Full list of proposed MAPS 4 projects

[Laramie]

Seems clear to me that the city leaders don’t have the political ability to get OKC voters to tax themselves for the things they need to fund through the general budget and standard sales tax. They must know OKC voters won’t agree to a permanent tax hike to fund the things that need to be funded. So instead of finding a permanent solution, they are hoping to use the MAPS brand to fund these things. I’m glad they are seeking to resolve some of these problems, but they are going about it the wrong way.

Well, not necessarily, voters like the fact they feel there's some input with capital improvement projects thru MAPS. If this were apart of the general fund; it's strictly thru council representative government affirming 'aye or nay.' Much like when the city approves its budget.

[Ed Shadid]

Well, not necessarily, voters like the fact they feel there's some input with capital improvement projects thru MAPS. If this were apart of the general fund; it's strictly thru council representative government affirming 'aye or nay.' Much like when the city approves its budget.

So. Incredibly. Frustrating. The language for MAPS4 is new and unlike previous MAPS ballots. The only language on the ballot in December will be to call for a 1-cent tax for the General Fund for 8 years.

[mugofbeer]

Seems clear to me that the city leaders don’t have the political ability to get OKC voters to tax themselves for the things they need to fund through the general budget and standard sales tax. They must know OKC voters won’t agree to a permanent tax hike to fund the things that need to be funded. So instead of finding a permanent solution, they are hoping to use the MAPS brand to fund these things. I’m glad they are seeking to resolve some of these problems, but they are going about it the wrong way.

I'm going to guess part of the city's problem is the source of their operating revenue. Since the city can't use property taxes and must rely on sales taxes and other fees, they are limited in their ability to fund "those things cities should normally be funding" that many of the posters feel are not MAPS issues.

If property taxes could be used, there would be a greater ability to fund "human based" things that are really a function of how much citizens want to to give to those sorts of things. Sales taxes are not infinite and have a certain amount of a competition factor if OKCs tax rate starts to get too high. Retailers could opt to go across the hiway to Edmond or Moore.

[soonerguru]

Basically the city is stepping up to fund infrastructure for things that were chiefly the province of nonprofits. Having worked in government, I can assure you that a sudden funding pool for, say, an animal shelter, would never happen. Government budgeting is always, "what can you cut this year?" in the rare event of any kind of sudden budget increase (pink unicorn) it is usually expended on COLAs for employees or something to cover health care cost increases or when a few additional employees are hired.

The fact that we are funding all of these separate facilities and projects in one fell swoop is transformational, whether it is more buses and bus shelters, facilities for people with addiction and mental health problems, sidewalks and streetlights, etc.

It's easy to throw stones, but these investments -- which is what they are -- will be game changing for our city.

It's absurd to just say, "The city should just.have a billion dollars and pay for this stuff out of the budget." Anyone who says that has clearly never worked in city or state government. Perhaps it's different for federal agencies, but I doubt it, because even DOD outsources practically everything to the private sector.

[SoonerQueen]

We were really pulling for the World Class Aquarium. That is something that would attract all ages and would be a destination place for visitors.

[Geographer]

It's absurd to just say, "The city should just.have a billion dollars and pay for this stuff out of the budget." Anyone who says that has clearly never worked in city or state government. Perhaps it's different for federal agencies, but I doubt it, because even DOD outsources practically everything to the private sector.

My only pushback here is that there are other general obligation bonds that could be an avenue for some of the projects listed here that could be argued don't match official language of intent for what MAPS is.

[Bunty]

Mind boggling to think they had a chance to put a World Class Aquarium on the list and we get this. If they did a poll with all these projects plus the Aquarium I would be willing to bet a World Class Aquarium would finish at the top. And it would be a better return for the tax payers. It would be something that would have people flocking to the downtown area ready to spend their money.

Find a billionaire to build the aquarium, like how Tulsa got its world class park.

[soonerguru]

My only pushback here is that there are other general obligation bonds that could be an avenue for some of the projects listed here that could be argued don't match official language of intent for what MAPS is.

