Are you kidding me? It's a tax increase and a big one. Call it whatever you want, its substantial, one of the small family owned businesses I eat lunch at once a week is going to have to packup shop if this passes. The guy has been downtown for almost 15 years. Yet this tax will raise his annual bill from just over 500 bucks to more than 5000 dollars.

The news had a guy on that has owned a barbershop for more than 50 years. His tax is going to go from 103 dollars to 6300 dollars...yet you wanna sit here and not call it a tax? Give me a break.


edit: no I dont like Taylor, she's better than LaFortune but I dont like her. She's constantly got double speak BS coming out of her mouth. She's positioning herself for a run at the governors office and doesn't really give two craps about Tulsa.

You didn't answer the question: what is this tax increase? Is it a TIF proposal? Sales tax? Property tax? Income tax? I have seen nothing about this tax.

I'm sorry, but a 6000 percent tax increase does not seem credible. Are you sure your employer has his/her facts straight?

You also referred to this tax increase "passing." Who's voting on it? City Council? County? Taxpayers?

I smell a rat in Denmark.

It's property tax. As for my employer, they haven't said a word to us about it other than depending on the size of the tax it may force them to relocate outside the IDL. I posted 3 links for you if those aren't good enough then find your own links?

6000 percent increase didn't sound credible to me either when If irst heard about it in mid June. I chalked it up to some overzelous report trying to get a story. So I started reading and searching for news articles, called the city, started reading local blogs etc etc etc, and about 2 weeks ago the local news started talking about it a lot and articles have been in the Tulsa World. You've made it pretty clear you dont want to believe its a tax increase, thats your perrogative, I've posted links, three of them, if you want more just google it, there's a lot of talk about it right now. It wont affect each business the same because the current assessments leveled at some businesses are higher than others. So the increase one business may see versus another could vary drastically as in the examples I cited earlier.

OUGrad,

Please accept my apology. I missed your links!

It appears that this is some hybrid property tax BID deal, not unlike what we've had in OKC to pay for improvements to the tunnel and other things.

Honestly, 6.5 cents per square feet annually doesn't seem like much to me. Also, it appears the average business owner is currently being assessed a tax of 3.5 cents. That is a one hundred percent increase.

It's hard to tell from the articles what the tax will actually amount to, but I agree that the increase seems excessive, especially for a ballpark which, while nice, has limited appeal. Ours is nice and is a great feature in Bricktown but is rarely filled for games.

Well yeah, the tax is kinda wierd. I think what happened (and I dont know this for sure) but tulsa may have frozen tax rates for certain tenants. It seems the small businesses are the ones that will be drastically affected by this tax with larger businesses seeing an increase of 15 to roughly 60% on their tax. Which is quite confusing. But it does lead me to believe that at some point Tulsa offered incentives or locked tax rates for people willing to move and/or stay downtown. So that would explain why so many smaller businesses are seeing drastic changes in their tax rates.

I agree 6.5% isn't necessarily a high tax, but if its double the current average inside the IDL that could prove disasterous to the area. I care greatly about downtown tulsa since I spend 40 or 50 hours a week there and after spending a great deal of time in downtown OKC, I'd like to see Tulsa come up to that level. Low crime, good amenities and a great night out...

No offense, but the barber shop thing looks like total BS. How many square feet in a barber shop? I'm going to say 800 to 1000. Doing simple math, the 6.5 cent per square foot annual bill would be $65.

The hotdog owner seems similarly misinformed. Let's say his hotdog shop is a whopping 2500 square foot space. His bill under the plan -- based on the Tulsa World link you provided -- would be $162.50.

If either of those business cannot handle that, then they are already in trouble.

I agree, but what the news said and what I also heard on local talk radio is the bill if passed would make some sort of minimum requirement to people paying tax. It doesn't make mathematical sense to me either but local talk radio had a city council member on saying that the increased tax rates were indeed accurate :dunno:


This is another thing that really bothers me, they want to increase this tax but wont provide the entire package to the public to view, which is kinda weird.

You're not reading your own link. It's NOT 6.5%. It's 6.5 cents per square foot, assessed annually.

Let's say you have a 4800 square foot retail store. Your tax will be $312. Don't you believe the hotdog shop and retailer will see additional foot traffic if there's a baseball park nearby.

While I share some of your crtitiques of city leadership, it appears that several people up there are operating on misinformation and hearsay. Shocking, I know.

Also, don't forget that people of all persuasions love to bitch and moan and blame others for their problems. Remember to believe half of what you read and none of what you hear.

Remember, trust nothing you hear, particularly on talk radio, about the worst place on the planet to get reliable information.

It sounds like a lot of crap is being slung, which is ALWAYS what happens in Tulsa whenever ANY tax of any kind is proposed. Period. There's always at least one or two councilmen going off, NO campaigns being launched, talk radio people railing against it, etc. etc.

It sounds like you're operating on some misinformation, i.e. you belief in this minimum thing, which was not in the articles you provided. Regardless of the perceived value of the baseball stadium, the fact remains that any tax proposal of any kind proposed in that city is doomed, because the fervent anti-taxers there are very organized and active.

This seems to reinforce my central argument. Tulsa will never be able to benefit from the kinds of things that have happened in Oklahoma City and lead to our city bypassing Tulsa because of Tulsa's hysterical opposition to taxes.

I read my own link, I read the articles a couple times actually over the last few days.

I meant to say 6.5 cents, sorry I'm talking to a friend of mine and I had a typo.

If you have anymore information on this I'd love to read it, I'm a bit of an economics junkie to begin with. Couple that with a metro where i currently live and I'd prefer to read any and all info available.


on a side note does anyone know why the "edit" function doesn't work?

I wish too that the Census Bureau would eliminate an entire adjacent county's population when figuring CMSA's

That's not totally true. US 75 North of downtown all the way to the county line is all inside Tulsa City Limits and there are only a handful of housing developments going up along that corridor. Seems to be plenty of land and good freeway access (plus SH 11) along this relatively narrow, yet expansive stretch of North Tulsa. In fact, you're practically out in the country literally 5-6 minutes north of downtown. I know there is little to no retail north of I-244 (except Owasso), but retail will follow if there are enough rooftops to serve.

The problem I see with the way Tulsa's growth has evolved, they've painted themselves into a corner...literally. I'm referring to the SE portion of the city near the US 169/71st Street area. Southeast appears to be the only direction sprawl seems to occur in Tulsa! Unfortunately for Tulsa, the city limits end with the beginning of BA and Bixby. Same due south with Jenks and Glenpool. So, these suburbs get most of the credit for population growth because the available land for new housing is in their city limits. Available land for new housing development inside the SE portion of Tulsa city limits is pretty limited.