Vision 2025 Extension - Package Details

[Red Arrow]

I hope April. I am ready. I have flipped a coin enough times to see a trend.

2 headed coin?

[carltonplace]

I heard the Mayor speak to how he would like to see this tax extension proposal rewritten. If he gets his way the whole package will fail. Hopefully the council will listen to their constituents and work together. The thing is called "Vision 2025" so it needs to be used for things that are "Visionary" and not for more pavement.

[TulsaGoldenHurriCAN]

I heard the Mayor speak to how he would like to see this tax extension proposal rewritten. If he gets his way the whole package will fail. Hopefully the council will listen to their constituents and work together. The thing is called "Vision 2025" so it needs to be used for things that are "Visionary" and not for more pavement.

Is there road construction included in the Vision package? I know they are trying to reappropriate the Fix Our Streets sales tax for the last couple of years to pay for the increased police and fire tax.

I don't understand why they don't just scale the police and fire tax back. Leave the Fix Our Streets for repairing roads.

[TulsaGoldenHurriCAN]

New Tulsa Vision to get council discussion Tuesday

Tulsa councilors, along with Mayor Dewey Bartlett, plan to discuss a possible new foundation for the city's Vision tax package Tuesday.
The overhaul was first pitched at a meeting last Thursday when staff reports showed the revenues Vision would draw from for economic development projects and operations would decrease expected funding for streets for several years.
A possible solution offered by Councilor Blake Ewing would include keeping Vision tax dollars purely for economic-development projects, as were the Vision 2025 funds approved by county voters in 2003.
Operations needs, such as public safety, would then go on a separate ballot that would effectively raise taxes — but only by the amount, 0.4 percent, voters approved in 2003. However, that additional tax never went into effect.
Ewing's option would dramatically change the way the tax is structured, but would ultimately simplify the question before voters while leaving future tax packages available to cover street rehabilitation.
Several officials have said they are open to discussing the idea, but are not ready to abandon their current approach.
"We are so close to having this right, and I don't think we should allow it to run off the rails because one issue came up," Councilor G.T. Bynum said. "There's plenty of opportunities for us to fund the proposal."
Bynum said he's been working since Thursday's meeting on options to make the existing package work.
Bartlett's spokesman, Lloyd Wright, said the mayor's position is that the current package can take care of the last-minute issues.
Bartlett offered several cuts from economic development projects at Thursday's meeting, but didn't cover the $240 million gap staff said might be created for streets.
Wright said Bartlett's plan Tuesday will look similar to the existing plan, but at the cost of economic development projects — also avoiding any talk of a tax increase.
Almost a third of the $1.17 billion 15-year Vision package, as currently envisioned, would go toward buffering the city's public-safety operations spending as a permanent tax.
Another permanent tax, about $60 million of the $1.17 billion, would be created for transit operations and capital.
The remaining $642 million would go toward economic development projects, including Arkansas River low-water dams, parks and amenities.
Councilor Karen Gilbert, in calling for the Tuesday meeting, said everything would be "on the table."
The meeting is scheduled to start at 5:05 p.m. Tuesday in City Hall's second-floor Council Chambers.

http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/government/new-tulsa-vision-to-get-council-discussion-tuesday/article_d331c12b-c74e-5544-9e60-bf35502fcb80.html

[Conan71]

Is there road construction included in the Vision package? I know they are trying to reappropriate the Fix Our Streets sales tax for the last couple of years to pay for the increased police and fire tax.

I don't understand why they don't just scale the police and fire tax back. Leave the Fix Our Streets for repairing roads.

Especially since repairing streets was what the voters approved that assessment for- not to divert funding elsewhere. 

The mayor needs to quit treating the public safety measure like a political pawn.  If people believe public safety will improve via more police and fire spending and an expansion in personnel, they will make it a priority and will vote for a tax increase.  Attaching this to the Vision 2025 extension has been a bad idea all along.

It's time for Dewey's dim-witted leadership to be over.

[TulsaGoldenHurriCAN]

Bartlett keeps doing his best to mislead voters into believing that using a third of the 1.17 billion Vision package on public operations and making that a permanent tax is not a tax increase. As it stands, the tax will expire. Any new Vision tax is a tax increase!

Furthermore Vision is for ECONOMIC development. Bartlett wants to cut back on economic development projects even further. They need to do the opposite. If anything, they should have a drastically scaled back public operations segment and increase the economic development. Otherwise this is not very visionary.

Go ahead and have a public safety tax vote and if the voters approve, great. Stop lying to the people and saying it is not a tax increase. Reappropriating funds from Vision purposes to public operations to cover bad management is stealing tax dollars from their original intent.

At this rate, I can see Vision 2035 - We need to repair the crumbling roads we neglected! We need to pay for basic maintenance of city parks and property! We need to hire someone in city hall who knows what they're doing!

[TulsaGoldenHurriCAN]

It's time for Dewey's dim-witted leadership to be over.

