Editor's note: The Tulsa World is examining the accuracy of television ads for each of the mayoral candidates.
A new television campaign ad's bold list of claims about former Mayor Kathy Taylor's accomplishments in office largely passes the muster of a Tulsa World fact check - with one or two exceptions.
In the ad, which began airing last week, Taylor rattles through the obvious highlights of her 2006-2009 administration - ONEOK Field and the Fix Our Streets initiative - while throwing in the more obscure claims that she "rescued" downtown's BOK Center and "put more police on the streets than ever before or since."
This, she says, she accomplished while planting the seeds for the city's current success and refusing to allow Tulsa to slow down during the recession.
Although the latter, more subjective claims have varying degrees of truth, the list of specific accomplishments - obscure or otherwise - is mostly hard to dispute. The police claim may be the lone exception in that category.
More police than ever: According to a Tulsa Police Department staffing report provided to the City Council in January, the department reached a record 956 filled positions in July 2006, three months after Taylor took office - a tie with the department's July 2005 count.
But subtracting instances in which more than one post was filled by the same employee, the department's staffing peak under Taylor was 907 in July 2006 and January 2007 - 11 fewer than in July 2004. The number had decreased to about 875 employees when she left office.
Civilian employees typically make up 5 percent to 10 percent of the department's staff.
Mayor Dewey Bartlett's administration has specifically disputed Taylor's ad on the grounds of semantics, saying the claim that she "put" more officers on the streets implies that she hired more than other mayors, rather than simply commanded a larger number of officers.
After laying off about 125 officers in 2010, Bartlett increased the department by about 100 employees, data show. However, the department had about 30 fewer employees in January than it did when Bartlett took office - the same net decrease logged under Taylor.
BOK Center: Bids for construction of the Vision 2025-funded project came in $32 million over projections in 2006 amid rising costs of construction materials, and Taylor's administration said it made numerous minor changes to the building's design to reign in the cost, according to Tulsa World reports.
BOK Center General Manager John Bolton said there was more to it than that, although he acknowledges that he wasn't involved in the process.
"I know when Kathy came into office, there was a big issue that the building was going to cost more money than we had from Vision 2025," he said. "They took some stuff out of the project, went to Williams Cos. for a new scoreboard system."
The final budget was $178 million, up from an original estimate of $141 million. The extra money came from additional private and Vision 2025 funds.
As for the claim that Taylor "rescued" the arena: "There's definitely some truth to it," Bolton said. " 'Rescued' probably is the truth."
Still, one minor fault might be found in the ad's claim that Taylor "brought (the arena) in on time." The facility opened four months after its initial April 2008 estimate.
ONEOK Field: Taylor negotiated in 2008 for the Tulsa Drillers Double-A baseball team to move to a new downtown stadium and created the Tulsa Stadium Improvement District to help fund it through a 6 1/2-cent assessment per square foot on downtown commercial real estate.
That fee is covering a $25 million chunk of the $60 million ONEOK Field project. Another $5 million came from the Drillers and $30 million from private sources.
Fix Our Streets: Taylor's ad claims only that "we began the largest street project ever." Fix Our Streets, which was approved by voters in 2008, allocated $452 million for streets - the largest single streets investment in Tulsa history.
Refused to allow Tulsa to slow: The ad's claim that Taylor "refused to allow Tulsa to slow during America's record recession" may be hard to defend with numbers, considering that Tulsa lost about 18,000 jobs and numerous corporate headquarters during the recession.
Planted the seeds: The ad's claim that "the work we did during the tough times is making Tulsa better today" rests largely on the capital improvements completed under Taylor's term.
A recently released study found that properties bought in downtown Tulsa after 1999 and sold again since 2008 increased in value an average of 70 percent.
That was the year the BOK Center was completed and ONEOK Field was announced.
World Staff Researcher Hilary Pittman contributed to this story.
Zack Stoycoff 918-581-8486
zack.stoycoff@tulsaworld.com
