June 2009 Archives

We attended Tuesday night's free Starlight Concert at the River West Festival Park to hear a concert by the U. S. Air Force Band of the West, performing alongside the Air National Guard Band of the Gulf Coast. It was well-attended and well worth the time to go.

I think it must have been about 1970 when I first attended one of these concerts. They've been going for 63 years. Back then, they were held in Skelly Stadium, with a bandstand built over the lower west side stands and concert-goers sitting in the upper deck (which no longer exists). The programs were staffed by local union musicians -- I suspect it was a way to keep them busy during the slow season -- and featured light classical pops, big band hits, standards, Sousa marches, selections from Broadway musicals and movie sound tracks, and even a few recent pop tunes. It was a pleasant thing to watch the stars come out, to feel the air cool off, and to hear melodies floating on the breeze.

Back to 2009: For some reason the amphitheater wasn't used, so the crowd spread out on the goose-poop-covered festival ground to the south. (We forgot chairs, but had some beach towels in the van.) The lack of a proper bandshell made it hard to hear the music too far from the tent-covered concrete pad that served as a stage. But we found a place to the side, behind the percussion section, that allowed us to hear the whole band and to watch the percussionists work the chimes, bells, gongs, and drums.

We all enjoyed the concert. It began, as you might expect, with the National Anthem (the audience was invited to sing along). One of the highlights was a medley of themes from spy and detective movies and TV shows, including the James Bond films, the Pink Panther movies, Get Smart, Dragnet, and a few specific Bond movies (e.g. Goldfinger, Live and Let Die).

There were three featured vocalists, including Air National Guard Staff Sgt. Lane McCray, Jr. He sang "A Foggy Day in London Town" and Michael W. Smith's "There She Stands." The MC informed us that McCray was an international recording star, selling over 10 million records. You've probably never heard of him -- I hadn't -- but that just illustrates the disconnect between the American and European music scene. McCray had been on active duty in the Air Force and stationed in Germany, but left to pursue a career in music. McCray began singing as part of a "Eurodance" duo called La Bouche. Their first album shipped double platinum. According to the official website, "La Bouche sind Erotik und heiße Preformance mit Ohrwurmcharakter." (I don't know what that means, but I love German compound nouns.)

The concert ended with a medley of the official songs of the five branches of the Armed Forces, winding up as the band took to their feet to sing and play "Off We Go into the Wild Blue Yonder" (MP3 link). I was disappointed not to see "Stars and Stripes Forever" on the program, but they played it as an encore as the crowd clapped to the beat.

The Band of the West / ANG Band of the Gulf Coast goes on to Weatherford, Texas, for a Thursday night appearance, the final date of their week-long tour through Oklahoma and north Texas.

There are three more Starlight Concerts this summer, with the Starlight Concert Band under the direction of Dale Barnett, formerly the championship-winning band director at Union and Catoosa High Schools. Barnett has been directing the band for six years, but he started with the band as a trombonist and euphonium player in 1971. Each concert has a different theme:

July 7 - A Tribute To Super Heroes
July 14 - Movie Night
July 21 - Swingin' Under the Stars & Silent Auction

Each concert begins at 8. Tonight's show ended about 9:45. There are concession booths, but you can also bring your own refreshments.

The Starlight Concert Band will also play a concert in Kiefer this Friday night, July 3, at 8 pm in the municipal park.

It's a great (and free) Tulsa tradition. Bring the family, bring a picnic, and enjoy beautiful music under the stars.

A survey firm called me yesterday evening. It was a very lengthy survey about the upcoming Republican primary for Mayor of Tulsa, and it seems likely that it was on behalf of Tulsa City Councilor Bill Christiansen's campaign for Mayor, as there were many specific questions about him, his record, and his background, but none for any other candidate.

The phone number was 304-250-3311. The agent had a slight Hispanic accent and asked for me by name. She identified herself as being with Promark Research.

There were several interesting aspects to the survey:

Susan Neal, former District 9 City Councilor and current aide to Kathy Taylor, was included in the list of options for voting in the primary.

I was asked if I approved or disapproved of the City Council as a body. This is a misguided question: The Council isn't monolithic. I generally approve of the performance of some councilors but not of others, but that response wasn't an option.

Several questions had a long list of options, from which you could pick only one. Asking to rank importance of each option probably would have produced more useful data.

"Protect property rights against zoning laws" was one of the option for "most important issue facing Tulsa." I've got to think this was garbled in translation.

The end of the survey was a combination push-poll and sensitivity test. After an initial ballot question (who would you vote for in the Republican primary for Mayor?), a series of 10 questions were read, all of which began with "If you knew that" and ended with "would that make you more or less likely to vote for Bill Christiansen?" This series was followed by another ballot question -- a way to see if any of the statements moved one's vote.

There were several items in that list that caught my attention, specifically:

b. If you knew that as a City Councilor Bill Christiansen voted against raising the assessment on property owners to finance a downtown ballpark...

Christiansen actually voted for establishing the district and the assessment back in July 2008. He voted against the assessment roll last month. See Steven Roemerman's comments on Christiansen's ballpark votes:

• Christiansen's Ball Park Fail Whale Sandwhich
• But I didn't know that would happen...
• Hornsby votes against ballpark

e. If you knew that Bill Christiansen was strongly supported by the Tulsa Firefighters Association and the Tulsa Police Officers Association...

I asked the agent whether these endorsements had been publicly announced and was told "yes." Christiansen isn't even in the race, no such endorsements have been made, and there's no such thing as the Tulsa Police Officers Association.

f. If you knew that Bill Christiansen led the fight to stop construction of the South Tulsa toll bridge which would have increased traffic on Yale and ruined a neighborhood...

It would be fairer to say that the South Tulsa Citizens' Coalition led that fight.

h. If you knew that Bill Christiansen supported a plan to require City Councilors to take unpaid days off in solidarity with city workers who are required to take eight unpaid days of furlough...

Has he actually announced this? Or is he poll-testing something he may announce, if it polls well enough?

These last two items don't exactly shine with conviction and leadership:

i. If you knew that Bill Christiansen supported Mayor Kathy Taylor's $451 million tax increase to fix our city streets...

j. If you knew that Bill Christiansen did not vote for Kathy Taylor's increase of property taxes and sales taxes; all he did was support sending the measure to the voters of Tulsa...

MORE: Tulsa resident Mike Ball writes a letter to the daily paper about the editorial condemning Bill Martinson's budget alternative:

I just read your Saturday [June 20] editorial entitled "Nuts!" and was disappointed. You seem to have the same dismal understanding of finance exhibited by Bill Christiansen when he gets that, "...help! Space aliens have stolen my brain, and I don't know what I'm going to say next" look. What part of the presentation didn't you understand?

(You can view Martinson's presentation and his rebuttal to the FOP president on Councilor John Eagleton's website.)

Continue reading to see the full list of questions. Numbering is my own. Consider all of this a paraphrase, as I could only take notes so fast.

Bryan Osborne has officially entered the race to succeed Bill Christiansen as a Tulsa City Councilor for District 8. (Christiansen is expected to run for Mayor.)

Paul Wizikowski has already announced his candidacy. Phil Lakin, CEO of the Tulsa Community Foundation, manager of Tulsa Stadium Construction Co. LLC (the sole bidder on the new downtown ballpark), chairman and trustee of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, is reported to be considering a run.

Here is Osborne's announcement press release:

Osborne Announces Candidacy for District 8 City Council Seat

TULSA, OK (6/27/09) Local businessman J. Bryan Osborne announced his candidacy for the District 8 City Council seat today.

"Public service should be about serving the public, not special interests," Osborne said. "Priorities for city government should be straight forward: well staffed and trained police and fire departments, good roads, ample sewer and flood water drainage systems, and well maintained public properties. City government needs to meet these needs and do so in a fiscally responsible manner. A good city councilor works to ensure those things get done and helps his fellow citizens to resolve issues related to city government."

Osborne, 46, believes that "elected officials are stewards of the hard-earned dollars of taxpayers and therefore have a duty to spend those dollars with great care." "If there are budget shortages, we have to find ways to trim the budget while encouraging business and job creation to increase the tax base," he said. "As a conservative, I simply do not believe that higher taxes are the answer."

Osborne is owner of the Huntington Learning Center in Tulsa, a supplemental education provider whose mission is "to give every child the best education possible." He is an active member of the Tulsa Chamber of Commerce, serves on the chamber's Education Advocacy Task Force and in the Oklahoma Scholars program, which is designed to encourage students in Tulsa Public Schools to make the most of their high school academic opportunities and be better prepared for the future.

In local politics, Osborne ran for Tulsa County Republican Party Chairman earlier this year, has served on the party's Executive Committee and as Platform Committee Chairman. He also currently serves as the Precinct Chairman of Precinct #173.

"Tulsa is a wonderful city and even better days are ahead. We need to work together to strengthen our community and create an even better city, not only for ourselves but for future generations."

For more information visit http://www.bryanosborne.com.

