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Preserve the Midland Valley Pedestrian Bridge
Tulsa's Midland Valley Pedestrian Bridge and Zink Lake Dam viewed from the west bank, south of the bridge and dam, February 14, 2016 Resistance is gathering to the plan to demolish the Midland Valley Pedestrian Bridge across the Arkansas River. Although an engineering analysis from 2015 shows that the 110-year-old...
Tulsa Election 2020: Ty Walker for Mayor
What looked like a sleepy re-election run, for Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum IV as recently as the beginning of May, with one declared opponent and a perennial candidate in jail, turned into a free-for-all. As soon as he had some tough decisions to make, the smiley guy that everyone...
Tulsa Election 2020, District 4: Kathryn Lyons questionnaire
Back on August 12, I sent the three eligible candidates for City Council District 4 a questionnaire using the email addresses provided in their declarations of candidacy or on their websites. The questionnaire included the 18 questions I asked the mayoral candidates, plus a question about neighborhood conservation districts and...
Tulsa Election 2020: Mayoral candidate questionnaire
Last Wednesday, BatesLine sent a questionnaire to the six serious candidates for Mayor of Tulsa, using the email addresses provided in their declarations of candidacy or on their websites. We sent two reminders. We received replies from three candidates: Craig Immel, Ken Reddick, and Ty Walker. The survey consists of...
Budget-busting Vision Tulsa: "We should have thought through better"
The City Council and the Mayor didn't need to put Vision Tulsa on a special April ballot. The Vision 2025 tax doesn't expire until December 31. They had plenty of time to perform due diligence, get solid estimates, consider consequences and hidden costs, but they wanted it on a low-turnout...
Sales Tax Overview Committee chairman voices accountability concerns about Vision Tulsa projects
Most of the projects in Vision Tulsa Prop 3 amount to "Here, have a pile of money." Instead of building a specific facility that will belong to the City of Tulsa or updating existing city-owned facilities, the City will write a check to some other institution to do with as...
Vision Tulsa, sheriff special election: BatesLine ballot card
Here are my recommended votes in the Tulsa County special election on April 5, 2016, for the unexpired term for Tulsa County Sheriff and county and municipal sales tax propositions. Links lead to more detailed information or earlier blog entries. (This entry may change as I decide to add...
Vision Tulsa and Tulsa County, April 5, 2016, election in a nutshell
Tomorrow, April 5, 2016, voters across Tulsa County have a special election for sheriff and will also vote on the county's sales tax proposal (1/20th of a cent for 15 years) for capital projects. Here's what the white countywide ballot will look like. Voters in several Tulsa County municipalities will...
Dam hazards: Ohio cities removing low-water dams
It's very typical of Tulsa to embrace an urban development fad just as other cities are rethinking and reversing course. (Case in point: No sooner did we close off Main Street for a pedestrian mall than other cities began noticing that pedestrian malls killed retail businesses and started reopening pedestrianized...
Vision 2025's broken promise: Economic development
We were promised in 2003 that if we passed Vision 2025, our economy would grow so much that we'd have enough additional revenue to pave streets and hire more police officers and re-open our closed city pools. If Vision 2025 made our economy grow, why are we now being asked to increase our permanent operating sales tax rate by 17.25% (from 2% to 2.345%) to fund basic police and fire coverage and street maintenance? Why are we demolishing rec centers and pools?
Arkansas River retrospective
Over the last 13 years, I've written quite a bit about the Arkansas River and proposals for damming and remodeling it, and about what Tulsans really are seeking when they ask for water in the river. Recently I resurrected several of my Urban Tulsa Weekly columns and my 2007...
Vague Vision Tulsa: Payola Project for common schools
Among the many flaws in the Vision Tulsa dam tax proposal (on the April 5, 2016, ballot) are what I've decided to call the Payola Projects -- projects that involve giving a chunk of money to various institutions in hopes of winning their constituents' votes for the dam tax. A...
Muscogee (Creek) Nation to Tulsa: No money for Jenks dam
Here is a timeline of statements made by Muscogee (Creek) Nation (MCN) elected officials regarding their financial involvement in the low-water dam. When you clear away the wish-casting statements being made by city officials, you'll notice that there aren't any MCN officials offering money to the project. Instead, MCN officials...
Dead Dam Vision: Fox23's spiked story
Last week, a local TV station spiked a well-researched news story about funding problems for the proposed south Tulsa / Jenks low-water dam and the awareness of Tulsa elected officials of the problem before they voted to put the proposal on the ballot. The story's sudden withdrawal hints at pressure...
Vision Tulsa squeezes out "Third Penny" for streets; Dollars for dams instead
If you take time to read the Vision Tulsa ballot resolutions and ordinances that define the new city sales tax rate and control how the new city sales taxes will be spent, the barrage of changing tax rates and effective dates may make your head swim. That's why I put...
Re-Vision foolishness: Where are the BoEs?
The Tulsa City Council is rushing to get the new "Vision" tax on the ballot for April. The current Vision 2025 tax doesn't expire until the end of the year, so they could wait until June (the city, state, and federal primary date) or November (city, state, and federal general...
GT Bynum lobbying, possible conflicts of interest in the news
Back in September 2010, BatesLine first looked at Tulsa City Councilor G. T. Bynum's lobbying practice and the obvious concerns that arise when a local official is acting as a paid agent for an organization actively engaged in local political issues. I mentioned Bynum's lobbying for the George Kaiser Family...
Turning the Arkansas River into Joan Rivers
Tomorrow morning (Friday, September 19, 2014) at 8:05 am, I'll be on 1170 KFAQ with Pat Campbell to discuss "improvements" to the Arkansas River, the broad prairie stream that flows through the western and southwestern parts of the city of Tulsa. The "improvements" would involve renovating the Zink Lake dam,...
Oklahoma Primary 2014 recap
What an interesting night! I had been at the watch party for Randy Brogdon, Ken Yazel, David Brumbaugh, and Chuck Strohm. The mood there was generally upbeat: Yazel had survived another establishment attempt to knock him off, winning re-election to another four-year term as County Assessor and Courthouse Gadfly with...
Arkansas River dams, again
Here we go again. Officials, led by an alleged fiscal conservative, are pumping us up to raise our taxes to pour concrete in the river. [Tom] Dittus is the managing partner of the Blue Rose Café at 19th and Riverside, and wishes he had some neighbors. "Hopefully people will see...
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