BatesLine

Part of the Oklahoma Local Development Act, 62 O. S. 860, a provision to encourage restoration of buildings historic neighborhood commercial districts, by allowing local governments to exempt taxation on the incremental property value (emphasis added):

D. A project plan may contain a provision that ad valorem taxes may be exempted in a commercial historic preservation area that is adjacent to and serves designated historical residential areas for neighborhood commercial preservation purposes in order for the neighborhood to retain its basic character and scale. No ad valorem tax exemption may be granted on the value of property which has been assessed or which is subject to assessment prior to the adoption of the project plan. No ad valorem tax exemption shall be granted pursuant to the provisions of this subsection for single-family residences. The governing body may grant the exemption only on the increase in value of the property. The exemptions may be granted for a specific period of time as determined by a written agreement between the property owners of the area and the governing body and may be renewed. Uses of the property eligible for this exemption may include but not be limited to commercial, office or multifamily residential use.

Is this actually in use anywhere in the state? Maybe only in Oklahoma City?

Found via the 2007 Oklahoma Business Incentives Tax Information Guide -- 60 pages worth of brief descriptions of tax exemptions, credits, and other incentives that Oklahoma offers to companies doing business in the state.

Very cool! INCOG now has, on its website, color-coded maps showing zoning classifications, covering Tulsa County and neighboring sections of Creek, Osage, Rogers, and Wagoner Counties.

It's all in PDF, so you will need Acrobat Reader. You'll also need broadband: The files appear to be quite large. Start with the index map, which shows county boundaries, municipal boundaries, major streets, and the township and range grid. Click on the place of interest, and a detailed PDF for the six mile by six mile township will appear.

Township boundaries run along 186th St. N., 126th St. N., 66th St. N., Archer St., 61st St. S., 121st St. S., and 181st St. S. Range boundaries run along 273rd West Ave., 177th West Ave., 81st West Ave., Peoria Ave., Mingo Rd., 193rd East Ave., 289th East Ave. Each map includes about 1/8th of a mile of overlap, so, for example, you can see both sides of Peoria through Brookside, even though Peoria is a boundary between map sections.

Here's the detailed map covering most of midtown.

The detailed map shows streets, lot boundaries, and zoning boundaries and is color coded for major zoning classifications -- green for agricultural, white for single-family residential, brown for multi-family residential, gray for industrial, red for commercial, yellow for office. Blue dashed lines indicate planned unit developments (PUDs), green dashed lines mark overlay districts, such as historic preservation districts. Labels show the legal zoning classification (e.g., RM-3, CS, IM, CBD), which will vary from one jurisdiction to another.

Of course, what you can and cannot do with a piece of land is affected not only by the underlying zoning, but also by any zoning overlay that may exist, the conditions and development standards attached to a PUD, if any, and any special exceptions or variances that may have been granted by the Board of Adjustment; you'll need to visit the INCOG offices to see the detailed records. But for most purposes, this will give you a clear and detailed picture of how our city can be built and rebuilt. The maps are current as of June 2007.

Next on the online wishlist: The comprehensive plan -- even though we're going to replace it, it would be helpful to have the current plan online, including detailed small area plans and master plans covering places like TU, the hospitals, and the Fairgrounds.

While we're wishing, maybe someday Tulsa County could have real estate records available online, navigable via a map. Sure, you can get to them when the library is open, but even then it isn't a user-friendly system. I've heard the reasons why not from our Tulsa County officials -- too expensive, privacy reasons, etc. But the website of Oklahoma County Assessor (and former Republican state representative) Leonard Sullivan provides access to records through a map viewer. Zoom in and click on a parcel, and it shows you who owns the land, how much it was assessed for, the physical description, the legal description (subdivision, block, and lot). A second click, on the account number, brings up a history of transactions, photos and sketches (used by the assessor to evaluate the size and condition of the house as part of assessing its value). Another click takes you to a list of comparable properties or a list of recent sales in the subdivision. It's all a matter of public record, everything the County Assessor's staff uses to do their jobs, and the Oklahoma County Assessor is making it as accessible to the general public as it is to developers and real estate professionals. The only flaw I can spot is that zoning information doesn't appear to be included. If Oklahoma County can do it, surely we can do it in Tulsa.

UPDATE: Commenter JW raises "the BS flag" on Tulsa County officials' cost objections to online land records:

This is nothing more than short sightedness and someone protecting their fiefdom. The state of Oklahoma offers tons of assistance to get counties land records online in a GIS web mapping application. INCOG and Yazel don't have a leg to stand on. Data can be obscured to protect privacy....

The data is already stored in GIS format. All they need is $800 in hardware and $0 in software to make it available online. Their excuses are borderline lies.

Another commenter makes the point that Tulsa County's data "is already made available and used daily by realtors and sites such as Zillow." Currently, a substantial fee has to be paid for access to the county data.

Here's Zillow's page for 2811 S. Columbia Pl., the 18,610 sq. ft., three-story, seven-and-a-half bath home of Mayor Kathy Taylor. If you enter a CAPTCHA code, you can see recent sales and tax data for the property. Zillow doesn't include ownership information, transactions other than sales, or data on non-residential property.

The City of Tulsa's Planning Department is holding a meeting in each council district to gather citizen input on the upcoming update to the City's Comprehensive Plan. They've also been meeting with a variety of community groups, asking three questions:

1. This survey seeks to determine what do you think is most important for Tulsa to achieve over the next 10 to 20 years (regarding where you live, work, shop, learn, visit and play). Please list three that you think are most important, in order of priority.
2. What do you think are Tulsa's most valuable or important assets or opportunities? Please list three that you think are most important, in order of priority.
3. In the same manner as above, what do you think are the most critical issues, problems, or concerns confronting Tulsa? Please list three that you think are most important, in order of priority.

The answers to those questions given at earlier community meetings have been posted on the Planning Department's website. You can provide your own answers to those questions through an online form.

Or you can show up tonight at 6 p.m. in the Great Hall of the University of Tulsa Allen Chapman Activity Center (5th Place & Florence Ave) or tomorrow night at the Wright Elementary School auditorium (45th Place & Madison). Other upcoming meetings, all starting at 6 p.m.:

May 21 - Memorial High School auditorium, 5840 S. Hudson Ave.
May 22 - Hardesty Regional Library Redbud Auditorium, 8316 E. 93rd St.
May 23 - Tulsa Community College Northeast Campus, 3727 E. Apache St.
May 29 - Martin Regional Library auditorium, 2601 S. Garnett Road.
June 4 - Rudisill Regional Library Ancestral Hall, 1520 N. Hartford Ave.

Although they're holding a meeting in each City Council district, you can attend any meeting that is convenient for you.

The point of these meetings is to let the public know about the Comprehensive Plan update process and to gather input that will shape the next step in the process: selecting a planning firm to put an update together. The Planning Department wants your perspective, so they can create a plan that reflects the concerns and priorities of all Tulsans.

The City of Tulsa is moving ahead with a complete rewrite of its Comprehensive Plan, the first thorough revision since the '70s. Amendments minor and major have been adopted over the years, often to retroactively change the plan to reflect a zoning decision that was not compatible with the plan. Special area plans involving the city's hospitals, the University of Tulsa, Brady Village, 6th & Peoria, Crutchfield, Brookside, the Charles Page Boulevard Corridor, and the Arkansas River have been adopted into the Comprehensive Plan.

We have some excellent planners in the City's Urban Development Department. They are in earnest about getting the involvement of ordinary Tulsans all through the process of developing a new plan.

One of the first steps is happening mainly this month and next, going out to talk to neighborhood associations and other community groups to find out what they want to see in a Comprehensive Plan and how they want to be involved in the process. The input the planners gather will shape the Request for Proposals for an outside planning firm to handle the process of developing the new plan.

If you're in charge of speakers for a neighborhood or civic group, e-mail planning@cityoftulsa.org or phone Martha Schultz at 596-2600.

If you want to shape the city's future growth, this is the most strategic way to do it. Check out the website for the new Comprehensive Plan process at www.planitulsa.org. There you'll find a list of the steering committee, and an outline of the process.

UPDATE: Fixed the link. It doesn't work without the www.

What makes Cherry Street (15th between Peoria and Utica) the lovely place it is, maybe the nicest street in Tulsa? This week's Urban Tulsa Weekly column tries to distill the essence of Cherry Street so that we can learn and apply the right lessons from its success.

Also in UTW this week:

• Jamie Pierson writes about the Towerview building and eminent domain abuse, and argues that the big developments enabled by eminent domain land assembly don't have the staying power of a downtown resurrected by small, individual efforts.
• A look back at the best and worst of 2006: You'll have to look at the hardcopy edition to see a photo accompanying this article that made me laugh out loud.
• Gary Hizer has a guide to live music leading up to and including New Year's Eve. We may go hear Cairde na Gael at Arnie's.

The following comment, by Tom Gulihur of CalCoast Realty, was posted on a much earlier entry, Will the Real New Urbanism Please Stand Up? Gulihur is a California-based real estate broker and financier with a fascinating resumé and deep Oklahoma roots.

This essay wasn't likely to get much readership in the comments of an old entry, so I'm posting it here. I think you'll find it as thought-provoking and well-written as I did.

I come from land rush era Oklahoman stock on both sides of the family and I lived in Oklahoma until I was ten years old, when my family moved to LA, like true Okies. Parents and grandparents are OU alums and paternal grandparents are OSU alums. I love Oklahoma in a nostalgic way, but I understand why many people outside of Oklahoma blanche at the corny Wal-Mart mentality there (and the rest of the South and Midwest).

But some real estate development business is bringing me back to OK. There's a downtown revitalization occurring in Tulsa and I'm involved in a project there. I've been reading gobs of information on Tulsa and urban renewal there and want to explain a fundamental challenge that Tulsans need to overcome. I've seen San Diego's urban renewal and have studied New Urbanism enough to understand how this has to work. First, the public has to buy-in to most of the concepts of New Urbanism or the whole thing will flop. Here is a quick version of what it requires:

• Create dense and intense development at the urban core using form based zoning code. That means don't classify building by use, but rather by their shape. Encourage mixed-use buildings but not only retail-office-residential; enable all mixed uses similar to the early 1920’s in America (it should basically look like Disney’s Main Street USA).
• Create a pedestrian-friendly environment. Expand public transit to de-emphasize the use of the car. Of course this is difficult in an economy that is based on big oil and Detroit steel (now Japanese and German steel too).
• Design an attractive public realm. Plant corridors of street trees, install traffic-calming devices, open corridors of greenbelts with paths and walkways to enable pedestrian and bicyclist activity, build 'vest-pocket parks'. Honor public institutions through architecture and placement. A well designed public realm, whether it’s a residential neighborhood (think of Georgetown, in Washington, D.C.), a public square, a village green, a park or a retail shopping street, they should all encourage people to want to ‘hang out’, ‘hang around’ or walk through it and walk to it. All this hanging out and walking around has a second major benefit to society besides the individual’s personal enjoyment of the experience, is that CRIME IS REDUCED where there are a lot of citizens with their eyes open. Democratic values are also strengthened when the public realm is strong.
• Build using environmentally sustainable techniques. Use all active and passive solar technologies available and use recycled or recyclable building materials.
• Mix housing types in random and close proximity. Don't just build high-rise condos that all cost from $300k to $500k because that fosters elitist classicism. This is the biggest challenge facing New Urbanists everywhere because of the conventional way residential projects are financed according to target market segments that naturally form socio-economic groups that lead to isolation of other groups. A truly democratic and vibrant culture occurs when a CEO and a janitor can live as compatible neighbors, although that's an extreme example.

It's important for the public to learn more about New Urbanism, which is also called Traditional Neighborhood Development (TND), Transit Oriented Development (TOD), Smart Growth, or other similar concepts. The American leader in this concept is Andres Duany and his wife Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk. Their architecture and urban planning firm is at DPZ.com and at CNU.org (The Congress for the New Urbanism). Better yet, read Duany's entertaining book, SUBURBAN NATION, THE RISE OF SPRAWL AND THE DECLINE OF THE AMERICAN DREAM. Then you will ‘get’ New Urbanism.

Some conservatives see a political subcurrent to it and there really is an environmental concern and inclusionary aspect to it. But hey, the icecaps seem to be melting from global warming aren't they? Ten years ago you could argue against that assertion but it's different now. The inclusionary aspect of democratic society is an important part of New Urbanism that doesn't necessarily disagree with a conservative agenda, unless it includes environmental abuse.

In my experience, residential development always leads retail development because retail business owners cannot follow the ludicrous mantra of 'build it and they will come'. Retail will die on the vine if there it is not surrounded by a sea of 'rooftops', meaning the rooftops of consumers. So there's always a lag of retail development behind residential development. And the biggest complaint of the first wave of downtown dwellers when a city starts a downtown renaissance is that there is no convenient or good grocery store downtown. And there are the homeless, who often represent a security problem for wealthy urbanites.

But if Tulsa wants to be the next SOHO or downtown Vancouver, or Portland, or San Diego then it needs to loosen up the archaic liquor laws, IMHO. You need to get a Trader Joe's in downtown for sure, and TJ's needs to be able to sell its selection of wines and beers, which is probably only about 10% of their business, but a crucial 10%. So you guys need to dump the blue laws and welcome to the 21st century. Get out of the Wal-Mart fundamentalist attitude, open your minds and live and let live.

Tulsa has always enjoyed a more cosmopolitan flair than larger Oklahoma City (from where my family hails), although some people on the left and right coasts would snort at the words 'cosmopolitan' and 'Oklahoma' in the same sentence. What Oklahoma has all over the snobbier coastal societies is a warm friendliness that says 'you're OK!', to borrow a partial phrase from Transactional Analysis and Rogers and Hammerstein.

Good luck Okies! I'm rooting for you. But you'll need to loosen your liquor laws and learn about New Urbanism before real progress can move forward.

A couple of comments: (1) Of course I'm curious to know which downtown Tulsa project Gulihur is involved with, and pleased to know someone familiar with these concepts is involved in a downtown project. (2) There's a reference in his comment to financing, and Gulihur is involved in the financial end of real estate. One of the obstacles to building mixed-use or traditional neighborhood developments is that the money people don't understand it and don't have comparables to guide their lending decisions. (The Next American City had an in-depth article on the topic, "Why Building Smart Is So Hard," in the inaugural issue.) I'd be interested in Mr. Gulihur expanding on that issue from his experience.

The Marketplace radio program had a report on eminent domain reform ballot initiatives. In four states, the reform measures have a strange twist:

Reforming eminent domain is supposed to be about limiting the government's right to bulldoze a house to put up a freeway or a mall.

But some of these measures go much further. They would let citizens sue when government authorities enforce land-use or other laws they personally don't like and think might cost them money. Even though those laws are there to protect the community's interest.

So if you don't mind your next-door neighbors starting a disco nightclub at their house and then suing taxpayers when the government tells them they can't, these are the initiatives for you.

Sound absurd? Oregon enacted just such a law two years ago. Oregonians have since filed 2,700 lawsuits against state and local authorities asking for $6 billion of taxpayer money.

The idea behind these proposals is that any government regulation that limits use of a piece of property should be considered a "taking," and the owner should be entitled to just compensation. The Marketplace story suggests that the language of the amendment could provide a grounds for challenging any regulation, even if it has nothing to do with real estate.

The proposed eminent domain reform initiative in Oklahoma was of the same variety, something I wasn't aware of when I signed the petition. (Shame on me for not reading the whole thing.) In the end, the Oklahoma Supreme Court struck down the petition on the grounds that it dealt with two separate topics, in violation of the State Constitution's single subject rule. Here's part of the Supreme Court ruling describing the provisions in question:

IP 382 next proposes that an owner of private real property is entitled to just compensation for any reduction in the fair market value of the property caused by the enactment or enforcement of a zoning law, with the following exceptions: 1) zoning laws that protect public health and safety; 2) zoning laws required by federal law or nuisance law; 3) zoning laws limiting the use of property for nude dancing or selling pornography; and 4) zoning laws enacted prior to the effective date of the proposed act. IP 382 also contains provisions placing the burden of proof on the public body and providing for an award of attorney fees, costs, and expenses to the landowner. IP 382 sets no minimum amount of reduction in property value to constitute an actionable claim, does not establish the method of valuing property, does not delineate how a landowner may establish causation between a reduction in property value and a zoning law, and sets no statute of limitations for making a claim. Construed broadly, IP 382 renders inefficacious any zoning law that falls outside of the exceptions in subsection 3.

Effectively, it's a zoning freeze amendment. It might even make it impractical for the city to approve zoning variances, special exceptions, and rezonings requested by the owner. Potentially, a neighboring property owner could sue the city on the grounds that granting the zoning change reduced his property value.

Back in August, in an Urban Tulsa Weekly column, I wrote about the reaction to a set of five modest proposals (the CORE proposals) to address historic preservation in downtown Tulsa.

TulsaNow has put together a compelling seven-minute video in support of downtown historic preservation. Click the play button below to watch:

The video's narrator (I think it's TulsaNow board member Sarah Kobos) mentions that Tulsa is second in the country for the percentage of its downtown devoted to surface parking lots. (Who's number one? And if we try hard, can we catch up? ;) ) Take a look at the map below (click to enlarge), and you won't doubt it for a minute:

The video spotlights some of the dramatic architecture seen on and inside historic downtown Tulsa buildings, but it also rightly points out the importance of modest older buildings to downtown's revitalization. Of the 30 restaurants and nightclubs open on evenings and weekends in downtown (not including the ones in the hotels), 28 of them are in older buildings. Older buildings provide an affordable incubator for new businesses.

The only point that I might have added to the video is one I made in my column on the topic: that the large amount of public investment in downtown, specifically for the purpose of downtown revitalization, makes it reasonable for the public to protect its investment by putting in place these moderate historic preservation measures.

This week's UTW column begins with an imaginary letter from the Convention and Visitors Bureau to delegates to the 2008 National Preservation Conference, inviting delegates to admire the parking lots where historic buildings used to stand.

Don’t miss the site of the Skelly Building on the northeast corner of 4th and Boulder, designed by famed architect Bruce Goff, now an exclusive deluxe gated, 12-space parking community owned by the Tulsa World.

More specifically it's about the CORE Tulsa recommendations for historical preservation in downtown Tulsa (PDF document) and the hysterical response of certain downtown property owners, who don't recognize the obligation placed upon them by the enormous amount of public investment that has boosted their property values:

We didn’t pay all that money to accelerate the conversion of downtown to an enormous surface parking lot. The express purpose of much of that public investment is the revitalization of downtown. Many Tulsans want a downtown where historic buildings are protected, a downtown that is an attractive and interesting place to walk around, not a downtown that looks like the Woodland Hills Mall parking lot. Every time a property owner knocks a building down for surface parking, it devalues that public investment. It is legitimate and reasonable for local government to protect that investment with modest regulations.

One of the organizations who complained about the CORE recommendations gets a new nickname: Downtown Tulsa Unlamented. (I couldn't find this in the Whirled archives, but I seem to recall reading an article about the demolition of the old Cadillac dealership in south Boston, in which a DTU official was quoted as saying that no one would miss that old building. Anyone else recall that?)

(Added on September 30, 2006, to fill in the gaps in my Urban Tulsa Weekly column archive.)

If I weren't going to be making the rounds of watch parties this evening, I'd be going to this, which is worth your attention if you're concerned about protecting what's left of Tulsa's historic buildings and neighborhoods:

In lieu of a monthly meeting
The Coalition of Historic Neighborhoods
is please to announce
A Round Table Discussion

"How Do We Save Our Historic Resources:
Downtown and Our Neighborhoods"

Tuesday August 22, 2006
6:30 pm - 8:00 pm
Marquette School
15th and Quincy

Our Guest Presenters include:
Jamie Jamieson on Form Based Codes
Steve Novick on Neighborhood Stabilization
Amanda DeCort on Historic Preservation Overlay Zoning
Shawn Schaefer on Urban Planning

Sean Griffin will moderate

Have you ever asked this question?
Then you need to participate in this discussion.

Open to any and all.

The response of the downtown building owners and their lobbyists to proposals for downtown historic preservation is ironic, with their talk of capital and free markets. I didn't hear any of them suggest that it was a violation of capitalism to tax groceries to pay for a venue for privately-owned, for-profit sports teams and musical acts, or to spend hundreds of millions of tax dollars to boost their property values.

Up in my linkblog, I linked to a speech by Donovan D. Rypkema, who describes himself as a "crass, unrepentant, real estate capitalist Republican type." The speech is about the rationale and legitimacy of land-use regulation. In particular, he addresses the assertion that land use regulation constitutes a taking for which a property owner should be compensated.

One paragraph in the speech seemed especially relevant to the debate over downtown historic preservation:

Most of the value of an individual parcel of real estate comes from beyond the property lines from the investments others � usually taxpayers � have made. And land use controls are an appropriate recompense for having publicly created that value.

Think about public investment in downtown Tulsa. Tulsa County taxpayers are investing over a quarter-billion dollars in downtown through Vision 2025. City of Tulsa taxpayers have invested tens or maybe hundreds of millions through bond issues and the third-penny -- building Main Mall, removing it, providing incentives to downtown residential development, acquiring land for the Williams Center through eminent domain, streetscaping, changing streets from one-way to two-way, etc. Then there's the federal and state investment in the highway network that connects downtown with the rest of the metro area.

The express purpose of much of that public investment is the revitalization of downtown. Many Tulsans want a downtown where historic buildings are protected, a downtown that is an attractive and interesting place to walk around, not a downtown that looks like the Woodland Hills Mall parking lot.

Every time a property owner knocks a building down for surface parking, it devalues that public investment. It is legitimate and reasonable for local government to protect that investment with modest regulations.

In my column in last week's issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly, I wrote about the many ways that Oklahoma City uses land-use regulation to protect strategic and historical parts of the city, such as the Northeast Gateway and Bricktown. Special districts have been established, with rules and processes specific to each. Bricktown and other older commercial districts, such as NW 23rd St., are under urban design review, which affects major exterior renovation, new construction, and demolition, to ensure consistency with the character of the neighborhood, protecting public investment and the investment of neighboring building owners.

A few years ago, the Urban Design Commission denied three applications to demolish the Gold Dome at 23rd and Classen, a geodesic dome originally built as a bank. The building is now being used for offices and a multicultural center to anchor the city's Asian District.

In 2002, I went on a Tulsa Now bus tour of Oklahoma City, and for part of the ride then-Mayor Kirk Humphreys was our tour guide. I asked him how they convinced developers to go along with restrictions on what they could do with their property. He said that the City pointed out how many millions of dollars the City had invested in that area (the canal, the ballpark, the Ford Center, and more), and that it was reasonable for the City to take steps to protect its investment.

Paul Wilson, one of the property owners who was quoted as complaining about the preservation recommendations in the Whirled's story, was a member of the Dialog/Visioning Leadership Team, the group that put together the Vision 2025 sales tax package. He and his business associates had been pushing for a new taxpayer-funded sports arena since the mid '90s. The last time I checked land records downtown, firms connected to Wilson owned a significant amount of land along Denver Avenue between Highway 51 and the arena site.

