By Trent Rosser

Well, it is happening again. The current city council is not wanting to hear from its own citizens. If you haven't heard, they are now trying to cut the public meetings in half. That's right, instead of having them once a week, they want them just twice a month. So approximately from 52 meetings a year to listen to the concerns of their citizens, they want just 24 meetings. This should really be no surprise from this council. They have already limited on how many people that they want to hear from. Now, before we dive deeper on this, let's start from the beginning.

I first met Mayor Ginger Nelson at a city council meeting when she was first running for office. She looked me right in the eye and lied to me. I could go deeper into what was said, but the end result was that she did not want to attend a forum and I was told that she wasn't invited. I later found her emails talking about the forum and she declined. What it came down to was she bad mouthed a small business to try to discredit them. Shortly after taking office, she banned clapping and cameras in the meetings. This was an unlawful act. To try to show her "power", she had a man arrested for clapping. She claimed it was disruption of a public meeting, but I was there. Many people clapped. Yet only one person was arrested.

Shortly after making national news with the clapping incident, our fearless city council tried to move the meetings from 5 p.m. to 7 a.m. the afternoon was tough enough with working citizens that don't get off work until 5. So they usually show up a little late. So now it moves to 7 a.m. and even more people found it harder to attend. If you have children at school, you would not be able to attend. You have to have your kids at school by a certain time. If you report to work at 8 a.m, by the time the meeting was over, you would be late for work. I believe enough citizens spoke up that they realized it wouldn't work. So they moved it to noon. So now every Tuesday at noon, you can attend a meeting. But if you didn't register to speak, or if 30 minutes have already passed, you will not be able to speak. Again, if it's not on the agenda, you can not speak your mind.

A while back I spoke at one of the meetings. Part of my concern was not being heard from the city council. As I walked away, Mayor Nelson spoke up and said that the citizens could email or even call and they would be happy to hear their concerns. This is absolute bull manure! Another example of lies. About six months ago I had a pressing issue and I tried to call Jared Miller. He is our city manager. I called and was told that he would call me back. I had an issue with one of the police department policies. A week later, I called back. Again, no return phone call. So, after two weeks, I called and asked for either Mr. Miller, or Mayor Nelson. Same thing happened. No phone call. A full month went by and I called again. They told me that they would call me back, so I expressed that I have yet to receive any call back. It was around the fifth or sixth call to city hall to try to get to talk to someone when I finally received a call back…...from the Amarillo Police Department. They wanted to know what was going on and how they could help. After talking with Internal Affairs, I finally gave up to talking with anyone on our city council. Just another deceptive lie from our Mayor.

Recently, there was an email recovered that showed Mayor Nelson wanting to use the COVID-19 relief funds to help build a new civic center. Those funds should be for the pandemic. An example of what they believe is that the funds need to go to the civic center, but yet they are now shutting water off on delinquent accounts. We still have bars closed, restaurants at half capacity and many people are still unemployed due to this crisis. So, the council attest that the relief money should go to a civic center instead of helping those affected by this pandemic.

Coming up in November, we will have a few things to vote on. One of them is cutting the meeting times in half and the other is to extend the term limits for our city council from two years to four years. I might be making a few people upset, but I believe that a four year term would be best, unless we can go to single member districts. That would be best at this time. But not with this city council! They do not need four more years to destroy the city.

My main concern is the meetings. Again, this council has proven over and over that they do not care about the citizens of Amarillo. They do what they want, when they want, as long as it benefits them or their PAC that they obviously work for. The council's track record shows that they are not for the people, but for themselves and their friends.

We must come together and make sure that this city council understands that we will not be silenced. The only way the city council will listen to us is at the polls. Do not be silenced, vote "No" on the four year term and definitely vote "no" on cutting the meetings in half. It's time to show that we, the citizens of Amarillo, still care about our city and we will NOT be hushed like children. Make your voices be heard, get out and vote!