Agreed. But the last round focused mostly on roads, an area of great need as well.

[TheTravellers]

Agreed. But the last round focused mostly on roads, an area of great need as well.

Not really. Convention Center, Scissortail Park, Streetcar, Riversport Rapids, Fairgrounds bldg, trails, sidewalks, senior centers, and infrastructure. Infrastructure got $47M out of it, so that's not anywhere close to "mostly" (and I didn't dig into how much roads actually got out of that $47M, so it could be even less).

https://www.okc.gov/government/maps-3/projects

You might be thinking of the Better Streets Safer City thing, which is mostly road-related.

[Pete]

Gazette has a story coming out later today with extensive interviews with the mayor and JoBeth Hamon.

It will be worth reading as much is mentioned about the process.

[PhiAlpha]

Gazette has a story coming out later today with extensive interviews with the mayor and JoBeth Hamon.

It will be worth reading as much is mentioned about the process.

Good job Pete. I’m glad to see that someone is doing this.

[checkthat]

While I have the same beef, the reality is that there are number of places surprisingly not even served by streetlights that should have them.

We absolutely need more streetlights and protected bike lanes. Yet another senseless death that could have easily been avoided:

Family, friends remember local magician fatally hit by OKCPD patrol car

[Pete]

MAPS package
All 16 projects with formal presentations at special meetings were included in the MAPS 4 package that will be voted on Tuesday.
BY MIGUEL RIOS

Oklahoma City council and mayor vote on a MAPS 4 slate tomorrow that includes all 16 proposals with formal presentations at the special meetings.

Allocations are based on an estimate that the temporary 1-cent sales tax will generate $978 million in revenue. If passed by council, the package goes to a Dec. 10 vote for OKC residents. If passed by residents, the tax begins April 1 and would last eight years.

“I think everything we’ve done here is certainly transformational. You always wish you could do more with everything, but we think we’ve definitely created a package here where everything is funded at a level where it can dramatically change that particular subject area that it’s addressing in our city,” mayor David Holt said. “You have a package here that’s very broad, that meets a lot of different priorities in the community. I think it falls into four buckets really: it’s neighborhood needs, human needs, quality of life and it’s jobs.”

The State Fair Coliseum, Innovation District, Chesapeake Arena and multipurpose stadium allocations account for 29.24 percent ($286 million) of the total estimated funds. Collectively, the other allocations ($692 million) make up 70 percent.

“That’s a total paradigm shift, but I think it’s responsive to where the people of Oklahoma City are in 2019,” Holt said.

The highest allocation of funds is $140 million for parks, followed by $115 million for Chesapeake Energy Arena upgrades and then $110 million for youth centers.

Process
Throughout the process, Holt has repeatedly stated that he wanted MAPS to be inclusive and transparent. In an Oct. 11, 2018 video, Holt requested ideas for MAPS. Though the results were never explicitly revealed to the public, Holt said during his January State of the City address that they had received over a thousand submissions. He listed about 20 ideas that had “even the base level of credibility,” though at that point Freedom Center and Diversion Hub were not mentioned but a “world-class aquarium” downtown was.

“As I went through the spring, I was listening, listening to the public and listening to the councilmembers most of all,” Holt said. “The nine elected officials are ultimately the decision makers at every step of the way, and so I worked up this presentation schedule that seemed to me to reflect the council’s priority. Ultimately, that was their choice to adopt it — our choice, I should say, as an elected body to adopt it as we did in an open meeting. … Things that didn’t really have sufficient support on the council to move forward just didn’t move forward.”

Holt said it “was fairly heavily implied” that projects not formally listed as agenda items on any of the four special meetings were going to have a “hard time” making the package. He said he wanted everything in the final package to have that level of public vetting.

“I could play with the numbers like anybody else could. I mean, I could see that that was possible, you know, like it was mathematically possible that they could all get in, but I also knew that they needed to withstand public scrutiny,” he said. “I think everything made its point. I found it was interesting that even things that maybe had a segment of the community that were naysayers sort of, at least partially, won them over through their presentations.”