Earlier this week, Dewey F. Bartlett, Jr., who represented District 9 on the Tulsa City Council from 1990 to 1994, announced that he is running for the Republican nomination for Mayor of Tulsa. Bartlett has run for office two other times. He finished second in the August 25,1992, 54-candidate free-for-all special election to replace Rodger Randle; that election was won by acting mayor Susan Savage. In 2004 he ran for the open State Senate District 33 seat. Tom Adelson, seen as the likely Democratic nominee for mayor, won that election 51.5% to 48.5%, a 910 vote margin.

Bartlett made his announcement at the Tulsa Press Club, but the event wasn't open to the public. A friend tells me that she was told to leave by Karl Ahlgren, one of Bartlett's campaign consultants. Ahlgren is the A in AH Strategies; Fount Holland is the H. Both men used to work for Tom Coburn during his time in the U. S. House, but Coburn's principles don't seem to have rubbed off on them. The two have followed the money in recent years, working for campaigns to raise taxes on Tulsa County residents. Holland was involved in a nasty smear campaign against Republican District Attorney Tim Harris on behalf of Brett Swab, who was running against Harris in the primary.

I lived in Brookside for most of Bartlett's tenure on the Council. At the time, he seemed to be supportive of neighborhood concerns, backing Brookside's objections to commercial encroachments into the neighborhood and winning passage of an ordinance designed to hinder the proposed six-laning of Riverside Drive north of I-44. The ordinance, Title 10, Chapter 3, requires any proposal to fund the widening of Riverside or Houston to be put on the ballot as a separate proposition.

More recently, however, Bartlett has taken a number of disappointing public stances. In 2005, he lent his name to the effort of "Tulsans for Better Government" to reduce the number of council districts to 6 and create three city-wide at-large council positions. The proposal would have diluted representation for north, west, and east Tulsa. The three at-large councilors would almost certainly have come from the Midtown money belt, overrepresenting those priorities at City Hall.

According to reports of Bartlett's announcement, he has nothing but praise for Kathy Taylor's tenure. Bartlett enthusiastically endorsed Taylor's re-election prior to her decision not to run again.

At his announcement, Bartlett trotted out the usual blather about "partisan bickering," which always seems to translate to "councilors should shut up, hurry up, and do what I say." It suggests to me that he intends to treat the City Council with the same degree of contempt as the current mayor. The opposition to Taylor's budget and the ballpark assessment wasn't borne of partisanship, but it was motivated by concern for fairness and sound fiscal policy. I appreciate councilors who are willing to stand on principle, even when there's a political price to be paid, and I want a mayor who will respect council opposition instead of trying to steamroll it.

Using the phrase "partisan bickering" pretty much guarantees you won't get my support. Using it is a sign that either you haven't been paying attention or you don't appreciate vigorous public debate of the issues.

Bartlett says he wants to increase city revenues by increasing Tulsa business, not by raising taxes, which is interesting because I can't remember a tax increase he has opposed in recent years. In fact, I'm pretty sure he endorsed a couple.

Today at a Tulsa County Republican rally, I spoke to Jarred Brejcha, who is working on Bartlett's campaign. (I didn't see Bartlett at the event.) I told him that Bartlett has some fences to mend if he hopes to win grassroots Republican support. When Brejcha told me that Bartlett is open to listen to all sides of an issue and all parts of the city, I replied that what matters is whose advice Bartlett will heed when it comes time to make a decision.

Bartlett's name gives him a huge advantage, as was demonstrated in 2006, when Robert Bartlett (no relation) won the Republican nomination for Tulsa City Council District 4 without actively campaigning. Older Republicans fondly remember his father, Dewey F. Bartlett, Sr., who served one term as Governor of Oklahoma (1967-1971 -- defeated by David Hall for re-election in 1970 by two thousand votes), then served a single term in the U. S. Senate from 1973 to 1978. The senior Bartlett died of lung cancer in 1979 at the too-young age of 59.

The rumor around the rally is that Councilor Bill Christiansen will make his formal announcement a week from today. There's also a rumor that Christiansen has hired campaign media consultant Fred Davis. (I spotted Davis last Monday on United's non-stop flight from LAX to Tulsa.)

The only other announced Republican candidate is small businessman Clay Clark, aka DJ Clayvis.

MORE: Chris Medlock notices an interesting similarity between Bartlett's campaign logo and Kathy Taylor's.

Tulsa City Councilor Bill Martinson has issued a response to Saturday's press release from Tulsa FOP president Philip Evans. Evans attacked Martinson's budget presentation from last Thursday night, a presentation that highlighted the growth and size of the Police and Fire departments' portion of the city's general fund revenues, characterizing Martinson's proposal as an "attempted coup."

(You can now view the Martinson presentation online on Councilor John Eagleton's website, without needing a copy of PowerPoint. You will need the free Adobe Flash player installed.)

Some highlights of Martinson's response:

As I stated to both Chief LaCroix and Chief Palmer on Thursday night, my intent was not to attack, but rather to prepare both departments for a drastic decline in funding dictated by economic reality. Since Police and Fire have managed to consume 100% of our sales tax operating revenue, I feel they must be prepared to adjust their operating structure to keep expenses in line with those revenues. My proposal Thursday night accomplished just that. The choices were theirs to make and, despite the budget approved by the Council and their hopes to the contrary, they may still face those choices and sooner than they think....

The public safety unions have done a masterful job of dictating policy. This needs to stop and elected officials must assume responsibility for the Citizens....

The unions, Administration, and certain City Councilors argue that the only option in reduced funding is to reduce staffing. This is true only if they wish it to be.... For example, it is not unusual for the City to re-negotiate contract terms, and while I have not been a party to any of the pending contract negotiations, prudent business practice would be to include language allowing for a revision in compensation structure, including perks, should conditions so dictate. If a relief provision is not incorporated in the agreements, one must wonder why, or one must ask why protecting certain union paychecks is more important than protecting the City....

Contrary to their persistent cries for more manpower, the Police and Fire unions have parlayed this unabated 35% increase in funding into fewer positions rather than more. Not only have the unions successfully negotiated with the Administration to utilize the additional funding to enrich their members rather than increase staffing to serve the City, but the Mayor, Chief Palmer, and the FOP have all ignored Tulsa's ordinance pertaining to take home vehicles....

Click the link to read the whole thing.

A browser crash took out a bunch of edits to a post about my recent trip to southern California, and I'm in no mood to recreate all that now.

So crack open a Mulo and visit Irritated Tulsan and his collection of vintage ads from summers past, including one for the Kip's Big Boy at 11th and Trenton. He's got some pretty neon photos, too, and he wants your favorite memories of Bell's Amusement Park.

Modern Tulsa has a photographic recap of the "Living in Hi-Fi Tour" of Lortondale's mid-century modern homes.

Holly Wall has a guest post up at Tasha Does Tulsa reporting on Thirsty Thursday at Drillers Stadium.

A fascinating new blog, Tulsa Gal, focuses on Tulsa history. Nancy is a researcher and volunteer for the Tulsa Historical Society.

Finally, make your blood boil with the Infrastructurist's then-and-now photos of beautiful train stations that met the wrecking ball.

According to the PLANiTULSA website, the "Which Way Tulsa?" survey is still open for voting until midnight tonight, so if you haven't yet done so, take a few minutes to pick you preferred scenario for future growth and development.

On Saturday, I received the following press release from Philip Evans, president of the Tulsa Lodge #93 of Fraternal Order of Police, in response to Tulsa City Councilor Bill Martinson's presentation during the Council's debate on Thursday, June 18, 2009, about the budget. Here is Evans's statement, verbatim:

The Fraternal Order of Police does not normally take an active roll in public theatrical politic, but in light of the attempted coup of Thursday evening's City Council meeting there is actually no choice. When four elected leaders, Counselors:
Westcott, Gomez, Eagleton, and Martinson, actively attempt to get rid of 20% of public safety officers from both the Police and Fire service, the public needs to take notice. There are two main misconceptions that need to be addressed.

The public generally has no idea of how police officers are paid, however, city counselors are not the general public and should be well versed on our system.
Many years ago the City established a "universe of comparable cities", ten cities much like Tulsa in size and population. The goal was to make our wage system comparable to
that of similar cities. The Fraternal Order of Police Negotiations Team struggles to bring Tulsa up to the average wage; but Tulsa currently remains near the bottom of the list. And even remaining low on the list requires spending over $100,000 a year on arbitration, lawyers and forensic accountants. The FOP has been contemplating changing the tactics to just comparing Oklahoma cities instead of a nation wide group. If such happens, Tulsa, being the second largest city in the state, would rank about fifth in wages.

As a result of the last city council meeting, the FOP dissected Mr. Martinson's presentation slide by slide in light of the most currently available data. The FOP believes that the data presented by Martinson was out of date and to the direct benefit of his budget proposal. The below link to the original budget proposal is: http://www.johneagleton.com/documents/20090618-C5-Budget-Presentation-v.2.ppt

There are some interesting points of data that were available, yet were "hidden" from his presentation. Most 2008 crime data was available, but Martinson chose not to present it since the outcomes were antithetical to his point.

