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2023 Tulsa sales tax and bond issues: Seven reasons to vote NO
Here are seven reasons to vote no on <a href="https://www.batesline.com/archives/2023/07/2023-tulsa-sales-tax-bond-issue.html">all four City of Tulsa ballot propositions at the special election next Tuesday, August 8, 2023
Improve Our Tulsa: Tulsa's Underpants Gnomes promise to fix homelessness
A dialogue pertinent to the August 8, 2023, City of Tulsa special election: "Homeless problem in Tulsa seems worse than ever and all over the city, not just downtown." "Don't worry, GT has a plan." "What's the plan?" "$75 million." "To do what?" "We don't know yet." "How do...
Tulsa GOP urges NO on Improve Our Tulsa 3
The Tulsa County Republican Party has officially come out in opposition to the four City of Tulsa propositions for sales tax and general obligation bonds on the August 8, 2023, ballot ("Improve Our Tulsa 3"): Republican Party of Tulsa County Takes Stance on Improve Our Tulsa 3 Bond Package Tulsa...
No on SQ 820 marijuana: More voices
More commentary opposed to SQ 820, on the ballot this Tuesday, March 7, 2023. (My earlier SQ 820 blog post covers campaign finances, the actual text of the proposition, and more voices against the proposition.) Twitter user Chels (@ChesterTweet) has a link-rich thread "explaining why every Oklahoman should vote...
Tulsa Election 2022: City Council runoff
The City of Tulsa's odd and oft-changed election process comes to its 2022 conclusion Tuesday with runoffs in three of nine Tulsa City Council seats. Three incumbents, all registered to vote as Democrats, failed to reach the 50% threshold in the August general election and so face a runoff. The...
2020 Oklahoma presidential primary; liquor sales on Sunday
Postdated to remain at the top of the blog until the polls close at 7 p.m. Today, March 3, 2020, is the Oklahoma presidential preference primary. Oklahoma is one of 14 states (Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maine, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia (Democrats only), and Vermont)...
"He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds."
You'll be touched and encouraged by two very different stories linked by a common theme: People who are serving as God's hands to heal the brokenhearted and bind up their wounds. The Folds of Honor Foundation's cottage at Crosstimbers Marina, dedicated Memorial Day weekend, welcomes its first guests this weekend,...
Apollo 11 -- forty years ago
I was five years old, but I got to stay up late to watch the moon walk. We were at my grandparents' house in Nowata. My grandpa sold and repaired TVs, radios, and appliances (Johnny's Electronics), so he had a color TV. (We wouldn't have one for a few years...
To have and have not
This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is an expansion upon my blog entry from last weekend about the efforts by "not-in-my-back-yard" downtown interests to relocate the homeless and indigent away from downtown. Coincidentally, in this same issue there's Brian Ervin's profile of Steve Whitaker, head of John 3:16 Mission....
Who are the real NIMBYs?
An edited version of this column was published in the August 14-20, 2008, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. It was a more polished version of a blog entry from the previous week (minus hyperlinks and blockquotes, which don't translate well to print). The published version is no longer available on...
The real NIMBYs
Ruth Kaiser Nelson was, for all practical purposes, my first Latin teacher. When I was an eighth-grader, our scheduled teacher, Bill Bippus, took a semester's leave of absence, and Mrs. Nelson taught us instead. Because the class occurred during the girls' PE period, it was an all-boy class, and Mrs....
I-244 & Yale vagrant facility on Council agenda
Tonight (Thursday, August 7) the Tulsa City Council will reconsider a resolution it passed last week. The resolution, jointly issued with the Tulsa Housing Authority dealt with four lots on the west side of Yale between Admiral Place and I-244, declaring it to be "in the public interest" for TDA...
Beach-ed appointment
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...
"A sense of independence carried to an almost pathological extreme"
I think Dan Paden has this exactly right: The real issue when it comes to the hard-core homeless is this: a sense of independence carried to an almost pathological extreme, such that eventually, one has no friends, no relatives, no support network, or at least none of these that are...
Reagan's economic record
Much of the focus of the last week has been on Ronald Reagan's role in the demise of Soviet Communism, but his economic achievements are just as impressive. If you're my age or older, you remember the '70s when double-digit inflation and double-digit mortgage rates seemed to be a fact...
Experimenting with vagrancy
Several items related to vagrancy: Tom McCloud, the publisher of Community Spirit magazine, has spent the last four days on the streets to try to understand that way of life on the inside. He has written about his experiences on the magazine's website. Among other revelations, it turns out there's...
Another visionary proposal, ignored
The politicians keep saying that this September 9th tax vote is the culmination of a grass-roots driven "visioning" process. But a comprehensive, strategic plan -- promised as an outcome of the visioning process -- was never completed. The only ideas given a hearing before the "leadership team" were those that...
Vagrant reality
A couple of interesting items yesterday regarding vagrancy (or as they call it these days, "homelessness"). John Derbyshire reports on the "battalions" of street people he encountered at City Hall Plaza in San Francisco, and reports that city leaders can't understand why the "homeless" population is increasing "despite" all the...
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