2011 State of the City Address

[warreng88]

Strength in numbers
Cornett: City needs to keep pushing for more success
By Brian Brus
Journal Record
Oklahoma City reporter - Contact 405-278-2837
Posted: 09:05 PM Thursday, January 13, 2011

OKLAHOMA CITY – As the city rebounds out of the recession with seemingly more momentum than much of the country, it’s hard to not anticipate hard-earned prosperity, Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett said Thursday.

“The good news is that it feels like we are sitting around making excuses as to why our economy is so strong right now, like we are afraid to believe it,” Cornett said.

“We have every reason to be cautious. But we also have every reason to be cautiously optimistic.”

Cornett provided an overview of the city’s recent strengths and accomplishments at his seventh State of the City address since taking office in March 2004. The Cox Convention Center auditorium was full, with about 1,100 people attending the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber-sponsored event.

Cornett has used the annual event in the past to unveil major economic development initiatives such as the third Metropolitan Area Projects tax issue and a similar effort to fund a new downtown arena to attract an NBA basketball team. But MAPS 3 progress is barely a year old since the issue’s passage and Cornett didn’t propose a new direction except in general terms.

“We’ve spent a couple of decades now diversifying our economy. We have succeeded well enough to be outperforming our peer cities,” he said. “We must continue to diversify into aviation, the biosciences, and tourism. We are scoring successes in these area and we need to keep pushing.”

Cornett cited Oklahoma City’s placement at the top of many rankings published in 2010, such as Forbes magazine identifying Oklahoma City as the No. 1 most affordable city in America and among Newsweek’s top 10 places poised for recovery.

The Milken Institute ranked Oklahoma City among the top 25 best-performing cities, and the Brookings Institute identified the city as one of the 20 strongest performers in the country.

“But perhaps the most important number – and it’s validated by our position on those lists – is our unemployment number,” Cornett said. “The most-recent Oklahoma City unemployment figure shows a drop to 6.2 percent from the previous month. OKC has the second-lowest unemployment rate of any large city in the country, trailing only Washington, D.C., at 6 percent.”

The national unemployment rate is 9.4 percent, and Cornett said Washington’s strong performance is artificially boosted by the large turnover of government jobs.

“Our low unemployment is not artificial and it’s not an accident,” he said. “It’s a reflection on smart investments.”

The base of employment and a factor that attracts more business is a well-educated work force, he said. And the education system in central Oklahoma, particularly the inner city, needs drastic changes to improve graduation rates, including state legislation, greater philanthropic support and residents’ ownership of the problem.

At the time of last year’s State of the City address, residents had just passed MAPS 3, a penny sales tax scheduled to last a little more than seven years. The economy has been so strong in the last half of 2010 that the city is already $5 million ahead of revenue projections, or $65 million of the total $777 million goal to fund eight major projects.

Because the city won’t spend MAPS 3 money until it’s been collected, work is expected to begin on various projects for the next 12 years, he said. Those projects include a massive central park, a downtown streetcar system, and a new convention center. The preparatory work done so far is right on schedule, he said.

Cornett concluded with a reference to a feature article in Newsweek that identified Oklahoma City as one of the top 10 cities that had best avoided the recession:

“Of course none of the cities in Newsweek’s Top 10 list competes right now with New York, Chicago or L.A. in terms of art, culture, and urban amenities, which tend to get noticed by journalists and casual travelers,” he said. “But once upon a time, all those great cities were also seen as cultural backwaters. And in the coming decades, as more people move in and open restaurants, museums, and sports arenas, who’s to say Oklahoma City can’t be Oz?”

[dmoor82]

It's going to be Awesome to see what OKC can do in a Non-recession considering all thats happended during one!

[TheTravellers]

Slightly troublesome is the reference to a "downtown streetcar system". Glad that he's pushing diversification of our economy, though.

[warreng88]

Here is the full transcript:

http://www.okc.gov/council/mayor/sta...011/index.html

[kevinpate]

Slightly troublesome is the reference to a "downtown streetcar system". Glad that he's pushing diversification of our economy, though.

Why troublesome? Doing something in DT is pretty much all that the funding available under the MAPs 3 can support, and it's rather consistent under the 'trust us' plan put forth in M3.

[TheTravellers]

Why troublesome? Doing something in DT is pretty much all that the funding available under the MAPs 3 can support, and it's rather consistent under the 'trust us' plan put forth in M3.

Keeping up with the other thread that shows we can probably put in spurs/stubs to neighborhoods and the plethora of maps (pun may or may not be intentional :-) ) in there, I thought we were pretty much past streetcar just being downtown.

[betts]

Keeping up with the other thread that shows we can probably put in spurs/stubs to neighborhoods and the plethora of maps (pun may or may not be intentional :-) ) in there, I thought we were pretty much past streetcar just being downtown.

Neighborhood. We've got money for six miles, max. I think it's an excellent idea to think ahead, and perhaps money from another source such as the federal government will be available to increase the number of miles, but without knowing about money from anyplace other than MAPS, it's unlikely the first line will go to more than one location outside downtown.

[Spartan]

Travellers, keep in mind that what the citizens passed was a "downtown streetcar." Verbatim. Not only was "downtown streetcar" what the voters passed, but it was also arguably the project that carried the ballot. The M3 vote was a referendum on public transit, period. The voters responded very favorably to the vision of starting the transit overhaul with a downtown streetcar.