For example, slide 48:
Violent crime, 1997: 4,596
Violent crime, 2007: 4,552

But in 2008, there were 4,992 violent crimes--from the data in Martinson's own presentation. That's an 8% INCREASE IN CRIME. Also, Martinson cites a "73% explainable variation" co-relation of unemployment and crimes on slide 30. Crime peaked when unemployment hit 6.5 in 2003.
The Tulsa World just reported that Tulsa's crime rate is now 6.3%.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/business/article.aspx?subjectid=11&articleid=20090
620_11_A1_Oklaho643816

If Martinson's historical perspective is true, then we should prepare for increased crime according to the same variation. On Martinson's own terms, the "historical variation" suggests about 31,500 crimes will occur--versus the 28,500 he portrayed in 2007.
So, that would portend a 10% CRIME INCREASE. According to Martinson's proposal we would have to fight 10% more crime--with 149 fewer officers. There are many issues with the actions of Thursday's night City Council Meeting. The Fraternal Order of Police believes the public needs to be aware of the course the four councilors were attempting to chart. If the Mr. Martinson would have received one more vote, the Citizens would have woken up July 1, 2009 with 149 fewer police officers, and approximately 120 fewer fire fighters.

Councilor G. T. Bynum, who voted for the Mayor's budget, wrote previously that "under our contracts [with police officers and firefighters] we can't reduce salaries/benefits so the result of [Martinson's] proposal would have been to lay off 20% of our police and firefighting forces.

Tonight the Tulsa City Council approved Mayor Kathy Taylor's budget by a vote of 5-4. The budget reflects deep cuts due to falling revenues and includes mandatory unpaid furloughs for city employees.

The four councilors who voted against Taylor's budget supported an alternative by Councilor Bill Martinson. Before your knee jerks and you assume Martinson was motivated by sheer partisanship, head over to Councilor John Eagleton's website and download Martinson's budget presentation. It's an 8 MB PowerPoint file, but it's eye-opening and worth the trouble. (For number crunchers, the raw numbers behind the charts and graphs are embedded in the PowerPoint file.)

The presentation highlights the growth of Police and Fire Departments' share of the budget over the last 40 years, during which time the police and fire budget has more than tripled in constant dollars, while land area and population have grown by 13% and 17% respectively. So even if you had expected the police and fire budget to grow proportionately to population and land area and in line with inflation, the current budget is two-and-a-half times bigger than you would expect based on those factors.

Over the same 40 year period, police and fire personnel have only grown from 1,151 to 1,612, only about a 50% increase, despite the inflation-adjusted tripling of the budget.

In 1968-9, police and fire (including capital equipment) made up 32% of the General Fund. In 2008-9, police and fire (excluding capital equipment, which is now paid for from the Third Penny fund) makes up 57% of the General Fund.

Here's another way to look at it: In the current fiscal year (2008-9), the first two cents of the sales tax, which goes to the General Fund, were budgeted to bring in $142.8 million in revenue. The Police and Fire Departments budget for 2008-9: $142.8 million.

The problem isn't payroll, evidently: From 1999-2000 to the budget for 2009-2010, the police and fire budget grew by 35% (not adjusted for inflation) while the number of employees shrank from 1660 to 1597.

What about the City's many other areas of responsibility -- neighborhood inspections, parks and recreation, internal auditing, the legal department, human resources? Martinson provides several examples where a department has increased its revenues while cutting expenses, effectively, as Martinson puts it, "donat[ing] revenue to the Police and Fire Departments."

According to Martinson, Taylor's budget, revised for new, lower revenue forecasts, would put the combined police and fire budget at 105.23% of the projected General Fund sales tax revenue. Martinson proposes cutting that number and restoring $3.9 million in funding for materials for keeping our roads drivable (salt, sand, concrete, and aggregate), nuisance abatement, animal welfare, mowing, security and recreation programs for public housing, and other basic purposes.

Go read the whole thing, and let me know what you think.

UPDATE: Via e-mail, Councilor G. T. Bynum provides some perspective on Martinson's presentation and his vote in favor of Taylor's budget:

I thought Bill's analysis was pretty powerful when it came to the increase in funding not equating to an increase in manpower. At the same time, under our contracts we can't reduce salaries/benefits so the result of his proposal would have been to lay off 20% of our police and firefighting forces. That was too much for me.

In a later e-mail, Bynum wrote, "Whomever negotiates our next round of contracts needs to do a better job of protecting the City's flexibility."

Red dirt, rockabilly, and western swing with Oklahoma ties are on tap this summer at Cain's Ballroom:

Wanda Jackson, the Queen of Rockabilly, from Maud, Oklahoma, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame back in April. After playing dates in London, Glasgow, and Interlaken, Switzerland, the rest of this month, she'll be at Cain's on July 7 with Nancy Apple and Ronnie Elliott, presented by the Woody Guthrie Coalition. Tickets are $24 for general admission, $39 for Gold Circle (tables down front).

(Wanda will play a Summer Breeze concert in Norman on July 12, and the Poncan Theater in Ponca City on September 19.)

Hot Club of Cowtown -- Elana James on fiddle, Jake Erwin on bass, and Tulsa resident Whit Smith on guitar -- bring their blend of Bob Wills and Django Reinhart to Cain's second stage on August 19. Tickets are $12. Hot Club's new album, Wishful Thinking, is due out this summer. The album will include the song, "Hey, Beautiful," whose lyrics are taken from a letter by Staff Sgt. Juan Campos, in Iraq, to his wife Jamie, back home in McAllen, Tex. Campos died in the line of duty in May 2007:

Campos' words were among those published in a New York Times article on March 25, 2008, under the headline "Six of the Fallen, in Words They Sent Home." One of the readers was Elana James, singer and violinist in the Austin band Hot Club of Cowtown; she was immediately struck by Campos' message.

"Here are people (who) have very modern ways of communicating, and yet they're so far away," James says. "I didn't think it was poetic, but I was bowled over by the writing and especially the one Campos letter. It was so beautiful; he said everything in that one brief letter. Also, none of it was about him -- it was about his caring for other people."

Stirred by the sentiments, James started thinking there was a song there. She worked out a melody, composed an arrangement, then recorded it with the band. It's a departure from Hot Club's usual Western swing and vintage jazz; James' voice floats breezily above a country-folkish melodic line, her violin underpinning it all. The tempo starts slowly, picks up in the middle, then winds down near the end. The song's mood exists in a zone between whimsical and mournful, ending up at matter-of-fact. It stays with you.

Hot Club is offering "Hey, Beautiful" as a free download on its Web site; James plans to include it on the band's upcoming album, to be released early in 2009, and is working out details for any royalties the song might generate to be given to Campos' family (she's been in touch with them via e-mail).

You can listen to "Hey, Beautiful" and clips from previous albums on the Hot Club of Cowtown website.

On August 28, the Red Dirt Rangers will celebrate their 20th anniversary with a free show at Cain's. Donations will be accepted with all proceeds going to charity. The band was recently the subject of an Urban Tulsa Weekly cover story by Mike Easterling.

All three shows begin at 8 pm; doors open at 7. All three shows are open to all ages.

Time to stop procrastinating and pick a scenario for Tulsa's future growth. Tomorrow (June 18, 2009) is the deadline for completing the "Which Way, Tulsa?" survey.

Dear Tulsan:

Over the past 8 months, input from thousands of Tulsans has been gathered at public workshops throughout the city, collected through surveys and recorded during interviews. Based on all these ideas for Tulsa's future, the PLANiTULSA team has developed four different scenarios of how future growth in Tulsa might look.

The PLANiTULSA team wants your opinions, thoughts and feedback on these four scenarios. We've prepared a survey for you to rate various aspects of the scenarios. During a month-long survey drive, May 12 - June 18, we hope thousands of Tulsans will fill out the survey. The more the better! The survey results will drive the process of turning the four scenarios into one shared vision for Tulsa's future.

The survey is available online at www.planitulsa.org

Thank you from The PLANiTULSA Team!

MORE: Mike Easterling covers the end of the PLANiTULSA survey in today's new edition of Urban Tulsa Weekly:

John Fregonese, president of Fregonese Associates--the Portland, Ore.-based urban and regional planning firm charged with coordinating the city's comprehensive plan update under the auspices of PLANiTULSA--said his firm has received roughly 2,000 online responses and 1,000 paper responses to the four potential development scenarios for the city's future it unveiled during a rally on May 12 at Cain's Ballroom.

The deadline for submitting responses is Thursday, June 18. Fregonese said last week his organization was making a coordinated, last-minute outreach effort to get input from as many groups as possible by circulating surveys at churches, rallies and meetings of various organizations. He said the firm was specifically targeting Tulsa's Hispanic community for more input.

In the end, Fregonese said, his firm expects to have 4,000 to 5,000 responses--a number that would be proportionate to what the firm's comprehensive plan update work in cities such as Austin, Portland and Salt Lake City has attracted.

Here's my May 20 column on concerns about the PLANiTULSA survey and what will be done with the results and my May 6 column previewing the scenarios.

Notes about demolition and neglect, here and elsewhere:

From the Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society.

