BatesLine

Tulsa County Commissioner Randi Miller held a press conference today to explain why she absolutely has to have a higher sales tax rate in order to build the low-water dams that she promised would be built by the existing Vision 2025 tax.

Miller was responding to a proposal by Tulsa City Councilor John Eagleton, who called for paying for river plan implementation from the existing Vision 2025 sales tax, asking voters to extend that tax if its necessary to complete the projects, rather than increasing the tax rate.

I made a similar proposal in this week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly. Tulsa County voters were promised three river related projects as part of Proposition 4:

Construct two low water dams on Arkansas River the locations of which will be determined in the Arkansas River Corridor Plan -- $5.6 million

Zink Lake Shoreline Beautification -- $1.8 million

Design and construct Zink Lake Upstream Catch Basin and silt removal -- $2.1 million

Last week on KFAQ, Vision 2025 project manager Kirby Crowe said of these funds, only $275,000 has been spent, to cover the cost of environmental paperwork that must be completed prior to constructing the dams. The rest, he said, is "unspent and protected."

In my column, I point out that these dams were promised as a part of Vision 2025, and that County Commissioners committed to completing all the projects as promised, and as quickly as possible. (I do find it interesting that neither of the two Whirled stories, about Eagleton's idea and Miller's response, mentions that construction of the dams were promised as part of Vision 2025.)

Matching funds or not, County officials made a commitment to complete the projects that were promised. In a July 23, 2003, story in the daily paper about the potential for revenues to exceed expected project costs, County Commissioner Bob Dick said that the Vision 2025 package was structured to be sure that no project would be left incomplete. Commissioner Dick was quoted as saying, “I think the worst thing you could do is promise you are going to build something and then not have enough money to build it.” So any surplus was intended first to be used to finish the promised projects.

Miller claims that we can't predict if there would be enough surplus, and if there is any, it's already been promised to the suburbs for unspecified projects.

But I'm told that no such projects have been approved by the Tulsa County Vision Authority and no such commitment was made. Mayor Taylor denies that any such promise was made. Such a promise would directly contradict something Miller was quoted as saying later in the interview:

The commissioners' primary responsibility is to ensure that the Vision 2025 projects promised voters are delivered, she said.

And that means building the low water dams and refurbishing the Zink Lake dams has to come before any new projects are undertaken.

In fact, the ballot resolution makes a formal commitment to that effect:

While the cost estimates shown above are believed to be accurate, it must be recognized that the exact cost of each project may vary from the estimate shown. It is the intention of the Board of County Commissioners of Tulsa County, Oklahoma, that all projects shall be completed as funds are made available. If the Board of County Commissioners of Tulsa County, Oklahoma, determines that all of the projects listed above will be completed with existing and projected funds and that excess funds will be available for additional projects, such excess funds shall be expended for caputal improvements for community enrichment (which does not include appropriation of any such funds to any other entity for such purpose), as determined by a public trust having Tulsa County, Oklahoma, [and all Tulsa County municipalities], as its beneficiaries.

Emphasis added. No new projects until all the listed projects are fully funded to completion.

Miller also claims that we can't get to any of the surplus money until near the end of the tax period, around 2015 or so. But as she knows, Vision 2025 is not a pay as you go project. She and her fellow commissioners have issued revenue bonds, borrowing money against future revenues so that the projects could be completed early, long before we raise the revenue.

I don't know how much has been borrowed all ready, how much has been spent, and how much is committed in the near term, but if the river is a priority, I'm sure some projects can be delayed to so that money already in hand could be used to start work on the dams. I'm sure more could be borrowed against anticipated Vision 2025 revenues. If John Piercey doesn't think he can do it, perhaps we could put the financing out for competitive bidding and find someone who can make it happen without charging us an arm and a leg.

Interesting: According to this, the river projects and all other Vision 2025 projects should have been funded in the second bond issue. The first bond issue was for $242,150,000:

Program manager Kirby Crowe said officials plan to have just one more bond issue to fund the rest of the Vision 2025 projects.

The Arkansas River projects, Broken Arrow's funding for downtown and neighborhood beautification, construction costs for the downtown Tulsa arena and renovation of the Maxwell Convention Center -- as well as the rest of the funding for projects that were only partially funded in the first bond issue -- are anticipated to be funded in the second.

Here's Randi Miller from June 2005:

While they aren't ready to act on projections for what the 13-year, sixth-tenths of a penny sales tax will bring in, Commissioners Bob Dick and Randi Miller both believe the Arkansas River is a likely candidate to see additional funding.

"It's too soon to start spending money above those things that have already been identified," Dick said. "But there's one real easy one, to say if we do have that, I think a high priority would be on the river."

The $5.6 million allocated in Vision 2025 for river projects only pays for a portion of two low-water dams. It is supposed to be used along with federal funds, but Miller said officials may need the extra money to make sure the dams get built.

"If there's any money that's available, in my opinion because we do not have enough for the dams, then I'm going to go with river development," she said.

From the same article, John Piercey provides an early estimate of a surplus and is game to try to make it available early:

Vision 2025 financial adviser John Piercey, a senior investment banker with Capital West Securities, said that virtually all of of the $65 million surplus will be collected in 2016 and 2017.

"The question becomes: Is there a way to have those funds early? We're working on that," he said.

And as recently as this January, Piercey said:

"It looks like they'll (local officials) be able to deliver everything they promised to voters, and then some."

Make it so.

TAKE ACTION: If you want County Commissioners to keep their promise and fund the low-water dams from the Vision 2025 tax, you need to let them know. The vote to put a new tax on the ballot could come as early as next Thursday. Here are phone and e-mail contacts for each:

District 1, John Smaligo: jsmaligo@tulsacounty.org, 596-5020

District 2, Randi Miller: rmiller@tulsacounty.org, 596-5015

District 3, Fred Perry: fperry@tulsacounty.org, 596-5010

Still catching up from various travels and other family events, I noticed I hadn't gotten around to linking my current Urban Tulsa Weekly column or the one from last week.

Last week's column dealt with specifics of the proposed $277 million county sales tax increase to fund low-water dams and other enhancements along the Arkansas River, in particular, how the proposed plan deviates from the official Arkansas River Corridor Master Plan.

But I had a couple of other matters to deal with before I jumped into the river. Faithful readers will recall that I was quick to distance myself from the text that was placed over my July 4 column. As soon as I could, I posted a comment on the article itself and here on this blog:

I want to remind readers that I do not write the headlines or [subheadlines] for my columns, and I do not agree with the harsh, sarcastic tone of the [subheadline] written for this column. I am grateful for the willingness of George Kaiser and other Tulsa philanthropists to contribute to the well-being of this city, and my suggestion that direct investment may be the best way to make the river the kind of place Tulsans want to enjoy is a suggestion made in earnest.

That wasn't the only problem I had with how my writing in that issue was edited: The beginning of my response to a letter to the editor about an earlier column was changed, setting a more pompous and pugnacious tone than I had intended. Again, I noted the differences between what I wrote and what was published in a comment on the paper's website and here at BatesLine.

To make sure that those who only see the column in print were aware of all this, I addressed both concerns in the July 11 column. When the paper came out, I had to laugh when I saw the headline:

Headlines Are Attention-Getting Devices
Otherwise, scholarly, well-researched opinion pieces might go unnoticed

Touché. The anonymous copy editor who wrote that headline is absolutely right.

A reader here asked, "Is there some journalistic justification for having an editor put words in the mouth of the columnist? I'd think that columnists, over the years (decades) would have protested loudly enough to end such a practice."

I've known of writers flying off the handle, even quitting, over headlines or edits to their pieces. I can't say I was happy when I saw how my work was edited that week, but having had a friend who was a copy editor gave me some perspective.

I met blogger Dawn Eden during my trip to the 2004 Republican National Convention, when she was a copy editor for the New York Post. In fact, that was the week she learned of winning a state Associated Press award for the headline "HURT IN LINE OF DOODY," which graced a story about a city employee injured by an exploding toilet.

Meeting Dawn put a face and a personality behind the clever, punny headlines for which New York City tabloids are renowned. I learned that copy editing is more than fixing typos; it also involves framing a story so that the newspaper reader will notice it and read it. The ability to concoct an eye-catching headline on deadline is a gift that not many writers have.

I remember, too, the saga of the following January, just before her visit to Oklahoma, when an edit Dawn made to a story about in-vitro fertilization enraged the reporter, who, despite Dawn's apologies, set out to get Dawn fired, not so much for the edit as for the staunchly pro-life content of her personal blog.

While I think the writer's reaction and the Post publisher's handling of Dawn's situation exceeded reasonable disciplinary action and entered the realm of religious persecution, I can now better empathize with the writer. When words appear under my byline, they are identified with me, and they speak for me, whether I wrote them or not. I don't appreciate having my name associated with opinions or attitudes I don't share. An attention-getting headline or a punched-up lede may draw a reader in to see what I have to say, but if it goes too far, a reader may conclude immediately that I'm an arrogant jerk with nothing to say worth reading and turn the page.

(I am an arrogant jerk, but I'd prefer to let my own words convict me on that charge.)

One of the lovely things about a blog is that everything here (except for the comments) is mine -- my words, my opinions. Also, my factual errors (like calling a subheadline a "tagline"), my misspellings, my inconsistent application of style rules, my homely layout, and my boring headlines. For better or worse, there's no editor to get in the way.

But when you're assembling the work of multiple contributors into a single publication, someone has to layout the pages, put the ads in place, write headlines, subheadlines, pullquotes, and captions, and turn those diverse contributions into an attractive and cohesive package.

I appreciate what copy editors do. I'm grateful when they fix my typos, add transitional sentences when I lurch too quickly from one idea to another, and make me look smarter, Charlotte's Web style, by putting brilliant headlines over my words. And when they get carried away, I'll handle it as I did this time -- let the readers know of the discrepancy and mend fences with the individuals who might have been offended by what someone else wrote under my name.

Alas, I didn't have a sitter, so I had to miss out on Tuesday night's Absolute Best of Tulsa (ABoT) party at the Petroleum Club. I didn't find out until tonight, when I finally had a chance to pick up a copy of the latest issue, but I won an Urby this year. Urban Tulsa Weekly readers have named me Best Blogger in the 2007 Absolute Best of Tulsa awards. Thanks to everyone who voted for me.

For the record, I didn't vote for myself. I voted for Mee.

MORE: Here's a link to a PDF of the 2007 Absolute Best of Tulsa special section.

My UTW column this week was also about the proposal to move City Hall to One Technology Center at 100 S. Cincinnati. Most of the questions I posed were raised in one form or another, and most were answered, although I won't say that my fears were allayed. (Don Himelfarb couldn't answer my question about the true operating costs of the first year, operating in both old and new facilities.)

I had two related feature stories in the issue, a report on the unearthing and unveiling of the buried car, and a look back at the Tulsarama! celebration in 1957 -- it was a huge city-wide celebration, plagued by at least as much rain as we've seen so far this year. It was much more than burying a time capsule and a car.

I'm pleased with the way the Tulsarama! story came out, but it isn't the comprehensive Tulsa 1957 story I wanted to do. I just ran out of time and couldn't get my arms around it. I have gathered a ton of material, looking through old city directories and planning documents, and receiving the reminiscences of Tulsans who were around in 1957. The article I wrote just scratches the surface, and I intend to provide more here and hopefully in future feature stories. The story of the major comprehensive planning effort that began in 1957 is a story that we need to know as we begin assembling yet another comprehensive plan.

Also in the current issue, Brian Ervin has a story on the difference of opinion about how many police officers Tulsa needs, with the Mayor and her interim police chief on one side and the Fraternal Order of Police on the other side.

UPDATE: Regarding the Belvedere, reader Richard Randall offered this interesting (and frightening) perspective:

We wonder why all of the bridges in Tulsa (and Oklahoma) are falling apart. Most of them were designed and built around the same time as the vault (give or take some years) by some of the same engineers. It seems to show just how well they designed and built some things back then and today, when it is built by the cheapest bidder. Growing up my dad had always talked about how bad the car would look when it came out (He worked at his dads construction company at the time the vault was built). He knew that the vault would fill up with water, by the design they used. Had they looked to the oil industry, they would have learned that water will find a way into anything. The best thing to use would have been a 1 to 2-inch steel box welded shut and encased in concrete. This would have withstood the fifty years. They did seem to grasp that idea a little bit. The time capsule was steel, (not sure if it was welded shut). Everything in it was in great condition.

Not only that, but the same engineers were probably responsible for designing the Civic Center's leaky and crumbling subterranean garage. (Maybe not crumbling any more. I haven't heard a report of falling concrete in some time.) One of the interesting facts that emerged in today's Council meeting about the proposed City Hall move -- about $16 million of that $24 million in deferred maintenance is related to the underground parking garage.

Congratulations to the paper for which I write, Urban Tulsa Weekly, for winning membership in the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies. It was one of five papers admitted out of 19 applicants for membership. UTW is only the second paper in the state to be admitted to membership. (The Oklahoma Gazette is the other.)

On its third try (the first was in 1999, the second was last year), UTW had the support of a majority of the membership committee, but not two-thirds, so it came to the full membership with no recommendation. This will give you some insight into the association's mindset. First, here are the comments from the committee:

Urban Tulsa Weekly 6 yes; 4 no

This newspaper is obviously making great strides forward, and has come a long way since first applying for membership. "Smart commentary, good news section, good, engaging writing overall," one member said. However, there were elements of the paper that made some committee members uncomfortable. "Little or no reporting -- just rehashing other people's points of view." There was concern that one story in the news section was little more than a military recruitment ad disguised as news.

And here is the account of the voting before the membership at large:

Holly Wall, editorial manager of Urban Tulsa Weekly, took up the case for her paper, noting they had taken to heart the recommendations about improving the paper offered by the Membership Committee on the paper's two previous applications. The Santa Barbara Independent's Robby Robbins defended Urban Tulsa Weekly against the committee's less flattering comments, arguing that judgments about its editorial content should take into consideration the conservative nature of the Tulsa market. After Wall and Robbins spoke, the paper was admitted on the second ballot.

Last year UTW didn't get the support of a majority of committee members, but there were signs of hope. The committee report began with a comment about music editor G. K. Hizer's sartorial choices: "A music editor in a tie? Now that's a conservative market. We're rooting for Urban Tulsa Weekly -- and winning columnists Michael Bates and Barry Friedman -- but have concerns about the stories in the rest of the paper."

Barry has, of course, moved on, but the AAN's approval is a recognition of the improvements that UTW continues to make. I'm pleased to have played some small role in UTW reaching this milestone, and I'm pleased to be part of a paper that is both conservative and alternative, even if that combination flummoxes our alt-weekly colleagues.

I've been so busy creating content for this coming week's Urban Tulsa Weekly that I haven't had time to link the current issue's column. It's about what I call the Greenwood Gap Theory, the widely-held notion that nothing happened in Tulsa's one-time African-American commercial district between the 1921 Race Riot and the late '80s construction of the OSU-Tulsa campus.

To fill the gap, I look at the historical record provided by aerial photos, street directories, and oral histories, all of which reveal that Greenwood was rebuilt after the riot, better than before in the view of many, but it was government action -- in the form of urban renewal and freeway construction -- that produced the empty lots in the '70s which OSU-Tulsa replaced.

An annotated aerial view of Deep Greenwood (the part of the district extending a few blocks north of Greenwood and Archer) from 1951 accompanies the story. Here's a larger version of the graphic for your perusal (1 MB PDF). (The scan of the aerial photo was done by INCOG at a cost of $35. INCOG has aerial photos of the entire county taken at roughly 10 year intervals.) And this photoset contains the pages from the 1957 Polk City Directory for N. Greenwood Avenue, showing the businesses, churches, and residences in house number order. Specifically they are pages 357 through 360.

