Upcoming 2015 City Sales Tax Proposals

[LandArchPoke]

I figured I would start a topic about this after the story in the World today.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/government/two-major-tax-projects-coming-this-year/article_1adddedc-7b40-5745-b981-29ebcfc51e2a.html

1. Public Safety Tax (would use the 0.6% from Vision 2025 when it expires)
    - Street Maintenance and Safety
    - Police and 911
    - Fire
2. Another River Tax (damn construction, reconstruction, & maintenance)


I'm very concerned at the lack of vision from city leadership in regards to these proposals. These proposals will do little to move the city forward development wise. While every city in the region build some form of rail project, we will again be trying to build damn on the river and funding public "safety" through these if they are both passed. Oklahoma City will have a streetcar, along with Albuquerque, Kansas City, Little Rock, etc. Tulsa will literarly be the only major city in the region without some sort of rail project active around 2020.

Is there going to be a 3rd more civic infrastructure minded proposal later down the line that will include ideas aimed to spur more downtown development and bring other county wide improvements or are these it for the foreseeable future?

[swake]

I figured I would start a topic about this after the story in the World today.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/government/two-major-tax-projects-coming-this-year/article_1adddedc-7b40-5745-b981-29ebcfc51e2a.html

1. Public Safety Tax (would use the 0.6% from Vision 2025 when it expires)
    - Street Maintenance and Safety
    - Police and 911
    - Fire
2. Another River Tax (damn construction, reconstruction, & maintenance)


I'm very concerned at the lack of vision from city leadership in regards to these proposals. These proposals will do little to move the city forward development wise. While every city in the region build some form of rail project, we will again be trying to build damn on the river and funding public "safety" through these if they are both passed. Oklahoma City will have a streetcar, along with Albuquerque, Kansas City, Little Rock, etc. Tulsa will literarly be the only major city in the region without some sort of rail project active around 2020.

Is there going to be a 3rd more civic infrastructure minded proposal later down the line that will include ideas aimed to spur more downtown development and bring other county wide improvements or are these it for the foreseeable future?

Not so long as Dewey is mayor.

[SXSW]

Regarding the river tax, is it just for the cities along the river (Sand Springs, Tulsa, Jenks, Bixby, Broken Arrow) or the whole county?  Without a really good PR job by the city this will be a tough sale.  I support it though, the dams are key to capitalizing on our best natural asset and enhancing the Gathering Place. 

As for the public safety tax, what happens to the rest of the Vision 2025 if it's just .6%?  What if the rest of that county tax was for more infrastructure projects including a starter streetcar, city beautification and enhanced transit (jumpstarting the Peoria BRT comes to mind). 

[ZYX]

When is Tulsa going to get serious about transit? At the very least a decent bus system. Some type of downtown circulator, even if it is just buses to start, needs to be implemented as soon as possible. Several buses that ran from the Brady through Blue Dome, the CBD, and soon the East End at intervals of 10 or 15 minutes would be sufficient for now.

Are there any more details about the tax packages? The article was sort of vague.

[LandArchPoke]

When is Tulsa going to get serious about transit? At the very least a decent bus system. Some type of downtown circulator, even if it is just buses to start, needs to be implemented as soon as possible. Several buses that ran from the Brady through Blue Dome, the CBD, and soon the East End at intervals of 10 or 15 minutes would be sufficient for now.

Are there any more details about the tax packages? The article was sort of vague.

The "trolley" does some of this. I'm honestly not sure when it runs though. Bartlett effectively killed the BRT down Peoria by making it one of the last projects to get funding in the recent streets package.

I'm afraid these proposals will really set Tulsa back if they are passed. The public safety taxes seem like a short-cut for funding without actually addressing the problem of why we can't pay for more police, fire, etc. The reason is we can't is because we have stalled in new development in the city. We have little land in the Tulsa city limits to build new development on.

What's the solution? Density and infill. Well we are not doing anything to support infill development. No streetcar, we are doing little streetscaping downtown, no new bike lanes, stalling BRT routes, no commuter rail, no light rail, etc.

