{"id":9982,"date":"2015-07-01T16:25:28","date_gmt":"2015-07-01T16:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9982"},"modified":"2015-07-01T16:25:28","modified_gmt":"2015-07-01T16:25:28","slug":"so-many-questions-at-city-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9982","title":{"rendered":"So many questions at City Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Amarillo City Council members decided to start their new tenure off with far more than a bang.<\/p>\n

It went off like a volcano.<\/p>\n

Place 4 Councilman Mark Nair called for City Manager Jarrett Atkinson’s resignation. He was joined by his pal in Place 3, Randy Burkett. That’s two votes against the manager.<\/p>\n

Where does a city councilman’s authority begin and end here? Can one, or two members of a five-member governing body make such a call?<\/em><\/p>\n

The two men also called for the resignation of Assistant City Manager Vicki Covey, who then agreed to quit.<\/p>\n

Given that the assistant city manager is hired by the city manager, do council members have any actual authority to call for a city manager subordinate to resign?<\/em><\/p>\n

Suppose Atkinson doesn’t quit. Suppose he wants to go to the mat. He then can ask for a public airing of the grievances against him. State open meetings law exemptions do not require<\/em> that personnel matters be kept secret; they only allow<\/em> for it.<\/p>\n

Would the City Council — in the interest of the transparency on which its three new members campaigned — be willing to discuss all this in the bright light of day? <\/em><\/p>\n

The city is knee-deep — and maybe even\u00a0deeper than that — in plans to redevelop its downtown district.<\/p>\n

What does all of this mean to the city’s efforts and does it derail it if the top municipal administrator is no longer in the picture?<\/em><\/p>\n

Change has arrived at City Hall. The new guys said they wanted to shake up the way things had been done.<\/p>\n

Something tells me we’re about to see whether we reap the benefits of that change — or pay for it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

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Amarillo City Council members decided to start their new tenure off with far more than a bang. It went off like a volcano. Place 4 Councilman Mark Nair called for City Manager Jarrett Atkinson’s resignation. He was joined by his pal in Place 3, Randy Burkett. That’s two votes against the manager. Where does a … Continue reading So many questions at 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":[290,347,1436,3426],"class_list":["post-9982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-amarilo-city-council","tag-downtown-amarillo","tag-open-meetings-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9982","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=9982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9982\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}