The Tulsa Forum by TulsaNow

The election is August 8th.  Thoughts on the renewal of this package?  I personally would like to see the public safety center remain downtown but fear they will move it to the State Farm complex at 129th E Ave. I also want to see movement on the full $300M renovation/expansion of the PAC, does that $79.7M include design fees for that portion?

$772M total cost

Streets & Transportation
- Inflation-Adjustment for Previously Approved Street Projects: $93.8M
- Citywide Routine & Preventative Maintenance: $68M
- Street Widening: $30M
- Bridge Replacement: $24M
- Matching Funds: $21.6M
- Traffic Engineering: $19.3M
- ADA: $10M
- Sidewalks: $4.8M
- Construction Completion Incentives: $4M
- Engineering, Inspection & Testing: $3M
- Alleys: $1.2M

City Facilities
- Safety Training Center Driving Track: $4.4M
- BOK Center: $6.4M
- Convention Center: $18.8M
- Tulsa PAC: $79.7M
- Parks: $31.9M
- Public Safety Center: $47.5M
- Gilcrease Museum: $10M
- Zink Lake Infrastructure: $5M
- Tulsa Zoo: $25.7M
- Citywide Facility Maintenance: $20M

Capital Equipment
- Tulsa Fire Dept Fleet: $58.5M
- Other Vehicles/Maintenance/IT: $94.3M

Tulsa Housing Initiative
- Housing Incentives: $75M
- ARPA: $5M
- DDRF: $8.1M
- HOME-ARP: $5M
- Affordable Housing Trust Fund: $8.4M
- Opioid Settlement Funds: $2.7M
- Neighborhood Revitalization: $15M

The investment in affordable housing and a low-barrier shelter is awesome. Lots of money for the PAC too - might be mostly for the ADA improvements. The new public safety center will be a major impactful change for downtown - would be great to get the police station/holding cells away from the convention center and then activate that block more. A lot of the rest of the facilities improvements are just roof replacements - necessary, but expensive and not noticeable.

Having to spend over 90 million on inflation adjustments sucks big time.

I'd like to see the public safety center be located across from the jail on the site of the closed dairy.

That's actually a perfect spot and it's currently for sale.  Can the City purchase and renovate it into the TPD/TFD offices for $47.5M?  Keeping those jobs downtown should be a priority

Wonder if they will try to make the roads radioactive like Florida is doing? 

They aren't. The bill wants a study to look at using phosphogypsum, a byproduct of making fertilizer using phosphate rock dissolved in sulfuric acid to create phosphoric acid that is used in fertilizer. This process has been around since the early 1800's. The phosphogypsum contains uranium and it's decay byproduct is radium 226 more commonly know as Radon.

Even if they state passed it, it would still have to meet Federal EPA rules.



https://www.npr.org/2023/05/09/1174789570/florida-roads-radioactive-paving-phosphogypsum (https://www.npr.org/2023/05/09/1174789570/florida-roads-radioactive-paving-phosphogypsum)

^It's still a bad idea. https://www.epa.gov/radtown/radioactive-material-fertilizer-production#:~:text=Phosphogypsum%2C%20a%20waste%20product%20from,elements%20uranium%2C%20thorium%20and%20radium.


Florida is literally trying to sweep it under the rug because they have so much of it lying around.

OK has plenty of old lead mining chat piles they could do the same with, I suppose.   ::)

Yeah, I can see that. The chat piles in Picher seem like a great choice for part of the aggregate for making concrete, it's the particulate that would be generated in the process that create the biggest hazard. I would think that the radioactivity from the phosphogypsum while low level would probably be stopped by the concrete, it's the process that would create the health hazard.

They want to.  This is the first step of trying to.

I got an education about this from one of the kids this week who is a nuclear physicist.  She told me it could be done somewhat innocuously and exposure levels, while above background, would still be fairly low.   So it almost certainly wouldn't be as bad as some of the other stupid Stitt Florida is doing, but it still isn't very clever.  


And it IS still a big enough thing that there are sequester sites where huge piles of the stuff are building up, theoretically keeping humans from exposure.  And likely to be at least a couple levels worse than the lead mine piles in Picher/Cardon.

Maybe we could work with them to combine the two and have lead based radiation exposure on the roads!

With consistent, even mixing, each bit of radioactivity would be surrounded by lead shielding!  And all the lead would be isolated from the environment by glow in the dark gypsum, preventing kids from chewing on it, due to an unpalatable appearance!   And reducing the need for so many of those unsightly street light poles!

(Anyone notice just the tiniest bit of hyperbole here...?)

