Urban Tulsa Weekly: October 2005 Archives

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.