No one is proposing to take his land away from him, but now that the City has given him so much of what he asked for, and has significantly improved the value of his investments, it is reasonable for the city to insist that he act in a way that upholds the value of the taxpayers' investment.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

This week's UTW column is about the University of Tulsa's aggressive expansion policies, facilitated by the City of Tulsa's abuse of eminent domain on TU's behalf. Not only is it an immoral use of state coercion, it's a violation of the Oklahoma Constitution and bad urban design. I point to the Savannah College of Art and Design as a better example of how to build an urban campus that enhances both the city and the college experience, "the kind of imaginative win-win solution that never seems to occur to Tulsa’s leaders."

Last week, the Whirled had a story about one developer's refusal to comply with city sidewalk regulations. The developer is Chris Bumgarner, and he is going to court to fight the TMAPC's insistence that he build a sidewalk along the eastside of Utica Avenue in front of his new development, just south of Utica Square. He calls it a sidewalk to nowhere, ending at Cascia Hall's property line, and says it will encourage people to cross Utica to the neighborhood in mid-block.

His attorney is Lou Reynolds. Yes, the Lou Reynolds whose reappointment to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Board was first rejected by the City Council, then approved when then-Councilor Sam Roop reneged on a written pledge to oppose the appointment. (Roop was later appointed to a six-figure job in the Mayor's office.) The very Lou Reynolds whose controversial reappointment was cited as a reason for recalling Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino from office.

Here's what this prominent and influential land use attorney thinks about sidewalks:

Attorney Lou Reynolds said developers look at sidewalks as a waste of money and land.

"We don't have pedestrians because everyone in Tulsa has cars. You don't see people walking around and it's not because of the absence of sidewalks that they're not walking around. The fact is that Tulsa has such little density that you have to have a car to get around," he said....

Reynolds said the sidewalk policy is idealistic and not very practical.

"It's not perceived as necessary (by developers) because we've got along just fine without them for the past 50 to 60 years," he said. "To really use sidewalks you've got to have somewhere to go to."

And Utica Square is somewhere to go, designed to be friendly to both auto and pedestrian traffic. Just a bit north, is the medical corridor connecting St. John's and Hillcrest. Cherry Street is within walking distance, too. And a large number of bus routes converge on the 21st and Utica intersection.

What Reynolds is spouting is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If you design a city so that walking somewhere is impossible, citizens will become increasingly dependent on having a car and driving dozens of miles a day just to go about everyday business. Sidewalks aren't enough in themselves -- there need to be a mixture of uses within walking distance -- but without them we can't create a more walkable, sustainable city.

Jim Beach's appointment to the Board of Adjustment is on tonight's Tulsa City Council agenda. You can read my reasons for opposing this appointment in my June 15th column. Despite reports that at least six and as many as eight councilors will vote no, Mayor Kathy Taylor is determined to get her way. The BoA is the guardian of the integrity of our land use regulation system. If you want to keep the BoA free of conflicts of interest, if you want the BoA to continue their recent practice of sticking to the law when granting variances, you need to be present tonight and voice your concerns to the City Council. The meeting starts at 6, and the appointment will be early in the agenda.

UPDATE: The Beach nomination will NOT be on tonight's Council agenda.

UPDATE 2: The nomination could still be discussed tonight, if even one Councilor objects to removing it from the agenda. If you can be there at 6, just to be on the safe side, please do.

Found on a MySpace blog during a Technorati search for "Tulsa", this is from Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, and Jeff Speck:

Another word for dependent is burden, and that term better describes these parents' perception of the children who rely upon them for mobility. Mothers often derail their careers so that their children can experience a life beyond the backyard. The role of journalist, banker, or marketing director is exchanged for that of chauffeur, with the vague hope that their career will resume when the last child turns sixteen; thus the term soccer mom -- a distinctly suburban euphemism. The plight of the suburban housewife was powerfully conveyed in a letter we received in 1990 from a woman living outside of Tulsa:

"Dear Architects:

"I am a mother of four children who are not able to leave the yard because of our city's design. Ever since we have moved here I have felt like a caged animal only let out for a ride in the car. It is impossible to walk even to the grocery store two blocks away. If our family wants to go for a ride we need to load two cars with four bikes and a baby cart and drive four miles to the only bike path in this city of over a quarter million people. I cannot exercise unless I drive to a health club that I had to pay $300 to, and that is four and a half miles away. There is no sense of community here on my street either, because we all have to drive around in our own little worlds that take us fifty miles a day to every corner of the surrounding five miles.

"I want to walk somewhere so badly that I could cry. I miss walking! I want the kids to walk to school. I want to walk to the store for a pound of butter. I want to take the kids on a neighborhood stroll or bike. My husband wants to walk to work because it is so close, but none of these things is possible. . . And if you saw my neighborhood, you would think that I had it all according to the great American dream."

TRACKBACKS:

See-Dubya, out on the Left Coast, says we should count our blessings:

You live in one of the greatest little cities in America, lady. I�d love to have your problems. I�d be up at Grand Lake this weekend, buzzing around in my bass boat with the rich people. I�d go all Lileks on one of the most beautiful Art-Deco downtowns in the country. I�d take my kid to the JM Davis gun museum or Woolaroc or Gilcrease or Philbrook or out to wander around in some little brick downtown with an Indian name like Warneka or Beufala that still has its feed stores right there on Main Street....

I can walk three blocks to a grocery store here, too, and it�s a fancy-pants rinky-dink Whole Foods knockoff that�s never open when I need it. Safeway is two miles up a commuter-jammed highway. I could walk to church, but to find one that actually believes in the Trinity requires a five-mile trip in the family truckster.

Charles G. Hill, down at the other end of the turnpike, sees a lot of walkers in his neighborhood, but not a lot of kids:

And I don't expect this to change any time soon: if you're buying a house in town and you've got school-age kids, your friendly agent will steer you away from my neighborhood, despite its manifest advantages, because it's in an urban school district and you can't possibly want that.

(My apologies for not having trackbacks turned on, but I got tired of deleting 40-60 spam trackbacks a day, and my old spam-deterrent techniques were no longer working. As soon as I get MT 3.2 installed, I'll turn them back on. In the meantime, I'll manually add trackback links as I find them or if they're e-mailed to me at blog at batesline dot com.

This week's column in UTW is about Mayor Kathy Taylor's first batch of appointments to city authorities, boards, and commissions (ABCs), particularly the appointment of Jim Beach to the Board of Adjustment, a move that has drawn opposition from neighborhood leaders and may provoke the end of Taylor's honeymoon. Taylor's appointment of Steve Berlin, a Great Plains Airlines board member, to the TARE board is also controversial.

Yesterday, long after I filed the story, I got word that the Taylor administration had pulled Beach's appointment off of this Thursday's Council agenda, and in fact it is missing from the online agenda, while the other appointments are still present.

Someone has said that any appointment to the Board of Adjustment is bound to be controversial, and that's true. You're almost certain to upset either the development lobby or the homeowners' groups. You have to choose which group you want to please and which group you want to anger, and Kathy Taylor has chosen to please the development lobby and anger neighborhood leaders with her first pick. That says a lot about the direction of her administration.

Also in this week's issue is Ginger Shepherd's story about the planned cleanup of Tent City, an unauthorized campground for the homeless between the north bank of the Arkansas River and the levee, west of downtown.

Shepherd also has a story about former Councilor and mayoral candidate Chris Medlock and his campaign for State House District 69.

My column this week in Urban Tulsa Weekly looks back at the Oklahoma legislative session just ended and the state election filing period next Monday through Wednesday, June 5 through 7.

SB 1324, the bill that would have interfered with local control of zoning, was dealt a humiliating 42-3 defeat in the State Senate, while its sister bill HB 2559 died in conference committee. SB 1742, a landmark pro-life bill, won by overwhelming margins in both houses and was signed by the governor. The legislators on the wrong side of those issues deserve special scrutiny as they face re-election this year, but they won't get any scrutiny unless they have an opponent.

In particular, District 70 Representative Ron Peters and District 72 Darrell Gilbert haven't faced opposition in six years and eight years respectively, and I'm hoping someone will step forward to challenge each of them.

District 3 Tulsa County Commissioner Bob Dick has yet to announce his plans, and it's beginning to look like Dick is trying a J. C. Watts-style handoff to his handpicked successor. You'll recall that Watts announced at the last minute in 2002 that he wouldn't be seeking re-election to Congress. Candidates that might have run for that open seat were caught flat-footed, but Watts' political consultant and chosen heir, Tom Cole, had advance knowledge of Watts' plans and was ready to run right away.

Speculation is that Dick's chosen successor is either Tulsa City Councilor Bill Christiansen or former State Sen. Jerry Smith. The district covers the southern part of midtown Tulsa, south Tulsa, Broken Arrow, and Bixby. (Click here to see a map of the Tulsa County Commission Districts.) The district is heavily Republican, and there has to be some man or woman of integrity and wisdom among the tens of thousands of registered Republicans in the district who would be willing to step forward and serve as a candidate.

Given the huge pot of money under the control of the Tulsa County Commissioners -- well over half a billion in Vision 2025 money, plus Four to Fix the County tax dollars, plus millions more money available to lend in their role as the Tulsa County Industrial Authority -- and the County Commission's propensity to avoid competitive bidding, we need to clean house at the County Commission. Having Bob Dick or his handpicked successor in office is not an acceptable result.

If you are considering a race for any of those seats, or would like more information about being a candidate, I'd be glad to talk with you. Drop me an e-mail at blog at batesline dot com.

UPDATE: The Whirled is reporting that Bob Dick is running for re-election and Bill Christiansen plans to challenge him. Not much of a choice. With the fans of insider deals splitting their votes between Christiansen and Dick, a conservative reformer could easily gain enough primary votes to make the runoff and then win the runoff. (That's more or less how Tim Harris came out of nowhere to win the DA's office back in 1998.)

East Tulsa neighborhood activist Jennifer Weaver has been keeping a close eye on Eastland Mall and its owner Haywood Whichard, an out-of-state investor who has a reputation buying distressed shopping malls and sitting on them until they're condemned for redevelopment.

There is a move afoot to rezone the mall from CS to IL -- light industrial. Jennifer has been trying to find out what is in store for Eastland Mall and has a detailed report on Meeciteewurkor's blog.

Jennifer says we need a comprehensive plan for Eastlamd Mall. In fact, on Wednesday the TMAPC took a bus tour (click for PDF of tour route) of the five-square-mile area included in the East Tulsa Neighborhood Plan. The plan covers US 169 to 145th East Ave, 11th Street to 31st Street. The plan is complete, but has not yet been adopted by the TMAPC or City Council as an official part of the City's Comprehensive Plan.

This just in: This afternoon the Oklahoma Senate voted down SB 1324, 3 votes to 42. Only three senators voted yes: Brian Crain (R-Tulsa; the bill's author), Patrick Anderson (R-Enid), and Ted Fisher (D-Sapulpa). Glenn Coffee (R), Judy Eason-McIntyre (D), and Mike Morgan (D) were absent. Everyone else voted against.

Thanks to all who called, e-mailed, and faxed to express your opposition. And thanks to the legislators who responded to our concerns, took a closer look at the bill, and rejected it.

TRACKBACK: Charles G. Hill comments on the bill and its defeat: "Tulsa's historic zoning is a plastic latch: it's there, and it makes a satisfying click sound, but sooner or later you know it's going to break."

This morning, SB 1324, a controversial bill that would interfere with local control of zoning and land use, has been signed out of conference committee and is on its way to a final vote in both houses. Because developers no longer control Tulsa's City Council, they are now using this bill to bypass the City Council and to have state legislators from Slapout and Bugtussle determine our local zoning policy.

It is time to get on the phone to your State Representative and State Senator and urge them to vote against this bill. Legislators have been misled to believe that this bill isn't controversial. If they're to be convinced otherwise, they need to hear from you right away.

It's worth noting that Gov. Henry vetoed a bill last year (HB 1911) that had almost identical language.

To find your State Representative and State Senator and their e-mail addresses and phone and fax numbers, click this link and enter your address in the form.

You can also reach any State Representative through a toll-free number, 1-800-522-8502. The main switchboard at the State Senate is 1-405-524-0126.

Previous BatesLine coverage of this bill and HB 2559, which contained similar language:

HB 2559: Attacking local control of zoning
Legislature interferes in local control of land use -- HB 2559 and SB 1324
Call your State Senators today -- kill SB 1324
SB 1324, HB 2559, Susan Neal, and non-partisan elections
SB 1324 is still lurking

In Urban Tulsa Weekly:

April 27, 2006
May 11, 2006
May 18, 2006

Elsewhere:

Homeowners for Fair Zoning letter in opposition to SB 1324
Chris Medlock's letter in opposition to SB 1324 to State Senators

SB 1324, the controversial bill that would interfere with local control of land use issues, is going to conference committee. Here is the list of conferees:

Senate (from Thursday's Senate Journal:

Brian Crain (R-Tulsa)
Earl Garrison (D-Muskogee)
Charlie Laster (D-Shawnee)

House (from Friday's House Journal):

Ron Peters (R-Tulsa)
Bill Case (R-Midwest City)
Guy Liebmann (R-Oklahoma City)
Mark Liotta (R-Tulsa)
John Carey (D-Durant)
Wes Hilliard (D-Sulphur)

Contact these legislators and let them know that you want this bill killed. It's an unwarranted intrusion into local control of local issues, and the legislature needs to let city governments work out matters of zoning, historical preservation, and urban conservation for themselves.

The charter review commission that Bill LaFortune put in place last December following the failure of Tulsans for Better Government's supercouncilor initiative petition is nearing its scheduled conclusion. I spoke at last Friday's meeting at the invitation of Co-Chairman Ken Levit. This week's Urban Tulsa Weekly has my report on the meeting and the kind of recommendations the Citizens' Commission on City Government is likely to make. (For a complete picture, don't miss Bobby's entry at Tulsa Topics, which contains audio of my presentation and TU Professor Gary Allison's remarks.)

My column also includes an update on SB 1324, the bill that would interfere with local government control of Board of Adjustment appeals and enforcement of design rules in historic preservation and neighborhood conservation districts.

(By the way, on Wednesday the State Senate officially rejected House amendments to SB 1324 and requested a conference committee. Conferees have yet to be named.)

This issue also includes a Ginger Shepherd profile of new District 7 Councilor John Eagleton. (Previous issues featured District 2 Councilor Rick Westcott and District 4 Councilor Maria Barnes.)

Eagleton tells how he came up with the idea that would use a south Tulsa toll bridge and a nearby TIF district to fund improvements to the roads leading to the bridge and to cover the shortfall in the BOk Center arena, while giving BOk the financing for the bridge in exchange for dropping their lawsuit for the $7.5 million owed by Great Plains Airlines and guaranteed by the Tulsa Airport Improvements Trust:

He said he came up with the idea while sitting in a Creek County Court for a docket call. The docket that day was six to seven pages long, and he was bored while he waited to be called. He counted the ceiling tiles, his mind was wondering and then he "was hit like a bolt of lighting" with the idea.

Whatever the merits of Eagleton's idea, that's certainly a more constructive and acceptable way to beat boredom in a Creek County courtroom than other methods that have made the news.

This issue also includes coverage of Mayfest (also here), a continuation of the summer events guide, and a ballot for the 2006 Absolute Best of Tulsa awards.

Please join me in urging our State Representatives and State Senators to kill SB 1324, which would infringe upon local control of zoning and land-use decisions. The bill is still alive. Its author, Sen. Brian Crain, tells me that it is headed for conference committee, although I find nothing in the House or Senate Journals online to indicate that this step has officially been taken, and the conferees from each chamber have yet to be named.

This bill has its roots in the frustration of one developer, John Bumgarner, who didn't get everything he wanted as quickly as he wanted when he built a bank and parking lot that encroached upon a historic preservation overlay district and resulted in the demolition of three contributing homes to that district. He knew what the rules were when he bought the land, and he could have chosen to develop within those rules. By seeking a zoning amendment, he should have been open to the possibility that his request would be denied or accepted only on certain conditions. Had he been willing to compromise with the concerns of homeowners, who have their own investments to protect, he would have been able to start building much sooner.

But rather than work in a spirit of cooperation, he has sought to have the rules changed, not by our local legislature, who is in the best position to strike the balance between competing interests in the overall best interests of Tulsa, but by state legislators from Oklahoma City, Altus, Slapout, and Bugtussle. I was disturbed to learn that no Tulsa city councilors were consulted about this bill at any point in the process.

The threat is twofold. First, that other provisions of our zoning code would effectively be voided by legislative action -- possibly the provisions that you rely upon to protect the value of your home or business. Second, there is a continuing threat to historic preservation districts and urban conservation districts (OKC has the latter; Tulsa doesn't), because it appears to take design review out of the hands of the committees established for that purpose and gives it to the Board of Adjustment, then requires that all appeals of those decisions must involve expensive attorney's fees.

Please call your state legislators today and urge them to kill SB 1324. There is nothing in the bill worth salvaging.

To repeat from an earlier entry:

To find your State Senator and his e-mail address and phone and fax numbers, click this link and enter your address in the form.

I'd also encourage you to contact Sen. Brian Crain, the Senate sponsor of the bill, and respectfully register your concerns with him. Sen. Crain is a Republican representing near-eastern Tulsa. He has been a champion of homeowners' rights with regard to eminent domain, and I think he'll come down the right way on this if he understands our concerns.

To see the status of this bill and find links to the text of the bill, visit this page and enter "SB 1324" (without the quotes) in the "Measure Number(s)" box. Here is a Rich-Text Format file with the House-amended version of the SB 1324. If the Senate accepts it, it goes to the Governor.

This week's column covers three topics: (1) An update on the status of HB 2559 and SB 1324, the bills in the Oklahoma legislature which would dictate local zoning and land use policy from Oklahoma City; (2) Mayor Taylor's hiring of former City Councilor Susan Neal; (3) the topics under serious consideration by the Citizens' Commission on City Government, including non-partisan city elections.

Since the story was filed, I've learned that HB 2559 is dead, but SB 1324 has gone to conference committee and is still very much alive. I spoke yesterday to State Sen. Brian Crain, the Senate author of the bill, who believes that the provision requiring Board of Adjustment appeals to go directly to District Court is merely a clarification of existing law. He directed me to 11 O. S. 44-110. I mentioned that Tulsa's City Attorney office had said that Tulsa could change its zoning ordinance to allow certain BoA decisions to be appealed to the City Council, and that such a change was discussed by the previous City Council.

The other part of the bill amends 11 O. S. 44-104, and it appears to put design guidelines (such as those in use in historic preservation and neighborhood conservation districts) in the control of the Board of Adjustment, rather than special design review boards:

[The Board of Adjustment shall have power to] Hear and decide proposals for accessory elements associated with an allowed building use, where appropriate general performance and design standards have been established which promote greater economic value and provide a harmonious relationship with adjoining land uses by ordinance or by administrative rule or regulation. Such proposals and performance or design standards may include, but are not limited to, such accessory elements as sound, building material, runoff, lighting, visual screening, landscaping and vehicular considerations;

I understood Crain to say that that language was intended to give cities the flexibility to enable infill development, and that it was crafted with the help of INCOG staff. Crain said he was open to suggestions for clearer language.

While I am sure of Sen. Crain's good intentions, I don't see an urgent need for either provision. Unless cities are complaining that they are unable under present law to add flexibility to the zoning code, leave well enough alone. While Tulsa does need infill development, local government is best suited to design rules that will balance competing concerns and ensure that the investments of homeowners and developers alike are respected.

Your calls to state representatives and state senators are still needed to stop this bill, which I believe would set a precedent for further legislative interference in local zoning.

On the matter of the City Charter, I'll be speaking Friday afternoon at the invitation of the Citizens' Commission, mainly to address the issue of partisanship. Here's my column on the idea of multi-partisan elections, an alternative to the non-partisan concept. I hope also to get in a plug for Instant Runoff Voting, which we need already, but we'll need it more if we move toward any system in which primaries are eliminated.

I was invited to speak tonight to the monthly meeting of the Layman-Van Acres Neighborhood Association. Layman Acres and Van Acres subdivisions make up the quarter-section just southwest of Pine and Mingo, just east of Spartan School of Aeronautics' Pine Street campus, and not far from the flight path of Tulsa International Airport's main runway. "Pressed on all sides" is a good phrase to describe the neighborhood's situation. Although you'd think they'd be in the airport noise abatement area, the neighborhood is like an island, with the noise contours just missing the area.

Spartan's expansion is a concern, as noisier activities involving engine maintenance and testing may be moving from the original Spartan campus west of the airport terminal to the Pine Street campus just west of the neighborhood. This is despite deed restrictions (covenants) on Spartan's property which should prohibit the noise. The problem with a covenant is that the only way to enforce it is to hire a lawyer and go to court; it's a private contractual matter, not a matter of public regulation.

Three other Tulsa bloggers were there as well: David Schuttler, who lives a half-mile or so to the west and has documented his neighborhood's problems with the airport noise abatement program; Paul Romine, who owns a home in the neighborhood; and Bobby Holt, who is (among other hats) president of Lewis Crest Neighborhood Association. Local media was one of the topics that came up during questions and answers, and it was a reminder to me of the thorough work the three of them and the other Tulsa bloggers did covering the recent city election campaign.

Tomorrow morning at 8, the neighborhood's situation is one of only two items on the City Council's Public Works committee agenda. Here's hoping the neighborhood's residents get the attention and relief they need.

UPDATE, Tuesday, May 2, 2006: SB 1324 is on the Senate calendar again today, so evidently they didn't get to it in yesterday's session. If you haven't yet, call, fax, or e-mail your State Senator about this bill. In the comments to this entry, you'll find a message from Preservation Oklahoma about the damage this bill would do to historic preservation and neighborhood conservation zoning.

UPDATE, Tuesday afternoon: No action on SB 1324 today. It is still on the calendar, but it is not on tomorrow's agenda. I spoke with someone in the clerk's office, who confirmed what is shown on the calendar and agenda correctly. If you haven't contacted your State Senator, please do so.

The details are here, but this post is just a reminder to call your Oklahoma State Senator today and ask him or her not to agree to the House amendments on SB 1324. SB 1324 is one of a pair of bills (HB 2559 is the other) which constitute an unwarranted interference in local control of zoning and land-use planning.

HB 2559 is likely to die, but SB 1324 is one step away from the Governor's desk, and that step is likely to be taken this week, possibly this afternoon. The last hope is to convince the Senate not to agree to the amendments to the bill that were approved by the House. The bill is on the calendar for the Monday, May 1, session of the Senate, which begins at 1:30 p.m.

SB 1324 passed unanimously in both houses. The legislators I've spoken with say they green-lighted it because they were told by the bill's sponsors that no one objected to it. Legislators have an incredible number of bills to consider, and in the absence of visible, vocal opposition, they're likely to believe a colleague who says that a bill isn't controversial.

