Ideas on funding/fixing public safety

[shadows]

Lets give it all back to the Indians and casinos, apologize for taking it away from them and accept they are wining it back thus it will take the burden off the others to find a way to finance an ever expanding bureaucracy.  Boren is trying to expand teaching the children history but in no parts of history has the citizens been able to muster the amount of money that the bloating bureaucracies demand from the citizens.  All of the problems to fix the city funding will be accomplished with a pair scissors working in the glass cube. 

When will the citizenry realize there is no other solution? 

[Red Arrow]

When will the citizenry realize there is no other solution? 

January 27, 2013

[Red Arrow]

Moreover, with a cap on sales tax amounts, big ticket items that have already surpassed the maximum sales tax amount will produce zero extra sales tax no matter how much the price of that thing increases.

Where, in $, is this cap?   From personal experience, it's above $75000 in Oklahoma for state "use" tax.

[nathanm]

Where, in $, is this cap?   From personal experience, it's above $75000 in Oklahoma for state "use" tax.

I don't know about Oklahoma, but in Arkansas cities and counties can only tax the first $3000 or so (I forget the specific figure) of a sale. The state, of course, gets paid on the whole amount.

If Oklahoma doesn't do that, sorry for generalizing.

[Red Arrow]

5% is a lot of money. My dad's house today is about $250,000. In whole dollars, not accounting for inflation, that's 12,500. Enough to influence first home decisions. Your dad probably didn't move there for economics, but other people moved to the burbs for that 5% I assure you because I sold them some of their homes. I sold real estate after I left Cities Service up to 1980.

You add in the extra monthly savings in lower taxes that the burbs offered and it meant the ability to buy much more home in BA than you could in Tulsa. Of course there wasn't much in the way of schools but my buyer's didn't have children. There wasn't much in the way of entertainment either (couldn't buy a mixed drink in BA!) but that was always available in nearby sin city. There were no large employers in BA or Bixby either till Ford Glass moved in, but not to worry, Tulsa had employment at AA and....downtown.

No, I'm afraid there was very little benefit from the BA expressway to those of us who chose instead to buy existing housing and work to build up our hoods. Even its path was an obvious and expensive route. Rather than take an existing arterial such as 11th street, Admiral or 41st and simply widen and streamline them to reach east Tulsa quickly, then tie in to a 169 type highway, the planners slashed right across the heart of existing neighborhoods separating them and creating more havoc with exits and entrances. Saved us little time except when we were going to the lake for the weekend.

And, I agree that the outlying communities would have continued to grow because of the economic benefit, the fear of minorities and perceived crime in the city. That's not an idle statement. I know what was in their hearts when they asked me as a realtor to show them homes. They often told me bluntly. Geez. Even my parents eventually moved to Bixby for some of those same reasons. But I seriously wonder if we would now have better mass transit, including inner city rail and better maintained arterials had we not suckered in to the exprway rage.

The suckling from the Tulsa breast still continues today. The lady who manages Supercuts and cuts my hair lives in Sapulpa and commutes to Brookside. Several of my co-workers do too. They travel from BA, Bixby, Owasso and Sand Springs just to work here in midtown. How dismal must the employment picture be in those areas? It doesn't hurt Tulsa to receive the sales taxes on their lunches, their fuel or the revenue from their traffic tickets, but the rest of their income including groceries, rent, banking etc. goes to their hometowns. The truth is, housing is cheaper there. Tulsa is indeed self sufficient.

1969 Chevelle Malibu. 300hp 350v8. Turbo-hydramatic with 3:73 rear end. Nassau Blue with fawn interior. Burned rubber in all three gears! Bought it from a little old child nursery care owner. I miss that car.

The "only 5%" is mostly due the size of a 2800 ft^2 house vs a 1500 ft^2 house. As you noted, we are not really comparing similar houses.   I agree that $1500 was a chunk of change then.  Dad had to take a couple of deep breaths when mom spent $1000 on a washer, dryer, refrigerator, and freezer.   My parents didn't want a big (2800 ft^2) house.  Neither mom nor dad enjoy(ed) house cleaning.   Looking at Google maps, I wouldn't really call 48th & Columbia the spirit of midtown that people here seem to wax philosophically over.  I would call it the edge of suburban sprawl in its time but inside the COT limits.  I think of Cherry St as midtown. I won't argue with a definition though.

