Author (#2)September 2007 Archives

It happens every time I upgrade Movable Type, the blogging engine, to the latest version. The new comment verification scheme just won't work with my old template. So BatesLine will be changing before your very eyes, as I create a new default template, then bring over my old customizations. Thank you for your patience.

Speaking of fixing what's broken, the No Tulsa River Tax website has been spruced up and it now works with Firefox as well as Internet Explorer. Since the campaign is grassroots-driven, there's a do-it-yourself flyer (PDF format) you can download and print to hand out to your friends and neighbors or bring to civic group meetings where the river tax is being discussed.

I received an e-mail last night regarding Harvey Young Airport. Of the many airports serving general (non-commercial) aviation that once dotted the Tulsa area, Harvey Young is one of the few remaining. The airport's north-south asphalt runway sits between 11th and 21st Street, about halfway between 129th and 145th East Avenues. It is privately owned, but open to the public. It serves small aircraft that might be out of place at the jet- and high-end turboprop-oriented Jones Riverside Airport.

Long-time eastsiders will remember the sight of the Goodyear blimp setting down and mooring at Harvey Young back in the '70s. It was used as an airship landing pad as recently as last month, during the PGA.

Word is that the property has a new owner who intends to sell the airport to someone who will close it and build low-cost, government subsidized, housing in its place. Mick Fine, an aviation enthusiast who is a tenant at the airport has set up a website at saveharveyyoung.com to present the history of the airport and encourage its preservation as a working general aviation facility. From the home page:

Harvey Young Airport has a long and proud history of serving the aviation needs of the Tulsa-metro area since 1940. In the early days of World War II, the airport answered the country's call to train cadets for the US Army Air Corp (predecessor to the US Air Force). By all accounts, thousands of future combat pilots took their first flights over the countryside of east Tulsa County:

While Harvey Young was 'out in the country' when established, Tulsa expanded east to surround and incorporate it. Sadly, Harvey Young is the last VFR (visual flight rules) GA (general aviation) airport within easy driving distance from anywhere in Tulsa. Should this vital resource be lost, most of the 80 or so tenants will be forced to relocate their aircraft to municipal and private airports outside the Tulsa area such as Gundys in Owasso, Haskell, Wagoner, Claremore and others. The associated commerce from hangar rent, fuel, maintenance, and even the hamburger and coffee sales to pilots, crews and spectators will go with them.

Harvey Young has always been a draw for visiting aircraft due to its close proximity to Tulsa. At most any time of the week, several 'transient' aircraft are tied-down at the field to do business in town or just to visit friends and relatives. The field has also been a host to blimp traffic for decades including the recent PGA Final at Southern Hills.

The reason most of the old Tulsa airports are gone is simple - the land they occupied was economically viable for other uses, usually a traditional housing and/or commercial development. The main reason Harvey Young has not suffered the same fate before now is that it sits on a solid limestone rock shelf lying 3 feet or less below the soil surface.

That rock shelf poses a serious obstacle to placing water and sewer lines in the ground. It took a great deal of expense to blast through the rock for the construction of the former Albertson's distribution center at Admiral and 145th, just a mile and a half north. In building its HQ, a couple of miles south along the ridge, Quik Trip dealt with the problem by constructing a campus of buildings, avoiding the outcroppings of rock. The development best suited to the area has been homes on small acreages, served by septic tanks.

Although it's in private hands, this airstrip is an asset to the community, one that would be impossible to replace inside Tulsa's city limits. I hope our city leaders understand its value to their constituents.

The website features historic photos and articles about the airport, well worth a browse.

Aaron Griffith gives his reasons for voting against the proposed $282 million river sales tax increase. Aaron comes from a left-wing populist perspective, but much of his argument will resonate across the political spectrum, and I like the way he has annotated each of his points with a relevant link.

Tulsa County River Tax: A Question of Style or Substance

It seems like an age old question: What should our priorities be in life? To create well-maintained, vibrant, safe, diverse, green, clean communities? Should our collective vision focus on substance and sustainability or should style and self-indulgent luxuries dictate our priorities? On October 9, Tulsa County Voters arrive at an ozone-polluted, pothole-riddled crossroads to face the decision of which way to go.

