Tulsa City Council District 4: No endorsement

MORE: Here are my survey questions, and answers from Daniel Regan, the only candidate to reply.

To the candidates for Tulsa City Council District 4:

I am a resident and voter in District 4. In fact, I ran for the seat myself many years ago, as well as serving several years as president of the Midtown Coalition of Neighborhood Associations. More recently, I've written about city government and urban development issues for Urban Tulsa Weekly, This Land Press, and on my website, batesline.com.

At this point, I have no leanings in this race for the open council seat. This questionnaire asks about some of the municipal issues most important to me and to many of my friends and neighbors. I've watched the LWV/36 Degrees North debate, which only grazed a couple of these issues, and I am no nearer a decision. Your answers will help me decide for whom to vote and may influence some other voters too, as I plan to post them, unedited, on my website, and use them to decide whether to make an endorsement. I've tried to provide context and links with further background information. There's no word limit for your responses, and I welcome detailed and nuanced replies.

1. Please list some occasions in recent years that you have addressed the City Council or city authority, board, or commission meeting an issue of public concern. I'd like to know to which body you spoke, when (month and year, or as close as you can recall), the subject you addressed, and the gist of what you said. (E.g., "March 2014, spoke to TMAPC in support of Pearl District form-based codes.") If this would be a long list, feel free to pick a few of particular importance. I just want a sense of your engagement with city government.

REGAN: Because I have been a civically engaged citizen of Tulsa for most of my adult life, there are too many instances to go in detail for every occasion. That said - I will give two particular interactions for reference...

I was asked to serve on the 2015 Transit Governance and Funding Task Force. In that role I advocated for broader governance constituency inclusion (to ensure that the perspective was represented from the suburbs this system serves through a seat at the board), as well as enhanced funding to expedite implementation of the Fast Forward transit plan recommendations.

Additionally, as a board member for the Downtown Coordinating Council, there were numerous occasions wherein I was a vocal advocate for competitively bidding the street maintenance and cleaning contract, which represents a significant portion of DCC's annual budget, as well as advocated for funding of the replacement and unification of downtown's broken parking meter system.

2. All of Tulsa's peer cities have some sort of ordinance protecting historic non-residential buildings, including downtown buildings, from demolition. All of Tulsa's peer cities have districts in which new construction is required to meet certain design standards in order to enhance walkability and to preserve the existing character of the neighborhood. Tulsa lacks these commonly-adopted protections for our urban fabric (already damaged by 60 years of bad urban policy) because of a small but vocal group of developers who seem to have the mayor and city council in their hip pockets. Will you pledge to enact and enforce stronger protections for Tulsa's historic buildings and our walkable midtown neighborhoods, no matter how loudly a certain tiny cabal of developers complains?

REGAN: As City Councilor I would make all efforts to enact and enforce the 80% - 90% of historic preservation regulations that we can agree on as a community, instead of taking an all or nothing approach (which has failed time and time again in the past - think Form Based Code discussions and downtown overlay decisions). I am a preservationist at heart, and that's the reason I bought as my first home a 1916 Dutch colonial house and worked hard to restore and preserve it myself. With that said, I am also a pragmatist and understand that letting perfect be the enemy of good serves no functional purpose for future generations enjoyment of our beautiful old buildings.

3. The vacant area north of downtown, between Brady Heights and the OSU-Tulsa campus, was acquired and cleared by the City in the late 1990s and early 2000s to fulfill a 1980s commitment to provide a 200-acre campus for the University Center at Tulsa. (I wrote about the neighborhood's history for This Land Press in 2014.) Developments since the 1980s -- particularly separate campuses for OU-Tulsa, NSU-BA, Langston-Tulsa, and OSU-Tulsa and the advent of online college classes -- mean that the initial enrollment projection of 20,000 students will never be met, and OSU-Tulsa will never need the space west of Detroit Ave. Alternatives for the land include leaving it in the hands of the University Center at Tulsa Authority (UCATA) to be used as they see fit, without further public input, or reversion of the title to the Tulsa Development Authority (TDA) under the terms of sale as it is surplus to university needs. Redevelopment possibilities include suburban-style (closing streets, large parking lots, sprawling institutional buildings, similar to OSU-Tulsa's campus and Woodland Hills Mall) or traditional mixed-use neighborhood (retaining the street grid, incremental development, design requirements for walkability, well connected to adjacent neighborhoods, in accordance with the neighborhood's history and the plan developed recently by Notre Dame urban planning students). What policy for the use of that surplus land north of downtown will you follow as a city councilor?

REGAN: While the monumental impact and potential a 20,000 student population university with on-campus housing would have on our city's urban core is not lost on me, I agree that the likelihood for that as a component of OSU-TULSA / UCAT are slim. Under the scenario you've proposed, I would recommend taking a traditional mixed-use approach to any future development (retaining the neighborhood charm of Brady Heights) is the wisest course to follow.

