{"id":21007,"date":"2017-04-14T00:00:50","date_gmt":"2017-04-14T00:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=21007"},"modified":"2017-04-14T00:01:03","modified_gmt":"2017-04-14T00:01:03","slug":"elections-provide-a-valuable-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=21007","title":{"rendered":"Elections provide a valuable education"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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I listened today to a candidate for the Amarillo City Council tell his audience about the things he has learned about running for\u00a0public office.<\/p>\n

Eddy Sauer is seeking to be elected in Place 3 to succeed incumbent Councilman Randy Burkett, who isn’t seeking re-election.<\/p>\n

Sauer gave some fairly standard remarks to the Rotary Club of Amarillo about how a lifelong Amarillo resident can have his eyes opened about the complexities of governing a city of roughly 200,000 residents. He spoke mostly about economic development, speaking intelligently about how the city should continue to seek companies willing to locate here; offer them financial incentives and then seek to ensure that they provide sufficient numbers of new jobs to make the investment worthwhile.<\/p>\n

He also spoke of improving “transparency” on the Amarillo Economic Development Corporation.<\/p>\n

Yes, the man is learning about the city, about its challenges. Sauer is an impressive fellow who I hope gets elected on May 6.<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

Sauer and I visited for a few minutes before he stood behind the podium. I mentioned to him how elections have been educational to me during more than 22 years living in Amarillo and, for most of that time, commenting<\/em> on them as a full-time opinion journalist at the Amarillo Globe-News.<\/p>\n

Indeed, these municipal elections have managed during every election cycle dating back to my first year here — 1995 — to tell me something about the community I didn’t know previously.<\/p>\n

I suspect that is perhaps the most gratifying aspect of these elections. Twenty-two years after settling in at my new post at the G-N, I’m still learning about this community.<\/p>\n

Before you ask what precisely have I learned, I must tell you that I cannot define it in tangible terms. Early on I learned about the landmark 1989 city election that resulted in a dramatic turnover of the five-member City Commission; the local economy was in deep trouble, the city had been feuding with leading business leaders; folks were angry.<\/p>\n

By the time I arrived at my post, much of that anger had subsided. The city, though, had plenty to teach this newcomer to the Texas Panhandle.<\/p>\n

I’ve been learning a little more every\u00a0odd-numbered year when the City Council’s five members are selected by city voters.<\/p>\n

Think, too, about this: Given that Texas elects its Legislature every even<\/em>-numbered year — as do the state’s 254 counties — we residents get a chance to be “educated” every single year.<\/em><\/p>\n

I told Sauer that even my perch in the peanut gallery — given that I no longer “work for a living” — provides me with an election-year opportunity to learn something new about Amarillo.<\/p>\n

This, I suppose, is my way of revealing my biggest takeaway from these local elections. It happened in Beaumont, when my wife and sons and I first moved to Texas back in 1984. I can go back even to my first full-time journalism job in Oregon City, Ore., which bears little resemblance to my familiar surroundings in big-city Portland.<\/p>\n

The upcoming election is\u00a0likely to teach\u00a0me more, still, about Amarillo. Indeed, elections can provide teachable moments<\/em> if we all keep an open mind.<\/p>\n

The good news is that the learning curve isn’t\u00a0nearly so steep these days. Still, it never will level out. Nor should it.<\/p>\n\n

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I listened today to a candidate for the Amarillo City Council tell his audience about the things he has learned about running for\u00a0public office. Eddy Sauer is seeking to be elected in Place 3 to succeed incumbent Councilman Randy Burkett, who isn’t seeking re-election. Sauer gave some fairly standard remarks to the Rotary Club of … Continue reading Elections provide a valuable education<\/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":[179,288,305,4668],"class_list":["post-21007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-political-news","tag-agn-media","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-amarillo-elections","tag-texas-panhandle"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21007","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=21007"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21007\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21009,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21007\/revisions\/21009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}