Editorial: Clarendon must focus on improving

At a meeting in Amarillo Monday, community leaders from across the Panhandle gathered to discuss the problems facing their towns and ideas for how to raise funds for those programs.

Your humble editor represented the Clarendon Economic Development Corporation at the meeting, which was hosted by the Amarillo Area Foundation. To kick off the morning, participants were asked to do a “dreaming” exercise. “What would you do,” the speaker asked, “if I gave you $1 million a year to do anything you wanted to in your community?”

The wheels began turning for 30-plus people in the room, and we soon each had a list that filled an entire page. As participants took turns giving ideas from their lists, it became clear that we all face many of the same problems. From Tulia to Childress to Pampa to Spearman to Chillicothe, towns of all sizes are grappling with the same issues that Clarendon faces. Each community wants more “quality of life” improvements – whether it be youth centers, park facilities, or entertainment venues. Each place has infrastructure needs and must consider how best to use the tax dollars at their disposal, and in almost every town there is a shortage of good, middle-income housing.

One participant blamed part of his town’s problems on previous community leaders who failed to plan for growth and failed to give the present generation the tools necessary to address the problems of today.

And that, dear readers, is where Clarendon now finds itself.

We have been shortchanged, in many ways, by city leaders over the last 20 or 30 or more years who failed to stringently enforce zoning, and codes, and ordinances, who were perhaps too complacent when it came to taking care of infrastructure, and who have left us a city that needs new streets, new water and sewer lines, and a firm hand when it comes to enforcing the rules.

This situation has left Clarendon in a position where it largely tries to just patch things together and hobble along because it doesn’t have the funds to address any one issue. The city is spending about $25,000, for example, on a comprehensive study of its waterworks, but what will we do when it is completed? It’s going to take money and a lot of it before the discolored water experienced by some citizens can be permanently fixed.

Our current city leaders allow themselves to get bogged down in the political nonsense of whether the city administrator should attend professional conferences or other trivial pursuits when they should be focused on what can we do long term to improve our city.

Instead, City Hall is embroiled in the fate of City Administrator Lambert Little and faces the real prospect of losing yet another administrator. Little’s exit would no doubt please some people; but while he has made mistakes, it is unlikely that any man – or woman – can come in here and fix in one or two years the mess that has been created over a couple of generations. And probably no city administrator could ever please some people who essentially want to run this city by committee (the board) instead of letting a professional do what needs to be done.

We need to set all this aside and start looking to the future. We need to put aside the negative attitudes of the complainers and realize that we’re going to have to raise taxes because it takes money to fix problems. We’re going to have to be pro-active in cleaning up this city and every person here has to come to understand that we all have a stake in making things better. Whether it’s a citizen simply cleaning up a vacant lot or a city employee putting up street signs, all the little things that we can do will make a big impact. And we have to dream big to make this the city it ought to be.

Clarendon has a lot of positive things, and this column has talked about all of them in the past. But we need to build on those and actively work to make things better. That should be the focus of the city and its citizens.