A more than five hours–long meeting leads to big changes in Tulsa’s Vision renewal package.
City officials cut $159 million in all, eliminating the need to issue general obligation bonds. Mayor Dewey Bartlett said it’s time to move forward with the election.
"There are other funding packages, other funding sources that will become available for whatever is not quite met," Bartlett said. "We have those opportunities here now within a few years as well."
The lion’s share of those cuts, $126 million, came out of the list of economic development projects.
The marathon meeting wasn’t always friendly. Councilor Blake Ewing was unhappy to see street maintenance and traffic rolled into a sales tax funding one of his pet projects, public transit.
"I'm going to advocate for that, and I'm going to fight for that, the one thing I've been fighting for, which you act like is for my district, which is total B.S.," Ewing said. "It's a citywide transportation system that we all use, and if you were paying attention, Councilor Henderson, you'd know that it impacts to the positive your district more than all the rest of us combined."
The 0.05 percent tax is expected to generate $63 million over 15 years. A pavement management program costs the city $40 million a year for major streets.
Fire department funding in the package was cut by $12 million, and $30 million are in there for county projects at the fairgrounds. Some funds are still being shuffled, but City Attorney Mark Swiney said that’s OK.
"Thursday evening, we also have to pass the resolution calling the election on these three tax questions, but there is still time to change the details," Swiney said.
Besides being smaller, the reworked package also uses a smaller portion of the 1 percent Improve Our Tulsa tax.
Councilors should approve ballot questions tomorrow night, one week ahead of the filing deadline for an April election.