That's why it's important for your State Senator to hear from you this morning that you do have a problem with SB 1324.

To find your State Senator and his e-mail address and phone and fax numbers, click this link and enter your address in the form.

I'd also encourage you to contact Sen. Brian Crain, the Senate sponsor of the bill, and respectfully register your concerns with him. Sen. Crain is a Republican representing near-eastern Tulsa. He has been a champion of homeowners' rights with regard to eminent domain, and I think he'll come down the right way on this if he understands our concerns.

To see the status of this bill and find links to the text of the bill, visit this page and enter "SB 1324" (without the quotes) in the "Measure Number(s)" box. Here is a Rich-Text Format file with the House-amended version of the SB 1324. If the Senate accepts it, it goes to the Governor.

Tulsa homeowners need to stick together. We've been getting better and better at it, but the easy progress of HB 2559 and SB 1324 through the Oklahoma Legislature proves we've got a long way to go. And just because we've elected a neighborhood-friendly City Council doesn't mean when can let our guard down. We need to be ready to support our elected officials when they do the right thing and ready to nudge them back on track when necessary.

There's one citywide organization devoted to keeping a watch on zoning and planning issues, and it needs your support and participation. Homeowners for Fair Zoning (HFFZ) is holding its annual meeting this Tuesday night at 7 p.m., at the Brookside Library on 45th Place just west of Peoria. The agenda includes an update on the two aforementioned legislative bills and the status of the Citizens' Commission on City Government, which is looking at changes like at-large councilors and non-partisan elections.

Membership in HFFZ is open to Tulsans who share the organization's aims: "Homeowners for Fair Zoning advocates legislation and support for public officials and political candidates who demonstrate a balanced concern for neighborhood residents and fair government."

If you share those goals, I encourage you to attend and to join HFFZ this Tuesday night.

This week's column in Urban Tulsa Weekly is about HB 2559, a bill in the Oklahoma legislature which represents an unwarranted state intrusion on local government control over zoning and land use regulation. (The column also covers the latest BOk Center bids, which put the arena at least $30 million over budget.)

HB 2559 would limit a city's options for handling appeals of decisions made by the city's Board of Adjustment (BoA), which considers variances and special exceptions to zoning requirements. The bill was amended in the State Senate to make it easier to remove historic preservation (HP) zoning from a parcel of land.

Since filing the story, I've learned about a parallel bill which originated in the State Senate called SB 1324. Like HB 2559, SB 1324 is sponsored by Sen. Brian Crain and Rep. Ron Peters. Like HB 2559, it would restrict a city's options for handling BoA appeals. Unlike HB 2558, SB 1324 also grants new powers to a Board of Adjustment:

[The board of adjustment shall have the power to] Hear and decide proposals for accessory elements associated with an allowed building use, where appropriate general performance and design standards have been established which promote greater economic value and provide a harmonious relationship with adjoining land uses by ordinance or by administrative rule or regulation. Such proposals and performance or design standards may include, but are not limited to, such accessory elements as sound, building material, runoff, lighting, visual screening, landscaping and vehicular considerations....

Earlier today I spoke to someone in the Clerk's office of the Oklahoma House of Representatives. My understanding is that HB 2559 is headed for a conference committee, but the conferees have yet to be named. SB 1324, on the other hand, was passed unanimously by the State Senate on March 9 (44-0), and passed unanimously on April 17 by the State House (98-0), but with a very small amendment. If the Senate votes to accept the House amendment, SB 1324 goes to the Governor for his signature. (The House amendment adds the phrase "and subsequent appellate courts" to the section forcing BoA appeals to District Court.) The final vote on SB 1324 is likely to happen this week.

Whatever the merits of BoA appeals and HP regulations, these matters should be handled locally, not dictated from Oklahoma City. Both of these bills should be scrapped.

If you want to make a difference on this bill, you need to contact your State Senator as soon as possible. To find out who represents you in Oklahoma City and how to contact them, click here, input your address, and click "Submit." The result will show you who your representatives are, their district office phone number, and their Capitol office phone number, and e-mail address.

It is amazing that these bills would pass without much opposition. I have to assume that legislators voted for it because they weren't aware of anyone who was against it, not because they had actually studied the measure. The supporters of the bill did a fine job of keeping it quiet so that potential opponents wouldn't be alerted.

It didn't happen this time, but I would hope that in the future, seeing Title 11 (Cities and Towns) on a bill would move legislators to consult with municipal officials in their districts. I would also hope that the City Council would assign a staffer to keep an eye on legislation affecting Title 11. Bills affecting Title 26 (Elections) and Title 60 (Trusts) might also have an impact on City Hall.

With these bills, the Tulsa development lobby seems to have exported our local debate over land use policy to the State Capitol. Until now, Republicans who disagree on local issues have nevertheless been united on state matters like taxation and tort reform. By putting a divisive issue into play at the state level, it may depress grass-roots enthusiasm to help Republican legislators keep the State House and win the State Senate.

I keep thinking that finally we are at the point Tulsa's development lobby will give up on their "rule or ruin" mentality, and will finally sit down with homeowners to work together to build a better Tulsa. They keep losing elections, now that their allies in the media no longer control the flow of information. Isn't it time they gave up on their fantasy of total control and joined in the give-and-take process of governance?

Not yet, evidently. Tuesday's Tulsa City Council committee meeting saw the unveiling of the latest assault of the Build Anything Anywhere (BAA) crowd. Zoning attorney Charles Norman attacked councilors for going to Board of Adjustment (BoA) and Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (TMAPC) meetings to speak on behalf of their constituents' concerns. He claims it is a violation of the ethics ordinance for a Councilor to vote on a zoning amendment after having spoken against it in a TMAPC hearing.

Mr. Norman was City Attorney from 1959 to 1968, through the heyday of urban renewal and the establishment of our current use-based zoning code. He left the employ of the city and has spent the last 38 years making a very nice living representing clients before the TMAPC, the BoA, and the City Council on zoning matters.

In the early days of the City Council, when most councilors saw themselves as rubber stamps, hiring Charles Norman to handle your rezoning was a guaranteed win. Councilors would generally defer to Norman's arguments and would ignore counter-arguments made by the opponents of a zoning amendment, who generally could not afford to be represented by a high-priced attorney.

Over the last few years, councilors have taken a more direct interest in zoning issues, and they are often asked to speak at public hearing s on behalf of a neighborhood association in their districts. Often a councilor is more comfortable with public speaking than a neighborhood leader and has more familiarity with the zoning code and process: The councilor sees dozens of zoning cases, while the leaders of a neighborhood association may be encountering the zoning process for the first time.

Norman's complaint seems to boil down to this: Someone is getting knowledgeable and eloquent representation in zoning cases without paying his exorbitant rates.

Norman seems to forget that rezoning a parcel is an amendment of the zoning code, Title 42 of Tulsa Revised Ordinances, and that a zoning amendment is a legislative action, not a judicial action, and not a ministerial action. It involves changing the rules, not enforcing existing rules. It involves the exercise of discretion. In handling zoning amendments, the TMAPC acts as a committee to the City Council, considering and amending proposals before passing them on to the City Council. It makes sense for a councilor to communicate to the TMAPC that a proposed zoning amendment would have his opposition. This gives the applicant and the TMAPC the chance to rework the amendment to make it acceptable.

I hope the Ethics Advisory Committee will see Norman's complaint for the absurdity that it is. If the ethics ordinance can somehow be twisted to make it say what Norman says it does, it needs to be amended to make it clear that councilors can speak at board and commission meetings.

There's a bill making its way through the Oklahoma Legislature which would take away a degree of local control over land-use regulation.

HB 2559 appears to represent a new line of attack by Tulsa's development lobby, which lost control of the City Council in 2004, failed in their attempt to regain control by means of the recall of Chris Medlock and Jim Mautino in 2005, and failed to regain control in this year's election.

The previous Council wasn't anti-growth or anti-development, nor is the new Council, but they were and are devoted to making the land-use process fair to all concerned, homeowners as well as developers, and to putting Tulsa's interests first, ahead of the suburbs. This is frustrating to the development lobby, which was used to getting its way all the time. Since they can't control local officials any more, they are using allies in the State Legislature to limit, restrict, and interfere with the ability of local officials to set zoning policy.

HB 2559 would require any appeals from a Board of Adjustment to go directly to District Court. This would prevent the City of Tulsa from allowing certain appeals to go first to the City Council, an idea that Councilor Roscoe Turner and then-Councilor Jim Mautino have advocated.

While the BoA acts as a quasi-judicial body on cases involving variances, in other cases, involving special exceptions, they have a good deal of discretion to consider issues like neighborhood compatibility. When the subjective element is present, when neighborhood compatibility is under consideration, it seems reasonable to allow the losing side on such a case to seek review by the City Council before lawyers and legal fees are involved.

But whatever the merits of the idea, HB 2559 would prevent Tulsa from even considering it. It is an unwarranted interference in local control of local issues, and such a bill should never pass a Republican-controlled legislative body, since Republicans believe that government closest to the people governs best.

But it did pass. It passed the State House on March 8 by an overwhelming margin. The Senate Judiciary Committee then added an amendment that would make it easier to remove property from a Historic Preservation (HP) overlay zoning district, another bit of unnecessary meddling in local control of local matters. The Senate passed the amended bill last Wednesday, April 19. It now goes back to the State House.

The bill is sponsored by Ron Peters (R) and Jeannie McDaniel (D) in the House and by Brian Crain (R) in the Senate. I am not sure who is responsible for adding the HP amendment in the Senate.

If you object to this attempt by the development lobby to bypass City Hall and to dictate local land-use policy at the State Capitol, you need to let your state representatives know as soon as possible. The toll-free number for the State House is 1-800-522-8502. And here is an alphabetical list of members' names and e-mail addresses.

Here's the text of HB 2559 as passed by the House. Here's the version that was approved by the Senate, with the amendment concerning HP zoning.

... or if I at least ruled the TMAPC, here's what land use regulation (aka zoning) in Tulsa would be like, as summarized in my column in this issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The Tulsa Whirled editorial board wrote that if I ever was appointed to the TMAPC, "the city might as well erect billboards at the edges of the city instructing developers to just keep on moving to the suburbs." Here's what I wrote in response:

I don’t expect I’ll ever be named to the TMAPC, much less be named the Pope of Planning, but if it were to happen, the City of Tulsa should erect billboards at the city limits saying, “Tulsa offers a fair, transparent, and up-to-date land-use system that maximizes freedom while protecting the investments of all property owners and our city’s quality of life. Tulsa welcomes developers who will work with us to build a better Tulsa.”

Click the link above, and read the five characteristics that a Michael Bates-designed planning system would have.

(Added on September 30, 2006, to fill in the gaps in my Urban Tulsa Weekly column archive.)

Something Bill LaFortune deserves, but hasn't received, credit for, is reshaping the city's Board of Adjustment (BOA). The BOA is a quasi-judicial body that is authorized to grant variances from the regulations of the zoning code. The BOA also considers requests for special exceptions, where the zoning code allows a certain use in a certain set of circumstances, but the BOA must weigh neighborhood compatibility before granting the exception.

A variance is only supposed to be granted if a hardship exists -- something about the arrangement land and buildings that would result in an absurd situation if the zoning laws were strictly applied. A hardship can't be self-imposed and can't be economic in nature. By state law, the BOA can't grant "use variances" -- for example, they can't authorize the use of a house for a restaurant in a residentially-zoned area.

Until recently, variances were routinely granted in cases that lacked a legitimate hardship. I remember a case where an outbuilding was approved when it greatly exceeded the zoning code's limits on accessory building size. The BOA found the hardship to be that the lot was large.

Mayor LaFortune's three appointments to the BOA -- Clayda Stead, Frazier Henke, and Michael Tidwell -- have taken a strict approach to granting variances. They understand that, while they may think something should be permitted that isn't, it isn't their place to legislate from the bench.

Council pressure played an important role in the new appointments. Some councilors made it clear that they wouldn't support the reappointment of certain BOA members. In this case, at least, LaFortune respected the Council's wishes and sent down new names.

One final note: I have a great deal of respect for David White, one of the BOA members who was replaced by LaFortune. Although I didn't agree with his approach to the variance issue, I appreciated his fairness, integrity, and availability to answer questions. Dave regularly attended meetings of the Midtown Coalition of Neighborhood Associations, often right after the conclusion of marathon BOA hearings, and was willing to explain his rationale on controversial decisions and to help us understand factors, such as court decisions and federal law, which the BOA has to weigh alongside the text of the zoning code.

I'm too tired to write right now, but fortunately, I'm not the only one writing:

Re: Whirled's endorsement of Taylor -- Chris Medlock told LaFortune so over a year ago; LaFortune just remembered.

Steve Roemerman rebuts the Tulsa Whirled's endorsement of Jim Mautino's opponent.

Mad Okie found a Quigmans cartoon that cuts a little too close to home. And he's got an illustration of Tulsa's April 4 choices -- from the Emerald City to the Magic Empire.

Dan Paden considers his alternatives and figures he's "hosed" either way.

TulTellitarian thinks Bill Martinson was left to twist in the wind by his fellow Cockroach Caucasians and believes that his District 5 opponent Jon Kirby is the Good Ol' Boys new choice for the seat. Interesting theory. Kirby's campaign is being run in tandem with that of District 6 Democrat Dennis Troyer, who is without a doubt the GOB choice in that district.

Independent candidate Ben Faulk has responded to meeciteewurkor's questions about the treatment of citee wurkors city workers.

Our Tulsa World has a list of 1998 Susan Savage contributors that bears a striking resemblance to Kathy Taylor's 2006 contributor list.

TulsaNow has a thread that explains why we need neighborhood conservation district zoning in Tulsa -- a developer is replacing the old Claiborne's Sinclair Station at 35th & Peoria with a Starbucks and a Pei Wei Diner, and the new building will have the parking at the street, instead of matching the Brookside pattern of having the building come up to the sidewalk. Unfortunately, both District 9 council candidates oppose neighborhood conservation district zoning and design guidelines in the zoning code.

Posts on the Eminent Domain Watch blog tend to come in bursts, and there was another burst of posting earlier today, including this cheery item, from a January 25th AP story:

Regional bank BB&T will make no loans to developers who plan to build commercial projects on land taken from private citizens by the government through the power of eminent domain.

"The idea that a citizen's property can be taken by the government solely for private use is extremely misguided; in fact it's just plain wrong," John Allison, chairman and chief executive of the Winston-Salem-based bank, said Wednesday....

"While we're certainly optimistic about the pending legislation [limiting eminent domain for private development], this is something we could not wait any longer to address," said BB&T chief credit officer Ken Chalk. "We're a company where our values dictate our decision-making and operating standards. From that standpoint, this was a straightforward decision; it's simply the right thing to do."

Emphasis added. BB&T is the nation's ninth-largest bank, so this could have some impact.

Here's a link to BB&T's corporate press release on the matter, which has this quote from CEO John Allison:

One of the most basic rights of every citizen is to keep what they own. As an institution dedicated to helping our clients achieve economic success and financial security, we won�t help any entity or company that would undermine that mission and threaten the hard-earned American dream of property ownership.

Meanwhile in Tulsa, at today's KRMG/Kiwanis Club mayoral debate, Kathy Taylor said, "We cannot take private property if it is not for a clear public use.... We do not use eminent domain to take private property to enrich private developers." Bill LaFortune talked about the Kelo decision in terms of homes being taken for shopping and said that that was wrong. He then pointed to the Council's one-year moratorium on eminent domain for private development.

It would have been more informative to have heard their comments about specific scenarios: Would you approve condemning the Towerview apartment building so that the entire block could be made available to a hotel developer? Would you approve condemning Metro Diner so that the University of Tulsa, a private college, can have a grand entrance on 11th Street?

There are a number of zoning code changes on the agenda for next Wednesday's Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission meeting.

That link will take you to a PDF with all the proposed amendments. Most of it looks pretty reasonable so far. What's missing, what I'd like to see, is a rationale document, describing the reason for each change. As you read it, feel free to post a comment with your reactions, concerns, and questions. There's also a forum topic about the proposed zoning code amendments at the TulsaNow forum.

UPDATE: You'll find comments from Homeowners for Fair Zoning here.

A vision is a "compelling description of your preferred future," not a collection of public construction projects. This week's column is about comprehensive planning and developing a real vision for Tulsa's future. Tulsa's comprehensive plan is about 30 years old, but the process to get a new one is underway. Kansas City redid theirs in the '90s, and they have an ongoing effort to implement it. Dallas has unveiled a draft comprehensive plan with a strong theme of making more of Dallas pedestrian-friendly. Tulsa could learn a lot from these cities, but the scorched-earth approach of the development lobby may stop Tulsa from having the kind of visionary leadership we need.

I first learned about the Dallas plan thanks to this topic on the TulsaNow forum.

Some supplemental links:

The report of Comprehensive Plan Process Task Force: transmittal letter, draft report, and draft process.

Tulsa City Council's resolution adopting the recommendations of the Comprehensive Plan Process Task Force.

ForwardDallas, Dallas's comprehensive planning effort.

ForwardDallas's draft comprehensive plan documents.

The urban design element of ForwardDallas (14.5 MB PDF).

Dallas Morning News (free registration required) story on the plan: "Pedestrians, not cars, star in draft of plan, but code changes sought"

Dallas does moratoriums, too. One example: building permits and certificates of occupancy within 1000 feet of a section of Fort Worth Avenue were halted for four months, to allow time for a development study to be completed. This is much stricter, although shorter in duration, than the eminent domain moratorium being proposed for Tulsa.

The big infill development battle in Dallas has been over McMansions -- tearing down smaller homes in older neighborhoods and building houses that fill their lots and dwarf neighboring homes. Here's a blog devoted to the fight against McMansions. (In Tulsa, it's been more typical to replace a sprawling ranch home on a multiple-acre lot with several multi-story houses.)

DallasBlog.com is an interesting community blogging effort at creating an alternative news presence online. I intend to explore it further.

Here's the home page for FOCUS Kansas City.

A proposal for a one-year moratorium on the use of eminent domain for economic development will be before the Tulsa City Council this Thursday night. (Click here for a PDF of the proposal.) The resolution would establish as the "policy of the City of Tulsa" the implementation of a "one-year moratorium on the use of economic development against the will of the property owners." This policy would "extend to the fullest extent possible as allowed by law to the City of Tulsa, its agencies, boards, authorities, and trusts."

Last summer's Supreme Court decision in the Kelo v. New London case woke Americans up to the misuse of government's condemnation powers. The word "blight" could be defined as anything different than what a politically-connected developer wants to build in the targeted area. Although local governments have for years been using condemnation to serve the interests of private businesses and organizations, most property owners were unaware of it, unless they'd personally been affected by it. What was shocking was that the Supreme Court would uphold what seemed to be an obvious violation of the Fifth Amendment. Americans got the message: "My home is my castle, unless the city thinks it can boost tax revenues by taking it away from me."

Legislators across the country have responded with proposals to limit how states, counties, and cities may use the eminent domain power. Here in Oklahoma, State Rep. Mark Liotta and State Sen. Brian Crain are sponsoring such legislation, but it likely won't be approved until the end of session in late May, and wouldn't go into effect until November. It would be a tragedy if, in the meantime, homes, business, or churches are taken by condemnation under conditions that would be illegal a few months later.

That's where a moratorium comes in. That long Latin word seems to confuse folks like non-Councilor Randy Sullivan. Maybe it sounds to him like crematorium or mortuary, but it has nothing to do with "killing" eminent domain permanently. Moratorium is from the Latin word morari, which means "to delay." The proposed moratorium would delay the use of eminent domain for economic development under certain conditions for one year, to give the legislature time to put some protections for property owners into place.

Here's what the proposal would not do:

• It would not stop the use of eminent domain for acquiring land for publicly-owned facilities like streets, schools, arenas, and parks.
• It would not permanently end the use of eminent domain for economic development. The moratorium would only delay such takings for a year, giving the legislature time to decide what restrictions on the practice are necessary to protect property owners.
• It would not prevent or delay the use of condemnation to remove structures that are a danger to health and safety.
• It would not prevent or delay the city from acquiring land for economic development from a willing seller.
• It would not prevent or delay the use of condemnation with the property owner's consent in order to deal with title, easement, or probate problems.

Mayor Bill LaFortune opposes any moratorium, calling eminent domain an important tool for cities. It is indeed a tool. A crowbar is also a tool, but it makes all the difference whether I use it to pry off your hubcap to help you change your tire or to crack open your door to steal your jewelry or to bash in your head. This moratorium doesn't mean we're throwing the tool away; we're just going to avoid using this tool in potentially damaging ways until we have some clear guidance on its proper, moral, and just use.

This resolution is a reasonable and measured response to the Kelo decision and the state legislature's initiatives. Tulsans concerned about protecting our property rights (especially the rights of the "little guy") ought to be at the City Council meeting tomorrow night, February 9, 6 p.m., to show your support.

UPDATE (2/9/2005): The Council approved the resolution by a 6-2 vote, with a couple of fixes to minor scriveners' errors. Henderson, Medlock, Turner, Martinson, Mautino, and Christiansen voted yes; Sullivan and Neal voted no; Baker was absent. Steve Roemerman has more analysis of the vote and its political implications. He notes that two City Council candidates spoke in support of the moratorium: Rick Westcott, running in the Republican primary in District 2, and Al Nichols, running in the Democrat primary in District 5.

At last night's City Council meeting, the Indian Health Care Resource Center (IHCRC), on the northwest corner of 6th and Peoria, applied to have Owasso Avenue vacated by the city, so that it could close the street, and expand its surface parking lot.

My friend Jamie Jamieson, developer of the Village at Central Park, and a guiding light of the 6th Street Task Force, spoke in opposition to the closing, making a very eloquent case for keeping urban streets open and showing how other measures could address the needs of the IHCRC while still allowing pedestrian and vehicular traffic to pass through on Owasso Ave. (Thanks to Steve Roemerman for posting the outline of his remarks.)

The Council sided with the neighbors and voted unanimously to deny the street closure.

Way back in 1999, I served on the committee that selected Jamie's team to redevelop the area between Central (Centennial) Park and Oaklawn Cemetery. One of the things I liked about the Village at Central Park plan was the determination to keep the new development connected to the surrounding areas, like a real city. Many new developments are walled enclaves, with private streets, but there are no walls around the Village, and the streets and alleys are all public ways.

Today the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (TMAPC) is to consider recommending to the City Council the adoption of the 6th Street Infill Plan as part of the Comprehensive Plan. The TMAPC meets in the City Council chamber at 1:30 p.m. today.

The 6th Street Task Force has been working on this plan for over five years, and they're looking for support today. Prominent zoning attorney Charles Norman is leading a last-minute effort, just discovered on Tuesday, to get the TMAPC to delay approving the plan. If you can be at the meeting and speak in support of approving the neighborhood task force's efforts, it would be a big help. Here's an action alert about the meeting from TulsaNow president Rebecca Bryant. TulsaNow's website also has a 10 MB PDF version of the 84-page 6th Street Infill Plan available for download.

