Ideas 4 MAPS

[jedicurt]

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.

that actually is a very interesting idea.....

[rte66man]

I believe it would be better to group the MAPS4 projects the same way the GO bonds are done. Then each person can decide in a more specific way instead of an all-or-nothing approach.

[Pete]

On the City Council agenda for Tuesday:

Resolution to be introduced and set for final hearing June 18, 2019, calling Special City Council
meetings to hear presentations on potential MAPS 4 projects to be held at 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, July 9,
2019, Thursday, July 11, 2019, Wednesday, July 31, 2019 and Tuesday, August 6, 2019 in the Council
Chamber, 3rd Floor, 200 North Walker Avenue, Oklahoma City; and directing the City Clerk to
provide notice of the special meetings.

[Laramie]

I don't know if this poll has been posted; however it shows how trends change over time:

Poll: OKC voters want more than capital projects in MAPS 4: https://nondoc.com/2019/05/30/poll-o...cts-in-maps-4/

So, do we need a few big tickets items with more focus on community projects?

[SouthSide]

MAPS was supposed to be Metropolitan Area Projects. It is about time for other areas of the city to start seeing significant investments after nearly 30 years of MAPS.

[OKCRT]

Sidewalks in neighborhoods esp. around schools where people tend to walk a lot would be nice. I don't walk kids to school or anything like that but I see a lot of people walking their kids and kids walking out in the streets because lack of sidewalks. This is basic stuff that all decent cities need. Do away with soccer stadiums til sidewalks are provided for the people.

[OKC Guy]

I think MAPS has done wonders for our city. I also think its run its course as designed and its time to change how we do projects. So much can change so fast we are just completing projects passed in 2009 and dreamed up prior.

What I suggest is break it down and do project approvals 1 year at a time for next 5 or so years. Figure out how much a penny brings in per year and if its $100m then decide on 1-4 projects at a time vs mass projects over years. And maybe even do 1/2 penny. Could either drop the other half all together or use it for major projects lasting for 2-3 years.

So 1/2 penny for smaller yet impactful projects voted on each year. Can adjust faster to needs and wants.

Other half for major projects like arenas and things like that.

This making 10 projects lasting 10 years is old and tired. It worked for 30 years but now that we have a great city we need to adapt to changes and needs faster.

[OKCRT]

The more I think about this the more I think this one should be Maps For Neighborhoods. Lets spread the wealth to all the areas for all the people this time.

[TheTravellers]

Sidewalks in neighborhoods esp. around schools where people tend to walk a lot would be nice. I don't walk kids to school or anything like that but I see a lot of people walking their kids and kids walking out in the streets because lack of sidewalks. This is basic stuff that all decent cities need. Do away with soccer stadiums til sidewalks are provided for the people.

Better Streets, Safer City already exists for that purpose, maybe not always building them exactly where they're needed immediately, but they've been putting sidewalks in all over the city for the past few years.

[Laramie]

We are not building the Funks a stadium anymore than we built The Peake for just NBA. The stadium will be city-owned & operated thru SMG. It will allow OKC to bid for events like amateur rugby, lacrosse, soccer & minor league level sports as we have done with the WCWS thru ASA (Porter) Hall of Fame Stadium.

The new state fair arena & soccer stadium (on city owned land) are as controversial as the convention center & Omni Hotel were in MAPS 3. OKC doesn't have a regulation stadium or arena available where USSF minor league soccer & rodeo, livestock related events are held--the soccer stadium can also used for American football. The arena with dasher boards (city has built these before) will make the arena available for minor league hockey.

[Laramie]

Only two big ticket items on MAPS 4

MAPS 4 Stadium




Designed to allow for soccer-American football expansion & renovation

New State Fair Arena




(8)Option for temporary upper-deck seating on the platform at the above right.

[Ed Shadid]

The soccer stadium, IMO, should not be viewed simply as a sports facility but also as a real estate development tool. Because taxpayers had to pay millions of dollars to speculators who bought land where they knew MAPS 3 dollars would go (ie: Scissortail Park) just prior to the MAPS 3 vote followed by presenting ridiculous appraisal numbers to the City, an essential component of the soccer stadium presentations should include where the stadium will go, who has been buying land in the area, and what it could potentially cost taxpayers to utilize eminent domain to acquire the land as well as who is likely to benefit from appreciation of land values in the immediate vicinity of the stadium. These answers may shed light on the question of why the soccer stadium proposal keeps hanging around despite abysmal polling numbers.

[Ed Shadid]

The more I think about this the more I think this one should be Maps For Neighborhoods. Lets spread the wealth to all the areas for all the people this time.

One of the best ways to "spread the wealth to all the areas for all the people" would be to include funding for operations and maintenance of city parks and public transit in this MAPS program. The original MAPS included funds for O&M and just last year the Better Streets, Safer City MAPS extension was accompanied by a separate vote for a 1/4 penny sales tax which was committed by the council to public safety operations. Making MAPS 3/4 capital and 1/4 operations and maintenance would provide approximately $28 million/year for O&M. If that O&M were divided between city parks and public transit you could improve amenities (only 1% if city parks have restroom facilities, there are few proper bus shelters etc..), see programming directed to the desires of the surrounding neighborhoods of a park (dog training, yoga, athletic leagues etc..), see improved frequency and extended hours of public transit service and fund marketing of park programming to the public. In this way, MAPS 4 could bring transformative change to all people in all parts of the city.

