If anyone wants to watch the painful sausage being made... You can watch the whole debate on TGov. (Doesn't work on all browsers, but does work on Internet Explorer.)
Here's my very incomplete summary of what happened at the meeting with timestamps if you want to view online. I didn't capture everything everyone said. The notes below reflect my bias and interests.
Here’s the first half:
http://tulsa-ok.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=31103:00 - Intro - GT tries to summarize what's happened and changed. "A number of us have been working on this." (If you keep watching, you'll understand that not everyone was included in all of these discussions.)
7:38 - Jack Blair - further explanation / overview
16:00 - begin various councilors sharing opinions and thoughts on projects
37:40 - Bartlett talks about Fire Dept / public safety funding
46:00 - Blake asks for thoughtful approach: "Do we look into the future and see that our investment truly made a difference in our community?"
49:00 – Why the $40 million additional funds for public safety more than original proposal? What outcome are we hoping to achieve?
52:00 – Bartlett – we’ve spent a tremendous amount of time on coming up with these proposals. Blah, blah, blah…
54:00 – more councilors talking about what they care about.
1h:31 – Bartlett justifies keeping $30 mil for county/fairgrounds without offering any reasons why.
1h:32 – Blake: we’re essentially paying the county $30 million to prevent them from going for .1 in their own measure. We shouldn’t sacrifice Tulsa projects to pay county.
1h:35 – Lakin – it actually frees up $90 million if we take that off the table, because the half a tenth comes off the table as well.
1h:35 – Lakin talks about his recommendations for the contingency list if south Tulsa low water dam doesn’t get approved by all 3 funding partners (Tulsa, Jenks and Creek Nation).
1h:38 – GT re: contingencies - Zink dam is entirely within COT. Costs for the south dam will be shared by Tulsa, Jenks and Creek Nation. Wording should be that if one of those partners fails to allocate funds, the dam does not get built.
1h:41 – Henderson re: $30 mil for fairgrounds: We shouldn't take things off our list to please the county.
1h:45 – Blake re: public safety / fire dept ask – need to talk in terms of desired outcomes, not manpower. Having more guys on a truck should not be the goal. What is the desired goal/outcome? Nobody has an answer to this question.
1h:50 – 2h:24 – Fire department discussion – arguments pro/con related 3 vs. 4 man trucks.
2h:24 - Good viewing if you want to learn about which councilors want to go home because they’re tired of debating issues. Also provides clues to who was/wasn’t involved in little small group non-public meetings over the weekend and earlier in the week.
2h:31 – 2h:35 Go Blake! (Some of this was shown on TV news. Watch the whole thing.)
2h:37:30 – GT – it’s important that we take our time. – “Let’s legislate this thing.”
2h:39:45 – Bartlett – talks about the little meetings that went on all day with some of the councilors. “We can’t have everyone in the same room at the same time because of open meeting laws.” (Uh… there may be a reason for that…)
Here's the second half:
http://tulsa-ok.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=2&clip_id=31114:08 – Lakin recommends reducing fire depart from 82.5 million to 70 million. – Reallocate 12.5 million to economic dev
12:00 – Council votes to approve this recommendation.
13:24 – Discussions begin on economic development – motion to accept Econ Dev draft list with additional $12.5 million added from public safety.
16:22 – Blake – Summarizes how transit funding has been screwed. City needs dedicated transit funding. Today, we’ve lost $35 million of transit funding.
20:00 ish – Mayor – talking about airport needs. Wants some of the money from $12.5 mil public safety savings for airport. But didn’t get much traction.
23:37 – More discussion of transit topics
24:50: - Lakin – “Why did we combine transit and transportation?”
25:10 – Jack Blair: “This was suggested in a draft I received this morning. I was not part of the discussions.”
26:00 – If we break transit back out, we may need another ballot title.
26:30 – Blake on transit: “I’ll take my chances with a dedicated transit fund… I worry that without dedicated transit earmark, those funds will be used for something else.” “The public should be able to count on the reliability of a transit service, the same way that they count on Yale Ave being there next year and the year after.” Transit operations shouldn’t be competing with pothole funding for the same dollars.
30:00 - Blake: Summary of how transit was decimated for street maintenance.
37:00 – Question of what to do with county dollars ($30 million for Fairgrounds) Do we have access to those dollars or not?
Blake moved to remove the $30 for the fairgrounds. His motion didn’t pass.
1h:02 – 1h:08 – more transportation/transit discussion.
1h:10 – Lakin recommends giving time to consider transit / transportation options, and come back on Thurs.
Bartlett says we must have $48 million for potholes.
1h:13 – Blake reiterates: in the course of a couple days, we went from $60 to $15 million for transit.
The votes that occurred during this meeting were for the legal department to move forward with drafting documents using the numbers on the council's spreadsheet. It was not the final approval of items/numbers to appear on the ballot. Sounds like that will happen on Thursday.
Still some wiggle room, but any recommendation will need to come with a recommendation of what you would cut to provide for it.