ELECTION RESULTS: Tulsa County school district bond issues all passed by a wide margin, each proposition exceeding 80% in favor. School bond issues fell short of the 60% threshold in Canute, Krebs, Silo, and Tupelo. In Boswell, Tuttle, and Weleetka school districts, a majority of voters voted against the bond propositions.

Worst turnout: Nobody -- zero of 21 registered voters -- in the Billings Public Schools district in Garfield County showed up to vote on adding themselves to the Garfield County 522 Ambulance Service District in the Billings Public Schools district. According to the Enid News, there were four propositions across the county relating to the ambulance service: Voters in the existing ambulance district cast two separate votes to annex into the district the parts of the Billings and Pond Creek-Hunter school districts in Garfield County, approving by 132-6 and 128-7, respectively. Voters in the affected part of Pond Creek-Hunter voted 11-5 in favor. Presumably annexation needed approval from both the existing district and the area to be annexed; with a tie 0-0 vote, it appears that the Billings annexation (about 32.25 sq. mi. in the northeast corner of the county) will not go forward.

In the entire state of Oklahoma, with over 400 school districts, each with at least one seat up for election this year, there were only 22 seats that required a primary because more than two candidates ran. In 13 of those 22 seats, a candidate received more than 50% of the vote and was elected; a runoff between the top two candidates will held for only 9 seats.

This coming Tuesday, February 13, 2024, is Oklahoma's annual school board primary election. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. A list of all of Tuesday's elections across Oklahoma can be found on the Oklahoma State Election Board website. You can access your sample ballot on the election board's Oklahoma voter portal.

As one of 10 election days authorized by law this year, Tuesday is also host to some municipal elections and special elections, including several school district general-obligation bond issues. As in all non-Federal Oklahoma elections, early voting is available the Thursday and Friday before election day from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. at designated locations; in Tulsa County and most counties, that's at the county election board headquarters.

Only a small percentage of Tulsa County voters will have a reason to go to the polls. The only school board races on the ballot this Tuesday are those that drew three or more candidates. If a candidate receives more than 50% of the vote this Tuesday, he or she will be elected; if not, the top two candidates will advance to the school board general election on April 2, 2024, which is where you will find school board elections that have only two candidates.

There are several contested school board seats in Tulsa County, including three in the Tulsa Public Schools district, but all of them drew only two candidates, so you will see them on the ballot in April.

In Tulsa County, there are general obligation bond issues in Bixby, Sand Springs, and Jenks school districts, and a single city council seat each in Collinsville and Sand Springs.

Bixby school bond issues:

• School district web page on the bond issue
• Bixby bond issue Bond Transparency Act disclosure: The district has $192,440,000 left to be paid off from the 2022 and 2016 bond issues.
• Proposition No. 1: $11,500,000 "for the purpose of constructing, equipping, repairing and remodeling school buildings, acquiring school furniture, fixtures and equipment and acquiring and improving school sites"
• Proposition No. 2: $500,000 "for the purpose of purchasing transportation equipment"

Jenks school bond issues:

• School district web page on the bond issue
• Jenks bond issue Bond Transparency Act disclosure: "The School District has 49,945,000 in unissued building bonds authorized at an election held on the 10th day of February 2015." The disclosure lists specific bond expenditures from each election going back to 2019.
• Proposition No. 1: $18,180,000 "for the purpose of constructing, equipping, repairing and remodeling school buildings, acquiring school furniture, fixtures and equipment and acquiring and improving school sites"
• Proposition No. 2: $820,000 "for the purpose of purchasing transportation equipment"

Sand Springs school bond issues:

• School district web page on the bond issue
• Sand Springs bond issue Bond Transparency Act disclosure: The disclosure lists specific bond expenditures from each election going back to 2009. Sand Springs district has $23,308,959 in outstanding bond debt, including principal and interest.
• Proposition No. 1: $111,875,000 "for the purpose of improving or acquiring school sites, constructing, repairing, remodeling and equipping school buildings, and acquiring school furniture, fixtures and equipment; or in the alternative to acquire all or a distinct portion of such property pursuant to a lease purchase arrangement"
• Proposition No. 2: $2,625,000 "for the purpose of acquiring transportation equipment and auxiliary transportation equipment; or in the alternative to acquire all or a distinct portion of such property pursuant to a lease purchase arrangement"

For each candidate, ballot name is followed by full voter registration name in parentheses, if different, then age, party of voter registration, social media profiles and websites.

Collinsville city council, Ward 1:

• Brad Francis (Orville Brad Francis), incumbent, 76, R. LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile.
• Gary Cole (Gary D Cole Sr), 68, R. Facebook profile.

(Larry Shafer was the only candidate for mayor and has been re-elected.)

Sand Springs city council, Ward 4:

• Brian Jackson (Brian Michael Jackson), incumbent, 41, I. LinkedIn, Facebook profile. Jackson ran in the Republican primary for State House District 66 in 2018. He finished 2nd in the primary then lost to Jadine Nollan in the runoff. He changed registration from Republican to Independent sometime between the primary and November 2.
• David B. Parker, 61, R. LinkedIn profile, real estate Facebook page, personal Facebook profile.

(Beau Wilson, Ward 5, and Jim Spoon, at-large, were the only candidates in their respective races and have been re-elected.)

Dusted off from the drafts pile: Occasionally I dump links and quotes in a blog draft on a particular topic just to have a record, with the possibility of expanding later into an actual published entry. Rarely does the published entry happen, but here's how "winning columnists" Barry Friedman and I and managing editor Holly Wall helped Urban Tulsa Weekly earn membership in the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (AAN), as told through the membership committee reports to their 2006 and 2007 annual conventions. I wrote a weekly column on local issues for UTW from September 2005 through April 2009. (G. K. Hizer was the music editor in a tie.) AAN renamed itself the Association of Alternative Newsmedia in 2011. Links originally gathered on May 17, 2022.

June 17, 2006: CONVENTION: Membership Committee Recommendations

Urban Tulsa Weekly - Tulsa, OK
The Vote: 3 yea, 6 nay
The Committee declines to recommend for membership.

A music editor in a tie? Now that's a conservative market. We're rooting for Urban Tulsa Weekly -- and winning columnists Michael Bates and Barry Friedman -- but have concerns about the stories in the rest of the paper. Readers described the prose as "meandering," "convoluted," "repetitive" and "dull." "With a few exceptions every story was a slog." "This paper needs much more attention paid to its writing and editing." The publisher is also the editor. "It needs to interview people who don't have vested inter-ests in the story being written about them. It needs to develop a critical sense in all of its pages." Case in point: a theater story quotes the director of the piece saying, "It's a wonderful show." Conclusion: It could be a wonderful paper.

May 2, 2007: Nineteen Papers Apply for AAN Membership

As always, there are some familiar names and faces in the bunch. The High Plains Reader and Independent News are applying for the fourth time, Chattanooga Pulse, City Pulse and Urban Tulsa Weekly hope the third time is the charm, and it's the second stab at AAN membership for Yes! Weekly.

June 18, 2007: Five New Member Papers Admitted to AAN

Holly Wall, editorial manager of Urban Tulsa Weekly, took up the case for her paper, noting they had taken to heart the recommendations about improving the paper offered by the Membership Committee on the paper's two previous applications. The Santa Barbara Independent's Robby Robbins defended Urban Tulsa Weekly against the committee's less flattering comments, arguing that judgments about its editorial content should take into consideration the conservative nature of the Tulsa market. After Wall and Robbins spoke, the paper was admitted on the second ballot....

Urban Tulsa Weekly
6 yes; 4 no

This newspaper is obviously making great strides forward, and has come a long way since first applying for membership. "Smart commentary, good news section, good, engaging writing overall," one member said. However, there were elements of the paper that made some committee members uncomfortable. "Little or no reporting -- just rehashing other people's points of view." There was concern that one story in the news section was little more than a military recruitment ad disguised as news.

Six years later, AAN covered the demise of one of its members: November 5, 2013: Urban Tulsa Closes

Launched in July 1991 as a monthly, Urban Tulsa switched to a weekly publication cycle in 1997. The publication joined AAN in 2007.

In an email, an advertising department staff member said, "We are all devastated at the closing of our city's alt weekly."

Here's a brief introduction to the six candidates running for three seats Tulsa Public Schools Board of Education, drawing on public information, including filing information, voter registration records, and social media accounts. All addresses are in the City of Tulsa. Because there are only two candidates in each race, each seat will be decided on Tuesday, April 2, 2024. I will add links to this page as more social media accounts are discovered and campaign websites are stood up, and this page will have a link to detailed candidate profiles later in the campaign season.

A brief panic during the filing period suggests nervousness by Tulsa's educational establishment about the outcome of these elections, in the form of letters from Tulsa Mayor G. T. Bynum IV, City Councilors Vanessa Hall Harper and Lori Decter Wright, State Rep. Monroe Nichols, and others urging the school board to waive board policy requiring a national search and public input in hiring a replacement for ex-Superintendent Deborah Gist and to hire Interim Superintendent Ebony Johnson to fill the permanent position immediately. The letters claimed to be concerned about local control, which appears to mean foundation control, as opposed to control by a board where three members had been recently endorsed by the voting public.

Following the process set out in board policy would have placed the hiring of a new superintendent after the seating of two or three new board members, resulting in a board that could well have a majority of four or five members who are independent of the private foundations that steered TPS policy during Gist's tenure. As Tulsa Parents Voice has documented, nearly all of the alumni of the Broad (rhymes with "road") Center for the Management of School Systems that populated the upper levels of the TPS org chart have departed this year. (The Broad Center involvement in public education has received criticism across the political spectrum; see these two 2018 articles by Betty Casey in Tulsa Kids. Eli Broad's controlling approach to "venture philanthropy" strongly resembles that taken by certain Tulsa philanthropists.)

Those executive vacancies would have been filled by a new superintendent under a new board majority, but now they can be filled by a long-time TPS administrator with a board majority of four favorable to Gist's failed policies and private foundation direction. Letters from community leaders allowed the current board majority to pretend to be responding to public demand in discarding board policy, bypassing public input and a thorough search for a new district leader. The two elected African-American women on the board, Rev. Jennettie Marshall and E'lena Ashley, voted against making Johnson permanent superintendent. Ms. Ashley commented after the vote on Facebook:

As I commend and congratulate our Dr. Ebony Johnson for her new 'permanent role' as TPS Superintendent, I am conflicted. I consider Dr. Ebony an excellent communicator and she certainly appears to have what it takes to make change.