The task force brought together residents, business owners, and other neighborhood leaders to create a vision for how the area should redevelop. Here's the group's vision statement:

To reinvent the art of city life in Tulsa. To develop from the grass-roots an urban neighborhood that is diverse, intriguing and charming; that adapts to the new realities of the 21st Century and has the character, humanity and convenience of the best, traditional cities; that offers a radical and attractive alternative to suburban living; where it is possible to work, play and shop without recourse to a car; where neighbors work to foster good schools and safe, attractive streets and civic spaces; and where a vibrant, civic environment is matched by enlightened public policies. To do all this before it is too late.

That's the sort of neighborhood I had in mind when I wrote, in my Urban Tulsa Weekly column on walkability and disability:

Most of Tulsa is designed for the private automobile, but there ought to be at least a part of our city where those who can�t drive, those who�d rather not drive, and those who�d like to get by with just one car can still lead an independent existence. At least one section of our city ought to be truly urban.

The first infill plan adopted was for Brookside (subject of my Urban Tulsa Weekly column a few weeks ago). Brookside was already attracting interest for infill development long before its infill task force was convened. The 6th Street corridor is a very different neighborhood. It is bounded by expressways on the north and west and split by the MKT railroad tracks. My great-grandmother lived at 1202 E. 1st St. in the 1940s; Paul Harvey grew up on 5th Place in the 1910s and 1920s. Some of the once-residential area near the expressways has redeveloped as light industrial, and along the railroad tracks it's been industrial for much longer, but some of those older sites are now vacant. There are stormwater flooding problems -- Elm Creek is one of the last creek basins in the city that hasn't had any improvements.

There are plenty of positive developments. The Village at Central Park -- the neotraditional townhouse development west of Peoria on 8th -- is coming along nicely. There will soon be a new senior citizen center in Centennial Park, next to a new, beautifully landscaped lake, which will help the stormwater problem. A 75-year-old apartment building has been converted into a boutique hotel called the Hotel Savoy. Family and Children's Services has a beautiful new red brick central office building right next to the Village at Central Park. The American Lung Association of Oklahoma is in the process of restoring the Fire Alarm Building -- an art deco gem -- for their headquarters. (You can see restoration photos here.)

These pioneers, along with homeowners, small businessmen, churches, and other institutions in the area are hoping for high-quality redevelopment that will create a walkable neighborhood.

Mr. Norman, I am told, is representing the Indian Health Center at 6th and Peoria. They want to close a street west of their property, and for that reason they want to delay approval of the plan; the task force report favors maintaining the street grid.

I hope the TMAPC will ignore the last-minute attempt to derail this five-year effort. If you care about quality redevelopment in Tulsa's core, I hope you'll be there in support of the plan.

UPDATE: The plan was approved unanimously. Tulsa Topics was on the scene, and Bobby has a summary.

Getting caught up on local news:

On Wednesday, the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals ruled against Homeowners for Fair Zoning in their suit against the City of Tulsa and F & M Bank. (Here is the OSCN case file. The decision itself doesn't appear to be on the web, but you can view it as a 500KB PDF file here. The PDF appears to have been prepared by the Court of Appeals using a scanner. Someone should let them know that you can create a more useful and compact PDF file if you do it directly from Microsoft Word.) Analysis as I have time later.

In last week's Urban Tulsa Weekly, I wrote about the Brookside Infill Plan and how it's being used to guide zoning decisions to ensure that new development enhances and reinforces the character of that urban, pedestrian-friendly neighborhood. The Brookside Infill Plan is only advisory, unfortunately, but there is a consensus on the planning commission and council to abide by it when considering zoning issues in the neighborhood.

Unfortunately, Brookside is, thus far, unusual in having a plan that defines neighborhood compatibility in such detail. There are many commercial strips around Midtown's historic neighborhoods that are vulnerable to incompatible redevelopment. One potential threat is on the Board of Adjustment agenda for next Tuesday.

The True Value hardware store at 17th and Harvard has closed. It was an old-fashioned neighborhood hardware store. Like most of the other buildings in that neighborhood commercial district, the store's front door and display windows come right up to the sidewalk, with parking to the side. The shopping area serves Florence Park to the west and Sunrise Terrace to the east, both neighborhoods built in the '20s and '30s.

The BoA is being asked to grant a special exception to redevelop the site as a car wash. The BoA must take neighborhood compatibility into account when considering a special exception. Going from a business that has only two auto entrances interrupting the sidewalk to a business that has at least twice as many driveways and more frequent auto traffic will change the block from pedestrian-friendly to an obstacle course for pedestrians and will undermine rather than enhance the character of this neighborhood shopping area.

Tulsa doesn't have many of these pedestrian-friendly commercial districts, and we need to protect the few that remain. Ultimately, we need zoning provisions that define where these districts still exist and that set guidelines for new development. For now, we need to ask the Board of Adjustment, next Tuesday at 1:00 in the Council room at City Hall, to deny this special exception.

Our City Council is going to wish they had this Thursday night:

City Councilman Unearths Magical Zoning Amulet

(That's an Onion article: Nothing objectionable in it, but the same isn't true for the rest of the site.)

Tonight the Tulsa City Council will consider a zoning change to remove some lots from the Yorktown historic preservation overlay (HP) district. These lots are part of the new Arvest Bank development under construction on the southwest corner of 15th and Utica. They'll also consider a major amendment to the PUD for Arvest Bank to allow a curb cut onto Victor Avenue from the bank's parking lot. Victor is a residential street, and nearby homeowners are concerned that the erosion of the HP district combined with making Victor Avenue a convenient route for bank traffic will hurt property values and quality of life. The neighborhood is already squeezed by the expansion plans of Saint John Medical Center.

The people who bought homes in the area bought with the understanding that HP would help protect their investment in restoring their historic homes. Sure, it can be a bother to seek a certificate of appropriateness when doing exterior work on a home in an HP district, but the benefit is that all your neighbors are under the same set of standards. You don't have to worry about your investment being undermined by a bad remodeling job across the street or the house next door being torn down and replaced with a suburban-style home with the garage as the most prominent feature. Changing the zoning breaks the promise the City made to these property owners.

Yorktown Neighborhood leaders would appreciate your presence and support at tonight's meeting at 6 pm at City Hall.

For more discussion about the issue, here's the relevant thread on TulsaNow's forum.

A quick update: At Tuesday's Board of Adjustment meeting, the Board unanimously granted variances to allow entrances between the neighborhood and the shopping center to remain open, as they have been for the last 50 years. Strictly following the zoning code would have required the entrances to be cut off by a screening fence. This is the last city-related hurdle remaining to the redevelopment of the center. The entire site will be cleared and replaced with a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market on the south side of the center, facing north, with a few "pad sites" along 21st Street for restaurants and one along Yale for Yale Cleaners.

This afternoon, I plan to appear and speak at a City of Tulsa Board of Adjustment hearing. Wal-Mart is working with John Nidiffer, owner of Mayo Meadow Shopping Center to build one of their Neighborhood Markets on the site of the vintage 1955 John Duncan Forsyth center. The zoning permission is in place -- Wal-Mart isn't seeking to expand commercial development into the residential area, and anyway, restrictive covenants would prevent that from occurring.

The only issue remaining is a variance that would allow leaving an opening in the screening fence (required when commercial development abuts a residential zone), so that it will still be possible to go from the residential area to the shopping center without having to go out onto one of the arterials.

I plan to speak in support of the variance. It's conventional wisdom that homeowners want complete separation between residential and commercial areas. I disagree. I think that for a neighborhood to be fully a neighborhood, it has to have more than houses. Mayo Meadow Shopping Center has been part of the Mayo Meadow neighborhood for 50 years, and I don't want to see that change, especially now that we will once again have a supermarket within walking distance. I like the idea of running an errand without getting into the car, and that I could send my kids, when they're a bit older, down to the store for a gallon of milk. A month or so ago, I went before the City Council on a related issue (vacating the stub of 21st Place that connects to the center parking lot) and Mr. Nidiffer, Paul Zachary of the City's Public Works Department, and I worked it out so that there would remain two entrances to the center from the neighborhood -- one on Winston and one on Vandalia.

Our neighborhood may soon be able to pass the "popsicle test," but only if the neighborhood street connections to the new center remain open.

Sorry for the bloglessness, but I've been working on my presentation for tonight's TulsaNow forum, "Passing the Popsicle Test: A Better Tulsa by Design." It's at 6:30, at the OSU-Tulsa Auditorium, and it's free and open to the public. Hope to see you there.

Here's a link to a map of the OSU-Tulsa campus. The auditorium is on the northwest edge of the campus. If you're coming by car -- and, sadly, that's pretty much the only way to get there -- the easiest way is to take the Cincinnati-Detroit exit on I-244, go north on Detroit, then east on John Hope Franklin Blvd (aka Haskell Street), and park in the west lot.

Attorney Charles Norman has dominated the field of zoning and land use in Tulsa for over thirty years, and Urban Tulsa has published a profile of Norman in this week's issue. Norman has had a long and influential career, and you need to read this article to understand this force that has shaped Tulsa's politics and physical development.

I'm quoted in the piece. I'm described as one of "Norman's detractors," which isn't really the case. I have a lot of respect for the man, but I do believe that his opinions are given more creedence by the planning commissioners and certain councilors than they deserve. Just because he wrote the zoning code 35 years ago doesn't mean that he should be the authoritative interpreter of it. There's an inaccuracy a bit later in the article: I am not a co-founder of the Midtown Coalition of Neighborhood Associations. I became involved in the group in March 1998, about four months after its founding by neighborhood leaders like Scott Swearingen, Stacey Bayles, and Maria Barnes.

I've often thought that someone needs to write a biography of Charles Norman or to help him write his own memoirs. There's a lot of Tulsa history there that needs to be captured on paper.

There's one quote from the story that deserves special attention, describing our previous form of city government:

At the time, four commissioners and a virtually powerless mayor, beyond mere persuasion, could not contend with the amount of problems. What the commissioners couldn�t handle was shifted to the city attorney�s office. A Tulsa World reporter once jokingly described the system as a �strong city attorney form of government.�

Seems to me the description still fits.

A while back I wrote about the "Popsicle Test" -- a measure of the walkability of a neighborhood. "An eight-year-old in the neighborhood should be able to bike to a store to buy a Popsicle without having to battle highway-size streets and freeway-speed traffic." I grew up in a neighborhood like that, but that's not the common experience of the kids in today's Tulsa. The reason has a lot to do with our outdated approach to regulating what kinds of activities can take place on a given parcel of land. Our system of zoning is all about separating different uses from each other, based on the assumption that it's a bad thing to have, for example, shops close to homes. Between our zoning laws and the understandable desire of developers and their financiers to minimize risk and go with the flow, we've developed a city where life is impossible without a car, something that becomes a problem when you're too young to drive, when you're too old or too handicapped to drive safely, or when gas gets above $2 a gallon.

There are other ways to regulate land use, and they promise to make life more predictable and less risky for homeowners and developers alike, to remove some of the contention from land use regulation, and to allow more creativity and variety, while protecting against situations that really do threaten property values, safety, and quality of life. One approach is to focus not on what goes on inside the building -- the use -- but the scale of the building and how it relates to its surroundings. It's called form-based planning, and next Wednesday night, TulsaNow is sponsoring a series of brief talks and a panel discussion on the subject.

"Passing the Popsicle Test: A Better Tulsa by Design" will be presented Wednesday, April 27, at 6:30 p.m. in the OSU-Tulsa Auditorium, just north of downtown. Speakers will include Jamie Jamieson, developer of the Village at Central Park; Russell Claus, Oklahoma City's Director of the Office of Economic Development; and me. There will be a panel discussion with questions and answers following the presentations.

Land use continues to be the central issue in Tulsa politics. Form-based planning may be a way to think outside the box and come up with a solution that will meet the needs of developers and property owners while helping us to create a more beautiful and livable city.

Expect to see another short Tulsa City Council meeting due to a lack of a quorum tonight. F&M Bank's final plat for the 71st and Harvard is on the agenda, and since five of the eight councilors are being sued personally for their vote to deny the plat, they will have to recuse themselves, and it will be impossible to continue with the agenda. The sensible thing would be for the Council to drop the item from the agenda, since they will never have a quorum to vote on it as long as the lawsuit is pending.

For F&M, the sensible thing would be to file an application for a major amendment to their planned unit development, as approved by the Council in 2003. That's what they should have done in the first place, rather than trying to pretend that a meaningful omission was a mere scrivener's error. Then F&M could sue whichever of their attorneys was responsible for the omission and recover the extra cost to their project.

The City Council did their job -- they rejected a plat that was inconsistent with the zoning for the subdivision. F&M should drop the suit against the councilors and put the blame where it really belongs.

(Hat tip to Bobby of Tulsa Topics for calling attention to this item.)

F&M Bank and Trust Corporation has filed a petition for a writ of mandamus in District Court to force the City of Tulsa to approve the final plat on their 71st & Harvard development. While all eight sitting Tulsa City Councilors are named as defendants, the bank is only seeking monetary damages from the five Tulsa City Councilors (Christiansen, Henderson, Mautino, Medlock, and Turner) who initially voted to deny the plat. You can read a the petition (500 K PDF file) here. While a councilor would ordinarily be immune from legal action pertaining to a vote he cast, F&M is arguing that approving a plat is a ministerial action, not discretionary or legislative, and therefore legislative immunity does not apply.

Back to that pre-meeting: Tulsa City Councilor Bill Christiansen was concerned about his personal liability over his vote (along with Henderson, Medlock, Turner, and Mautino) to deny the final plat for F&M Bank. Acting City Attorney Alan Jackere had advised the Council that legislative immunity would not apply for that action and F&M could sue individual councilors for violating the bank's right to fair treatment. After an executive session in which the Council conferred with city attorneys, the Council voted 4-4 on Christiansen's motion to rescind denial of the plat, with only Christiansen changing his vote. Without a majority in favor, the motion failed and at this point F&M cannot proceed with construction.

If there is any lawsuit, Christiansen may be the target. By changing his vote, he implicitly admits that he wasn't using his best judgment on his initial vote. The other four voting to deny the plat can fairly and truthfully maintain that their judgment was that there was no scrivener's error on the PUD and therefore granting the plat would have been inconsistent with the approved zoning. The proper remedy for F&M is to seek a major amendment to the PUD.

The situation has inspired a very funny audio montage created by Bobby of Tulsa Topics. Bill Christiansen, Darth Vader, HAL 9000, Don Vito Corleone, Daffy Duck, Regis Philbin, Mr. Spock, Buddy Hackett, and Yoda all in one clip.

UPDATE: Bobby has a first-hand report from the pre-meeting, and a link to a Wiki entry about acting City Attorney Alan Jackere.

I've been watching the TMAPC rebroadcast from last Wednesday. The hearing had to do with removing historic preservation (HP) zoning from a part of the Yorktown HP district in order to make way for parking for a new Arvest Bank.

The lesson to be learned from this and all other contentious zoning issues is that if you can afford to hire Charlie Norman to plead your case, you will get everything you want. Thus has it always been.

The neighbors are rightly concerned that once a few lots have been removed from the district, the precedent will be set for further exclusions. HP zoning was pursued by Yorktown homeowners in order to protect the value of their investment in these historic homes. By mutually agreeing to submit to additional restrictions affecting the exterior of their property, these homeowners were trading the extra expense of maintaining the historic appearance of their property for the guarantee that their neighbors would be doing the same. And certainly they could have some confidence that if the house across the street were to go away, it would be replaced by another house across the street in character with the neighborhood. That confidence was misplaced.

The entry over at HFFZ is more cautious and circumspect in its conclusion, but it seems clear to me that Acting City Attorney Alan Jackere was in error in stating that the Oklahoma Constitution requires daily publication of notice a charter amendment for 21 days at least 20 days in advance of an election. The constitutional requirement applies to adoption of a charter, not to amendments, and the requirement gives cities the option of three publications in a weekly paper or 21 publications in a daily paper. Moreover, Mr. Jackere's opinion notwithstanding, there is nothing that forbids cities with a daily paper from opting for weekly publication.

Yet another misguided City Attorney's opinion overrules the law and the will of the people as expressed through their elected representatives. His misjudgments always seem to promote the aims of the selfish development lobby. To be clear: There are plenty of good folks in the development business, but the people who control the Home Builders Association seem to believe they have the right to build anything they want, anywhere they want, and they have no respect for the property values of hundreds of thousands of people who own the homes they built and sold once upon a time. The selfish development lobby doesn't have any respect for the rules and procedures that were designed to protect everyone's property rights.

So when will Mayor Bill LaFortune let Mr. Jackere take his rightful place as a developers' attorney in the private sector and give us a City Attorney who believes his job is to serve the interests of all Tulsans? Probably never.

From tonight's Tulsa City Council meeting, about the proposed charter amendment to restore the zoning protest supermajority, a protection for property owners against arbitrary rezoning: Homeowners for Fair Zoning counsel Steve Denney just told the Council that the statute regarding the publication of a municipal election changed in 1996. The new requirement is three consecutive weeks, according to Denney, which is 15 days, not 22 days. So there is still time for proper notification. Alan Jackere, acting City Attorney, who seems to think that the City Attorney's office is a branch of zoning attorney Charles Norman's law firm, took issue with Denney's interpretation and said that there was a constitutional provision overriding the statute that Denney cited. Councilor Chris Medlock raised the possibility of seeking injunctive relief to allow the election to go ahead, given the clear and unanimous intention of the Council and the Mayor in support.

(UPDATE: You'll find links to the relevant statutes and constitutional amendments at this entry on HFFZ's news log.)

Brad Colvard, HFFZ president: "The Mayor's failure to stand up for Tulsa's citizens is noted." Colvard said he committed to support the bond issue, and still will, but asked if the city can't manage to get a simple measure on the ballot, why should Tulsans trust the city with $250 million.

Interesting: Chris Medlock noted that a speaker (Chris Jennings, if I heard the name correctly) against the charter amendment sat down next to Chamber CEO Jay Clemens and got an "attaboy". (Update -- 9:15 pm -- Bill Christiansen objects to Medlock pointing out what happened in the audience. Objection noted, Bill. We've all got your number, ducky.)

8:53 pm: Council just voted unanimously to move ahead with the bond issue on April 5th.

8:55 pm: Bill Christiansen wants to put the charter change on the next city-wide election, not in May -- can't afford another $100,000, he says. I think the $100,000 ought to come out the paychecks of whoever screwed this up. Starting with the Mayor.

Susan Neal is talking about "just folks" -- not just members of the development community -- who wanted to have a voice on the charter change proposal. Funny that none of these "just folks" are speaking out publicly.

Councilor Jack Henderson is saying that this sends a wrong message to the public -- that the Council can take a vote, but have it undone because of a clerical mistake.

A friend from the Kansas City area sends along this cynical dictionary of land use and zoning phrases. Some samples:

Campaign Contributions: The first step in the zoning process.

Citizen Groups: Rabble.

City Council: A governing body representing developers.

Developer's Attorney: 1. A golfing buddy of city council members. 2. A campaign manager for city council members.

Eminent Domain: A developer's philosophy: "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine."

Landscaping: The installation of trees, shrubs, and other plant materials in lieu of enforcing the proper zoning.

Master Plan: A fairy tale, updated yearly, which doesn't begin with "Once upon a time" and never has a happy ending.

Public Hearing: Private meetings between the governing body and developers--sometimes interrupted by uninvited citizens.

Zoning: The intended use of a land before a developer says otherwise.

A rumor has reached me that Tulsa Mayor Bill LaFortune may veto the charter change proposal that was passed unanimously by the City Council last week, which would keep the proposal off the April bond issue ballot. The proposal would restore the ability of property owners affected by a zoning change to file a protest petition. A sufficient petition would require the zoning change to receive supermajority approval by the Council. The charter change would restore a long-standing protection against arbitrary and capricious changes which can damage property values, a protection that was removed by a slanted City Attorney's office ruling -- a ruling that had to do more with positioning for a lawsuit than with fair interpretation of the law.

If Bill's going wobbly again, it means his developer buddies, who are used to getting whatever zoning change they want, have been beating down his door, probably threatening to come after him like they've gone after Councilors Medlock and Mautino. If you want the chance to vote to restore this protest petition protection, you need to let the Mayor know you expect to see it on the ballot, and if it isn't there you'll feel betrayed. As Brad Colvard pointed out to the Council, the charter change proposal will help the infrastructure bond issue pass, because it represents a promise to the people that the City has kept. If the proposal is taken off the ballot, it would be a breach of faith with the citizens of Tulsa, and I believe it will damage the bond issue's chances -- as well as Bill LaFortune's future prospects.

Someone has said that Bill LaFortune is like a pillow -- he bears the imprint of the last person who sat on him. I'd like to believe that assessment is wrong, but it's up to the Mayor to demonstrate otherwise. You might wish to give him some encouragement in that direction: MayorLafortune@ci.tulsa.ok.us

Homeowners for Fair Zoning has posted an announcement for its annual meeting on February 21. In addition to organizational business, there will be an update on the lawsuit over the City's improper rejection of the 71st & Harvard zoning protest petition. That entry includes a proposed rewrite of the group's mission statement, making it more about general principles -- the current statement is focused on the 71st & Harvard case.

The HFFZ news blog also takes a shot at the Tulsa Whirled for David Averill's Sunday op-ed ("Big lies from a sad little paper"). Visit the HFFZ home page to find links to video and audio clips of key City Council and planning commission meetings which illustrate the contempt in which ordinary citizens and their rights are held by many of our elected and appointed officials.

HFFZ also relays contact information for Yorktown Neighborhood, which is fighting rezoning of a lot in a historic preservation district for a bank parking lot. They'd like homeowners from all of Tulsa's historic preservation zoning districts to speak at the TMAPC hearing on Wednesday, February 2, at 1:30 p.m. in the City Council room, to defend the integrity of these historic districts, weak though the ordinance is.

Homeowners for Fair Zoning is continuing to keep an eye on the situation with the planned F&M Bank branch at 71st & Harvard. The lawsuit over the improper handling of the neighborhood's protest petition is still pending, but in the meantime F&M Bank is making preparations to build -- and they apparently want to build something different than what the TMAPC and the City Council approved at the end of 2003. Here's what the HFFZ website says about it:

On January 5, 2005, at TMAPC's 1:30 p.m. public hearing, John S. Denney presented the following objections to approval of the bank's plat and related restrictive covenants. The essence of the objection is that the TMAPC approved and recommended approval to the City Council in this P.U.D. of "permitted uses" for the property which did not include the two office buildings. The Council then approved the TMAPC's written recommendation which did not include the offices. If the City Council finds that this is indeed a change from the original P.U.D. approved by the Council, it will be free to deny the plat and P.U.D. amendment and block the building of the two office buildings. Without the office buildings, the project will likely have to be scrapped.

