Ideas 4 MAPS

[pw405]

Darn... I've always been pretty PRO MAPS. At the time of MAPS 3 vote, I lived in Norman, but I was still encouraging everybody in OKC to vote yes!

However...now that I live in an older (~1960's) part of OKC, I certainly understand the opinions of those that think the city should just end MAPS. It is a tough call, but we aren't really transforming the city anymore now that we've come so far. I'd LOVE to have another transformative, game-changing something, but what? A middle-tier soccer stadium and arena are all good & well, but it ultimately isn't going to be transformative like the canal was.

Investments in the Thunder, I like, but I still struggle a little bit with funding it with MAPS. Shouldn't the ultra-rich owners be doing that? Also...what in the world do we need to do to the 'Peake now? Hopefully arena improvements are a small % of the total cost.

When I first move back to OKC from Norman in 2014, I was excited because there was a park a few blocks from my house (North Rotary Park, Tulsa Ave). I figured I could just walk the 4-5 neighborhood blocks. I was pretty far from any parks at my Norman residence.

The experience was not as pleasant as I would have liked: between trying to dodge cars on Tulsa Ave that are simultaneously trying to dodge the damaged parts of the street & then trying to dodge the stickers in lawns and in the street-grass, the broken glass, random pieces of metal/etc in the road all while making sure the dog doesn't step on anything that would hurt her paws, I've never returned with dog.

So the journey to the park was kinna crappy... not the end of the world. I could drive there, but the offerings of the park are a bit sparse. The park has:

1. Small jungle gym for <~5yr olds.
2. A basketball court
3. Two tennis courts
4. Rusted & bent metal piping resembling a backstop
5. Rusted & bent metal piping resembling soccer goal
6. Trees
7. Grass with stickers

(Note - I haven't been to the park lately to see the condition of the courts, but I'd imagine they are due for upgrades).

A simple jogging track, exercise pavilion, small fenced area for an off-leash dog park would be VERY easy upgrades. Additional pavilion structures for hosting neighborhood get-together's, etc. etc.

Could we allocate 5% of MAPS 4 (Estimated value: $40,000,000 - $60,000,000) to be for upgrades to existing city neighborhood parks that have been neglected for decades? Neighborhood committees could have hyper-local input on what they want in the park. I'd love to have a place I could walk to and get to know neighbors, exercise, let the dog play, etc. I'm sure there are PLENTY of other ideas for park upgrades.

While the flashy, high-profile projects are nice, and I'm ALL FOR anything that helps OKC's economic growth, as others have said, residential quality of life needs to be pretty high on the priority list if they think MAPS 4 will have a chance of passing. Especially with today's political climate.

[Midtowner]

That all sounds great.

[Pete]

Keep in mind that it's completely possible for 2 things to be true: That those items described by the mayor will be a part of MAPS 4 but so will several or all the projects being pushed by the chamber.

[jn1780]

Anything for the Thunder should be its own vote. Maybe in-between MAPS. They should make the business case that they need it and persuade cough cough "threaten" people to vote for it.

[OKC Guy]

Anything for the Thunder should be its own vote. Maybe in-between MAPS. They should make the business case that they need it and persuade cough cough "threaten" people to vote for it.

I’ll take it a step further, every project should be single line voted. If MAPS truly is “for the people of OKC” then each line should stand in its own merit.

I do think MAPS has been great for our city but also think its run its course. Just reoccurring costs on existing projects is going to grow by leaps as they age, and we need to be more selective on new ones.

I’ve voted yes on all prior MAPS and liked all projects except SC. But if MAPS 4 is bundled my vote and that of my family is no. We have to move forward smartly and it seems we are dreaming up things to spend money on instead of having needs like prior MAPS. Just reading this thread the past 6 months there is no overwhelming item that most agree on.

[benjico]

I’ll take it a step further, every project should be single line voted. If MAPS truly is “for the people of OKC” then each line should stand in its own merit.

That's a very interesting concept...

[Ed Shadid]

"I’ll take it a step further, every project should be single line voted. If MAPS truly is “for the people of OKC” then each line should stand in its own merit."

[pw405]

"I’ll take it a step further, every project should be single line voted. If MAPS truly is “for the people of OKC” then each line should stand in its own merit."

Glad to hear they're at least testing the waters for this!

I forget when, but somewhere on OKCTalk, somebody had mentioned they heard rumors that future MAPS may be different with public/private partnerships.

If MAPS Funds are used as MATCHING funds for things like a soccer stadium... I can get behind that. It still incentives new construction of facilities that will attract out of state sales tax, increases OKC's national visibility, and significantly reduces risk to investors, and takes some of the burden off the public.

[d-usa]

One of the benefits of MAPS has been the bundled approach, sometimes you need the pretty projects to pull up the less popular projects. That’s how all government works. If everyone gets something, everyone will support it even if there is something they don’t like. I think the “unbundling” push is just a symptom of our polarized politics.