One of the projects that didn’t have a formal presentation was a downtown aquarium proposal, which he listed in January as still being a part of the MAPS conversation. Holt said the idea did not really have any big advocates on the council or from the public, so it didn’t advance.

“It did not get a lot of traction with council and really with the public,” Holt said. “I don’t know that there’s any specific moment where you could say it didn’t move forward, but it never seemed to have the support necessary from any elected official or from the public at large to be a part of MAPS.”

Though it did not have a formal presentation, Ward 7 councilwoman Nikki Nice had someone present the project under the item “other items brought forward by councilmembers” at the final meeting Aug. 6.

Ward 6 councilwoman JoBeth Hamon said her experience with the project has not been as open and transparent as it has been made out to be. Around April or May, Hamon said she was presented with a rough sketch of what the numbers would look like for “pretty much all of the projects that got onto” the special meetings’ agendas.

“Since that point, the only numbers that have kind of shifted around have been those numbers that are kind of at that neighborhood and human needs bucket,” she said. “As it relates to the number for the [Chesapeake] arena, the multipurpose stadium and the State Fair arena, those numbers haven’t really changed since the original numbers that were presented for me. So my concern is we talked about having a truly open and transparent process when that’s just not totally been my experience.”

Holt has also repeatedly stated that MAPS is a compromise, which Hamon agrees with. But she believes neighborhood and social needs suffered through that compromise much more than things like the multipurpose stadium.

“Every democratic process involves compromise, but to me, the folks that compromise before they even got to the negotiating table were the sidewalks, the transit, the housing proposal,” Hamon said. “The power dynamic between the State Fair Arena or the Chesapeake Arena are not the same thing as the dynamics of compromise for affordable housing or transit.”

Despite touting transparency, a Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce poll gauging the popularity of the MAPS projects has never been made public. Holt reconciles his calls for transparency with a private poll because he said polls don’t determine everything.

“To me, polling is interesting, and I’m not saying it’s irrelevant, but it’s not like you just poll everything and you just pick the 16 most popular things,” Holt said. “I don’t think anyone would ever say that a decision was made in its totality based on a poll. … In this context, things that didn’t move forward and aren’t in this package were ultimately viewed as not important and critical to the future of our city as the things that are. Or maybe they’re not a good fit for MAPS for any reason.

“I don’t think the polls, polling and people getting to see polls as if there’s some, I don’t know, mythical formula that is calling the shots — I don’t know. I mean, I don’t have any polls; I just see polls. People like to show the mayor polls, and that’s fine. If I had polls, I’d share them with people, but I just see polls and I say, ‘Thank you,’ and I find it interesting analysis. And I think enough polls have leaked to the public that I think validate polls I have seen that didn’t leak to the public, so I don’t think there’s anything really, you know, that people don’t really know already.”

In an Aug. 22 tweet, Holt wrote that “the proposals made to council scientifically poll very high individually & as a package.”

Hamon said people have expressed their frustration for attending special meetings, which all lasted upward of five hours, and feeling like they were pointless. She was told in personal conversations with the mayor and other councilmembers that they didn’t want to give people a false sense of hope. Despite not seeing the chamber of commerce’s poll herself, Hamon said they did base decisions on their popularity. Holt communicated any polling to her, and she said “even that was still fairly selective.”

“There were other things that weren’t polling as well, but we asked them to present a smaller number, and so they were still included,” she said. “That’s the piece where it did feel like a certain extent like, ‘OK, these are the projects that are going to get included at some level.’ … I can say when we originally talked about the transit number and brainstorming, we were really talking more in the [$120 million] range, and that got pulled down to [$87 million] after other projects kind of came forward as having a lot of public push and support.”

VOICE hosts a community meeting at 6:30 tonight at Tower Theatre, 425 NW 23rd St., to examine the proposals and propose next steps.

[Laramie]

The current thirst for public transit just doesn't scream out. Will we get there, I certainly hope so.

Depend on public transportation for 3 - 5 days as I did, your perspective will change.

