Coming Monday: City's capital funding proposal represents needs, council chair says
By ZACK STOYCOFF World Staff Writer on Jul 28, 2013, at 2:39 PM
City Council Chairman David Patrick
Tulsa City Council
Mayor Dewey Bartlett and former Mayor Kathy Taylor have eight weeks to make their cases before voters go to the polls Nov. 12.
Michigan-based Horizon Group Properties and Charlotte, N.C.-based Collett & Associates, the developer of the Tulsa Hills shopping center, seek to build a large outlet mall on a 64.8-acre parcel at 129th East Avenue and Interstate 44, officials said.
Not even the largest capital funding proposal in Tulsa’s history can fit every project city departments say they need, as it turns out.
“There’s lots of needs,” City Council Chairman David Patrick said. “But I think these are probably some of the highest priorities.”
City officials have crafted a $919.9 million proposal that nearly doubles the record $464 million 2006 third-penny package because of its unique use of both bonds and sales tax projects at once.
But with $1.38 billion in needs identified by city departments through 2019, something is bound to get left out.
City officials say they poured through months of departmental requests and examined the need for each project before choosing. The deciding factor, Patrick said, usually was whether a project was a “capital need” or a “capital want.”
“What we tried to do is keep capital wants out of this package and try to put wants into a (future) Vision package,” he said.
The proposal as it stands would be funded with $355 million in bonds over five years and $564.9 million from 5 1/2- or six-year extensions of the third-penny sales tax and the city’s 0.167-cent share of the county’s former 4 to Fix tax.
The specific projects are subject to change as feedback is gathered at an ongoing series of town hall meetings, officials say.
Among the largest single requests that didn’t make the cut was $37.45 million for repairs to the city-owned Air Force Plant No. 3, which houses American Airlines, Spirit AeroSystems and IC Bus.
Councilor G.T. Bynum said that is both because other funding sources may be available for such facilities and because some officials were weary of linking the new package to the failed countywide Vision2 initiative, which included $122 million for airport facility renovations.
“I think there was a concern among some of us that it could confuse people looking at this proposal into thinking that this was another shot at Vision2, which it isn’t,” Bynum said.
Read more of this story in Monday's Tulsa World.
Tulsa City Council
Mayor Dewey Bartlett and former Mayor Kathy Taylor have eight weeks to make their cases before voters go to the polls Nov. 12.
Michigan-based Horizon Group Properties and Charlotte, N.C.-based Collett & Associates, the developer of the Tulsa Hills shopping center, seek to build a large outlet mall on a 64.8-acre parcel at 129th East Avenue and Interstate 44, officials said.