Our politicians have become obsessed with "putting water in the river". I have heard many times people allude to how Lady Bird Lake in Austin helped spur the development in and around Downtown Austin. While this is one of the things that helped create a good quality of life around downtown, this is really such a minor thing that a river that looks like the Arkansas in Austin would have not changed anything in how much growth the Downtown Austin has attracted. We will never be able to create a "River" like Little Rock or Austin because the terrain surrounding the Arkansas in Tulsa is so different we will never be able to fully put and keep water in the river.

Austin created an attractive environment for people like musicians to move there by proving things like free health insurance to them. It wasn't a dam damn that did it.

We have become so short sighted it is hindering us from doing anything truly unique for us.

Another crutch is people have become obsessed with Portland, and trying to copy everything they do. Why? I get they have done a lot of great things, but no one seems to look at say Vancouver or Seattle to see how they have attracted even greater growth than Portland.

In fact, Portland and Vancouver were essentially the same cities in the 80s until they both built a different type of transit system, and look how radically different the cities have developed? We are limiting our pool of ideas and inspiration that it will ultimately come back to bite us. Some of our previous greatest civic projects were ideas taken from New York and other much larger world-class cities, and just scaled to fit Tulsa. This attitude would do wonders for us, and to truly evaluate concepts that are successful in London, New York, LA, Washington DC, Vancouver, Stockholm, etc. and see what is scaleable to Tulsa, and how do we make it unique to us. Instead, we forge on like every other mid-sized city who is obsessed with becoming the next Portland - Austin (Jacksonville, Louisville, Omaha, Des Moines, Oklahoma City, etc). How many times have citizens here said they don't want to be these cities (Austin or Portland), we want to be us! Yet our leadership doesn't seem to get it. That's a huge reason this River Tax has failed so many times.

[SXSW]

LandArch, I agree with you that transit needs to be the next big investment for Tulsa.  Density and infill will be what moves Tulsa forward, and better transit can create that.  With Tulsa seemingly behind OKC in every way now I am surprised that a streetcar is not being at least mentioned, since OKC will have one in the next couple years.  Do we have to wait until it's a success there before we do it?  Same for river development, they've been capitalizing on theirs for 10 years while we're still discussing funding for low water dams.  Same goes for a downtown ballpark, arena, housing, bar district, urban park, downtown elementary, etc.

Like I said I think the low water dams are important.  "Putting water in the river" should be a top priority.  Then it should be transit and encouraging density and infill, basically implementing PlaniTulsa.  Which means we need to elect a new mayor in 2017.

[ZYX]

The "trolley" does some of this. I'm honestly not sure when it runs though. Bartlett effectively killed the BRT down Peoria by making it one of the last projects to get funding in the recent streets package.

I'm afraid these proposals will really set Tulsa back if they are passed. The public safety taxes seem like a short-cut for funding without actually addressing the problem of why we can't pay for more police, fire, etc. The reason is we can't is because we have stalled in new development in the city. We have little land in the Tulsa city limits to build new development on.

What's the solution? Density and infill. Well we are not doing anything to support infill development. No streetcar, we are doing little streetscaping downtown, no new bike lanes, stalling BRT routes, no commuter rail, no light rail, etc.

Our politicians have become obsessed with "putting water in the river". I have heard many times people allude to how Lady Bird Lake in Austin helped spur the development in and around Downtown Austin. While this is one of the things that helped create a good quality of life around downtown, this is really such a minor thing that a river that looks like the Arkansas in Austin would have not changed anything in how much growth the Downtown Austin has attracted. We will never be able to create a "River" like Little Rock or Austin because the terrain surrounding the Arkansas in Tulsa is so different we will never be able to fully put and keep water in the river.

Austin created an attractive environment for people like musicians to move there by proving things like free health insurance to them. It wasn't a dam damn that did it.

We have become so short sighted it is hindering us from doing anything truly unique for us.

Another crutch is people have become obsessed with Portland, and trying to copy everything they do. Why? I get they have done a lot of great things, but no one seems to look at say Vancouver or Seattle to see how they have attracted even greater growth than Portland.

