Tulsa Remote

[Rover]

Every single person who steps inside of the Panasonic plant will be working to grow a company based elsewhere.

That's true, but at least they are investing in more permanent assets within the state that they can't just up and move away. Working remotely gives you a job but no investment to otherwise help the state. No construction jobs, no ancillary servicers and suppliers locating here to serve, etc., etc. Brick and mortar investment is important for economic development.

[rte66man]

Tulsa is voting on "Improve Our Tulsa" on August 8th. The $814 million proposal is the second renewal of what was called Vision 2025.

The highlights are:
$300 million for streets
$95 million for housing
$80 million for a refurb of the Performing Arts Center
$50 million for a new headquarters for the police and fire departments. which will allow the city to tear down the current complex and build a new convention center hotel on the site similar to what the Omni is in OKC
$32 million for parks
$10 in increased matching funds for the new Gilcrease Museum bringing total funding to $130 million for the new building

https://www.cityoftulsa.org/media/21...nd-spanish.pdf

$300 million for streets is not nearly enough. Went to Tulsa this weekend for a few days away. Haven't been back in a few years and was STUNNED to see how bad the arterials were in the areas we visited. Memorial north of 71st was a giant pothole. 61st between Sheridan and Memorial wasn't any better. Plus Tulsa is so far behind in widening projects. They are just now finishing 81st St when that should have been done 20+ years ago. If the SE arterials are this bad, I can't imagine how bad the core areas are.

[soonerguru]

Ever heard of things like sign-on or relocation bonuses? Like $10k is nothing, especially if most of the salaries are people in excess of $100k. Relocation bonuses don't exist for remote workers and it's actually a pretty smart thing for Tulsa to offer it. Why shouldn't the entire State of Oklahoma offer it to people? If there's this much success in Tulsa think what it could do for the entire state of offering highly skilled people relocation bonuses for remote work. Seems kind of dumb to keep it limited to just GKFF in Tulsa doing it, but hey stay salty. I've had several sign-on bonuses in excess of $25k so $10k is not that big of a motivator (and I'm in the range of pay of what many Tulsa Remoters are making), it's a nice thing to pay for your moving costs and that's about it. The people who moved here didn't do it because it was a life changing amount, they had to want to move to Tulsa in the first place and this just helped win them over to do it.

Because George Kaiser isn't paying to relocate people to move to Oklahoma. He's paying to relocate people to Tulsa.

Oklahoma needs more George Kaisers. (Grateful he invests in OKC, too).

[Swake]

New article on Tulsa Remote on Vox:
https://www.vox.com/technology/23751...ty-future-work

[Bunty]

Ever heard of things like sign-on or relocation bonuses? Like $10k is nothing, especially if most of the salaries are people in excess of $100k. Relocation bonuses don't exist for remote workers and it's actually a pretty smart thing for Tulsa to offer it. Why shouldn't the entire State of Oklahoma offer it to people? If there's this much success in Tulsa think what it could do for the entire state of offering highly skilled people relocation bonuses for remote work. Seems kind of dumb to keep it limited to just GKFF in Tulsa doing it, but hey stay salty. I've had several sign-on bonuses in excess of $25k so $10k is not that big of a motivator (and I'm in the range of pay of what many Tulsa Remoters are making), it's a nice thing to pay for your moving costs and that's about it. The people who moved here didn't do it because it was a life changing amount, they had to want to move to Tulsa in the first place and this just helped win them over to do it.

Ponca City offers an incentive to move there. It's seriously needed since Ponca City has been slowly declining in population since the 1990s.

Stillwater has a $9000 incentive but is currently on pause. Remote worker required to buy home worth at least $250,000. Don't think there are any other towns offering an incentive to move there.

Rural legislators ought to push for a remote incentive program for the entire state of Oklahoma. Start out with a budget of at least $10 million dollars and later increase it if demand forces it. That's nothing compared to the highly extravagant incentives the state wants to offer manufactures to come to a single place. Hard to imagine, though, why anybody would want to move to those remote dying little towns with none to very few cars ever parked on Main St. Does anybody want to live in a ghost town to be? However, towns big enough for a Wal-Mart and next to an Interstate are not like that and would be more appealing. And not too far from OKC or Tulsa. Weatherford on I-40 is only around an hour from OKC.