Zingo's dismantling is almost complete, and Bell's Amusement Park is about to vanish from their long-time location on the Tulsa County Fairgrounds. Bell's paid the most rent of any Fairgrounds tenant, but despite that, the park's lease was not renewed and county officials claimed to have no plans for redeveloping the land.

This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly, I ask whether the U. S. National Arabian and Half-Arabian Championship Horse Show is the real reason that Bell's was given the boot and whether trading a 50 year Tulsa tradition for a lucrative but temporary event was a smart move for taxpayers.

By the way, I used a number in the story of $20 million, which I recalled hearing cited by Expo Square officials as the cost of improvements made to attract and accommodate the Arabian Horse Show. I called Expo Square to confirm that number, and the comptroller went down the list and came up with a number of $15 million. Unfortunately, his response came too late for UTW's deadline.

And here's a link to last week's column on the City Council's vote to authorize Tulsa police officers to verify the immigration status of anyone who is taken into custody on felony or misdemeanor charges.

The intervention by Congressman John Sullivan and Senators Coburn and Inhofe seems to have given the Council the backing they needed to take up this issue. Here you can read a letter from Sullivan to Mayor Kathy Taylor prior to the Council vote, and here is one from after the vote, urging her to implement the resolution.

Some further notes on local law enforcement and illegal immigration

In a letter to the head of ICE, Sullivan repeats his call for expediting the Sheriff's Office application for 287(g) status:

I believe that a 287(g) designation, which would allow for the cross deputization of Tulsa County Sherriff’s deputies and jail personnel, would help to mitigate these problems by ensuring that Oklahoma law enforcement personnel have the authority, training, and tools they need to report and detain criminal aliens in the course of their regular duty. If implemented in Tulsa, the 287(g) program would act as a force multiplier for ICE and help protect our communities from terrible incident like the one mentioned above.

Nashville police recently obtained 287(g) status. This case is one of the reasons they pursued it vigorously:

Garcia was charged with two counts of vehicular homicide while intoxicated and evading arrest. Court officials said he has reached a deal with prosecutors and will plead guilty today, the same day the trial was scheduled to begin. His lawyer, Assistant Metro Public Defender Glenn Dukes, did not return a call seeking comment.

Garcia is being held at the Metro Jail under an immigration hold, which means he'll be turned over to federal authorities after any criminal sentence he might serve.

But Garcia was well known to law enforcement before the fatal accident.

County records show that he had been booked into the Metro Jail on at least 14 different occasions since 1997.

Besides the DUI cases, he had been charged with domestic assault, leaving the scenes of accidents, driving on a revoked or suspended license, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, theft, failing to have insurance and driving with an open container.

On at least one occasion, local authorities said, Garcia was flagged by federal authorities and deported, only to return and resume his streak of arrests.

The other times, Garcia went to court, was jailed for some period and released. Sheriff's officials said they routinely sent notification to federal immigration authorities that they had booked a foreign-born inmate.

Nashville hopes to replicate the success of 287(g) in Charlotte, N.C.:

In the seven-month period following the implementation of its 287(g) immigration enforcement program, Charlotte, N.C. saw significant decreases in the number of Hispanics arrested for Driving Under the Influence (DUI), the total number of DUI-related arrests among Hispanic persons and the amount of Hispanic gang-related crime, law enforcement personnel there said.

In the program’s first nine months, Charlotte’s specially trained sheriffs identified 1,520 arrestees as having entered the country illegally.

All were marked for deportation back to one of the 31 different countries — mostly Central and South American — from which those 1,520 individuals came, Mecklenburg County Sheriff Jim Pendergraph told WFAE (Charlotte) talk radio last month.

And a full 20 percent of the foreign-born persons who were brought into the jail and subsequently identified though 287(g) had been arrested for drunken driving, Pendergraph said.

At the same time, a statistical analysis by the Sheriff’s Office shows that the number of Hispanic-related DUI incidents and arrests fell sharply in the months following the beginning of 287(g).

From 2005 – when sheriff’s deputies had to request an arrestee’s immigration information from a federal database in Vermont, as they still have to do in Nashville – to 2006, the number of Hispanic persons arrested for DUI decreased by 26 percent.

Additionally, the number of overall DUI-related arrests of Hispanic persons decreased by 63 percent – from 1,379 to 508 – during the same period.

This week in UTW, I'm writing about Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor's vanished campaign promises and her failure to deliver on one of them in particular: a more collaborative relationship with the City Council. Her refusal to keep them in the loop about the hiring of an interim and a permanent police chief, her use of private dollars for public actions (like the recruitment of a new chief) to try to circumvent the Open Records act, and her unilateral decisions to commit Tulsa to radical positions on gun control and anthropogenic global warming with which most Tulsans disagree.

Two weeks ago, Kathy Taylor became the 500th mayor to sign the U. S. Mayors' Climate Protection Agreement, which you can read in PDF form here, and you can read more about the agreement's development on the website of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels. And here is the Climate Protection page on the U. S. Conference of Mayors website. Taylor's action came without any consultation with the City Council.

And here's a belated link to the previous week's column about the last-minute agreement reached on Fairgrounds annexation, negotiated by Taylor behind the Council's back, and the need for the Council to defend its institutional prerogatives for the sake of checks and balances in local government. In the same column, I also covered an apology by a Tulsa Whirled reporter to the Tulsa Minuteman Project for underestimated their numbers at a Cinco de Mayo counter-rally, and I make my recommendations for Absolute Best of Tulsa Spiritual Leader and Best Family Fun Spot.

MORE: Here's an interesting thread on a national police and law enforcement forum about the Tulsa Police Department and Taylor's criteria for a new chief. The pseudonymous officer posting there claims Taylor is only looking at female candidates. If true, it would be another example of Taylor putting left-wing politics ahead of the public interest.

This week's UTW column topic: The Mayor's proposed FY 2008 budget has been released, and it includes some unpleasant surprises. As the old arena is converted to ballroom space and the new arena isn't open yet, convention and arena revenues will vanish for the year, while start-up administrative costs appear with a vengeance. The net result: A $1.7 million hole in the General Fund, which the Mayor proposes to plug by shutting down 27 holes of golf and cutting a police academy, resulting in a net loss of officers. (The suggestion that golf savings will be funding northside pools is a smokescreen. The Mayor didn't actually say that that would happen, and in fact one fewer pool will be open this year than last.)

There was a typo -- my fault -- in the section of the column about the pools. Last year nine pools were open -- four funded by the city and five by private sponsorships, not four.

Also this week, a few thoughts on the result of Oklahoma's vote for a state quarter design. How did we miss out on an American Indian theme?

One of the images I suggest might have been a better choice is Willard Stone's sculpture "Exodus". Follow that link to see a picture of it.

Elsewhere in the current issue, Brian Ervin has a story on the problem of sinkholes caused not by geology but by aging underground sewer and stormwater pipes. (Take a look at the downtown stormwater management master plan -- it's in the government documents section at Central Library -- and note the section on "subsurface voids." That's where there's a gap between the relatively thin layer of concrete and asphalt and the solid ground beneath.)

The second installment to UTW's guide to summer events and activities is in this week's issue. Here's a link to the first installment.

Also, nominations are in order for Urban Tulsa Weekly's Absolute Best of Tulsa awards. Click the link to enter your choices online, or pull a ballot out of a paper copy and mail it in.

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly was a follow-on to Brian Ervin and Shannon O'Connell's story on the death of Eleazar Torres-Gomez in a dryer at Cintas's Tulsa laundry. My column explored the reasons why local media had downplayed this story and other local stories that received nationwide attention -- Jamal Miftah's expulsion from Tulsa's mosque, the OU suicide bomber, and the Tulsa Whirled's legal threats against this blog. Read the story, but here's a hint as to the answer: It's not a conspiracy, more a failure to see the forest for the trees.

Posted retrospectively on May 10, 2007, to complete the UTW archive category.

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is a farewell salute to KFAQ's Michael DelGiorno, who wrapped up his 17 years in Tulsa media last Friday and is now holding court on Nashville's WWTN:

Many readers' brains may explode as they read the following sentence, but it's true nevertheless: Politics and public dialogue in Tulsa are better off for Michael DelGiorno's tenure here.

Here's a bit of newspaper trivia you may find interesting. Writers don't write the headlines or cutlines for their stories. Those tasks are performed by a copy editor. At times the copy editor also adds text to provide a smoother transition between paragraphs or to provide some explanation that he feels the reader may need. Deadlines being what they are, I don't get a chance to see those changes before I see them in the paper. Those kind of edits don't happen often, but there was one this week. Here's what I submitted:

There was a niche to be filled, and DelGiorno, a conservative Republican and Southern Baptist, persuaded Journal Broadcast Group to let him step in and fill it.

Here's what's in the paper:

Until DelGiorno began to exploit the obvious. Just like some transplanted Tulsans discover fertile, virgin soil in untapped treasures (much as coffee table book author Michael Wallis discovered as he began cultivating interest in Route 66 with his "Mother Road,") there was a niche to be filled, and DelGiorno, a conservative Republican and Southern Baptist, persuaded Journal Broadcast Group to let him step in and fill it.

The phrase "began to exploit the obvious" reminds me of Roger Clemens's record-breaking 20 strikeouts in a game against the Seattle Mariners. Some baseball fans dismissed the accomplishment because Clemens did it against the worst team in the American League. But every other pitcher on every other team had faced Seattle. If it was so easy, why hadn't anyone done it yet?

As for Michael Wallis, I'm a fan, and as someone who loves Route 66, I'm glad he traveled the road and gathered stories and photos when he did -- so many of the people and places are gone now.

MORE: Here are my earlier thoughts, and the comments of other bloggers, about the changes at KFAQ. And Tennessee political blogger Bill Hobbs has taken note of DelGiorno's arrival in Nashville. (Also, Hobbs is looking for center-right political bloggers in Oklahoma. Drop your recommendations in his comment box. I've already sent along my list.)

(Also, fixed the number of Clemens's strikeouts. 19 in a nine-inning game was the record he beat, held by Steve Carlton, Tom Seaver, and Nolan Ryan.)

FOR NOW at least, you can still download the podcasts of Michael's farewell show, which included replays of many of the best radio cartoons from the show:

Preshow, Hour 1, Hour 2, and Hour 3

The song with which he ended the final broadcast, "Build It Anyway," by Martina McBride, was an appropriate and touching ending.

One of my favorite state senators, Randy Brogdon of Owasso, is profiled in the current issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. One of the many things I appreciate about him is that, unlike some Republicans, he believes that being pro-business means reducing government's burdens on all business, not providing special subsidies to politically favored businesses. When asked for examples of government waste, here's what he told UTW reporter Brian Ervin:

So, where is the government spending irresponsibly?

"Corporate welfare," answered Brogdon as an immediate example.

The governor's Opportunity Fund and EDGE Fund were specific examples he cited.

"It's not right for the state government to spend money to handpick which companies are going to prosper," he said. "If was governor and I was going to make that decision, I would set a level playing field and set up a free market."

Senator, are you announcing your candidacy for governor in 2010?

"Not today," answered Brogdon in mid-laugh.

I hope he will.

Elsewhere in the issue, sports columnist Dwayne Davis reviews a Tulsa and Muskogee-based sports talk station called the Sports Animal. This paragraph caught my eye:

[Host Geoff Haxton] is joined by local sports broadcasting legend Bob Carpenter and/or Channel 6's John Holcomb depending on the day of the week. It is refreshing to hear Tulsa talk from guys who understand the town.

Interesting note about Carpenter. For years he could be found on sports talk rival AM 1430 The Buzz. The 'Carpenter Call' was a staple of the afternoon show with Pop and Plank.

Dwayne is probably too young to remember this, but Bob Carpenter was a pioneer of local sports talk back in the late '70s, with his nightly hour of Sportsline on KRMG. (Sportsline was 6-7, Nightline with David Stanford was 7-8, then Johnny Martin came on with big band music until one o'clock in the morning.)

I missed this when it first ran two weeks ago, but Katharine Kelly gave a very good review to a Filipino restaurant called Phil-Asia, near 36th & Sheridan. We'll have to give it a try.

My Urban Tulsa Weekly column this week is on two very different events: last Saturday's Oklahoma Republican State Convention and last Friday's inaugural gala for the National Fiddler Hall of Fame. The convention story covers the race for state party chairman and a brief description of what delegates were saying about next year's presidential race. (More about the NFHOF gala in a separate entry.)

This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly, I take a look back at the decision of the Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority last fall to evict Bell's Amusement Park from the Tulsa County Fairgrounds. Although it's not a new story, the way the eviction was handled sheds some light on the question of the City of Tulsa's annexation of the Fairgrounds (to be decided this Thursday night by the City Council), currently an unincorporated enclave surrounded by the City of Tulsa. Expo Square management and TCPFA members have made a number of claims about the effects of annexation, and those claims need to be weighed in light of the board's credibility and transparency -- particularly the credibility of the three TCPFA members who were on the board prior to 2007.

Here's another doubtful decision: Last year the Tulsa State Fair reached the one million attendance mark for the first time in four years. In December, the 2006 Fair won six awards for Marketing and Competitive Exhibits at the International Association of Fairs and Expositions (IAFE) in Las Vegas. Amber Phillips, who was manager of the Tulsa State Fair in 2004, 2005, and 2006, overseeing increased attendance each year, didn't get to enjoy the fruits of her hard work and creativity, because Expo Square CEO Rick Bjorklund had fired Phillips a week earlier. (Officially, her position was eliminated in a "reorganization," but it's not as though they're going to stop having a Tulsa State Fair, and someone has to manage it.)

You can read more commentary and background about the Bell's eviction here (including an interesting look at Bjorklund's career trajectory). And this website has a number of articles on Bell's and other amusement parks in this region, including Frontier City and Joyland in Wichita. Here's his evaluation of what was done to Bell's.

I've gotten really sloppy about posting blog links to my Urban Tulsa Weekly column. In case I forget, you can always go directly to the urbantulsa.com home page and find a link under Columns. Articles from the new edition are posted on the website Wednesday morning. I will be adding retroactive links to previous articles so that you'll be able to find a complete archive listing here.

In any case, this week I consider the idea of moving City Hall to the Williams Communications Group building, aka the Borg Cube, aka One Technology Center. Our existing City Hall is inadequate and, to say the least, homely:

A couple of years ago, I was giving a tour of the city to a friend from New York. Despite her love of '60s pop music and fashion, the poorly-executed '60s architecture of City Hall left her cold. When I pointed out the place that occupies so much of my attention, she declared, "That is the ugliest city hall I have ever seen."

As you'll read, even Weird Al dissed our City Hall when he filmed a movie here. (In the service of researching this article, I had to watch UHF again. In the commentary track, Weird Al misidentifies the ersatz City Hall as the Christian Science church at 10th and Boulder -- it's the First Christian Church across the street at 9th and Boulder.)

The real City Hall entrance is gloomy and subterranean, beneath the Civic Center Plaza. In place of grand steps, there is a curb cut leading up a few inches from the main driveway through the parking lot. A set of automated sliding glass doors are framed by white-painted cinder blocks, on which is mounted the words "CITY HALL" in original-series Star Trek block lettering.

Also in this week's issue, Brian Ervin has a story on the anti-illegal-immigration proposal currently before the Oklahoma Legislature. Ervin does an excellent job of setting out the details of the bill, how it differs from last session's bill, what influences shaped the bill, and how changes in the balance of power have changed the prospects for passage. He spoke to proponents Rep. Randy Terrill and Sen. Jim Williamson and opponents Victor Orta and Ed Martinez and is very fair in representing both perspectives. (UTW has a real gem in Mr. Ervin.)

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is a salute to the late great western swing band leader Bob Wills. This weekend is the annual Bob Wills birthday celebration at Cain's Ballroom, so it seemed like an opportune time to explain, to Tulsans unfamiliar with his legacy, his importance to American music and Tulsa history, what make western swing music so much fun, and why everyone needs to get out to Cain's Friday and Saturday night to listen and dance to Bob Wills's Texas Playboys, led by vocalist Leon Rausch and Tommy Allsup, both veterans of the Texas Playboys in the '50s and '60s.

