The campaign to convince Tulsans to “Improve Our Tulsa” kicked off Tuesday with a logo, campaign website and plenty of optimism for the $918.7 million capital improvements proposal.
“I think we’re all here kind of like parents in the waiting room — excited about this baby about to be born because we’ve been working on this thing for nine months,” said City Councilor G.T. Bynum, who led a council committee that helped select projects for the package.
City voters on Nov. 12 will consider separate ballot propositions to extend 1.1 percent in sales taxes up to seven years for $563.7 million in roadwork and other capital improvements projects and to issue $355 million in general obligation bonds mainly for nonarterial roadwork.
The campaign for the propositions, collectively titled Improve Our Tulsa, will focus on educating residents about their contents and scope, said Waller PR President Barrett Waller, whose firm will guide marketing efforts under an agreement with the Tulsa Regional Chamber.
Tulsans over the next two months can expect media advertisements, social media outreach and speaking engagements with churches and other groups as financed by private fundraising overseen by campaign chairman Bob Jack, senior vice president of Manhattan Construction, and at least four co-chairs.
Waller PR will work under a contract with the chamber, although no contract has been signed yet, Waller said.
The firm developed the campaign logo — a street sign reading “Improve Our Tulsa,” a reference to its emphasis on roadwork — and launched a website Tuesday with project lists, frequently asked questions and a video.
The website can be found at
tulsaworld.com/IOTcampaign.
Jeff Dunn, president of Mill Creek Lumber and a member of the campaign, told reporters Tuesday that the education aspect will be “monumental, just like the public input procedure (in crafting the proposal) has been monumental.”
The proposal is based on $1.6 billion in projects that were whittled down during about 50 public meetings, including council meetings and two rounds town hall meetings held throughout the city.
City officials praised the process at a news conference Tuesday as a masterful collaboration between government and residents, saying Improve Our Tulsa has the unanimous support of city officials and is based on copious public feedback.
“We wanted to make certain an effort was made for us to go outside of City Hall — to go to where the voters are, to go to where those that will be making the decision and evaluation (and make sure) that they’re a part of the process,” Mayor Dewey Bartlett said.
The next step, Bynum said, “is where we ask all those people who came out to all those meeting, who sent us emails, who wrote to us — we’re asking for their help in reaching out to their friends, their neighbors, their co-workers to spread the word about this proposal so that everyone in town will know all about it by the time they go to vote.”
The proposal includes $654.2 million for transportation projects such as street repairs, widening and new public buses — more than 70 percent of the funding — and also contains projects such as police and fire equipment, city facility renovations and park equipment.
It has $470 million strictly for street repairs, which would make it the largest single investment in streets in Tulsa’s history.
The sales tax portion would remain in effect as long as it takes to fund the sales tax projects, which is estimated at 6 to 6½ years but would be capped at 7 years.
Local Politics
Mayor Dewey Bartlett and former Mayor Kathy Taylor have eight weeks to make their cases before voters go to the polls Nov. 12.
Gov. Mary Fallin will be out of state this week for activities in Washington, D.C., and New York.
