This is the first in a new series of articles from Waylon Walker.
There are so many things in disrepair around this town of Amarillo: the town I grew up in; the town I was desperate to move back once I left the military. It is home to me. As such it kills me to see that instead of maintaining it we are more focused on the “beautification” of the city. The reasoning for this is that the city, OUR great city, is in no way being beautified. We are instead building new baseball stadiums and doing things such as using garbage cans instead of dumpsters. To be fair though, if I was a trash collector I wouldn’t want to go down the alleys in Amarillo either.
"Out of sight, out of mind" must be what the city is thinking as they ignore the alleyways. I could understand the dirt ones being rough, but to have asphalt ones be to where you feel like you’re driving off road in Palo Duro Canyon is ridiculous. Below is a photo of one such alleyway. It sits near 34th and Western.
So my question is this: with all the construction going on in the city right now, whether it be roads or the new MPEV that we are all praying doesn’t fail and cost us for another useless building, I ask one simple thing. WHY? Why spend money to bring in new things when the city itself is in need of TLC? Why require residents to haul trash up to the curb and call to have it picked up? I must add here that I’ve seen many older residents struggling to do this when the city workers could just as easily come to the alley and get it all. Why are we doing trash cans instead of dumpsters? I don’t know about you, but I do not look forward to this aerial assault when the wind lifts them and blows them all over. That’s why the dumpsters are so good.
Why does it feel like the City Council is misdirecting us on so many things? We NEED to fix things in city first. Not just in the new additions and the richer parts of town. ALL of Amarillo needs it. WHY is this not being done? These are questions I feel we should all be asking. Why is this the way it is? How can we change it? What is the first step in changing it?
Photo by Waylon Walker