Red Fork's oldest remaining high school building is to be demolished. The 1925 building served for most of its history as Clinton Middle School, but when first built it was the high school for the Red Fork district, which was previously located on the Park Elementary campus, which dates back to 1908. (The Park high school was built in 1918, according to the Sanborn map, but has been gone for decades.) Clinton continued as a high school until 1938, when Daniel Webster High School opened. This story tells about the time capsule discovered in its cornerstone:

When officials took down the cornerstone, they found a copper box not much bigger than a car stereo in a gap in the brick wall.

In it, they found a small U.S. flag with 48 stars, several yellowed copies of The Tulsa Tribune newspaper, and lists of members of the Order of the Eastern Star, Red Fork Masons, Red Fork school board members and faculty and staff members at Clinton, which was a high school in 1925.

The Tulsa Public Schools website has a slide show and high resolution images of some of the objects in the Clinton Middle School cornerstone.

The first time I found my way onto W. 41st Street many years ago, I was impressed and amazed by the civic buildings along this half-mile stretch between Union Ave. and Southwest Blvd:Trinity Baptist Church, Pleasant Porter School (originally Clinton Public Grade School), sited in a shady grove of tall trees, Clinton Middle School, and the Clinton Memorial First Baptist Church of Red Fork -- each had a certain dignity that marked Red Fork not as a suburb, but as a town in its own right. The old Baptist Church was demolished to make way for the new Clinton Middle School; now the old school is being torn down after 84 years of service.

(Here's some more historical information on the Clinton family and the school that stood on their old homestead.)

Four miles north-northeast, someone has taken photos of the interior of the Tulsa Club building, on the northwest corner of 5th and Cincinnati. The art deco building has been left to rot, unsecured, by its current owner, and it has become the target of graffiti vandals who seem to know that no one cares. I've been in the building twice: Once for the school prom ("Dutchman Weekend") my sophomore year in high school, and once just after the Tulsa Club shut down for good and the fixtures were auctioned off. There are hints of what once was, but the interior is pretty well trashed.

On to Detroit, where the last vestiges of old Tiger Stadium, aka Briggs Stadium, are being demolished for no good reason. The infield stands still stood, and preservationists had been working successfully to raise funds to preserve them, maintain the diamond as a community ball field, and use the stadium structure as a museum to house broadcaster Ernie Harwell's collection of memorabilia. Despite the progress of preservationists in raising funds, the Detroit City Council decided to turn even more of their once-bustling city into flat nothingness.

Neil de Mause explains what made Tiger Stadium special and worth saving:

Tiger Stadium is now the last surviving example of an old-style upper deck overhang. Yankee Stadium will be gone shortly; Fenway Park doesn't have an upper deck to speak of; and Wrigley Field, for all its charms, has a top deck set way back from the action. That leaves the sliver of stands still standing in Detroit as the only place in the world where baseball fans will be able to experience what was once commonplace: cheap seats that, thanks the miracle of cantilevering and the willingness to make some field-level patrons sit in the shade, are closer to the field of play than all but the priciest field-level seats at modern stadia -- stunningly close at Tiger, where Tom Boswell famously wrote that sitting in the upper deck behind home plate and watching Jack Morris pitch enabled him to truly learn the importance of changing speeds.

I saw a game there once. In 1988, my last full summer of bachelorhood, my friend Rick Koontz and I went on a week-long "Rust Belt Tour" that took us to Wrigley Field, Comiskey Park (the original one), Tiger Stadium, Cleveland Municipal Stadium ("the mistake by the lake"), and Riverfront Stadium. 21 years later, only Wrigley still stands. We had great seats to watch the Tigers play the Yankees, a game the Tigers won, 7-6 in the bottom of the ninth, a six-run inning that concluded with an Allan Trammell grand slam home run. It was the most exciting game of the trip, and a great place to watch a game. (It was also the night the Pistons lost to the Lakers in Game 7 of the NBA finals. We were relieved, given Detroit's reputation for violent celebrations.)

National Trust for Historic Preservation president Richard Moe writes of Tiger Stadium:

Demolishing the stadium is a mistake. Even in its diminished, partly demolished state, the stadium served as a defining feature of the historic Corktown neighborhood-a reminder of better days, but also a cornerstone for future revitalization of the community. Redevelopment of this iconic historic place for, among other things, youth baseball leagues, could transform it back into the thriving center of community activity that it once was. Now, city leaders have chosen a course that will in all likelihood lead to yet another empty lot in Detroit-the last thing the city needs.

More from the National Trust for Historic Preservation on Tiger Stadium's demolition:

Despite a protest at Tiger Stadium last week, Detroit contractors began razing the 1923 structure the following day. Late Friday afternoon, a judge issued a temporary restraining order, which should have halted all destruction, but crews continued demolition until the end of the day.

On Monday Wayne County Circuit Judge Prentis Edwards lifted the restraining order and rejected the conservancy's request for the injunction.

"[Demolition crews] were out there an hour after the decision. They didn't waste any time," says Michael Kirk, vice president of the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy, which requested a permanent injunction to halt the demolition. "We don't understand it. There's no other development deal pending for the site, so the need for speed doesn't make any sense."

City attorneys argued that the conservancy could not raise enough for the $27 million construction project to retain Navin Field, the oldest part of the existing stadium complex.

Plans to demolish the remaining section of the old stadium were set back in motion after a 7-1 vote on Tuesday, June 2, by the board of Detroit's Economic Development Corporation. Waymon Guillebreaux, executive vice president, said in a statement last week that the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy "is still far short of its targets" agreed upon in a memorandum of understanding with the city that was signed last fall and claimed the conservancy did not have "secure commitments for funding the project."

The board acted despite $3.8 million earmarked by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) for the Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy's plan; an identified $19 million from new market, "brownfield," and state and federal historic tax credits (some of which were already applied for and approved); and $500,000 in grants, loans and private donations.

Lowell Boileau, a painter, created a website in the late '90s called The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit, a site that contains hundreds of images of abandoned and now-demolished buildings, including abandoned suburban buildings that took the place of previously abandoned urban buildings.

Zimbabwe, El Tajin, Athens, Rome: Now, as for centuries, tourists behold those ruins with awe and wonder. Yet today, a vast and history laden ruin site passes unnoticed, even despised, into oblivion.

Come, travel with me, as I guide you on a tour through the fabulous and vanishing ruins of my beloved Detroit.

It's a tour worth taking -- well-organized with an "express" path that hits the highlights, and "detours" that allow deeper exploration.

Sadly, at a time when mainstream public support for historic preservation is growing, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has decided to squander its hard-won credibility by turning its blog over to the promotion of "gay pride" during the month of June, in a series of posts that have nothing to do with preserving and protecting historic buildings. (One exception: There is a post about preservation in West Hollywood; the "gay" connection is that it was written by a preservationist drag queen.) The latest example is this essay on "gayborhoods" entitled "Pardon Me Sir, But Can I Queer Your Space." This is a classic example of a venerable organization being hijacked to serve someone's personal agenda rather than the cause for which it was founded.

My nephew is a Guitar Hero virtuoso. He would love to win the Aerosmith Opening Act contest. To do that, he needs the most views of his YouTube video, showing him getting a 100% score playing Aerosmith's "Sweet Emotion."

You can help. All you have to do is click play -- as many times as you can. If everyone visiting this blog plays the video just once, it would give him a great start. Thanks for your help.

Frustrated by meetings that drag on and on without ever reaching a conclusion? Angry at members who seem to delight in postponing a decision? Feeling steamrollered by the majority?

If you're an officer or a member of a neighborhood association, committee, or civic organization, some knowledge of the basic rules of order -- parliamentary procedure -- could help your organization have more enjoyable, efficient, and productive meetings.

The Oklahoma State Association of Parliamentarians is holding a training seminar on parliamentary procedure this Friday from 9 to 4 and Saturday from 1 to 4 in Oklahoma City.

Friday morning's workshop covers parliamentary basics: quorums, abstentions, different kinds of motions, the process of handling motions, agendas.

Friday afternoon moves on to more advanced topics: Handling amendments, keeping minutes, nominating and electing officers, maintaining decorum in debate, and methods of voting.

Saturday afternoon will cover substitute motions, the motion to lay on the table ("the most misused and abused motion"), and "bring back motions" ("how an organization can change its mind").

You can find full information on the seminar flyer. For more information and to register, call 405-330-9273 or 405-524-8953.

If you're going to be involved in your community, you're likely to end up on a board or committee at some point, and you'll want to know the rules of the road.

I learned parliamentary procedure from watching my dad run monthly business meetings at our Southern Baptist church, and it's been helpful knowledge at Republican Party conventions and City Council meetings. Robert's Rules of Order are the product of a hundred years of experience and refinement, providing you with simple rules that work 95% of the time and with precedent to handle the difficult cases, too.

You've got just six more days to respond to the PLANiTULSA "Which Way, Tulsa?" survey -- to express your opinion on the way Tulsa should grow over the next 25 years. Whether you prefer the Main Streets approach (Scenario B), "New Centers" (Scenario C), or "Centered City" (Scenario D), or whether, like the Owasso real estate agent quoted in a Sunday newspaper story, you'd like most of the region's growth to happen outside of Tulsa's city limits (Scenario A), take a few minutes to express your opinion.