It also saddens me that we now as the Tulsa Public Schools board have...

• set precedent for Tulsa Public Schools by throwing away the rules in which the board established to ensure we performed our due diligence and ensured we in fact did all in our powers to find the best, most qualified person to lead TPS as Superintendent.
• set precedent to 'Circumvent the Rights' of the very students we are promising to Teach and Protect.

What we're teaching our young children is that when the rules don't fit our needs or agenda, we simply ignore them or find the best most expedient solution to get around them.

That's not how our students should expect their life's decisions to be made and they most certainly shouldn't see the leaders of their schools acting in such nefarious ways.

Here are brief profiles of each of the TPS school board candidates:

TPS Office No. 2:

This is a special election to fill the seat for the remaining year of an unexpired four-year term. Judith Barba Perez was elected to this seat in 2021, winning a three-way primary with 201 votes out of 379 cast. Barba Perez resigned in 2023 after she moved out of Oklahoma, and Diamond Marshall was appointed by the board to replace her until a special election could be held. Diamond Marshall declined to file for election.

Calvin Michael Moniz, 38, 2607 E. 6th St., Independent, Voter ID 720718072. Voted 11 times in the last four years. Did not vote in the February 2021 school board election. Social media: Campaign website, LinkedIn, personal Facebook profile, campaign Facebook page, campaign Instagram, personal Instagram (private, with 1,850 followers and 2,382 posts), campaign Twitter. A personal Twitter account @CalvinMoniz is no longer online. Moniz supported bypassing board policy to make Ebony Johnson permanent superintendent without the required nationwide search and public input.

KanDee N. Washington, 56, 2211 N. Xanthus Ave., Independent, Voter ID 720570162. Voted 5 times in the last four years. Did not vote in the February 2021 school board election. Social media: Campaign Facebook page.

TPS Office No. 5:

This is a regular election. John Croisant won the open seat in 2020, finishing first in the February primary with 44% in a field of five, then narrowly winning the postponed general election in June, 52% to 48% over Shane Saunders, thanks to an 834-vote advantage in absentee ballots and early voting.

John Thomas Croisant, 62 E. Woodward Blvd., Democrat, Voter ID 720699462. Voted 12 times in the last 4 years. Voted in the 2020 primary and general school board elections. Social media: Campaign website, LinkedIn profile, campaign Facebook page, personal Facebook profile, business Facebook page. Croisant voted to bypass board policy and make Ebony Johnson permanent superintendent without the required nationwide search and public input.

Teresa Ann Peña, 1127 S. College Ave., Republican, Voter ID 720206476. Voted 4 times in the last 4 years. Voted in the 2020 general school board election. Social media: Campaign website, LinkedIn profile, campaign Facebook page, personal Facebook profile.

TPS Office No. 6:

This race is for a full four-year term for the open seat currently held by Jerry Griffin, who is not running for re-election. He defeated long-time establishment incumbent Ruth Ann Fate in 2020.

Maria Mercedes Seidler, 7057 E. 52nd St., Republican, Voter ID 801571311. Voted 10 times in the last 4 years, including the 2020 general school board election. Social media: LinkedIn profile, personal Facebook profile, personal Twitter account. Seidler spoke at the December 11 TPS board meeting in favor of following board policy and conducting a nationwide search with public input for a new permanent superintendent.

Sarah Adrianne Smith, 5431 S. 67th East Pl., Democrat, Voter ID 720429536. Voted 9 times in the last 4 years, including the 2020 general school board election. Social media: Campaign website, LinkedIn profile, campaign Facebook page, personal Facebook profile, campaign Twitter account. Smith applauded the school board's decision to bypass board policy to make Ebony Johnson permanent superintendent without the required nationwide search and public input.

UPDATE: At the close of the filing period, we have three contested races for Tulsa school board, and contests for single seats in Berryhill, Owasso, and Union. The remaining 13 seats (including two each in Keystone and Liberty and the Tulsa Tech Center seat), are uncontested. Maria Mercedes Seidler filed for TPS Office No. 6, making that a two-woman contest for the open seat. Alan Staab filed but withdrew for TPS Office No. 5, so there are no Tulsa County contests with more than two candidates, and there will be no February 13 primary; all of these races will be settled on April 2, 2024. (Backup copy of candidate filings.candidatefilings_12082023.pdf)

Today, Wednesday, December 6, 2023, is the final day of filing for school board races in every public school district across Oklahoma. Candidates may file at the county election board until 5 p.m. today.

K-12 school districts will have a single seat, Office No. 4, up for election to a five-year term. K-8 dependent districts (Keystone is the only one in Tulsa County) have three seats that rotate through three-year terms, and also have a single seat on the ballot. Each year one of 7 Technology Center seats is on the ballot for a 7-year term; this year that is Office No. 1.

Tulsa, with 7 board members, has two seats up for a four-year term (No. 5 and No. 6) and the one-year unexpired term of Office No. 2.

After the second day of filing in Tulsa County, 13 seats have drawn only one candidate, 2 seats (Berryhill and Owasso) have drawn two candidates, and in Tulsa Office No. 5, incumbent John Croisant has drawn two challengers. No one has filed for Liberty Office No. 4.

Nor has any candidate filed for the Tulsa Technology Center Office No. 1, not even incumbent Rev. Dr. Ray Owens, pastor of Metropolitan Baptist Church and a board member of several non-profit organizations. This district mainly covers North Tulsa, from 11th Street South to 86th Street North, mainly west of Yale, plus Gilcrease Hills and neighborhoods just west of downtown.

Filing is also open for a number of municipalities; candidates have filed for city office in Collinsville, Owasso, and Sand Springs.

(Here is the a link to the latest list of candidates for Tulsa County school board and city council seats.)

School board filing always comes at a busy and distracted time of year. As I've written before, it's almost as if school board elections were deliberately scheduled to escape the notice of potential candidates and voters.

The school board primary election will be held on February 13, 2024, for those seats where there are three or more candidates. If no one wins a majority of the vote in the February election, a runoff will be held on April 2, 2024. If a seat draws only two candidates, the election will be held on April 2, 2024.

The Tulsa district, largest in the state, has two out of seven seats up for election to a four-year term, Offices No. 5 and 6, plus the remaining one-year term of Office No. 2, previously held by Judith Barba-Perez, who resigned earlier this year. As mentioned, incumbent John Croisant, first elected in 2020, is being challenged by retired TPS teacher Theresa Pena and Alan Staab. The Board appointed Diamond Marshall to serve District 2 until this year's school elections; the winner of this election will serve just one year. Marshall has not filed for election, but Calvin Michael Moniz has, and Candee Washington is expected to file as well.

Jerry Griffin, the incumbent in District 6, is not expected to run for re-election; he upset 24-year incumbent Ruth Ann Fate in 2020. So far Sarah Smith is the only candidate for that seat. Based on the age (45) listed on the filing, this is Democrat Sarah Adrienne Smith, registered to vote at 5431 S 67 E PL. (I don't know why the filing list omits addresses, which help to disambiguate names. There are 21 Sarah Smiths in Tulsa County, 9 in the Tulsa Public School District, 2 in Election District 6.) Her campaign kickoff was co-hosted by former Tulsa County Democratic Party chairman Keith McArtor. Here is Sarah Smith's personal Facebook profile. She is using the left-wing ActBlue platform for campaign donations.

You'll find a map of Tulsa Public Schools board districts here. District 2 is mainly between Admiral and Pine, with a bit of territory south to 11th Street around TU and Will Rogers High School. Booker T. Washington High School is also within District 2's boundaries. District 5 is mainly midtown west of Yale, around Edison High School, and District 6 is midtown from roughly Yale to Mingo.

Back during the 2019 filing period, I wrote at length about why school board races are so important, why they deserve much more attention than they receive, and why it's a shame that so few candidates run and so few voters turn out. During the pandemic school closures of 2020, parents and the general public began to learn more about what their children were being taught (and often how little they were being taught). More people are alert to what's at stake, and Tulsa has had some very contentious elections in recent years. We're hoping that trend will continue, but with more victories for school board members who will ask tough questions of the administration, who will represent the community's values and priorities, and who will stop the use of schools as missionary outposts for the Gramscian Left.

Another blog article started long ago, July 26, 2021, but never quite finished, until now.

In 1982, Oklahoma was celebrating its 75th anniversary, the Diamond Jubilee of statehood, and it was one of the focuses (along with Korea) of the Smithsonian Institution's 1982 Festival of American Folklife. The program book for the festival is available at the Internet Archive.

The 1982 festival's book includes a Guy Logsdon article on western swing. In this two-page essay, Logsdon puts the spotlight on Johnnie Lee Wills, Hank Thompson, and Leon McAuliffe, all still actively performing at the time, all based in or near Tulsa. Logsdon made some insightful comments on the musical distinctives of western swing:

A cultural blend of musical styles, western swing has one primary characteristic - a danceable beat. While country and bluegrass music primarily emerged as listening traditions, the principal audience for western swing is a dancing crowd. If the listeners on a Saturday night outnumber the dancers, the band has failed at playing good western swing....

The western swing band requires fiddles, drums, a bass fiddle, horns, a steel guitar and a rhythm guitar, performing a strong heavy rhythmic style. The voicing of the fiddles provides the distinctive sound for each band: Bob Wills voiced his fiddles to play harmony above the lead fiddle; Leon McAuliffe voiced his below the lead to simulate a saxophone-trombone effect; Spade Cooley, an Oklahoman who had a popular California band, used arrangements which voiced the fiddles above the lead, punctuating the music with a strong staccato sound. The sound and the quality of western swing music was determined by the leader. Musicians "play better" behind an outstanding leader, and the greatest of the leaders have made Tulsa their home.

Logsdon also mentioned Al Clauser, bandleader of the Oklahoma Outlaws, a band that started in Peoria, Illinois, moved to Des Moines, Iowa, Cincinnati, and Rock Island, before landing in Tulsa in 1942, performing on KTUL radio (AM 1430) and at the dance hall at Crystal City Amusement Park (on Southwest Boulevard in Red Fork, now the site of the Crystal City shopping center).