The proposed County river tax is not a transformation, but a mutation of the geographic inequity, institutionalized neglect, economic segregation, and false promises of progress as promised as usual in Tulsa County. We will not become a progressive community by continuing to neglect the maintenance of our failing roads and infrastructure or ignoring the environmental elephants in the room in regards to river development.

It will not happen by disregarding alternative sources of funding for river development, which do not increase regressive County sales taxes that steal primary revenue streams away from struggling municipalities or by infrastructure privatization.

It will not happen by perverting the Arkansas River Corridor Master Plan to include a 41st St. pedestrian bridge or wasting precious resources on unwanted, unnecessary, special elections.

It will not happen by gambling on exaggerated economic impact projections or empty promises of good-paying construction jobs that won't have any prevailing wage protections and nothing to protect against 1099 worker misclassification abuse, that places honest contractors who play by the rules at a competitive disadvantage.

It will not happen by misguided, last minute, half-hearted attempts to address the hardship this tax increase causes to our at-risk, low income, and fixed income families living paycheck to paycheck by offering a year end tax rebate to those who qualify for the Earned Income Tax Credit that will do nothing to affect the immediate impact this new tax increase on the basic necessities of life will have on their budgets.

It will not happen by giving private special interest controlled Mayors, County Commissioners, and their politically appointed new bureaucratic unrepresentative river authority the final say on development along the river within the sovereignty of municipalities by voting to give them a giant blank check, a new regressive tax, for continued failure to deliver the progress as promised.

At the polls during the October 9 special election, I urge you to please vote NO, so we can begin a real dialogue on how to provide sustainable solutions to the critical long-term infrastructure, environmental, socioeconomic, transportation, planning challenges we face in Tulsa County in order to promote, preserve, and protect real progressive values.

Don't bother trying to post a comment. Since the upgrade to 4.0, the comment system has been busted, and my simple fixes have failed to work. I suspect I'll have to modify the template in some way, which will probably break other parts of the site. Sad thing is that the new comment system was supposed to work better and might even let me get away with not moderating comments.

The good news is that I finally located some features I thought I had lost in the upgrade.

The linkblog is also going to be out of commission -- at least not updated -- for a while. MT 4.0 provides a better way of integrating that sort of feature into a blog, but until I get comments sorted out, I won't worry about it.

Would you buy a used car from this dealer at 9404 E. 31st St.?

If memory serves, this same dealer has posted messages accusing those who believe in the enforcement of America's immigration laws of being hateful racists.

Since the signs cost a lot less than $5, maybe people should turn in their signs, then donate the proceeds to buy more signs. :) (I think I saw a variation of that idea on an episode of "The Lucy Show" -- Lucy exploited the double-your-money back guarantee of a brand of canned beans.)

If you'd like a "NO RIVER TAX" sign for your yard, Tulsa Machine (a sign printing shop) at 1503 E. Admiral Pl. has them for sale for a nominal price.

From an email about the upcoming Republican Women's Club of Tulsa County's luncheon (Tuesday, September 11, 11:30 p.m., Holiday Inn Select, I-44 and Yale -- the old Hilton) (emphasis added:

Commissioner Perry will present the Proposed River Plan/Tax in an educational format. He will be aided by an engineer who played a key role in the development of the 42 mile River Corridor plan from which the proposed plan was derived.

Commissioner Perry will present arguments which have been made both for and against the Proposed River Plan and the associated county sales tax to fund it. The matter is scheduled for a county wide vote on October 9th.

If you're a Republican woman and think it's egregiously unfair for a proponent of higher taxes to represent both sides of this debate (a debate where the county Republican party platform comes down solidly in opposition), you might politely encourage the RWC president, Nancy Rothman, to allow an actual opponent to argue the case for the opposition. (I won't reproduce her contact info here; if you're a club member, you have her phone number and email address in the meeting notice.)

UPDATE: I just spoke to Commissioner Perry, who wanted to emphasize that it was Ms. Rothman's choice, not his, to have him present both sides of the argument. He says he's going to have to walk quite a tight rope and that neither side is likely to be satisfied that their argument was fully presented. He also took issue to my characterization of him as a proponent of higher taxes, that there are things that make him uneasy about the river tax plan (the tax increase, Broken Arrow's opposition) and he's not cheerleading for it, but on balance he thinks it's good thing, and he is a proponent of letting the voters decide. He also pointed out that in the legislature he sometimes opposed sending an issue to a vote of the people: the lottery, casino gambling, certain tax increases.

