Editorial: Voters Must Have a Say on New City Hall Push

Logo by City of Amarillo

By Thomas Warren III, Editor-in-Chief

Craig Gualtiere is completely right: voters must be able to have the final say on the Amarillo City Council’s push to build a new city hall, despite voters having already turned down the project.

As most of our readers are aware, the Amarillo City Council is pushing forward with a plan to build a new $35 million city hall facility downtown, just months after voters voted down Proposition A, an item which funded a spending package that included a new city hall. Despite the defeat of this item, municipal officials have claimed the new city hall was not actually a part of Proposition A, and was instead just one of a larger number of projects intended to take place downtown, in addition to Proposition A’s projects. This excuse has been made despite the fact that the relocation of city hall and the new facility were both included in the Proposition A plan and were advertised by the City of Amarillo as costs associated with the project before the election.

After the item went down, the Amarillo City Council, now re-elected and no longer facing the threat of losing an election, voted to move forward with issuing $35 million in debt for a new city hall. The only person to vote against the item was Cole Stanley, the only new City Councilman who was not serving during the original Proposition A election.

Due to their push to bypass the voters and force taxpayers to accept a project they already declined to fund by using certificates of obligation, Gualtiere, a local coffee shop entrepreneur, and other activists have pushed a petition to place the item back on the ballot for voters to decide. Their efforts have gotten the attention of U.S. Rep. Ronny Jackson, who recently expressed positive views toward the petition drive.

While City officials have said little about the petition drive, I would be willing to bet that Ginger Nelson and her City Council — with the exception of the taxpayers’ advocate in Stanley — would love to see the petition fail. They are likely hoping voters are not engaged enough to demand accountability on their efforts to disregard the will of the voters.

I hope they are wrong.

Voters must have their say on the new city hall project again. We defeated it once back in November 2020, and voters should be allowed to defeat it again this year. Our elected officials should have respected the voters’ decision by letting the project go, but since they won’t, it’s terrific that voters are stepping up and demanding to have a say again.

I sincerely hope this petition is successful, as voters must have a say on a new city hall. Since the taxpayers will have to foot the bill, it’s only right that they get the final say on this project, not the elected officials.