[mugofbeer]

I think this is a good idea for part of the program - even most of it. 50s to 70s parts of the rest of the city are looking pretty run down in some areas. Too much vacant and underused commercial space. That retail center on the south edge of Will Rogers park (that used to be part of the park) is one of my pet peeves.

[shawnw]

We are not building the Funks a stadium anymore than we built The Peake for just NBA. The stadium will be city-owned & operated thru SMG. It will allow OKC to bid for events like amateur rugby, lacrosse, soccer & minor league level sports as we have done with the WCWS thru ASA (Porter) Hall of Fame Stadium.

In most cases I'm in agreement with you, but if this were true the city could bring a hockey team into the Peake but it doesn't. We also don't seem to get all the concerts that BOK does. NBA, observationally at least, seems to defacto get a tighter grip on that venue than they should considering it's city owned.

[TheTravellers]

One of the best ways to "spread the wealth to all the areas for all the people" would be to include funding for operations and maintenance of city parks and public transit in this MAPS program. The original MAPS included funds for O&M and just last year the Better Streets, Safer City MAPS extension was accompanied by a separate vote for a 1/4 penny sales tax which was committed by the council to public safety operations. Making MAPS 3/4 capital and 1/4 operations and maintenance would provide approximately $28 million/year for O&M. If that O&M were divided between city parks and public transit you could improve amenities (only 1% if city parks have restroom facilities, there are few proper bus shelters etc..), see programming directed to the desires of the surrounding neighborhoods of a park (dog training, yoga, athletic leagues etc..), see improved frequency and extended hours of public transit service and fund marketing of park programming to the public. In this way, MAPS 4 could bring transformative change to all people in all parts of the city.

Absolutely this. We should never build shiny pretty things without having a way to pay to keep them shiny and pretty, ongoing maintenance costs definitely need to be built in to MAPS 4.

[d-usa]

Do we have a list of previous MAPS projects that have gone without funding or which have caused cuts in other areas to fund them after their MAPS funding expired?

Ed Shadid should be able to give some good examples, since he was involved in the budget process for the city I would assume.

I thought that funding was already build into MAPS. Increased tourism dollars from
The NBA games goes to fund city functions via increased sales taxes and property taxes.

[Pete]

^

The Myriad Gardens receives about $1.9M a year in subsidy; Scissortail Park will get $2.8M a year (and I believe this has gone up).

The entire budget for Parks & Rec is $33M per year for 22,000 acres of parkland.

[Pete]

The streetcar is being subsidized for $3.1M out of the $23M public transport budget.

[Pete]

The whitewater facility and Boathouse Foundation are asking for operational money now, but I don't have the figures.

[Ed Shadid]

Do we have a list of previous MAPS projects that have gone without funding or which have caused cuts in other areas to fund them after their MAPS funding expired?

Ed Shadid should be able to give some good examples, since he was involved in the budget process for the city I would assume.

I thought that funding was already build into MAPS. Increased tourism dollars from
The NBA games goes to fund city functions via increased sales taxes and property taxes.

So glad you asked. Unlike MAPS 1 which had some maintenance funds built in, MAPS 2 and MAPS 3 were strictly capital expenditures and there are many examples of how this has caused operational and funding deficiencies.

MAPS 2, or MAPS for Kids, spread hundreds of millions of dollars of capital investments to schools across the entirety of the city (including schools outside of I-89 and even OKC boundaries) but with no maintenance funds to accompany the capital investments. School boards were then expected to pick up all of the operations and maintenance costs of the new buildings, add-ons, HVAC systems etc.. and with cuts to education we all know how that worked out.

Exhibit number one in MAPS 3 would be the whitewater exhibit and the hemorrhaging of money by the Boathouse Foundation. Last year the Boathouse foundation secured millions of additional MAPS funds at least partially in an attempt to make capital investments designed to decrease their O&M costs and then received a multimillion dollar bail out from our general fund because of O&M shortfalls. My understanding is that the hemorrhaging continues and they are quietly seeking an additional bailout this year with no end in sight.

Ten years after the MAPS 3 vote we have only built 2 out of 4 senior wellness centers primarily due to being able to find partners who were willing/able to take on the O&M of running the facilities.

The streetcar never had a dedicated funding source for its O&M so the $3 million in annual O&M costs was simply provided from the existing transit budget.