The line-up this weekend includes many veterans of the Texas Playboys and Johnnie Lee Wills's band: steel guitarist Bobby Koefer, who blew us all away last year at the Playboys' performance at the Osage Casino, fiddlers Curly Lewis and Jimmy Young, and Curly Hollingsworth on piano -- not to slight the other great musicians who'll be on stage, including fiddler Bob Boatright, trumpeter Mike Bennett, and trombonist Steve Ham.

Something I didn't mention in the article: A new western swing band will be playing Saturday night's performance: Oklahoma Stomp, a collection of 12 to 16-year-old musicians organized by Tulsa fiddler Shelby Eicher, in connection with the National Fiddler Hall of Fame.

FURTHER READING:

If you'd like to read something a bit more in-depth, but not book length, here's a good article about Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys from the Journal of Texas Music History.

Here's a BlogCritics review of the Legends of Country Music box set issued by Sony.

Here's a page about Leon Rausch with some of his solo recordings and recordings with Tommy Allsup and Bob Wills's Texas Playboys. And here's a page with the Texas Playboys upcoming tour dates. They're playing Lincoln Center in New York in June, part of the "Midsummer Night Swing" series of outdoor concerts and dances.

You'll find more links and some videos in BatesLine's Western Swing category.

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly wonders whatever happened to a couple of big plans for downtown: Global Development Partners' "East End" concept and Maurice Kanbar's plans to turn 20 downtown buildings into Soho on the Arkansas. (Hats off to the copy editor for the pithy headline.)

Also, on page 17 (you'll have to get the dead-tree edition or download the PDF from the website for this), UTW account exec Shannon O'Connell reveals -- among other things -- her pick for the best Arkansas River development ever.

Now, UTW is not just good for trenchant commentary and the annual swimsuit issue. I was looking for blog references to the paper, and I found this very nice testimonial to UTW's event listings, in which the blogger describes how they helped her break out of a routine and discover what Tulsa has to offer. I'm going to quote it at length, because it's so very good. There's even a plug for one of my favorite coffeehouses:

I have been scouring the internets for cheap or free things to do outside the house.

Actually, "scouring the internets" is not difficult, thanks to Urban Tulsa Weekly. Without this handy little publication, I would have no idea how much cool stuff I have been missing.

For instance. Thursday evenings, admission is free at the Philbrook Museum of Art. Tuesdays, I found TWO different places to play Scrabble. One is free, the other costs a whole dollar. This coming Sunday, Gilcrease Museum will be showing The Grapes of Wrath as part of their Centennial Film Series. Price? Free. How awesome is that?

The Tulsa Zoo is having Polar Bear Days, during which admission is halved on days when the forecasted temperature is below freezing. It is their way of boosting ticket sales while promoting their indoor (heated) exhibits.

I can learn to dance the tango at the Elks club. Waltzing and swing are taught at a local community center. Belly dancing is something I have been meaning to get back into for (cringe) years, and there are a couple of different options for that.

Dude, you can even take clogging lessons.

There is a silent film, The Black Pirate, being shown at the Tulsa Technology Center this Friday. Free.

There are at least SIX plays begging to be attended for less than ten bucks a pop.

Tulsa Spotlight Theatre has been running The Drunkard every Saturday night since 1953 or some such ridiculous thing. And I have never seen it! This needs to change.

Twice a month, the VFW hosts ballroom dancing.

I want to dance the tango with old men who can tell me war stories!

I want to play Scrabble with strangers! I do!

I want to go to museums and take beadwork classes and maybe learn a little conversational German.

I accept the fact that I am a nerdy, nerdy girl.

Aside: for Valentine's Day dessert, I picked up a slice of flourless torte yesterday at the Coffee House on Cherry Street. Less than three bucks for rich, chocolaty goodness. It went well with the Greek pizza we grabbed at the Pie Hole and washed down with a bottle of Rioja.

Right this minute, Tulsa is my favorite city ever. I just need to get out and explore it more.

So go check out those events listings and find something cheap, fun, and new to do this weekend!

This week's Urban Tulsa Weekly column is about the race for a seat on the Tulsa school board. Incumbent Gary Percefull, a PR consultant, is being challenged by Brenda Barre, a retired teacher with nearly 30 years of service at Tulsa's Booker T. Washington High School. The election is next Tuesday, and every voter in Tulsa school board district 1 should make plans to turnout and vote for Brenda Barre.

Blogger Jeff Shaw adds his own testimonial as a comment on the column:

Ms. Barre would make an excellent school board member. I'm confessing, she was my homeroom teacher at BTW, so I am a bit biased. She was a tough as nails educator with a soft heart for what's best for the kids. Since she taught at BTW, she knows all about excellence, which is what TPS needs; not a pack of legal eagles.

(By the way, Jeff's got a lot of new and interesting items on his blog, including an update on the proposed "East End" development. Be sure to click that link. And here's his blog entry endorsing Barre.)

Also in this week's edition, a cover story about Clifton Taulbert, author of Once upon a Time When We Were Colored, The Last Train North, and Eight Habits of the Heart. He'll be speaking on those eight habits this coming Tuesday at Holy Family Cathedral School, 8th and Boulder downtown.

There's some in depth local news coverage as well: A story on the management mess at Gilcrease Museum, interim City Attorney Deirdre Dexter (also cleaning up a mess in that office), and Senator Jim Inhofe and his stance on global warming.

Interesting point from the story about Dexter:

While Dexter was asked to serve as the interim city attorney for up to six months, she's currently in the middle of a process that city officials hope will make the legal department more effective for the people they represent. The first step in the search process for a new city attorney is to have all city department chiefs and city councilmen participate in a client survey.

"We want to know how they think the city attorney's office is doing, what can be done better and their ideas to fix problems," Dexter said. "We also want to be sure that our clients, who are the council and any city department, understand their relationship with the city attorney's office."

Some of the surveys, which were due back in Dexter's office last Friday, have shown a disconnect between the legal department and other city offices, she said.

"We've received good information that confirms some areas where we can better serve our clients," she said. "This survey information will also be helpful for whoever is hired to fill this position and it allows me to take some steps that would make their transition even easier."

It's seemed to me that the City Attorney's office long ago forgot who its client was, so I'm encouraged that this process is underway. (There are some very good individual attorneys in that office, I hasten to add, but I don't want to shorten their careers by praising them.) I was surprised when Mayor Taylor named Deirdre Dexter to this position, but she's an excellent choice.

The big story I've been working on is finally in print. This week's Urban Tulsa Weekly cover story is the epic tale of a century -- yes, a century -- of Tulsa's plans to do something interesting with the Arkansas River.

This story was a blast to research. UTW's Holly Wall and Siara Jacobs rounded up copies of articles and documents from the 1968 and 1976 plans from the very helpful folks at the River Parks Authority. I spent hours paging through Central Library's "vertical files" and repository of old planning documents. I had far more material than I could use. I was helped immensely by a conversation with architect Rex Ball, whose firm developed the 1968 River Lakes Park plan, and by my long acquaintance with Jim Hewgley III, who was Streets Commissioner when the Zink Lake low-water dam was built by Mayor Jim Inhofe.

It's my intention to scan and upload much of the research material and to provide some sort of bibliography to help anyone else who might want to do further research.

In the story I mention a river concept presented very briefly in a 1959 document called A Plan for Central Tulsa:

A page of that study was devoted to "The Marina," a concept for the river between 11th and 21st Streets. The accompanying illustration showed an artificial lagoon for boats near 15th and Riverside, a floating restaurant and boat club just to the south, a "picnic island" accessible by pedestrian bridge just to the north, and a larger island, accessible only by boat, where the west bank used to be.

Yes, used to be. The drawing showed the river almost twice as wide as its existing width at the 21st Street bridge, backed up by a dam at some unspecified location downstream, with the new shoreline just below the west bank levee. The resemblance to last year's "The Channels" plan is uncanny.

I took a photograph of the illustration so you can see for yourself. It's not as sharp as I'd like, but I think you can make it out. Click on the image to see it in its original size.

(Notice that in 1959, the location of the Inner Dispersal Loop, seen along the top of the diagram, has already been determined, although it wouldn't be completed until nearly 25 years later.)

My column this week is also about Tulsa history:

Oklahoma's centennial year ought to be a year when all Oklahomans -- natives and newcomers alike -- encounter our state's history in a way that engages our imaginations. While every year is a good year to study Oklahoma history, this is a year that ought to be hallowed to that purpose, a year for remembering where we came from and how we got to where we are today.

The June unearthing of the buried Belvedere fulfills that purpose quite well. I propose extending that glimpse back 50 years with the Tulsa 1957 project, which I launched here a while back and explain in detail in the column. I also mention a couple of websites which are helping to capture everyday life in Tulsa as it was. (But I neglected to mention Jack Frank's wonderful Tulsa Films series, which uses TV footage and home movies to bring decades past back to life.)

Also this week UTW gives a rave review to the source of the coffee and quesadillas that helped fuel my 6,000-word feature story. Katharine Kelly gives the Coffee House on Cherry Street five stars each for food, atmosphere, and service.

RELATED: A pretty thorough outline history of the Arkansas River in the Tulsa area.

This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly, I've written about the historic preservation issues surrounding the proposed 85-room boutique hotel to be built on the grounds of the McBirney Mansion on Riverside Drive. The entire facility is under a special scenic, open space, and facade easement, a kind of conservation easement held by the City of Tulsa and the Oklahoma Historical Society. (Here is a PDF with the text of the easement.) The column explains what a preservation easement is, what restrictions this easement specifically places on the property, and who would be involved in any decision to change the terms of the easement.

Conservation easements can be used to protect a place's historical character, ecological qualities, or archeological artifacts. When a conservation easement is used specifically for historic preservation, it is usually called a preservation easement.

Donation of a preservation easement on a recognized historical property can qualify the donor for a tax benefit. You can read more about preservation easements on the websites of the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Park Service (which oversees certification of historic properties for the National Register of Historic Places.)

The state law governing easements generally is 60 O.S. 49. Among other things, you can own an easement entitling you to a seat in church.

In 1999, the Oklahoma legislature adopted the Uniform Conservation Easement Act, which is codified as 60 O. S. 49.1 through 49.8.

Our new County Commissioners, John Smaligo and Fred Perry, will be sworn in this morning at 9:30 at the Tulsa County Courthouse, in Room 119 of the Administration Building at 6th & Denver. It's a good time to show your support and appreciation for a change in direction for County government and an end to the empire-building that characterized the commissioners that are leaving office.

My Urban Tulsa Weekly column, out today, is a salute, of sorts, to outgoing Commissioners Bob Dick and Wilbert Collins, a look at their legacy and at the kind of changes we hope the new commissioners will make.

One issue that the new County Commissioners will face, although the decision is ultimately out of their hands (the City can act unilaterally, under state law), is the possibility of the City annexing the Tulsa County Fairgrounds, aka Expo Square.

Contrary to some statements that this land has ever been unincorporated territory, subject only to the jurisdiction of Tulsa County, in looking back at old maps as part of some other research, I've found confirmation of the fact that large parts of the Fairgrounds have been within the city limits of Tulsa at various times in the past.

The overview map for the 1932 Sanborn Fire Map of Tulsa (I can't link to it directly, but if you're a Tulsa Library card holder, you can access it over the Internet) shows the western two-thirds (160 acres more or less) of the Fairgrounds within the City of Tulsa. That area included all the developed parts of the fairgrounds, including the International Petroleum Exposition grounds (where the Expo building is now), the Pavilion, cattle barns, and other buildings.

(UPDATE: This link will take you right to the map, zoomed in to the Fairgrounds and its surroundings. If you're not already logged in to the library website, you'll first be taken to a screen to type in your last name and Tulsa Library card number. You can use the arrow icons to pan around to other parts of the map, including the bottom where you'll see the date of the map. And here's a link to a PDF version of the same map. Sheet 317, showing the detail of the fairgrounds, is here. Keep in mind that the racetrack and grandstand shown on the map was just east of where the half-demolished Exchange Building now is, an area which is now a parking lot for Fair Meadows.)

Then there was an article in the January 16, 1960, Tulsa Tribune, about the changes in the city limits over the previous decade. (You can find it in the annexation vertical file at Central Library, and it's also reproduced in a City Council report on annexation from a couple of years ago.) The map accompanying the story shows an area apparently west of New Haven Ave from 17th Street to 21st and west of Pittsburgh (the mid-section line) between 15th & 17th Street as within the City of Tulsa in 1950, but out of the city in 1960, except for a very small tract around the city water tower at 21st and Louisville. This would have been about 60 acres of land. The story says:

A section of the Tulsa County Fairgrounds (located at Yale Ave. and 21st St.) is the only area which was disannexed from the 1950 limits.

Owned by the county, the fairgrounds usually is not considered for annexation to the city, but special problems have caused it to come and go from the city limits.

Annexed to permit construction of Veterans' Village following the war, it was removed from the city after the buildings in the Village were removed.

City Engineer W. R. Wooten recalled the same area was taken in and then thrown out again some years earlier when horse racing was a debatable activity there.

"The city wouldn't permit the betting," Wooten recalls, "so the area was disannexed. Horse racing finally was ended by calling out of the National Guard."

The story doesn't say when the disannexation occurred, but a 1957 Rand McNally map shows the section I described above as still within the city limits.

I've had this idea of trying to capture life in Tulsa as it was in a particular year, before freeways, urban renewal, and the flight to the suburbs began to change it. It's hard to believe today, but Tulsa was once one of the twenty most densely populated large cities in the nation. It might help us reimagine what a revived, dense urban core for Tulsa would look like if we could get a vivid picture of what Tulsa's urban core looked like when it was dense and full of life. It seems a fitting project for our state's centennial year.

For this thought experiment, I picked 1957 as the target year. That was the year of the state's semi-centennial. The new County Courthouse had opened and the first massive redevelopment project -- the Civic Center, originally just four blocks between Denver and Frisco, 4th & 6th -- was just beginning to take shape. Early suburban neighborhoods and shopping centers, like my own Mayo Meadow, had been opened. The city's first freeway plan was drawn up -- it still isn't finished, and part of it never will be. A master parks plan called for a massive park along 71st Street from the river stretching through the hills to the east. In June 1957, a Reader's Digest article about Tulsa mentions that Tulsa had taken to calling itself "America's Most Beautiful City." 1957 is recent enough to be in living memory -- childhood for the early Baby Boomers, high school and young adulthood for my parents' generation -- but distant enough to be a very different world.

While I wanted to fix on a particular year for the sake of creating a snapshot in time, reminiscences from earlier and later years, like the memories of the early '60s at Riverview School, will help to make the picture vivid.

I'd like to flesh out this idea with maps -- big maps showing where the city limits were, little maps showing the stores, schools, and churches in a neighborhood -- photographs, news stories, and lots of personal reminiscences. The Sanborn Fire Maps, the city directory, the phone book, and newspaper ads can be used to help refresh and correct those reminiscences.

(It would be a big help if someone had software that could be used to create a base street map of Tulsa and environs in 1957.)

I'm not only interested in the memories of Tulsans, but also those of people who lived in surrounding towns, rural Tulsa County communities (like Alsuma, Lynn Lane, Union, Rentie Grove), and outlying Oklahoma towns like Nowata and Tahlequah who remember trips to the big city as a big deal.

This idea is inspired in part by a cartoon map that appeared in the very first issue of Urban Tulsa. The map showed the adventures of a group of boys, maybe 10-12 years old, who took the bus into downtown Tulsa on a Saturday morning in the early '60s -- they saw a movie, explored the seedier parts of downtown, had a Coke at a soda fountain, browsed through comic books. The map promised "To be continued" but it never was. Those are the sort of memories I'm hoping to capture.