In addition to the multiple choice questions, there are several questions at the end that allow free-form responses:

7. The scenario survey asks about a few major components of the comprehensive plan, such as housing and transportation strategies.

• Are there any significant issues that you would like to see given more attention?
• Is there anything about the specific growth scenarios, that doesn't fall under the previous questions that you would like to tell us?

8. If you could focus the comprehensive plan on just one part of the city, which area would it be?
(Be as general or as specific as you like)

9. What policies or strategies would you like to see the City of Tulsa pursue?

10. Please use the space below to provide any other comments that you would like the PLANiTULSA team to receive.

Another opportunity to express your opinion comes in the form of Urban Tulsa Weekly's Absolute Best of Tulsa runoff ballot. Deadline is June 25 at 5 pm. Multiple choice this time, in about 70 categories, mostly food and drink, but you can also vote for Best City Councilor (only three choices, though) and Biggest Ego.

UTW is also sponsoring an expanded music awards program this year -- the Absolute Best Music Awards. Voting is now open and will continue until July 17. You can listen to music samples for each nominated artist, so it's a great way to get to know the Tulsa music scene.

Tulsa City Councilor G. T. Bynum sent out an email today announcing his decision to run for re-election to his District 9 post, rather than running for the mayor's seat left open by Kathy Taylor's decision not to run for re-election.

Bynum's decision leaves five councilors who have not officially announced their intentions regarding the mayor's race. Rick Westcott (District 2) and Bill Christiansen (District 8) have both said they're considering the race.

Here is Bynum's announcement, posted with his permission.

Family, Friends & Neighbors:

In the week since Mayor Taylor's surprise announcement that she would not seek a second term, many of you have emailed and called me with your encouragement to run for mayor. I can not convey how much it means to me that, based on my work in a brief time on the Council, you would enthusiastically entrust me with what I honestly believe is a sacred duty: managing the day-to-day affairs of the city in which we live with the people we love.

That is what drew me to run for the Council: the people I love live here, and I want the place where they live to be the best it can be. That has guided all of my decisions on the Council.

But with a rambunctious 2-year-old at home and a baby due in September, the people I love the most - our young and growing family - need me right now as a husband and Dad. Those are more important jobs to me than being mayor. I am also not so full of myself as to think I don't have anything to learn before seeking such an important public office.

I am hopeful that someone with political courage will step forward in this race, because that is what our City needs: performance audits of all departments, utility rates in line with costs, a clearly-defined and strategic partnership with the County, a second streets proposal to finish the work of the first, river development, and a bipartisan approach to governance. All of these will be tough, some of them will be unpopular, but all of them are needed. These are the issues I would have focused on as a mayoral candidate, and these are the ones I will focus on in my re-election campaign for City Council District 9.

The City Council is a tremendous opportunity for citizens to play a part in the life of our City without the taxing impact on family life that comes with the job of mayor. I love my work on the Council, and am eager to seek another term.

For all of you who have encouraged me to run for mayor, I'm honored by your faith in me.

GT

Photo from the Tulsa City Council website.

There are a couple of tours happening in and around Tulsa this weekend that may tickle your fancy:

An all-day bus tour of historic all-black towns will take place this Saturday, from 7 am to 5 pm. Freed slaves from the Muscogee (Creek) Nation founded a number of towns south and east of Tulsa around the turn of the 20th century. Other towns were established in the newly opened Oklahoma Territory at the end of the 19th century as part of a black statehood movement.

The tour is $30. For information and to make reservations call 918-596-7280. (Found via TheMidtowner.)

This New York Times story is a good introduction to Oklahoma's all-black towns. Alison Zarrow has made her photoessay on Oklahoma's black towns, Wish You Were Here, available online.

This Saturday evening, 5:30 to 8:30 pm, the Modern Tulsa committee of the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture is hosting a tour of homes in the mid-century modern neighborhood of Lortondale, east of Yale Ave. between 26th and 28th Streets.

Designed and built in 1954 by Tulsa duo Donald Honn (architect) and Howard Grubb (builder), the Lortondale Neighborhood was the recipient of a multitude of national design awards. The neighborhood was featured in an array of magazines including House and Home and Better Homes and Gardens.

In recent years Lortondale has experienced something of a rebirth. A new generation of homeowners, interested in modern design, are snapping up the houses just as fast as they come on the market. After decades of neglect, many of the houses in the neighborhood are being restored to their former modern glory. Most importantly, the Lortondale Community is experiencing the same restoration.

This year's tour seeks to convey the energy that is the Lortondale Neighborhood today. Featured are 6 houses in various stages of completion. From the beginning stages of a restoration to a virtually complete example of HiFi-modern bliss, this tour of Lortondale will show you what all the buzz is about.

Tickets are $10 in advance, $15 the day of the tour, and available at Dwelling Spaces, Urban Furnishings, Ida Red Boutique, and the Tulsa Foundation for Architecture office. All the details are available at the Modern Tulsa website.

The tour is self-paced. You can start at any home and purchase a ticket at the first house you visit:

• 4912 E. 26th Terrace
• 5331 E. 26th Pl.
• 5342 E. 26th Pl.
• 4953 E. 27th St.
• 4958 E. 27th St.
• 5312 E. 27th St.

There's an ongoing online tour you can follow vicariously. A family is visiting all 77 of Oklahoma's counties, taking photos, and recounting their travels. You can follow their progress on the 77 Counties blog. (The latest entries will also be linked on the BatesLine Oklahoma headlines page.)

More linkage, less thinkage, until I get out from under the pile:

Abandoned Oklahoma is a website devoted to photography of abandoned places around the state. Homes, industrial sites, parks, schools, churches. Sites include the Labadie Mansion in Copan (north of Bartlesville), the Santa Fe Depot in Cushing, the Page-Woodson School in Oklahoma City, the Hissom Memorial Center near Sand Springs. The photos are fascinating, often poignant.

A similar site, Underground Ozarks, has several pages devoted to Monte Ne, southeast of Rogers, Ark.

The abandoned million-dollar resort known as Monte Ne was the dream of former Liberty Party presidential candidate William Hope "Coin" Harvey. In 1901, the eccentric Harvey purchased 320 acres near Rogers, Arkansas to become a health resort, political headquarters, and place for civilization to arise after the apocalypse (which Harvey believed was imminent). The resort had two massive hotels, an enclosed plunge bath, a golf course, and gondolas to ferry visitors across the lagoon. In later years, Harvey even added a Roman amphitheater, which is now submerged under Beaver Lake.

Russell Johnson has much more information about Monte Ne and Coin Harvey.

And now for a deliberate, man-made ruin:

(This really deserves an entry of its own, but for now I just want you to see the link.)

Blair Humphreys is getting caught up on his blogging, and the most dramatic thing he's posted is this map of the Oklahoma City urban renewal plan. The map, created in 1965 by MIT-trained architect I. M. Pei and Carter & Burgess, defined the areas of downtown to be cleared and redeveloped according to the Pei plan. Blair has shaded the map to highlight the doomed zones. It's nearly everything from NW 6th to SW 3rd, from Western Ave. to the Santa Fe tracks. (Bricktown, east of the tracks, was spared.) Click through to see a much larger image and to read Blair's comments.

Blair notes that "old plans can tell us a lot about how the city came to be the way it is." He has scans of many important Oklahoma City plans and hopes to put them all online in the future.

I'm in the throes of a major effort at work and only have time to throw you a few links to good reading elsewhere:

For your viewing pleasure, Tulsa TV Memories links to the Life archive and photos from February 1952 of KOTV general manager Helen Alvarez. Besides photos of the lovely Mrs. Alvarez, the archive shows the Channel 6 news, weather, and sports sets of the day, plus photos from the Sun Refinery and of a powwow. (Does this qualify as a Rule 5 post?)

Irritated Tulsan discovers that the Boulder Ave. bridge is safe enough -- for the crane that's demolishing it.

Steve Roemerman has posted a new podcast, reacting to Councilor G. T. Bynum's comments during last week's ballpark assessment vote.

Chris Medlock has a new podcast up, reacting to comments about city election "reform" made by former Mayor Susan Savage. And he talks to State Sen. Randy Brogdon about the legislative session and the gubernatorial campaign.

Jack Webb, of "Dragnet" fame, was the announcer for Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys? Yes, indeed! For a few months, at any rate.

Back in 1946, Bob Wills had a weekly half-hour radio show on San Francisco's KGO, broadcast live from the Oakland Auditorium Theatre. TiffanyTranscriptions.com, a website devoted to the mid-'40s for-radio-only recordings that captured the Texas Playboys at their swinging best, has a section on the KGO Bob Wills broadcasts, with a couple of sound snippets of Jack Webb and the Playboys and a script for a Hollywood broadcast for which Webb served as both announcer and MC.

In 1946, Webb starred in two radio series for KGO: The Jack Webb Show, a comedy show, and Pat Novak for Hire, a detective series.

