Vision 2025 Extension - Package Details

[PonderInc]

Renovations to Cox business center, and purchasing the downtown post office building.  I haven't watched that video.

https://www.cityoftulsa.org/our-city/vision/submitted-proposals.aspx

[DowntownDan]

I like how he just casually mentions at the end acquiring the Page Belcher Federal Courthouse.  Are we finally getting a new courthouse?  Seems like it's been talked about for years but I've never heard more than a rumor and confirmation that we're "on the list" for a new one, with no timeline whatsoever.

[cannon_fodder]

The Federal Building is reasonably well appointed and certainly meets their needs (Courtrooms have been kept up to date, etc.), but it is an architectural atrocity IMHO. Better suited to be a prison along a highway than a Courthouse in the middle of downtown. Also, with the post office processing moving to a brand new facility in East Tulsa (before moving to Oklahoma City), there is 86,000 square feet of space unoccupied in that building.

http://www.loopnet.com/xNet/Looplink/Profile/Profile.aspx?LID=17672655&STID=CB0003&LL=true

400,000 square feet more than satisfies the requirements based on the listing, could probably get that down to 300-350k with more efficient designs.  You could have the same square footage in a 9 story building occupying half the footprint, sell the rest of the line for hotel space, build a parking garage connecting to the BOK center garage extending over the little strip of road to the new hotel, throw a sky bridge between Aloft, convention center, and this new hotel and over to the BOK. Poof! Added parking. Added hotel space. New non-ugy Federal building and sky bridges. WIN!

Or... move it to the parking lot desert on the fridges of downtown or over by TCC. The Federal Courthouse doesn't really interact with the State facilities, so no need for the immediate proximity.

But, I have to admit, it isn't a huge priority for me. The new OKC Federal Building cost $33mil and is only 185k square feet. on a true cost benefit analysis, it probably isn't a wise community investment. But damn it Inhoffe, where's the pork!

[PonderInc]

$30 million for the Fairgrounds (county owned property).  Can anyone explain what that $30 million would be spent on?  Some disagreement on the council of whether we should be responsible for funding the fairgrounds with city money.

[Conan71]

The Federal Building is reasonably well appointed and certainly meets their needs (Courtrooms have been kept up to date, etc.), but it is an architectural atrocity IMHO. Better suited to be a prison along a highway than a Courthouse in the middle of downtown. Also, with the post office processing moving to a brand new facility in East Tulsa (before moving to Oklahoma City), there is 86,000 square feet of space unoccupied in that building.

http://www.loopnet.com/xNet/Looplink/Profile/Profile.aspx?LID=17672655&STID=CB0003&LL=true

400,000 square feet more than satisfies the requirements based on the listing, could probably get that down to 300-350k with more efficient designs.  You could have the same square footage in a 9 story building occupying half the footprint, sell the rest of the line for hotel space, build a parking garage connecting to the BOK center garage extending over the little strip of road to the new hotel, throw a sky bridge between Aloft, convention center, and this new hotel and over to the BOK. Poof! Added parking. Added hotel space. New non-ugy Federal building and sky bridges. WIN!

Or... move it to the parking lot desert on the fridges of downtown or over by TCC. The Federal Courthouse doesn't really interact with the State facilities, so no need for the immediate proximity.

But, I have to admit, it isn't a huge priority for me. The new OKC Federal Building cost $33mil and is only 185k square feet. on a true cost benefit analysis, it probably isn't a wise community investment. But damn it Inhoffe, where's the pork!

What happens in this federal building vs. the one at 2nd & Boulder?  Or is the one at 2nd & Boulder exclusively for bankruptcy?

[Dspike]

Page Belcher includes the District Judges and the Magistrate Judges. I believe the probation office and the clerks' office is there as well.

The old (and beautiful) courthouse holds the Bankruptcy Judges and retired District Judges (who still carry a reduced caseload). The old courthouse is not quite big enough to fit everyone in it, but it would be great if they could expand it just a little and move everyone back there. Certainly should be able to do it for less than the $33M spent on the OKC federal courthouse (based on comments upthread).

[PonderInc]

Most recent draft of the list of items.  This is the current draft.  More discussions tomorrow (Thurs).

http://www.tulsacouncil.org/media/115177/visionproposalsummary(1-27-16).pdf

Includes the contingency items in case the South Tulsa dam doesn't get funded by all 3 funding partners.