I wasn't around in 1957, and I can't devote a lot of time to this, so I'm looking for help. Anyone interested?

What makes Cherry Street (15th between Peoria and Utica) the lovely place it is, maybe the nicest street in Tulsa? This week's Urban Tulsa Weekly column tries to distill the essence of Cherry Street so that we can learn and apply the right lessons from its success.

Also in UTW this week:

• Jamie Pierson writes about the Towerview building and eminent domain abuse, and argues that the big developments enabled by eminent domain land assembly don't have the staying power of a downtown resurrected by small, individual efforts.
• A look back at the best and worst of 2006: You'll have to look at the hardcopy edition to see a photo accompanying this article that made me laugh out loud.
• Gary Hizer has a guide to live music leading up to and including New Year's Eve. We may go hear Cairde na Gael at Arnie's.

The developer of the Branson Landing riverfront mixed-use development has expressed interest in developing the west bank of the Arkansas River between 11th & 21st Street, and that's the topic of my latest column in Urban Tulsa Weekly. I reflect on a recent visit to Branson Landing and to a startlingly similar (but non-waterfront) development in the Florida panhandle called Destin Commons and consider how well that sort of thing might fit on our west bank.

Also of note in this week's UTW:

• Holly Wall reports on plans to build an 85-room boutique hotel on the grounds of the historic McBirney Mansion at Riverside and Galveston. It's an interesting approach that seems to try to be sensitive to the historical context, but the neighborhood impact has to be considered, rezoning would be required, and there are preservation easements, donated by the owners to the City of Tulsa and the Oklahoma State Historic Preservation Office, that prohibit the kind of development being proposed.
• Jarrod Gollihare has a feature story on the Tulsa Violin Shop, on Main north of Brady downtown. There's more to getting a violin or cello ready to play and keeping it playable than you might think.

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is about Jamal Miftah and his treatment by leaders of the Islamic Society of Tulsa's al-Salam ("Peace") mosque over his guest editorial in the October 29 Tulsa World. (Here's a link to the text of his op-ed.)

The same issue has another letter from Miftah, in which he makes the case from the Qu'ran that the Holy Land belongs to the Jews, and that means that Palestinian attacks on Israel cannot be justified as jihad. (It's on a page with the rest of the letters, so scroll down once you click to it.)

In the story I link to eteraz.org, a blog and web community for progressive Muslim activism. Ali Eteraz interviewed Jamal Miftah and has written several more articles about the situation. Another site of interest is the Free Muslims Coalition:

The Free Muslims Coalition is a nonprofit organization made up of American Muslims and Arabs of all backgrounds who feel that religious violence and terrorism have not been fully rejected by the Muslim community in the post 9-11 era.

The Free Muslims was created to eliminate broad base support for Islamic extremism and terrorism and to strengthen secular democratic institutions in the Middle East and the Muslim World by supporting Islamic reformation efforts.

The Free Muslims promotes a modern secular interpretation of Islam which is peace-loving, democracy-loving and compatible with other faiths and beliefs. The Free Muslims' efforts are unique; it is the only mainstream American-Muslim organization willing to attack extremism and terrorism unambiguously. Unfortunately most other Muslim leaders believe that in terrorist organizations, the end justifies the means.

Here's an interesting piece from their blog about the two faces of Saudi Arabia -- is it friend or foe to the West?

So is the Saudi Arabian government a friend of the United States or does Saudi Arabia propagate hate and intolerance among American Muslims and Muslims world wide? The answer to both of these questions is yes. The Saudi Arabian government is a great friend to the United States and at the same time many in Saudi Arabia, including some who receive government funding propagate hate and intolerance against anyone who does not share their Wahabi inspired ideology. The answers to both these questions may seem inconsistent and counter intuitive but these seemingly inconsistent answers reflect the complexity of modern day Saudi Arabia.

By now everyone has heard of the historic compact between the Saudi Royal Family and the fanatical Wahabi religious establishment. According to this agreement, the Saudi Royal family deals exclusively with matters of state while the Wahabi religious establishment deals with issues of morality which includes substantial control over the education system and the substantive interpretation of Islam. It is this division of power that produces the two faces of Saudi Arabia.

As long as my column is this week, I've got much more material that I didn't use, particularly from my interview with Jamal Miftah, and I have more research to do on Saudi funding of Islamic organizations in the West. I hope to get this material out here on BatesLine or in UTW.

Urban Tulsa Weekly has a bright and shiny new website!

All the links in my archive category are now broken! But it's worth it! (And they'll be easy enough to fix -- it will just take time.)

(There's a really simple forwarding trick they could do to fix all the broken links on the server side.)

Here's this week's column, part 6 in the series dealing with The Channels proposal, this week asking about the best way to create a more pedestrian-friendly city, learning a lesson from the success of a waterfront development in Florida.

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is a report and commentary on the public comment session of the Arkansas River Corridor Master Plan Advisory Committee regarding The Channels, held a week ago Tuesday, October 3, at OSU-Tulsa.

The copy editor is evidently bored with the topic, as my column was given the headline Poltergeist X. (It's actually the fifth column in a row that has had something to do with the islands-in-the-Arkansas plan.)

I, on the other hand, feel like I've found my muse again. It's not that I'm smitten by The Channels (which should be obvious), but the proposal has given me a jumping-off point to talk about many other important issues: How do we create interesting and lively urban places? What makes for walkable communities? What should we be doing to compete for population with other cities and with our own suburbs? What do we mean when we say we want river development?

I've uploaded several audio files and will be uploading more over the course of the evening, along with comments. This first group were mentioned in this week's column, so that you can hear for yourself what was said. These are all MP3 files, each less than 1 MB in size.

• Facilitator Gaylon Pinc explains the format for the evening.
• Pinc explains that answering questions would allow things to "get out of hand."
• Debbie Sanditen of changethechannels.com reads a letter of concern from the Oklahoma Floodwater Management Association.
• Richard Baldwin, a property owner along the north bank of the river west of downtown, explains the effect of high river levels on land north of the levee and on the river's tributary creeks.
• Architect Dan Hicks describes his alternative proposal for development on the west bank of the river.
• W. K. Warren, Jr., declares that Tulsa is a backwater community and says, “I don’t want to give $10 million dollars to something and hear a bunch of naysayers.”
• Attorney Mike Redman discounts Hicks' plan because it lacks a presentation as slick as that produced for The Channels.
• Tamara Daniel touts The Channels as a cure for Oklahoma's obesity epidemic.
• Flood control expert Ron Flanagan says that we ought to handle unfunded higher-priority projects to take water out of the flood plan, rather than using tax dollars to build new land in the floodway.
• The next to last speaker, Josh Walker, describes the concerns raised at the meeting as "ignorant statements."

Also, don't miss my colleague Jamie Pierson's column, which covers the history of the relationship between Tulsa and the Arkansas, up to and including the Arkansas River Master Corridor Plan.

In the previous issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly, I wrote that when Tulsans say they want river development, they are really seeking a lively promenade, a place to see people and to be seen. This week, I propose a way to make that kind of bustling promenade happen along the banks of the river between 11th and 21st Street, working within the existing river master plan.

I'd be very interested in your comments on this concept, and to that end I've started this thread over at The Voice of Tulsa forum.

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is about The Channels proposal to dam the Arkansas River and build three islands in the middle of it, at a cost to the taxpayers of $600 million. I suggest that the $100 million in private funds could be used more effectively using Roberta Brandes Gratz's "Urban Husbandry" strategy -- identifying positive signs of urban life and building on those, rather than trying to create something out of nothing with one big Project Plan.

And over on The Voice of Tulsa forum, I've posted another topic related to river development: When you say you want river development, what exactly are you after? You're invited to click the link and speak your mind.

This week's UTW column begins with an imaginary letter from the Convention and Visitors Bureau to delegates to the 2008 National Preservation Conference, inviting delegates to admire the parking lots where historic buildings used to stand.

Don’t miss the site of the Skelly Building on the northeast corner of 4th and Boulder, designed by famed architect Bruce Goff, now an exclusive deluxe gated, 12-space parking community owned by the Tulsa World.

More specifically it's about the CORE Tulsa recommendations for historical preservation in downtown Tulsa (PDF document) and the hysterical response of certain downtown property owners, who don't recognize the obligation placed upon them by the enormous amount of public investment that has boosted their property values:

We didn’t pay all that money to accelerate the conversion of downtown to an enormous surface parking lot. The express purpose of much of that public investment is the revitalization of downtown. Many Tulsans want a downtown where historic buildings are protected, a downtown that is an attractive and interesting place to walk around, not a downtown that looks like the Woodland Hills Mall parking lot. Every time a property owner knocks a building down for surface parking, it devalues that public investment. It is legitimate and reasonable for local government to protect that investment with modest regulations.

One of the organizations who complained about the CORE recommendations gets a new nickname: Downtown Tulsa Unlamented. (I couldn't find this in the Whirled archives, but I seem to recall reading an article about the demolition of the old Cadillac dealership in south Boston, in which a DTU official was quoted as saying that no one would miss that old building. Anyone else recall that?)

(Added on September 30, 2006, to fill in the gaps in my Urban Tulsa Weekly column archive.)

This week in UTW, my column is about the two Republican runoffs for Tulsa County Commission, between State Rep. John Smaligo and former Tulsa City Councilor Anna Falling in Commission District 1, and between State Rep. Fred Perry and City Councilor Bill Christiansen in Commission District 3.

(Added on September 30, 2006, to fill in the gaps in my Urban Tulsa Weekly column archive.)

The response of the downtown building owners and their lobbyists to proposals for downtown historic preservation is ironic, with their talk of capital and free markets. I didn't hear any of them suggest that it was a violation of capitalism to tax groceries to pay for a venue for privately-owned, for-profit sports teams and musical acts, or to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars to boost their property values.

Up in my linkblog, I linked to a speech by Donovan D. Rypkema, who describes himself as a "crass, unrepentant, real estate capitalist Republican type." The speech is about the rationale and legitimacy of land-use regulation. In particular, he addresses the assertion that land use regulation constitutes a taking for which a property owner should be compensated.

One paragraph in the speech seemed especially relevant to the debate over downtown historic preservation:

Most of the value of an individual parcel of real estate comes from beyond the property lines from the investments others � usually taxpayers � have made. And land use controls are an appropriate recompense for having publicly created that value.

Think about public investment in downtown Tulsa. Tulsa County taxpayers are investing over a quarter-billion dollars in downtown through Vision 2025. City of Tulsa taxpayers have invested tens or maybe hundreds of millions through bond issues and the third-penny -- building Main Mall, removing it, providing incentives to downtown residential development, acquiring land for the Williams Center through eminent domain, streetscaping, changing streets from one-way to two-way, etc. Then there's the federal and state investment in the highway network that connects downtown with the rest of the metro area.

The express purpose of much of that public investment is the revitalization of downtown. Many Tulsans want a downtown where historic buildings are protected, a downtown that is an attractive and interesting place to walk around, not a downtown that looks like the Woodland Hills Mall parking lot.

Every time a property owner knocks a building down for surface parking, it devalues that public investment. It is legitimate and reasonable for local government to protect that investment with modest regulations.

In my column in last week's issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly, I wrote about the many ways that Oklahoma City uses land-use regulation to protect strategic and historical parts of the city, such as the Northeast Gateway and Bricktown. Special districts have been established, with rules and processes specific to each. Bricktown and other older commercial districts, such as NW 23rd St., are under urban design review, which affects major exterior renovation, new construction, and demolition, to ensure consistency with the character of the neighborhood, protecting public investment and the investment of neighboring building owners.

A few years ago, the Urban Design Commission denied three applications to demolish the Gold Dome at 23rd and Classen, a geodesic dome originally built as a bank. The building is now being used for offices and a multicultural center to anchor the city's Asian District.

In 2002, I went on a Tulsa Now bus tour of Oklahoma City, and for part of the ride then-Mayor Kirk Humphreys was our tour guide. I asked him how they convinced developers to go along with restrictions on what they could do with their property. He said that the City pointed out how many millions of dollars the City had invested in that area (the canal, the ballpark, the Ford Center, and more), and that it was reasonable for the City to take steps to protect its investment.

Paul Wilson, one of the property owners who was quoted as complaining about the preservation recommendations in the Whirled's story, was a member of the Dialog/Visioning Leadership Team, the group that put together the Vision 2025 sales tax package. He and his business associates had been pushing for a new taxpayer-funded sports arena since the mid '90s. The last time I checked land records downtown, firms connected to Wilson owned a significant amount of land along Denver Avenue between Highway 51 and the arena site.

No one is proposing to take his land away from him, but now that the City has given him so much of what he asked for, and has significantly improved the value of his investments, it is reasonable for the city to insist that he act in a way that upholds the value of the taxpayers' investment.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

This week's UTW column is about the University of Tulsa's aggressive expansion policies, facilitated by the City of Tulsa's abuse of eminent domain on TU's behalf. Not only is it an immoral use of state coercion, it's a violation of the Oklahoma Constitution and bad urban design. I point to the Savannah College of Art and Design as a better example of how to build an urban campus that enhances both the city and the college experience, "the kind of imaginative win-win solution that never seems to occur to Tulsa’s leaders."

If you're looking for more commentary on the election come back later tonight. I'm beat after hitting six watch parties last night (Anna Falling, John Sullivan, Jim Caputo, Tim Harris, J. Anthony Miller, Chris Medlock), then getting up to help with the primary post-mortem.

(Best watch party food award goes to District Judge candidate Jim Caputo, who had barbecue from Albert G.'s, one of the few places in town that offers sliced smoked pork.)

In the meantime, here's a link to this week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly. It's about a study, by Conventions, Sports, and Leisure, International, of the feasibility of a new downtown Tulsa convention hotel. The current issue also includes stories about the over-budget arena bailout, the City's process for parceling out Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) money, and a feature story about the Tulsa Talons cheerleaders.

I'll be on 1170 KFAQ with Michael DelGiorno and Gwen Freeman starting at 6:10 a.m. this morning for a special primary election preview.

For your voting convenience, here are the endorsements I've made in statewide and local Republican races and the non-partisan judicial races, starting with the top of the ballot:

Governor: State Sen. James Williamson is the most experienced and knowledgable candidate in the race, the best qualified to be Governor of Oklahoma -- incumbent Brad Henry included. Williamson has been a leader in the legislature for fiscal restraint, meaningful lawsuit reform, and the protection of the sanctity of human life.

Lt. Governor: Can't really go wrong in this primary -- all three candidates are good people, and it grieves me to see the mud flying back and forth. State Sen. Scott Pruitt has the biggest vision for the office, taking full advantage of the powers of the office to advance a conservative vision for Oklahoma.

State Treasurer: Dan Keating has already demonstrated that he'll be a watchdog for the taxpayers' interests by calling attention to the problems created by the Henry-Meacham tribal tobacco compacts. Howard Barnett's vocal support for the anti-democratic at-large city councilor proposal shows an appreciation for clubby insider politics, an attitude that we don't need in the office that invests our state's financial assets.

State Insurance Commissioner: I'm not bowled over by either candidate, but Tahl Willard seems to have more relevant experience, including a stint as the Insurance Department's Regional Director for Eastern Oklahoma and manager of the Tulsa office, along with an impressive set of insurance certifications. His opponent, Bill Case, is a term-limited State Rep. who was nominated for the Oklahoma Conservative PAC's RINO (Republican in Name Only) award every year for the last five, winning once.

U. S. Representative, District 1: On fiscal and social issues, on border security and national security, Congressman John Sullivan has been as consistent a conservative as you could want on the full range of congressional issues.

State Senate, District 36: There's more to Joe Lester than a catchy jingle. His newspaper articles reveal an intelligent, principled conservatism, and he would bring almost 40 years of law enforcement experience (U. S. Army MP, City of Tulsa, University of Oklahoma) to the Legislature.

