Let’s not take city’s future for granted
POINT OF VIEW: Support MAPS 3
BY MEG SALYER
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Published: November 9, 2009
One of the most welcome surprises I found when moving to Oklahoma City 25 years ago was the way this community works together in good times or bad to dream a big dream or find a solution to a real problem. This overwhelming sense of civic responsibility embraced by our citizens played a major factor in my decision to run for City Council last year. I see that commitment to moving our community forward reinforced on a daily basis.
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MAPS 3
Oklahoma City residents will vote Dec. 8 on the $777 million MAPS 3, which would extend a current penny sales tax to pay for a downtown park, a convention center, transit improvements, Oklahoma River improvements, renovations at State Fair Park, health and wellness aquatic centers for senior citizens, new bicycle and pedestrian trails and money for new sidewalks.
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That is a very sweet story of how wonderful everthing is...but, lets take off the rose colored glasses for just a minute. While asking the citizens of OKC to vote for another 777 million dollars over the next seven years, the council has decided to cut 2% out of the budgets of all the cities departments. This includes Fire Dept. & Police Dept.
From what I understand, the most that the previous MAPS has collected in any year was 92 million dollars. Well, that means we're going to have a problem on our hands. The economic times are much more difficult now than the previous MAPS years. So, what happens if we collect an average 90 million instead of the "projected" 100 million? Which projects get cut? I bet it will not be the Chamber of Commerce's Convention Center or Devon's Park.
Exactly who will service these new facilities? Remember we just cut the budgets of the city departments. Those cuts have to come from somewhere. Personell,services? Who will keep these areas safe, a police department who is already stretched beyond its limits?
Our council has lost sight of who they serve, but I think they will be reminded December the 8th.
Citizen of OKC
News today that now the city involved is stuck with vacant land and no property taxes on it at all. It's also going to get no taxes from Pfizer or the people it once proposed to hire to work there. Nada. Nothing. As the Washington Examiner reports:
The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain. But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes' seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London. To lure those jobs to New London a decadeago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing.
(source: AT blog)