I was excited to learn in today’s Tulsa World that the new VA hospital in downtown Tulsa has received an additional $31.2 million in funding for its construction, according to the nonprofit organization Veterans Hospital in Tulsa (VHiT), which is overseeing the project. TW subscribers can read the full article here: https://tinyurl.com/5n7ffux5  The funding,…
While some property owners predictably resist what they consider to be cumbersome and sometimes expensive regulations, they are arguably the ones who have the most to gain by them. Â It is a mistake by those who dismiss design standards as nothing more than unnecessary aesthetics serving as barriers to doing business.Â
Proposition 1 – If approved, the permanent, dedicated public safety tax will provide funding for the addition of 160 new police officers and 65 new firefighters. The City states that the added police officers will allow police stations to remain open 24-hours a day, seven days a week. It likely will improve response times for police by having more patrol officers ready to answer calls.
Proposition 2 – The common denominator of cities with effective transit systems is a source of dedicated funding. Dedicated and predictable funding facilitates the long-term planning required to bring the city up to competitive levels of performance. With the approval of Proposition 2, Tulsa can take begin to build a transit system for the 21st Century.
Background Information The current Tulsa County Vision 2025 sales tax will expire at the end of 2016. Vision 2025 is an unprecedented and highly successful countywide program of community enrichment and economic development projects. In late 2014, with the end of the Vision 2025 nearing, local officials began discussing the prospect of identifying new community…
On the Vision Tulsa renewal ballot, Tulsa County will offer a roughly $75 million package, funded by 0.05 percent sales tax over 13 years, for projects outside the city of Tulsa. We pass along the following list to provide you with the project details to inform your vote on the County’s Vision Tulsa plan, April 5th.
I have a lot of confidence in the ability of voters to decipher the issues and support the community’s needs when they are presented logically, honestly and rationally. They almost always do. And when packages are not well conceived, are poorly timed, or lack sufficient public input, they almost always fail.
Citizens seem to understand that solving the structural problems of financing city operations is needed and they are willing to use Vision 2025 to address them, even supporting a .4% tax increase to free up money for other worthy vision capital projects and programs.
Smart Growth Tulsa published a survey, providing an opportunity for participants to indicate which Vision 2025 Extension proposals they would like our elected officials to put on the spring ballot. After receiving presentations totaling $2.5 Billion from 120 individuals and organizations, the City Council must now decide which ones will compete for as little as…
Any way you slice it, commandeering half of the Vision 2025 funds for the four dams in a winner take all up or down vote would have seriously compromised what is left for other worthy quality of life enhancements. The public’s interest will be well served by broadening the discussion.
In the absence of any other comprehensive Vision 2025 extension proposal, we humbly submit the following options for your review and consideration. Our proposal is not meant to tell you what you need but rather to ask if these are the kinds of projects you would like to support and see on the ballot.
So we are left to determine if devoting $300 million to these dams is the smart, prudent, responsible and best use of the funds. The massively disproportionate share of the costs expected to be borne by Tulsans (90%) in relationship to the projected benefits simply do not add up.