State House, District 68: Incumbent Chris Benge is the best choice for another term.

State House, District 69: Former City Councilor Chris Medlock would bring a needed perspective to the Legislature. He's a conservative who understands the impact that state government has on Oklahoma's largest cities. As I wrote a couple of months ago: "I think Chris would make an excellent legislator. The Republican caucus needs more members who will keep it committed to conservative and free-market principles. Chris Medlock understands that being pro-business means providing an environment in which all businesses can thrive, not making special deals for special interests."

State House, District 76: John Wright is another incumbent with a strong conservative record who deserves re-election.

District Attorney, District No. 14 (Tulsa County): Despite declining arrests, eight-year incumbent Tim Harris has put away a record number of bad guys, focusing his department's resources on the cases that matter most. Challenger Brett Swab's campaign is grounded in misleading presentation of facts. One attorney asked me, rhetorically, if Swab will twist the facts to win his "case" against Harris, will he twist the facts to win in court?

Tulsa County Commission, District 1: Former City Councilor Anna Falling hasn't lost any of her enthusiasm and drive, but her leadership of a faith-based outreach to Tulsa's needy has smoothed off some of the rough edges. Tulsa County government needs someone willing to move beyond the way things have always been done and someone who will look out for the taxpayers' interests first.

Tulsa County Commission, District 3: State Rep. Fred Perry is the most consistent conservative in this race, and his rapport with grassroots Republicans and legislative leaders will serve Tulsa County well. Any of the other three candidates would likely mean a continuation of good ol' business as usual at the County Courthouse.

District Judge, District 14, Office 4:: Collinsville Municipal Judge Jim Caputo is my pick for this office, which is on the ballot only in northern and eastern Tulsa County.

District Judge, District 14, Office 10:: There are a number of good candidates in this race, but I've known J. Anthony Miller for over a decade as an elder in our church. I am confident that Miller has the experience, temperament, and prudence to be an excellent district judge.

Tulsa County Election Board has posted sample ballots for every precinct.

In addition to the above elections, Berryhill Fire Protection District has a vote on whether to expand its territory, and the Town of Skiatook is voting on a 10-year extension to a one-cent sales tax.

Here are links to my election preview columns from Urban Tulsa Weekly:

The Tulsa County judicial races
The statewide races
The Tulsa County legislative races
The Tulsa County DA and Commission races

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly puts the claims made by District Attorney challenger Brett Swab against incumbent DA Tim Harris under a forensic examiner's microscope. There's also a brief discussion of the two Tulsa County Commission races on the Republican primary ballot.

My wife and I attended the Urban Tulsa Weekly Absolute Best of Tulsa party tonight at The Hive. It was too loud and too smoky, and nearly everyone was way younger than us, but it was fun to get to chat with other UTW writers and staffers, like publisher Keith Skrzypczak, music writer G. K. Hizer, arts writer Claudette Lancaster, reporter Ginger Shepherd, and our newest columnist, Jamie Pierson. We saw City Councilor Roscoe Turner (last year's most believable councilor), his wife Nancy, and Christie Breedlove (who took that wonderful inauguration day photo of the Bates family).

A number of restaurants were there with samples -- nachos, cuban sandwiches, sushi, baklava, pizza -- and there were free drinks galore. Since I already felt like I was teetering from heat and fatigue, I didn't have anything stronger than water.

We ran into Rick Boltinghouse -- he and I sang together in the Concert Chorus and Madrigal Singers in high school. Rick owns and operates the Daylight Donuts in the old Shaw's Drive-In at 31st and Yale. He estimates that he's made 14 million donuts in his career. He said they're in the process of upgrading the building, expanding the menu, and expanding the hours.

The Absolute Best of Tulsa issue hits the streets tomorrow morning, so tonight the winners of UTW's reader poll were unveiled. Categories include politicians and business people, restaurants, specialty shops, night clubs, and entertainers. This year's most believable councilor isn't on the council any more: Chris Medlock. Bill LaFortune got the most reader votes in the "Local Weasel" category, but Kathy Taylor finished second. I'll link to the ABOT story once it's online.

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is about Tulsa-area legislative primaries, particularly about the most hotly contested race, the Republican primary to replace Fred Perry in House District 69, which includes far south Tulsa, Jenks, a bit of Bixby, and the northern part of Glenpool.

One of the emerging issues in that race involves the proposed toll bridge across the Arkansas River that would connect south Tulsa near 121st Street to Jenks and Bixby. Although Fred Jordan got a tremendous headstart in the campaign, helped by $100,000 in contributions, largely from the development industry, Jordan is losing ground as south Tulsa voters learn that he is in favor of the toll bridge as proposed by Infrastructure Ventures Inc.

The South Tulsa Citizens' Coalition asked all five Republican candidates to sign a representation opposing the bridge. The representation states that the candidate will not support a bridge until certain intersections and streets connecting to the bridge have been widened, will oppose any heavy truck traffic on Yale between 121st and the Creek Turnpike, and won't support the north end of the bridge connecting to or near Yale Avenue. Chris Medlock, Lisa DeBolt, and Jeff Applekamp have all signed these letters, and Medlock was a leader while on the City Council in getting city officials on record in opposition to the bridge. (Here is a PDF of Medlock's representation letter.)

Fred Jordan and Darrell Gwartney have refused to sign the representation, which Jordan calls, "a highly restrictive and legalistic 'pledge' committing [his opponents] to oppose the bridge under any reasonable circumstances." (Here is a PDF of Fred Jordan's statement to the STCC.) I'm sure STCC members would object to the characterization of the preconditions, which I summarized above, as unreasonable.

Jordan, who has been vague on the issue until now, has started to lose supporters to Chris Medlock. (Although there are two other candidates who oppose the bridge, they are trailing far behind Jordan and Medlock. Neither DeBolt nor Applekamp are likely to make the runoff.) A couple of days ago I spoke to Kari Romoser, who lives near 111th and Yale, an area that would feel the traffic impact if the bridge is connected to Yale. She had Fred Jordan's sign in her yard, but she recently pulled it up and replaced it with a Chris Medlock sign.

Jordan's position on the bridge issue wasn't the only reason for Kari's change, but it was an important reason. Her family has invested a lot to be in this part of Tulsa so that they can send their children to Jenks Southeast Elementary School. Anything that would hurt the value of their home or affect safe access to the school is important to her.

Jordan's company, Caprock Resources, is developing three residential areas along Elm (Peoria) in south Jenks. Two of them, Wakefield Pond and Wakefield Village, are along 121st St., in an area that would benefit from the proposed bridge without bearing a significant traffic impact. (For he folks north of the bridge in south Tulsa along Yale, the traffic impact would far outweigh any convenience benefit.)

So far, the toll bridge has been a local issue, involving Tulsa County and the cities of Jenks and Tulsa, so why does it matter what a state representative thinks about the issue? In his statement, Jordan says that, "to my knowledge, there is no pending or proposed action in the legislature relating to the bridge."

In fact, there was a measure in the Legislature this session which passed the House but was killed in the Senate that would have had an effect on the toll bridge deal. The process has raised all kinds of issues that the Legislature may address at some point: Should counties and cities be able to enter into private toll bridge deals of this sort? Who has ownership and jurisdiction over the Arkansas River bed? Whose approval is needed to build a private toll bridge? Should private toll roads and toll bridges be legal? Should the jurisdiction responsible for connecting infrastructure have a say in whether a toll bridge is built? When a city and the county, or two adjacent cities, are at odds over a bridge, who makes the final decision?

As we learned with the Board of Adjustment legislation (SB 1324, HB 2559) this session, it won't be enough to have the Tulsa City Council on our side, because the Legislature could take away the City's say on this contentious issue. It will be important for south Tulsa residents to have someone in the Legislature who will represent their interests on this matter, someone with the savvy to detect and block any attempt to bypass Tulsa's city government.

In last week's Urban Tulsa Weekly I reviewed the two District Judge races on the July 25 ballot in Tulsa County, explaining why there is frustratingly little information available to ordinary voters in most judicial elections and making my recommendations in support of James Caputo for Office 4 and J. Anthony Miller for Office 10.

I have left comments open on an earlier entry about the judicial races, so feel free to click through that link and chime in there. And you may also want to review this entry on how district court elections work in Tulsa County.

This week's column takes a look at the four Republican primaries for statewide offices and the local 1st Congressional District race.

(Added on September 30, 2006, to fill in the gaps in my Urban Tulsa Weekly column archive.)

The final report from Tulsa's Citizens' Commission on City Government is the topic of this week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly. The commission, appointed by then-Mayor Bill LaFortune last December, finished on schedule, made some constructive recommendations, including a recommendation against adding at-large seats to the City Council.

You can find the full text of the Citizens' Commission on City Government report on the Tulsans Defending Democracy website.

Also in this week's UTW, Ginger Shepherd covers the new Tulsa Public Schools superintendent, downtown revitalization in Muskogee, the recently passed City of Tulsa budget, and the sweet no-bid contract Murphy Bros. got to continue to run the Tulsa State Fair midway.

The story quotes Jerry Murphy, owner of Murphy Bros.:

Murphy added, �why would you fire someone that is doing a good job?� and been doing it for a long time?

In fact, the midway has been a disappointment for a long time, and Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority (TCPFA -- the fair board) members owed it to the public to see if another operator couldn't bring better, more reliable rides for better prices, but instead they continued the Tulsa County practice of awarding contracts to insiders without competition. Jerry Murphy's wife, Loretta Murphy, contributed $5,000 to the mayoral campaign of County Commissioner Randi Miller, who is also a member of the TCPFA and voted to approve the contract with Murphy Bros.

This week's column in UTW is about Mayor Kathy Taylor's first batch of appointments to city authorities, boards, and commissions (ABCs), particularly the appointment of Jim Beach to the Board of Adjustment, a move that has drawn opposition from neighborhood leaders and may provoke the end of Taylor's honeymoon. Taylor's appointment of Steve Berlin, a Great Plains Airlines board member, to the TARE board is also controversial.

Yesterday, long after I filed the story, I got word that the Taylor administration had pulled Beach's appointment off of this Thursday's Council agenda, and in fact it is missing from the online agenda, while the other appointments are still present.

Someone has said that any appointment to the Board of Adjustment is bound to be controversial, and that's true. You're almost certain to upset either the development lobby or the homeowners' groups. You have to choose which group you want to please and which group you want to anger, and Kathy Taylor has chosen to please the development lobby and anger neighborhood leaders with her first pick. That says a lot about the direction of her administration.

Also in this week's issue is Ginger Shepherd's story about the planned cleanup of Tent City, an unauthorized campground for the homeless between the north bank of the Arkansas River and the levee, west of downtown.

Shepherd also has a story about former Councilor and mayoral candidate Chris Medlock and his campaign for State House District 69.

Jane Jacobs, the urban observer who helped blow away the cobwebs of urban planning dogma so that we could see what really makes a city work, passed away in April. My Urban Tulsa Weekly column last week was a salute to Jane Jacobs, highlighting three lessons from her landmark 1960 book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, one of my favorite books.

Also of note last week: Jamie Pierson's first column for UTW, in which she recalls a suburban Tulsa upbringing, gives thanks for her midtown-based young adulthood, and gives a tongue-in-cheek call for deannexing everything south of I-44.

My column this week in Urban Tulsa Weekly looks back at the Oklahoma legislative session just ended and the state election filing period next Monday through Wednesday, June 5 through 7.

SB 1324, the bill that would have interfered with local control of zoning, was dealt a humiliating 42-3 defeat in the State Senate, while its sister bill HB 2559 died in conference committee. SB 1742, a landmark pro-life bill, won by overwhelming margins in both houses and was signed by the governor. The legislators on the wrong side of those issues deserve special scrutiny as they face re-election this year, but they won't get any scrutiny unless they have an opponent.

In particular, District 70 Representative Ron Peters and District 72 Darrell Gilbert haven't faced opposition in six years and eight years respectively, and I'm hoping someone will step forward to challenge each of them.

District 3 Tulsa County Commissioner Bob Dick has yet to announce his plans, and it's beginning to look like Dick is trying a J. C. Watts-style handoff to his handpicked successor. You'll recall that Watts announced at the last minute in 2002 that he wouldn't be seeking re-election to Congress. Candidates that might have run for that open seat were caught flat-footed, but Watts' political consultant and chosen heir, Tom Cole, had advance knowledge of Watts' plans and was ready to run right away.

Speculation is that Dick's chosen successor is either Tulsa City Councilor Bill Christiansen or former State Sen. Jerry Smith. The district covers the southern part of midtown Tulsa, south Tulsa, Broken Arrow, and Bixby. (Click here to see a map of the Tulsa County Commission Districts.) The district is heavily Republican, and there has to be some man or woman of integrity and wisdom among the tens of thousands of registered Republicans in the district who would be willing to step forward and serve as a candidate.

Given the huge pot of money under the control of the Tulsa County Commissioners -- well over half a billion in Vision 2025 money, plus Four to Fix the County tax dollars, plus millions more money available to lend in their role as the Tulsa County Industrial Authority -- and the County Commission's propensity to avoid competitive bidding, we need to clean house at the County Commission. Having Bob Dick or his handpicked successor in office is not an acceptable result.

If you are considering a race for any of those seats, or would like more information about being a candidate, I'd be glad to talk with you. Drop me an e-mail at blog at batesline dot com.

UPDATE: The Whirled is reporting that Bob Dick is running for re-election and Bill Christiansen plans to challenge him. Not much of a choice. With the fans of insider deals splitting their votes between Christiansen and Dick, a conservative reformer could easily gain enough primary votes to make the runoff and then win the runoff. (That's more or less how Tim Harris came out of nowhere to win the DA's office back in 1998.)

(Added retroactively on June 3, 2006, to complete the column archive.)

This week's Urban Tulsa Weekly column is about corporate welfare, connecting the dots between news that the Great Plains Airlines tax credits are being repaid with money that should be repairing roads and bridges, an effort to extend similar tax credits for the restoration of Shangri-La resort on Grand Lake, former Mayor Bill LaFortune's favorable concessions deals for the Tulsa Talons and Tulsa Oilers, and the biggest example of corporate welfare around -- the $200 million BOk Center.

The charter review commission that Bill LaFortune put in place last December following the failure of Tulsans for Better Government's supercouncilor initiative petition is nearing its scheduled conclusion. I spoke at last Friday's meeting at the invitation of Co-Chairman Ken Levit. This week's Urban Tulsa Weekly has my report on the meeting and the kind of recommendations the Citizens' Commission on City Government is likely to make. (For a complete picture, don't miss Bobby's entry at Tulsa Topics, which contains audio of my presentation and TU Professor Gary Allison's remarks.)

My column also includes an update on SB 1324, the bill that would interfere with local government control of Board of Adjustment appeals and enforcement of design rules in historic preservation and neighborhood conservation districts.

(By the way, on Wednesday the State Senate officially rejected House amendments to SB 1324 and requested a conference committee. Conferees have yet to be named.)

This issue also includes a Ginger Shepherd profile of new District 7 Councilor John Eagleton. (Previous issues featured District 2 Councilor Rick Westcott and District 4 Councilor Maria Barnes.)

Eagleton tells how he came up with the idea that would use a south Tulsa toll bridge and a nearby TIF district to fund improvements to the roads leading to the bridge and to cover the shortfall in the BOk Center arena, while giving BOk the financing for the bridge in exchange for dropping their lawsuit for the $7.5 million owed by Great Plains Airlines and guaranteed by the Tulsa Airport Improvements Trust:

He said he came up with the idea while sitting in a Creek County Court for a docket call. The docket that day was six to seven pages long, and he was bored while he waited to be called. He counted the ceiling tiles, his mind was wondering and then he "was hit like a bolt of lighting" with the idea.