The sponsor of the broadcast was Fisher Mills, maker of Zoom instant hot cereal. One of the jingles (you can hear it on this page, which also has a KGO Bob Wills show script) went like this:

For a breakfast that's delicious
That will banish morning gloom
Joe and Jane and Aloysius
All eat instant cooking Zoom.

The jingle concludes with a trademark Junior Barnard guitar lick. I'd like to shake the hand of the songwriter who rhymed "delicious" and "Aloysius" -- brilliant! The singers are probably Evelyn McKinney, Dean McKinney, Eldon Shamblin, and Tiny Moore -- the four sing together on "It's a Good Day" (which you can find on the Tiffany Transcriptions: McKinney Sisters disc) and the sound is very similar.

RELATED FOUND STUFF:

Excerpt from Dirty Linen magazine interview with Tom Diamant on how he and Jeff Alexson, his partner at Kaleidoscope Records, brought the Tiffany Transcriptions back to life in the 1980s. (I've got a copy of the issue on order.)

Panhandle Country, Tom Diamant's weekly show on KPFA.

Diamant recommends the Collectors Choice reissue of the Tiffany Transcriptions but notes some history missing from the set:

I have two complaints which I have expressed to Collectors Choice. The Tiffany Transcriptions were rescued from a basement in Oakland California by Kaleidoscope Records owners the late Jeff Alexson and me, Tom Diamant. We dubbed them, chose the songs for those first 9 albums plus the McKinney sisters one, sequenced them, arranged for the notes by the original musicians, supervised the whole thing, and originally released them on Kaleidoscope Records yet we are not credited by name on the Collectors Choice issue, except for doing a couple of interviews. Also, the marvelous art work that appears on the original albums and the covers of the Collectors Choice CDs was done by Elizabeth Weil, who is also not credited. We receive no royalties for these later reissues, but it would have been nice to have a line of type acknowledging our efforts.

On Eric Banister's Tiffany Transcriptions box set review, Diamant explains what's not in the box set:

There were over 460 recorded items, by Bob Wills for the Tiffany Transcriptions including false starts, incomplete takes, intros and outros, mic checks, a Zoom Cereal jingle, etc.

There were over 360 or so complete takes recorded. Many are not so good but are interesting just the same. A chronologicaly ordered, complete box set would not be easy listening and for fanatics only. Those first 9 CDs were the cream of the crop (there is a volume 10, but it was never issued and that's another story. The McKinney Sisters was part of a different series and not considered Volume 10. Although everyone seems to call it that.)

Ted Gioia's Jazz.com on Bob Wills and the Tiffany Transcriptions

A.V. Club review of the Tiffany Transcriptions box set

The Wall Street Journal review of the Tiffany Transcriptions box set features steel guitarist Herb Remington on his guitar trios with Tiny Moore and Eldon Shamblin:

The new center of action, however, is an unprecedented three-part-harmony string section made up of Eldon Shamblin on electric guitar, Tiny Moore on electric mandolin, and Mr. Remington on steel. To Wills's country-breakdown dance numbers, such as "Stay a Little Longer," and the blues and pop tunes like "What Is This Thing Called Love?" that the band always had played, this lineup adds string-dominated turns on songs of Duke Ellington ("Take the 'A' Train"), Benny Goodman ("Mission to Moscow") and other leading lights of Swing.

"That wasn't an accident," Mr. Remington recalls. "We were all trying to do session work, and these tunes were in our minds and bodies from listening to the Big Bands. We had DC power and an amplifier in a little room in the back of Bob's new bus -- and the three of us would work out things like 'At the Woodchoppers' Ball,' but with strings only. By the time we got to the job we could play it, but then Bob might get drunk or something and never call the tune." Some of those "never called live" bus-born arrangements would become Tiffany session tracks -- and without the time limitations of recordings of 78 rpm singles, there's time for the solos as well as those instrumental harmonies.

Blurt Online review of the Tiffany Transcriptions box set: A few missed facts (the box set has the same tracks as the Kaleidoscope releases, and Oklahoma Hills is Jack Guthrie's song, not his cousin Woody's), but some good insights.

From Bob, what might have seemed corny, contrived and phony from someone else was, well, corny, sometimes contrived but hardly false. Bob Wills had loads of charm and a love of music making that transmitted easily to live audiences and are just as much in evidence on record, especially in this almost dauntingly comprehensive collection.

...There were better fiddle players and singers, more prolific songwriters and certainly there were more graceful dancers but somehow Bob Wills caught lightning in a bottle. He was that rarest of musical people; a great bandleader. They are generally good to great musicians but more than that they are strategists, spokesmen, focal points and sometimes even jesters and clowns.

Time's March 15, 1954, cover story on Jack Webb covers his KGO years

More about Pat Novak for Hire, Jack Webb's first crime series

Pat Novak for Hire -- 23 episodes at the Internet Archive. With Raymond Burr as the obnoxious cop! (UPDATE 2019/09/20: That link's dead, but you can find Pat Novak for Hire episodes here.)

Loads of great noir narration from Pat Novak for Hire:

"He was a tough, hard cop, with a heart big enough to hide behind a piece of birdseed."

"The street was deserted except for a couple of winos, near the corner, trying to buy back 1926 at a dollar a jug."

"So far it was working out like a crossword cut in half."

"She had nice hair, and the dress helped too. It was dark blue and had a V-neck, but the designer believed in big letters."

UPDATE 2019/09/20: In 1975, Jack Webb walked out of a house in Encino with a single suitcase, leaving all the contents to the new owners. This weekend, their estate, containing many items once belonging to Jack Webb, is for sale. Click through to see the photos.

I've got some thoughts about the Council's 5-4 vote to approve the assessment roll of the Tulsa Stadium Improvement District -- the controversial funding mechanism for funding the Tulsa Drillers new downtown baseball stadium -- but no time right now. Watch for something Monday morning.

Steven Roemerman has posted some hard-hitting commentary about the vote. It has extra relevance as the mayoral race looms near. It's a hard thing to say, "wait," or "no," when everyone is shouting that we must act and must act now. It's even harder to do that from inside a baseball mascot costume. Steven's commentary:

• Christiansen's Ball Park Fail Whale Sandwich
• "But I didn't know that would happen..."
• Hornsby votes against the ballpark

An excerpt from the second of the three entries:

Aside from the citizens exercising their right to vote her out of office, the Council is the only check and balance to the Mayor. It is the Council's duty to flush out such things before passing something as weighty as a 64,900% increase on a downtown assessment on the citizens of Tulsa. To complain now is sad and pathetic. Moreover, the very idea that Councilor Christiansen is thinking about running for Mayor now after this fiasco is insulting and scary.

Tulsa's Mayor has a lot of power, and the person that sits behind that desk on the top floor of the One Technology Center needs to be a strong leader, one who makes the tough calls, and flushes out all the details before making important decisions. We do not need a follower that stands in the Council chambers complaining that they cannot see past the next action they will take.

I haven't been watching much TV lately, but I'm told that Mayor Kathy Taylor's valedictory ads, trumpeting her record as mayor, have already begun to run on local stations.

I spoke to someone this morning who has some direct, recent experience with advertising on local TV. He says there's no way you could decide on a Thursday not to run for re-election and the next day start running TV ads. It takes at least two weeks to line up air time. It also takes time -- days, not hours -- to write, shoot, and produce a minute-long commercial that is as well-done as Taylor's "I'm not running" ad. This suggests that the decision not to run was made at least two weeks ago.

His speculation is that the ads are intended to create a groundswell of support for her to reverse course and run for re-election. Taylor is benefiting from news stories reviewing her term of office as if she's already gone. Her fans on local message boards are shouting down any criticism of her performance. For the next month, she can pose as someone above the fray of politics, as her potential successors jockey for funding and support. Then she can file at the last minute for re-election, reluctantly submitting to a draft.

What's the benefit of such a scenario? Here's one possibility: Before Taylor announced her withdrawal, the question among Republicans was who would "draw the short straw," "take one for the team," and run an almost certainly futile campaign against someone able to spend a million dollars on her own re-election. You can't run for mayor and run at the same time for re-election as councilor, so it would be hard to convince more than one councilor to abandon easy re-election for a doomed effort.

But if she's out of the picture, it suddenly becomes conceivable that you could raise the funds for a successful race for an open seat. Two, maybe three Republican councilors throw their hats in the ring, thinking the odds are worth the risk. In this scenario, Taylor lines up her allies to run for those now-open council seats, then jumps back into the mayor's race at the last minute, after the councilors have already filed to run for mayor, too late to back out and run for re-election. Taylor gets back in for another term with a more compliant council that won't challenge her decisions.

Even if Taylor doesn't re-enter the race, it's almost certain that there is an anointed successor waiting in the wings, possibly someone capable of self-funding to the same degree as Taylor. This scenario could still serve as a trap, luring councilors away from seeking re-election to safe seats, putting together last minute citywide campaign teams, and finding themselves up against an experienced campaign organization ready to do battle.

