{"id":2223,"date":"2013-07-02T22:30:24","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T22:30:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/highplainsblogger.wordpress.com\/?p=2223"},"modified":"2013-07-02T22:30:24","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T22:30:24","slug":"street-work-in-dire-straits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=2223","title":{"rendered":"Street work in dire straits"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p>Tooling east along Seventh Avenue around noon today &#8212; between Georgia and Adams streets &#8212; a blocks-long Amarillo eyesore caught my attention.<\/p>\n<p>It was the sight of the sidewalks along both sides of the street. They are in terrible shape.<\/p>\n<p>Few intersections had &#8220;curb cuts&#8221; designed for wheelchair access.\u00a0Long stretches of sidewalk are\u00a0uneven, broken up, weed-infested.<\/p>\n<p>As I approached the downtown district en route to making\u00a0a right turn on Taylor Street, I noticed that the sidewalks didn&#8217;t improve the closer I got to Adams. They looked as shabby at Adams as they did farther west.<\/p>\n<p>What does all this mean? Only that the city&#8217;s downtown refurbishing plan needs some work on the outskirts, those areas one sees when approaching downtown.<\/p>\n<p>Most of that refurbishing needs to get started. I&#8217;ll concede as well that many areas in the heart of the downtown district are looking a lot better now than they were when we arrived here in early 1995. The Potter County Courthouse Square is beautiful. Polk Street is looking more spruced up. It&#8217;s encouraging to see after-hours activity downtown, although some of it admittedly results in some bad behavior at times.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m wondering today, though, when the city &#8220;parents&#8221; are going to start paying attention to at least one significant street coming into the downtown district.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ll be waiting &#8212; and watching &#8212; for some activity.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tooling east along Seventh Avenue around noon today &#8212; between Georgia and Adams streets &#8212; a blocks-long Amarillo eyesore caught my attention. It was the sight of the sidewalks along both sides of the street. They are in terrible shape. Few intersections had &#8220;curb cuts&#8221; designed for wheelchair access.\u00a0Long stretches of sidewalk are\u00a0uneven, broken up, &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=2223\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Street work in dire straits<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2223","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223","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=2223"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2223\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2223"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2223"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2223"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}