Whatever the merits of Eagleton's idea, that's certainly a more constructive and acceptable way to beat boredom in a Creek County courtroom than other methods that have made the news.

This issue also includes coverage of Mayfest (also here), a continuation of the summer events guide, and a ballot for the 2006 Absolute Best of Tulsa awards.

This week's column covers three topics: (1) An update on the status of HB 2559 and SB 1324, the bills in the Oklahoma legislature which would dictate local zoning and land use policy from Oklahoma City; (2) Mayor Taylor's hiring of former City Councilor Susan Neal; (3) the topics under serious consideration by the Citizens' Commission on City Government, including non-partisan city elections.

Since the story was filed, I've learned that HB 2559 is dead, but SB 1324 has gone to conference committee and is still very much alive. I spoke yesterday to State Sen. Brian Crain, the Senate author of the bill, who believes that the provision requiring Board of Adjustment appeals to go directly to District Court is merely a clarification of existing law. He directed me to 11 O. S. 44-110. I mentioned that Tulsa's City Attorney office had said that Tulsa could change its zoning ordinance to allow certain BoA decisions to be appealed to the City Council, and that such a change was discussed by the previous City Council.

The other part of the bill amends 11 O. S. 44-104, and it appears to put design guidelines (such as those in use in historic preservation and neighborhood conservation districts) in the control of the Board of Adjustment, rather than special design review boards:

[The Board of Adjustment shall have power to] Hear and decide proposals for accessory elements associated with an allowed building use, where appropriate general performance and design standards have been established which promote greater economic value and provide a harmonious relationship with adjoining land uses by ordinance or by administrative rule or regulation. Such proposals and performance or design standards may include, but are not limited to, such accessory elements as sound, building material, runoff, lighting, visual screening, landscaping and vehicular considerations;

I understood Crain to say that that language was intended to give cities the flexibility to enable infill development, and that it was crafted with the help of INCOG staff. Crain said he was open to suggestions for clearer language.

While I am sure of Sen. Crain's good intentions, I don't see an urgent need for either provision. Unless cities are complaining that they are unable under present law to add flexibility to the zoning code, leave well enough alone. While Tulsa does need infill development, local government is best suited to design rules that will balance competing concerns and ensure that the investments of homeowners and developers alike are respected.

Your calls to state representatives and state senators are still needed to stop this bill, which I believe would set a precedent for further legislative interference in local zoning.

On the matter of the City Charter, I'll be speaking Friday afternoon at the invitation of the Citizens' Commission, mainly to address the issue of partisanship. Here's my column on the idea of multi-partisan elections, an alternative to the non-partisan concept. I hope also to get in a plug for Instant Runoff Voting, which we need already, but we'll need it more if we move toward any system in which primaries are eliminated.

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is about HB 2559, a bill in the Oklahoma legislature which represents an unwarranted state intrusion on local government control over zoning and land use regulation. (The column also covers the latest BOk Center bids, which put the arena at least $30 million over budget.)

HB 2559 would limit a city's options for handling appeals of decisions made by the city's Board of Adjustment (BoA), which considers variances and special exceptions to zoning requirements. The bill was amended in the State Senate to make it easier to remove historic preservation (HP) zoning from a parcel of land.

Since filing the story, I've learned about a parallel bill which originated in the State Senate called SB 1324. Like HB 2559, SB 1324 is sponsored by Sen. Brian Crain and Rep. Ron Peters. Like HB 2559, it would restrict a city's options for handling BoA appeals. Unlike HB 2558, SB 1324 also grants new powers to a Board of Adjustment:

[The board of adjustment shall have the power to] Hear and decide proposals for accessory elements associated with an allowed building use, where appropriate general performance and design standards have been established which promote greater economic value and provide a harmonious relationship with adjoining land uses by ordinance or by administrative rule or regulation. Such proposals and performance or design standards may include, but are not limited to, such accessory elements as sound, building material, runoff, lighting, visual screening, landscaping and vehicular considerations....

Earlier today I spoke to someone in the Clerk's office of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. My understanding is that HB 2559 is headed for a conference committee, but the conferees have yet to be named. SB 1324, on the other hand, was passed unanimously by the State Senate on March 9 (44-0), and passed unanimously on April 17 by the State House (98-0), but with a very small amendment. If the Senate votes to accept the House amendment, SB 1324 goes to the Governor for his signature. (The House amendment adds the phrase "and subsequent appellate courts" to the section forcing BoA appeals to District Court.) The final vote on SB 1324 is likely to happen this week.

Whatever the merits of BoA appeals and HP regulations, these matters should be handled locally, not dictated from Oklahoma City. Both of these bills should be scrapped.

If you want to make a difference on this bill, you need to contact your State Senator as soon as possible. To find out who represents you in Oklahoma City and how to contact them, click here, input your address, and click "Submit." The result will show you who your representatives are, their district office phone number, and their Capitol office phone number, and e-mail address.

It is amazing that these bills would pass without much opposition. I have to assume that legislators voted for it because they weren't aware of anyone who was against it, not because they had actually studied the measure. The supporters of the bill did a fine job of keeping it quiet so that potential opponents wouldn't be alerted.

It didn't happen this time, but I would hope that in the future, seeing Title 11 (Cities and Towns) on a bill would move legislators to consult with municipal officials in their districts. I would also hope that the City Council would assign a staffer to keep an eye on legislation affecting Title 11. Bills affecting Title 26 (Elections) and Title 60 (Trusts) might also have an impact on City Hall.

With these bills, the Tulsa development lobby seems to have exported our local debate over land use policy to the State Capitol. Until now, Republicans who disagree on local issues have nevertheless been united on state matters like taxation and tort reform. By putting a divisive issue into play at the state level, it may depress grass-roots enthusiasm to help Republican legislators keep the State House and win the State Senate.

... or if I at least ruled the TMAPC, here's what land use regulation (aka zoning) in Tulsa would be like, as summarized in my column in this issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The Tulsa Whirled editorial board wrote that if I ever was appointed to the TMAPC, "the city might as well erect billboards at the edges of the city instructing developers to just keep on moving to the suburbs." Here's what I wrote in response:

I don’t expect I’ll ever be named to the TMAPC, much less be named the Pope of Planning, but if it were to happen, the City of Tulsa should erect billboards at the city limits saying, “Tulsa offers a fair, transparent, and up-to-date land-use system that maximizes freedom while protecting the investments of all property owners and our city’s quality of life. Tulsa welcomes developers who will work with us to build a better Tulsa.”

Click the link above, and read the five characteristics that a Michael Bates-designed planning system would have.

(Added on September 30, 2006, to fill in the gaps in my Urban Tulsa Weekly column archive.)

This week's Urban Tulsa Weekly column is an analysis of the result of the mayoral election, a defeat for Bill LaFortune that was four years in the making. How did he go from having broad and enthusiastic support in 2002 to having no significant base of support in 2006? Special attention is given to the role that the local Republican Party organization might have played in keeping LaFortune connected to the GOP grassroots.

(I don't normally write my own headlines, but I submitted this one, and it was used. I think it's pretty apt.)

The rest of the current issue has a whole bunch of articles by city reporter Ginger Shepherd: on the mayoral transition, the high-rise sprinkler requirement, home security, syphilis, and the PAC's new ticketing system. Pick up an issue today at fine establishments citywide.

UPDATE: If the term Laodicea isn't familiar to you, read this.

My latest column in Urban Tulsa Weekly, which was filed on Monday, before the election, recommends switching city elections from the current primary/general structure to a multi-partisan instant-runoff election. Note that I said multi-partisan, not non-partisan. (I don't write the headlines or cutlines for my stories.) My column explains the distinction and how my proposal gives voters more choice and more information than either the current system or a non-partisan system.

Since these haven't yet been posted on the UTW website, I'll post them here:

Introduction

Below are the responses submitted by Bill LaFortune to the Urban Tulsa Weekly questionnaire. Democrat nominee Kathy Taylor and Independent candidate Benford L. Faulk did not submit replies.

Paul Tay submitted his reply prior to the primary, and did not respond to the opportunity to reply to the two additional questions (11 and 12) added to the general election questionnaire. You can read Tay's response, which includes his proposed cabinet, a couple of vulgarities, and a lengthy digression about the deflation of his erstwhile inflatable companion, on his blog.

The City Council website has details about the six charter amendments, including ballot language and the changes to the charter text for each. UTW endorses passage of all six.

For more information about the candidates, www.TulsaTopics.com has links to all the candidate websites, a printable "tournament bracket" for the city elections, and audio of the mayoral forum sponsored by TulsaNow and Arts and Humanities Council of Tulsa. David Schuttler�s Our Tulsa World blog has video from many Mayoral and Council candidate forums.

Homeowners for Fair Zoning has posted their endorsements in the City Council races and on the charter amendments.

Here's the complete BatesLine archive of entries about Election 2006.

The Tulsa Whirled is making its archive of Election 2006 stories available outside their firewall. Sumite cum grano salis.

To look up your district and polling place and to see sample ballot images, visit the Tulsa County Election Board website.

Other UTW election resources:

• My column on the mayoral race
• My column on the council races
• My column on the six charter amendments
• City council candidate responses to the questionnaire

Click the "continue reading" link to see LaFortune's questionnaire responses.

My column in this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly is a look at our four choices in the mayoral race. There you'll find why I can't vote for Taylor, Faulk, or Tay, and why I'm voting for LaFortune. I'm not going to try to summarize or elaborate here -- click the link and read the whole thing.

Elsewhere in this week's issue, Ginger Shepherd has a story about the state of Eastland Mall and one about the projects being funded by the Vision 2025 neighborhood fund.

This week's Urban Tulsa Weekly column reviews the four Tulsa City Council races on the general election ballot: Incumbent Roscoe Turner vs. Gerald Rapson in District 3, Maria Barnes vs. Robert Bartlett for the open District 4 seat, incumbent Bill Martinson vs. Jon Kirby in District 5, incumbent James Mautino vs. Dennis Troyer in District 6, and Cason Carter vs. Phil Kates for the open District 9 seat.

(Added on September 30, 2006, to fill in the gaps in my Urban Tulsa Weekly column archive.)

My column this week is about the six Tulsa city charter amendments on the April 4 ballot, and why you should vote FOR all six.

I wrote a column about these amendments, and those that didn't make the cut, back in November, right after the amendments had been approved for the ballot. It's instructive to see which councilors supported and which opposed each one.

At TulsaNow's forum, there's a lively discussion about the need for Proposition 1, which would allow the Council to hire legal help independent of the City Attorney's office. Michelle Cantrell (posting as "pmcalk") makes some excellent points.

Also in this week's issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly:

Jarrod Gollihare has the first in a series of stories about charismatic universalist preacher Carlton Pearson.

UTW's new city reporter, Ginger Shepherd, has a story about the proposed sprinkler ordinance for residential high-rises and another story about a dispute between Community Care College and students over the school's veterinary program.

The cover features the poker craze, and Barry Friedman reports from an illegal private game and from the casinos.

Wonder whatever happened to KTUL sports director Mike Ziegenhorn? So did David Austin, who spoke to Zig and his old boss at KTUL.

When I filed this week's column Monday morning, I had no way of knowing the final result, but I felt certain that whoever won the Republican nomination for Mayor would win without a majority of the vote. I thought that was the optimum time to write about the advantages of instant runoff voting without drawing complaints that it was an exercise in sour grapes.

For what it's worth, I've proposed instant runoff voting at least twice during the City Council's charter review process held every two years.

You'll find more information about instant runoff voting at FairVote, which reports that Burlington, Vermont, used IRV to elect their mayor this last Tuesday.

And here's the Burlington Votes website, with a helpful and thorough set of answers to frequently-asked questions, the results of the two rounds of the mayoral election, a sample ballot, and, for election nerds, a text representation of each ballot and the open-source software used to count the ballots.

Also, this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly has a story by Ginger Shepherd about Maurice Kanbar and Henry Kaufman's plans for downtown Tulsa. And Gretchen Collins talks to the two Portland-based investors who hope to convert the Towerview Apartments into lofts.

That latter story is very encouraging, but the most discouraging note is that city officials and the head of Downtown Tulsa Unlimited tried to talk them out of doing anything with the building. It's a shame our local yokels don't seem to understand that good, urban downtowns are built, renovated, and redeveloped one lot, one building at a time. When you start talking about whole blocks or superblocks or (heaven forbid) acres devoted to a single use, you're not talking about an urban streetscape any more, but transplanted suburbia.

The Towerview is the building that city officials have targeted for condemnation to make way for a hotel across the street from the arena. There's no reason that a hotel can't coexist with a restored Towerview and other new buildings besides. The Crowne Plaza takes up about a half-block, the Mayo a quarter-block, the old Holiday Inn/Ramada about a third of a block. Even the Doubletree, able to sprawl a bit because it's built on urban renewal land, would fit in less than a full block.

Here are a couple TulsaNow forum topics about the Towerview:

Towerview photos

Discussion of LaFortune's plan to condemn the Towerview

UPDATE 3/6/2006: It's almost election day! This entry has links to all my Urban Tulsa Weekly writings on the election, plus my endorsements, and phone numbers so you can call and offer your help to these good candidates. They will still need election day help, so if you have an hour or two, give them a call!

The latest Urban Tulsa Weekly is online and has the second installment of the primary election preview, with stories on the primaries in Districts 1, 2, and 5 through 9. The story on each race includes candidate names, addresses, websites, and phone numbers, so you can get in touch, ask tough questions, and offer your help. (Note that, due to a snafu -- I submitted them, but they were overlooked -- the District 1 and 2 stories didn't make it to print, but they've been added on to the end of the online version of this week's piece.)

Last week's issue had the first installment of the primary election preview, including an overview of what's at stake, the questionnaire we sent to city candidates, a preview of the charter amendment on the March 7th primary ballot (Independents can vote, too!), and stories on the District 3 Democrat primary, and the Democratic and Republican primaries in District 4.

UTW also published the full text of the questionnaire and the candidate responses online.

My op-ed this week was actually two pieces that were joined by the editor into a single story containing my analysis and endorsements in the Democrat and Republican primaries for Mayor. I detail how Bill LaFortune frittered away all the goodwill and political capital he enjoyed at the beginning of the term. I try to explain why Bill LaFortune needs to be fired, and why the Republicans need to do the job themselves. I go on to outline Chris Medlock's vision for Tulsa and take a look back at some of his legislative successes.

Terry Simonson issues a call to the undecideds, telling them that the first step is to realize we need a change at the top:

First of all, decide if you think things are going so well that you want more of what we have had. Are you one of the people who can't imagine that anyone else can do or would do a better job than the incumbent? That's wrong-headed thinking and you have to get over it.

If you have traveled at all, or read about other cities, you know that we are not anywhere near where great cities in this new century should be and it�s because of our leadership. If all cities face the same national and social problems, why are some cities doing so much better than Tulsa? The answer is leadership quality.

He goes on to identify a lack of mayoral leadership as the cause of City Hall strife. Simonson has endorsed Chris Medlock for Mayor.

Once again, my endorsements for their respective nominations (please note that this does not guarantee an endorsement in the general election):

Mayor Republican: Chris Medlock
Mayor Democrat: Don McCorkell
District 1 Democrat: Jack Henderson
District 2 Republican: Rick Westcott
District 3 Democrat: Roscoe Turner
District 4 Republican: Kent Morlan -- with an honorable mention to Rick Brinkley
District 4 Democrat: Maria Barnes
District 5 Republican: no endorsement; Greg Madden is worth a further look
District 5 Democrat: Al Nichols
District 6 Republican: Jim Mautino
District 7 Republican: John Eagleton
District 8 Republican: Cliff Magee
District 9 Republican: Cason Carter

Proposition 1 (zoning protest charter change): YES

See last week's column for the reasons why in each race.

Your call to action again this weekend is to volunteer for a candidate and offer your help. At the same time, call your friends and neighbors, tell them who you're voting for and why.