Regarding the RWCTC event, Perry told me that Ms. Rothman is a professional mediator who feels that the Republican Party is too divided and contentious, so she didn't want to have a debate. I would think that, as a mediator, she would understand the importance of each side feeling that their concerns were fully aired and given a fair hearing. Perhaps her mediation sessions consist of her picking one side to argue both sides of a dispute.

To be fair to Ms. Rothman, there are political parties that do a much better job than Republicans of maintaining unity and harmony. For example, the Workers' Party of Korea presents a united front on every issue. You never hear a dissenting voice on any issue, or if you do, you never hear from it again. Perhaps she has the WPK in mind as a model for the Republican Party's future.

This morning on KFAQ, Gwen Freeman and Chris Medlock interviewed real estate expert and urban critic Joel Kotkin. Last week in the Wall Street Journal, Kotkin wrote a pointed takedown of cities that chase the "Creative Class" with civic improvement schemes -- arenas, convention centers, government-planned entertainment districts, light rail, etc. -- while neglecting basic infrastructure and overlooking the concerns of middle-class families. Here are a few key paragraphs:

Governments prefer subsidizing high-profile but marginally effective boondoggles -- light-rail lines, sports stadia, arts or entertainment facilities, luxury hotels and convention centers.

Over the past decade, according to a recent Brookings Institution study, public capital spending on convention centers has doubled to $2.4 billion annually; nationwide, 44 new or expanded centers are in planning or under construction. But the evidence is that few such centers make money, and many more lose considerable funds. The big convention business is not growing while the surplus space is increasing. New sports centers add little to the overall economy.

Critically, misguided investments shift funds that could finance essential basic infrastructure. Pittsburgh has spent over $1 billion this decade on sports stadia, a new convention center and other dubious structures. Heralded as major job creators and sources of downtown revitalization, they have done little to prevent the region's long-term population loss and continued economic stagnation. Much the same can be said of Milwaukee's new Santiago Calatrava-designed Art Museum, or Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Transportation priorities are also skewed. Government officials in Minnesota spent mightily on a light-rail system that last year averaged barely 30,000 boardings daily. It did not focus nearly as much on overstressed highway bridges, or the bus systems serving the bulk of its mostly poor and minority transit riders. Most other light-rail systems, built in cities with highly dispersed employment, also have minuscule ridership, but consume a disproportionate share of transit funds that might go to more cost-efficient systems, including bus-based rapid transit.

In this morning's interview on KFAQ, Kotkin expanded on this theme. Here's a link to the MP3 file for the hour containing the Joel Kotkin interview. He packed a lot of important ideas about cities into a very short segment. I'll try to unpack some of them before too long, but two that come to mind:

• The fact that downtowns were designed for commerce, not for residential living, but close-in neighborhoods were designed well for housing, while providing a customer base for downtown businesses. My response: Tulsa tried to save its downtown by destroying or amputating major sections of its close-in neighborhoods to make way for parking and freeways and to eliminate "blight". (Of course, the blighted homes and apartment buildings were not much different from those in now-valued neighborhoods like Brookside and Swan Lake.) Now we're trying to undo the damage by converting commercial buildings with residential space, something I've supported, although Chris Medlock pointed out that we've spent a lot of public money per person added to the downtown population.
• The importance of parks in every neighborhood, not just a handful of centrally-located showplace parks. I need to transcribe exactly what he said, because it was spot on -- something about having to "make a day of it" to visit one of these showplaces, rather than being able to integrate a neighborhood park into your everyday life. Every neighborhood needs its gathering places, whether that's a park or a playground or a coffee house.

There's also an interview with Kotkin on townhall.com, conducted by Bill Steigerwald, about the continued importance of manufacturing to the economies of American cities. Steigerwald is a Pittsburgh native, so it's natural that the conversation would focus on the departure of heavy industry and billions spent on stadiums, light rail, and other pretty things at the expense of basic government services.