Rather than correct this problem through the proper channels (which should include TMAPC and Council approval for a major amendment), the TMAPC attempted to pretend that something different was actually approved:

Without notice to HFFZ or anyone other than the bank, TMAPC had added a proposal to the agenda, styled as a "correction," to retroactively amend the minutes of the August 27, 2003, TMAPC meeting where the "permitted uses" for P.U.D. 687 had been adopted. It was these minutes which were submitted for approval by the City Council and which formed the basis for the City Council's approval of this P.U.D. With the current language for the "permitted uses," the bank's ability to build is strongly in doubt. Hence, the effort by TMAPC to change the minutes.

When challenged on this attempted sleight of hand, did the TMAPC chairman blush and sheepishly apologize?

Despite not being given notice of the agenda addition to change the minutes, Mr. Denney caught the item, filed a written objection and waited approximately 2 1/2 hours until this item (placed as the last item on the agenda) was reached. When he got up to speak, TMAPC's anti-neighborhood leader, Joe Westervelt, tried to prevent him from speaking and informing the public of what TMAPC and the bank were trying to do. HFFZ will try to get a sound clip from the verbal exchanges between Mr. Westervelt and Mr. Denney. The public needs to become aware of the heavy-handed tactics used by Mr. Westervelt and TMAPC.

Westervelt was reappointed in 2002 by Mayor Bill LaFortune, over the strong objections of neighborhood leaders. Westervelt is himself a developer -- not a bad thing in itself, but he verbally abuses many of those who come before the TMAPC with objections to proposed zoning changes. His arrogance was on display during a February 2004 TMAPC hearing, a story you can read here.

Westervelt is up for reappointment -- his term expired on Tuesday. When Westervelt was reappointed in 2002, Mayor LaFortune assured me that Westervelt was contrite about his rude behavior and promised to do better in future. The Mayor assured me that if Westervelt got out of line again, he would personally go down to the TMAPC meeting and register his objection. Westervelt has gotten out of line, but the Mayor hasn't done a thing about it. Now he has the chance to appoint someone fair and open-minded to the TMAPC to replace Westervelt. The word around town is that the Mayor is trying to figure out how to recapture grass-roots support. If he reappoints Westervelt, or appoints someone else just like him, the Mayor can kiss grass-roots support adios, goodbye, auf wiedersehen.

Setting aside Westervelt's behavior, the fact that the TMAPC would consider rewriting history is appalling. A TMAPC that insisted on the utmost precision in the neighborhood's protest petition should not be allowed to call "do-overs" on their recommendation to the City Council.

Good news at 15th and Utica: Tulsa Preservation Commission denied a request to demolish a home in the Yorktown historic district and turn it into parking for a new Arvest Bank branch. The bad news is that this is really only a stay of execution. The TPC can only delay demolition of a historic structure for 60 days.

Charles Norman, the attorney for Arvest, was quoted as saying, �This development [the new bank and the accompanying demolition] will end up helping the neighborhood by stabilizing its corners and encouraging residents to improve their own properties.� In fact, while the bank itself may be a good thing for the neighborhood, the encroachment into the residential area and the demolition of historic properties will undermine the value of surrounding properties. Homes that once faced other historic homes will now face a flat sheet of asphalt. People will be less likely to invest in maintaining and improving their homes without the assurance that historic standards will be enforced. Particularly vulnerable are the smaller homes along Victor Avenue and along the north side of 16th Street.

Charles Norman is right that infill development will be needed "to make Tulsa's core flourish," but it has to be done in a way that preserves the positive aspects of the neighborhood's character. The bank could have gone in at 15th & Lewis, in place of the vacant supermarket building, or it could have gone in without drive-thru lanes, using the extra space for parking and avoiding the need to demolish homes in the historic district.

One of the TPC commissioners says that the development would save the neighborhood from something much worse that could go there. That argument has often been put forward by Charles Norman himself. Mr. Norman, as City Attorney at the time, was the primary author of the zoning system we now have, and he continues to have a great deal of influence over its evolution and application. If you think about it, the message is, "The zoning code I created is so inadequate for infill development, so open to incompatible development, so insensitive to the character of existing development, that you should be grateful that what my client is proposing is only mildly incompatible."

The system is broken. The zoning code was designed for sprawling suburban development on vacant land. It has been patched more times than a six-pack-a-day smoker trying to kick the habit. It's time to replace it with something that works for our present circumstances.

Tulsa Topics has more here.

There's a story in Sunday's Whirled (starts here, jump page here) about a revival of plans to build a new Arvest Bank branch on the southeast corner of 15th and Utica. The dispute isn't so much about the bank building itself, which will sit on the site of the old H. L. Moss store, but about the parking, which will replace three homes within the Yorktown Historic Preservation zoning district, and about access from the bank lot to Victor Avenue, currently a residential street.

The dispute is ultimately the result of trying to do suburban-style development in one of Tulsa's few remaining walkable urban neighborhoods. If the bank were built without a drive-through, the parking could probably fit in the already commercialized area at the corner, without the need to sacrifice the historic homes.

Tulsa Mayor Bill LaFortune has submitted two new appointments to the Board of Adjustment. The nominees are Clayda Stead and Frank X. Henke IV, replacing Norma Turnbo and David White, respectively. The City Council's Urban and Economic Development committee will consider these nominations today at 10 a.m. in the Council Committee room.

Turnbo's term ended 19 months ago. White's term expired this past May. The Mayor is finally getting around to dealing with these expired terms.

The Board of Adjustment has a significant impact on the quality of life of Tulsa's neighborhoods, because of the discretion the BoA has under the zoning code to grant special exceptions under many conditions. We need good, fair-minded people who will give due consideration to the impact of their decisions on homeowners.

I'm familiar with Clayda mainly from her activism in opposition to sales tax increases in the early and mid '90s. She was also an advocate for building the women's softball fields, and the eastside park where they are located was named Savage Park at Clayda's urging. I don't know anything about Clayda's views on land use. Clayda has also run for City Council in District 5.

Frank X. Henke IV is the son of Frank and Bonnie Henke. I've not met the younger Frank, but neighborhood activists know and appreciate his mother as someone who is knowledgeable and fair-minded about land use and zoning issues and understands neighborhood concerns. Bonnie ran for City Council in District 9 in 2002, losing the Republican primary to Susan Neal by a slender margin. (A last-minute unfair attack circulated by developers via e-mail may have been the deciding factor in that race.) If Frank IV shares his mother's views, he will be a fine addition to the board.

If you can't attend in person, I encourage you to tune in to the committee replay on Tulsa Cable channel 24, to see what questions are asked and if there is anything that should be of concern to neighborhoods. Committee meetings are usually rebroadcast between 1 pm - 6 pm each day, beginning the following day. I don't expect the nominations to come before the full Council this week, as the Council is taking more time to vet nominations than was customary in the past.

Before I close, I want to thank David White for his years of service as a member and chairman of the Board of Adjustment. David is a Midtown resident (White City) who regularly attends meetings of the Midtown Coalition of Neighborhood Associations. He has always been ready to answer questions and offer insight into the reasons behind the decisions made by the board. BoA meetings often last far into the evening, and doing the job well requires additional time to study the materials and see the subject property first-hand. We may not always have agreed with his decisions, but we knew that he was diligent and honestly striving to be fair, and that he understood and considered the impact of his decisions on neighborhoods. Thanks, David, for the time you invested in this role.

Bobby Holt of Tulsa Topics has a very useful entry, in which he mines the City Council minutes online to look at the last time the question of appealing Board of Adjustment zoning decisions came before the City Council, back in 2001. Good work, and thanks, too, Bobby, for the kind words.

Mark your calendars. The City of Tulsa Board of Adjustment's (BoA) role in the zoning process will be up for discussion and a public hearing before the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (TMAPC), a week from today, Wednesday, December 15, at 1:30 p.m., in the City Council chamber.

This hearing was instigated by Councilor Jim Mautino, who is concerned about the impact of some BoA decisions on homeowners who cannot afford to make an appeal through the courts. He believes the City Council should be the first line of appeal on BoA decisions. The Council didn't agree to that point but did agree that the issue deserves scrutiny, and they voted to direct the TMAPC to study the issue and make recommendations.

While the BoA is described as "quasi-judicial" -- applying the law, not making it -- the zoning code gives the BoA broad discretion to decide whether a proposed variance or special exception will be injurious to the interests of nearby property owners. If you have a BoA horror story, a case where City Council review of a BoA decision would have been helpful, come prepared to talk about it, with as many specifics as possible. It may be that for certain circumstances where special exceptions are permitted, City Council review is appropriate.

I believe the root problem is that Tulsa's land use planning system is broken, that it doesn't serve developers or homeowners, that it "protects" against threats that aren't threats at all, throws obstacles in the way of innovative approaches to development, while allowing practices that really do harm property values and the quality of life, and that it isn't producing a livable and sustainable community. We may still need to patch the system for the time being, but we need to have an honest and open conversation, with everyone around the table, having checked their cherished assumptions at the door, about a better system to replace the one we've got.

In the meantime, be there next Wednesday and be heard.

(Here, here, and here are earlier entries on the topic.)

Tulsa City Councilor Chris Medlock has started a blog at medblogged.blogspot.com, and he's got comments up about the Whirled's response to Councilor Jim Mautino's proposal about Board of Adjustment appeals, and about the controversial reappointments to the Tulsa Metropolitan Utility Authority.

Medlock is not convinced that Mautino's proposal is the right way to go, but he thinks the Whirled is arrogant for dismissing the reality of problems with the BoA process:

Concerned that change that they didn't initiate might actually occur in our city, the [Whirled editorial] board is actually making the case that the citizens of Tulsa have a fitting appeal option when they feel they have gotten a raw deal from the Tulsa Board of Adjustment. In fact, their exact quote is that "Citizens who are unhappy with Board of Adjustment decisions have a fair and appropriate appeals mechanism available now..."

"Appeals mechanism" is a very pleasant and succinct way to say, "hire an expensive attorney, take out a second mortgage, or if you're lucky get the neighborhood to have a big yard sale and silent auction so that you can cough up the $10,000 to $20,000 it takes to prevent $10,000 to $20,000 of impact to your property value." ...

BoA decisions impact property value -- approving an application may mean that neighboring properties lose value, while denying an application may mean that the applicant's land is worth less. The problem is that the remedy for this loss of value may be as expensive as the loss itself. And if property owners don't appeal a bad decision, because of the expense, the bad decision sets precedent for future decisions which will affect property owners in other parts of town. The cost of an appeal blocks frivolous appeals, but it also blocks appeals that should be heard.

That is the problem that Councilor Mautino is trying to address. If the Whirled editorial board were open-minded, they would look at this proposal and say, "An elected official is bringing this proposal forward. We see problems with the proposal, but there must be some reason, some problem, some grievance that is prompting this proposal. Let's seek to understand what the root problem is, beneath the symptoms, and propose a better way to address it."

Instead, the arrogant out-of-hand rejection of the concerns of the public by the Whirled, the Tulsa Metro Chamber, the Homebuilders Association, and the rest of the Cockroach Caucus, on many local issues, is leading to the public's rejection of the Cockroach Caucus. The public is concluding that this bunch isn't interested in their concerns, that this bunch won't work in a cooperative fashion, and therefore increasingly the public doesn't care what the Cockroach Caucus has to say about an issue.

You don't have to agree -- at least listen and respond with respect.

Received the following summary of what happened at yesterday's hearing on summary judgment in the 71st & Harvard protest petition civil rights case. Bottom line is that Judge Gassett deferred a decision until August 31 at 11 in his courtroom.

On August 26th, a hearing was held before District Judge Michael Gassett on the Defendants� motions for summary judgment in the civil rights lawsuit known as Homeowners for Fair Zoning vs. The City of Tulsa and F & M Bank. The issue before the court was whether the Plaintiffs should be allowed to go to trial on their claims for violations of their constitutional right to due process of law in connection with the zoning protests filed under Section 1703(E) of Chapter 42 of the City�s zoning code (the �zoning protest ordinance�). The City and Bank argued that their motions should be granted because they believe that (1) there is a conflict between the City Charter and the zoning protest ordinance�s requirement of higher than a simple majority vote by the City Council and (2) the City�s zoning ordinances and the City Council�s decisions related to them should be considered a matter of only local concern which should not involve full due process requirements or review by the District Court of any aspect of the decision beyond a standard of whether the action was completely �arbitrary and capricious�.

The Plaintiffs were represented by Lou Bullock, Bob Blakemore and John S. Denney. In their briefs filed prior to the hearing, Plaintiffs� counsel responded to these arguments with extensive citations of authority and a large list of factual issues in dispute which should be determined by the Court at a trial on the merits. At the hearing, Plaintiffs� counsel presented an abbreviated form of argument preferred by the Court since Judge Gassett had already closely read the briefs. In response to the Defendants� argument that there is a conflict between the City Charter and the zoning protest ordinance on the issue of whether greater than a simple majority vote can be required in a zoning case when an appropriate number of protests are filed, Mr. Bullock pointed out that, despite being in effect for over 30 years, the City had never chosen to challenge the validity of its own ordinance and did not do so during the rezoning proceedings themselves. It was only upon being sued for civil rights violations that it took the unusual step of declaring that the City Charter�s requirement of a majority vote in zoning cases meant a �simple majority� only and that any higher level vote requirement would conflict with this provision. While not in any way conceding that this interpretation of the Charter was legitimate, Mr. Bullock pointed out that when the City Charter was amended in 1989, the amended Charter�s provisions adopted the then existing City zoning ordinances, including the language of 1703(E) requiring greater than a simple majority vote. If any potential ambiguity existed prior to the Charter�s amendment, it was resolved by the Charter�s specific adoption of the zoning ordinances as they were then worded.

Regarding the Defendants� contention that the City�s zoning proceedings were matters of strictly local concern and did not invoke or allow for more than a minimal review by the District Court of what occurred in them, Mr. Bullock argued that the Court should consider issues of due process of law and basic fairness in counting of the number of zoning protests to be matters of statewide concern subject to constitutional and statutory protections and requiring a full review of the matter by the District Court.

It was strongly urged that the case should be set for trial and that the Defendants� motions for summary judgment should be denied. Unless both issues (1) and (2) are resolved in the Defendants� favor, the case should go to trial.

Judge Gassett paid great attention to the arguments and asked good questions of both sides. He then passed making a decision on the matter to a hearing before him in the same courtroom on August 31st at 11:00 p.m.

Mona Miller, President of Homeowners for Fair Zoning, wishes to thank all those who made phone calls to notify people of the hearing, showed up at the hearing and otherwise helped arrange for people to demonstrate community support for this lawsuit.

The summary judgment hearing that was continued from last week is coming up Thursday at 3 p.m., Judge Gassett's courtroom on the fifth floor of the Tulsa County Courthouse.

To repeat what I said earlier: Attorneys for the homeowners say that it would be helpful for people to be in attendance, so that the public interest in the case would be evident. Please note that I am NOT suggesting you call the judge or try to lobby him in any way. Judges do not respond well to that kind of treatment. Just show up if you can -- come early to be in the courtroom on time -- sit quietly and observe the proceedings.

This case is about your ability as a property owner in Tulsa to protect yourself against arbitrary rezoning of neighboring property or your own property. The City Attorney's office is wants the judge to declare protest petitions invalid. The judge and our elected officials need to see that homeowners want these protections to remain in place.

For more, here's the info on the Lewis Crest neighborhood website. Or enter 71st & Harvard in the search box on the right side of my home page.

The summary judgment hearing in Homeowners for Fair Zoning et al. v. City of Tulsa and F & M Bank and Trust Company has been delayed until 3 pm, Thursday, August 26. Change your calendars accordingly.

UPDATE 8/14: The hearing has been postponed to August 26th.

UPDATE: The correct time is 3:00 pm. Changed below.

The lawsuit filed by homeowners late last year over the violation of their civil rights by city officials in the 71st & Harvard / F&M Bank zoning case will be before Judge Michael Gassett Monday, August 16, at 3:00 pm, in the Tulsa County Courthouse. Here's a link to the case file on OSCN for Homeowners for Fair Zoning et al. v. City of Tulsa and F&M Bank and Trust Company. On Monday Judge Gassett will hear a motion for summary judgment from the attorneys for the City of Tulsa and F&M Bank, which, if granted, would end the trial before the case can be heard on its merits. Monday is also a scheduling conference to determine when the trial will proceed.

Attorneys for the homeowners say that it would be helpful for people to be in attendance, so that the public interest in the case would be evident. Please note that I am NOT suggesting you call the judge or try to lobby him in any way. Judges do not respond well to that kind of treatment. Just show up if you can -- come early to be in the courtroom on time -- sit quietly and observe the proceedings.

The City of Broken Arrow has issued a Request for Proposals (RFP) for the "analysis/update/modification" of its zoning ordinance. This is a great opportunity for Broken Arrow to address its continued rapid growth in a way that serves the interests of homeowners, business owners, and developers alike.

The current zoning ordinance was passed in 1989 and is described as "Euclidean", which means it follows the pattern set early in the last century by Euclid, Ohio, of defined zones which segregate uses. Broken Arrow has 25 zoning districts, plus the Planned Unit Development overlay. This approach to land use regulation has fallen from favor in recent years, as it discourages the creation of walkable communities, discourages creative mixed-use developments, and typically ignores issues of scale and design which have a greater impact on compatibility between adjoining uses. In short, Euclidean zoning, as typically applied, is a tool that is inadequate to the task of creating livable communities. It "protects" property owners against land uses that pose no real dangers, while allowing land use practices that degrade adjacent property values and quality of life.

There are a number of innovative land use planning firms, like Duany Plater-Zyberk, who specialize in helping cities rewrite their land use regulations to be more effective at achieving each city's desired future. Let's hope some of them go after this contract. Tulsa's leaders should keep a close eye on this.

The RFP includes some interesting background info on Broken Arrow's development. Within its fenceline, BA has nearly as many square miles in Wagoner County as in Tulsa County (51 vs. 53). And the RFP mentions that BA was little more than a small town surrounded by ranches until the Broken Arrow Expressway was built -- an early example of tax dollars subsidizing suburban sprawl.

There was an amazing revelation in last Thursday's Tulsa City Council meeting, during the debate over the Council consensus affirming the zoning protest petition process, the deadline prior to the Council meeting, and the supermajority requirement. A Council committee is discussing important issues of public policy in closed meetings which are unannounced, a blatant violation of the spirit of the Open Meetings Act, even if it barely falls within the legal requirements.

Councilor Tom Baker revealed that a "working group" is reviewing development issues, as part of an ongoing process relating to his "Compendium of Needs" concept, a bureaucratic, numbers-driven process for strategic planning that Baker pushed through during the previous Council term. Councilor Medlock interrupted to ask Baker who is serving on that working group. Baker replied that he, Randy Sullivan, Bill Christiansen, and David Patrick had been on the working group, but Sam Roop had been invited to take Patrick's place. Roop quickly interjected that he had only been to one meeting.

Further digging revealed that Susan Neal had previously been a member of the group, apparently rotating off in favor of Sullivan. She has been one of the most vocal supporters of Baker's planning process.

Do you spot a pattern? Baker, Sullivan, Christiansen, and Patrick all received campaign contributions from Joe Westervelt, the contentious planning commission chairman. Neal received a contribution from Westervelt in the 2002 election; she didn't need to raise money for this year's race. These five, plus Art Justis, received contributions from F&M Bank board members in the 2002 election. All of them were endorsed for election by the Tulsa Whirled. This little clique is presuming to develop a strategic plan for the Council while hiding from public scrutiny.

Four is the magic number. It's the largest number of councilors that can meet without forming a quorum and triggering the requirements of the state's Open Meetings Act. This working group has been meeting for the past year, in lieu of the Budget Committee, one of the standing committees listed in the Council rules.

The meetings of this working group have not been announced. The agendas are not posted. They are not open to the public. They are not even open to all members of the Council.

This working group has met with the presidents of the local universities, and with area school superintendents. More recently, Josh Fowler, the lobbyist for the development industry, was present at a discussion about land use planning and zoning.

This is part of a broader pattern of hiding information from the public which characterized the Class of 2002. It's the way the Whirled and the Chamber like to do business. The pre-meeting is another example. I am sure that new majority on the Council will work for fairness and openness.

By the way, they meet at lunchtime on Tuesdays. I can't be there, but maybe someone else would like to show up with a camcorder.

I told you about the "pre-meeting" in the previous entry, and I mentioned that there were some fireworks shortly after.

The neighborhood folks who came for the pre-meeting hoped to speak briefly to Councilor Sam Roop to ask for his support on the Council Consensus that was on the agenda. We were waiting in the Council lobby right after the pre-meeting. I asked a Council staffer if he was in his office and if I could speak with him. She checked -- he was not in his office. She said he's around here somewhere. I asked if he might still be in the library where the pre-meeting was held, and started in that direction. No one seemed to object.

As I approached the door of the library, which is in the northeast corner of the 2nd Floor, I heard a voice coming from the office of a council staffer as I passed:

"Where the hell do you think you're going?"

I turned to reply. I wasn't bothered by the harsh language -- I assumed the comment was made in jest.

"I'm looking for Councilor Roop."

The reply shocked me:

"Get the hell out of here! Get the hell out of here! I hate you!"

And he yelled some other stuff.

And then he yelled, "You kitty-cat!"

Except he didn't say "kitty-cat".

I kept hearing about something called a "pre-meeting". Every week before the Tulsa City Council's televised 6 p.m. regular meeting, they hold a 5 p.m. pre-meeting in the Council library, an area not generally open to the public. The purpose is to go over the agenda, and the chairman indicates which routine items he plans to combine, and which items will be pulled -- maybe because the relevant councilor, official, or citizen can't be at the meeting.

You will not see any mention of the pre-meeting on the Council website (feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but I couldn't find it). Because a quorum of the Council is present they must post an agenda publicly, which they do post at City Hall, but they don't post it on the website. It's clear that they don't expect members of the public to be in attendance.

Many legislative bodies handle this kind of business at the beginning of the regular meeting. A proposed agenda is presented to the body, amendments may be proposed, and the agenda is approved. There's no reason this couldn't be handled in a few minutes at the beginning of the televised regular meeting.

So why have a pre-meeting? And why schedule it a full hour before the regular meeting? I'm told that many of these pre-meetings are quite long, sometimes barely leaving time for councilors to get over to the chamber for the start of the regular meeting. What are they talking about all that time? Are they going beyond technical agenda issues and delving into the substance of issues? These meetings are not recorded and are not publicized.

I decided to find out. With a contentious issue on the agenda, it could be an interesting pre-meeting. So I went down to the City Council offices with a few friends and a digital video camera.

I sent this out to a neighborhood mailing list and thought you all would be interested in it too:

Tonight at their regular 6:00 pm meeting, the Tulsa City Council will again take up a Council Consensus expressing support for retaining and strengthening the protest provisions of the zoning code. Under Title 42, Section 1703(E), a supermajority of seven yes votes is required for a zoning change if the owners of 50% of the land within 300 feet of the affected area, or 20% of the affected area itself. These provisions are an important protection for property owners against arbitrary zoning changes, such as a blanket upzoning or commercial and industrial encroachment into our neighborhoods. This supermajority requirement has been part of state law since the 1920s, and part of Tulsa's zoning code for over 30 years. This is one little bit of leverage that homeowners have, and certain forces are working hard to take even that away from us. (More about that below.)