[OKC Guy]

One of the benefits of MAPS has been the bundled approach, sometimes you need the pretty projects to pull up the less popular projects. That’s how all government works. If everyone gets something, everyone will support it even if there is something they don’t like. I think the “unbundling” push is just a symptom of our polarized politics.

I respect your opinion but feel there is a time and place. Prior MAPS were mostly needed and now we are at the want stage. Keep in mind the more projects we do the more future outlays we have to pay for just upkeep. There is a saturation point on the cost scale and someday we will have maybe choose what to re-spend money on to redo.

We’ve massively improved our city but we added what, $2,000,000,000 in projects so far? We know to maintain being a major league NBA city means we can’t skimp on Peake. Someday we will be where Seattle was and if we over taxed ourselves on too many pet projects we won’t have public support when we need a major facelift or upgrade. Being smaller TV market we can’t stay competitive in getting FA’s if facilities are in bottom of league. That day isn’t here but will be someday. If we over MAP’ed ourselves we’ll have no public willpower to tackle this.

All I’m saying is we can’t afford every project. We needed MAPS 1 and its still paying dividends. OMNI, Convention and Park are also great adds. Ballpark has been great. River rapids area a great add.
But our growth has not added transportation funds other than SC and thats for tourists not moving mass people. We threw a bandaid at roads but they get worse every day. Buses were neglected and had we spent the SC money on buses we’d have the model bus system in country. I think we could have added micro lux buses in same route as SC and spent 10% of money. My opinion is of you want to help reduce cars you need a bus system (or light rail but that is part of regional plan plus is mega cost). If you can get people to downtown you can find lots of more cost efficient methods to move them other than SC. Plus SC is static and not moveable as downtown changes whereas other transpo methods can be changed fast if/as needed.

I think line item vote is best way forward. The challenge is how to word it tax wise. You won’t know which will pass until after vote so voters won’t know total costs to vote. So you have to add in a note that each xxx of approved costs add yyy in length of tax.

So something like this:

$100m adds 1 cent for 1 year
$500m adds 1 cent for 5 years

Something like that so if all project lines are approved a person knows the longest time tax will last.

[OKC Guy]

"I’ll take it a step further, every project should be single line voted. If MAPS truly is “for the people of OKC” then each line should stand in its own merit."

Thank you, so I’m not alone in this thinking. Lets hope city realizes MAPS4 might be DOA if they bundle, based on that poll.

[d-usa]

“Would you rather” is different than “would you vote no” though.

[okccowan]

I'm against the idea of unbundling MAPS. It will needlessly complicate the idea of MAPS. If people don't want a bundled MAPS4 they will vote no. Something lost in all these anti-MAPS conversations is that the people vote on every MAPS, unlike other cities that issue bonds for large projects, where there is no public vote at all. If Ed is so opposed to MAPS4 all he has to do is campaign against it and get a majority of the voters to vote his way. That's how democracies work.

[Ed Shadid]

I'm against the idea of unbundling MAPS. It will needlessly complicate the idea of MAPS. If people don't want a bundled MAPS4 they will vote no. Something lost in all these anti-MAPS conversations is that the people vote on every MAPS, unlike other cities that issue bonds for large projects, where there is no public vote at all. If Ed is so opposed to MAPS4 all he has to do is campaign against it and get a majority of the voters to vote his way. That's how democracies work.

This post presents a good opportunity to clear up some misconceptions.

First, you have made a statement about me personally. Who says I am against MAPS4? I thought the projects hadn't been decided yet. Furthermore, investments in transit, parks, mental health/substance abuse, protected bike lanes, homelessness would be a dream come true for me personally and I would support them wholeheartedly. I have two major concerns regarding what I am hearing so far. First, that the effective logrolling of unrelated projects runs afoul of the State Constitution and numerous Supreme Court rulings and two, that investing only in capital projects without funding for operations and maintenance is a grave mistake.

First, the way OKC "democracies work" is that the Chamber of Commerce is given the sole responsibility of running the campaigns for tax initiatives for city, county and OKCPS governments. This gives them effective veto power over what is included in the package. This makes OKC an outlier compared to other major cities in the U.S. according to Roy Williams at the Chamber. The Chamber spent approximately $3 million on the MAPS3 campaign. There is no one who will be able to match, or come anywhere close to, that dollar amount in opposition to the Chamber. While David Holt is technically correct that the Mayor and Council will present and vote on a package of projects, imagine for a moment that the Chamber of Commerce was opposed to the package because everything it wanted had been jettisoned and so they decided to spend $3 million in opposition to MAPS4. Would it be likely to pass? The Mayor and Council know this and that is why I do not believe that the Mayor and Council are completely autonomous. The best, very public example of this was last year when the Chamber opposed decreasing the "Better Streets, Safer City" MAPS extension to 3/4 of a penny and the Mayor/Council reversed course at the very last minute and complied with the only entity which expressed a desire to change the amount of the tax back to a full penny and that was the Chamber. Those who have read Boomtown and other historical works about OKC know that sometimes the Chamber gets things right (ie: Tinker AFB) and sometimes they get things spectacularly wrong (ie: Urban Renewal). Unchecked power of the Chamber of Commerce/City Plutocrats is so very dangerous for the people of OKC.

