My way forward

[swake]

We need to try this again. Tulsa and Jenks and the 2025 people need to get together and come up with a way forward and hopefully be able to go back to Kaiser and try again.

4 cents permanent city gas tax raising about $10 million annually for city road maintenance. This will keep the streets from getting worse.

2/10ths permanent sales tax for city police. This will raise about $15 million annually and would be enough to hire an additional 150 police officers. These officers should be focused criminal enforcement (break-ins, gangs, drug dealing etc) and not just more traffic officers. Tulsans should be able to feel that when they report a crime it will be investigated and not just reported.

Agree with Jenks to jointly build the $30 million toll bridge. Revenue from the bridge should be partly bonded to improve streets to and from the bridge in both cities ($25 million) and then also to build the Jenks dam ($25 million). Ongoing revenue from the bridge should be devoted to and split between maintenance of Riverparks and to support the Aquarium.

Pledge 2025 overages. The agreement when the arena overruns were funded was to spend any more excess funds in the 'burbs. So, take the first $25 million and bond and spend it on the Sand Springs dam, later overages for the land acquisition ($15 million)  for Broken Arrow and Bixby riverfront. If there are final overages the dams at these sites can be constructed. Find a matching project in Owasso/North County to fund.

2/10ths temporary city sales tax for 8 years raising about $120 million dollars for the river. $25 million to fix the Zink dam, $25 million for west bank land acquisition (to be matched with a reasonable $25 million TIF), $40 million for the living river section (to be matched with the eventual $50 million in federal funds) and $40 million for an "iconic" combination auto/pedestrian bridge at 41st.

$360 million general obligation bond issue. $15 million for the John Hope Franklin museum and race riot memorial on the north side of downtown, $35 million for a downtown baseball stadium, $5 million for "brownfield" reclamation leveling abandoned industrial sites, $5 million to purchase abandoned homes in blighted areas for resale for $1 to people that agree to spend at least $25,000 on home improvements, $40 million to reconstruct Riverside Drive and $260 million for other city street improvements.

This will allow for half a billion dollars in Street improvements, 150 new cops, allow for the half billion dollar west bank commercial development, $250 million in river improvements (and hopefully recapture some of the $117 million in private donations), a downtown baseball stadium, the race riot memorial, and for neighborhood improvements for blighted areas throughout the city while providing newly remolded low income housing.

[Conan71]

Glad to see you have quit sulking and are thinking progressively again. []

I've got an appointment to get to, I want to look over your numbers when I've got more time.

Only comment I have for now is I wonder what it's going to take to get John Piercey to admit there are collection overages.  He sure wasn't admitting to any projected overages a few weeks ago.

[Conan71]

Okay "My way forward" sounds pretty cocky, but that's nothing new for you.  Let's roll with it. []

I think there's enough comprehensiveness to your idea to bring a lot of people on board and soothe a lot of concerns.  

The only drawback I see is that I don't know that $10mm a year in gas tax would get us close to touching the back-log on street repairs, and I don't think you can pay and outfit officers for $100K per year apiece.  Seems like I've seen higher figures before.  Even if it resulted in 100 new officers, that's still a substantive gain.

[swake]

quote:Originally posted by Conan71

Okay "My way forward" sounds pretty cocky, but that's nothing new for you.  Let's roll with it. []

I think there's enough comprehensiveness to your idea to bring a lot of people on board and soothe a lot of concerns.  

The only drawback I see is that I don't know that $10mm a year in gas tax would get us close to touching the back-log on street repairs, and I don't think you can pay and outfit officers for $100K per year apiece.  Seems like I've seen higher figures before.  Even if it resulted in 100 new officers, that's still a substantive gain.

I put my way forward because I want to show that I am making an effort to move forward and making suggestions. I have yet to see any real suggestions from the "no" side except to have that reactionary blowhard idiot Eagleton be elected mayor and "how about a TIF, with no regard for a TIFs impact on the city budget. We might as well elect Randy "Tabor" Brogdon mayor if the goal is to bankrupt Tulsa.

$10 million a year is not intended to work on any back log. I have heard that we need about $8 million a year to stay where we are, $10 million is that plus a little extra. The backlog is going to need to continue to be addressed from GO bonds, state/county surface road money and the 3rd penny. There's over half a billion dollars already on the way from these sources and I'm proposing hundreds of millions more through another GO bond. Going forward INCOG needs to hire lobbyists at the state and federal level to get us our proper share of road money.

I have read one cop is about $100,000, it probably varies by jurisdiction. It is probably is low for my numbers because I think Tulsa has plenty of traffic and street cops and not enough detectives. The problem people have with TPD is not the average speed on the streets, it's when your car gets stolen or your house robbed and the police act like there's nothing to be done. New York proved that taking every crime seriously has a serious impact on your crime rate, we should do the same.

