I’ve simply never figured out why it is if the oligarchs who have run the city for decades don’t take the advice of the paid consultants and paid employees, then what are we paying them for?
Nor have I ever figured out why the City of Tulsa keeps on paying consultants (and keeps on paying City employees to listen to those paid consultants), and then almost never implements the recommendations of the paid consultants.
Here's an example, and it pertains to the subject of walkability and to Federal civil rights legislation dating back to Bush 41's administration: wheelchair accessible curb ramps. In August 2014, the City of Tulsa brought in Kristi Avalos, an American with Disabilities Act (ADA) expert from Houston, to give a two or three day seminar about ADA compliance (and I don't think she worked for free). The seminar was for City employees, contractors who build streets and sidewalks, design professionals, and others who are interested in or responsible for public works projects such as sidewalks, crosswalks, etc.
I attended only one day of Avalos's seminar. It was about eight hours of training, as I remember. I'm not 100% sure, but I think attendance by City employees in certain departments was required. In addition to many contractors who construct public sidewalk and paving projects, I saw dozens of City employees there. Some were from the planning department, some were from public works, and Mayor Dewey Follett Bartlett Jr was there, also. I don't know the pay scale of all the City department heads and various employees, but the mayor's salary was about $100K in 2014, as I recall. That's about $50 per hour for each hour the mayor was there, and the mayor isn't the highest paid City employee.
I looked for Avalos's seminar PowerPoint on the City's website a few minutes ago, but I couldn't find it. She showed photos of recently constructed projects in Tulsa as examples of how
NOT to design or build sidewalks, curb ramps, crosswalks, etc. Avalos showed images of
the non-compliant and dangerous roundabout at 10th & 11th & Elgin, and I heard some of the contractors in the room laugh and say, "We told the City that design wasn't going to work, but they forced us to build it like that, anyway."
She showed a photo of
the ridiculous bollards and rough pavement at 11th & Peoria, and I heard the contractors laugh again and tell her, "Yep. We said that wouldn't work, either." But once again, the City forced the contractors to build the intersection with the dangerous curb ramps and stupid bollards, anyway. Since 2014,
the bollards have been removed and the curb ramps have been re-built,
AGAIN.
Many of Avalos's comments were about curb ramps and how they should be designed and constructed in pairs on all four corners of standard intersections, so the ramps will lead pedestrians directly into the crosswalks. But Avalos really didn't need to tell City officials about best practices for curb ramps, because the City already had developed its own
standards for curb ramps, years before Avalos's seminar. In my opinion, Tulsa's standard details for curb ramps are very good. The problem: Tulsa doesn't enforce or implement its own municipal standards. Time and time again, I see new curb ramps built that direct pedestrians into the middle of intersections, sometimes not leading to a crosswalk at all, such as
the angled ramp on the southwest corner of 5th & Boulder, which was constructed a few months after Avalos's seminar, and many years after Tulsa had developed ADA-compliant standards.
Yes I caught the earlier comments about Mr. Speck being paid from private funds. City planning employees are not. No ill wishes on the planning staff, nor many in INCOG. There are many bright and progressive minds in planning and zoning, yet we keep making the same mistakes over and over with planning, zoning, and development.
Bingo. That's the rub, Conan. I have more examples to help illustrate your (and my) point, but I'll save those for another time and another post ... hopefully a post that a moderator won't feel compelled to edit for some unknown reason, without any explanation.