The issue of bundling is not simply that "If people don't want a bundled MAPS4 they will vote no" What the Supreme Court has repeatedly emphasized is that in terms of the single subject rule. voters cannot be given an unpalatable all or nothing choice between two unrelated provisions. In other words, my interpretation is that the Supreme Court is interpreting the State Constitution to mandate that I do not have to vote to tax myself for a soccer stadium that I strongly do not want in order to tax myself for mental health/substance abuse facilities which I strongly do want. This is why we had 14 different votes on the 2017 GO Bond package. A vote for street projects, a vote for transit projects, a vote for drainage projects, a vote for bridge projects etc...This is why the City of OKC knows that it cannot put 8 different projects on the ballot for an up or down vote the way we did for MAPS1; it would absolutely be struck down as logrolling by the Supreme Court. So the City came up with a way it felt it could cirvumvent the State Consitutional prohibition by making the MAPS vote simply for a 1-cent sales tax "for capital improvements" and called capital improvements the single subject while having the City Council pass a non-binding resolution expressing the intent of the current council to use the 1-cent sales tax for those projects in the MAPS campaign. The problem is that the Supreme Court has struck down the State Legislature's attempts at combining different projects under the single subject of "bonds" and stated that this "broad expansive theme approach" to the single subject law is unacceptable. No one has yet challenged the City's approach and so at best, one could say that it is unknown how the Supreme Court would rule.

To okccowan I would tell you what has been told to me countless times: if you don't like the law (in this case the single subject rule), if you think that projects should be able to bundled, then work on the State Legislature to change the State Constitution (good luck with that especially with the SoonerPoll clearly showing how much the electorate prefers to vote to tax themselves on items separately rather than as a package).

In terms of bonds; there are different kinds. In the City of OKC we have general obligation bonds which are paid for with property tax and those would require a vote of the people. There are also revenue bonds in which a dedicated funding source, which would have been put into place by a vote of the people such as the hotel-motel tax, the dedicated 1/8-cent sales tax for the Zoo etc.., could be pledged to pay off the revenue bond and this would not necessarily require a vote of the people. TIFs are another example of the creation of a dedicated revenue source of which money could be borrowed against and which would not require a vote of the people.

[Zorba]

It seems the chamber is focused on the following projects:

1. State Fair Arena
2. Soccer Stadium
3. Thunder Practice / Auxilary Facility (not exactly sure what this would entail but would be near the practice facility)
4. Chesapeake Arena Improvements (primarily for the Thunder)
5. Boathouse Row Recreation


Ideas that seem to have been ditched:
- Aquarium
- Streetcar expansion
- I-235 cap

That looks like a pretty big loser to me.

[mugofbeer]

One of the benefits of MAPS has been the bundled approach, sometimes you need the pretty projects to pull up the less popular projects. That’s how all government works. If everyone gets something, everyone will support it even if there is something they don’t like. I think the “unbundling” push is just a symptom of our polarized politics.

I think having everything completely unbundled is dangerous and this is why. If there were an unbundled item to replace a series of sewage pipes in, say, some obscure part of somewhere other than northwest OKC, l could easily see it going down in flames no matter how badly the project was needed. I see no reason to not bundle similar type projects strategically.

[JDSooners]

After attending my daughters graduation and tearing down osu okcs graduation at the state fair arena, I now believe the city is starving for a nice arena to hold graduations.
The Cox center and state fair arenas are dumps and need a better facility.

[Pete]

I think having everything completely unbundled is dangerous and this is why. If there were an unbundled item to replace a series of sewage pipes in, say, some obscure part of somewhere other than northwest OKC, l could easily see it going down in flames no matter how badly the project was needed. I see no reason to not bundle similar type projects strategically.

Sewage pipes in different parts of the city is not remotely the same as bundling a soccer stadium with homeless services.

[Laramie]

We tend to forget about what makes the bundled approach legal. You are actually voting on a capital improvements total amount--like $777 million. The projects themselves are more like placeholders.

The city is under no obligation to build what they have proposed in those projects; however, they realize the backlash & consequences if they don't carry through on their proposals. Although there will be projects proposed that appeal to one or other individuals, it would be impossible to craft an initiative in which everyone would agree or get what they want or don't want. Hopefully, you will find something among the initiatives you like.