We just pissed away at least $600 million in private dollars based on your vote and according to Steve Walman in the Oklahoma Journal Record developers are "packing their bags and moving on" from Tulsa. What is YOUR plan?

Quote:
"I think there's a lot of people who feel like I do today, who want to get their suitcases out and start packing," said Steve Walman, the owner of Walman Commercial Real Estate Services. "I mean, literally, I've talked to two people who said they wanted to get their suitcases out and move out."


http://www.journalrecord.com/article.cfm?recid=82633

[Conan71]

You make a step forward then can't resist taking one more stab can you? [}:)]

I say **** the ungrateful bastards and let them pack their ****ing bags.

This was first shot on the river plan.  Someone seriously screwed up by trying to encumber funds from Kaiser and others right now.

There is a prime piece of west bank real estate which could make a developer very prosperous.  There is another piece the city already owns across the street.  I can't believe you bought into an outright lie that we had to have a $283mm slush fund to make commercial development on the west bank a reality.  Huffman certainly has backed off in his rhetoric and I think there's motivation within the city to help accomodate him if all we think we deserve is Branson tacky in Tulsa.

The MTCC should be pounding the pavement and racking up airline frequent flyer miles trying to hawk that land all over the country to other developers.  There usually IS water in the river in that area thanks to Jack Zink's unconditional philanthropy back in the early 1980's.

If they are hamstrung thinking no one will want the land because we turned down a tax package then the MTCC is even more myopic than I've already given them credit for.

You live in Jenks.  Jenks is being quite self-sufficient for a sleepy little burg in making a lot of things happen on the river without trying to talk surrounding communities into paying for it.  By that example alone, you should see optimism for it happening up-stream.

[swake]

Great attitude, "don't let the door hit in the donkey" to developers that don't want to spend money here any more, screw you to a hundred million in donations.

You want the MTCC to be "pounding the pavement and racking up airline frequent flyer miles" to sell land that the city DOES NOT OWN. Perfect, that's makes great sense.

The right to own that land and thus to SELL it in that fashion was lost by the "no" vote. And you can't write a TIFF to BORROW money (and be clear, that IS what a TIFF is) against a possible future development. To do a TIFF you need a developer already signed on the dotted line so you can borrow the money, and we don't have that.

And Jenks is doing well, but I know that Tulsa has to do well for any suburb to do well, it IS the center city. I also know that there is a finite amount of possible river development and that at this point Tulsa is going to be so late to the game, if it ever even comes to the game, that Tulsa is going to lose out to what all is built to the south, maybe forever.

You voted badly, and I think at this point, you KNOW you voted badly. The "no" side is running around all upset that there isn't another plan, that the private development won't happen in Tulsa without the tax, that the donations are gone. You all act shocked. You want all of that not to be true, but it IS what the yes side was telling you would happen all along, and now you are upset over it? "Screw Them?", no, we are the ones that got screwed. And you did it.

[waterboy]

Could we show a little pragmatism here gentlemen? Neither side will admit their arguments were faulty. It was too close a vote for that. In fact its likely there is truth in each argument. The reality is we still have to live here or pack up and move.

The smart thing to do is gear down the rhetoric that the hard core negatives in this city feed off of and start some sort of rebuilding. Don't put more milk in their dish and don't suffer foolish remarks.

The window is closing.

[YoungTulsan]

I think this is a great plan, myself.

My first reaction was thinking the $10 million per year for streets is not enough to make a dent, but I suppose this is kept seperately from construction just as a "fix the problems as they arise" type deal?  An upgrade from "dump chunks of black stuff in the holes and let the cars drive over it" approach to potholes?  

I like the South bridge idea as well.  I would prefer a non-toll bridge to any proposal, but using it to pay for the low water dam, road improvements around the bridge, and riverparks/aquarium funding is a great idea.

IMO, the city should just go for 0.483% instead of 0.4% to make it an even 9%

Maybe fashion a city tax plan that also heads off 4-to-fix at the pass, like .483% until 2011 and .65% thereafter, basically shutting down the county's inevitable grab to renew that money.

Might even be able to throw Crow Creek and Pearl into the mix that way.  But I like your idea how it is, if you think keeping it simple is the best route.

[Conan71]

Sorry Waterboy, I had about one quart of gasoline left that I need to get rid of before the weekend. []

Swake-

Profit-driven developers are always looking for pieces of real estate to exploit, but they have to know it's available.

Neither the city nor county government needs to buy the concrete plant for it to change hands, unless they are going to willingly pay more than FMV for it then sell it at a loss which is a poor investment in anyone's books.  If that's the case then some greedy bastard needs to back off on his asking price.

The MTCC is supposed to market commerce.  It's within their means and their definition to try to attract a developer to purchase a privately owned piece of land when it can lead to more jobs or quality-of-life enhancements.  There is a nice piece of land the city DOES own just across the railroad tracks from the river front which can be marketed and which will be vacant soon with the move to OneTech and the air park.

