During Tuesday’s city council meeting, Amarillo Mayor Cole Stanley addressed concerns, clarifying his remarks made at the Oct. 8 city council meeting when questioning AEDC President Kevin Carter about discretional spending.
Stanley began the meeting by acknowledging that his choice of words in the prior discussion might have been misunderstood. “I do have a clarification, and it fits under announcements,” he said. “In relation to the previous meeting, where we had a pretty good discussion and debate back and forth, my wife could probably attest to this — there are times when I may use an extreme example to make my point.”
The controversy stemmed from Stanley’s earlier comments, where he posed a hypothetical scenario questioning whether the AEDC could alter directives set by the city council without approval. “You could choose to fund a membership to the KKK … and you didn’t ask for anyone’s permission; nobody approved it,” Stanley said at the time, highlighting potential gaps in oversight. He equated this with AEDC’s handling of a $100,000 budget line item for The RANGE, which he said was increased over three years without proper authorization.