You keep hearing that we a building this or that for the Thunder, or a stadium for Funk's soccer team--they will be the anchor tenants of the projects in which they commit to a long-term lease, this pays for the upkeep and maintenance on the facilities.

The new convention center & Omni hotel along with Scissortail Park, Myriad Botanical Gardens & the streetcar will leave a lasting impression on guests and convention goers.

These facilities are versatile and will be used for a number of events. They will also put OKC in a position to bid on more future events; the stadium will put us in a position to bid on events like NCAA men & women's lacrosse, soccer, field hockey etc, as well as future minor league pro football.

NCAA WCWS is an example of where 'Oklahoma City' has gotten lots of popularity and publicity. We've invested $27.5 million in bonds to upgrade ASA Hall of Fame Stadium. If you kept up with the college women's softball the past two weeks, ESPN kept mentioning Oklahoma City, like we are some kind of paradise. ASA Hall of Fame Stadium is located in the most scenic part of our city--surrounded by many amenities like the OKC Zoo, Omniplex, Cowboy & Western Heritage, Softball Hall of Fame & Firefighters museums.

Would be nice if OKC could set aside a fund, say $10 million for each Ward to address items they need or want for their communities.

[mugofbeer]

Sewage pipes in different parts of the city is not remotely the same as bundling a soccer stadium with homeless services.

Which is why my post clearly stated "bundle similar types of projects strategically."

[okccowan]

Ed,

You are completely wrong about logrolling. The way OKC bundles MAPS is constitutional. As someone on this thread pointed out already the items are placeholders the Council could legally change even after a "bundled" vote. Basically you are calling OKC voters stupid for voting for MAPS because the projects were proposed by and the campaign was funded by the Chamber of Commerce. If the people don't want the bundled projects, they can vote no and the City will have to rethink how it does MAPS. Your side lost the MAPS3 vote and rather than support the democratic vote you attempted to undermine the projects the people voted for (eg Streetcars). Again, if you don't like MAPS4 then campaign against it and if the voters agree with you the result will be "no". Then the City can consider unbundling. Your comments seem quite anti-democratic.

[citywokchinesefood]

Ed,

You are completely wrong about logrolling. The way OKC bundles MAPS is constitutional. As someone on this thread pointed out already the items are placeholders the Council could legally change even after a "bundled" vote. Basically you are calling OKC voters stupid for voting for MAPS because the projects were proposed by and the campaign was funded by the Chamber of Commerce. If the people don't want the bundled projects, they can vote no and the City will have to rethink how it does MAPS. Your side lost the MAPS3 vote and rather than support the democratic vote you attempted to undermine the projects the people voted for (eg Streetcars). Again, if you don't like MAPS4 then campaign against it and if the voters agree with you the result will be "no". Then the City can consider unbundling. Your comments seem quite anti-democratic.

I believe the point Ed is making is that by representing it as a 1% tax increase for "capital projects" you are technically not breaking the law, but you are definitely subverting the spirit of it. I think an argument can be made that is as good as breaking the law. I think it is a bit trifling to call his comments undemocratic.

[Ed Shadid]

I believe the point Ed is making is that by representing it as a 1% tax increase for "capital projects" you are technically not breaking the law, but you are definitely subverting the spirit of it. I think an argument can be made that is as good as breaking the law. I think it is a bit trifling to call his comments undemocratic.

Thank you. I think there is an argument that "capital projects" mirrors the State Legislature's attempts at bundling unrelated projects under "bonds" which was struck down by the Supreme Court and therefore, under existing case law would be ruled unconstitutional. As to your point as to intent and spirit of the law I am attaching a memo from the OKC Municipal Counselor in 2009 in which the language of the MAPS3 ballot was being debated. This memo contains a good summary of the relevant legal issues and case law. Clearly the City recognized that recent Supreme Court decisions ruled out the original MAPS ballot language as an option and debate ensued as to how to continue to logroll in the least risky manner which one could certainly conclude was "subverting the spirit" of the law.

Perhaps the most important statement from the Municipal Counselor was " Therefore, one must examine the proposed provisions in an ordinance proposing a sales tax to determine whether projects included therein are “so unrelated that many of those voting on the law would be faced with an unpalatable all-or-nothing choice.” If the answer is “yes,” then the ordinance is likely invalid under the single-subject rule."

[Ed Shadid]

I believe the point Ed is making is that by representing it as a 1% tax increase for "capital projects" you are technically not breaking the law, but you are definitely subverting the spirit of it. I think an argument can be made that is as good as breaking the law. I think it is a bit trifling to call his comments undemocratic.

Accidentally copied post

[mugofbeer]

Would be nice if OKC could set aside a fund, say $10 million for each Ward to address items they need or want for their communities.

I think this is an excellent idea.