Some numbers in the Vision 2025 package

[RecycleMichael]

I think some of these details are not as obvious as they could be. I generally vote yes for improvements, but I take my time to research what I am voting for.

$748.8 million divided among 603,403 people (2010 census of Tulsa County) works out to $1,240 per person. The tax doesn't start until the other one expires in 2017 and runs till 2029 (12 years! wow...) so the $1,240 by year is $103 or $2 a week per person if it passes.

Of course, I have a family of four so it would be $8 for me (but my kids will be hopefully gone from my house by the time it kicks in).

Are these projects worth $2 a week to me?

Some of them are important to me. I think the Juvenile Justice Center is vital. I think the river levee improvements will be a great way to protect developments and add recreation opportunities. $7 million for County Parks seems reasonable and I think the county has done a great job with their parks. I am interested in seeing what projects the City of Tulsa comes up for their portion.

[Teatownclown]

That's well and good, but their priorities are not mine. I prefer the money be invested in education, environment, and infrastructure.

What are your priorities? Falling in line and corporate welfare?

We are already one of the highest taxed towns in America. I could care less about trying to attract business. If your city has the right ingredients, then the economic base will expand.

I am appalled you would even be willing to fund a Chamber bribe account. That really is the sickest thing about extending 2025....and the fact that this was suppose to be a one time tax with an end point unlike the 3rd penny lie.

[Weatherdemon]

I don't mind spending the money on designated projects with oversight but I trust our city and county leaders to take care of themselves and that's it. I don't trust them with hundreds of millions of unallocated money and no oversight.

I am not for paying for needed maintenance at the airport so all the tenants will stay. Most have discounted rent as it is, except for the smaller companies that could really use it, and all have paying for their facilities maintenance as a part of their agreement.

New facilities may be needed but again, if the renters aren't going to maintain it as their lease requires, then why do I want to give them something better?
Yes, every city that AA is in gives them essentially free rent and facilities. They've recieved hundreds of millions in tax breaks in Tulsa and other cities and recieve billions from the the feds yet they continually lose money and threaten to pull of town. I see no reason to to spend a hundreds of millions on facilities they will threaten to abandon in 5-10 years if we don't come up with millions more for them.

As for Gilcrease. Maybe we do need it. Maybe it will help. Why is it not proposed as toll like the Creek? Could it be that the OTA doesn't see it as having enough traffic to pay for its completion? Serious question. They jump at a chance build another toll road yet they don't like one up there?

More river BS. For whatever reason the city seems hellbent on studying the river and not doing a damn thing with it except nicen up the trails (which they have done well at). Studies show that studying studies of studies studied in preparation for new studies does nothing but cost money and are a way to prevent progress.

The cities around the county don't know what to spend this money on although they will find something. If this was so important you think these communities would have a list of items to drop this dime on but instead they're saying, well, uh, I guess, uh, we might spend it on, uh, some improvements to our, uh, downtown or um, uh our infrastuctures.

NO NO NO!
And I was 100% behind the original 2025.

[AquaMan]

A couple of things. One, the buildings that AA and IC reside in are hell to work in from what I've heard from workers there. The buildings can be maintained without improvements but if AA and the bus company leave, we will have to either rent or sell the buildings and I'm not sure they can be sold. So, it behooves a landlord to invest in his properties to make them more rentable should the worst happen and its not good to wait till you have no rent coming in to do so. Its a public property and we should invest in its saleability or rentability.

Two, the authorities know that the improvements necessary would not pass on their own merits if put to a vote. So, they sweeten the pot and try to coat tail on the more popular V2025 issue. Offering the surrounding communities some of the pie was the key element to V2025 passage.

I've changed my view over time about the Gilcrease bridge. The Gilcrease is a good idea whose time never seems to come. Just because it couldn't survive as a toll road doesn't mean it isn't good planning. Its just expensive and longer payback.

