{"id":9999,"date":"2015-07-03T01:50:27","date_gmt":"2015-07-03T01:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9999"},"modified":"2015-07-03T01:50:27","modified_gmt":"2015-07-03T01:50:27","slug":"hold-on-for-bumpy-ride-at-city-hall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=9999","title":{"rendered":"Hold on for bumpy ride at City Hall"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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My cell phone rang this morning. I answered it and on the other end was a friend of mine who works at Amarillo City Hall.<\/p>\n

We chatted for a few moments about some blogs I’d written about the new City Council makeup, the potential fate of City Manager Jarrett Atkinson and a few other things.<\/p>\n

I told my friend, “I don’t feel good about what I’m seeing happening at City Hall.”<\/p>\n

My friend answered, “It’s going to get a bit bumpy around here.”<\/p>\n

My final response to my friend was to “keep your head down.”<\/p>\n

Later in the day, I visited with another friend who recalled when he first came to Amarillo, one of the things he had heard about city government was “how well everyone worked together.” He talked of the espirit de corps <\/em>that existed among city leaders, the business community and just plain folks.<\/p>\n

Is all of that gone now that we have a new City Council comprising three new guys who campaigned for “change”?<\/p>\n

Three new council members have taken their oath and two of them have called for the resignation of the city manager, whose status will be the subject of a City Council meeting next Tuesday.<\/p>\n

The stakes, though, go far beyond the fate of one man. Jarrett Atkinson might survive this tempest. If he does, then he’ll have a majority of the council — if not all five of them — watching his every move.<\/p>\n

If he doesn’t survive, if he quits or is let go, what happens then to the grand plan that’s already begun its forward movement? The effort to revive downtown already has begun.<\/p>\n

The Coca-Cola distribution center has been vacated to make room for construction of that multipurpose event venue; Xcel Energy has broken ground on its new office complex; the block that used to house the city jail has been cleared away to accommodate construction of a convention hotel.<\/p>\n

Do we really and truly have the stomach to see all of the hard work that went into this proposal tossed aside?<\/p>\n

If the need arises and we need to look for a city manager, the process is going to take months — perhaps many months. Is anyone going to rise up from within the ranks to take the job? You can stop laughing. I get it. Of course not.<\/p>\n

My friend was trying to be diplomatic with the description of a “bumpy” ride coming up.<\/p>\n

We’d all better hold on with both hands.<\/p>\n

Oh, and that spirit of cooperation? Well, that’s a goner, too. I do not object to healthy dissent and debate — along with constructive criticism<\/em>. I fear the potential for a\u00a0City Hall donnybrook.<\/p>\n\n

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My cell phone rang this morning. I answered it and on the other end was a friend of mine who works at Amarillo City Hall. We chatted for a few moments about some blogs I’d written about the new City Council makeup, the potential fate of City Manager Jarrett Atkinson and a few other things. … Continue reading Hold on for bumpy ride 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":[288,290,292,1436,2418,3153],"class_list":["post-9999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news","tag-amarillo-city-council","tag-amarillo-city-hall","tag-amarillo-city-manager","tag-downtown-amarillo","tag-jarrett-atkinson","tag-mpev"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9999","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=9999"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9999\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}