The downtown park (Scissortail) has no identified funding source for the $3-4 million in annual O&M and funds are diverted from the parks budget. We now have a situation where the 10 acres in the Myriad Gardens requires about $4 million in O&M annually and the 70 acres of Scissortail Park will also likely require $4 million annually because programming, which brings people to parks, requires O&M dollars. So 80 acres of downtown parks requires $8 million/year or $100,000/acre for O&M. Now what about the 6,000 acres of neighborhood parks throughout the city? There is simply not enough money in the parks budget to do much more than cut the grass in our neighborhood parks throughout the city and the lack of O&M funds is a major reason that only 1% of OKC parks have restroom facilities (restroom facilities require about $5,000/year to operate and maintain).

If the convention center performs as advertised it will require a larger CVB budget to manage the type of conventions they project along with potentially greater maintenance costs. Again, there is no O&M fund dedicated to this so any increase will come from the general fund and the hotel/motel tax.

The even greater cloud hanging over all of this is what happens during the next recession/depression. We got a taste of this in the 2016 time frame and had no choice but to simply cut personnel and services throughout all departments; but you can't just shut down the streetcar/downtown park/whitewater facility so we shall see what the next recession brings.

[d-usa]

Which is not what I asked though.

I asked what cuts were made to other programs to fund this spending. What parts of the city budgets were cut to ensure continuing funding for things created by MAPS. Since that’s an argument made by some against future MAPS projects, we should be able to know what programs or services are hurt by old MAPS projects.

I know some things are just going to cost money and not make much visible return on paper. But saying the Myriad Gardens getting 1.9 Million (which also includes the pre-MAPS Crystal Bridge I assume) doesn’t account for money the Myriad Gardens bring back into the city budget to contribute towards their own funding: sales tax spend by people dining out after visiting the Gardens, staying at local hotels, etc. This goes for the ball park, the Whitewater facility, the Peake, etc.

How much of their cut in the city budget for operations is offset by an increase in the city budget because they exist? I won’t argue that they break even, but it’s something to consider.

[d-usa]

So glad you asked. Unlike MAPS 1 which had some maintenance funds built in, MAPS 2 and MAPS 3 were strictly capital expenditures and there are many examples of how this has caused operational and funding deficiencies.

MAPS 2, or MAPS for Kids, spread hundreds of millions of dollars of capital investments to schools across the entirety of the city (including schools outside of I-89 and even OKC boundaries) but with no maintenance funds to accompany the capital investments. School boards were then expected to pick up all of the operations and maintenance costs of the new buildings, add-ons, HVAC systems etc.. and with cuts to education we all know how that worked out.

Exhibit number one in MAPS 3 would be the whitewater exhibit and the hemorrhaging of money by the Boathouse Foundation. Last year the Boathouse foundation secured millions of additional MAPS funds at least partially in an attempt to make capital investments designed to decrease their O&M costs and then received a multimillion dollar bail out from our general fund because of O&M shortfalls. My understanding is that the hemorrhaging continues and they are quietly seeking an additional bailout this year with no end in sight.

Ten years after the MAPS 3 vote we have only built 2 out of 4 senior wellness centers primarily due to being able to find partners who were willing/able to take on the O&M of running the facilities.

The streetcar never had a dedicated funding source for its O&M so the $3 million in annual O&M costs was simply provided from the existing transit budget.

The downtown park (Scissortail) has no identified funding source for the $3-4 million in annual O&M and funds are diverted from the parks budget. We now have a situation where the 10 acres in the Myriad Gardens requires about $4 million in O&M annually and the 70 acres of Scissortail Park will also likely require $4 million annually because programming, which brings people to parks, requires O&M dollars. So 80 acres of downtown parks requires $8 million/year or $100,000/acre for O&M. Now what about the 6,000 acres of neighborhood parks throughout the city? There is simply not enough money in the parks budget to do much more than cut the grass in our neighborhood parks throughout the city and the lack of O&M funds is a major reason that only 1% of OKC parks have restroom facilities (restroom facilities require about $5,000/year to operate and maintain).

If the convention center performs as advertised it will require a larger CVB budget to manage the type of conventions they project along with potentially greater maintenance costs. Again, there is no O&M fund dedicated to this so any increase will come from the general fund and the hotel/motel tax.

The even greater cloud hanging over all of this is what happens during the next recession/depression. We got a taste of this in the 2016 time frame and had no choice but to simply cut personnel and services throughout all departments; but you can't just shut down the streetcar/downtown park/whitewater facility so we shall see what the next recession brings.

How much would you say the MAPS projects contributed to the growth of the city budget during that time. Do you think the cuts would have been worse or better without the increased tax income due to projects? How much imbalance is there between growth contributions and expenses?

[d-usa]

As an example: how many of the cuts during the small recession were caused by the fact that we have MAPS and how many were caused by the fact that we still have a large reliance on energy companies as a source of the city budget? (Which is something we have continued to improve I think)

[Pete]

^

The Parks & Rec Budget is only asking for 5% more this year over last, which is about a $1.8M increase. Inflation in the U.S. has been running about 2%.

Scissortail Park will take at least $2.8M in subsidy.

So, they just merely cut other things out of the parks and rec budget, such as maintenance and people. In other words, less money to go around to all the other parks and facilities.


Those are hard numbers in one area, just to use as an example.