I won't argue either that a lot of people going to the suburbs got more square feet of house for less money, probably at less quality on a smaller lot, than many midtown locations.  I cannot see the cost of construction varying that much for a few miles except  perhaps by city fees and regulations.  Sometimes you may want a Lexus, can only afford a Corolla but you still need a car.  Evidently Tulsa didn't have enough Corollas.  Not everyone is interested in a fixer-upper. Flight from crime etc, perceived or real, would make any place unattractive at any price. 

The SE suburbs within Tulsa city limits are frequently declared to be undeserving of infrastructure improvements on general tax dollars.   Do the houses south of say 71st St pay lower tax rates than other areas?  Some of the new homes in SE Tulsa have price tags in the mid to upper 6 digit and lower 7 digit (all left of the decimal point) prices.  The tax revenue from them should be significant. People with the amount of money required to buy such homes will probably spend more (generating sales tax revenue) than people with 5 digit incomes too.

It's fashionable to hate everything that Woodland Hills Mall and the 71st St corridor stand for but it's (mostly?) within the city limits and has to generate a lot of revenue.  Want to donate it to Broken Arrow?

The BA Expy west of Sheridan runs for a good distance along the RR tracks.  Did the tracks have grade crossings at every residential street before the BA?  How close were the houses to the tracks? I don't have an appropriately dated map to find that.  RRs frequently separate neighborhoods.  Running an expressway between already separated neighborhoods makes sense to me.  I don't know what  the choices were where the BA heads west between 13th and 14th. I don't remember much development in 1971 east of where the BA and the RR part company.  Connection to the Muskogee Turnpike and I-40 is probably good for Tulsa's businesses.  Where should the Turnpike have ended?  Memorial Drive?  Where it does now but with only surface streets to connect to Tulsa?  How many homes and businesses would have been disturbed by significantly widening one or more of the E-W arterials to be like today's 71st St?

I-44 is for thru traffic.  Exits at the major arterials present business opportunities.  Maybe having interstate traffic go through downtown on 11th St was fine in 1950.  I remember going through many  towns between PA and FL on vacation in the 60s without doing anything except spending time helping to clog their streets.  I-95 was wonderful.  If we needed something in a town like dinner, we would go into town.  We were not the type to stop by the roadside attractions that so many lament the passing of.  We were going from point A to point B.   If the trip is the object and not the destination, many of the old roads still exist.

Light rail probably would have been a better commuter choice than the BA Expy.  Skelly was probably a good choice although I won't argue for or against the exact route.  Tulsa had a reasonable (real) trolley system until about the mid 30s.  Then GM, Firestone, and Standard Oil set about to increase their sales by increasing the use of buses all over the US. The trolley systems frequently had their own problems and replacing them was not a hard sell in many cases.

A case could probably be made against any of the expressways.  A case could probably be made against the entire Interstate system too.  I'm sure the RRs would have liked for the Interstates to have never been made.

The surrounding towns have grown over the years.  I see them as having similar services as Tulsa.  In the surrounding communities we have police and fire protection.  Good, better, worse than Tulsa? I don't know.  Schools have expanded with the population. Good, better, worse than Tulsa? I don't know.   We buy water from Tulsa.  Thank you. I hope you are not losing money on the deal.   Sewer/septic tank.  Depends on  the housing density and soil conditions.   Is your dad's house still on the septic system?  (I have no problem with it if it is.) Jobs have developed all over the area, making light rail more difficult to plan or implement. 

What does the COT offer anymore that is not available in the surrounding suburbs?  There is the prestige of a Tulsa address.  At one time a Sapulpa address was better.  There are the quality of life things that typically any small town cannot support alone like the BOK center, the Fairgrounds, specialty businesses,  the PAC, the ball park.  The COT should be the collection point for these venues.  Making them easily accessible to as many people as possible, including the suburbs, will help insure their success.   You contend that Tulsa is self supporting.  I say not so,  based on the current financial crisis and the cry that the suburbs are draining the city and therefore must directly help support  the city.  The COT must find a way to provide more actual and perceived value for the dollar than the suburbs if it expects to grow at the suburbs expense.  It must also be affordable to avoid  the Lexus vs Corolla scenario. 

[Red Arrow]

Don't get me wrong. I love Bixby, especially its large lot homes just south of 101st.

South of 111th between Memorial and Mingo.  South of 101st east of Memorial is not large lots.  South of 101st W of Memorial is COT.

[waterboy]

Rambling a bit there, Red.

