Left: Matthew Allen, Right: Grayson Path/Photos provided by City of Amarillo
The City of Amarillo recently announced Grayson Path and Matt Allen as the finalists in the search for Amarillo’s next City Manager. The public will soon have an opportunity to meet the candidates, as we previously reported.
Since the announcment, our team has been working to research the candidates and their backgrounds. Here’s what we’ve found:
Where They Come From
Both finalists currently work as city managers. Matt Allen currently serves as the City Manager of Garden City, Kansas, while Grayson Path currently serves as the City Manager of Paris, Texas.
Both Garden City and Paris have similar governmental structures to Amarillo. All three have a council-manager form of Government, where the elected council serves as the board of directors by passing ordinances that are carried out by the city manager.
The City of Amarillo represents a large step up from the cities currently employing the finalists. Here are some key facts about each city compared with Amarillo:
Population:
Looking at population numbers, Amarillo has about eight times the number of people of either Paris or Garden City.
Amarillo: 201,291
Garden City: 27,519
Paris: 24,695
2023/24 Budget:
Amarillo likewise has the largest current budget of any of the three cities, though Garden City has a budget more than three times as large as Paris.
Amarillo: $531,043,295
Garden City: $187,991,945
Paris: $58,237,848
Number of Employees:
Exact current employment numbers are hard to come by for each city, especially when accounting for unfilled positions. Whoever wins the job of City Manager will be managing roughly four to five times as many people as they do in their current role.
Amarillo: ~2,500
Garden City: ~500
Paris: ~400
Property Tax Rate
The one stat where Amarillo comes in below either Garden City or Paris is the city’s property tax rate. Paris has the highest tax rate of all three. In a letter presenting the draft budget to the Paris City Council, Grayson Path argued for raising the rate to the maximum allowed without requiring an election. “It is strongly recommended that the City of Paris utilize the allowed restricted growth passed by the State Legislature when needed in order to keep up with the vital services we offer the citizens,” wrote Path. “To fall behind under this legislation could eventually prove irreversible thus detrimental to the desired operations and services the citizens expect of the City.”
(Note: We had to do some math to calculate Garden City’s tax rate, as Kansas tax rates are presented in the form of a mill levy. Still, this figure should be taken with a grain of salt, as Kansas tax laws include other substantive differences when compared to Texas, including different exemptions.)
Amarillo: 0.39195
Garden City: 0.442658
Paris: 0.47782
Salaries
It’s also worth comparing the current salaries of the applicants. While we are currently awaiting responses to records requests from Garden City and Paris, from what we have found so far, whoever gets the job will probably see a sizable pay increase.
First, some local context: when Amarillo’s most recent City Manager Jared Miller renegotiated his contract in 2023, he was given a base salary of $313,000.
Grayson Path’s current base pay is $178,000 per year, an adjustment from his initial base pay of $160,000 per year when he was first hired in 2020.
As of 2023, Kansas Open Gov reported that Garden City paid Matt Allen $227,921, though this figure includes some additional earnings including cellphone and vehicle allowances on top of his base pay.
(This story was updated on May 29th following a response to a records request by the City of Paris for Path’s current base pay. We are awaiting a response for similar information from Garden City.)
Experience
As noted above, both Matt Allen and Grayson Path are currently city managers.
Allen has served as the City Manager in Garden City since 2008 and was first hired by the city as Assistant City Manager in 2002. Before then, he was City Administrator in Oakley, Kansas from 2000 to 2002, Assistant to the City Manager in Joplin, Missouri from 1997 to 2000, a Management Analyst in Salina, Kansas from 1996-1997, and a Management Intern in Lenexa, Kansas from 1995-1996.
Path has been in his current role for a far shorter time than Allen, having been hired by Paris in 2020 following a search by Baker Tilly, the same firm facilitating Amarillo’s search. Path previously served as City Administrator for Nebraska City from 2015 to 2020 and City Administrator in Jetmore, Kansas from 2013 to 2015.
For context, before being hired by the City of Amarillo in 2017, former Amarillo City Manager Jared Miller had been the City Manager for San Marcos from 2014-2017. Before then, he had been an Information Dominance Warfare Officer for the US Navy Reserve from 2004-2015, an Assistant City Manager in North Richland Hills from 2007-2013, and the City Manager for Crosbyton, Texas from 2003 to 2005.
Education
Both candidates have Master of Public Administration degrees. Matt Allen received his master's from the University of Kansas in Lawrence, while Grayson Path earned his from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro.
For context, former Amarillo City Manager Jared Miller also had a Master of Public Administration, with his being from Texas Tech University. Miller also had a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and Government from Abilene Christian University.
For his undergrad, Allen received a Bachelor of Arts in History/Political Science from Bethany College in Lindsborg, Kansas.
Path has an Associate of Science in Physics from Northeast Community College in Norfork, Nebraska and a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.