Here are some candidates who, in my humble opinion, need and deserve your help these last three days:

Chris Medlock for Mayor, 269 - 2822, or stop by HQ at 69th and Canton (north of 71st and Yale QuikTrip)

Rick Westcott, District 2 Republican, 639-8542, e-mail rick@rickwestcott.org. Rick is asking volunteers to gather 10 a.m. Saturday at his office at 1743 E. 71st Street.

Roscoe Turner, District 3 Democrat, 834-7580

Maria Barnes, District 4 Democrat, 510-5725

Al Nichols, District 5 Democrat, 663-9432

Jim Mautino, District 6 Republican, 437-2642

John Eagleton, District 7 Republican, 496-0706/584-2002, or meet at 62nd and Irvington at 9:00 a.m. Saturday

Cliff Magee, District 8 Republican, 747-1747

Click on that Tulsa Bloggers button on the right side of the home page near the top. My brother bloggers are providing a lot of excellent coverage of the elections, including video of candidate forums, commentary, and endorsement news. None of us can cover everything on our own, but as a group we're doing a pretty good job of filling in the details that the mainstream media pass by.

And don't forget to pick up an Urban Tulsa Weekly. This week features my endorsements in the two mayoral primaries, plus the rest of the stories on the city council primary races, and a Terry Simonson op-ed explaining why we need to fire Bill LaFortune. On KFAQ Thursday morning and earlier in the week on KCFO, Simonson announced his endorsement of Chris Medlock, which gives Medlock the endorsement of two of the last four Republican mayoral nominees. Frank Pitezel, former state rep, is the other former nominee who supports Medlock. The two that don't endorse Medlock? Bill LaFortune and Bob Dick, the ol' BillyBob team.

The latest Urban Tulsa Weekly is online and has the first installment of the primary election preview, including an overview of what's at stake, the questionnaire we sent to city candidates, a preview of the charter amendment on the March 7th primary ballot (Independents can vote, too!), and stories on the District 3 Democrat primary, and the Democratic and Republican primaries in District 4. The story on each race includes candidate names, addresses, websites, and phone numbers, so you can get in touch, ask tough questions, and offer your help.

Next week's issue should have my stories on the rest of the races. The full text of the candidate responses is not yet online, but I'll link it from here when it is.

My op-ed this week was inspired by a form letter we received from District 4 Democratic candidate John "Jack" Wing. I take apart the conventional wisdom on Council "bickering" (as expressed in Wing's letter) as a way to explain my endorsements in each Council primary, as well as the Republican primary for Mayor.

Primaries are important. As I wrote, "If you let others weed out candidates in the primaries, you may find that they've left you with a choice between two candidates with different party labels but equally unacceptable views on how to run City Hall." Since so many races will be won, or all but won, in the primary, I've made endorsements in each of the primary races. Even though I'm a Republican, it matters to me as a Tulsan whether good men like Roscoe Turner and Jack Henderson win their nominations.

My endorsements for their respective nominations (please note that this does not guarantee an endorsement in the general election):

Mayor Republican: Chris Medlock
Mayor Democrat: To be announced
District 1 Democrat: Jack Henderson
District 2 Republican: Rick Westcott
District 3 Democrat: Roscoe Turner
District 4 Republican: still undecided -- Rick Brinkley is a good man; I'm slightly leaning to Kent Morlan for his awareness of city issues
District 4 Democrat: Maria Barnes
District 5 Republican: no endorsement; Greg Madden is worth a further look
District 5 Democrat: Al Nichols
District 6 Republican: Jim Mautino
District 7 Republican: John Eagleton
District 8 Republican: Cliff Magee
District 9 Republican: Cason Carter

See the column for the reasons why in each race. These good folks could use your help during these last 12 days of the campaign. Call or e-mail and volunteer.

Terry Simonson, in a column that seems to have been written before the FOP announced their endorsement, and long before Bill LaFortune's bizarre action to place Police Chief Dave Been on administrative leave, wants the police rank and file to go beyond issuing an endorsement and to get active on behalf of their candidate.

I'd add only that the candidate the officers ought to be getting behind is not the one their leadership endorsed. When there was an opportunity to shift funding away from gilding the lily at the Fairgrounds and building a new golf cart barn at LaFortune Park, and toward beefing up Tulsa's police force, Chris Medlock took a political risk to propose a way to increase funding for the police department, while Randi Miller opted for protecting the County's sales-tax turf over protecting Tulsans against crime. When "4 to Fix" renewal was being considered by the County Commission, Randi Miller could have shown leadership, could have said the cities need this money more than the County does, but she didn't.

On the subject of bloggers in print: As proud as I am to write for UTW, another blogger's exciting achievement today puts that into perspective. Congratulations to Dawn Eden on her first-ever byline in the Wall Street Journal, a review of the book Fired!, by Annabelle Gurwitch.

(Now that I think about it, the blogger achievement mentioned in the previous entry really puts everything into proper perspective.)

If I had read this week's UTW when it first came out, I would have known about Dwight Twilley's free Friday night gig at Boston's and a series of lectures about the renowned British author and Christian apologist G. K. Chesterton by Dale Ahlquist, president of the American Chesterton Society. Friday night's sleet, snow, and extreme cold probably would have kept me home anyway, but at least I would have known and could have told you all about these opportunities.

(There was an odd juxtaposition in the print version. The notice about Ahlquist's lectures was nestled between a couple of large display ads for -- well, let's just say the spot on the page would have been better suited for a meeting notice for the American Chesty Morgan Society. Readers who avert their eyes from ads featuring scantily clad models might have missed it, but you can avoid that problem by reading the events calendar online.)

There's a lot going on around Tulsa, and you'll find nearly all of it -- lectures, plays, concerts, art exhibits, craft workshops, poetry slams -- announced each week in the events listings of Urban Tulsa Weekly. Don't wait until you've missed half the week -- pick it up on Wednesdays! It's free!

In the meantime, don't miss the current issue. My column this week is about the collective rump-smooching that took place at the Tulsa Real Estate Coalition (TREC) mayoral forum, an event from which Republican candidate Chris Medlock was excluded. (You'll find video of the forum and of many other candidate events over at David Schuttler's Our Tulsa World blog.) And Barry Friedman mentions the ORU campaign e-mail scandal at the end of this week's Double Take on the Sooner State.

By the way, UTW is to blame for my blog silence the last few days, as I've been preparing content for this week's city primary election preview issue. Candidates provided some thoughtful responses to a challenging questionnaire, and I think you'll find the results enlightening.

A vision is a "compelling description of your preferred future," not a collection of public construction projects. This week's column is about comprehensive planning and developing a real vision for Tulsa's future. Tulsa's comprehensive plan is about 30 years old, but the process to get a new one is underway. Kansas City redid theirs in the '90s, and they have an ongoing effort to implement it. Dallas has unveiled a draft comprehensive plan with a strong theme of making more of Dallas pedestrian-friendly. Tulsa could learn a lot from these cities, but the scorched-earth approach of the development lobby may stop Tulsa from having the kind of visionary leadership we need.

I first learned about the Dallas plan thanks to this topic on the TulsaNow forum.

Some supplemental links:

The report of Comprehensive Plan Process Task Force: transmittal letter, draft report, and draft process.

Tulsa City Council's resolution adopting the recommendations of the Comprehensive Plan Process Task Force.

ForwardDallas, Dallas's comprehensive planning effort.

ForwardDallas's draft comprehensive plan documents.

The urban design element of ForwardDallas (14.5 MB PDF).

Dallas Morning News (free registration required) story on the plan: "Pedestrians, not cars, star in draft of plan, but code changes sought"

Dallas does moratoriums, too. One example: building permits and certificates of occupancy within 1000 feet of a section of Fort Worth Avenue were halted for four months, to allow time for a development study to be completed. This is much stricter, although shorter in duration, than the eminent domain moratorium being proposed for Tulsa.

The big infill development battle in Dallas has been over McMansions -- tearing down smaller homes in older neighborhoods and building houses that fill their lots and dwarf neighboring homes. Here's a blog devoted to the fight against McMansions. (In Tulsa, it's been more typical to replace a sprawling ranch home on a multiple-acre lot with several multi-story houses.)

DallasBlog.com is an interesting community blogging effort at creating an alternative news presence online. I intend to explore it further.

Here's the home page for FOCUS Kansas City.

The latest issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly is online, and for the first time, I've written the cover story, a feature story about Tulsa's news bloggers, with sidebars about what blogs are, the history of news blogging, a sampling of other local blogs, and how you can start your own blog -- it's free and easy. I'm grateful to my fellow Tulsa news bloggers for providing such interesting responses to my questions -- sorry I couldn't include more detail.

There's one correction I need to make: Bobby Holt wrote to remind me that it was Paul Romine who set up the Tulsa bloggers e-mail group, not Bobby. I regret the error.

My op-ed this week revists the question of public investment in downtown. With private investment in downtown growing, conditions have changed, and we need to rethink our decade-old approach.

Over at the TulsaNow forum, there's a lively discussion about the current state of Urban Tulsa Weekly, led off by someone who says it's turned into a "right-wing rag." Agree or disagree, you might enjoy jumping into the discussion. I've posted a few comments there myself.

TRACKBACKS: My friend Scott Sala, whom I mentioned in the story, blogged about it at Urban Elephants NYC. And the Blogging Journalist, who covers the relationship between blogs and mainstream media, linked to the cover story.

My column in this issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly is my review of last Friday's GOP mayoral candidate forum, sponsored by the Tulsa County Republican Men's Club.

This issue is chock full of good stuff. Barry Friedman takes us to the fallout shelter that now serves as the jury pool waiting room at the Tulsa County Courthouse. In the print issue (I can't find a link on the web) is a story about Boone Pickens' massive donation to the OSU athletic program, and the use of eminent domain to clear Stillwater neighborhoods to make way for Pickens-funded facilities.

Gary Hizer takes us up Main Street for a visit to the renovated Cain's Ballroom. It's the house that Bob Wills built, and it's the place where Sid Vicious punched a hole in the wall at the Sex Pistols' last US concert. In 2005 it was number 38 in Pollstar's list of top US live music venues, based on ticket sales. The story delves into the Cain's storied past, its recent renovation, and scheduled acts for 2006.

On the Cain's calendar for this year: George Clinton and the P. Funk All-Stars, rap acts, metal acts, tribute acts (Beatles, Grateful Dead, and Sex Pistols), and string bands. Personally, I'm looking forward to Asleep at the Wheel's return on May 13, and the Round-Up Boys playing a dance on Sunday afternoon, February 12.

Urban Tulsa Weekly, Tulsa's alternative weekly newspaper has been running a help-wanted ad for a reporter. Now that G. W. Schulz has gone on to greener pastures on the Left Coast, they need to find someone to fill his Birkenstocks here in Tulsa. Here's the text of the ad:

Are You Serious About News?

REPORTER WANTED.

At least three years' experience at weekly or daily paper required.
Advancement opportunities.
Contact Emily. Resumes with samples.
No phone calls. Confidentiality assured.

Urban Tulsa Weekly
710 S. Kenosha, Tulsa OK 74120
eberman@urbantulsa.com

There's a real opportunity for a reporter to make a name for himself or herself at UTW by digging into stories that the daily monopoly newspaper won't touch.

In the meantime, I'm still writing my weekly op-ed column, although I've fallen behind on updating the links to my columns here at BatesLine.

Two issues ago, I wrote about the Mayor's proposal for a six-plus year renewal of the Third Penny sales tax, explaining why a 14-month extension of the existing tax, to pay for the projects we approved in 2001, would be better for downtown and inner city neighborhoods.

Last issue, my column was about the last-minute, back-room maneuvering that shook up the list of candidates to be Tulsa's next Mayor.

The new issue is out tomorrow at finer coffee houses and restaurants across our fair city. I promise to post a link a bit sooner this week.

For some reason, I am only now getting around to linking to this week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly, which is a collection of a dozen-plus reasons I'm optimistic about Tulsa's future. (The column sparked this thread at the TulsaNow forum.)

There's one more reason that I would have included, but can't now because this reason is leaving Tulsa: UTW reporter G. W. Schulz is moving back to San Francisco as a reporter for the Bay Guardian. It's a great opportunity for him.

I have enjoyed getting to know G. W. over the last year or so. Although he grew up here, he spent several years in Austin, Lawrence, and San Francisco, and he brought a fresh perspective to the coverage of Tulsa politics and people. I was really looking forward to his coverage of this spring's city election.

You can read G. W. Schulz's final pieces for UTW in the current issue. The cover story this week is about the sad realities of child custody battles. He shows us a day in Family Court, and interviews a judge, a custody evaluator, a divorce and custody expert at Family and Children's Services, and a couple of attorneys who handle divorce and custody cases, including John Eagleton. G. W. writes of his day at the courthouse:

It�s difficult to imagine anyone ever experiencing intimacy in here, save for a couple of divorce attorneys who might find their own brand of love amidst the sadism and animosity. But a room like this, with its sterile walls, steel furniture and mustard yellow paneling, could certainly accommodate a splintered relationship with kids tumbling in the wake.

Divorce court could be the greatest untapped reservoir of birth control Planned Parenthood never considered. It made me want to experience head trauma so severe that I would lose any sense of carnal knowledge.

G. W. also takes a humorous rearview mirror look at his hometown as he heads off to the Left Coast, in which he dares to suggest that my Oxford shirts are neatly pressed. Nope -- this household is strictly 60-40 blend, machine wash warm, tumble dry low, remove promptly when dryer stops.

One of the delights of walking into Shades of Brown Coffee these last few months was seeing G. W. sitting at the counter, typing away on his laptop, and interrupting him for a wide-ranging chat. I'll miss that. All the best, G. W.

Late getting 'round to this, but here's a link to my column in the current issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly, with some recommended reading on urban design. As I wrote in the column:

Urban design and architecture are too important to be left to the professionals.

You and I may not have diplomas hanging on the wall, but we're experts in those fields, because we live, work, play, drive, and walk in the results of the design decisions made by others. We may not have the vocabulary to explain what we're experiencing, but we know what we like. We remember being in urban places that feel alive and exciting, places that feel comfortable, places that seem dead, places that seem foreboding. Some places invite you to linger, others make you feel like hurrying along to get some place else as quickly as possible.

Architects and urban planners can help the layman put words to his gut feelings about good and bad urban design, but some of the best books on urban design have been written by journalists, and I recommend three that I've found especially insightful and useful, plus a couple of books by an architect. (At the bottom of this entry, I've provided some links to supplemental reading.) The ideas in these books can help to equip you to participate more effectively in the public debate over urban design, zoning, and land use policy.

The current issue of UTW includes Barry Friedman's end-of-year Double Take on the Sooner State and the city's most comprehensive listing of New Year's Eve entertainment. Music writer G. K. Hizer provides his recommended list of places to ring in the New Year. (Here are links to the regular weekly listing of live music and events, which include some New Year's Events. There's a Western Swing dance and covered dish supper in Bixby that looks like fun, but I don't think my wife is up to two-stepping right now.) You'll need the dead-tree edition to get the full listing and all the ads.

Gretchen Collins has a story about the 6th Street Task Force and the exciting plans for remaking that area, particularly the creative ways they propose for dealing with the flooding problem in what is, after 20 years of stormwater improvements, still one of the city's last unimproved drainage basins.

Also, in the web edition this week (although I think it was in last week's print edition) is Barry Friedman's review of an uneventful City Council meeting.

Now for some supplemental links that go with this week's column:

Christopher Alexander's A Pattern Language -- a summary of each of the patterns described in the book, and the connections between them.

The introduction to Cities Back from the Edge: New Life for Downtown

Jim Kunstler interviews Jane Jacobs -- two of the authors I list in my column.