Attitudes like "you guys really effed this up by voting no" only serves to alienate others who just might have better ideas.  Just because this river plan sounded like the perfect idea to you doesn't make it so with 67,000 other people who voted no on it.  People throwing temper tantrums and taking their suitcases full of cash back to the bank vault isn't doing much to inspire people either.

Saying $600,000,000 in private development went down the tubes is fallacious when you see that Huffman is still at the back door begging for something to make it happen.

[inteller]

wow, I've heard more presentable ravings from the Insane Clown Posse.  This thread makes me laugh a lot.  

When you have quit crying you can then join the rest of us in reality.  I plan on voting FOR the inevitable roads package to put this city back in order.

[waterboy]

quote:Originally posted by swake


We need to try this again. Tulsa and Jenks and the 2025 people need to get together and come up with a way forward and hopefully be able to go back to Kaiser and try again.

4 cents permanent city gas tax raising about $10 million annually for city road maintenance. This will keep the streets from getting worse.

2/10ths permanent sales tax for city police. This will raise about $15 million annually and would be enough to hire an additional 150 police officers. These officers should be focused criminal enforcement (break-ins, gangs, drug dealing etc) and not just more traffic officers. Tulsans should be able to feel that when they report a crime it will be investigated and not just reported.

Agree with Jenks to jointly build the $30 million toll bridge. Revenue from the bridge should be partly bonded to improve streets to and from the bridge in both cities ($25 million) and then also to build the Jenks dam ($25 million). Ongoing revenue from the bridge should be devoted to and split between maintenance of Riverparks and to support the Aquarium.

Pledge 2025 overages. The agreement when the arena overruns were funded was to spend any more excess funds in the 'burbs. So, take the first $25 million and bond and spend it on the Sand Springs dam, later overages for the land acquisition ($15 million)  for Broken Arrow and Bixby riverfront. If there are final overages the dams at these sites can be constructed. Find a matching project in Owasso/North County to fund.

2/10ths temporary city sales tax for 8 years raising about $120 million dollars for the river. $25 million to fix the Zink dam, $25 million for west bank land acquisition (to be matched with a reasonable $25 million TIF), $40 million for the living river section (to be matched with the eventual $50 million in federal funds) and $40 million for an "iconic" combination auto/pedestrian bridge at 41st.

$360 million general obligation bond issue. $15 million for the John Hope Franklin museum and race riot memorial on the north side of downtown, $35 million for a downtown baseball stadium, $5 million for "brownfield" reclamation leveling abandoned industrial sites, $5 million to purchase abandoned homes in blighted areas for resale for $1 to people that agree to spend at least $25,000 on home improvements, $40 million to reconstruct Riverside Drive and $260 million for other city street improvements.

This will allow for half a billion dollars in Street improvements, 150 new cops, allow for the half billion dollar west bank commercial development, $250 million in river improvements (and hopefully recapture some of the $117 million in private donations), a downtown baseball stadium, the race riot memorial, and for neighborhood improvements for blighted areas throughout the city while providing newly remolded low income housing.

I think this is a very insightful, thoughtful, doable plan. Some reservations:

1. Broken Arrow has little interest in riverfront development along their stretch. They are worried about their sewage treatment plants over their and imo their golf course plans. Why include money for something they don't want?

2. This is a good time to address the sewage treatment plant issues at 51st street bridge. Couldn't the BA money be put to better use there?

3.I would amend your first remark to be Jenks, Tulsa, Sand Springs and maybe Bixby. IOW the river communities that are already making big investments and recognize the importance. Why even include Owasso and BA when neither one cares much about the river. If its the v2025 overages, maybe, but otherwise keep focused on the part of town that actually passed this last measure.

I absolutely love the $1 housing plan and the shared toll bridge returns. Great thinking and makes the plan quite salable.

[sgrizzle]

quote:Originally posted by inteller

wow, I've heard more presentable ravings from the Insane Clown Posse.  This thread makes me laugh a lot.  

When you have quit crying you can then join the rest of us in reality.  I plan on voting FOR the inevitable roads package to put this city back in order.

You and the other 17% of Tulsa. Just like last time.

[Double A]

Why don't each of you 60,000 or so yes supporters who voted for the river tax put your money where your mouth is and donate $1,000 each towards river development, that would raise around 60 million or so? Hell, if you raise enough money maybe Inhofe and Sullivan will make good on the federal dollars they hinted at. Brad Henry endorsed it, maybe the state will match some cash. Could money be used from the newly created state opportunity fund? We need a State program for waterways like the Main Street program to encourage cities with water features to improve their environmental, recreational and commercial development along their waterfronts. Why don't you explore some other potential funding sources, before jumping on the bandwagon for another regressive sales tax?