City councilors unanimously passed Thursday night an $884.6 million Vision plan to send to voters, and citizens offered praise and criticism up to the last minute.
The plan includes $11 million for a north Tulsa business park. It’s intended to attract employers in need of large, ready-to-build sites, but some residents would rather not have the project.
Charles Williams lives on Mohawk Boulevard and said developers are buying up homes left and right.
"And virtually, I'm going to be the only one left on that side of the block, because I don't want to sell my house," Williams said. "I built it for a reason, and I expected to be there until the day that I die."
J.R. Stewart was among the residents who don’t want to see more industrial development around Peoria Avenue and Mohawk Boulevard.
"There used to be houses there. Doctors and lawyers used to live on that thoroughfare, on that boulevard," Stewart said. "I would just like to see a residential area instead of some business, some construction or whatever."
The project is between Peoria and Lewis avenues, north of Mohawk Boulevard and south 36th Street North. The proposal calls for the city to perform site work and streetscaping.
Councilor Jack Henderson pitched it as a way to lure well-paying jobs and struck a training partnership with OSU’s Institute of Technology.
Though the Vision list has $18 million for north Tulsa economic development and connectivity projects, Phoenix Development Council President Tracy Chandler wanted another $28 million for those and a Greenwood walking tour project that didn’t make the cut.
She said $21 million should be reallocated from the $65 million going to the Gilcrease Museum.
"They have a donor that will give them about $50 million," Chandler said. "If you don't want to take all of the $21 million from the museum, you could take part of it from the airport. Why the airport? The airport is not doing all that it can do to supply its funding."
The Vision list has $27 million for airport infrastructure.
K–12 education in Tulsa was a winner when it came to Vision funding. The final list has $24.5 million earmarked for safety and teacher retention efforts. Tulsa Public Schools Superintendent Deborah Gist said the safety projects will do more than help kids get to school.
"These projects are certainly important for us. They're important for all of our city. But they're also — the way we designed them for this purpose was to also make sure that they were neighborhood revitalization projects," Gist said.
The safety first initiative calls for new signs, street lights, crosswalks, sidewalks and bus shelters that will benefit students at dozens of schools in the TPS, Jenks and Union districts.
Gist thanked councilors for investing in education and said pushing the graduation rate up 13 percentage points would have a big economic impact.
"We would see the following economic impacts: $34 million in increased annual earnings, $26 million in increased annual spending, $44 million in increased annual home sales, $43 million in increased annual gross regional product and $2.6 million in increased annual local tax revenue," Gist said.
The election will be April 5 as long as city officials file with the election board by Feb. 4.