Yes. We can thank South Tulsa for this "leader" whose primary agenda is getting reelected ("I personally increased Firefighters and police by X% without increasing tax, just lying! I am a brilliant man!"). Bynum seems much better but it would be nice if there was an option who wasn't such a political schmooze.

[PonderInc]

Lots of shifting today on vision proposal. Sounds like there were some "small get togethers" - to avoid open meeting act? - in which some serious horse trading occurred. Giant cluster 5 hour meeting tonight. I couldn't be there, but was following on Twitter and the news. Thanks Councillor Ewing for fighting for transit. Dooey: please resign.

http://ftpcontent.worldnow.com/griffin/NEWSon6/PDF/1601/visionpdf.pdf

And here's a fun video where the mayor talks about meetings with 3 or 4 councillors at a time, "because of the open meetings act." (Also funny bc the Tulsa World video shows Bartlett is City Council District 1. (Henderett? Barterson? Dew-Jack?)

https://social.newsinc.com/media/json/69017/30256039/singleVideoOG.html?videoId=30256039&type=VideoPlayer/16x9&widgetId=2&trackingGroup=69017

[Conan71]

Lots of shifting today on vision proposal. Sounds like there were some "small get togethers" - to avoid open meeting act? - in which some serious horse trading occurred. Giant cluster 5 hour meeting tonight. I couldn't be there, but was following on Twitter and the news. Thanks Councillor Ewing for fighting for transit. Dooey: please resign.

http://ftpcontent.worldnow.com/griffin/NEWSon6/PDF/1601/visionpdf.pdf

And here's a fun video where the mayor talks about meetings with 3 or 4 councillors at a time, "because of the open meetings act." (Also funny bc the Tulsa World video shows Bartlett is City Council District 1. (Henderett? Barterson? Dew-Jack?)

https://social.newsinc.com/media/json/69017/30256039/singleVideoOG.html?videoId=30256039&type=VideoPlayer/16x9&widgetId=2&trackingGroup=69017

So, they added $17.9 million for the Jenks dam and removed the entire $24.8 million long term operating and maintenance endowment for the dams package.  That means they will be back with their hands out in 15 years needing maintenance funding for the dams.

How is this going to help pass the package when a full analysis is put before the voters?

North Tulsa was hard hit by cuts including Mohawk Sports Complex which has generally been a success at attracting amateur sporting events on a regional or national scale.  Some of the remaining crumbs left for various projects seem rather meaningless.

[PonderInc]

Can anyone explain why COT should raise $30 million for the county fairgrounds?

Also, the amount going to the fire department just went up, as far as I can tell. 

Personally, I'm opposed to including public safety in a vision proposal.  We either need to change state law and allow cities to fund basic services like police and fire, water and sewer from property taxes; or we should impose levies on new development that is proposed outside the existing service area to help fund the excessive costs of extending police and fire protection to greenfield areas.

[swake]

Can anyone explain why COT should raise $30 million for the county fairgrounds?

Also, the amount going to the fire department just went up, as far as I can tell. 

Personally, I'm opposed to including public safety in a vision proposal.  We either need to change state law and allow cities to fund basic services like police and fire, water and sewer from property taxes; or we should impose levies on new development that is proposed outside the existing service area to help fund the excessive costs of extending police and fire protection to greenfield areas.

I believe you can already do that for fire by creating a fire district. I don't see why we don't have a countywide fire department anyway and like the library fund it from property taxes.

[AquaMan]

So, they added $17.9 million for the Jenks dam and removed the entire $24.8 million long term operating and maintenance endowment for the dams package.  That means they will be back with their hands out in 15 years needing maintenance funding for the dams.

I know its hard to lead by committee, especially when there are so many competing agendas. But there are some questions here that beg answers.
    1. Of course, the operating and maintenance endowment for the dams. Unless they simply don't expect the south dam to ever be built. Same thing with the Jenks dam Phase 2 river corridor study and design.
   
2. The reduction in funding several items namely "23rd and Jackson redevelopment planning", "performing arts center renovation", and a few others whose amounts were slightly reduced. Either they were over estimated or they will now be underfunded. Just kill them if you're only going to go half -arsed on them.
   
3. I can see each area of town took some strong hits. But I am most sorry to see the funding dropped for the Rte 66 trail Village Train Depot trust fund. They have actually shown much initiative in starting this development locally. West Tulsa always gets screwed it seems.

My gut feeling is that there is a premonition by leaders of bad economic realities about to commence. They want to get this done fast and get some seed money into the system before Oklahoma collapses under the weight of state leadership's failure to manage.

[Conan71]

Under this, the Route 66 train village still has it's own line item for $3M.  I'm not sure why they had two separate line items before unless that was to help fund the Route 66 stuff at the north end of Riverside Drive.

[Townsend]

Will the ballot be separated into these 3 taxes?

Public Safety
Transportation
Economic Development

edit - With further reading, this may not be the final product.  So far, it remains very disappointing.

[DowntownDan]

If it's already in this thread, I apologize, but what is "Cox Business Center and Arena District Master Plan"?