I know little of PA. But I speak from experience in Tulsa. I grew up around the area that the BA bifurcated. Went to Jr. High at Wilson. Had friends that lived on both sides of the tracks. Played on those tracks with my friends from that area. They didn't cause the separation the exprwy did. The neighborhoods were built around them as the tracks have been there a long time. They were healthy hoods with solid middle class to upper lower class residents. Lots of older folks who built the homes and retired there. The expressway was a catastrophe for those hoods both business wise and socially. Third street, 6th street and 11th street all became irrelevant. Fifteenth was a cut through till it became "Cherry". Twenty first survived because of Utica Square, Monte Cassino and established oil wealth over there. The fairgrounds area suffered for years and was mercilessly cut in half. I specifically didn't mention I-44 or 244 since they are interstates and useful on a national level. Nonetheless, 244 is one of the poorest planned interstates I've driven and should have been located further north.

Then I sold real estate throughout the city. That was an education for me. Most realtors actively swayed first time buyers away from any home north of the BA expway, then anything north of 44 and finally, anything in Tulsa School District. Why? The builders they represented were building south of those described areas. The banks were loaning to the builders and working with the realtors and finally, it was too darn hard to learn about an older neighborhood when all you had to do was steer them to where low priced new construction listings were. Listings as easy to get as a low cut dress wiggled in front of a low brow builder. It became even easier to move them out of Tulsa when you threw in the wild cards......MINORITIES, Urban Renewal and Crime! Thats right folks, you don't want your kids going on busses to those crime infested slums where the darkies are with guns and drugs! When you are new to a city like tons of Cities Service and AA employees were, you depend on your realtor because you know you could be transferred at any time and have to sell. You don't take chances. Truth be damned.

I counter punched. I bought into some of those leapfrogged hoods, waited and worked for their renewal and did alright for myself. Some realtors did too. But you can't tell me that these were wise decisions by forward thinking planners or that they didn't have adverse results for our city. It was all driven by the need to keep builders, developers and bankers, fat and happy.

And, just because the city screwed up and padded their payrolls without making sure we had good revenue sources, don't for a minute think Tulsa is not self-sufficient. We'll adjust. You should hope so. If we don't, the little bergs around us end up as casualties too. We'll all be on the History channel 'splainin our versions of how it happened!

[waterboy]

South of 111th between Memorial and Mingo.  South of 101st east of Memorial is not large lots.  South of 101st W of Memorial is COT.

Noted. I get the two confused. In my day it tended to often be under a foot or so of water each spring. Made great sod and vegetables!

[Nik]

I was actually coming here to post exactly this (raising taxes), but it appears somebody else had the same idea. Here are the current sales taxes for Tulsa as well as some suburbs and other large Oklahoma cities:

(these figures have been provides by others in the thread, but I had already typed them up before I saw them)
Tulsa: 3%
Oklahoma City: 3.875%
Broken Arrow: 3%
Sand Springs: 3.5%
Jenks: 3%
Bixby: 3.5%
Glenpool: 4%
Norman: 3.5%
Owasso: 3%
(source: http://www.tax.ok.gov/publicat/copos/copo1Q10.pdf)

Tulsa had $15.8M in sales tax revenue in 12/09, 14.5% lower than the 12/08, or $2.7M. My math may be simplified or off, but a .5% increase should get us to about $18.4M, <$.1M short of 12/08's revenue.

I would propose that the City raises the sales tax to 3.5% for ONE YEAR. At the end of that one year, hopefully the economy will have recovered mostly and the sales tax will be dropped back to 3%. However, I have another provision. Any revenue greater than the previous period goes into a rainy day fund. So for instance, (I'm making up numbers here) if the revenue for 7/10 (after the .5% increase) is $19M and the revenue for 7/09 was $18.2M, that $.8M difference goes into the rainy day fund. The rainy day fund could be used if the economy hasn't fully recovered after the sales tax expiration and still forces the Tulsa government to live within the budgets that were used to and gives the city more time to correct any wasteful spending.

I caught the tail end of the news. Did I hear a councilor is going to propose a 1 cent sales tax increase? I think a .5 cent increase would get more support. I still like my idea.

[Red Arrow]

Noted. I get the two confused. In my day it tended to often be under a foot or so of water each spring. Made great sod and vegetables!

There is a fairly good elevation increase between 111th and 121st on Memorial.  I would be surprised if 111th and Memorial was anything but local puddles. The sod farms start south of 121st.  Still there just west of Memorial.  I think your memory is a mile off, otherwise OK.

[Red Arrow]

Rambling a bit there, Red.