In 1937, while broadcasting on WHO in Des Moines, the Oklahoma Outlaws were invited by Gene Autry to be in his film Rootin' Tootin' Rhythm. Tulsa music legend Rocky Frisco, created the Wikipedia page for Al Clauser and wrote of the Hollywood trip:

Al Clauser & His Oklahoma Outlaws appeared in an early Gene Autry film, "Rootin' Tootin' Rhythm," and recorded a dozen tracks for ARC in the 1930s. When Gene called to ask Al to bring the band to Hollywood to be in the movie, WHO sportscaster, Ronald Reagan, asked Al if he could come along on the Band Bus and Al said that would be fine. Reagan's first experience on a movie set was during the shooting of this film. In the 1970's and 80's, the office of Al's recording studio had an enormous photograph of Reagan with Reagan's thank-you note for his "start in the business" penned on it in ballpoint.

Rocky Frisco was assistant engineer at Clauser's Alvera studio in Prue, Oklahoma.

TulsaTVMemories has stills from Rootin' Tootin' Rhythm featuring Al Clauser and his band.

In November 1940, the Oklahoma Outlaws debuted on WCKY Cincinnati's "Hot Coffee" early morning show; hiring staff musicians got WCKY out of trouble with the musicians' union.

It's not entirely clear, but it may be that the Oklahoma Outlaws were based in Cincinnati, while they broadcast a daily 15 minute show on CBS Radio Network. By May 1941, they were heard on 31 stations nationwide. But during the summer of 1942, the band was performing three nights a week in Tulsa at the Casa Loma Terrace at Crystal City Park and was heard daily on KTUL radio.

The Oklahoma Outlaws daily radio show was sponsored by Page Milk Company, and their girl singer, Clara Ann Fowler, used the sponsor's name as the basis of her stage name: Patti Page. Born in Claremore, Patti Page spent much of her youth west of the river in Tulsa, where she attended Clinton Junior High and Webster High School.

Clauser became a broadcast engineer at KTUL-TV, serving as studio supervisor and chief engineer. In the 1970s, Clauser played sidekick Uncle Zeke on KTUL's afternoon kids' show, Uncle Zeb's Cartoon Camp.

That festival handbook also has (on pages 30-34) a collection of Oklahoma recipes from various ethnic communities, presented by Sue Manos: Czech kolaches, Mexican tamales, German plum soup, Italian Easter bread casadele and Easter pie, Vietnamese cha gio (meat rolls), Indian fry bread, Cherokee grape dumplings, "Afro-American" fried okra and ham, "Anglo" chicken fried steak, cream gravy, and biscuits.

The 1982 Festival of American Folklife handbook also includes essays by Guy Logsdon on Woody Guthrie, Oklahoma folkways, and shape-note singing; by George Carney about pipelining in the oil fields; and by Clydia and Fred Nahwooksy on Indian crafts and dancing and quarterhorse match racing.

RELATED:

The Oklahoma Department of Tourism has an itinerary of places relating to Patti Page's life and career.

In 2011, Paul W. Dennis at My Kind of Country wrote profile of Patti Page and explained how she began working as her own backup singer:

Patti's first single, "Confess" came out during one of the Petrillo strikes in 1947, meaning that background singers were not available for recording purposes. Mercury thought that Patti's voice was sufficiently versatile that she could do her own harmony backgrounds, and so developed the practice of Patti overdubbing her own harmony vocals on record, the first artist with which this was done. "Confess" was one of three top twenty records she would chart from 1947-1949.

PragueFrank has a comprehensive discography of Al Clauser and the Oklahoma Outlaws. Patti Page did the vocals on "Never Pretend" from a late 1945, early 1946 recording session; it's on a Krazy Kat reissue: Al Clauser and the Oklahoma Outlaws: Oklahoma Stomp: Hot Western Swing 1937-1948

What was here? Who owned it? What did it look like? There are a number of resources available for reconstructing Oklahoma's geographical past, and they're easier to use than ever. These are my go-tos when researching the history of a neighborhood or answering questions about the past. This is an encyclopedic article, so if you're on the home page, you'll have to click the "Continue reading" link to see all of it.

These links will take you to specific sections of this article:

• Oklahoma Historical Aerial Digitization Project: Geotagged historical aerial photos going back to the 1930s
• Oklahoma Aerial Photo Inventory: A broader collection of imagery, including some not yet geotagged
• EarthExplorer: US Geological Survey aerial imagery: Higher resoution aerial photos from the 1950s through the 1970s, plus satellite and other imagery
• topoView: US Geological Survey historical topographical maps: Maps for Oklahoma from 1901
• US Bureau of Land Management Land Records: Township survey plats of Indian Territory from the 1890s, with field notes from the surveyors
• Oklahoma State University McCasland Maps Collection: Includes historical county highway maps as early as 1937, plus USGS topo quads not in the topoView collection
• WPA 1936 land ownership and valuation maps: Interactive statewide browser
• Tulsa Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps at Library of Congress: Building-by-building detail from Tulsa's earliest days through 1915, 1939, and 1962
• Tulsa Census Enumeration District and Census Tract Maps: Base street maps and boundaries of statistical neighborhoods
• Tulsa County Clerk Subdivision Plats and Deed Indexes
• Tulsa County Assessor Static Section Maps
• Miscellaneous Maps of Tulsa

Note: I started on this back on August 20, 2023, meant for it to be a quick blog post, but got bogged down trying to locate some of the places mentioned. It's November 19, 2023, and chilly and rainy outside, but I took a few minutes to finish this up and publish it.

What did Tulsans do 100 years ago to escape the summer heat? Some answers can be found in a little clipping I saved during some research on Tulsa's streetcars and electric interurban railroads, from the June 25, 1923, Tulsa Tribune:

Picknickers Flock To Woodsy Places As Sol Hits High

MANY BEAUTY SPOTS NEAR CITY ARE POPULAR

The old picnic basket has been taken off the shelf and dusted in the last few days. New sets of paper plates and napkins have been procured, and a supply of tin cups to be tied on the basket handle.

For summer has come, with Old Sol himself emphasizing the fact every day, and the urge of the cooling breeze, sought in woods and by streams, is stirring the populace.

Every paved road leading out of Tulsa is lined with motor cars and picnic crowds in the afternoons and in almost every direction, a good spot for supper grounds can be found.

If swimming is to be combined with sandwiches, as is generally the case, "Katy" lake, near Alsuma, which is reached by driving out the Broken Arrow road to the big brick house, which is about half way, and then driving down the dirt road for several miles, is one of the most popular.

Owasso lake, which can be reached by pavement as far as the town itself, has always been an attractive place for swimmers, and Hominy Falls has occasionally been selected by those who do not mind a long drive.

Fishing parties generally choose the Verdigris river, and a stream two miles south of Leonard is drawing groups of boys and men for week-end trips. Shell creek dam, beyond Sand Springs, offers the best nearby fishing opportunities.

At Parthenia park is a swimming hole not far from town. It is reached by driving out the Sapulpa road to Oakhurst, then going across the O. U. R. tracks to the lake. Parthenia, and the Oakhurst Country clubs grounds, are usually chosen by picnic parties, too.

A pleasant spot for weiner roasts, and parties who like to climb, is at Lost City, which can be reached by driving out the Sand Springs road, across the bridge to Fisher, then climbing up the hill. Turkey Mountain, out the Red Fork road, is also good for climbing parties.

Mingo Creek is a spot easily reached by driving out Admiral to Lewis avenue, then going north two miles, then east to the creek. Sapulpa lake, on the other side of that city, is good for both swimming and picnicking.

Among places which can be easily reached by those who do not have cars, are Sand Springs park, which the Sand Springs interurban reaches and Sunset and Electric parks, on the Sapulpa interurban line. All three places have swimming pools, concessions, and other amusements.

So where were these places? I could easily do a deep dive on each place mentioned, but I'll limit myself to locating each:

Katy Lake: A classified item in the October 10, 1923, Tulsa World announcing that hunting at the lake was not allowed provides a better description of its location: S 1/2 SE 1/4 S23 T19N R13E. That's an 80 acre tract bounded today by 38th Street, 41st Street, 73rd East Ave, and Memorial. As you'd guess by the name, the lake abutted the old MK&T ("Katy") railroad between Tulsa and Broken Arrow. A story from April of that year announced that it would be renamed Rose Lake and expanded with a 90-foot dam impounding 18 acres, surrounded by pecan groves. News items from later in the year suggest that the Rose Lake name never caught on. A miniature brewery located near the lake was raided and destroyed in a July 1923 raid, but the Katy Lake owner, J. O. Whitman, wanted it known that it was not at his lake. (The accused brewer was named J. H. Stout.)

USGS maps from the early 20th century show a lake straddling the tracks at that spot; the Jenks quadrangle from 1953 shows a string of lakes running all the way to Memorial. Today there's a large, dry stormwater detention area with a channelized Fulton Creek running along its northern edge. As recently as 2003, there was still a lake in the area. The "Broken Arrow road" probably referred to Harvard Ave, which would later be part of Oklahoma Highway 51 and US 64, which ran from 15th to Harvard to 51st Street to Memorial. Traffic for Broken Arrow would head east on 71st from Memorial.

The "big brick house" is probably the two-story house with the green tile roof that sat on a rise northeast of 41st and Harvard. A convenience store was built in front of it, it served as a day care or school for many years, and it was demolished after New Life Center moved to Broken Arrow and sold its building to Freeman Harris Funeral Home in 2001; Cornerstone Church is now located there. Newspapers say the home was built by an unnamed oil millionaire and was later an orphanage. Its final use was as Christian Day Care Center. The house was the original home of and then parsonage and classroom space for Bethany Lutheran Church in 1954, which built a Blaine Imel-designed sanctuary, which was sold to Bethel Temple in 1962. There is a news story from December 19, 1971, that brings together several fascinating threads of demographic displacement. The history of that plot of land and the churches connected with it deserves its own article.

An appropriations amendment by Oklahoma 1st District Congressman Kevin Hern to prevent federal funding for Confucius Classrooms in K-12 was approved by voice vote by the U. S. House of Representatives on November 14, 2023. The one-sentence provision would amend H.R. 5894, the Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2024: "None of the funds made available by this Act may be used to fund a Confucius Classroom."

Tulsa Public Schools is one of seven school districts in the US that hosts a Confucius Classrooms. At the July 10, 2023, board meeting, the TPS board approved the contract for what the agenda said was Booker T. Washington High School's 14th year of participation in the Confucius Classroom program. The 2022 renewal of the Confucius Classroom was one of several items pulled from the board's consent agenda for additional scrutiny thanks to the absence of a board member.