[PonderInc]

Contingency items may be funded if the south low water dam doesn't happen (Tulsa, Jenks and Creek Nation all have to approve funding.  If one party doesn't, we can use the money currently allocated for the south dam for other priorities).

It's sad that the $60 million of dedicated transit funding has now been combined with "transportation" (potholes) funding.  There are two proposals right now that will be discussed further tomorrow.  (Didn't we just pass a billion dollars for street maintenance a couple years ago?)

Option 1: A blended total amount of $63 mil for transportation and transit, or

Option 2: a dedicated split between potholes ($48 mil) and transit ($15 mil).

One concern for blending the two is that transit will be screwed every year. It would be at the whim of the mayor and the annual budget allocations. And people with cars have more political swing that transit users.

The Center of the Universe transit station appears to be completely absent.

It's also interesting that we now have $30 mil going to the fairgrounds, which is owned by the county.  Ewing and Henderson argued to eliminate this and return those dollars to Tulsa city projects.  All the other councilors voted to keep the $30 mil handout to the county.  (They fear that if the county makes a bigger ask on their ballot item, it will impact the public's perception of the COT ballot items. This is considered a way to appease the county, so they will keep their ballot initiative at current levels.  Or something like that.)

If anyone wants to write some emails to the various city councilors, I've been told to keep them short.  Apparently, not all councilors take the time to read long emails.  So a few succinct sentences might be good.

[patric]

I think the election(s) should be delayed until after the issues are hashed out, and I don't think the Council and the public are capable of ironing out the wrinkles by Feb 4.

New low-water dams are a bad idea, in my opinion.  If new dams are combined with anything else on any ballot, I'll vote NO.

A term even shorter than eight years would be better.

So much of the issue was centered around public safety operations that they didnt realize they had left out most of the funding that V2025 was intended for in the first place.  This may take more than one election cycle...

[PonderInc]

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=3110
3:00 - 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=3111
4:08 – 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.

[Conan71]

Was Blake referring to other councilors as “clowns” or who was that?

Some thoughts:

We don’t need to collect tax for the county- they can come up with their own initiative, if it’s got value to the taxpayer, they will pay it.  Dewey failing to coherently justify why we need to do this is a dereliction of duty.

I’m glad to see there is a contingency if Jenks or the Creeks have no interest in funding the Jenks dam.  I hate that a west bank trail from Turkey Mountain to Jenks has been axed entirely.  This has been needed for some time.  I was rather shocked at the allocation for it, I believe $8.5M was the number.  That’s a lot of money for 2 or 3 miles of trail, maybe Kirby can chime in on cost breakdown for trails. 

I get Blake’s frustration with the total crap on transit.  I also thought fixing pot holes was a part of that billion dollar package we were sold in 2008 for the streets package.

I do applaud the council for all the sacrifice in time they’ve had to take away from their families throughout this process.  But, I pity the poor people who have to polish this and sell it to the voters.

[PonderInc]

The clown comment was expressing frustration at all these little meetings that were happening with a few councillors at a time and the mayor. Lots of horse trading appears to have occurred, but not all councillors appear to have been included in those discussions. Makes you wonder who was, and why others weren't. But it sounds like Blake wasn't there and in a matter of hours, transit got axed. Coincidence? Doubtful.

One of the frustrating things is that Blake is the only one who understands the value and economic benefit of transit. It's a social equity issue. It's a jobs issue. It's a proven economic stimulus because it allows people without cars to get and keep jobs. And it also creates jobs in the operation of transit. (Roads just create jobs while they're being built.)

So all these councillors, whose constituents are far more dependent on transit than Dist 4 aren't speaking up. Blake's the only one. Has to be frustrating.

[cannon_fodder]

Thank you for the wonderful summary!

[AquaMan]

A few thoughts from an outsider.

Who in the electorate has time to do the research and follow the proceedings like those involved here or in political/development circles? Few. This is coming off to the voters as complicated, expensive and likely viewed negatively in general.

It still is a basic tax grab by police, fire, streets, county. Nothing new there except more people seem to realize this is less about economic development than it is about nest feathering. Siphoning off project funding to accomplish safety and maintenance, tasks that should already be funded.

Blake looks like a good mayoral candidate but GT is playing the game.

Dewey is playing old school politics. Even gray hairs are pissed about that.

Naysayers about the original Vision project becoming more or less permanent taxation....may have been more visionary than I thought.

[carltonplace]

They need to pull the river...I think it's a waste of time at this point. River vote is going to fail.
Agreed on the Fairgrounds...what is left to fix there? Why would we allocate city funds to the county?