{"id":9164,"date":"2015-05-03T03:31:58","date_gmt":"2015-05-03T03:31:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9164"},"modified":"2015-05-03T03:31:58","modified_gmt":"2015-05-03T03:31:58","slug":"candidates-shell-out-big-dough-for-a-volunteer-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9164","title":{"rendered":"Candidates shell out big dough for a volunteer job"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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You’ve got to hand it to the 16 men and women running for five spots on the Amarillo City Council.<\/p>\n

They’ve raised and spent a lot of money to obtain what, in effect, is a volunteer job.<\/p>\n

Campaign filing reports released Friday show the candidates have raised more than $281,000 in campaign cash for the council. The tab is continuing to climb and the final campaign expense list won’t be released until after the May 9 election.<\/p>\n

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

These individuals are running for a spot on the council that pays 10 bucks per meeting. The council meets once a week on the third floor of City Hall. So, it’s $40 for most months; $50 for those months that have five Tuesdays in them. They get reimbursed for expenses incurred while doing city business. If they travel, say, to a Texas Municipal League meeting, the city will pay them back for travel expenses.<\/p>\n

A couple of dynamics have popped up in the waning days of the campaign.<\/p>\n

One of them is the negative campaign being waged by Place 1 incumbent Ellen Robertson Green\u00a0and challenger Elisha Demerson, a former Potter County commissioner and judge. Another has to be the relative\u00a0silence<\/em> in most of the other races, even though the candidates have raised what seems like a lot of cash to spend.<\/p>\n

I’ve had friends who are closer to this race than I have been tell me they think some of the incumbents are in trouble. Other friends, though, are suggesting that the turnout will be low — which is typical, sadly — and that the incumbents will skate back into office.<\/p>\n

I’m not going to handicap this contest. My reporting job for NewsChannel10.com kind of takes me out of the local political prognostication business.<\/p>\n

I will add this observation, however. If the candidates are going to spend nearly 300 grand collectively for an office that basically pays them nothing, then I suspect a serious commitment to public service from all of them — incumbents and challengers alike.<\/p>\n

That speaks well for Amarillo.<\/p>\n\n

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You’ve got to hand it to the 16 men and women running for five spots on the Amarillo City Council. They’ve raised and spent a lot of money to obtain what, in effect, is a volunteer job. Campaign filing reports released Friday show the candidates have raised more than $281,000 in campaign cash for the … Continue reading Candidates shell out big dough for a volunteer job<\/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":[288,290,823],"class_list":["post-9164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","category-political-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-campaign-spending"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9164","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=9164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9164\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}