Here are Mr. Hern's remarks on the floor of the House:

Madam Chair, through the Belt and Road Initiative, the BRI, the Chinese Communist Party has been spreading its malign influence over the last decade. This initiative has one goal: to increase China's economic and political dominance over the United States and the world.

Disguised as harmless global infrastructure, transportation, and production networks, the Belt and Road Initiative, or the BRI, is anything but harmless.

Education is one of the primary targets of the BRI. They are succeeding in their mission to indoctrinate American students with their Communist ideals. Chinese state media even brags about the success of Confucius Institutes and other educational initiatives in spreading the CCP's influence.

This doesn't stop on our college campuses. Right now, China is invading our K-12 schools through Confucius Classrooms. Over the last decade or more, the CCP has infiltrated our public school system, setting up Chinese language and cultural programs in primary and secondary schools.

These Confucius Classrooms are funded by the Chinese Government, both directly and through Confucius Institutes and other third parties. Make no mistake, this is not through the kindness of their hearts. The CCP is not interested at all in helping American students learn Mandarin. They want to brainwash our children, plain and simple.

Since 2013, the authoritarian Government of the People's Republic of China has sent curriculum and PRC-trained teachers into hundreds of K- 12 schools across America as an unofficial component of its global influence campaign.

The CCP has committed countless violations of human rights, and its authoritarian agenda is antithetical to the democratic principles our country was founded on. Chinese propaganda has no place in our education system.

We have taken important steps toward mitigating Chinese influence at American universities by cracking down on Confucius Institutes. Now that the Chinese Government has directed its attention toward elementary and secondary schools, it is time we do the same and protect our children from the malign influence of the CCP.

My amendment would prevent Federal funding for these Confucius Classrooms.

Madam Chair, I urge my colleagues to support this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

Blue-haired Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro gave a weak speech in opposition, claiming that the proposal would create fear and would cause harm and violence to Asian-American teachers and students. DeLauro claimed the amendment was not being offered in good faith because the numbers of Confucius Institutes (Communist China's initiative on college campuses) had plummeted.

Hern offered a second amendment to fund enforcement of a provision of the No Surprises Act which requires a cost estimate for medical services to be provided to patients prior to treatment. The provision was passed nearly three years ago, but the Biden Administration has not enforced it. This Hern amendment also was approved by voice vote, but Rep. DeLauro demanded a recorded vote, which means that the vote on this amendment will be postponed under clause 6 of rule XVIII. It's curious that DeLauro did not use the same method to block the Confucius Classroom amendment.

While I appreciate Congressman Hern's attention to this issue, I do wonder how enforceable his proposal is. It appears not to prohibit schools from taking funding from other sources, such as a Chinese Communist Party-backed non-profit, for a Confucius Classroom, and it does not prohibit the idea from returning under another name.

UPDATE 2023/11/20: Michael DelGiorno posted on his Facebook page: "Many have asked, so here's the specifics: "Your Morning Show" is now on iHeart app and Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC in Nashville. Starting Monday, December 4th on 1300 The Patriot in Tulsa. And, starting on Monday, January 8th on NewsRadio 1000 KTOK in Oklahoma City. More markets coming!"

iHeartMedia has announced that talk radio host Michael DelGiorno will return to the Tulsa airwaves in the near future. DelGiorno will be on KAKC 1300 The Patriot in Tulsa, KTOK Newsradio 1000 in Oklahoma City, and WLAC 1510/98.3 in Nashville. DelGiorno will begin broadcasting on WLAC on Monday, November 6, from 5 am to 8 am. Oklahoma City and Tulsa will "follow later" according to a RadioInsight story.

DelGiorno spent 17 years in the Tulsa market, serving as an afternoon host and program director at KRMG and operations manager for Clear Channel's Tulsa radio stations and KTBZ 1430 morning host. In 2002, DelGiorno turned legendary 50,000-watt country station KVOO, then owned by Journal Broadcast Group, into Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ, starting out in an afternoon talk slot, then moving to mornings for most of his five-year stay. He gave me the opportunity for a weekly guest slot that started with discussion of the Vision 2025 tax and grew to include local politics generally. In 2007, Cumulus Media hired DelGiorno as afternoon host at WWTN in Nashville, and he continued in that timeslot through March 2023.

After leaving WWTN, DelGiorno launched the 1850 Main Street podcast with David Zanotti, which will continue alongside the new morning show. As described about midway through the initial episode, 1850 in the name refers to a critical year in resolving America's divisions -- "you have 10 years to solve the conflicts that led to the Civil War." Earlier in that episode, DelGiorno discusses some of the formative experiences that shaped him as a political talk show host -- his involvement in Scott Pruitt's 2001 run for Congress, the slander and media bias that killed Steve Largent's political career in the 2002 gubernatorial election.

Tulsa has been starved for local talk since the illness and death of KFAQ's Pat Campbell. Rather than fill Pat's seat in 2021, KFAQ changed call letters and changed formats to sports talk. iHeartMedia saw an opportunity, and KAKC 1300 reformatted as The Patriot, picked up a number of national shows, and added Tulsa to Lee Matthews's 5 pm to 7 pm evening drive broadcast on KTOK.

That move turned out not to be the answer that we'd hoped for Tulsa talk radio. Matthews, based in OKC, has been focused on local discussion of national and state issues, with very little time to get into Tulsa-specific issues. If Matthews was taking a day off, he didn't have a substitute fill in; the local drive slot was simply eliminated and the following national show moved 2 hours earlier to fill the gap.

Michael DelGiorno will have some catching up to do after 16 1/2 years away, but he has the benefit of nearly two decades in Tulsa and family and friends in the city.

When Michael announced his departure from KFAQ in 2007, I summed up his impact on Tulsa's political conversation at that time:

When other stations were becoming more automated and homogenized, DelGiorno gave Tulsa talk radio about local issues. When other news-talk stations were cramming local content into ever tinier segments, DelGiorno provided time to cover an issue in depth.

DelGiorno provided a bypass around local media dominated by a few narrow interests. He gave politicians and activists the chance to get their side of the story out to the public.

Michael gave me a platform that I wouldn't otherwise have had. The exposure I got on his show brought more readers to this blog and ultimately led to the opportunity to write for Urban Tulsa Weekly.

DelGiorno brought concerned Tulsans, who otherwise wouldn't have met, together as allies. He helped them see the big picture, bigger than the specific problems that awakened their interest in local government.

Michael often expressed frustration that the same old issues kept recurring, and it seemed as if no progress was made. But as someone who has lived here most of my life and who has been involved politically for twenty years, I know that things are much different, and much better, for his work at KFAQ. Important issues that used to be under the radar are now front and center in the public dialogue.

In the UTW column I wrote later that month, I noted that it was during DelGiorno's time at KFAQ that Tulsa, for the first two times ever, elected a majority of city councilors who were not endorsed by the local power-brokers. DelGiorno's morning show made it possible for councilors like Jim Mautino, Roscoe Turner, and Chris Medlock to get elected, for the issues they raised at City Hall to get fair coverage and full discussion, and, in Mautino and Medlock's case, for their ability to rally support to survive a recall election.

I wonder what a three-city, two-state simulcast will be like. I'm sure there will be significant differences with 2007 in Michael's approach to covering Tulsa, but whatever form that takes, I'm excited to have Michael DelGiorno's voice back on local Tulsa talk radio.

Viewing for James Mautino will be 12 noon - 8 pm, Wednesday, November 1, 2023, and the service 11:30 am, Thursday, November 2, 2023, at Moore's Southlawn Funeral Home. Services will be webcast. Condolences may be left online at www.moorefuneral.com.

Former Tulsa City Councilor Jim Mautino passed away last Thursday, October 26, 2023, at the age of 91. He is survived by his wife Bonnie, four of his children, and many grandchildren. Jim was elected District 6 City Councilor in 2004 and again in 2009, serving two two-year terms. Jim Mautino was the best representative east Tulsa ever had at City Hall; arguably, he was the only representative east Tulsa ever had at City Hall.

I first met Jim in 2000 at a real estate office in midtown, where neighborhood leaders from across the city gathered to form the Tulsa Alliance of Neighborhoods (TAN). Jim was a leader in the Tower Heights neighborhood, just west of the KVOO transmitter towers near 11th Street and 145th East Avenue. This neighborhood of homes on one-acre lots was built when the area was way out in the country. The City of Tulsa annexed this area in 1966 and promptly forgot that they had. Even after Tulsa adopted geographical representation in 1989, councilors elected from District 6 were more concerned about pleasing the Midtown Money Belt and special interest donors that put them in office than about representing the needs of the district. Jim Mautino was the lone exception.

Jim was a retiree from American Airlines, where he had worked as a maintenance instructor and quality assurance auditor, roles that gave him invaluable skills of organization, communication, and analysis that he put to work for his fellow Tulsans.

Jim Mautino was passionate about developing and improving east Tulsa, where he had made his home since 1963. He saw the hills and valleys and prairies and wondered why so little of it had been developed. He wondered why city officials allowed the eastern gateway to the city, the confluence of I-44, I-244, US 412, and OK 66, to be lined with car lots and industrial uses, rather than revenue-generating retail. He wondered why city officials allowed industrial property owners with deep pockets to violate the city's zoning and stormwater ordinances. He wondered why the city's water board seemed more intent on fueling the development of Tulsa's suburbs rather than building infrastructure within our own city limits to increase our population and expand our sales tax base.

In 2004, Jim Mautino ran for City Council and won against long-time incumbent District 6 City Councilor Art Justis. Grassroots neighborhood activists from across the city volunteered to support Mautino's bid, while his opponent was backed by big money connected with a zoning controversy.

(Jim and I had a little adventure together at the Council meeting just before the election. We showed up early for the Council pre-meeting and came across an unannounced pre-pre-meeting, which seemed to have an inhibiting effect on the councilors in attendance. Shortly thereafter, a City Council staffer screamed at me.)

Jim was just shy of 72 years old when he first took office, but he had more energy for the job than officials decades younger. Jim regularly held district "town hall" meetings at Martin East Regional Library, leading off with a PowerPoint about infrastructure projects and new development in the district, talking about city issues of general concern, and fielding questions. I can't find any of the video of those meetings online, but an archived page of links from a June 2005 Jim Mautino meeting on David Schuttler's Our Tulsa World website gives you an idea of the topics he covered: Fence lines and city limits, boards and trusts, street problems, retail growth in Owasso and its threat to Tulsa sales tax revenues, Light Industrial zoning along US 412, the sweetheart water deal the Tulsa Metropolitan Utilities Authority made with the suburbs. From my description at the time:

D. Schuttler has posted video excerpts of Mautino's June 29th town hall meeting, and you can hear the councilor speak about encouraging growth and increasing retail sales within Tulsa's boundaries, and how water lines, annexation and fence lines, and comprehensive planning all fit together to help or hinder development within the city limits. Jim Mautino is passionate about encouraging quality development in east Tulsa, and that means making undeveloped areas within the city limits a higher priority for new infrastructure than the suburbs.