It is important that we get the City Council on record in support of this protection before next Tuesday's election. If a councilor is unwilling to express support for this protection before the election, he certainly won't push for it once the political pressure is gone. We need to know, before we go to the polls on Tuesday, whether these councilors support keeping this protection in place or sweeping it away. We have some leverage right now that will disappear after next Tuesday. I urge you to attend tonight's meeting, or at least contact councilors and urge their support.

Also, it was mentioned in last week's Council meeting that the City Attorney's office has issued a confidential memo that reportedly proposes an alternative consensus on this issue. Because of its confidential nature, understandably no one will go on record as to its contents. My guess, based on how the City Attorney's office has dealt with this issue so far, is that their proposal would not be in the best interests of neighborhoods. We need to urge our councilors to reject any secret consensus and to commit openly to protecting the supermajority requirement.

There are two items pertaining to the zoning protest petition process on tonight's City Council agenda:

7. COUNCIL ITEMS

d. Addendum Item: Council Consensus supporting the three-fourths voting requirement for passage of a zoning map amendment as set forth in Title 42, section 1703 (E) of the Tulsa Revised Ordinances; and supporting the legislative intent that any protest against a zoning map amendment shall be filed three days prior to the hearing before the City Council of the City of Tulsa. (Medlock) 03-540-9

e. Addendum Item: Discussion regarding the status of the Tulsa City Council�s request for an informational packet from the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, as set forth in Resolution 7126, passed by the City Council on November 20, 2003. (Christiansen) 03-540-10

The name in parentheses is the name of the Councilor who put the item on the agenda, so Medlock and Christiansen continue to be on top of this issue.

This seems like an excellent opportunity to let the Council hear what neighborhood leaders weren't allowed to say at yesterday's TMAPC non-hearing on this issue. So be there if you are able!

Well, not literally. But today at the meeting of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (TMAPC), commission Chairman Joe Westervelt demonstrated his deep contempt for homeowners by deleting from the agenda, at the last minute, a controversial item which had brought dozens of people down to City Hall for the opportunity to speak at a public hearing. I understand that County Commissioner Randi Miller even cancelled an official appointment in Oklahoma City to be present for this hearing.

There is a procedure allowing for an item to be continued to a future meeting, but that requires the vote of the commission, and interested parties are allowed to make their case for or against deferring the item to a future date. Instead, Westervelt just announced his decision to drop the item from the agenda, and allowed two minutes for those who came to speak on the issue to clear the room.

The issue was the zoning petition process, a process that was unfairly administered in the 71st & Harvard case, and which is now the subject of a lawsuit. The City Council asked the TMAPC to examine the issue and make a recommendation by January 20.

There had been rumors that the item might be pulled from the agenda, but at the previous day's City Council committee meeting, INCOG planning director Wayne Alberty gave firm assurances to the City Council that the item would be heard, that the TMAPC could not simply drop the item, because it was advertised as being on the agenda.

Why was it simply dropped? There's a theory that if they had proceeded to allow the public to speak, it would have permitted the City Council to move forward with their own proposal to amend the zoning protest petition process, regardless of TMAPC final action. The development interests (which hold an overwhelming majority on the TMAPC) want to postpone this issue until after the Council elections, when there isn't any political pressure to ensure that the process is reformed in a meaningful way.

Westervelt is well known for his hostility to the interests of homeowners, and his arrogant treatment of those who come before the TMAPC to voice their concerns and even of his fellow commissioners. In 2001, I witnessed his shameful and inappropriate public chastisement of then-Councilor Brady Pringle, who had come to speak about a proposal to widen Riverside Drive. At last month's TMAPC work session on the topic of the zoning protest process, Westervelt tore into Councilor Chris Medlock and homeowner Steve Denney for daring to propose improvements to the process.

Westervelt was first appointed to the TMAPC by then-Mayor Susan Savage in 1996, reappointed in 1999, and in 2002 he was reappointed by new Mayor Bill LaFortune, over the objections of neighborhood leaders. At the time, the Mayor said he was aware of the concerns about Westervelt's conduct, and that he had promised to behave himself. The Mayor personally told me, and he repeated this to many other neighborhood leaders, that if Westervelt got out of line again, he would personally come down to the TMAPC and make his displeasure known.

So after Westervelt pulled his latest stunt, about 20 neighborhood leaders decided to go talk to the Mayor. We rode up the elevator to the 11th floor, but the Mayor and Deputy Mayor were out. Steve Denney and I ended up speaking to Karen Keith and Erin Patrick and outlining the concerns of the assembled neighborhood leaders. We asked that the Mayor use his influence to expedite this issue, because we want it dealt with before the city elections. (The Council had asked for the TMAPC to deal with the matter back in January before the city primary.) We said we want the Mayor to deal with Westervelt as he promised he would. We urged the Mayor to clean house at the City Attorney's office, which is actively working against neighborhood interests in this matter. And we urged the Mayor to create a balance on TMAPC between homeowner's interests and the interests of the development industry, by choosing his appointments wisely.

I was told that our concerns were relayed to the Mayor, and I look forward to hearing and passing on a reply when it comes.

The slide shows presented by TulsaNow at Wednesday night's city council candidate forum are now available on the TulsaNow website here. There are two presentations.

The first is entitled "We Can Do Better", and it was presented by Duane Cuthbertson. It is laden with pictures which are more eloquent than the words, but I'll give you some of the words to give you enough of the flavor so you'll want to look at the presentation in all its glory.

It begins by leading the audience through a mental exercise:

I�d like to start with a little exercise. I�d like to ask everyone in the audience to imagine that you have two weeks to spend in any city in the world (cities, not beaches). You have no family or work obligations, and money is no object. Now imagine yourself in that city . . . . Think about your surroundings . . . .

... the question we confront, and which those we elect to office will confront, is whether Tulsa will be more like the cities we admire and enjoy, or more like the cities we do our best to avoid.

The presentation goes on to look at Tulsa as it is today, showing examples of good urban form and bad urban form, and then showing how we can take the kind of places we have now, places that don't work well, and make them better by adding elements of good urban design.

The second slide show, presented by Jamie Jamieson, reviewed TulsaNow's mission and core values, set out the importance of land use planning and the drawbacks of zoning as a means of land use planning, and alternative approaches to planning. The presentation concluded with a list of principles, strategies, and actions TulsaNow is encouraging the new City Council to adopt for its 2004-2006 term. I won't spoil the presentation by listing them here; you need to see them in context.

Go and read them, and when you're done, have a browse through the resources on the site and visit some of the research links. You'll begin to get a sense of what TulsaNow hopes for our city's future, and the lessons we can learn from the experiences of other cities.

Wednesday night's TulsaNow candidate forum on land use planning was a wonderful event. 13 of the 26 council candidates were present to respond to a presentation on land use planning as we do it now, and as we might do it in the future. The opening slideshow, presented by city planner Duane Cuthbertson and developer Jamie Jamieson, featured compelling images of city scenes good, bad, and ugly. Jamie, who is the developer of the Village at Central Park, made the point that development is not the problem; the real problem is the patterns of development. We need to be willing to do development in a different way than it's been done for the past 50 years.

Candidates, including some not in attendance, submitted written responses to five questions on the topic.

The Tulsa Whirled coverage , headlined "Group focuses on city zoning", missed one of the key points of the evening. TulsaNow points out that there are various methods of land use planning, of which zoning is only one, albeit the predominant approach in the US since World War II. Tulsa's land use planning process is broken, and zoning, which requires strict and arbitrary segregation of different land uses, very different from the ways in which cities evolved before World War II. Our process generates confrontations between homeowners and developers. For example, a change in land use which might be beneficial is fought because the zoning change opens the door for other uses which might be disruptive.

It was clear that the concepts under discussion were new to most of the candidates, even to some of the incumbent councilors. Some impressions:

Most of the candidates were at least open to the ideas presented, and many gave answers that suggested they had thought about some of these notions before, particularly Medlock, Self, Mautino, Huston, and Neal. Huston expressed the most enthusiasm for the vision presented but said he didn't know to what extent the Council had the power to make it happen. Medlock called for a flexible, comprehensible, comprehensive master plan that would be "stuck to". He said it should be hard for zoning attorneys to make a living in this town.

Eagleton made the excellent point that whether you have a new plan or an old plan doesn't matter when you have Councilors who won't honor the plan. Eagleton also emphasized respect for property rights and sounded an appropriate note of caution, reminding that layering new restrictions on property owners can be considered a taking under our Bill of Rights.

When asked if the current system was friendly to homeowners or developers, Medlock said the pendulum had swung too far in the direction of developers, and most candidates agreed, except for Baker who refused to answer and just said there was opportunity for improvement, and Neal, pointing to two recent TMAPC decisions that favored the neighborhood over the applicant, said it depends on who you ask. (Neal answered the question in terms of outcomes, but the question was really about the fairness of the process.)

Larry Self wants to transplant downtown Minneapolis to downtown Tulsa. Joe Conner called for a ban on political contributions from individuals bringing zoning cases before the Council.

Baker exhibited his bureaucratic mindset in all his answers, but I'll save that for another entry.

It's hard to imagine the point of having a bail bond office seven or eight miles away from the county courthouse and jail, but ABC Bail Bonds is asking to rezone a duplex on the edge of the Lewis Crest neighborhood at 51st and Atlanta, right across from the regional Girl Scouts headquarters. Although the home is not yet approved for the new use, word is that the business is already up and running 24/7.

Imagine having a next door to you a 24 hour business whose client base is people who have run afoul of the law. (Girl Scouts selling cookies rarely need to be bailed out of jail.) Worse yet, the INCOG staff has recommended approval of the zoning change on the grounds that it is in accordance with "trends" in the area. Neighbors see a connection with the strip club going in at 51st & Harvard and wonder if businesses catering to a similar clientele will fill in along 51st Street. That area has been relatively quiet, with some office buildings replacing homes, compatible with the neighborhood, and nothing so far like a bail bonds office. Despite the proximity to I-44, the locations of entrances and exits on that stretch of road makes 51st from Lewis to Delaware inconvenient to easy-on, easy-off traffic, but a concentration of businesses targeting freeway traffic could change all that.

By the way, it's not just homeowners who are concerned. Weinkaupf Petroleum, which has an office across the street from the proposed location, has written the TMAPC protesting the zoning change

This points up the need to review our 20-year-old Comprehensive Plan, which long ago ceased being either comprehensive or a plan. The review needs to be on a neighborhood by neighborhood basis, and those who have already invested in that neighborhood should have a strong voice in determining its future direction.

During the build-up to Vision 2025, I proposed a neighborhood assessment process which was well-received by Mayor LaFortune and others. This process was used by Kansas City, Missouri. An assessment was done for every neighborhood in the city, centered around a meeting bringing together homeowners, businesses, and other neighborhood stakeholders. At this meeting, bolstered by weeks of research by urban development staff, a neighborhood identifies the basic condition of the neighborhood, what needs to change, what qualities and features need to be preserved, and how they would like to see the neighborhood evolve in the future. Specific improvements are identified -- projects that can be tackled by homeowners, projects that will need outside private help, and projects that need government involvement. In Kansas City, this program took four years and $2 million to complete, and they didn't use a tax increase to pay for it -- it was integrated into the normal way they do business. Supposedly some of the $30 million "downtowns and neighborhoods" project money will pay for this program in the City of Tulsa, but we shall see.

In the meantime, we need to support the Lewis Crest neighborhood as they fight this rezoning attempt, which comes before the TMAPC today at 1:30, although there has been a request to postpone ("continue") the hearing until two weeks later, which is likely to be granted. If the TMAPC approves, the request will go to the City Council. E-mail your city councilor, and e-mail the TMAPC care of bhuntsinger@incog.org and express your concern. Remember -- some day it could be your neighborhood.

UPDATE (1/27/2003): I understand that the zoning application was rejected by the TMAPC.

Homeowners for Fair Zoning, the city-wide neighborhood alliance that emerged from the 71st & Harvard zoning case, is meeting tonight (Wednesday, January 21) at Martin East Regional Library, 26th and Garnett, at 7 p.m. There are two main topics of the meeting -- an update on the civil rights lawsuit filed over the City's invalidation of the homeowners' protest petition, and a discussion of the upcoming City Council elections.

For more information, contact Mona Miller, 496-1481, or by e-mail at mrmruoutthere@aol.com

City Councilor Randy Sullivan, whose zoning-related antics have been documented on this site, is getting lots of publicity for trying, once again, to close the barn door after the cows have gotten out, metaphorically speaking. A strip club will be going in at 51st & Harvard because the City Council dropped the ball in the Fall of 2002.

From today's Whirled:

At a public meeting Monday, about 350 area residents voiced opposition to the topless bar and frustration about a zoning process that didn't allow for public input.

Any zoning action the council takes to restrict such businesses won't stop the topless bar from opening at 51st and Harvard.

The city had an opportunity 14 months ago to act on the zoning changes that Sullivan is now calling for, but it failed to act on the proposal, which came from the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission.

More than a year ago, the Mayor's Office asked the Planning Commission to increase the spacing requirement between sexually oriented businesses and protected businesses or residential areas to 1,000 feet and to add facilities frequented by youths younger than 18 to the list of protected businesses.

The request stemmed from an unsuccessful move by a party associated with Traylor to open a sexually oriented business near a child-care center downtown.

Because the council approves zoning changes, the Planning Commission recommended that the council amend the zoning code by adding the changes.

The council discussed the recommendation at a November 2002 committee meeting but never acted on it.

When I have more time, I'll post a complete timeline and add some links to TMAPC and Council minutes. It was interesting that the Council minutes for that November 2002 committee meeting show no interest in the subject on the part of the Councilors.

So who gets the blame for dropping the ball? Bill Christiansen was Council chairman. The original zoning problem that raised the concern about strip clubs near daycare centers was in Tom Baker's district, and he is the one of the co-chairmen of the Council's Urban and Economic Development committee. And any councilor could have put the matter on the agenda, but none of them did.

By the way, one council seat was vacant at this time: Randi Miller had resigned her District 2 seat to take her post on the County Commission, and Chris Medlock had not yet been elected to replace her.

A reminder: The lawsuit for fairness in zoning cases is going forward, and your help is needed for the suit to succeed. Donations are needed to cover legal costs, and volunteer help is needed to handle a variety of details. To donate to the cause, write a check to Zoning Alert Watchman Committee, and mail it to:

Ms. Mona Miller
7211 South Gary Place
Tulsa, OK. 74136

On the political front, we are still looking for good candidates to run in many of the City Council districts, and the filing period is just two weeks away. Good candidates who are already in the race, like Councilor Chris Medlock, former Councilor Roscoe Turner, and John Eagleton, will need a lot of volunteer help and financial help to prevail.

To help make the case to the broader public, I'd like to collect stories of problems with the zoning and planning process in Tulsa. Whether you were an applicant or protesting an application, if you experienced a situation that seemed unfair or absurd, please drop me a line at blog at batesline dot com and tell me all about it. Please include as many specific details as you can, particularly the location involved, the date of key hearings or events, and the case number, zoning number, or PUD number as appropriate. And let me know if I can use your name, or if you'd prefer to remain anonymous. Real-life experiences can help make the case for reform better than dry analyses. Thanks for your help.

I don't have the energy at this late hour to take apart Janet Pearson's condescending, simplistic, and one-sided column in Sunday's Whirled about zoning controversies. The column is little more than a dressed-up presentation of the views of Jerry Lasker, director of the Indian Nations Council of Governments (INCOG), whose planning staff were behind the successful (and unlawful) effort to invalidate the protest petition against the rezoning of 71st and Harvard.

It's apparent she only has second-hand knowledge of neighborhood complaints about Tulsa's zoning process, filtered through the perspective of the people who run the zoning process and are quite pleased with it. Her treatment of the subject would have benefitted from some conversation with actual neighborhood leaders like Brookside's Nancy Apgar, Mona Miller from 71st & Harvard, or Maria Barnes from Kendall-Whittier.

Here are a few excerpts and my comments:

Few happenings at City Hall generate more controversy than zoning cases. Each year there are usually several big zoning fights, as well as countless smaller ones that don't make headlines but still make enemies.

Several recent cases -- notably the Wal-Mart grocery store proposal for 41st Street and Harvard Avenue -- are cases in point.

Interesting that 71st & Harvard doesn't get an explicit mention. Could it be because the rezoning benefitted a company with close connections to her employer?

Residents have a good point: Developers and their representatives usually do have the upper hand because of their experience and superior knowledge of the zoning process.

No, Janet, real residents will tell you that developers have the upper hand because the system is slanted in the developer's favor. The 71st & Harvard neighbors demonstrated a sophisticated awareness of the zoning process when they presented a protest petition to the City Council, which under the law raises the bar to require supermajority approval for rezoning. INCOG staff and the City Attorney's office responded to this "superior knowledge" by changing the rules to invalidate their petition.

But homeowners could improve their chances of altering proposals and even prevailing in the end by doing a little homework. In the Wal-Mart case, it was evident some had done their research.

The subtext here: "The system is just fine. Neighborhoods can prevail, if they will only do their homework. The 71st & Harvard neighbors lost, not because of a slanted system, but because they didn't do their homework. Poor stupid neighbors."

Study of land-use issues should begin even before buying property. "If you're looking to buy a house, look at the neighborhood. Look at the zoning in the area. Go to the planning commission office to see if there are uses other than residential approved for the area," recommends Jerry Lasker, director of the area planning agency INCOG, which includes the local zoning department, the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission....

"Also, look at what's across the street," he continues. If there is more intense development -- busy commercial or retail businesses, for example -- nearby, then there is a good chance pressure will grow in that area for more such development to occur.

Homeowners would do themselves a favor if they familiarize themselves with two important documents: the comprehensive plan and the development guidelines. There are other documents that are valuable to review also: protective covenants, subdivision plats, even the zoning code itself.

All the "homework" that Pearson recommends (really Lasker through her) was done by people in the 71st & Harvard area. They looked at the existing zoning -- residential. The looked at the comprehensive plan -- low-intensity residential. They looked at nearby development -- all residential for at least a mile in each direction. Previous proposals for commercial development had been turned down. The neighbors had good reason to expect that the site would remain residential. None of it mattered, because power trumps law when it comes to land use regulation in Tulsa.

That's enough for now -- but there's plenty more to rebut. Lasker defends the practice of ignoring the Comprehensive Plan, rather than amending it to reflect changing conditions, and says that infill development doesn't have to be consistent with existing development -- in fact you should expect it to be inconsistent and more intensive. Lasker even tries to wrap INCOG's policies with the mantle of "smart growth".

The more I mull it over, the more this column looks like damage control, trying to paper over the serious issues raised by the 71st & Harvard case, trying to take the wind out of the sails of efforts to challenge the current stacked zoning process in the courts and at the ballot box. If you haven't yet, go back and read my entry on the lawsuit, with excerpts and a link to the full text, and be amazed at the creative efforts expended to deny property owners due process.

I was out of town last Thursday when the Council finally considered the 41st & Harvard rezoning request for turning a residentially zoned area into a Wal-Mart neighborhood market. (Whirled coverage begins here, continues here.) This was yet another case where the INCOG planning staff and the Planning Commission recommended a zoning change out of accord with the Comprehensive Plan. The fundamental issue here is not whether or not Wal-Mart is a good company, but, as in the 71st & Harvard and Bell's cases, whether the Comprehensive Plan is a worthless document or a way of ensuring orderly development and redevelopment, protecting property owners against arbitrary and capricious zoning.

In the end, the Council (all but David Patrick) did the right thing by voting this down 8-1, but in doing so, several of them reversed themselves on the principles that guided their 71st & Harvard decision. In the earlier case, Councilor Tom Baker claimed that it wasn't his place to question the judgment of INCOG's planning professionals or the volunteers who serve on the planning commission. But in voting against Wal-Mart, Baker went against both groups, who recommended approval.

In the short time I've been back, I haven't had time to watch the tape yet, but it will be interesting to see how some of the Councilors justify this flip-flop. Perhaps Wal-Mart needs to do a better job of spreading money around during campaign season. Wal-Mart may have grounds for a lawsuit.

I'm pleased the Council voted as they did, but I don't think they deserve a lot of praise for their decision. This should have been a slam dunk. It never should have gotten past INCOG's zoning staffers, much less the TMAPC, and the fact that it did should raise questions about the people serving in those capacities.

Tulsa's land use planning system is still broken, but even a broken clock is right twice a day.

In the midst of preparing for the citywide rally for fair zoning last Monday, there was news in the Bell's roller coaster case (jump page here) which was discouraging at first glance. The Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals reversed last year's District Court ruling in the neighborhoods' favor, but it appears that the Appeals Court slipped on a couple of points, and there is still good reason to believe that the neighborhoods will prevail.

The Bell's case is another zoning-related lawsuit which arose because the zoning authorities ignored the law in favor of a powerful special interest, in this case the County Commission's desire to make more revenue from Expo Square regardless of the impact on surrounding property owners. At stake is whether the Comprehensive Plan represents a commitment on which property owners can depend, or just a load of promises not worth the paper they're printed on.

A quick recap: Back in December 2000, the Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority (aka the Fair Board, consisting of the three county commissioners and county cronies Jim Orbison and Bob Parmele) granted Bell's a new lease which would allow Bell's to expand west of the park all the way to Louisville Avenue, and make it possible for them to build a new 100 foot roller coaster just west of Zingo. Although concerned neighbors proposed several alternatives that would allow Bell's to expand into the interior of the Fairgrounds, away from residential areas, the Fair Board ignored the concerns and approved the lease. The discovery that part of the land actually belonged to and was in the city limits of Tulsa (a water tower used to stand there, on one of the highest points in Midtown) forced Bell's to redesign the coaster to fit within county-owned land. In September 2001 Bell's announced that the redesigned coaster would go 12 feet underground, and except for the 88-foot-high peaks, much of the coaster would be underground or enclosed to mitigate noise. In October 2001, the Tulsa County Board of Adjustment (whose members were appointed by the County Commissioners) voted 3-2 to grant a special exception, required to allow a roller coaster to be constructed on agriculturally-zoned land. (The Tulsa County BOA had jurisdiction because the Fairgrounds is not within the corporate limits of the City of Tulsa.)

Neighboring homeowners immediately appealed the decision in district court, and in August 2002 Judge David Peterson granted summary judgment in favor of the neighbors. Both sides agreed that the land was designated in the Comprehensive Plan for low-intensity use, and that a roller coaster could not be considered a low-intensity use. Judge Peterson pointed to Oklahoma Statutes and case law which require BOAs to comply with the Comprehensive Plan in granting or rejecting special exceptions and variances.

I wrote about the case back in June 2003, when Bell's attorney Roy Johnsen finally appealed the summary judgment. On December 9th the Court of Civil Appeals reversed the summary judgment, which means that the case will be returned to district court for a full hearing before the judge.

