Here is the Tulsa World Sunday headline story for comment.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?articleID=070624_238_A1_spanc42015Future revisited By BRIAN BARBER World Staff Writer
6/24/2007
Tulsans have shared a lot of thoughts at public meetings during the past two months about what they would like the city to be in the future. City leaders, taking the first steps to update the comprehensive plan, have dutifully recorded all of the ideas into a revolutionary computer program called Many Eyes.
The word-analysis program is designed to help identify common themes from the meetings held with more than 1,300 residents and hundreds of surveys submitted, said Pat Treadway, the city's urban development manager. To develop a blueprint for Tulsa's future, the city has created a survey to get your opinion.
"We're trying to put together a blueprint for the future, or our preferred future," he said. "And the only way we can do that is to find out what Tulsans want their city to achieve in the next 10 or 20 years. "I've led many of these meetings, and once one person starts throwing out ideas, everyone jumps in. It has been very interesting."
Some of the more common themes are ones that have reverberated in Tulsa for years. Tulsans want a better transportation system: "This means many different things," Treadway said. "We heard a lot about the state of our roads and why there's so many potholes. But we also heard a lot about $3-per-gallon gasoline and that maybe we should look at improving mass transportation." Whether it is by car, bus or rail, he said, "People are saying we're going to have to think about how people move around the city."
Tulsans want to feel safe: "Some believe this means having more police officers," Treadway said, "but others said maybe it's more about perception than reality. Maybe it's also about improving lighting and getting rid of vacant and blighted structures."
Tulsans want Arkansas River development: "At almost every meeting, people talked about the river as being Tulsa's best untapped asset," he said. "But they want to do it while preserving nature."
Tulsans want their city to stay green: Treadway said many people expressed a desire for more environmental thinking. "We like our quality of life, and people are a bit worried that for some reason our city is not as nice as it once was," he said. "We like being known as Green Country. But we have air-quality issues that lead to Ozone Alert Days. Maybe we should think more about smart cars and mass transit. "People also said we need to protect our tree canopy," Treadway said.
Tulsans want a great public school system: The education of the city's children is on many people's minds, he said. "We heard loud and clear that our kids are our future, and they want to know how the city's comprehensive plan can work to improve the public schools," he said. "Here's a concrete example: What if the schools' capital-improvement plans and the city's capital-improvement plan were linked? "If you did that, it seems to me you could get a lot more bang for your buck."
Tulsans want a vibrant downtown district: "People realize that if the urban core of the city is not healthy, the rest of the city won't be," Treadway said. "They also look to downtown, with the arena and nightspots, as a place that will help keep young people in Tulsa."
The meetings took place in advance of the city hiring a consulting firm that will help update the comprehensive plan. That should happen by the end of the calendar year. "We wanted to provide them with a starting point, and the end point as well," he said. The public will have many other opportunities for input. "We envision a process that is powerfully engaged in community dialogue for a long time to come," he said. "This is only the beginning."
Mayor Kathy Taylor said updating the plan is a top priority for her administration and that she wants the bulk of the work done by the end of her first term in April 2010. "Our current plan simply isn't applicable to the Tulsa of today and tomorrow," she said.
The last time the city's comprehensive plan was given a major overhaul was about 1978, shortly after "Star Wars" was released and disco and bell bottoms reigned. "Tulsa is not what it was back then," Treadway said. "People are not the same, either." Woodland Hills Mall was less than 2 years old; there was no 71st Street commercial corridor; 12 percent of the retail sales taxes came from downtown; and there was much less traffic, he said. "The plan should have been updated much, much sooner because this is a very different city," Treadway said.
Land use, economic development, housing, urban design, environmental protection, transportation, public facilities, historic preservation, art and culture and recreation are just some of the categories that the plan will address. When done, it will be relied upon by the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission and the City Council to help make zoning decisions and by city officials when capital improvements are being decided. Once the update is complete, it will take time to revise the codes and ordinances that are affected, Treadway said.
The 2006 third-penny sales-tax package set aside $500,000 to begin the plan update, which is anticipated to cost between $1.5 million and $3 million. Additional public and private dollars are expected to be put toward the process.
