{"id":9712,"date":"2015-06-12T13:55:42","date_gmt":"2015-06-12T13:55:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9712"},"modified":"2015-06-12T13:55:42","modified_gmt":"2015-06-12T13:55:42","slug":"oh-the-stress-of-deciding-how-to-vote","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9712","title":{"rendered":"Oh, the stress of deciding how to vote"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Amarillo is going to the polls one more time Saturday.<\/p>\n

I’m still undecided on how I should vote in the runoff for Place 4 on our City Council.<\/p>\n

It appears that downtown’s revival future might be at stake. Both of the candidates seem like good men. They’re thoughtful and insightful.<\/p>\n

Mark Nair finished first in the May 9 election; Steve Rogers finished second. Nair didn’t get to the 50 percent-plus one vote majority he needed to win the seat outright. Thus, we have the runoff.<\/p>\n

Some controversy has swirled in this race. It involves the Commerce Building downtown and Rogers’s involvement in the appraisal of the building that will become the site of West Texas A&M University’s downtown Amarillo campus.<\/p>\n

We’ve now learned that Rogers — a real estate investment guy — provided the correct assessment of the property’s value, even though some had alleged that it was severely overvalued. The FBI is now involved. It’s looking, however, that the deal was on the up-and-up.<\/p>\n

Rogers is known to be friends with Mayor Paul Harpole and is thought to be an ally of the mayor, who wants to push forward aggressively with downtown revival efforts.<\/p>\n

Then we have Nair. I’ve met him once — which is one more time than I’ve met Rogers. He seems like an earnest and honest young man. One of his key supporters is someone I know pretty well and she believes Nair asks “all the right questions” about any issue relating to public city policy.\u00a0 He asks questions about the process that produced the downtown redevelopment effort, sounding a bit doubtful about its legitimacy.<\/p>\n

This election provides ample support for my belief in waiting until the last day to cast a vote. I don’t like voting early, particularly if I’m having trouble making up my mind.<\/p>\n

I’ve read the comments by both men. I’ve read some of their statements in the media. I have a good idea where they both stand on this downtown matter, which appears to be the driving issue of this runoff campaign.<\/p>\n

Readers of this blog know where I stand on downtown development. That might give you a clue as to how I’m leaning; do not presume<\/em> anything, however. I know many of both men’s key supporters quite well. I trust and respect their judgment in the choices each of them has made in declaring their support either for Rogers or Nair.<\/p>\n

Therefore, I remain somewhat torn.<\/p>\n

I’d better make up my mind in a hurry.<\/p>\n

Just don’t ask me how I’m going to vote.\u00a0We cast “secret ballots” for a reason.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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Amarillo is going to the polls one more time Saturday. I’m still undecided on how I should vote in the runoff for Place 4 on our City Council. It appears that downtown’s revival future might be at stake. Both of the candidates seem like good men. They’re thoughtful and insightful. Mark Nair finished first in … Continue reading Oh, the stress of deciding how to vote<\/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":[288,331,2915,3519,4423,5228],"class_list":["post-9712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-amarillo-runoff-election","tag-mark-nair","tag-paul-harpole","tag-steve-rogers","tag-west-texas-am-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9712","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=9712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9712\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}