{"id":20924,"date":"2017-04-10T15:21:56","date_gmt":"2017-04-10T15:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20924"},"modified":"2017-04-10T15:21:56","modified_gmt":"2017-04-10T15:21:56","slug":"potentially-monumental-municipal-election-on-tap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=20924","title":{"rendered":"Potentially monumental municipal election on tap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Amarillo is less than one month away from what looks like a potentially landmark municipal election.<\/p>\n

Think of this for a moment.<\/p>\n

Three members of the five-member City Council are not seeking new terms: Mayor Paul Harpole is retiring from public life; Place 2 Councilwoman Lisa Blake won’t seek election for the seat to which she was appointed in 2016; Place 3 Councilman Randy Burkett is forgoing a shot at a second term.<\/p>\n

That leaves two council members, Elisha Demerson in Place 1 and Mark Nair in Place 4 seeking re-election to second terms. But get this: They both are facing serious challenges from serious challengers.<\/em><\/p>\n

That means the entire council could flip on May 6.<\/p>\n

Oh, and then there’s another element. The city has a new manager, a new chief administrator, Jared Miller, who was hired by the current council, but who might find himself working for five brand new council members with entirely different priorities.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong. The current City Council needed to act when it hired Miller and I applaud\u00a0council members\u00a0for moving with relative speed after dawdling for more than a year to find a permanent city manager after Jarrett Atkinson resigned shortly after the 2015 municipal election. They brought in an interim manager, Terry Childers, who right away seemed to be a poor fit, given some temperament issues that surfaced with that silly “Briefcasegate” matter involving his misplaced briefcase\u00a0and that ridiculous 9-1-1 call in which he berated an emergency dispatcher. Oh, and then he called an Amarillo constituent a “stupid son of a b****”.<\/p>\n

B’bye, Mr. Childers.<\/p>\n

I’ve got my choices for the City Council. I frankly think a wholesale change in the council’s makeup is in order.<\/p>\n

This election would seem to demand a huge turnout at the polls. It should compel a rigorous examination of the candidates and the platforms on which they are running. It should require voters to pay careful attention to each candidate’s views on the direction they want to lead the city.<\/p>\n

Amarillo is in the midst of a massive makeover in its downtown district. We still have to get that baseball franchise relocated to Amarillo and to secure a major tenant for that ballpark officials hope to build across the street from City Hall.<\/p>\n

I remain optimistic it will occur. The next City Council must\u00a0ensure the city keeps moving forward.<\/p>\n

At minimum we are guaranteed to elect a new majority on our council. A better outcome would be to start with a fresh approach across the board. My choices?\u00a0Ginger Nelson for mayor; Elaine Hays for Place 1; Freda Powell for Place 2; Eddy Sauer for Place 3; Howard Smith for Place 4.<\/p>\n

Are we ready?<\/p>\n\n

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Amarillo is less than one month away from what looks like a potentially landmark municipal election. Think of this for a moment. Three members of the five-member City Council are not seeking new terms: Mayor Paul Harpole is retiring from public life; Place 2 Councilwoman Lisa Blake won’t seek election for the seat to which … Continue reading Potentially monumental municipal election on tap<\/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":[9,14],"tags":[288,290,3153],"class_list":["post-20924","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-political-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-mpev"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20924","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=20924"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20924\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20926,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20924\/revisions\/20926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20924"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20924"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20924"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}