In 2002, when J. C. Watts announced at the last minute that he wouldn't run for re-election to Congress, only one potential replacement wasn't caught flat-footed: His longtime political adviser Tom Cole, who went on to win the seat. Cole drew some primary opposition from Marc Nuttle, and with several months to raise money Nuttle, with his connections to national conservative organizations, could have been a formidable candidate. Instead, Nuttle had only six weeks from Watts' announcement to election day in which to decide to run, organize a campaign, raise money, and meet voters. On primary night, Cole had 60% to Nuttle's 33%.

The scenario presented by my friend was intriguing, but I'm still inclined to believe that Taylor is setting herself up to run against Congressman John Sullivan next year. It would look crass if she said anything now, while he's still in rehab, but if she waited until he returns -- beginning of July at the earliest -- it wouldn't leave much time before the city filing period for someone else to get ready to run. The "I'm rising above politics to take care of the city" approach would get her out of the mayor's race, make room for someone else to get in, without seeming insensitive.

You may wonder why I'm not taking her at face value. She can very easily run the city and run for mayor at the same time. It's not like a statewide race where you have to travel incessantly to campaign. And it's not as though she has to knock doors, call voters, and lick envelopes herself. As mayor, campaigning or not, she'll be out in the community. She could do her job and then pay her PR people and campaign advisers to spin her record and get her message to the voters. There's something else going on here, and the decision to run slickly-produced campaign ads after officially "ending" her campaign only solidifies that suspicion.

UPDATE: Rusty at the OKDemocrat forum notes media interest in the story.

BREAKING NEWS: Gov. Brad Henry has vetoed HB 2246, the initiative petition reform bill to which Rick Carpenter alludes in the essay below, despite near unanimous support from the legislature. According to an e-mail press release from Oklahomans for Responsible Government late last night, "[Henry] claims that the provision that protects petition circulators from harassment is a violation of free speech."

Rick Carpenter was one of three people indicted and handcuffed for their involvement in circulating the Taxpayer Bill of Rights initiative petition.

Rick and I were primary- and middle-school classmates, and his passion for politics was evident at an early age. (There are a couple of stories I could tell....) That early passion has endured.

After the legislature failed to approve Taxpayer Bill of Rights legislation, Rick led the effort to pass it by means of initiative petition. The number of required signatures combined with the short window of time to gather them makes it difficult to get a petition circulated without the help of paid circulators, particularly if your volunteer circulators are subject to harassment from members of groups that feel threatened by the petition. TABOR supporters hired a firm with previous success circulating petitions in Oklahoma. They brought in circulators from out of state, just as supporters of the ban on cockfighting had done in 2002.

But TABOR and a companion petition against eminent domain abuse were unpopular with those groups and businesses dependent on government funding and with the government officials who enjoy the power of doling that funding out. TABOR petitions were disqualified on the grounds that some of the circulators were not bona fide residents of Oklahoma. The State Supreme Court ruled against the petition but refused to hear oral arguments, and the TABOR initiative was thrown off the ballot. That would be enough of a setback, but officials went further and sought indictments of Rick Carpenter, Susan Johnson, head of the petition circulating firm, and Paul Jacob, a consultant on initiative campaigns.

The Oklahoma 3 were indicted and handcuffed in court, just for the cameras. At length, the Federal 10th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the 1969 law, under which the Oklahoma 3 were the first to be indicted, violated the 1st and 14th amendments to the Constitution. After first announcing plans to pursue the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, Edmondson dropped the charges on January 22, 2009, the day after the 10th Circuit refused Edmondson's appeal.

Rick has written a powerful essay on his experience and its significance for democracy in Oklahoma, and with his permission, it's appearing here on BatesLine. An excerpt:

The Attorney General, his political cronies, bigwig CEOs and labor unions, the Oklahoma axis of evil, were not content to defeat these two petitions. They wanted to make people fearful to participate in the petitions process. They knew the issues were popular among voters and it was just a matter of time before another petition got on the ballot. Clearly, the opposing long-term strategy was to make examples of us so Oklahomans would think twice before asserting their free speech. They want to intimidate citizens, like me, from sponsoring future petitions and out-of-state consultants, like Paul and Susan, from daring to do business in Oklahoma.

While they would never be able to remove initiative petition rights from the Constitution, they can use the law to make life very difficult on anyone who chooses to circulate a petition that the power structure does not like. I found myself the target of an angry and vengeful government, determined to tell the people of Oklahoma, "Don't you dare come between the government and your money or property".

By filing charges and threatening us with 10 years in prison, the Attorney General knew he would cause a chilling effect on petitioning in Oklahoma. All petitions face validity questions: some people sign more than once, some people sign who are not eligible, some people sign up under a name like "Clark Kent". The verification and challenge process is supposed to weed out those occurrences. If petition proponents fear facing criminal charges at each instance, nobody will be willing to sponsor a petition. Edmondson, the corporate CEOs funding his governor's campaign and labor unions endorsing him, would maintain control of ever-increasing amounts of taxpayer money and unfettered ability to seize private property.

Following our arraignment we were all three curiously handcuffed together, I suppose to keep us all in camera frame, and "perp walked", Rudy Giuliani style, out of the courtroom before a crush of cameras and reporters. The message was clear; this is what happens to you if you dare to circulate a petition that challenges the status quo.

Two must-read articles for today, the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, when the Chinese army, under orders from the Communist government, crushed a peaceful protest for democracy and liberty, killing hundreds.

Claudia Rosett of the Wall Street Journal was there in the pre-dawn hours of June 4 when the tanks rolled in to Tiananmen Square:

Tiananmen was -- and is -- important because that spring of 1989 was the only time in the despotic, 60-year history of the People's Republic of China that the people themselves enjoyed the chance to speak, debate and assemble freely. What they did with that freedom, by the millions, was call peacefully for China's government to institutionalize those rights. They called for democracy and marched under banners bearing exactly that word. They asked for the right to choose their leaders and hold them to account.

When China's Premier Li Peng declared martial law on May 19, just over two weeks before the actual crackdown, the people of Beijing set up bus and truck barricades and camped out in the streets to block any army advance. More whimsically, they created obstacle courses of noodle carts and potted plants. They were looking not for violence but for liberty. In the words of one white-collar worker, typical of many who helped man the barricades, "I think the most important thing for China is democracy and freedom."

And when China's rulers finally ordered the army to open fire and move in, these protesters tried desperately to hold their ground. Behind me as I ran into Tiananmen Square in those early hours of June 4 was a huge crowd -- ordinary citizens, not students -- who had poured into the streets, trying to stop the soldiers from reaching Tiananmen....

Near [the Statue of Democracy], which China's rulers had labeled "an abomination," I watched a handful of young doctors working out of a makeshift medical tent -- themselves in the line of fire -- trying desperately, in blood-stained smocks, to treat demonstrators hit by bullets. During a half hour there, I saw seven wounded rushed in. Then I moved away, fearing it was too dangerous. Before I left, I asked one of the doctors if he had expected the army would open fire. He answered, "Of course."

If you were watching in 1989, you recall the remarkable scene of a young man, carrying shopping bags, standing in the path of a column of tanks. When the tanks tried to go around him, he moved to block them again, eventually climbing up on the lead tank before being captured and led away. No one knows who he is or what happened to him.

Four western photojournalists who got shots of the confrontation from a nearby hotel provided reminiscences to the New York Times. They had to go to some lengths to get the film out of China. Charlie Cole, who was there for Newsweek, writes:

After taking the picture of the showdown, I became concerned about the PSB's surveillance of our activities on the balcony. I was down to three rolls of film, with two cameras. One roll held the tank encounter, while the other had other good pictures of crowd and PLA confrontations and of wounded civilians at a hospital.

I replaced the final unexposed roll into the one of the cameras, replacing the tank roll, and reluctantly left the other roll of the wounded in the other camera. I felt that if the PSB searched the room or caught me, they would look even harder if there was no film in the cameras.

I then placed the tank roll in a plastic film can and wrapped it in a plastic bag and attached it to the flush chain in the tank of the toilet. I hid my cameras as best I could in the room. Within an hour, the PSB forced their way in and started searching the room. After about five minutes, they discovered the cameras and ripped the film out of each, seemingly satisfied that they had neutralized the coverage. They then forced me to sign a confession that I had been photographing during martial law and confiscated my passport.

Stuart Franklin of Magnum:

The film was smuggled out in a packet of tea by a French student and delivered to the Magnum office in Paris.

Jeff Widener of the AP:

I had earlier accomplished my mission of photographing the occupied Tiananmen Square so I gave all my rolls of film to Kurt/Kirk who smuggled it back to the A.P. office in his underwear. The long-haired college kid was wearing a dirty Rambo T-shirt, shorts and sandals. Security would never suspect him of being a journalist.

Another photo, never before published, taken at street level just before the standoff, has surfaced. You can see it here.

The Communists are still in charge, still repressing freedom. A Google.com search for images of Tiananmen Square will turn up several pictures of "Tank Man" and other photos from the massacre. The same search at google.cn turns up standard postcard-style shots -- no hint of what happened there 20 years ago.