The website of Jim Kunstler: If you can look beyond the use of foul words for emphasis, there's a lot of food for thought here. His "Eyesore of the Month" is a photo and commentary on an example of bad architecture or urban design, and the feature is coming up on its eighth anniversary. (This month, in the spirit of the holidays, he gives us a break and presents some positive examples.)

Not mentioned in the column is the website for the Project for Public Spaces, which is full of examples of parks, squares, plazas, and streetscapes that work well, with explanations of why they succeed at attracting people. (New York City's Bryant Park is a great example of a once-failed public space that is now thriving.) There are also examples of failed public spaces, like Boston's hideous City Hall Plaza, which replaced lively, unruly Scollay Square.

This week I managed to lead off my Urban Tulsa Weekly column, about the urban design characteristics of the new downtown Tulsa arena, with a Monty Python reference.

UPDATE: Charles G. Hill comments: "Oklahoma City's Ford Center isn't particularly iconic either, but it's intended to fit into an existing urban environment, not to anchor a new one." Precisely. If the building works well as urban design, it doesn't matter if it's iconic.

I thought of another TV reference, as I was writing about iconic structures, like the Eiffel Tower and the U. S. Capitol, which serve as widely-recognized symbols of their cities. There was a Green Acres episode in which Oliver and Lisa were going to Washington, and everyone in Hooterville told them to be sure to see the Statue of Liberty and the Eiffel Tower. Oliver would scoff in reply: "Those aren't in Washington!" At the end of the episode, Oliver and Lisa are in their Washington hotel room and Lisa flings open the curtains to reveal... the Eiffel Tower. Just one of those surreal moments that made Green Acres a classic.

Elsewhere in the latest issue of UTW:

Katharine Kelly doesn't care for Qdoba. I tried it the other night and didn't care for it much myself. The food was OK, but the decor was very barren, the lights were so bright you couldn't see out the window to Cherry Street, and (worst of all) the free Wi-Fi didn't work.

Gretchen Collins reviews Philbrook's special exhibit of the works of Thomas Moran, the great landscape painter of the American west. It only runs through New Year's Day, so don't delay.

This week's column is about the demise of the late, unlamented petition pushing for at-large members of the Tulsa City Council, and Bill LaFortune's new "Citizens' Commission," which appears to be intended to push the same agenda by other means.

Elsewhere in the current Urban Tulsa Weekly:

Have you wondered about the huge clouds of birds that swirl around and roost at sunset this time of year? The birds that are incredibly noisy and seem to love Bradford ornamental pear trees? Emily Berman has the scoop.

G. W. Schulz has a story about city employee unionization, with extensive quotes from City Councilors Martinson, Mautino, and Medlock on their reasons for their votes on the issue (Mautino voted yes, Medlock and Martinson voted no), from national and local representatives of AFSCME, the public sector employee union, and from one of the other Michael Bateses in town, Michael S. Bates, the city human resources director.

Apparently, I've been "allowed to hijack" the UTW op/ed page, or so says a letter writer named Joe Gaudet. Sir, if I could hijack an op/ed page, I'd have it fly me some place warm.

This week in Urban Tulsa Weekly, an up-close look at next Tuesday's Tulsa County sales tax election. (You can find an earlier column about this tax proposal here, and here's a column about Tulsa County Commissioners' aversion to competitive bidding.

G. W. Schulz has a lengthy profile of Ray and Robin Siegfried, the company they built, their lavish lifestyles, and the legal dispute that divides the two brothers even after Ray's death earlier this year. And he's got a story about Oklahoma's TABOR initiative.

All that and much more, in the latest issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly.

My column in the current Urban Tulsa Weekly is a review of the City Charter amendment proposals Tulsans will vote on next spring, as well as a few that didn't make the cut, along with a look at the politics behind what passed and what didn't.

There were a couple of new developments tonight. Illegitimate Councilor Randy Sullivan tried to move the zoning protest petition amendment from the March primary election ballot to the April general election ballot. He tried to make the case that voters would be disenfranchised by having the vote on the primary ballot, when turnout would be lighter.

Councilor Chris Medlock pointed out that homeowners were promised back in 2004, when the courts ruled that the protest petition ordinance was in conflict with the charter, that the amendment to restore that protection would be on the next citywide election ballot. That would have been the December 2004 library bond issue, but the Council held off at the request of library officials. The next opportunity was the city bond issue in April 2005. The Council called the election, but something happened -- the dog ate Bill LaFortune's homework -- and the required public notices weren't placed in the Tulsa Legal News. The March 2006 is the next available citywide date to vote, and because there will be a mayoral primary, every precinct will be open anyway.

The other councilors were apparently persuaded by Medlock's argument -- Sullivan's motion died for lack of a second.

Councilor Roscoe Turner brought the recall amendment up for reconsideration, as I was hoping he would. The original proposal was modified by two complementary amendments proposed by Councilor Tom Baker. The requirement for signature comparison for the recall petitions was dropped (by a unanimous vote). Added in its place was a requirement for each signer to provide a valid contact phone number. That passed by a 5-4 vote (Baker, Henderson, Mautino, Medlock, Turner in favor; Christiansen, Martinson, Neal, Sullivan against). The amended amendment was sent to the voters by a 7-2 vote -- Martinson and Sullivan voted against. Although it isn't my ideal, the proposed amendment would require that recall be for cause, provides a consistent standard for number of signatures across all offices, and requires that signature gatherers be residents of the district. If we pass it in April, it will help ensure that a recall only happens when genuine constituents have a genuine and grave complaint against an elected official.

Finally, a District 7 resident (and a friend of mine), John Eagleton, protests that he did raise the issue of Randy Sullivan's non-residency with members of the City Council when it was publicly acknowledged in February 2005. Eagleton asked the Councilors to seek the City Attorney's opinion on the effect of filing a bogus declaration of candidacy; he believes it would render the election null and void and cause the office to become vacant. That was never done, apparently, perhaps because everyone was distracted by the recall effort underway at the time.

I remember, too, that there were District 7 residents who wanted to recall Randy Sullivan, but they restrained themselves at the request of Councilors Medlock and Mautino, who were themselves under threat of recall at the time.

Here's a link to all the articles in the current issue. Don't forget -- just a few more days to donate gifts for children in the DHS foster care system. Pick up a copy of the dead-tree version of UTW for a list of kids, ages, and the gifts they'd like for Christmas.

Betcha didn't think I could work the word "rhinotillexomania" into an Urban Tulsa Weekly column about how much the downtown sports arena is going to cost us, did ya?

Also in the new issue of UTW:

G. W. Schulz has a very funny take on local news and the November ratings sweepstakes. He challenges TV station problem-solvers with a really hard math question. And he names names: What TV newsreaders are speeding through your neighborhood and endangering your children? Tune in at 10!

Barry Friedman has some meditations on cartoon plagiarism, cow tipping, and whether Bill LaFortune thinks the doctrine of the deity of Christ is a petty matter.

For the Thanksgiving Day cover story, Katharine Kelly asks, "Why aren't we happier?" Possibly because we're having turkey instead of Billy Sims Barbecue, which she also reviews in this issue.

Finally, UTW wants to provide Christmas gifts for 100 of the 1,200 kids in foster care in our area. Click here to find out how you can help between now and December 5. Of course, the best gift of all would be to adopt a child in permanent foster care, and each issue of UTW spotlights children waiting for a home.

Pick up a copy today!

UPDATE: Bobby has a helpful set of footnotes for my column.

In this week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly, I review what happened with Bill LaFortune's plan to have the city pay off the $7.5 million owed by Great Plains Airlines to the Bank of Oklahoma, and ask some questions that need answering.

The cover boy this week is my friend Jamie Jamieson, developer of the Village at Central Park. Jamie was interviewed by Gretchen Collins about exciting developments in the 6th and Peoria area (soon to become known as the Pearl District).

All that and much more in the November 17 issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly.

I've been remiss in linking to this week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly. It's a look at what makes the Republican Party tick at the local level -- really just scratching the surface, with more to come in future columns.

This week's cover story by G. W. Schulz is fascinating, a real page-turner -- the story of Freddy Salazar, a man of many hats, an inventor who challenged Proctor and Gamble on a patent and won, while he was in prison doing time for drug trafficking.

All that, plus coverage of theater, live music, movies, restaurants, sports -- in the current issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly.

The latest issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly is out, and my column this week is a response to some comments objecting to my reference in last week's column to the Christian faith of the four reform-minded city councilors. An excerpt:

I think I understand the root of their objections. If you think of faith as just professing agreement with certain doctrines, then what I wrote would be irrelevant to the discussion. If you confuse faith with religion, then you might well wonder what a Councilor�s position on the propriety of infant baptism, which foot to lead with when genuflecting, or whether musical instruments have a place in worship has to do with his performance in office.

But faith is more than reciting a creed or performing certain rituals. Faith involves confidence and trust. During a worship service you profess certain things to be true about God�s nature and character. During the rest of the week, your true faith--what you really believe about God and his dealings with you and the rest of the humanity--becomes apparent in the way you live your life, and particularly in the way you deal with adversity.

For that reason, what an elected official really believes about God�s nature and character affects how he conducts himself in office. Someone who has genuine confidence and trust in God as He is revealed in the Bible will have courage and persistence in the face of discouragement, danger, hostility, oppression, and injustice.

That's the gist of it; go read the whole thing, and feel free to post a comment.

Earlier in the week, Steve Denney of HFFZ posted some worthwhile thoughts on the matter:

To challenge a vested, powerful and ruthless political/financial machine is tough, thankless and risky work. A brief review of the personal attacks, including a lawsuit, that the Reform Councilors have had to endure should quickly disabuse anyone of the notion that they have been basking in power and glory at Tulsa City Hall. It is something beyond ourselves, religious faith, belief in the rule of law, a sense of fairness, or perhaps all three together that draw an individual to the cause of balanced representative government.

UPDATE: I've posted some responses from the blogosphere in this entry, and I'll add to it as more come in.

The new issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly is now online, and my column this week is about "Tulsans for Better Government" and the initiative petition this group has launched to reduce the number of City Council districts by three and add three at-large seats.

By the way, the link at the top of the homepage labeled "This week's column" -- http://www.batesline.com/utw/utcolumn.html -- will always redirect you to the latest column. Feel free to bookmark it or add it to your blogroll.

The new Urban Tulsa Weekly is out. My column this week is about the proclivity of Tulsa County Commissioners (as commissioners, and as board members of various trusts) to grant sole-source contracts, a practice which doesn't serve the best interests of Tulsa County's taxpayers. The IVI bridge is just the latest example of the County Commissioners choosing not to shop around for the best deal.

G. W. Schulz covers the controversy over the airport noise abatement program, which happens to involve Cinnabar, a company headed by some of the same folks who head up IVI. David Schuttler was interviewed for the story -- he's chronicled the shoddy, but expensive, work done by Cinnabar's subcontractors on his home.

If you have ideas you'd like to see me cover in future columns, please post them here as a comment, or e-mail me at blog at batesline dot com. Thanks.

My latest Urban Tulsa Weekly column is up -- Far From the Madding Crowd. It's about a walk downtown along the reopened Main Mall, through the Great Wall of Williams, by the first downtown pocket park, and into the so-called East Village.

Elsewhere in this week's UTW, G. W. Schulz has a story about Tulsa convention center economics, a follow-up to his story from March.

Pick up a copy at fine establishments all over Tulsa.

UPDATE: Jamie Pierson, my favorite blue-haired Brookside barista, has a couple of thoughts on downtown Tulsa history prompted by the article, which she's posted on her new blog. One of the thoughts has to do with her grandfather, Jimmy Saied, who opened his music store downtown in the '40s, then moved to 33rd and Yale in the '60s.

My latest column for Urban Tulsa Weekly is online, and in honor of National Newspaper Week, I've written about our city's monopoly daily newspaper, the Tulsa Whirled.

The column is about the investigation into Great Plains Airlines, and why the Tulsa Whirled seems so intent on halting that investigation before we know how the airline spent over $30 million in public investment. If you've been trying to understand what the Great Plains fuss is all about, this column is a good place to start, if I do say so myself.

Also in this issue, G. W. Schulz delves into the politics of distributing Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) dollars and other federal funds to local non-profits. G. W. provides the background to the recent controversy over the city repaying grant money to the Feds. And Barry Friedman has some doubts about those estimates of the New Orleans Hornets' economic impact on Oklahoma City.

You can find Urban Tulsa Weekly at finer dining establishments and smart cafés all over Tulsa.

By the way, I've added a blog category to collect each week's announcement of my latest column and thus serve as a sort of column archive.

I'm down at Shades of Brown, working on my Urban Tulsa Weekly column, and from the next table I'm hearing a lot about nuns assimilating, but by the context they're not talking about the acculturation of immigrant Catholic religious women. It's a couple of ORU grad students trying to get their brains around Hebrew orthography.

Shades has a full house tonight, and it's gratifying to see a lot of the patrons perusing the latest issue of UTW as they sip their coffee.

In that new UTW issue, you'll find my latest column, on infill development in Brookside, and some encouraging steps toward accommodating new development without sacrificing the neighborhood's character. G. W. Schulz has the cover story -- it's about the challenges faced by EMSA, Tulsa's ambulance service. As a former Austin resident, G. W.'s also a part of a symposium on the OU-Texas rivalry. The discussion goes beyond football to the differences in attitude between north and south of the Red River. Way down Texas way, they don't mind rowdy politicians:

When Tulsa City Councilors Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino began raising hell at City Hall, the city recoiled with shame and horror as if someone had farted at a funeral. We're generally timid and quiet; we don't like anyone making too much noise.

But Mautino and Medlock's antics hardly would have made the pages of the Austin American-Statesman. The only time Texans blink is when someone isn't screaming and yelling at the capitol building.

Pick up a copy and read the whole thing.

The latest issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly is online, and my column this week is about Tulsa County's push to pass an extension to the "4 to Fix the County" sales tax:

Tulsa County�s three commissioners are scrambling to put together a list of projects to be funded with a new 1/6th cent sales tax. Although there�s a year to go until the �4 to Fix the County� (4FC) tax expires, county officials are eager to get Tulsa voters to commit at the earliest possible opportunity to pay the tax for five more years.

The reason has little to do with funding critical County government functions, and everything to do with mayoral politics and the balance of power between City and County. While the County has accomplished a lot of good with 4FC, the question Tulsa voters should be asking is, �Who needs the money most?�

Read the whole thing, as they say.

I'm pleased to announce that I'm writing a weekly column for Urban Tulsa Weekly. My first column is in the current issue, and it's on urban design, walkability, and what that means for Tulsans who, by reason of disability or age, cannot drive:

For tens of thousands of our fellow Tulsans, walkability isn�t about rows of trendy cafes and quirky consignment shops, or about sidewalks to nowhere; it�s about independence. For them, driving simply isn�t an option. I�m not talking just about those who can�t afford to operate a car. There are those who are physically unable to drive.

Many senior citizens, troubled by glare at night or uncertain of their reflexes, prefer to drive only during daylight or not at all. Teenagers are old enough to get around on their own, but either can�t drive yet or shouldn�t. For those who can�t drive, urban design makes the difference between freedom and frustrating dependence.

The focus of my column will be city issues and city politics. Many thanks to UTW publisher Keith Skrzypczak for the opportunity to write a column, and to UTW reporter G.W. Schulz, whose very kind profile of me in July started the ball rolling on this.

G. W. Schulz's 4,000-word profile of yours truly is the cover story of this week's Urban Tulsa Weekly.

It was a pleasure to get to meet and talk with G. W. over the last few weeks. I've enjoyed his work in UTW, and it's an honor to be the subject of a profile by him. His hiring is a part of UTW's increased coverage of local news, and it's an important step in that paper's evolution from a collection of entertainment reviews and ads to a full-fledged alternative weekly.

I may issue a few clarifications or corrections later to compensate for my failure to answer as clearly as I might have, but for now, I'll just encourage you to read it. I'm very pleased.