4. Every few years, some major civic project is touted as a "game-changer," the key that will take Tulsa to the "next level." Currently, city leaders speak this way about dams on the Arkansas River, BMX Headquarters, and The Gathering Place. In the past, civic leaders have used this kind of talk to push urban renewal demolition, pedestrianizing Main Street (completed in the '70s, reversed 30 years later), closing streets and demolishing historic buildings to create the Williams Center superblock and the now-closed Williams Center Forum shopping mall, and purchasing the new City Hall. Others, including myself, believe that the real game-changer would be to get off the megaproject merry-go-round and pursue small-scale measures to improve livability, following the principles found in Jane Jacobs' writings, Roberta Brandes Gratz's concept of "urban husbandry," Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language, New Urbanism, and the Strong Towns movement. Which urban development philosophy and which "game-changer" initiatives would you pursue as a city councilor?

REGAN: I believe we too often have a tendency to chase the "shiny new thing" while neglecting the "low hanging fruit" in our community. There are countless instances when we ask consultant after consultant to come in and tell us the same thing we have already heard before or determined ourselves, yet we fail to find action on even the simplest of endeavors or recommendations. We must be more proactive and action oriented in implementation of things recommended in reports like the Go Plan, PlanitTulsa, Neighborhood Revitalization and Small Area Plans, and Tulsa Walkability Study to name a few.

5. A number of cities around the country have passed ordinances imposing a particular understanding of sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI) on their citizens and business owners, requiring compliance under threat of fines, business closure, and imprisonment, taking a heavy-handed, one-sided approach to a divisive issue. For example, Charlotte, North Carolina, passed an ordinance that included the requirement that privately-owned gyms must allow men who claim to be women to use the women's locker room. A similar ordinance in Houston was overturned by a initiative petition and referendum; the City of Houston petitioned the courts to subpoena sermons preached by pastors who opposed the ordinance. Phoenix's SOGI ordinance was used to punish two artists who did not want to exercise their creativity in service to a same-sex ceremony. In other cities, non-profit organizations were banned from using public facilities or barred from participating in grant programs because they refused to affirm official city dogma on these issues. Tulsa already has SOGI ordinances affecting city employees and private landlords, imposing on them the controversial ethical position that it is never valid for anyone under any circumstances to draw a distinction between, for example, an actual woman and a man claiming to be a woman, or between a male-female marriage and a same-sex couple, a position with which many, if not a majority, of Tulsans disagree. Do you agree with me that city government should "live and let live" and respect the freedom of Tulsa's citizens, organizations, and business owners to use their own judgment on these matters, and will you pledge that you will oppose and vote against any additional SOGI ordinances?

REGAN: I would need to study this issue further to better understand the unintended consequences.

6. The George Kaiser Family Foundation has been a generous donor to many initiatives around Tulsa, but many citizens are concerned that that generosity has come at the price of control, not only of non-profit beneficiaries, but of city government itself. Our current mayor is a former Federal lobbyist for GKFF. A member of the City Council is GKFF's chairman. GKFF-affiliated donors are often found on the campaign disclosure forms of candidates for city office. Should the City Council and Mayor always defer to the wishes of GKFF and other generous benefactors? On what recent issues should city officials have refused a request of GKFF and other foundations? Specifically, should city officials have acquiesced in GKFF's request for a three-year closure of a major north-south road and trails serving motorists, cyclists, runners, and walkers?

REGAN: I don't believe it to be fair or prudent to always defer on any issue. Each decision should be given a fair and legitimate review, in order to best understand what the most productive and least detrimental potential outcome would be. I will need to do more investigation to fully understand the requirement for a three year street/trail closure. I will say that timing this closure so that it coincided with highway 75 closures seemed unfortunate and avoidable.

7. As a member of the City Council, you would be part of the Legislative Branch of city government, with a duty to act as a check and balance on the Executive Branch: Mayor Bynum, his administration, and the boards and commissions that he appoints. What recent actions or policies of the mayor, administration, boards, and commissions should have received strong pushback from the City Council? On what sorts of issues would you, as a member of the Council, seek to exercise oversight of the Executive Branch?

REGAN: One recent item that I thought warranted push back was the suggestion to extend the parking enforcement hours within the IDL. I was glad to see that the Mayor decided against the implementation of the extended hours for parking meters downtown (to include evenings and weekends) when push back was raised as it became part of the public discussion.

8. Here's a simple one for the finale: Tulsa recently raised its permanent sales tax rate to fund public safety and added a new temporary tax for the "Vision Tulsa" projects. Are Tulsans paying enough taxes to the city? As a city councilor, would you vote for or against putting additional taxes on the ballot?

REGAN: I believe Tulsans are currently paying enough taxes to the city. I would weigh heavily the opportunity to eliminate redundancy and use those savings or to re-allocate current resources through a shifting of prioritization before ever asking for additional taxes to be added to the ballot. With that said, I learned long ago that it isn't prudent or sincere to commit to something indefinitely and that all scenarios deserve their own individual due diligence and considerations.