[Miracle121]

Fair ground arena must be equipped with ice making equipment for minor league hockey. Not just a horse barn. If just a horse barn I will vote no.

[baralheia]

Exactly why I’ve added Election Day to my calendar to not forget to vote no. MAPS has been modified to cover what should be done by other entities or by normal municipal means.

Social movement doesn’t elevate the city above others; but outstanding projects result in the increase of sales tax to fund those extras from general operations.

This is kinda my sentiment, though I'm still very undecided as to how I'll vote. There are a ton of good and much needed ideas on this list, but most of these line items are ones that I would expect would be funded from the taxes we all already pay. I'm also quite leery of the conditions that many of these items have on them - i.e. "conditional on the identification of operational funding". For instance, EMBARK is already stretched thin with their budget. Where is the operational funding going to come from for the proposed BRT lines? Unless the intent is to expand EMBARK's budget after the fact (which I would be massively in support of doing, btw), the money earmarked for the BRT lines sounds like it's just going to sit and do nothing to me. There's a lot of that in this MAPS package and I honestly don't know what to think about it.

[soonerguru]

Not really. Convention Center, Scissortail Park, Streetcar, Riversport Rapids, Fairgrounds bldg, trails, sidewalks, senior centers, and infrastructure. Infrastructure got $47M out of it, so that's not anywhere close to "mostly" (and I didn't dig into how much roads actually got out of that $47M, so it could be even less).

https://www.okc.gov/government/maps-3/projects

You might be thinking of the Better Streets Safer City thing, which is mostly road-related.

No. I’m referring to the last bond issue. I’m very clear on all of the MAPS initiatives.

[chuck5815]

If you are upset with the lack of BLC items on the Holt Commission's List, definitely consider dropping a note to your friendly neighborhood councilman or woman. Don't let these Chads get away with passing this Little League City List.

ward1@okc.gov
ward2@okc.gov
ward3@okc.gov
ward4@okc.gov
ward5@okc.gov
ward6@okc.gov
ward7@okc.gov
ward8@okc.gov

[soonerguru]

Reading the Gazette story, I notice it carries Hamon’s comments about human needs being cut without clarifying that Fairgrounds, Soccer stadium, and Innovation Hub all had their budgets cut. To my knowledge only transit had its budget cut in the human needs category. Perhaps Urban Pioneer can add to this because he worked on the transit piece.

[Pete]

Reading the Gazette story, I notice it carries Hamon’s comments about human needs being cut without clarifying that Fairgrounds, Soccer stadium, and Innovation Hub all had their budgets cut.

What she is saying is the numbers for those projects did not change since they were first presented to her in April/May.

[AnguisHerba]

The Council passed the resolution unanimously without modification.

JoBeth proposed two motions to modify funding for the housing project and change language around the connections for the Innovation District so that it would clearly include more bridges over I-235. Both motions were voted down.

Ed Shadid also showed up and stated his intent to contest the vote in court as logrolling.

[Pete]

The log-rolling issue will be interesting.

For the last MAPS, to get around a potential challenge over this issue, they re-worded the ballot item to say the money would go into general capital improvements, even though the projects were clearly spelled out and budgeted.

Now, they are talking about just putting the MAPS proceeds in the general fund to try and work around this law.

We'll see if it stands up in court because Shadid seems set on his challenge.

[soonerguru]

What she is saying is the numbers for those projects did not change since they were first presented to her in April/May.

I thought the Fairgrounds asked for 90 mil. They got sixty-three. Innovation Hall asked for 22 mil but got 10. Soccer wanted 73 mil, but got 37, etc. Regardless, it passed unanimously! Way t go OKC!

[Pete]

It's also interesting to consider how each of these individual items might fare with voters if they were each separate items.

[soonerguru]

It will be a sad but revealing sight watching Ed Shadid constitutionally challenging an initiative that will help people who rely on bus transportation, whose forgotten neighborhoods will receive important public investment, who suffer from addiction, unaffordable housing, homelessness, and mental illness. But that is the most Ed thing ever. If he were still on council I bet this round of projects would be 90 percent Chamber driven.