Increasingly it's the Sunbelt where manufacturing is sought and celebrated, not the old Rust Belt, which views its history with the same kind of "cultural cringe" that fashionable Tulsans feel about cowboys, Indians, and oil:

I have to tell you, almost every place I go in this country, particularly where the economy is growing, if you ask business people what is it that would really help them, they say "skills." Machinists. Welders. It's not like there's a Ph. D. shortage, generally speaking. But there is a welder shortage, there's a plumber shortage, there's a machinist shortage. But nobody wants to talk about this. Cities that have lost their industrial base don't want to talk about it, and many cities that still have it are almost ashamed of it. In one of the great historical ironies, the places where they are not ashamed of manufacturing are places like Houston and Charleston and Charlotte. But the places with the great industrial traditions, it's almost as if they are ashamed of their lineage.

Kotkin makes some great points about how manufacturing brings outside money into a city (our Chamber of Commerce seems to believe that only conventions and tourism are capable of doing that), and how people forget about skilled labor jobs:

Everyone talks about how we're becoming a society of low-end service workers and high-end information workers. But here's something in between -- basically the logistics and manufacturing industry -- and nobody seems to be focused on it.

What can governments do to attract this sort of business? The basics:

I would say infrastructure and training are the two big things -- and if you think of the training as part of the infrastructure, it's really one thing. You need roads that go in and out. You need modern industrial space. You need reliable electricity. You need shipping facilities. You need workers who are relatively skilled, trainable and reliable. It's really not rocket science that you can do that and that would promote the manufacturing sector of the economy.

And to retain and rebuild a city's manufacturing base?

Are there companies that would like to expand? Are there companies that want to stay? Ask them what they want.

But that isn't what cities are doing:

We live in this dream world where we say, "Well, if we have a fancy stadium with sky boxes, that will keep businesses here." Well, what do you mean by businesses? Do you mean the gauleiters who represent multinational corporations, so they can hang out at a fancy football game? Or are we talking about somebody who's got 15 people working for him in a shop somewhere in the suburbs and would like to get to 30? What are his issues? Are they tax issues? Are they training issues? Are they regulatory issues? You've got to go ask! I don't see anyone interested in that anymore. It's all "What does some 23-year-old, footloose student want? Does he have enough jazz clubs to go to?" Or some footloose 50-year-old corporate henchman. "Does he have enough arts facilities?"

As a country, we're kind of delusional about our economies. I've found a few places in the country where they focus on this stuff, but I'm kind of becoming a persona non grata for raising these issues. I'm not raising them as a conservative, saying we shouldn't have taxes or shouldn't have regulations. I'm just saying, "How do you provide for a broad-based economic opportunity for your people? Isn't that what's it about?" Unfortunately, for most mayors in America, that's not what's it's about. What it's about is, "How do I keep the public employees happy? How do I keep the people at the very top of society happy? And how do I put on a good enough show so that everybody thinks I have a hip, cool city."

The conversation between Kotkin and Steigerwald ends with the role of local papers in pushing these projects of questionable value:

[Kotkin:] I'll tell you the truth, a lot of the blame comes to the journalists. The journalists never ask the tough questions. They basically follow the scripts that they are given. And also part of the problem, and we've talked about this in general about journalism these days, you have got a bunch of young kids who are there for two or three years. They don't understand what crap this is. To them it's all, "Well, there's an art museum downtown. That'll be good for me." If there is some "starkitect" -designed building, they say, "Wow, that's sort of fun for me." They don't care.

[Steigerwald:] I've always said the newspapers of America should be indicted en masse for having countenanced 50 or 60 years of the destruction of cities. I bet 95 percent of newspapers have applauded and cheered every boondoggle, every urban-renewal project back in the 1950s, every new light-rail project -- no matter what it was, newspapers cheered them on.

[Kotkin:] And what happens if you have the temerity to suggest that this may not be the way to go? You're "anti-city," you're "pro-suburbs," you're a "neoconservative" -- like I'm Dick Cheney or something. You get name-called. And all you're saying is, "Look, are we sure that what we are putting our money into is really what matters, given the tremendous pressing needs that every city has?"

In 1980, Congressman Tom Steed was interviewed at Rose State College and had something very sensible to say about the way decreasing voter participation empowers pressure groups. (Found on the Democrats of Oklahoma Community Forum.)

Well, you really struck a nerve with me there because my pet-peeve is the fact that people won't vote. And I have studied it. I've talked to a lot of authorities and there's a lot of people concerned about it all over the nation. And so I've actually come to the conclusion that there's no more insidious enemy my country has than a person who will not vote.