Councilor Mautino became part of a bipartisan, multiracial, grassroots, reform-oriented caucus originally known as the Gang of Five -- five councilors representing the neglected periphery of the city, seeking to encourage accountability in government, fairness in application of the zoning laws, and quality development within the city limits to grow Tulsa's tax base.

The Powers That Be (a group I dubbed the Cockroach Caucus) immediately set out to break up the council majority. One member, unemployed, was offered a job in the mayor's administration. Two more, Jim Mautino and District 2's Chris Medlock, were targeted with recall petitions. Both men prevailed in the July 12 recall -- Mautino winning with 71% of the vote.

As an indication of the bipartisan esteem in which Jim was held, here's a bit from his 2006 re-election endorsement from attorney and Democratic activist Greg Bledsoe.

A little over a year ago I had the pleasure of meeting and getting to know your City Councilor Jim Mautino. Since that time, it has become clear to me that Jim is the most hardworking, dedicated and selfless public servant I have ever known. He is the salt of the earth. His tireless commitment to the improvement of District 6 and the whole City of Tulsa is without limitation. He has worked long hours for better sewers and streets (including a dramatic increase in funding for District 6), balanced economic development and transparent government at City Hall.

As far as I can tell, when it comes to local issues, Jim does not have a partisan bone in his body. He does not vote a party line, but always votes for what he thinks is right.

As an American Airlines employee of over 39 years, Jim was an active member of Transport Workers Union Local 514. At City Hall he has consistently voted and tried to help the non-certified employees organize a union, a position that was recently approved by the Oklahoma Supreme Court. He has held accountable the Mayor, a member of his own party. He has been a consistent advocate for neighborhoods and small businesses. He has always been willing to meet and hear the concerns of all, even those who disagree with him.

When necessary, Jim asks the tough questions that have not been asked, but should have been. When it comes to waste and corruption at City Hall, Jim has applied the finest attribute of a traditional Republican, good business sense, to look into what's been going on there.

Jim Mautino is exactly the type of City Councilor any citizen would want to represent them: fair, hardworking, and honest. I hope you will vote to RE-ELECT JIM MAUTINO. You cannot find a better person to support your district or the City of Tulsa.

But three elections in three years took a toll. Mautino survived a 2006 primary challenge but was narrowly defeated by Democrat Dennis Troyer in the general election.

In 2009, Mautino stepped up to run again, defeating Troyer with the help of new residential development in the part of east Tulsa within the Broken Arrow School District. Jim rejoined Roscoe Turner and Maria Barnes, two other neighborhood leaders who had regained council seats that year. He arrived back on the council as a fan of new Mayor Dewey Bartlett, Jr., but soon became disillusioned:

When Jim returned to City Hall in 2009, he set out to be newly elected Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr's strongest advocate on the City Council. He urged his fellow councilors to give Bartlett Jr the benefit of the doubt for at least six months as he got his new administration going. Despite their good-faith effort to work with the new mayor, Bartlett Jr managed to alienate each councilor, one by one, with broken promises, misleading information, and contemptuous treatment.

One of Mautino's signature issues in this second term was animal control. His effort to find a way to make laws against animal abuse and abandonment economically enforceable was met with passive-aggressive behavior by city bureaucrats.

Then you have the councilors who do their own research, who dig into ordinances and budgets and case law and what other cities are doing, and they persist in asking "why not?" and presenting alternatives. From a bureaucrat's point of view, such a councilor is a pain in the posterior, a threat to their comfortable, stable existence, and must be taken down. If you can use your lack of cooperation to provoke the councilor, passive-aggressively, to the point of expressing his irritation, you win.

Since this sort of inquisitive, pro-active councilor also poses a threat to other entrenched interests, the aggrieved bureaucrat can usually find a helping hand from the various organs of the Cockroach Caucus, who miss the days when all one had to do was pull on their strings to get the councilors to do their bidding. The obligatory unflattering photo, misleading headline, twisted caricature, and tut-tutting editorial follow in due course.

It's a misunderstanding of the nature of bureaucracy to think that bureaucrats will be supportive and encouraging of a councilor's ideas for new ways to solve a problem, if only the councilor will be polite and patient. (People seeking public office really should read Jim Boren's books first.) It's not that bureaucrats are bad people, but it's a profession that tends to attract the risk-averse. You don't climb in a bureaucracy by taking risks. The exceptions to the rule are there, and they're real treasures because they're rare. Too often, bureaucrats will try to wait the councilor out -- keep holding meetings, keep delaying a final plan, until the councilor gets interested in another project or gets voted out of office.

It's a pretty good indication that a city councilor is doing what he ought to be doing if he's getting shot at by the bureaucracy and the daily paper. Jim Mautino is a good councilor, and if District 6 voters want an advocate for their interests who won't be deterred by bureaucratic foot-dragging, they'll return Jim Mautino to office this fall.

Jim, along with most of the rest of the councilors, was targeted by Bartlett Jr and his establishment allies, using the memetic accusation of "bickering," with the help of gerrymandering and plenty of campaign money.

Their real problem with Jim Mautino was that he was an intelligent, diligent city councilor. He used his freedom as a retiree to devote himself full time to researching laws, investigating best practices, meeting with constituents, and proposing solutions to the problems they raised.

One of the things that seemed to annoy City Hall bureaucrats about the old council was their habit of raising new issues to be discussed, explored, and acted upon. From the bureaucrats' perspective, this meant more work and their own priorities displaced by the councilors' pet issues.

Nearly all of the outgoing councilors had certain priorities that were inconvenient or outright obnoxious to the administration, the authorities, and special interests. Jim Mautino was concerned about animal control, food truck sanitation, chloramines in water, and encouraging new, high quality development in east Tulsa....

Although the specific issues varied, in each case these councilors were willing to spend time outside the scheduled meetings to read, to talk to citizens, to commission research from the council staff (and actually read it), and then to keep pushing for action. That's pretty much a recipe for annoying city officials.

Despite his defeat in his 2011 re-election bid, he kept digging into issues, like the new trash contract, until his term came to an end. With the end of that term, a short era marked by inquisitive, intelligent councilors was replaced by the Complacent City Council.

Despite the abuse and arrows hurled at him over the years, Jim Mautino persisted with a smile on his face and hope in his heart. May God grant comfort and happy memories to his grieving family, and may God grant our country more intelligent, devoted public servants like Jim Mautino.

The City of Tulsa Board of Adjustment (BOA) has granted a special exception and a variance to allow the new Brookside Library to be built on the playing fields of the former Wright Junior High School, on the northeast corner of Madison Place and 46th Place South. A group of citizens have filed a lawsuit in Tulsa County District Court to halt the zoning permission, alleging conflicts of interest on the BOA. Under state law and local ordinance, the only appeal from a BOA decision is a lawsuit in district court.

The BOA case is BOA-23557. Tulsa's zoning code allows libraries within an RS-3 residential single-family zoning district, but only by special exception. In order to grant a special exception, the BOA must find (Title 42, 70.120.F.):

1. That the special exception will be in harmony with the spirit and intent of this zoning code; and

2. That the special exception will not be injurious to the neighborhood or otherwise detrimental to the public welfare.

Paragraph B of the same section says that, "Applications for special exception approval may be filed only by the owner of the subject property or by the property owner's authorized agent." In this case, the applicant is Lou Reynolds of Eller and Dietrich representing the Tulsa City-County Library Commission (TCCLC), according to a letter to neighbors included in the BOA hearing packet; the current owner is Tulsa Public School (Independent School District No. 1). The same requirement applies to variances (70.130.C). This violation is one of the allegations in the lawsuit.

The application also requested a variance to allow a 15 foot setback for the library building on 46th Place instead of the 25 feet required for the RS3 zoning district. The zoning code explains the purpose of a variance in Section 70.130.A.

A variance is a grant of relief to a property owner from strict compliance with the regulations of this zoning code. The intent of a variance is not to simply remove an inconvenience or financial burden that may result from compliance with applicable zoning requirements. Variances are intended to help alleviate an unnecessary hardship or practical difficulty that would be caused by strict enforcement of the subject zoning code requirements. They are intended to provide relief when the requirements of this zoning code render property very difficult or impossible to put to reasonable use because of some unique or special characteristics of the property itself.

Variances are not a wild card. For example, you can't use a variance to allow a use that is forbidden for that zoning district. In this case, the building cannot be shifted further north because of a 120" storm sewer pipe that runs under the property; there is a required storm sewer easement that must be kept clear. This area would be used for parking. Of course, the proposed building could be built with a smaller footprint, possibly by building a second story, that would honor both the utility easement and the required setback.

The heart of the lawsuit, CV-2023-1809, is that Whitney Stauffer, one of the members of the Board of Adjustment who participated in the hearing and the vote, is also on the board of the Foundation for Tulsa Schools (FTS), which exists to support Tulsa Public Schools. The lawsuit also points out that Moises Echeverria-Ashworth is both the President and CEO of the Foundation for Tulsa Schools and a member of the Tulsa City-County Library Commission (TCCLC), and that Stauffer and Ellen Duecker, another member of the TCCLC, served together on the 2021 Bond Committee for Tulsa Public Schools. The special exception and variance received only 3 votes, the required majority for the 5-member body, but one of those three votes came from a member who, the suit asserts, should have recused herself.

The lawsuit states: "The interests of FTS have become so confused with the operations of Independent School District No. 1, Tulsa, Tulsa County, that it is inconceivable that Whitney Stauffer in her role as BOA Member and simultaneously chair of FTS could make an unbiased decision when it comes to BOA-23557." The complaint uses minutes from FTS and TCCLC meetings to illustrate the interconnections of these bodies.

You might well wonder why, in a city of 413,066 people, in a county of 669,279 people, the same few dozen people occupy the boards of all the public authorities, boards, and commissions, and interlock with many non-profits and foundations.

