, some folks involved\u00a0with local government in some form or fashion; I\u00a0noticed one well-heeled residential and commercial developer; I shook the\u00a0hands of some City Council candidates; I noticed one\u00a0Potter County commissioner and another former county commissioner; and a retired college administrator.<\/p>\n

My wish\u00a0as I drove downtown tonight to attend this reception was to see a larger representation of the community at-large.\u00a0Those who didn’t attend missed an interesting and engaging interaction with the five men\u00a0the council is considering for the city manager’s job.<\/p>\n

This is a huge deal, folks. The city manager will be asked\u00a0— according to\u00a0a friend who’s fairly\u00a0familiar with the atmospherics at City Hall — to “fill a lot of holes.” A lot of key personnel have departed City Hall in recent months, given all the turmoil that’s erupted there — with the resignation of City Manager Jarrett Atkinson and several key senior staff associates and then the sudden departure just a few weeks ago of the interim manager, Terry Childers.<\/p>\n

The next manager will have to oversee a budget of several hundred million dollars. He will have to manage the\u00a0progress of downtown’s extreme makeover. He’ll have to\u00a0figure out how\u00a0to implement the expenditure of money to repair\u00a0and\u00a0rehabilitates streets.<\/p>\n

The city manager will become\u00a0the face and the voice of the city’s administration. He will have tremendous responsibility to serve\u00a0a city of 200,000 souls who\u00a0depend on the city to deliver services paid for with taxpayers’ money.<\/p>\n

If only more of the community had come out tonight to get an up-close look at the men vying for this critical job.<\/p>\n

The City Council is now faced with the kind of “headache” elected governing bodies always seek. It gets to choose from among five competent, experienced and seasoned municipal and county administrators.<\/p>\n

A little birdie told me tonight the decision could come quickly.<\/p>\n

I\u00a0encouraged one of the council members tonight only to “choose well.” He smiled.<\/p>\n\n

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I’m going to assign the Amarillo City Council a letter grade for its attempt to\u00a0present five qualified city manager candidates seeking to become the individual chosen to manage City Hall’s complex government machinery. That would be an “A.” For effort. The council brought the five individuals out tonight to a meet-and-greet reception at the Civic … Continue reading City Council gets an ‘A’ for effort<\/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":[288,290,292,2418,5621],"class_list":["post-19102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-amarillo-city-manager","tag-jarrett-atkinson","tag-terry-childers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19102","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=19102"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19105,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19102\/revisions\/19105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}