In fact, Portland and Vancouver were essentially the same cities in the 80s until they both built a different type of transit system, and look how radically different the cities have developed? We are limiting our pool of ideas and inspiration that it will ultimately come back to bite us. Some of our previous greatest civic projects were ideas taken from New York and other much larger world-class cities, and just scaled to fit Tulsa. This attitude would do wonders for us, and to truly evaluate concepts that are successful in London, New York, LA, Washington DC, Vancouver, Stockholm, etc. and see what is scaleable to Tulsa, and how do we make it unique to us. Instead, we forge on like every other mid-sized city who is obsessed with becoming the next Portland - Austin (Jacksonville, Louisville, Omaha, Des Moines, Oklahoma City, etc). How many times have citizens here said they don't want to be these cities (Austin or Portland), we want to be us! Yet our leadership doesn't seem to get it. That's a huge reason this River Tax has failed so many times.

Whatever trolley may be there is not obvious, as I've never seen trollies, stops, schedules or routes posted, etc.

I don't worry too much about downtown. It will continue to grow. The opportunity to make money is there and increasing as more residents continue to move in. However, I worry that the infrastructure in our inner city will be incredibly far behind that of other cities our size in 5-10 years. Oklahoma City is getting ready to start construction on a downtown streetcar loop, and we aren't even talking about one.

The already decent amount of private downtown investment could, in my opinion, very quickly grow much, much bigger if we made infrastructure and transportation a priority. Downtown just East of Blue Dome is getting ready to explode with residential. Where is the streetscaping? Where is anything even resembling a transit system? What about bike share? We have it on Riverside, why not in downtown?

I agree with you on the river. I don't see how water in the river will magically cause development to spring up around it. The only thing I can see it directly helping is recreational opportunities with the Gathering Place. We should focus on what we can do to enhance and encourage private development on land, not how artificially pretty we can make the river. Who really just sits and stares at it anyway?

[LandArchPoke]

SXSW - I will have to disagree with you in regards to putting water in the river as the top priority. Should fixing Zink Lake be one? I do think so as well. In regards to the other damns? No. Zink Lake bugs me in the fact this should have already been done. Wasn't the money supposed to come from state and federal funds, and then it was the typical out of site out of mind for our lawmakers and now it's become an issue where we have to fund ourselves?

We are spending close to $200 million to fix the dome on the capitol building in Oklahoma City, a dome that everyone in the state could have cared less about. We are about to spend nearly $600 million to repave the IDL, when the traffic counts on 1/2 of it are less than sections of Memorial Drive, 71st Street, and Riverside Drive. How is this ok?

We need to have a long range mass transportation plan that is implementable similar to what Salt Lake City has done. Whether it be Bus Rapid Transit, Light Rail, Light Metro, Streetcars.. we need a plan. PlaniTulsa laid groundwork for it, but there was absolutely no meat in their discussions on transit.

Downtown will continue to grow as ZYX said. The growth potential for downtown is vastly different with transit than without transit. The main reason we haven't seen any new high-rise downtown residential construction is parking costs are to high in comparison to rental rates in the state. How do you fix that issue? You create transit that is accessible to all parts of the city, then new development types become economical.

[Red Arrow]

I think a good transit system is more important than water in the river. 

A local circulator system will be needed if we ever want rail between Tulsa and OKC to work.  My preference is light rail or streetcar/trollies but a usable bus system is the minimum acceptable.  Routes should eventually include a downtown circulator, downtown to Tulsa Int'l Airport, downtown to the Gathering Place , and hopefully downtown to Cherry Street and Brookside.  The Peoria Ave BRT is also a good start.  Make it easily convertible to Streetcar or Light Rail.

[Conan71]

We are spending close to $200 million to fix the dome on the capitol building in Oklahoma City, a dome that everyone in the state could have cared less about. We are about to spend nearly $600 million to repave the IDL, when the traffic counts on 1/2 of it are less than sections of Memorial Drive, 71st Street, and Riverside Drive. How is this ok?

It may be a matter of semantics, but it's not the dome they are fixing on the capitol building, it's the rest of the building under the dome which is crumbling.  It is somewhat symbolic of how skewed our development priorities are in this state.  Certainly, there were signs of mechanical obsolescence and structural issues in the 1990's when the whole idea to put a dome on the capitol building was first considered.  It probably would have been more prudent to solicit private funds to re-hab the building at that time rather than putting a dome on it.