Couldn't resist...
(https://i.pinimg.com/736x/7c/ba/de/7cbade45b6429f0bebefc0ed54810ec3--starry-nights-bicycles.jpg)
https://www.pilotonline.com/resizer/06Swj0oXG41oV_fLdX-0-G4fdJY=/800x0/filters:format(jpg):quality(70)/arc-anglerfish-arc2-prod-tronc.s3.amazonaws.com/public/FXHT3HVXEZCMDMP6ZLJYKFS2JM.jpg

I want that for my driveway!!!  At this age, who cares about some radiation!   I had a couple years exposure to asbestos dust and didn't get the pretty colors!

Can anyone point me somewhere I can see what road widening projects are included in this project?

The BOK Center needed a better video board the day it opened and it shocks me it still has that same one.
A big, beautiful arena with a bargain basement video board.
Are there any funds here or elsewhere to replace it?

Not everyone is in love with the proposed $814 million Improve Our Tulsa capital improvements package.
Certainly not District 5 City Councilor Grant Miller, and certainly not local writer and author Michael Bates.

https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/government-politics/dissenting-voices-get-their-say-on-proposed-improve-our-tulsa-3-captital-improvments-package/article_fe371dcc-2cb4-11ee-8c1c-9b71ee9866d4.html

I cant help but wonder if voters would actually approve multi-million dollar items on police wish lists if they were stand-alone items and not bundled in with other "improvements."

Michael Bates is a broken record.

That's not the adjective I was thinking of, but I digress...

All the proposals passed easily.


https://www.newson6.com/elections

Good deal ^. Saw quite a few no signs.. was a pretty easy victory.

The same people who are big on voting no are also the same people screaming at the city to do what the bonds are for...

Glad this vote is out of the way so these improvements can go forth. Moving the DT police station would be huge for the convention center. Still hilarious how the grand entrance to our convention center is hidden behind a jail.

Finishing Gilcrease is also a big relief. Updating the PAC is important to.

At the end of the day though, we'll all be glad when the streets projects that have been put on hold are finally pushed through thanks to this.

Do we know if the PAC improvements are just what is needed to keep the building running/up-to-code and does it include any design work for the bigger project?

Also curious where the Public Safety Center ends up going.  The Hiland Dairy plant makes a lot of sense and keeps those jobs downtown.

It sounds like there will be a new Tulsa County Courthouse on the dairy site:
https://www.news9.com/story/64c8350bde40fd072efb4b08/tulsa-county-taking-steps-toward-replacing-70yearold-courthouse-building

But there are several blocks available there and it would make sense to keep the new the Public Safety Center next to the new courthouse.

The dairy plus the site north of Cameron along Denver Ave would make a great spot for all of that

Does anyone know of a way to view the project schedule for the previous versions of this?

There is an interactive map at www.improveourtulsa.com where you can click on various streets to see projects (showing the type of improvement and cost) but not the schedule. I swear there used to be dates attached to them but I don't see them now.

I'm mostly curious about the Peoria re-build in between 21st and 41st and also my particular part of Brookside is also supposed to be re-done, so I'm just curious when both of those may be happening. (City crews came out and marked lines on my neighborhood streets earlier this year but nothing has happened since.)

Hey Jeff, if you click on the three horizontal dots at the lower right corner of the pop up (when you click on a street segment), then click on View in Attribute Table, that will open a table that has a design start and construction start date.  At least for some projects.  Maybe not all of them.  

Ahh... I figured it was something like that. Thanks!

Edit - so looking at the schedule, it says that my neighborhood is in the "design" stage, and that design started like a year ago (Sept. 2022). So anyone who knows anything about street projects, what's a reasonable time frame to expect the work to start? Next year? 2030? Lol

https://tulsaworld.com/news/local/government-politics/consultants-offer-possible-sites-for-new-or-expanded-tulsa-county-courthouse/article_e68fb126-67b9-11ee-8781-9f776eb4f98d.html#tracking-source=mp-homepage

Looks like the old dairy site isn't being considered? I know they want to keep it within the IDL, but any of these locations will eventually butt up against future growth initiatives. The south side of the IDL especially. It might be cheaper somehow to keep the new site closer to the existing, but if they redevelop the existing site the way they want, we're hoping that development will be spurred all around. I'm not sure if the courthouse would get in the way of that or not.

Can someone explain to me why the county building next door can't be demolished and built several stories high as an add-on to the existing courthouse? Didn't all the county offices there move across the street? Still wouldn't solve accessibility but I'm confused what that building is and why it can't be an expansion site for the courthouse.

I think the plan to build just south of there is the best for a new courthouse. I really don't see it stopping other developments, and part of me has given up hope for south downtown. I assume it'll be a parking crater forever.

My take FWIW:
1. The police/fire HQ should be at the repurposed Hiland Dairy
2. The new courthouse should be built on the parking lot south of the current courthouse fronting the triangular park at 7th & Denver that could be renamed Courthouse Square. 

Both allow the current outdated buildings to be demolished to make way for a new convention hotel