I know little of PA. But I speak from experience in Tulsa. I grew up around the area that the BA bifurcated. Went to Jr. High at Wilson. Had friends that lived on both sides of the tracks. Played on those tracks with my friends from that area. They didn't cause the separation the exprwy did. The neighborhoods were built around them as the tracks have been there a long time. They were healthy hoods with solid middle class to upper lower class residents. Lots of older folks who built the homes and retired there. The expressway was a catastrophe for those hoods both business wise and socially. Third street, 6th street and 11th street all became irrelevant. Fifteenth was a cut through till it became "Cherry". Twenty first survived because of Utica Square, Monte Cassino and established oil wealth over there. The fairgrounds area suffered for years and was mercilessly cut in half. I specifically didn't mention I-44 or 244 since they are interstates and useful on a national level. Nonetheless, 244 is one of the poorest planned interstates I've driven and should have been located further north.

Then I sold real estate throughout the city. That was an education for me. Most realtors actively swayed first time buyers away from any home north of the BA expway, then anything north of 44 and finally, anything in Tulsa School District. Why? The builders they represented were building south of those described areas. The banks were loaning to the builders and working with the realtors and finally, it was too darn hard to learn about an older neighborhood when all you had to do was steer them to where low priced new construction listings were. Listings as easy to get as a low cut dress wiggled in front of a low brow builder. It became even easier to move them out of Tulsa when you threw in the wild cards......MINORITIES, Urban Renewal and Crime! Thats right folks, you don't want your kids going on busses to those crime infested slums where the darkies are with guns and drugs! When you are new to a city like tons of Cities Service and AA employees were, you depend on your realtor because you know you could be transferred at any time and have to sell. You don't take chances. Truth be damned.

I counter punched. I bought into some of those leapfrogged hoods, waited and worked for their renewal and did alright for myself. Some realtors did too. But you can't tell me that these were wise decisions by forward thinking planners or that they didn't have adverse results for our city. It was all driven by the need to keep builders, developers and bankers, fat and happy.

And, just because the city screwed up and padded their payrolls without making sure we had good revenue sources, don't for a minute think Tulsa is not self-sufficient. We'll adjust. You should hope so. If we don't, the little bergs around us end up as casualties too. We'll all be on the History channel 'splainin our versions of how it happened!

My uncle had a Rambler station wagon.  We were a GM family.   

I wanted to address a few things that were getting scattered.

When I was a kid, we played on the trolley tracks when our parents weren't looking.  We put pennies on them and hoped we could find them after the trolley smashed them. The trolley had its own ROW in our area so crossing the tracks wasn't like crossing the street like in Philly where the trolleys mostly ran on the street.  We weren't next to the Pennsylvania or Reading (pronounced like Redding) commuter lines but they weren't something you wanted to mess around on.   

I'm sure the BA Expy encouraged development around it. I believe the areas near 51st and Memorial were developed in the 60s. At least my brother's house, just north of the Falls Apartments (or whatever they are called now) was built in the mid 60s. Several of my dad's coworkers lived in that area. Not everyone went to Broken Arrow and Bixby. Development to the south and east was going to happen.  The BA Expy probably sped it up a bit.  I do remember the trip to downtown before the BA Expy was done along 13th and 14th.  The houses didn't look too appealing to me.  They may have been the unoccupied ones slated for demolition for the expressway. Too crowded for me even if the houses had been brand new. I think there was a moving company warehouse too.

I agree that I-244 could have been better.  Those left lane exits and entrances are terrible.

I expect my parents were steered in this direction.  There may have been something else within the COT limits but maybe not with the lot size and house size they wanted during the week they had to find something. 

Be sure that I don't want Tulsa to fail.  That would not help me at all. Since Tulsa is self sufficient, all the talk about COT income tax for outsiders, making every road entering Tulsa a toll road and a few other wild ideas can cease because you don't need my money.  Any money I spend with Tulsa businesses is gravy for Tulsa.  Thank you.   

[YoungTulsan]

Thread hijack.

Public safety --> Suburban sprawl, water, sewer, roads, impact fees? --> Where stuff was 40 years ago

[Red Arrow]

Thread hijack.

Public safety --> Suburban sprawl, water, sewer, roads, impact fees? --> Where stuff was 40 years ago

I'll admit to drift but not hijack.  The suburbs stuff came about from the "suburbs must pay" to keep Tulsa afloat concept.

[waterboy]

Thread hijack.

Public safety --> Suburban sprawl, water, sewer, roads, impact fees? --> Where stuff was 40 years ago

If you don't know how you got somewhere, its doubtful you'll know how to get back.

[Nik]

I caught the tail end of the news. Did I hear a councilor is going to propose a 1 cent sales tax increase? I think a .5 cent increase would get more support. I still like my idea.

I took the liberty of sending this idea to Councilor Henderson since it sounds like he will be proposing a sales tax increase.