Now, as the vote went down and down over these years, the pressure groups in Washington went up and up and up. Where there used to be a page of them in the telephone book in Washington, now there's many pages. Everybody has a pressure group.

Well, finally the Congressman who votes for what's right and antagonizes one or more of these pressure groups comes home and finds that most of the people that he represents and that he did that for won't even bother to vote. He has no protection. And off goes his head. Well Joe Doaks sees Bill Spivey get it in the neck, so the next time, he gets cautious. And it's a growing sickness.

I don't know how to make people vote. Now in the bicentennial year, we got together, we raised money, we put on a special drive. We had the help of all the media and everybody else. No one was against it. We finally got 55 percent of the eligible voters in Oklahoma to register and we got 94 percent of the 55 percent to vote. And we led the nation - in our bicentennial year. Number one in the nation - in citizenship! Did you hear anything about it? Any hats go up in the air? Have you seen any chamber of commerce slogans or anything? If we were number one in football, maybe we'd a heard a lot, but not on citizenship.

Now after that, I said, well, I don't know, I give up. If that won't set the state on fire, I don't know what you could do. But it's a sad thing and I never pass up an opportunity to scold people because they won't go vote.

When ordinary people don't pay attention and don't support officials who put their interests first, voters are swayed by the ads purchased by various pressure groups. Elected officials learn to fear the pressure groups rather than their own voters.

I think that goes a long way toward explaining how the current ill-conceived river tax increase found its way to the ballot.

Upgrading to the latest version of Movable Type. Expect breakage.

UPDATE: We seem to be back up. Someone post a comment, and let's see if it works.

UPDATE: Comments are broken, but I can post. Thanks to those who tested comments. I tried to reconfigure comments and rebuild the site, but rebuilding consistently causes a Bluehost CPU overage, which is why I'll be looking for a new hosting provider as soon as I can. I can't find a way to rebuild a few entries at a time to avoid getting dinged.on CPU.

A notice posted on the County Clerk Public Records site (found via Dustbury):

THE DELAWARE COUNTY COURTHOUSE WILL BE CLOSED THE FOLLOWING DAYS FOR ELECTIONS: TUESDAY AUGUST 14/TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 11^^THE ELECTION BOARD (TWO BLOCKS NORTH OF COURTHOUSE) WILL ANNOUNCE LIVE RESULTS OF THE ELECTIONS @ THEIR OFFICE ABOUT 7:30 PM^^BRING LAWN CHAIRS****PLEASE DO NOT BLOCK ALLEY!!

It warms the heart to think that elections could still be a community event somewhere.

It happens that we have film from outside the Delaware County Election Board on August 14. Take it away, Leon:

(Side note: So now 27 more Oklahoma counties have their county clerk's land records on the internet. When will Tulsa County catch up?)

At the end of a blog entry recounting angry letters to the editor in response to a couple of sentences in a recent column praising homeschooling and private schools, Rod Dreher explained why only the angry letters showed up in the paper:

Dallas readers will wonder why the paper only published negative responses to my column, and will perhaps see media bias in the letters selection. Not true. I work in this same department, and let me tell you, all the people who liked the column and took the trouble to write wrote me personally. The ones who hated it wrote letters to the editor -- which is why they got printed.

So if you like something you read in the paper, by all means let the writer know, but cc the letters column, and let everyone else know, too.

I've commented on the pointlessness of the 41st Street and 61st Street pedestrian-only bridges, which are part of the sales tax package Tulsa County residents will be voting on October 9, but which are not part of the Arkansas River Master Corridor Plan. The 41st Street pedestrian-only bridge would in fact obstruct something that is in the ARMCP: A combination vehicle and pedestrian bridge linking Red Fork to Brookside.

The two pedestrian-only bridges will connect on the west side of the river to an industrial area and a railroad track, respectively. Cyclists and joggers may appreciate having more ways to make a circuit around the river, but few Tulsans will make use of these bridges, which are priced at $15 million a piece.

Up in Amsterdam, N. Y., Robert N. Going wonders about the value of a pedestrian bridge proposed to span the Mohawk River. Like our 61st Street bridge, this one would dead-end at a railroad track and would fall well short of connecting the two sides of the town.

