Minicozzi and Chuck Marohn, founder and president of Strong Towns, have created models showing the amount of property tax created per acre for different types of development. They have shown that while everyone thinks a big Walmart on a suburban site will generate an enormous amount of tax revenue, because of the infrastructure required to service such a large site, the amount of property tax revenue per acre is much lower than traditional development found in downtowns and older urban neighborhoods. Since the City of Tulsa is dependent on sales tax, not property tax, revenue to fund operations, locally the Urban Data Pioneers civic group attempted to do a similar analysis of Tulsa development patterns based on sales tax revenue in 2017. The picture was largely similar.

Thus, for example, when considering street improvements, Tulsa needs to look at more than just traffic counts or the pavement condition index. It needs to consider what type of development will this facilitate and will it generate additional tax revenue that more than covers the cost of the improvement and provides replacement cost funding.

4. Determining which street projects to tackle require more than just an analysis from traffic engineers.

As I currently understand it, the City’s traffic engineers maintain the list of needed capital improvement projects. Street projects are reviewed and ranked to determine which have the greatest need based on traffic counts, age, pavement condition index, etc. However, what’s missing is the level of economic activity (tax revenue) likely to be generated, and whether it is the type of development that helps create the city Tulsans want. With a few exceptions, Tulsa’s traffic engineers largely control the capital improvement process.

The most recent gauge of what Tulsans would like for their city was the Tulsa Comprehensive Plan, which came out of PlaniTulsa. It represented the views what thousands of Tulsans said they wanted our city to look like. Citizens strongly preferred a more walkable, less auto-dependent city with several districts and neighborhoods of mixed-use development. However, the infrastructure projects favored by the City’s traffic engineers are encouraging more auto-dependent development, not less. Currently, the plan is administered by the Tulsa Planning Office housed at the regional planning organization, the Indian Nations Council of Governments (INCOG), and they have no formal role in determining which infrastructure projects the City will fund. This should change with infrastructure projects being seen as way for the City to help achieve this vision Tulsans desire.

Besides opening the process up to the Tulsa Planning Office, there should be an independent economic analysis done for projects to determine whether they generate additional tax revenue or economic activity that exceeds their original and replacement costs. Ultimately, a project selection committee should be formed that makes the final recommendations on projects based on these criteria to the Mayor.

5. The City has done a poor job managing and completing construction on existing capital improvement projects that have already been funded.

Tulsans have expressed frustration with continual street construction. Bumper stickers have been spotted that say “Tulsa: Finish Something. Anything.” or “Welcome to the City of Road Construction.” I realize that construction is often the price of progress, but can’t Tulsa figure out a way to do it better? Other cities don’t seem to have as much constant construction as Tulsa does.

There were plenty of capital improvement projects, including streets, that had been approved by the voters but have yet to be completed before the election this past Tuesday. Now there will be more. Instead of continuing to do the same thing over and over and expecting different results, can’t Tulsa rethink its capital improvements approach and consider the economic impact and type of development encouraged by them before selecting proposed projects in the future?

Tulsans deserve better. It should have started on November 12, but didn’t. Maybe it can start now.







Editor’s Note: A version of this article originally appeared on the blog Batesline. Top photo of Tulsa is via Jon Grogan.