Opinion/Editorial

Turkeys at City Hall (Printable Version , E-mail to a Friend )
Don’t succumb to the tryptophane of Tulsa status quo. Read this and question authority
by Michael Bates

Could there be anything more disgusting than watching Mayor Bill LaFortune’s staff picking their noses during City Council meetings? Surely such highly-paid public servants would know better than to engage in rhinotillexomania while sitting on the front row in the Council chambers, in full view of the cameras.

Chief of Staff Clay Bird, in particular, should know that a lengthy examination of the treasures recovered during nasal spelunking only compounds the offense. As for public consumption of said objets trouvées by mayoral cabinet members, the less said the better. Citizens who watch the proceedings over T-GOV as they sit down to Thursday supper deserve more considerate behavior than that.

Now you might read that first paragraph and assume that what I had complained about actually happened. As far as I know, no city official has ever been observed picking his nose in public, but it would be natural for someone reading that to assume that there must be an actual offense corresponding to the complaint. (I feel sure that Clay Bird knows that it’s bad form to stare with fascination at a freshly-mined nose nugget.) If you read carefully, though, you’ll notice that I never say that anything of the sort happened, just that it would be nauseating if it did happen.

That sort of accusation by implication happens a lot at City Council meetings, but with reform-minded City Councilors as the target. The accusers are city officials who find themselves being asked polite, reasonable questions that they’d rather not answer. To deflect attention from the substantive issue at hand, they complain that they’re being bullied or browbeaten. The daily paper duly reports the baseless complaints, which gives their editorial board a chance to wheeze out a few paragraphs deploring the behavior that didn’t happen. 

Bird is a master of this ploy. Rather than give a straight answer, he lets his jaw drop, feigning speechless outrage at the Council’s impertinence. Then his voice rises with righteous indignation as he expresses his incredulity. Parents of teenagers will recognize the tactic. 

Used in the past to derail Council concerns about city water policy, about the Chamber’s handling of economic development, and about Great Plains Airlines, the tactic has been used lately to avoid answering questions about the rising cost of building the new downtown sports arena.

When Councilor Roscoe Turner insisted that Bird give a direct answer to a question about arena costs at a recent Council committee meeting, Bird complained that the Council just wanted staffers there to beat up on and claimed that city staffers don’t want to appear before the Council for fear of how they’ll be treated. At a meeting of the Vision 2025 sales tax overview committee, one committee member said that councilors ought to “quit whining.”

This defensive behavior is a reaction to some very reasonable questions being asked by Councilors Chris Medlock, Roscoe Turner, Jack Henderson, and Jim Mautino. Whether or not you supported building the arena, if you pay taxes in Tulsa, you ought to be concerned about what it’s going to cost to build and operate it, and whether enough is going to be left over to pay for promised convention center improvements.

During planning for the Vision 2025 sales tax vote in 2003, the Dialog/Visioning leadership team estimated a need for $125 million to build an 18,000-to-20,000 fixed-seat arena and $58 million to renovate the convention center and convert the existing arena into ballroom and meeting space.

In drafting the ballot resolutions for the Sept. 9, 2003, election, the County Commission lumped the arena and convention center together and added the two numbers to come up with a single $183 million line item: “Tulsa Regional Convention/Events Center, including Convention Center modernization, land, design, and Events Center construction.” (“Events Center” was the euphemism used during the campaign for the sports arena.  The term “arena” resurfaced following the election.)

Throughout the campaign and for several months thereafter, the cost of the arena was consistently given by proponents as $125 million, and the cost of convention center renovations as $58 million. As far as I can tell, no one from the City or County protested when these numbers were used by the daily paper in news stories and editorials backing the arena.

In February 2004, a team headlined by starchitect Cesar Pelli was selected to design the arena. Scanning the World’s archives, the first sign I can find of a major shift in numbers was in a July 3, 2004, story following a nationwide tour of new arenas by LaFortune and members of the arena oversight committee. That story lists $143 million for the arena and $40 million for convention center renovations.  In the same story, LaFortune says that more money will be needed to provide the kind of finishing touches that will make the arena special.

An October 3, 2004, story is the first appearance of the $141 million figure, and it was in the context of the unveiling of Pelli’s conceptual design, featuring an “iconic” glass wall.  The $141 million/$42 million split was described as an “updated breakdown.”

The story quotes project director Bart Boatright: “We know that an 18,000-seat arena can be built within our budget. But we don't know the exact cost for this concept. To have this type of skin and iconic architecture, we'll have to run through the numbers.”

In the story, Boatright and LaFortune speculated about how much additional money might be raised from private sources, through naming rights and premium seating.

Who shifted the bucks? One man has the power to allocate the $183 million between the two projects: Bill LaFortune. The City Council can ask questions, but they have no control or authority over how that money is spent.

The adjusted numbers drew new attention last month amid a recommendation from the city’s Vision 2025 Oversight Committee to move another $3 million from the convention center budget to the arena budget to pay for a higher level of wind resistance for the arena’s wall of glass.

The oversight committee suggested that some of the costs for the new grand entrance to the convention center could be shifted to the City’s “third penny” sales tax for capital improvements as part of a civic center plaza upgrade, freeing up the money for the arena. That boils down to $3 million less available for basic street, water, and sewer improvements.

Medlock caught unwarranted grief from the daily paper, from Bird, and from fellow Councilor Susan Neal for trying to get solid numbers, not just reassurances, about what the arena and convention center projects were expected to cost and for trying to account for the changed numbers. Rather than focusing on the cost questions, the daily proclaimed that Medlock had been “scolded” and his notions “quashed.”  (Medlock provides a thorough rebuttal on his blog, http://medblogged.blogspot.com)

If the current numbers are to be believed, the arena is going to cost at least 13% more than the original estimate, but by some miracle, planned convention center improvements are going to be 27% cheaper than originally planned.  That’s before any adjustments are made to account for higher material and labor costs resulting from hurricane reconstruction along the Gulf Coast.

Ground was broken on another 18,000-seat arena this summer--a new venue for the New Jersey Devils hockey team in downtown Newark. That facility, which isn’t an iconic design by a world-renowned architect, is budgeted at $310 million. Allowing for higher labor costs and a certain percentage for kickbacks--this is New Jersey we’re talking about--it makes one wonder whether even the whole $183 million will be enough for Tulsa’s more elaborate facility.

However much the arena ends up costing, the City of Tulsa is only going to get $183 million from the County’s Vision 2025 sales tax for both projects--not a penny more. If there’s only enough left over to give the Convention Center a new coat of paint, that doesn’t fulfill the promises made during the campaign; doesn’t provide the improvements we were told were essential for Tulsa to compete for convention business.

If more taxpayer money is needed to do the job right, now is the time to have that discussion, before the arena is too far along, while we still have some options, but we can’t usefully discuss options until LaFortune’s administration tells us how much extra money will be needed, something they’d prefer not to discuss until after the mayoral election. 

One of those options is for LaFortune to ask city taxpayers to fund the additional amount. Tulsa voters might opt to turn down the County’s “4 to Fix the County” sales tax, then raise city sales tax by the same amount to pay the higher arena costs.

LaFortune might roll the extra costs into the next “third penny,” but that eats into money for more basic infrastructure. Then again, Tulsa voters might decide they have higher priorities for the money than to invest more in buildings that futurist David Pearce Snyder called “worthless, worthless, worthless” for urban revitalization.

They might insist that LaFortune makes the current budget work. Perhaps the design team could come up with something less iconic that still meets the specs for seats and features. 

The options will only become fewer and far more expensive if LaFortune gets away with punting this dilemma downfield.