{"id":57652,"date":"2024-10-19T00:07:21","date_gmt":"2024-10-19T00:07:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=57652"},"modified":"2024-10-19T00:07:21","modified_gmt":"2024-10-19T00:07:21","slug":"yes-on-ward-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=57652","title":{"rendered":"Yes on ward politics!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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This won’t surprise many readers of this blog, but there was a time when I wrote editorials for daily newspapers that I penned opinions with which I disagreed personally.<\/p>\n

Hey, I was getting paid to speak for the newspaper and my voice wasn’t the only one to be heard. I had bosses and I answered to them!<\/p>\n

You want an example? I once wrote editorials endorsing Amarillo’s at-large voting plan for its five-member city council. I disagreed with that notion, but I sucked it up and spoke for the Globe-News.<\/p>\n

I left the paper in August 2012 and wrote on this blog that I actually endorse the idea of creating single-member districts for Amarillo’s five-member council.<\/p>\n

Well, the city is putting a proposal on its ballot next month that expand the council by two seats, and the two seats will be elected at-large along with the rest of the council.<\/p>\n

Amarillo’s population has grown past 200,000 residents. It is a diverse collection of residents, comprising a growing Latino base, an expanding Black base, more immigrants are moving in. Residents have a wide variety of interests, ethnicities, creeds and values.<\/p>\n

Why not divide the council into, say, four ward seats, two at-large seats and the mayor? I’ve seen such a system work in other Texas cities. Beaumont, where I first lived in this state from 1984 to 1995, operates on a hybrid system. It works well.<\/p>\n

Yes, a ward system can go too far. I visited Charleston, W. Va., this past summer and learned that the city of fewer than 50,000 residents is governed by a council comprising more than 20 members, all of whom represent wards. Talk about tiny constituencies!<\/p>\n

Amarillo, though, remains wedded to a system that worked well when the community was much smaller and much more homogenous than it is today.<\/p>\n

Truth be told, I still wonder how a city can govern when the entire governing body — including the mayor — answers to the same citywide constituency.<\/p>\n\n

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This won’t surprise many readers of this blog, but there was a time when I wrote editorials for daily newspapers that I penned opinions with which I disagreed personally. Hey, I was getting paid to speak for the newspaper and my voice wasn’t the only one to be heard. I had bosses and I answered … Continue reading Yes on ward politics!<\/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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,10],"tags":[179,276,288],"class_list":["post-57652","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-media-news","tag-agn-media","tag-amarillo","tag-amarillo-city-council"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57652","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=57652"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57652\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57653,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/57652\/revisions\/57653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=57652"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=57652"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=57652"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}