[DTowner]

Conceptually, I am less bothered by the airport improvements and bribery/closing fund portion of this package than the undefined projects for the county/cities.  As for the airport issue, Tulsa has allowed its assets to become run down due to a lack of maintenance (a running theme with many city assets).  Spending money to improve those properties makes sense to me because I assume Tulsa never had enough leverage to get a lease that required the tenants to pay for such improvements.  I get it that this is not a normal landlord-tenant relationship and these are no triple net commercial leases.  Therefore, the City needs to step up to fix up our property and be prepared for come what may with respect to AA.  To the extent this part of the package means spending money directly for AA, such as buying equipment or tools, then I think that is a bad idea.  As for the closing fund – I don't like it but it is a fact of life.  We are not successfully getting companies to move here with out it.  Even worse, companies already here are being recruited by other communities to move away.  We can bemoan corporate welfare, et al. until the cows come home, but we've got to protect what we have and try to grow our business base if we want all the development bells and whistles we love to talk about on this site.

I have real concerns about the other part of the package – the unspecified projects in every city and town.  As an initial matter, it doesn't make much sense to have this county tax if the money is going to be spilt back up pro rata according to population.  What's the point?  If Bixby wants to raise its sales tax to fund some needed project, then that is up to them.  This is simply a transparent attempt to give every community a stake in the outcome, when in reality it simply shows how poorly thought out and rushed this concept really is.  Plus, I suspect Tulsa is a net loser under this distribution plan because I suspect a disproportionate share of the taxes are collected from Tulsa businesses.

This tax proposal appears like an effort to create regionalism in which the local governments of the many communities of Tulsa County cede authority and power to a centralized county government.  That may be a good idea, but I don't think it should be done covertly.

Finally, the process for this package stinks.  Every lesson learned from Susan Savage's two failed "vision" votes and the successful Vision 2025 vote is being cast aside.  This has been a rushed top down process and the voters are being asked to lock down money until 2029 without a good idea of what projects they will get in return.  As discussed above, serious consideration of potential "mass transit" ideas in downtown and midtown need to be considered.  Maybe we could even discuss how to use those new railroad tracks on our fancy new bridge over the Arkansas.  I'm sure there are a lot of other good ideas that could and should be considered.  If this money gets locked up for the next 17 years, where will the money come from if Tulsa wanted a downtown trolley loop system or the city wants to pick up the slack on funding for the Oklahoma Pop museum when the legislature screws us again?  "Sorry, we're building a sand box park in Collinsville with that sales tax money" is a pretty lousy answer.

Did the local politicians and chamber leaders completely miss the John Sullivan primary loss 2 months ago?  Whether you agree or not with the message the primary voters were sending is not the point.  Local leaders ignore that message at their peril.

[erfalf]

This plan should be renamed "Reaction 2012" as there is no vision present in it.

[Gaspar]

This plan should be renamed "Reaction 2012" as there is no vision present in it.

+1

[Teatownclown]

+1

RINO! (Reactionary in name only....)

[erfalf]

RINO! (Reactionary in name only....)

Whatever, but this is the most opposite of visionary.

At least Vision 2025 had some decided improvements in quality of life. Regardless of what happened to the economy we ended up with the world class BOK Center as well as community enhancements to towns all around Tulsa County.

Why doesn't the city come up with something and get the county out of the sales tax business? County government is just be used as a tool to spread the money back out. They figured it out. Where do most of the people spend their money...Tulsa. How do they get it back? Besides, all of the burbs are pretty reliant on the core city anyways.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what firm gets most of the underwriting business for the city and county?

[shadows]

Whatever, but this is the most opposite of visionary.

Why doesn't the city come up with something and get the county out of the sales tax business? County government is just be used as a tool to spread the money back out. They figured it out. Where do most of the people spend their money...Tulsa. How do they get it back? Besides, all of the burbs are pretty reliant on the core city anyways.