Orville Wright Junior High School opened to students in fall 1959, alongside Nathan Hale and Raymond S. McLain Senior High Schools in Tulsa's growing eastern and northern subdivisions, and the new Education Service Center, headquarters to Tulsa Public Schools, at 31st and New Haven. Wright was Tulsa's first circular school building, designed by Leon Senter and Associates. The large block between 45th Place, 46th Place, Madison Place, and Peoria Avenue was all owned by TPS and shared between Wright and Oliver Wendell Holmes Elementary School. Holmes was built in 1950, but closed in 1981, one of the earlier victims of falling TPS enrollment. It was placed on the TPS surplus property list in 1983, became the Brookside Center retail complex in 1988, and was purchased by Tulsa Ballet in 1991. When Holmes closed as a school, Wright became an elementary school. Collegiate Hall charter school opened in 2015 at Marshall Elementary School at 56th and Peoria, then, after TPS closed Wright Elementary in 2020, Collegiate Hall moved into the building. Collegiate Hall lost its charter at the end of last school year. College Bound Academy, another charter school, now has a campus in the Wright building.

The Brookside branch library opened in the former Guy Scroggs's Brookside Drug Store, 3516 S. Peoria, in January 1951, then moved in January 1962 to 1311 E. 35th Street, the old southside post office building. The South Brookside Library opened at 1207 E. 45th Street in 1966, replacing the Brookside branch. It was expanded in 1999, doubling from 3,360 to 7,120 sq. ft. The proposed replacement would have 15,000 sq. ft. and 78 parking spaces.

While there has been a library "in the neighborhood" for over 50 years, the current location is surrounded by commercial development and just a short distance from an arterial street on a residential collector street. The new location is deep in the neighborhood and larger. Just to the west of the current location there is a seldom-used side parking lot for the Walmart Neighborhood Market. If it weren't for Tulsa's ridiculous parking minimums that space could be repurposed as parking for an expansion of the existing library into its current parking lot.

MORE:

Backup copies:

• Petition in CV-2023-1809, Royce in re City of Tulsa Board of Adjustment
• BOA-23557 Board of Adjustment agenda backup materials and case file

Happy news late this afternoon that Deborah Gist has resigned as superintendent of Tulsa Public Schools. Gist resigns as the state's largest school district faces a hearing on Thursday at the State Board of Education on the loss of its accreditation.

The threat to pull accreditation stems from poor academic performance and lack of financial controls. Alleged embezzlement of nearly $500,000 by Chief Talent and Equity Officer Devin Fletcher and alleged kickbacks to other unnamed employees point to a lack of financial controls and oversight by the Gist administration and the school board majority who have propped her up. Despite the district experiencing year after year of dismal test scores during Gist's tenure, the Tulsa school board majority continued to renew her contract well in advance of its expiration, with some renewals timed such that newly elected board members could not have a vote in the matter.

In a public statement, Gist stated that her handpicked successor would be chosen by the board to continue her work:

There will be a special board meeting on Wednesday evening where the board will consider my separation and the appointment of Dr. Ebony Johnson as interim superintendent. I am enthusiastic about the board's plan to act upon the appointment of our colleague as interim superintendent. As you know, Dr. Johnson is a lifelong Tulsan, a stellar educator, a strong leader, and a remarkable human being. With the leadership of Dr. Johnson, our team will keep the work of our plan on track and will reach even higher.

"The board's plan to act" suggests that a violation of the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act has occurred. Any discussion should occur in a public meeting with adequate public notice. The use of serial private meetings with fewer than a quorum at each in order to avoid an open meeting has itself been found to be a violation of the Open Meeting Act. Board member Jerry Griffin, a critic of Gist, said that he had been kept in the dark:

In light of recent reports surrounding the resignation of Dr. Gist, Superintendent of Tulsa Public Schools, I find it crucial to clarify my position and understanding of the matter. The news surrounding the resignation of Dr. Gist has taken many by surprise, and I wish to expressly state that I too was unaware of the decision until it emerged in the media. Various statements have indicated that this was a decision made by the Tulsa School Board, of which I am a part. However, I was neither consulted nor informed about this decision at any point in time. I must stress that I have not been privy to any discussions regarding the resignation, nor have I been involved in decisions about the interim Superintendent's appointment. These developments have been made without my knowledge or consent.

The Tulsa school board will meet tomorrow, Wednesday, August 23, 2023, at 5:30 p.m., in the Cheryl Selman Room, ground floor, at the Education Service Center, 3027 S. New Haven Ave. From the agenda it appears that the useless board majority intends to give Gist a golden parachute (note item D):

C. Motion, second, discussion and vote on motion to approve a mutual separation agreement with Dr. Deborah Gist as Superintendent of Schools, effective September 15, 2023, at 11:59 p.m.

D. Motion, second, discussion and vote on motion to approve amending the district's 403(b) annuity plan to allow nonelective post-employment employer contributions, and authorize the attorneys for the district to prepare/approve the appropriate plan amendment document(s) and the proper officers of the Board of Education to execute the document(s) on behalf of the district.

E. Approve an emergency waiver of the policy suspension procedures in Board Policy 1201 and immediately suspend all requirements under board policies for posting and advertising the position of interim Superintendent of Schools....

G. Motion, second, discussion and vote on motion to appoint Dr. Ebony Johnson as the interim Superintendent of Schools and approve an employment contract with Dr. Johnson to serve as interim superintendent of schools effective September 16, 2023.

The board will go into executive session regarding Gist and Johnson before items C and G, respectively.

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Gist herself indicates that her resignation is meant to appease the State Department of Education and forestall loss of accreditation:

I am confident that my departure will help to keep our democratically-elected leadership and our team in charge of our schools-this week and in the future.

The Oklahoma state school board should not be satisfied that only one head of the hydra has been severed. Gist's departure is happy news, but it's only the beginning of the cleanup effort. All of Gist's cronies, all of the strings-attached foundation grants, the ties to Tulsa's control-freak philanthropocracy, the useless board majority that kept extending her contract and failed to exercise oversight -- they all need to go. State Superintendent Ryan Walters and the State Board of Education should not relent until the cleanup is complete.

It's ridiculous to suggest that we have effective, democratic local control of schools. Oklahoma's school election laws are ideal for thwarting voter involvement -- filing period in early December as families are focused on the end of the fall semester and Christmas, campaigning through the darkest and coldest months of the year so no door-knocking after work during the week, and staggered terms (four years in Tulsa, five years most other places) so voters cannot throw all the bums out in one revolt. Reform of school elections -- I suggest two-year terms and November elections in odd numbered years -- will improve democratic accountability in the long run. In the meantime, when our "local control" has failed to maintain financial control and academic performance, the state has a responsibility to clean house. This happened in 2021 during the administration of State Superintendent Joy Hofmeister, when Western Heights School District in Oklahoma City lost its accreditation after a period of probation.

Only 26 districts in the state scored lower than Tulsa Public Schools in composite academic achievement in 2021-2022, the most recent year for which results have been published. 32 of TPS's 46 elementary schools had 0 students scoring at a proficient or advanced level in the 2021 assessments. Defenders of the TPS status quo claimed that 49 districts have worse performance than TPS, and State Superintendent Ryan Walters should focus his attention elsewhere. But TPS is the largest district in the state, and there are 490 districts that have better performance. The percentage of TPS students at proficient or advanced levels is only 8.86%. Tulsa ranks 18th worst district in percentage of students "below basic" achievement levels at 64.4% -- nearly two-thirds. (Data exported from the SDE interactive data browser is the source of these statistics.)

Earlier this month, Democrat State Rep. Jacob Rosecrants urged that "we need to look past standardized test scores as a way to determine if a school district is failing or not." He claimed that inner-city "student trauma" gets in the way of test performance and the state should respond with "more resources." (Thread captured here.)

If students can't read, they can't read. One-room-schoolhouse teachers -- my great-grandfather was one -- managed to teach poor farm kids -- like my grandfather -- how to read in between fall harvest and spring planting. Public schools in the Depression managed to teach reading, despite plenty of trauma. Self-styled "public education advocates" need to stop making excuses for failed educational philosophies that no amount of money can rescue.

I find it interesting that City of Tulsa and Tulsa Regional Chamber officials continue to speak about TPS as if it were the sole school district of importance. I haven't run the numbers, but I feel certain that there are far more school children living in the City of Tulsa who attend Jenks, Union, Broken Arrow, Bixby, and other public school districts, charter schools, and private schools, or are homeschooled than attend TPS. That's definitely the case for the Tulsa metropolitan region. City officials should tout the wide range of educational options the city has to offer, while treating TPS as a problem to be solved; instead, they defend the fellow insiders who have driven TPS into the ground. If they really are worried about workforce development as they claim, city and chamber officials should demand strong action to clean up TPS.

State Superintendent Walters and the state school board should not be placated by Gist's resignation. I hope that they will act boldly on Thursday to clean up TPS, for the sake of the children who are stuck there and for the district's once-proud legacy. I expect that the System is hoping that sacrificing Gist will allow them to retain control of TPS. (No doubt a very nice sinecure in a non-profit has been set aside for her.) I hope they are mistaken.

Concluding this blog post by switching movie villainesses: Remember, the squashing of the Wicked Witch of the East was at the beginning of The Wizard of Oz. The final defeat of the Wicked Witch of the West and her flying monkeys didn't happen until the end.

Special congratulations go to Tulsa Parents Voice for their research and persistence in documenting Gist's failures, pressing for an audit of TPS finances, and continuing the battle for reform.

MORE: LibsOfTikTok has posted a video by Union Public Schools elementary school librarian Kirby MacKenzie. MacKenzie superimposed this text atop video of herself strutting with an armload of books: "POV: teachers in your state are dropping like flies, but you are *still* just not quite finished pushing your woke agenda at the public school." MacKenzie is also an assistant director at Gaining Ground. KTUL reported that Union Public Schools spokesperson Chris Payne claimed, without evidence, that the video had been "doctored up."

Payne denied, however, that Mackenzie made the video, despite it appearing on her own TikTok page under her name. The video, they said, was edited by a third party and was not Mackenzie's creation.

"That is the doctored-up version of a video that [Mackenzie] made," Payne told CITC via phone. "They have made changes to her video. What we're talking about isn't even her video, it's one that has been doctored up. Obviously, they have an agenda."

CITC could not identify any differences between the video originally published by Mackenzie on TikTok and the version circulating social media on Tuesday.

When asked for clarification, Payne was unable to identify the "original" video or describe who had allegedly edited it. He also could not explain how the allegedly edited video had been posted to Mackenzie's page without her knowledge or consent.

