Stormwater Tax

[aoxamaxoa]

I read this board many days and am amazed at the number of people who seem to suggest wild ideas for improving our city with total disregard for the funding side of the equation. If citizens of Tulsa want to catapult it into "major city" status, there needs to be a more dedicated discussion to what drives a cities desirability. Over the past 10 years, the city fathers have substantially increased the burden of taxes upon the poorest members of our city by raising fees and increasing sales taxes to fund  projects for our economic development. Little do the politicians and bureaucrats who parade and implement these fees and taxes understand that their actions actually and adversely have a negative affect on our economic stability and our ability to draw business from outside our city.

Today's case in point can be seen in the Tulsa World. City councilors are most likely going to raise the storm water management fee by %25. This is an outrage. For years this fee served to establish storm water facilities to correct our local governments inept handling of water runoff due to land development going unchecked in flood areas around town since the beginning. Once a plan was established, with cooperation of state and federal agencies, the fee was implemented for the sole purpose of correcting this plague. And the program worked after 95% completed.

But what happened to city accountability to it's taxpayers?
Today, these funds are now used to cover cost overruns in other departments at the guidance of the city engineers office. It is a puddle fund....a slush fund so to speak for the heads of different departments to grab at when incompetence prevails.

If you want to see what your storm water fees are doing, drive down Harvard between 51st and 61st anytime a rain, no matter how large, and watch the water rise. Please feel free to point out other areas of town where you feel the city has neglected storm water.

In my neighborhood in the heart of the city, there is no storm water regulation what so ever. It is an unplanted area grand fathered in to no required drainage restrictions. Neighbors put up dams with fences, raise their yards in drainage areas, and change contours causing "puddling" which adds to insect problems as well as other environmental issues.

I have started withholding pay to this portion of my city fee in protest of the mismanagement of these funds. To see a proposal to increase this tax by %25 offends me. I encourage others to demand an accountability from Mr. Kier and Mr. Hardt. The new Mayor should know better than to burden the citizens with higher taxes.