______________________________________________________________________________________________

Sales taxes are the most regressive tax ever conceived as it is imposed on those who are least can afford them. They are the most progressive of any tax ever conceived by a controlling bureaucracy in a socialist republic form of government.  The loaf of bread costing $1 dollar when taxed at 8 cents and its cost is increased to $2 dollars a loaf the sales tax is increased to 16 cents without any effort on the part of bureaucracies.  The burden then falls on the job of the bureaucrats to dump this money in so called quality-of-life schemes which can include everything.

By the sales taxing it encourages the pressure to increase inflation on the necessities of life support.  Thus it becomes a tool of further planning that can be project from quality-of-life into socialism of transferring private ownership into a state of communism 

Now who would want to take away from our non replacing leaders this free money that are dead set on creating an environment of roads to socialism of public ownership?               

[Gaspar]

I'm going to go ahead and throw out the new Vision3 program.  We can take $800 million from tax payers and build class A office space for Oneok and Bok.  Then we will build new manufacturing facilities on the West side for Aaon, Baker Hughes, and Nordam.  If there is any money left we will plant a tree and clean up a park to make the peasants happy, but don't hold your breath.

Who's with me?

Since we've decided to turn our city's vision projects into corporate welfare, why not go whole-hog?  After all, we're living in the land of Obamanomics where corporate bailouts are the Hope & Change.

[nathanm]

Does the city own any of those facilities? I don't believe that to be the case. Not that I think funneling a bunch of money in AA's direction is a great plan or anything, but it does make somewhat more sense than your modest proposal.

Now from a purely selfish perspective, where AA is the only US airline worth flying, I would like us to please do whatever it takes to keep them in business. I wouldn't want to have to stoop to the level of flying in the same cabin as ma and pa kettle.

[swake]

Does the city own any of those facilities? I don't believe that to be the case. Not that I think funneling a bunch of money in AA's direction is a great plan or anything, but it does make somewhat more sense than your modest proposal.

Now from a purely selfish perspective, where AA is the only US airline worth flying, I would like us to please do whatever it takes to keep them in business. I wouldn't want to have to stoop to the level of flying in the same cabin as ma and pa kettle.

I think the city owns all of it

[DTowner]

I'm going to go ahead and throw out the new Vision3 program.  We can take $800 million from tax payers and build class A office space for Oneok and Bok.  Then we will build new manufacturing facilities on the West side for Aaon, Baker Hughes, and Nordam.  If there is any money left we will plant a tree and clean up a park to make the peasants happy, but don't hold your breath.

Who's with me?

Since we've decided to turn our city's vision projects into corporate welfare, why not go whole-hog?  After all, we're living in the land of Obamanomics where corporate bailouts are the Hope & Change.

In fairness, V2025 contained goodies for AA and Boeing, but only the AA monies were collected and spent because our bribe to Boeing wasn't accepted. 

[JCnOwasso]

I'm going to go ahead and throw out the new Vision3 program.  We can take $800 million from tax payers and build class A office space for Oneok and Bok.  Then we will build new manufacturing facilities on the West side for Aaon, Baker Hughes, and Nordam.  If there is any money left we will plant a tree and clean up a park to make the peasants happy, but don't hold your breath.

Who's with me?

Since we've decided to turn our city's vision projects into corporate welfare, why not go whole-hog?  After all, we're living in the land of Obamanomics where corporate bailouts are the Hope & Change.

Gas... This has been going on in cities all across the country.  We are not the lone gunman.  It has nothing to do with Obama or Bush policies.  I don't know when it started, but I remember Whirlpool getting a nice cushy deal to open their plant back in the nineties and I know that was common for them.  Cities do what they do to entice businesses.  We can bite our thumb at the process, but if you don't play the game, you will always be the loser.  Tulsa has to do what it can to bring in businesses.  Sure we have a good location-- center of the country and close to a water port.  But with rail, air freight, ground freight, over night shipping etc. any location can be a hub for a business.