After a series of emails from CITC attempting to verify the district's claim, Payne said "we are done" and implied CITC was pushing an agenda.

CITC is Crisis in the Classroom, the national education reporting arm of Sinclair Broadcast Group, parent company of KTUL. Their Twitter account, @CITClassroom, provides a feed of stories reported by Sinclair stations across the country on educational failures, predatory teachers, teachers' union activity, pornographic books in school libraries, and the rise of school choice. Recent Oklahoma stories covered a grandparent's claim that Oologah Middle School ran out of cafeteria food and the new school choice tax credit law. Several times they've called attention to their analysis questioning Joe Biden's demand for teacher raises, noting a 43-year long increase in teacher pay (except for the effects of Bidenflation) and plummeting student performance.

This is an encouraging development: A major media chain has noticed widespread parental concerns about public schools and is wisely making it a focus of their local news coverage.

Originally posted on August 1, 2023. Post-dating to August 8 so it remains at the top of the page through election day. A previous entry has a just-the-facts discussion of the four August 8 bond issue and sales tax propositions.

Here are seven reasons to vote no on all four City of Tulsa ballot propositions at the special election next Tuesday, August 8, 2023:

1. Two-and-a-half years too early: The proposed sales tax may not go into effect until January 1, 2026.* A lot can change in two years and five months. Economic and global circumstances two years from now may be very different -- just think how different the world was two-and-a-half years ago -- and our priorities may change with those circumstances. We shouldn't commit nearly a billion dollars in spending so far in advance, nor should we start borrowing (and paying interest) on revenue that's two-and-a-half years in the future.

2. Hamstringing the next mayor and council: The proposals block the ability of new city officials to pursue capital improvements to implement their election platforms. A new mayor and city council will be elected in 2024, but the August 8 proposals lock up funding for capital improvements until 2030, after the end of the next mayor's term of office in 2028. It's selfish on the part of lame duck mayor GT Bynum IV, who is not running for re-election, to lock in spending priorities for his successor. There's plenty of time before the current tax runs out for the new mayor and council to decide on a new package. The new officials will have 10 months after taking office in December 2024 to put together a package and put it before the voters.

3. Too vague: $162 million is "itemized" for "citywide" but unspecified lists in broad categories -- streets, sidewalks, alleys, ADA implementation (whatever that means), bridge replacement. This list of vague citywide items includes traffic engineering, which is not a capital improvement but an operational responsibility, and project engineering inspection and testing, which in the past was always priced into individual projects as essential to any construction project. In the original 1980 "third-penny" sales tax vote and its early successors, specific intersections, bridges, widening projects, water and sewer lines, etc., were listed in the sales tax ordinance or general obligation bond issue, committing the city to specific projects with definable costs. It was possible to see whether or not funding was going to the most urgent needs and whether all parts of the city were given due consideration. These vague "citywide" line items don't give the voters anyway of telling whether we're being offered good value for money or whether contractor profits are being padded.

We also don't have specifics on nearly $80 million, divided between Proposition 1 and Proposition 4 for "Additional costs for completion of previously approved street projects listed in Improve Our Tulsa Proposition No 1 approved at an election held on November 12, 2019." Which projects overran? How much does each project require for completion?

Besides the "citywide" and "additional costs" items, many other line items are vague and undefined; some of them are outlined below.

4. $75 million for undefined "housing initiatives": When government sets out to solve a social problem, the money is wasted and the problem gets worse. $22 trillion was spent during the first 50 years of the War on Poverty, and there are more people dependent on government than ever before. The city wants $75 million to solve the homeless problem but they won't tell us how they will spend that money, not even why they think $75 million is the right amount to ask for.

The money will be spent in accordance with the recommendations of the Housing, Homelessness, and Mental Health Task Force, a group of the usual suspects and yacht guests that includes exactly one person who might have some direct experience dealing with homeless people.

The people in charge of our city government and the philanthropocrats** who control them see human beings as mere animals, automata that respond to stimuli in predictable ways. Their thinking goes that if you provide the proper environment and nutrients, people will thrive, just like plants do. That way of thinking leads to the arrogant belief that enough government money can fix anything: "If we can put a man on the moon" -- solve an engineering problem using the unchanging laws of physics and chemistry -- "we can end homelessness" -- a complex set of human tragedies that find their explanation in spiritual truths denied by the philanthropocrats and their minions.

The Founding Fathers and the Framers of the Constitution, informed by a Biblical anthropology, understood that all human beings are created in the image of God and as such have inherent dignity and worth, but also that all human beings are marred by the Fall, and inclined by nature to selfishness and evil, which requires the internal restraint of the Holy Spirit, a conscience externally restrained by the social pressure of a moral society, or, as a last resort, the threat of state violence to prevent violent evil.

Christian ministries like City of Hope Outreach and John 3:16 Mission have helped homeless people successfully leave the streets and rebuild their lives, because they begin with a true understanding of human nature. Materialist philanthropists and social service agencies, no matter how well-intentioned, cannot hope to address the problem and will likely only enable more of the self-destructive and societally destructive behavior they claim to be able to stop, if only they had enough money to spend.

5. Gilcrease Museum held hostage: Bynum IV & Co. are demanding another $7 million in "matching funds for improvements." In 2016, Tulsans approved $65 million to renovate Gilcrease Museum. In 2020, we were told that it had to be demolished and rebuilt. (Bynum IV chief of staff Blake Ewing wrongly claimed at the Tulsa GOP forum that we didn't know until the museum was closed that demolition was necessary. In July 2021, the doors closed for what we were told would be three years. In March 2023 we were told that more money was required, and recently we were told that the museum won't be open to the public until 2026. Bynum IV & Co. will have deprived an entire generation of Tulsa students of the opportunity to visit Gilcrease Museum during their high school years.

Like the proverbial car dealer who throws your keys on the roof and won't get them down until you buy a new car, Tulsa mis-leaders are demanding more money before they'll let us enjoy the priceless collection of artwork, artifacts, and historical documents that we, the Citizens of Tulsa, own. They don't deserve any more trust when they've already betrayed us over and over again. To earn our trust, the first step is to reopen Gilcrease, and put our collection back on display, with the money they already have in hand.

6. PAC in danger: Now City Hall mis-leaders want $55,790,000 for "Tulsa Performing Arts Center - facility renovation, infrastructure, loading dock improvements, safety and ADA improvements." This is more than half of the money for specified projects in Proposition 2. Given our experience with Gilcrease Museum, I would expect a similar bait-and-switch:

1. Tulsans approve funding for PAC renovations
2. Mis-leaders "discover" "serious problems" requiring demolition (or gutting)
3. PAC closes with a promise to reopen in three years
4. Mis-leaders "discover" a need for more money to reopen
5. Construction delays keep PAC closed for two more years

I believe that Tulsa's mis-leaders wanted a new building for Gilcrease all along***, just like they wanted a new Arkansas River pedestrian bridge, and I strongly suspect they want a new PAC, but they know they cannot convince the voters to approve demolition of a beloved landmark or the full cost of the new facility. So they will deceive Tulsa voters, and if voters are stupid, they will fail to learn anything from past behavior and will let themselves be deceived once again.

Do we want to go for five or more years without a venue for Broadway theater, symphony, ballet, and opera? Until they deliver a new Gilcrease Museum to our satisfaction, we shouldn't trust Tulsa's mis-leaders with another precious cultural institution.

7. Millions more for a toxic lake: Work on the Zink Dam isn't complete yet, and the City wants another $3.5 million (per Proposition 2 in the bond issue resolution) or $5 million (per public statements) for "Zink Lake - infrastructure." Blake Ewing said during the Tulsa GOP forum that this was for parking lots, but when I asked where the document was that spells this out, I didn't get an answer. Meanwhile, Tulsa citizens have unanswered questions about toxic chemicals seeping into the lake from ground water under the refineries, past and present, along the river. Ewing dismissed these concerns as a "political, fun, fun hot button thing to get upset about."

In May 1979, Tulsa voters rejected the first attempt to pass a "third penny" sales tax for capital improvements. The list of projects was too vague, lacked guarantees that money would be spent as promised, and included some big projects that voters didn't want. In October 1980, 60% of Tulsa voters approved a more specific package with better safeguards and without the most objectionable projects. City of Tulsa officials have plenty of time to give us a solid package if we say no to this one.

Thanks to Jesse Rodgers and City Elders for the logo at the top of the page.

A dialogue pertinent to the August 8, 2023, City of Tulsa special election:

"Homeless problem in Tulsa seems worse than ever and all over the city, not just downtown."

"Don't worry, GT has a plan."

"What's the plan?"

"$75 million."

"To do what?"

"We don't know yet."

"How do we know it will cost $75 million?"

"We have matching funds and other money totaling $104.2 million."

"That's an awfully precise amount for an undetermined plan."

"Top men will tell us how to spend it. Top. Men."

"When will we find out how it will be spent?"

"After you vote to give us the $75 million."

A friend with experience in this realm says that $75 million could probably fix homelessness (except that some will always choose that way of life) IF it was being used by groups that do things right -- that means working one-on-one and slowly with individuals to address their REAL needs. But it won't.

The city ordinance setting out the policy for spending the sales tax money says it will be spent in accordance with the recommendations of the Housing, Homelessness, and Mental Health Task Force, a group of the usual suspects and yacht guests.

Under the "Improve Our Tulsa 3" plan, my friend notes, the people who will be allocating and spending the $75 million are the same people who stuffed a couple hundred people into a hotel on Garnett for 6 months, indiscriminately. People who lived there reported that drugs, prostitution (including coerced prostitution), rape, and gang activity were rampant. A large number of those residents were eventually housed, but many are back out on the streets, some after two or three trips through the housed/homeless cycle. Every time the non-profits get someone housed, the non-profits get money, so they cycle people through. Landlords let people live out the lease, collect the subsidized checks, then they issue a non-renewal notice the day that lease expires. The people are back out on the streets and back on the wait list for housing after having to reapply. The landlord raises the rental price, and they all repeat the process again. That will burn through the $75 million. A few cheap units might be built, but they'll become havens of drugs and crime and prostitution and trafficking.

$75 million for failed homeless strategies (which they won't disclose before we vote) are on the ballot today, Tuesday, August 8, 2023, part of a special election in the City of Tulsa. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Four propositions, three general obligation bond issues and a new 0.95% sales tax, are on the ballot. The Republican Party of Tulsa County has officially come out in opposition to all four propositions, as has independent City Councilor Grant Miller, the only elected official with the courage and wisdom to refuse to send this poorly crafted package to the voters.