Putting water in the river does zilch for development opportunities for COT along the river with the exception of the east bank from 71st to 81st.  The biggest opportunities would exist between 71st Street to south of Jenks unless we consider more piered development like the Blue Rose to be desirable all up and down the east bank of the river, blocking the view from trail users.  There's very limited development space on the west bank north of 71st due to refineries, a power plant, commercial businesses, and a waste treatment facility.

I'm really not certain why Zink Lake is not holding more water right now.  Didn't we finish a re-hab of the dam gates last year?  It seems to hold no more water now than it did prior to this repair.

[BKDotCom]

Certainly, there were signs of mechanical obsolescence and structural issues in the 1990's when the whole idea to put a dome on the capitol building was first considered.  It probably would have been more prudent to solicit private funds to re-hab the building at that time rather than putting a dome on it.

Dome = turd polish

[carltonplace]

I predict that these tax proposals will be miserable failures, and I can't see that the need has been proven for either one of them.

I agree that transit needs to be a top priority if we ever want to get out of the catch 22 of constant street repair and widening to accommodate volume. If we don't do something now, we could quickly have the same type of traffic problems that Austin has. I support a downtown circulator ASAP, the surface parking in downtown is going to start to evaporate in short order and we need alternatives. I would love to see a rail based circulator, but just a bus with arrival times and payment kiosks would work just as well to start.

[SXSW]

I predict that these tax proposals will be miserable failures, and I can't see that the need has been proven for either one of them.

I agree that transit needs to be a top priority if we ever want to get out of the catch 22 of constant street repair and widening to accommodate volume. If we don't do something now, we could quickly have the same type of traffic problems that Austin has. I support a downtown circulator ASAP, the surface parking in downtown is going to start to evaporate in short order and we need alternatives. I would love to see a rail based circulator, but just a bus with arrival times and payment kiosks would work just as well to start.

Downtown circulator on 3rd/4th to Cincinnati/Detroit to Brady/Archer to Boulder would connect the dots fairly well.  Then another lines that runs this route and then goes down Boston from 3rd/4th to 11th all the way to Harvard/TU should be a future corridor as well as something to connect Cherry Street and Riverview on 15th.  Brookside and Peoria would be taken care of with the Peoria BRT.  All of this could interface with a commuter rail system on the existing tracks from downtown to BA, the airport and Jenks.  You could probably build all of that for what we just passed for street improvements and resurfacing the IDL...

And whether we like it or not the river will be the main priority as long as Dewey and his puppet Bynum are running the show.  We might as well get that behind us so then we can focus on transit, implementing PlaniTulsa and new zoning and other more important issues facing the city, hopefully with a new administration in 2017, which is also when the Gathering Place should open which at least needs the Zink Dam fixed to really be spectacular.  We can argue it should've been the feds, state, etc. but the bottom line is it needs to be fixed before the park opens.

[Conan71]

Downtown circulator on 3rd/4th to Cincinnati/Detroit to Brady/Archer to Boulder would connect the dots fairly well.  Then another lines that runs this route and then goes down Boston from 3rd/4th to 11th all the way to Harvard/TU should be a future corridor as well as something to connect Cherry Street and Riverview on 15th.  Brookside and Peoria would be taken care of with the Peoria BRT.  All of this could interface with a commuter rail system on the existing tracks from downtown to BA, the airport and Jenks.  You could probably build all of that for what we just passed for street improvements and resurfacing the IDL...

And whether we like it or not the river will be the main priority as long as Dewey and his puppet Bynum are running the show.  We might as well get that behind us so then we can focus on transit, implementing PlaniTulsa and new zoning and other more important issues facing the city, hopefully with a new administration in 2017, which is also when the Gathering Place should open which at least needs the Zink Dam fixed to really be spectacular.  We can argue it should've been the feds, state, etc. but the bottom line is it needs to be fixed before the park opens.

What happened to the dam repair which was supposedly finished last year?

[Vision 2025]

What happened to the dam repair which was supposedly finished last year?

Only the first phase was finished.  The remainder is, I believe, still underway.