From the newspaper story, it appeared that the Appeals Court was rejecting the notion that the Comprehensive Plan must guide Board of Adjustment decisions, even though a couple of Oklahoma Supreme Court rulings have established that principle, based on the state statutes governing county zoning. But I later learned that the Appeals Court may have misinterpreted some of the information presented to the District Court. In addition, the statute on which Judge Peterson relied in his ruling was not addressed by the Appeals Court at all.

The homeowners have several possibilities before them which would allow them ultimately to prevail. They are in the capable hands of zoning attorney Randall Pickard. I would love to see this go on to the state Supreme Court -- this case and the 71st & Harvard case would demolish the notion, which seems to be conventional wisdom among INCOG planning staff, planning commissioners, and most of the City Councilors, that there are no limits on their discretion to change zoning.

By the way, the Mid-Town Neighborhood Alliance, which was formed to fight the special exception, is still in need of funds to handle legal costs. You can find an appeal letter here and a contribution form and instructions here. Even if you don't live in the area, this group is fighting for your rights as property owners, and they deserve your support.

A petition was filed Thursday in district court regarding the rezoning of 71st & Harvard and the unlawful invalidation of the homeowners' protest petition. The zoning protest process -- designed to protect property owners against rezoning that threatens the value of their property -- is the focus of the lawsuit, not so much the rezoning itself. As Mona Miller, a leader of the homeowners' group, has said, if the process had been fair when the rezoning was approved, they would have been disappointed but would have accepted the result.

INCOG staff and staff from the City Attorney's office went to great lengths to ensure that the homeowners' petition would not succeed. Lest you think these homeowners are just sore losers, you need to read the chronicle of unfair treatment contained in the petition, which is on the web in PDF format, courtesy homemyhome.com. In the extended part of the entry, I'll include excerpts from the petition, but the petition itself is 19 double-spaced pages, an easy read, and will give you a complete understanding of the issues.

With that here are some excerpts:

As expected, the City Council voted to approve Councilor Randy Sullivan's resolution to have the TMAPC study ways to keep the rezoning of 71st & Harvard's southwest corner from setting a precedent for similar rezoning on the other three corners. The item was discussed in committee, but added last minute to Thursday night's agenda. I got word of the meeting late that afternoon. Neighborhood activist Herb Beattie and I spoke to the Council.

I laid out the points I mentioned here in a previous entry, and added this point. There is no way the Council can avoid setting a precedent for the other corners. Its approval of the F & M Bank rezoning has already set a precedent. Suppose a developer applies for a zoning change to the northeast corner to build an office building of similar size to the F & M facility. If the TMAPC or Council rejects that rezoning, the applicant is sure to take the matter to district court and is sure to win his case against the city. Approving an office rezoning on one corner and not an another would clearly be regarded as "arbitrary and capricious", and the court would reverse the decision. The big campaign contributions given by F & M board members to councilors would be an issue in the case -- the clear motive for granting special consideration to one rezoning applicant.

I was pleased to see that my soundbite made the Whirled's coverage. I called the resolution "a cynical exercise in political posterior coverage."

Herb Beattie spoke next, calling the proposal meaningless and saying that it missed the point. If the councilors really wanted to understand the concerns of homeowners, they should attend Monday night's neighborhood rally, 6 p.m., at Wright Elementary School.

In the end, the council voted 7-1 (Williams was absent) to approve the meaningless measure. Randy Sullivan said his motive wasn't political, he just wanted to protect the neighborhood. (Of course, he didn't support neighborhood protection when it really mattered.) Councilor Susan Neal couldn't see the harm in passing the resolution. I offered to explain, but she wasn't interested. Sam Roop agreed with Herb that the resolution was meaningless, but said he would end up voting for it anyway.

That left Chris Medlock, bravely standing alone on principal, refused to go along with this sham, although he didn't say anything as undiplomatic as that. He deserves the enthusiastic support of homeowners across Tulsa in his re-election bid.

I hope you're making plans to join us Monday night at Wright. Doors open at 5, there's a press conference at 5:30, and the rally proper at 6. Attorney Louis Bullock and neighborhood leader Mona Miller will be speaking -- and I'll get to say a few words as well. Be there, invite your friends, and let the powers-that-be understand that Tulsa homeowners expect fair treatment in the zoning process. Let's demonstrate our strength with our numbers.

Saw the following recent post (about halfway down) by Keith Mooney in one of the Tulsa Now forums:

After being out of town for a few months, I was really disappointed to see that generic looking McDonald's being built on the sw corner of cherry and peoria. What nimron allowed that to happen? It totally disgraces the character of the neighborhood. Who allowed that to happen? Whoever it was, they were on some sort of sedative when they allowed that plan to go through. It's not that I'm annoyed that is was a McDonald's, but surely someone could have designed a McDonald's that would have blended in with the neighborhood, although we have the Whataburger and Long John's across the street that are eyesores just as well. But still, Cherry Street could be so much nicer if we had developers who would keep in mind the integrity and architecture of that corner. To the poster who posted that Cherry Street and Brookside are lost causes, well I disagree. These are small neighborhoods, not mega entertainment districts (i.e. OKC's Bricktown or Dallas' WestEnd), But surely from now on, we need to be more stringent as a city regarding architectural and aesthetic developments being constructed in these otherwise charming neighborhoods. But that McDonalds is a total waste of space and sticks out like a sore thumb.

Many people have expressed surprise that a garden-variety McDonald's could be built in a historic, traditional, pedestrian-oriented shopping district, next to two historic neighborhoods. Folks who have visited historic districts elsewhere have seen chain stores and restaurants redesigned to fit in with the existing architecture, and they are surprised that that doesn't seem to happen here. I remember on a trip to Germany finding Mickey D's in the heart of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a beautifully preserved walled city. But the McDonald's, right on the market square, was in a historic building, with signage adjusted so it didn't stand out like a sore thumb. (No drive-thru, of course.)

At 15th & Peoria, you could have had a lot worse than McDonald's, by right. You could have a giant windowless metal barn topped by an enormous sign, because the parcel is zoned CH -- commercial high-intensity. CH zoning was applied to most of the shopping districts in Midtown, even though high-intensity is not an apt description for the small shops and cafes you find in this areas.

Other cities expect better and they get it, because they set their expectations in writing, in the form of design requirements. Design requirements are used in residential and commercial areas to maintain the character of an area, without imposing the more stringent standards of historic preservation. Design requirements are a component of "neighborhood conservation" or "urban conservation" ordinances. Oklahoma City, Dallas, Fort Worth, Little Rock are just a few among many cities in our region and nationally which have enabled the creation of conservation districts.

Meanwhile, Tulsa lags behind. Conservation districts were considered by Mayor Savage's 1999 Infill Task Force. INCOG planning staffers even had a draft neighborhood conservation district ordinance for the task force to consider. In the end, the concept was watered down by the members of the development community who dominated the task force. I recall one developer saying that national chains would not want to locate in Tulsa if we imposed any sort of design requirements. This is baloney -- as the experience of other cities demonstrates -- and it reveals a lack of confidence in Tulsa's desirability. If a company wants to target a given neighborhood because of its demographics and spending patterns, they will be willing to adapt to meet the requirements for the location they want. It is certain that they will build their cookie-cutter standard design, unless there is some requirement to do otherwise.

Here is a page that tracks news stories about urban design guidelines.

Mark your calendars for 5:30 p.m. next Monday evening, for a citywide rally in support of fair zoning. It will be a chance for ordinary Tulsans show their opposition to the manipulations used recently to deprive property owners of their right to protest a zoning change.

The politicians would like to think we don't care about this issue -- we don't care enough to fight the issue in court or at the ballot box. Let's show them they're wrong.

The rally will be at Wright Elementary School, on 45th Place west of Peoria. Doors open at 5, with the meeting beginning with a press conference at 5:30, followed by a few speeches.

This next city election, less than two months away, ought to be about development and zoning issues. These issues are crucial to our quality of life and our city's future. We shouldn't let the big shots keep these issues out of the spotlight. Please join us on December 15.

A 71st & Harvard update: There is a move afoot to mollify the protesting homeowners, avert a lawsuit, avoid negative publicity for F&M Bank, and diffuse a mounting political backlash against the six councilors (Sullivan, Baker, Patrick, Justis, Williams, and Neal) who voted to discard the homeowners' lawfully submitted protest petition.

District 7 Councilor Randy Sullivan, F&M's point man on the City Council, is shopping a proposal to provide some assurance to the homeowners that F&M's zoning change will not set a precedent for similar residential-to-non-residential changes on the other three corners of that intersection. What he is offering amounts to a band-aid to heal a stab wound that he inflicted.

A resolution was on the Council agenda last Thursday night, brought forth by Sullivan without any prior consultation with Councilor Chris Medlock, who represents most of the affected area. Click the "read more" link for the full text and commentary.

A shot across the bow of the City from 71st & Harvard homeowners, via their attorney, Louis Bullock. The next to last paragraph is a great summary of the case:

The lawsuit soon to be filed will also seek remedies for the City's violation of the Constitution of the United States. In violation of the due process clause of the Constitution, my clients were denied a hearing or any semblance of fundamental fairness. The rules of the process were continually changed to fit the goals of F&M Bank and its supporters in City government. The clear objective of a majority on the City Council was to deny these citizens their right to fairness and to petition their government; they acheived that objective. In short, my clients were steamrolled to serve narrow economic and political interests.

This is an issue that has already affected homeowners in many parts of the city, and anyone could find themselves in the same situation -- seeking fair treatment from the City and being denied. (You can find out how to help by clicking here. The neighborhood you save may be your own.)

You can read the whole letter by clicking the next link.

The neighborhoods surrounding 71st & Harvard are going forward with a lawsuit regarding the way their zoning protest petition was handled by INCOG planning staff, the City Attorney's office, the City Council, and the Mayor. This lawsuit is not really about the zoning case itself, but about the way this protective law has been stripped away, denying due process to all property owners. Here's a message from the homeowners, seeking your help in restoring this protection for your property values.

Due to the re-zoning of 71 and Harvard and the unfair and illegal handling of protest signatures, we are appealing to District Court to consider Equal Rights for Homeowners. The actions of various entities clearly subverted the intent, as well as the letter of state law that allows for homeowners the right to protest such matters. The people's distress goes far beyond the zoning change. There is an outrage over the basic loss of the right to petition. If enough people will pull together, we will be able to cover the legal costs without putting the burden on just a few. Already we have four lawyers who are donating their time to this lawsuit. If you agree with the value of this lawsuit, please help by donating whatever amount is comfortable. Checks need to be written to: Zoning Alert Watchman Committee Please mail to:

Ms. Mona Miller
7211 South Gary Place
Tulsa, OK. 74136

Need more information? Call Mona at 492-1481

Thank you, in advance, for your help.

Remember - your neighborhood or your corner could be next. We need to protect this basic right to express opposition.

One of the irksome things about the Council's discussion of the zoning protest process -- the ability of neighboring property owners to force a Council supermajority requirement to enact a zoning change -- is the insistence that the law is vague or unclear, which was unfortunate for the neighbors, but them's the breaks. Part of the confusion claim regards the deadline by which petitions must be submitted for consideration -- three days before the planning commission hearing, or three days before the City Council hearing. There's talk of rewriting the ordinance to clarify the issue.

This is a crucial issue, because in their evaluation of the petitions submitted in the F&M Bank / 71st & Harvard protest, INCOG planning staff rejected anything submitted after three days before the planning commission hearing. The neighborhood submitted amended petitions at least three days prior to the City Council hearing.

Here is a reading comprehension test.

Below is the text of Title 42, Section 1703, paragraph E of Tulsa Revised Ordinances. (To read it in it's full context, click here.)

E. City Council Action on Zoning Map Amendments. The City Council shall hold a hearing on each application transmitted from the Planning Commission and on any proposed Zoning Map amendment initiated pursuant to Subsection 1703. B. The City Council shall approve the application as submitted, or as amended, or approve the application subject to modification, or deny the application. Prior to the hearing on the proposed rezoning ordinance before the City Council, the applicant shall remit to the office of the City Clerk a publication fee, said fee to be in accordance with the schedule of fees adopted by resolution of the City Council of the City of Tulsa. In case of a protest against such zoning change filed at least three days prior to said public hearing by the owners of 20% or more of the area of the lots included in such proposed change, or by the owners of 50% or more of the area of the lots within a 300' radius of the exterior boundary of the territory included in a proposed change such amendment shall not become effective except by the favorable vote of three-fourths of all the members of the City Council. Ord. Nos. 17689, 18465, 18641

Here is your comprehension question: The phrase "said public hearing" refers to which public hearing?

A. The Spanish Inquisition.

B. Lee Harvey Oswald's arraignment.

C. The hearing of the zoning case by the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, in accordance with precedents from Minnesota, Tannu Tuva, and the court of Captain Kangaroo.

D. The hearing of the zoning case by the City Council

30 seconds.... Time's up!

Here's how to score your answer:

If you said A, B, or C, congratulations!!! You have the necessary mental agility to serve in the City Attorney's office! When confronted with a legal situation that may inconvenience a politically-connected business, you need creativity to make that inconvenience go away! It takes imagination to read into the text ideas that aren't really there. Good work!

If you said D, so sorry! You are a legal literalist. You are cursed with the ability to see things as they really are. You naively believe that words mean things. Pathetic, really.

Councilor Randy Sullivan was in the news recently in connection with the 71st & Harvard rezoning. He made the paper again yesterday, over a zoning change that he opposed earlier this year, an opposition that had costly consequences for a new private school. His bizarre behavior in this case raises serious questions about his fitness for office.

Sullivan, who represents near south Tulsa, was one of those who led the charge for the controversial rezoning of 71st & Harvard. He was a major recipient of funds from F&M bank officers and won an early endorsement from the Whirled, which is owned by the chairman of F&M, Robert Lorton. At the October 30th council meeting, at which the neighborhood's protest petition was discussed, he voted to cut off debate before the shenanigans of INCOG and the City Attorney's office could be fully aired. Then he voted to invalidate the neighborhood's petition, even though it met every legitimate legal test. He took several opportunities to carp at his colleague Chris Medlock without adding anything substantive to the discussion. He also made some bizarre comments about being under a tub. Finally, he voted for the rezoning, in violation of the Comprehensive Plan.

I first met Randy Sullivan when we appeared as City Council candidates to speak to a Republican club. I asked him why he decided to run for Council, and his answer shaped my opinion of him, and that initial impression has been confirmed time and again. He told me that he and former Councilor (and prominent Chamber Pot) John Benjamin had been lounging in a hot tub while on a skiing vacation in Colorado (Aspen, if I remember correctly), and Benjamin encouraged him to run. Initially, he planned to run against Todd Huston, but then found out that Todd Huston wasn't his councilor, so he switched to run for the seat being vacated by Clay Bird. That gives you an idea of how engaged and concerned he was about city issues before plunging into politics.

As I said, there was a situation a few months ago when Mr. Sullivan actively fought against a very minor land use change. This case pitted him against the formidable Charles Norman, the man who wrote Tulsa's zoning code as City Attorney. Sullivan persisted in his lonely crusade against the change, despite the absence of objections from anyone else, baffling long-time observers of zoning issues.

I hear that, rather than propose reforms and clarifications to the zoning protest process, councilors are lining up to punt the whole issue back to the TMAPC. The proposal will be on the agenda Thursday night. The proposal would direct the city clerk's office to provide packets of information about the rules for filing a zoning protest as they have been applied, and then would ask TMAPC to study amending the process, and report back to the Council when they're good and ready -- no deadline. And to give the issue back to the TMAPC? The TMAPC is stacked with people who want to be sure that a protest can never succeed.

Clearly, most of the Council wish this issue would go away. They hate having to choose between the big donors who fund their campaigns and the people who vote for them. Punting the issue back to TMAPC would give these councilors some political cover with their constitutents, without them having to do anything that would actually help their constituents. They're hoping the TMAPC doesn't report back until after the next election, if ever.

Let's show up Thursday night and hold their feet to the fire. Let them know that a vote for punting to the TMAPC is one more vote against fairness, against homeowners, against neighborhoods.

Monday night's meeting of neighborhood leaders was a great success. I'm only getting time now to write about it. I had to leave the meeting early to get to a Coventry Chorale rehearsal (our concert is Friday night at 7:30), then home to do bills, get a bit of sleep, then work (including a work meeting), a TulsaNow leadership meeting, and the Midtown Coalition meeting. Then some family business to take care of, and now finally a minute or two to blog before I pitch forward and fall asleep with the laptop as a pillow.

About 130 people from about 40 neighborhood associations gathered Monday night to discuss the 71st and Harvard / F&M Bank rezoning case, the hear about the legal process ahead, and to consider what can be done politically to address the way homeowners have been mistreated, not only in this case, but in countless zoning cases over the years.

Among the crowd were two current councilors (Medlock and Christiansen), two former councilors (Turner and Huston), and several potential candidates for council, including John Eagleton, who will be running for District 7, whether Randy Sullivan runs again or not, and Roscoe Turner, who will be running to recapture District 3 from David Patrick.

It was said several times that the anger over this issue is not about losing a zoning case, disappointing as that was, but over the illegal lengths to which officials went in order to disqualify the neighborhood's protest, stripping them of an important legal protection against arbitrary rezoning. I'm sure the councilors who supported this and the Mayor felt that the anger would soon subside and the issue would be forgotten. The fundamental unfairness of the process, and the unwillingness of most of the councilors and the Mayor to stand up for fairness won't soon be forgotten.

A leader from the 71st & Harvard area made one of the best points of the evening -- if this is the way zoning laws are enforced, we'd be better off without them. They provide only the illusion of protection to property owners.

I spoke for a few minutes about the political situation. There's no point in having rules unless you have honest, fair, and just rulers to enforce them. We need councilors who won't pass the buck. I called attention to the Chamber's infill report, and their radical plan to remake Midtown Tulsa, without regard for the people who have already invested in homes and businesses in their targeted areas. Zoning and planning were the stealth issues in the 2002 council campaign, with councilors and candidates targeted for defeat for being concerned with the impact of zoning changes on neighborhoods. In 2004 we can make these issues front and center. I warned the audience to expect fair and honest candidates to be trashed by the Whirled -- expect it and take it with a grain of salt. The Whirled will trash these people because of their positions on development and neighborhoods, but the Whirled will find was to marginalize them without raising these issues. I called for neighborhood leaders to find good candidates and support them with money and time.

After I finished and headed back to my seat, someone argued that the real problem is not with the Council, but with the TMAPC, and we need to work with the Council to bring about reform. I replied that if the current bunch undertakes reform we won't be happy with the results, and that we need to clean house first.

Councilor Medlock spoke of efforts to clarify the ambiguities in the zoning protest process. He was hopeful that even councilors who opposed the neighborhoods on this issue would support a modest reform to set out more clearly the standard a protest must meet. Medlock was praised by several of the speakers for his leadership on this issue.

I'm told that at the end of the meeting there was great support for moving ahead with legal action against the City and for taking political action. Several people commented about how hopeful the meeting made them feel. Me too.

Neighborhood leaders from across the city are meeting tonight (November 17), 7 p.m. at the Embers Restaurant, 81st & Harvard. The meeting is to discuss the 71st & Harvard rezoning case. Attorney Louis Bullock, who may be handling a lawsuit on behalf of the neighborhood, will be present. We'll also be talking about political strategy -- how to replace the buck-passing councilors who approved this with more fair and thoughtful Tulsans on the City Council.

Even if you aren't particularly interested in the 71st & Harvard case, the issues at stake -- how we do planning and zoning in Tulsa -- affects homeowners in every part of the city. You can make a difference. Please join us tonight.

On Thursday Mayor Bill LaFortune approved the rezoning of 71st & Harvard for F&M Bank. Although the Mayor was in town Thursday, his deputy Steve Sewell signed the ordinance in his stead. One City Hall observer who contacted me noted that there's an emerging pattern of the Mayor delegating the approval of controversial items -- the Mayor had Sewell sign off on giving a big chunk of taxpayer money to the Tulsa Metro Chamber for "economic development" activities during the Vision 2025 campaign, bypassing the Economic Development Commission.

Whether that's true or not, both the Mayor and the majority on the Council have engaged in buck-passing on this issue. Councilor Tom Baker told a gathering of neighborhood leaders that it wasn't his place to question the judgment of the City Attorney's office and INCOG planning staff. And now the Mayor is saying it's not his place to scrutinize the decision made by the City Council.

To which I say, why the heck did you bother running for office? We elect a City Council to act in part as a check on the unelected bureaucracy and on the Mayor's office. Councilor Baker, did you think that being a City Councilor was just a nice way to get some supplemental retirement income and health coverage for your declining years? Do you resent spending time studying and debating these important issues? Is that why you voted to cut off debate before any significant discussion had taken place?

And Mr. Mayor, where does the buck stop in your administration? Yes, it would be unprecedented for a Mayor to veto a zoning ordinance, but given the unprecedented amount of controversy, didn't you owe your constituents the courtesy of examining the issue independently? Shouldn't you be looking into questionable behavior by your legal department, which threw out a lawful protest petition? And with the threat of a major lawsuit looming, shouldn't you at least give the protestors a hearing? And if you're going to approve it, why not sign the thing yourself?

The property owners protesting the rezoning are planning an appeal, not only for their case but for the sake of homeowners across the City who have been mistreated time and again by the zoning process. Neighborhood leaders from across the city are invited to attend a meeting this Monday night, 7 p.m. at the Embers Restaurant, 81st & Harvard. Attorney Louis Bullock, who may be taking the case for the neighborhood, will be present. The meeting will not only cover the legal process, but will focus on political strategy, because the legal problem could have been avoided with more fair and thoughtful Tulsans on the City Council.

Too many of our councilors seem to be time-servers and buck-passers: Their mantra is "Don't rock the boat, do what the big shots tell us to do, don't think any original thoughts." Follow that path, and they can get the campaign contributions to keep drawing salary and benefits without having to break a sweat or strain the brain. We need to re-elect hardworking thoughtful councilors like Medlock, Roop, and Christiansen, and elect more like them to replace the councilors who just want to be bumps on a log.

Once again Councilors Joe Williams, David Patrick, Tom Baker, Art Justis, and Randy Sullivan cast a vote against fairness in the zoning process. That makes four votes each against fairness and for special interests for Patrick, Baker, Justis, and Sullivan, in just two council meetings. (Unlike the others, Williams voted to allow the debate a week ago to proceed.)

This Thursday night the Council again voted 5-4 on the second (and final) reading of the zoning map amendments for 71st and Harvard, allowing a bank and office park on land that has been for many years zoned residential and designated residential on the Comprehensive Plan. All this over the objections and formal protest of nearby residents.

I've been told that Councilor Williams was reconsidering his vote, but at the last minute, after strolling into the meeting with Randy Sullivan, he reverted to his particular plans. Once upon a time, he was a reliable vote for fairness in zoning matters. To see him acquiesce so readily to this sham of a process makes some wonder what is motivating him these days.

