{"id":52287,"date":"2022-07-17T21:23:57","date_gmt":"2022-07-17T21:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=52287"},"modified":"2022-07-17T21:23:57","modified_gmt":"2022-07-17T21:23:57","slug":"city-faces-stern-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=52287","title":{"rendered":"City faces stern test"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Amarillo City Hall is going to court against an individual who is angry enough at the city to file a lawsuit that says what the city did to incur a mountain of debt is illegal.<\/p>\n

I won’t contest the legality of it, but from my perspective from the Metroplex it looks as though it might have been seriously ill-advised.<\/p>\n

Amarillo businessman Alex Fairly has sued the city over the council’s decision to levy $260 million in debt through what it calls “anticipation notes.” To be candid, I never had heard of that type of municipal funding until I heard about that decision.<\/p>\n

The reason I am questioning the wisdom of this move is its timing. The city put a $275 million bond issue up for a vote in November 2020. The voters offered a resounding “no” vote on whether to renovate the civic center and relocate City Hall. So, what did the council do?<\/p>\n

It said, in effect, that it didn’t matter what votes said, that it would proceed anyway. Anticipation notes don’t need voter approval.<\/p>\n

Boom! Just like that the city started turning the wheels on a project that voters had just rejected.<\/p>\n

Can you say “pitiful timing”?<\/em><\/p>\n

A visiting judge from Lubbock County decided recently to combine two lawsuits into one, which I presume means the matter will be settled with a single judgment.<\/p>\n

If Fairly wins and the court determines the city acted illegally by not providing sufficient public notice in advance of its decision, then the city will have a serious legal matter to clear.<\/p>\n

If the city wins and then proceeds with the plan to act over its constituents’ objections, then the city faces a larger political obstacle. I hope to keep watching this matter play out.<\/p>\n

johnkanelis_92@hotmail.com<\/a><\/p>\n\n

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Amarillo City Hall is going to court against an individual who is angry enough at the city to file a lawsuit that says what the city did to incur a mountain of debt is illegal. I won’t contest the legality of it, but from my perspective from the Metroplex it looks as though it might … Continue reading City faces stern test<\/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":[290,293],"class_list":["post-52287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-amarillo-civic-center"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52287","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=52287"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52288,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52287\/revisions\/52288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=52287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=52287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=52287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}