{"id":9744,"date":"2015-06-14T02:22:31","date_gmt":"2015-06-14T02:22:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9744"},"modified":"2015-06-14T02:22:31","modified_gmt":"2015-06-14T02:22:31","slug":"its-official-change-has-arrived-at-amarillo-city-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9744","title":{"rendered":"It’s official: ‘Change’ has arrived at Amarillo City Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Let’s call Amarillo City Councilman-elect Mark Nair the “man who brought change” to Amarillo municipal government.<\/p>\n

Tonight he was elected to Place 4 on the five-man City Council. trouncing runoff opponent Steve Rogers.<\/p>\n

So, what does “change” look like? That remains to be seen.<\/p>\n

But here’s what we know. Two of the new guys on the council, Place 1 Councilman Elisha Demerson and Place 3 Councilman Randy Burkett campaigned aggressively against the “status quo.” That means, I guess, that they oppose some of the key policy decisions made in recent years by the council. The highest profile set of decisions involves downtown redevelopment.<\/p>\n

Now we have Nair joining the new three-member majority that advocates change … whatever it means.<\/p>\n

I keep hearing a lot of rumblings around town about “The Ballpark,” or the multipurpose event venue. Will there or won’t there be a citywide referendum to determine if voters want to build the MPEV? Why even put it to a vote? Well, it involves spending “public money,” derived from hotel-motel tax revenue, which is how the city intends to finance construction and\u00a0upkeep of the venue.<\/p>\n

Here, though, is the irony: The money comes from those who visit<\/em> the city, not from those who live<\/em> here.<\/p>\n

But, by golly, there just might be a vote on it, just to gauge residents’ feelings about building it.<\/p>\n

If voters say “no,” the council — while not obligated legally to abide by the result — would commit political suicide by ignoring it.<\/p>\n

If the MPEV gets derailed, what happens to the downtown hotel being planned? Developers say the MPEV must be built for the hotel to proceed. Oh, and the parking garage — the third wing of this three-part package? Who needs it?<\/p>\n

So, will “change” mean the end of this downtown effort?<\/p>\n

Congratulations, Councilman-elect Nair.<\/p>\n

Proceed with wisdom, young man.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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Let’s call Amarillo City Councilman-elect Mark Nair the “man who brought change” to Amarillo municipal government. Tonight he was elected to Place 4 on the five-man City Council. trouncing runoff opponent Steve Rogers. So, what does “change” look like? That remains to be seen. But here’s what we know. Two of the new guys on … Continue reading It’s official: ‘Change’ has arrived at Amarillo City Hall<\/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":[288,1436,1446,2915,3153,4423],"class_list":["post-9744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-downtown-amarillo","tag-downtown-revival","tag-mark-nair","tag-mpev","tag-steve-rogers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9744","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=9744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}