China is blocking access to blog sites like blogspot.com and wordpress.com, certain search engines, Twitter and Flickr. Dissidents are disappearing. Participants in the protests 20 years ago still suffer economic deprivation:

In recent days, the government has detained a number of political dissidents seen as threats to public order during the anniversary period, including one who had released an open letter complaining about economic hardship visited on former Tiananmen demonstrators who were jailed after the crackdown.

The dissident, Wu Gaoxing, was seized Saturday at his home in Taizhou, a coastal city south of Shanghai, according to the New York advocacy group Human Rights in China. Mr. Wu was among five men, all once jailed for their roles in the Tiananmen movement, who released a letter last weekend charging that former prisoners have been singled out for economic hardship long after their prison terms ended.

Human Rights in China said Mr. Wu was taken away and his computer confiscated about an hour after the letter, addressed to President Hu Jintao and other senior leaders, became public....

"In this society that claims to be harmonious, we have become 'citizens of the three have-nots waiting to die': we have no regular jobs, no pensions, and no health insurance; if we get sick, we can only wait to die, and all this just because 20 years ago we were sentenced for political reasons," the letter says.

The men, among them a former Communist Party member and a factory worker, said they had been denied pensions, health care and regular employment since taking part in local rallies that were inspired by the protests in Beijing.

When the government controls health care, banks, and industry, the government can punish dissidents by withholding access to jobs, medicine, and money -- something to keep in mind here at home. The Romans had a name for it: aquae et ignis interdictio -- deprived of fire and water.

Gao Zhisheng, a Chinese civil rights lawyer who won praise as an opponent of local government corruption but was persecuted for standing up for Falun Gong and other religions, is still missing after communist Chinese officials took him away from his home four months ago today. During previous detentions he was tortured with electric batons, starved, and beaten beyond recognition.

Pray for China. Pray for prisoners like Gao Zhisheng and Wu Gaoxing and their families. Pray for the persecuted church in China.

Some Americans complain about politics and partisanship and wish that dissidents and political opposition would shut up and go away so that our leaders can take care of the people's business. We need only look across the Pacific Ocean to see what that kind of society is like. I'll take liberty and democracy, thank you, bickering and all.

Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor has issued a press release saying she will not be running for re-election. She will hold a press conference at 5:30 at the Tulsa Press Club.

More as it develops.

UPDATE 6:15 pm: Taylor spoke very briefly and did not answer questions. She spent a minute or two greeting well-wishers like Tulsa Metro Chamber head Mike Neal, Convention and Visitors Bureau head Suzanne Stewart, and Sharon King Davis.

Taylor began her remarks with a list of accomplishments: A hangar for American Airlines to keep maintenance jobs here, completing the BOK Center, coping with the ice storm of 2007, "amazing progress" on the river, the entrepreneurial spirit awards, finding mentors for 400 students, and finalizing plans for the John Hope Franklin Reconciliation Park before Franklin's death.

Taylor decried a focus on personalities and partisan politics and expressed hope that stepping down would help the Council do the right thing with regard to the ballpark. (Tonight is the final vote on the assessment roll for the Tulsa Stadium Improvement District.)

Taylor said the primary reason for not running was to ensure the economic viability of Tulsa. She claimed that "we've turned this city around." She said she needed to be running the city, not running a political campaign. As she makes tough budget decisions, she doesn't want a partisan political cloud over decision making.

Taylor said she had no plans for the future but would continue to pursue her passions: education, small business, and greening Tulsa.

MORE: Taylor's letter to city employees at 5:30 this evening:

Together, we have opened a world-class arena, moved city hall to a modern and high-tech new space, seen amazing progress on the revitalization of downtown, made a significant commitment to our streets infrastructure, created new education opportunities for our children and recruited hundreds of mentors for at-risk kids. We have promoted health programs, had success with our "biggest loser" wellness program and worked side by side with community leaders with the shared goal of making our neighborhoods safer.

We have launched new initiatives in the areas of energy efficiency and we have pulled resources together to honor the many veterans and military families in Tulsa. We have made city government more efficient because of your participation in High Performance Government and our green initiatives are saving energy costs in departments throughout the city. We have supported emerging businesses with our Entrepreneurship Week and Spirit Awards and thousands of Tulsans have given us their input through our city's comprehensive planning process.

All of these initiatives and many many more have culminated in a record of amazing progress for the city we love. It is a record you can be proud of and I want to personally thank you for all you have done to make it possible!

Because of the serious budget and economic challenges we are facing, the next 6 months are going to be pivotal and frankly, very difficult for our City. Tough decisions will have to be made that may not be popular, but they will be fiscally responsible- and they will help secure Tulsa's future.

I have been in public service now for 6 years -- first as Secretary of Commerce and Tourism for the State and these last years as your Mayor. Amazing things can be accomplished when private citizens get engaged in their community.

Thank you again for your hard work and for allowing me to be a part of this great team of city employees.

It is an honor I will value forever.

Sincerely,
Kathy Taylor,
Mayor

KOTV's Dan Bewley went to Yale, OK, today to report on the demolition of Yale's Norma S. Velvin auditorium, the only remaining piece of the 1930s high school building. According to the report, Superintendent Mike Wilson claims that there are no student records or transcripts in the building and that anything remaining is infected with mold or beyond repair. Alumni who object to the demolition say there are still computers, printers, and trophies in the building.

At this point, it would be very difficult for someone to check on the contents of the building, although I'm told that demolition has been halted or at least slowed over concerns about a failure to remove asbestos. If in fact there is nothing of value left in the building, the superintendent would be more persuasive if he released a complete list of what was left in place and what was removed. Likewise, it would be easier to believe that no transcripts or student records were left if he would account for where all student records are currently stored.

Click the link to see the KOTV video:

I just learned that the Yale, Oklahoma, Board of Education -- the school board in Jim Thorpe's hometown -- is demolishing its school auditorium, named in honor of long-time teacher Norma Velvin. That's bad enough, but what's worse is that they've left school trophies and memorabilia inside the building, along with the student records that had been stored there. I'm told that the building is already being pulled down.

The agenda for the April 13, 2009, board meeting includes these items:

• Board to discuss the State Fire Marshal's Report regarding the Norma Velvin Auditorium with possible consideration of demolition.
• Board to approve/not approve the demolition of the Norma Velvin Auditorium as stipulated by the State of Oklahoma , Office of the State Fire Marshal.
• Board to approve/not approve the contract for demolition of Norma Velvin Auditorium as presented by the Superintendent.

The May 11, 2009, board agenda included this:

4. Board to discuss and vote to approve/not approve declaring contents remaining in the Normal [sic] Velvin Auditorium as of June 1st 2009 as salvage.

The auditorium is in bad shape from apparent neglect, and it appears that the State Fire Marshal ordered its demolition. That may excuse the demolition, but I can't think of an excuse for abandoning a community's history to the landfill.

According to a website devoted to renovating and restoring the auditorium to use, "Trophies of Yale Schools, Quay Schools, and Norfolk Schools still sit in the display cases and on shelves." This sort of material should have been removed and provided to a local historical society or the Oklahoma Historical Society. A trophy represents a moment of triumph, a team victory or an individual achievement.

Yale had a population of 1,342 in 2000. The school system has 549 students. I suspect that, as in many small Oklahoma towns, the school system is the largest employer. The school system is also often the one constant factor that binds together multiple generations in a community. Trophies, yearbooks, photographs, and newsletters make it possible for a young person to know something of the lives of their parents and grandparents when they were young.

A building helps to create that sense of continuity, too -- walking the same halls, sitting in the same classrooms.

From aerial photos it appears that the auditorium may be the last remnant of the WPA-era Yale High School. That last remnant is now being destroyed with a community's memories inside it. Yale seems determined to turn itself into a ghost town, remembered only as a dot on a map, with no past, and no future.

MORE: If student records were left in the building as salvage, the Yale school board may be in violation of state law. 70 O. S. 24-114 requires permanent retention of original student records and off-site or fireproof storage of duplicates of all permanent student records.

STILL MORE: J. Grau writes in the comments that the Fire Marshal gave the school the option of bringing the building up to code but says that the board only saw an altered version of the report. Grau writes that Yale Superintendent "Mike Wilson requested and accepted bids for the demolition of the building prior to the State Fire Marshal even making a statement as to it's condition and structural requirements." That statement appears to be confirmed by the April 2009 board agenda which has an item to approve demolition immediately before an item to approve a contract for demolition.

Via email, Tom Elmore points us to how Yale's Santa Fe depot was rescued -- by an out-of-towner buying it and moving it to an acreage near Cushing for use as the Cimarron Valley Railroad Museum.

RELATED? A brief tale of two rural Kansas counties -- one healthy and one not so much:

To the north we have County A, where people routinely farm well into their 80's, have active sex lives into their 90's, and there has not been a teen pregnancy in almost 10 years. These are the ruddy-cheeked insanely healthy country folk you may have read about. To the south, then, we have County B, where everyone over 40 has diabetes, the obesity rate seems like it's about 90%, STI's are rampant and there are currently 8 pregnant girls in the high school. What's the difference? I have been trying to figure this out. The medical care is exactly the same (it's our group). The physical infrastructure is not that different. But culturally, people in County B have this victimizing, back-biting mentality.