In Amsterdam's case, the bridge is being financed by a statewide bond issue that passed a couple of years ago. The local assemblyman (equivalent to Oklahoma's state representative) included money for the bridge in the bond. Just as Tulsa County officials didn't consult with City of Tulsa officials about the City's priorities for the river, the assemblyman didn't speak to Amsterdam city officials about whether there were better ways to use the $17 million that he had finagled for the pedestrian bridge.

Robert presents an alternative and less expensive idea that would improve the city's waterfront and usefully connect one place to another. His idea won't get anywhere, because it doesn't cost enough and involve enough money for construction contracts, so there won't be anyone with a financial motivation to lobby for its approval.

It took me a while to figure this out, but to the people who make the decisions, a plan for civic improvement isn't a real plan unless it involves higher taxes, the issuance of revenue bonds, and lots and lots of concrete and steel. There has to be a sufficiently concentrated benefit for some group of businesses and institutions to make it worth their while to lobby and campaign for something.

I've been outspoken in opposition to several of these big tax projects, but each time I've offered an alternative approach to civic improvement. When The Channels concept surfaced last fall, I used my UTW column to set out what I think Tulsans really want when they say they want river development and the best way to make that happen.

My approach to civic improvements usually involves a series of incremental improvements, none of them wildly expensive. Roberta Brandes Gratz's concept of "urban husbandry," as opposed to "project planning," guides me in this regard. Some of my ideas involve redeploying existing resources or eliminating regulatory barriers (e.g., allowing entrepreneurs to operate private bus services, aka jitneys).

I've always marveled at how quick the Vote Yes folks are to scoff at my alternatives to their plans for civic improvement. They don't want to know my alternative plan for making Tulsa a better place. They want to know my alternative plan for raising taxes and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on new construction. The idea that we don't need to raise and spend all that money is unacceptable. I can't find it right now, but there was even a letter to the editor mocking the fact that I always offer a less expensive way to do something.

One more thought connected to this: Vision 2025 included $15 million for the Route 66 corridor. That kind of money could have been used to amazing effect, supplementing the positive impact of the National Park Service's Route 66 Corridor Preservation Program. The money could have funded facade improvements, rehabilitation of neon, and other efforts to preserve and restore commercial buildings along Route 66 in Tulsa County. It's the roadside businesses, and the memories they stir of pre-Interstate Highway travel, that draw people to Route 66. (The federal program has $10,000,000 to spend over 2,000 miles of road. Tulsa County has $15,000,000 for 26 miles of road.)

Instead, much of the money is being used to build a new museum, which means a big general construction contract and lots of money flowing down to subcontractors. No one thought of using the money for restoration and preservation of existing buildings because no one could figure out how to make a buck off of it. (Which is silly, because there is money in restoration and preservation. The notion just hasn't caught on here yet.)

RELATED: An excellent post by Jeff Shaw which fed into my thoughts on this issue as well. He asks some questions of the economic impact numbers the Chamber Pots are touting for the river tax plan. I have a copy of that spreadsheet, which I intend to post soon, and at first glance it looks like their economic impact estimate is predicated on how much tax money is spent on construction. No account is made of the impact of withdrawing the money for construction from the uses to which it would have been put otherwise. The model behind it seems to predict that if you taxed every penny and devoted it to construction of new public facilities, the city would become a wealthy paradise.

On a visit to Bartlesville's Kiddie Park last weekend, I was surprised to see bare dirt on the southeast side of the road, just across from the steam engine and the Hulah depot.

That empty space used to be home to a fixture from my early childhood -- a replica of Oklahoma's first commercial oil well, the Nellie Johnstone No. 1, drilled on that spot in 1897. We passed it often on the walk between our house on Delaware and the playground at Johnstone Park. There was some sort of marker on the site with the Cities Service Oil Company trefoil, so I assume the company had something to do with the replica's construction. (My dad worked for Cities from 1965 to 1985.)

The reason it's gone is that the current replica was "badly deteriorated." I can't imagine the repeated flooding of the Caney River was good for it. The replica was pulled down in mid-August. It had been built in 1964, replacing an earlier replica built in 1948. Sometime in September will be a groundbreaking for a new replica, sponsored by the Centennial Commission.