Now the Mayor will get the zoning amendment and has 15 working days to veto it or sign it. (The law will go into effect unless he acts to veto it.) He admits that he hasn't fully studied the issue, and has said that he wants to stay out of this, but perhaps with some encouragement he will change his mind. Please contact the Mayor (mayorlafortune@ci.tulsa.ok.us) and encourage him to examine the case carefully and put Tulsa city government on the right side in this dispute. Even though it will probably go to court either way, the Mayor's decision will establish which side will have the burden of proof and will bear most of the cost.

There are several amusing ironies surrounding the Council's approval last Thursday of rezoning for 71st & Harvard. Tom Baker, Councilor for District 4, was one of the staunchest supporters for the rezoning, voting the wrong way three times: to suppress debate, to reject the petition from neighboring property owners, and to approve the rezoning itself, despite its violation of the Comprehensive Plan.

Two days later Baker held a five-hour-long district planning session for selected neighborhood presidents. One wonders at the point of investing time developing a plan and providing neighborhood input to a public official who has only 36 hours earlier voted to ignore an existing plan and ignore organized, overwhelming neighborhood input.

Dear Mayor LaFortune,

Tuesday morning on 1170 KFAQ, Michael DelGiorno asked you if you would consider vetoing the zoning amendment sought by F&M Bank at 71st & Harvard. You paraphrased his question as asking if you would repeal the amendment, which was approved by a 5-4 vote of the City Council last Thursday. It will not become law without your approval. You said that this was a decision for the professional planners, the planning commission, and the Council, not for you as Mayor. While I appreciate your deference to the legislative branch of city government, I am writing to remind you that you have the power to veto this ill-advised amendment to our zoning ordinance, and to persuade you that it would be in the best interest of the city and of your administration to do so. By vetoing the amendment you would demonstrate your administration's commitment to fairness -- everyone plays by the same set of rules.

I was asked whether a Tulsa Metro Chamber committee report on infill development (posted here, comments here) was formally adopted by the Chamber or by any governmental body. I don't know that it has or hasn't, but in a way, it doesn't matter, because the ideas contained in it are already guiding the practice of land use regulation in Tulsa, in a piecemeal, evolutionary fashion, while its more radical concepts are on the wishlist of many influential people and institutions.

When I ran for City Council in 2002, I submitted to an interview by David Averill and Julie DelCour of the Tulsa Whirled Editorial Board. Given my opposition to "It's Tulsa's Time", I figured a new downtown arena would be the dominant topic. Instead, they were most interested in my positions on three issues. First, they wanted to know my position on abortion. I told them I am pro-life, and that I believe that we have an obligation to protect innocent, defenseless human life. They told me not to worry and that the Whirled sometimes endorses "anti-choice" candidates.

The second key issue was whether I approved of the use of government condemnation to "assemble" land for private redevelopment. Clearly they supported the notion. I told them I felt it was an abuse of the power of eminent domain. And they wanted to know where I stood on the six-laning of Riverside Drive, a pet project for them -- I oppose it because of the effect on the park and neighborhood, and said so.

An earlier entry contains a report on infill development by a Metro Tulsa Chamber committee. Here's how it fits into the bigger picture.

Infill development is often controversial, because it involves changing the use or size or appearance of an already-developed area. It puts at risk the investment made by neighborhing property owners -- good infill can enhance property values, bad infill can destroy them.

The bottom line for some developers is this: We should be able to build anything we want, tear down anything we want, anywhere we want. We want government to clear away any obstacles that stand in our way, including existing zoning laws. If a a property owner won't sell us property we want to redevelop, we expect government to declare the property as blighted, seize the land (paying "compensation" or course), and sell it to us. This document says that this is the only way our city can move forward economically, the only way Tulsa can halt the decline of retail in Tulsa caused by new retail development in the suburbs, the only way Tulsa can halt the decline of sales tax revenues.

Neighborhoods are unfairly identified as an obstacle in this document, a barrier to new retail and residential development in Midtown. Government is identified as a tool to be used, gearing deparments, boards, and commissions to "fulfill the mission". To gain the cooperation of the citizens, they must "become terrified of continuing the status quo".

All of the talk about "vision" over the last year was focused on building publicly-funded capital improvements, but a real vision should deal with the big picture -- what do we want Tulsa to look like, what do we want our own neighborhood to be like, and what do we need to do now to achieve that goal. Can Tulsa once again have a fair claim to the title "America's Most Beautiful City", a title we claimed in the 1950's? How we handle land-use regulation and planning today will determine if that goal will be achievable 20 or 30 years from now. It's a topic that deserves the attention of every concerned citizen.

Last week's 71st & Harvard zoning vote was just one skirmish in a decades-long struggle, largely conducted behind the scenes, between competing visions of the future development of Tulsa. Only one side appreciates the reality of the struggle and seeks to wage the war in a coherent, organized, and well-financed fashion, even as they seek to keep the public from noticing that the war is underway. The other side has a few people with an appreciation for the big picture, but most of the warriors show up for their local battle, then disperse once the battle is over, sometimes achieving a tactical victory, but never strategically positioned to acheive the objective.

A document has recently surfaced revealing the vision of politically-connected developers and the Chamber of Commerce and their "battle plan" to achieve their aims. Last week I was given a copy of a report generated back in January 2003 by a committee of the Tulsa Metro Chamber regarding infill development. "Infill development" means redeveloping already developed areas, or developing undeveloped spots in the midst of existing development. It contrasts with the kind of development that has characterized Tulsa for since WW II -- converting farmland into subdivisions and shopping centers.

Infill development is often controversial, because it involves changing the use or size or appearance of an already-developed area. It puts at risk the investment made by neighborhing property owners -- good infill can enhance property values, bad infill can destroy them.

I'll save extended commentary for a separate entry. Here are some key points that the committee makes in its report -- my paraphrase, but their ideas.

* There's a crisis because the suburbs now have retail, and suburbanites don't have to come into Tulsa to do their shopping. Sales tax revenues in Tulsa may not recover when the economy does. This threatens our city's ability to provide basic services.

* We need to build new attractions, and all of them should be in downtown Tulsa. We think housing downtown is a silly idea. No one wants to live there.

* Neighborhood empowerment and historic preservation zoning is an obstacle to achieving our aims.

* Commercial zones in midtown are too narrow for us to build cookie-cutter suburban stores in Midtown neighborhoods (and we don't know how to build anything else). So we should widen these zones and designate them specifically as redevelopment targets.

* We need more high rises, so we should "assemble" much of Brookside between Riverside and Peoria (through government condemnation) to allow high rises to be built there.

* We need to scare the voters into going along with this approach.

The text of the report is linked below, in the extended part of this entry. I plan to post the actual image of the report, including appendices -- when I do, I will link it from here. Please read it through, and if you don't like the vision it outlines, get involved in electing councilors who will support a better, inclusive vision that will preserve and enhance our city's beauty.

As always, Thursday's City Council meeting will be rebroadcast on Tulsa's Cox Cable channel 3, starting at 6 a.m. The debate on 71st & Harvard will begin about 6:30 and will run until about 9:30. Tune in: It will give you a chance to evaluate for yourselves the quality of representation you have on the City Council.

I got an e-mail last night from someone considering a run against an incumbent Councilor, asking how to proceed. The time is now to get organized and raise money if you want to make a serious run at it. Filing is in January, the primary is in February, and the general election in March. I'd be happy to provide the benefit of my experience to candidates who are serious about running and serious about serving the public interest with energy and intelligence. E-mail me at blog at batesline dot com. And if you're a registered Republican, contact Chairman Don Burdick at Republican HQ, 627-5702, chairman@tulsagop.org. If you're a Democrat contact Chairman Elaine Dodd at Democrat HQ, 742-2457.

[To keep this from filling the home page, I've put most of this report in the extended entry. Click the link after the next paragraph to read the whole thing.]

Just a quick note to let you all know that the Council approved F&M Bank's zoning application by a 5-4 vote -- Joe Williams, David Patrick, Tom Baker, Art Justis, and Randy Sullivan supported F&M's application and opposed the homeowners -- Chris Medlock, Sam Roop, Bill Christiansen, and Susan Neal voted against. All this despite an effective presentation by Medlock, and effective testimony from neighborhood representatives Mona Miller, Chris Denny, and Kay Bridger Riley, who did as effective a job as I've seen in making their case and remaining calm. (They were only able to speak at Councilor Medlock's behest. The public hearing was held on October 9, and this meeting was a continuance.)

I received word yesterday that the formal protest filed by property owners in the 71st & Harvard area has been rejected as insufficient by INCOG staff, and so a super-majority of the council will not be required to approve the rezoning of the southwest corner of 71st & Harvard. The rezoning case will be before the City Council tomorrow night (Thursday, October 30, 6 p.m.). Neighborhood leaders from across the city should turn out to support our fellow homeowners. You should also e-mail or phone your councilor (distX@tulsacouncil.org, 596-192X, where X is the district number) and register your opposition. You can also e-mail the council secretary at wshott@tulsacouncil.org to send a message to all nine councilors. The meeting will be in the Council chambers, starting at 6 p.m. (The location is marked as number 2 on this map of the Civic Center.)

(Click here, here, here, and here for earlier articles on the rezoning, with links to the application and the planning commission minutes.)

The proposed zoning change is not in accordance with the Comprehensive Plan and sets a precedent for commercial development at totally residential arterial nodes. This precedent could be applied at Midtown intersections like 21st & Peoria, 31st & Peoria, 31st & Lewis, 41st & Lewis. The change also breaks a promise made to area residents when they dropped their lawsuit against the six-laning of 71st Street.

State law and city ordinance provide a safeguard against arbitrary zoning changes. If owners of at least 50% of the lots within 300 feet sign a protest against the change, it requires a 3/4 vote of the council to approve it. That means there must be seven yes votes (abstentions count as if they were votes against).

The neighborhoods near the proposed change have done an excellent job of mobilizing and secured the necessary signatures, but INCOG and the City of Tulsa legal department have been working equally hard to find any technicality to disallow the protest. Today, INCOG land development staffers Wayne Alberty and Jim Dunlap went through the protest petitions and disallowed most of them with the encouragement of Alan Jackere, an attorney for the City of Tulsa. Here are a couple of the reasons used to disallow a protest:

* The property is jointly owned by husband and wife, but only one spouse signed. In one case, the husband's name is still on the deed, but has been dead for several years. That protest was disallowed.

* The property is owned by a trust (a means of avoiding probate), and the owner signed his name, but failed to sign it with the word "trustee".

The homeowners learned that these technicalities might be used and so they filed an amended petition, correcting any nit the lawyers might wish to pick. The amended petition was disallowed on the grounds that it was not filed before the initial TMAPC hearing (back on August 27), but there was a difference of opinion between two City lawyers, with Patrick Boulden saying the petition could be filed prior to the City Council hearing, and Alan Jackere saying it had to be filed prior to the initial TMAPC hearing. The wording in the ordinance (Title 42, Section 1703 E) is very clear that the deadline is three days before the City Council's public hearing.

I am informed that this provision has never been successfully used -- they always find a technicality for rejecting the protest.

So now the question is before the Council. Unfortunately, most of the City Councilors -- Patrick, Baker, Justis, Sullivan, Christiansen, and Neal -- received at least $1,000 in campaign contributions from F&M Bank Board members, and Christiansen is the only one of those six who opposes F&M's rezoning application. (Christiansen has constituents who would be affected by the rezoning, which may explain why he is opposing it despite the contributions.) The other five who got F&M money are said to support the rezoning, but we will find out for sure tonight.

Of the three who did not get funds from F&M -- Medlock, Roop, and Williams -- Medlock has been very supportive of the neighborhoods, working to ensure fair treatment of their protest petition, and leading the opposition to the change. Roop and Williams are also reported to oppose the change.

So it appears that Christiansen, Medlock, Roop, and Williams will oppose the rezoning -- if one more councilor would support the neighborhood, or even abstain, the precedent-setting rezoning would fail.

So please e-mail or phone your councilor, and if possible show up to speak in support of the neighborhood.

The F&M Bank 71st and Harvard rezoning issue is back on the City Council agenda this week. It's on the Urban and Economic Development committee agenda on Tuesday morning at 10 a.m., at which time it's expected that the neighborhood's protest will be certified, requiring approval of the zoning change by seven councilors. The zoning change itself will probably be before the City Council on Thursday night.

I am awaiting confirmed details, but I am told that several of the councilors who support the rezoning received campaign contributions from F&M executives. In doing some research into Savannah's zoning process, I saw this prominent notice, which appears at the top of the planning commission's agenda each week:

The Georgia Conflict of Interest in Zoning Actions Statute (OCGA Chapter 67A) requires disclosure of certain campaign contributions made by applicants for rezoning actions and by opponents to rezoning actions. Contributions or gifts which in aggregate total $250.00 or more if made within the last two years to a member of the Metropolitan Planning Commission, City Council, or County Commission who will act on the request must be disclosed by applicants. Persons who oppose a rezoning request by speaking before these officials, by direct contact with these officials, or in writing to these officials must also disclose such contributions. Disclosure reports must be filed with either the Clerk of Council or the Clerk of the Chatham County Commissioners, as appropriate, by applicants within ten (10) days after the rezoning application is filed and by opponents at least five (5) calendar days prior to the first hearing by the Metropolitan Planning Commission. Failure to comply is a misdemeanor.

This seems a fair way to provide the public with information to evaluate the performance of the councilors. I would hope that any councilor who took a significant amount of campaign money from F&M executives or board members would voluntarily recuse themselves from this decision.

The 71st & Harvard zoning controversy will come before the City Council this Tuesday morning in committee and at the regular Thursday night meeting. By a 7-1 vote, the planning commission (TMAPC) approved a zoning change from residential to light office to accommodate a proposed F&M Bank branch on what is now vacant land. While the bank may not have a detrimental effect on the surrounding neighborhoods, neighboring property owners are concerned that this change would set a precedent for rezoning residential land to commercial even when such a change is out of accord with the Comprehensive Plan.

Nearby property owners are concerned enough to file a formal protest with the City Council. The owners of over 50% of the property within 300 feet of the proposed change have signed on to the protest. By state law and city ordinance, such a protest means that the zoning change must be approved by 3/4 of the City Council (7 members of the 9) in order to be enacted. Three Councilors could block the change. This is a safeguard to protect neighboring property owners from arbitrary zoning changes.

There is a complication with the protest. Guier Woods, which constitutes the majority of the land within 300 feet of the proposed F&M site, is platted as a single lot owned as condominiums. Patrick Boulden in the City Attorney's office has written that the area of Guier Woods can't count toward the 50% unless every owner of every condominium, both husband and wife, sign the protest.

This is a nonsensical interpretation of the law which makes it impossible to mount an effective protest -- unless Guier Woods owners are unanimous (no opposition, no abstentions), 50% cannot be reached, even if the remaining property owners within 300 feet are unanimous in their opposition. While Guier Woods may be a single lot, units are bought and sold separately along with a share of the elements in common (e.g. the gatehouse). Units are also taxed separately by the county. Either the separate units should be treated as separate properties, or else Guier Woods's duly elected board should be able to protest on behalf of the entire development.

To illustrate the absurdity of Boulden's interpretation, imagine that one of the lots was owned by a public corporation -- by his approach, every shareholder of the corporation would have to sign the protest before that lot's area counts toward the 50% requirement.

This Tuesday, Councilor Chris Medlock will be putting forward a proposal to clarify the requirements for filing a protest, in accordance with a common sense interpretation of the state law. Without some clarification, an important safeguard for property owners will be neutralized by a technicality.

UPDATE: The minutes of the planning commission meeting, with details of the proposal and comments from commissioners, attorneys, and interested parties are online here, on pages 2-23.

When you buy a home in the middle of a neighborhood, surrounded by other homes, it's reasonable to expect that you won't wake up some morning to find your neighbor's house gone and a zinc smelter or slaughterhouse being built in its place. People less for a home next door to something busy and noisy, more for homes in quiet neighborhoods. That kind of price differential wouldn't make sense if any parcel could suddenly change to any other use. We have zoning an d planning laws in place to provide for orderly changes in land use, to protect the investment we've made in our property. Our zoning laws aren't perfect, but they ought to be applied evenhandledly. That doesn't appear to be happening in several recent controversial zoning cases that will soon be coming before the City Council.

One case is a proposal to rezone an area around the southeast corner of 41st & Harvard. The current zoning is RM (residential multifamily). As with the proposed F&M Bank at 71st & Harvard, the proposed change to the zoning runs counter to the city's Comprehensive Plan. Once this zoning change is approved, a second zoning change, called a Planned Unit Development (PUD), would combine the existing commercial zoning at the corner (the site of the Christmas tree lot) with the newly rezoned commercial area, plus some areas zoned for offices and single-family residential lots, to create one big commercial lot for a Wal-Mart neighborhood market and gas station.

We had the leaders of the neighborhood groups opposing the zoning change at the Midtown Coalition meeting a couple of weeks ago. They aren't NIMBYs: These homeowners would support commercial and multifamily development in accordance with existing zoning. The zoning change being requested is not in accord with the Comprehensive Plan for the parcels in question and involves a significant increase in intensity of use. They are not reassured by the fact that a PUD will be applied to the site, as they have an example on the NE corner of 41st and Harvard -- promises when the PUD was approved were then broken through amendments some time later.

In layman's terms, these neighbors bought homes that backed up to other homes. The adjoining lots were zoned and designated in the comprehensive plan for residential development. They had no reason to expect a supermarket loading dock across the back fence, and they paid some market-based premium on the basis of that expectation, which was grounded in existing use, zoning, and the Comprehensive Plan.

The key issue in this case and in the 71st and Harvard case, from the perspective of homeowner associations and neighborhood associations is the bypassing of the Comprehensive Plan.

The Comprehensive Plan is meant to give property owners and prospective property owners some degree of predictability. When considering the purchase of a piece of property, I should be able to look at the zoning map and the Comprehensive Plan and know what I am allowed to do with my land and what neighboring property owners are allowed to do, and the range of possible land use changes that may occur in the future.

Comprehensive Plan land use designations (such as "low-intensity residential" or "medium-intensity no specific use") are tied to zoning changes by a matrix which specifies which zoning categories (such as RS, CG, OL) are in conformance, are not in conformance, or which may be in conformance with the land use designation. By restricting the possibilities, property owners can invest with some degree of confidence that their investment will not be undermined either by an arbitrary zoning change or by an arbitrary refusal to grant a zoning change which is in accord with the Comprehensive Plan.

An owner's ability to make rational investment decisions is undermined by the frequent practice of changing the zoning without regard to the Comprehensive Plan, then amending the Comprehensive Plan after the fact to match the new zoning. Rezoning is no longer a matter of following the rules, but often who can hire the cleverest lawyer, or whether the applicant's plans will generate more sales tax and property tax revenue than the current land use.

I have heard it said that the TMAPC is right to ignore the Comprehensive Plan, since it hasn't been updated in ages, and there isn't any money to update it. The counter-argument is that there is no compelling reason for developers to push for a Comprehensive Plan update, because they can get any zoning they want without regard to the plan. (No land-use reforms will be considered by local politicians unless the development community is supportive, so great is its influence over local politics.) This reminds me of Oklahoma's old prohibition against liquor-by-the-drink, a law so often skirted that it was called liquor-by-the-wink. Only strict enforcement of the existing rules created pressure for reasonable reform.

The planning commission recommended approval by a vote of 5-4, and it will soon go before the City Council.

At last night's monthly meeting of the Midtown Coalition of Neighborhood Associations we discussed three contentious zoning issues. Taken together they raise the question of whether our land use planning process is broken beyond repair. Here's a bit about one of them.

On the southwest corner of 71st & Harvard, F&M Bank wants to build a new branch, along with a couple of smaller office buildings. (Here is the case report for the zoning change application.) Currently there is only residential development at that intersection, despite a six-lane arterial that carries over 50,000 cars a day past that corner. The site is vacant, zoned for low-density, single-family homes (RS-1). To put a bank on that corner, low-intensity office zoning (OL) is required.

The zoning change has been approved by a near unanimous vote of the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission (TMAPC) -- Dell Coutant was the sole dissenting vote. As a zoning change, it's a change to the city ordinances, and must go before the City Council for approval. That will happen in the next few weeks.

It would make life difficult for neighboring property owners if the City Council could grant any zoning change it wished -- if, say, they could arbitrarily rezone a residential lot in the middle of a neighborhood to permit a skyscraper. So as a safeguard, every parcel of land is assigned a land use designation by the Comprehensive Plan. This land use designation is supposed to limit the kinds of zoning to which the parcel can be changed. This often comes into play when pastures are developed -- the whole square mile may be zoned agricultural (AG), but the Comprehensive Plan map may show a land use designation of low-intensity residential in the center of the mile, medium-intensity commercial at the section corners ("arterial nodes") with medium-intensity residential as a buffer between. There is a matrix in the Comprehensive Plan showing which zoning classifications are considered "in accordance" with the different land use designations.

In this case, the Comprehensive Plan designates the site's land use as low-intensity residential, with which OL zoning is not in accordance, according to the zoning matrix. Nevertheless, the TMAPC voted to recommend approval to the City Council. If the Council approves the rezoning, at some point in the future, the TMAPC and Council will consider amending the Comprehensive Plan to bring it into line with the rezoning decision, thus putting the cart before the horse. This happens rather often, which raises the question of the value of having a Comprehensive Plan at all. If the Comprehensive Plan is consistently ignored by the TMAPC and the Council, it can't provide useful guidance to a property owner or prospective owner who wants to know what he will be permitted to do with his property -- or, just as important, what his neighbors will be permitted to do with theirs. Many planners and zoning attorneys insist that it makes sense to ignore the Comprehensive Plan, because most of it is over 20 years old, it hasn't been kept up-to-date, and there isn't the money to update it now.

A bank may very well be the least disruptive and most compatible land use for that site, but approving the change would mean ignoring the rules of the game, and setting a precedent for future inconsistent zoning changes nearby. Here's what Jon Stuart, who lives near the site, had to say in a letter to the Whirled:

This request should be denied because the longterm master plan contemplates no such zoning change and all four corners are zoned residential. This zoning, if passed, would be adverse on the city of Tulsa because it would open every single residential corner at the intersection of any arterial street to commercial zoning. It could lead to a zoning request free-for-all that could easily spread to 31st Street and Lewis Avenue, 41st Street and Lewis Avenue as well as any undeveloped corner in the city. Spot commercial zoning should be the exception, not the norm.

Once the corner is zoned for commercial, I think a strong argument could be made that the property next door could qualify for commercial zoning, which could eventually take us to the point where Harvard Avenue looks like 11th Street. ...

How this zoning request turns out will set the stage of residential zoning for years to come. The importance of this action will speak volumes for our city and its elected officials. ...

It would be better to go through the proper process to amend the Comprehensive Plan first -- have a debate about what kind of development belongs at that corner and at similar corners throughout the city. Consistent application of the rules and doing all things "decently and in order" serves the interests of homeowners and developers alike.