Just before 5 p.m. Monday, I received an email from the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, a public trust for the City of Tulsa, urging me to vote yes. I am fairly sure this is illegal, but because it was done at the last minute, any protest or penalty will come too late to undo the effect it was intended to have. The email claims, "As a part of that package, the TPAC would receive nearly $80 million," but the package only includes $55,790,000 for the PAC (Proposition No. 2), and it seems reasonable to fear that the same bait-and-switch that was pulled for Gilcrease will be pulled for the PAC: They'll get this money, then claim they actually have to demolish and rebuild, and then will come back and demand more money and more time; meanwhile Tulsa's orchestral musicians, opera singers, and ballet dancers will be without a place to perform for the next 5 to 10 years. No, thanks. You can read all seven of my reasons to vote NO here.

MORE: For those wondering about the memes on this page: Underpants Gnomes, Gru's Plan.

The Tulsa County Republican Party has officially come out in opposition to the four City of Tulsa propositions for sales tax and general obligation bonds on the August 8, 2023, ballot ("Improve Our Tulsa 3"):

Republican Party of Tulsa County Takes Stance on
Improve Our Tulsa 3 Bond Package
Tulsa GOP is asking voters to Vote No on August 8th

TULSA, OK (08/02/2023)

On August 8th, the City of Tulsa is asking all residents to vote on the Improve Our Tulsa 3 bond package. We love Tulsa; however, Improve Our Tulsa is the wrong approach at this time. It is vague and unvetted by the citizens. This package is being rushed when we have over two years to renew the current tax. Our biggest concerns about this package are the $75MM for UNDEFINED housing initiatives in the housing package, additional funding for the Gilcrease Museum, and the uncertainty with Zink Lake. Should this package be passed, the next Mayor will be hamstrung with the responsibility of implementing something he or she had no part in creating. How is this fair for our next Mayor?

We should learn from our history, in May 1979 Tulsa voters rejected the first attempt to pass a "third penny" sales tax for capital improvements. The list of projects was too vague, lacked guarantees that money would be spent as promised, and included some big projects that voters didn't want. In October 1980, 60% of Tulsa voters approved a more specific package with better safeguards and without the most objectionable projects. City of Tulsa officials have plenty of time to give us a solid package if we say no to this one. (batesline.com)

These are just a few reasons why the Republican Party of Tulsa County is asking you, the Tulsa voters, to VOTE NO on ALL FOUR propositions on August 8th because history tells us..... WE. CAN. DO. BETTER.

MORE: District 5 City Councilor Grant Miller explains why he voted against sending the package to the voters:

The mayor continues to dismiss the real and valid concerns of Tulsans claiming that people who don't like the idea of not having a plan for $75M of spending on homelessness or want answers regarding chemicals in the river before spending millions on a recreational area are "...just folks, like Councilor Miller, who object to things for the sake of objecting to them." (Link in comments). We can do better than the Mayor's package and come up with something that actually works for Tulsa, instead. And there is absolutely no reason to rush into this. We have more than enough time to go back to the drawing board according to Chief of Staff, Blake Ewing. Everything is and will be funded through 2025. So why did the Mayor say it would be a disaster?! He knows that's not true. Dismissing Tulsans' very serious concerns is terribly arrogant.

Here's the link to Councilor Miller's comments on KRMG.

Tulsa is the focus of another recent article from a UK newspaper website: A story in the Guardian Online about the impact of expressway construction on Tulsa's Greenwood neighborhood, and the possibility of reviving the neighborhood by removing the north leg of the Inner Dispersal Loop.

Twenty-five years before Don Shaw was born in Greenwood, a white mob invaded the Tulsa neighborhood and killed more than 300 people. Much of the tight-knit community was burned to the ground, including his grandfather's pharmacy.

But when Shaw was growing up in the 1950s and 60s, few people wanted to talk about the massacre - perhaps in part because much of the damage was no longer visible.

He remembers walking the streets of Greenwood in his youth and seeing Black-owned businesses up and down its blocks: a hotel, dry cleaner, soul food restaurants, churches, a ballroom, dentists, pharmacies, hardware store, photo studio, the 750-seat Dreamland Theatre. It was an oasis of Black economic self-sufficiency, inside an Oklahoma city flush with oil industry wealth where the Klu [sic] Klux Klan once publicly operated.

"There was a lot of parties," recalled 76-year-old Shaw, who has lived in Greenwood his whole life. "Dances and stuff like that, concerts, lots of stuff going on."...

By December 1921, more than half of the homes that were destroyed had been rebuilt, despite city leaders rewriting zoning and fire codes to prevent the Black neighborhood from surviving. (Some Greenwood locals worked on their homes at night to avoid policemen.) When I-244 came decades later, resistance to the highway was undermined by a lack of Black representation in city government.

The Guardian story was apparently inspired in part by a graphic depiction of the effects of I-244 on the neighborhoods north, northeast, and northwest of downtown Tulsa, produced by New York City architect Adam Paul Susaneck for his @Segregation_by_Design Twitter account. Susaneck got in touch with me back in early June, looking for aerial photos and other information that would help him with a then-and-now visualization of the sort that he has done for many other cities, part of a long-term project (segregationbydesign.com) to depict vividly the destruction wrought by Federal highway and urban renewal funding.

Using historic aerial photography, this ongoing project aims to document the destruction of communities of color due to red-lining, "urban renewal," and freeway construction. Through a series of stark aerial before-and-after comparisons, figure-ground diagrams, and demographic data, this project will reveal the extent to which the American city was methodically hollowed out based on race. The project will cover the roughly 180 municipalities which received federal funding from the 1956 Federal Highway Act, which created the interstate highway system.

Since the creation of the Interstate, freeway planning has been an integral tool in the systematic, government-led segregation of American cities. Used not only as a direct means to destroy the communities in their paths, freeways have also been used to cement racial segregation and ensure its endurance. Working synergistically with the legacy of redlining, freeway planning became the ultimate enforcement mechanism: literal walls of concrete and smog that separated black communities from white. In the name of the thinly veiled racist policies of "urban renewal," the freeways took the red lines off the map and built them in the physical world.

Here is the minute-and-a-half video on Tulsa, Greenwood, and I-244:

Greenwood, Tulsa--the famous "Black Wall Street"--before and after highway construction and "urban renewal."

"Decades after the Tulsa Race Massacre [in 1921], urban 'renewal' [in the 1960s] sparked Black Wall Street's second destruction," writes @SmithsonianMag. pic.twitter.com/Qz099Ww1nt

— Segregation_by_Design (@SegByDesign) July 19, 2023

After a street scene from circa 1949, looking north on Greenwood from just north of Vernon AME Church, the video shows the same location today, with homes and shops replaced by today's empty OSU-Tulsa parking lots. The view shifts to a 1951 aerial, zooming in to Admiral Blvd and 1st Street, just west of Utica Ave. The view pans west, as a modern aerial photo replaces the 1951 aerial, showing not only the destruction in the immediate path of the expressway, but the erosion of neighborhoods bordering the expressway, with homes and churches and schools replaced by parking lots and industrial buildings.

At about 27 seconds in, we see an outline showing the boundary of the Greenwood District, and we see I-244 take out two-thirds of what had been a densely-developed business block between Greenwood, Hartford, Archer, and Cameron, and then another business block between Brady, Cameron, Greenwood, and Frankfort. Continuing west, the highway took out more homes and businesses in Greenwood and in the adjacent neighborhood west of Detroit Ave that I've called the Near Northside. A wider swath was cut to build the Cincinnati-Detroit interchange with I-244, and Cincinnati, which had stopped north of Standpipe Hill, now cut through it.

At 41 seconds, I-244 crosses Main Street, sparing Cain's Ballroom. A few seconds later, the massive northwest IDL interchange, connecting the Tisdale Expressway, the Keystone Expressway, and the west leg of the IDL (I-244) wipes out a working-class white neighborhood and cuts downtown off from Owen Park and Crosbie Heights. Edison Junior High gets cleared for the Keystone Expressway at 54 seconds, and then more destruction along the southern edge of the Owen Park neighborhood. When the expressway reaches Yukon Ave, the view zooms out to show a modern aerial view, with the expressways that ring downtown highlighted in yellow, and then the same view from 1951.

The devastation caused by the expressway was significant, particularly to the area known as Deep Greenwood, the commercial district centered on Archer and Greenwood. A May 4, 1967, Tulsa Tribune story, republished here on BatesLine, An Old Tulsa Street Is Slowly Dying, had a photo of the demolition of the Dreamland Theater (at the time, an Elks Lodge) and comments from merchants who were being displaced by the expressway.

The Guardian article discusses the $1.6 million FY22 Reconnecting Communities grant received by the North Peoria Church of Christ, for "I-244 Partial Removal Study." They hope to place the reclaimed land in a trust, to reconnect the street grid, and to avoid gentrification.

But the Grauniad story and the I-244 removal effort misses an important factor in the second demise of Greenwood. The damage done by the expressway was compounded by the "Model Cities" program, the new, Federally funded and allegedly humane approach to urban renewal. It, too, was adopted in 1967, the same year that the path of the expressway was cleared through the neighborhood. The aerial photo from September 10, 1967, suggests that had the expressway been the only insult suffered by the Greenwood District, it might have survived, but Model Cities cleared out everything except the churches and the little remnant of the commercial district south of I-244. Even the original Booker T. Washington High School building, which had survived the 1921 massacre (the L-shaped complex in the upper left of the photo below) was demolished in 1983 in the name of "renewal."

Tulsa Public Schools made the Mail Online on July 30, 2023, as one of 7 school districts in the US with active contracts for Confucius Classrooms, a propaganda outreach of the Chinese Communist Party.

China is funding America's public schools to the tune of $17 million dollars, it has been revealed, with Republicans now probing the disturbing donations.

The report by Parents Defending Education states that the close coordination between the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and U.S. schools to establish Confucius Classrooms has historically included 143 school districts in 34 states and Washington, D.C.

In addition, at least seven contracts are still active in Texas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Oregon and Washington.

A year ago, July 2022, BatesLine reported on the Tulsa Public Schools board vote on accepting a Confucius Classroom grant for Booker T. Washington High School, the ninth year of the program. The grant had been hidden in a "consent agenda," a long list of items to be approved en masse without discussion or debate, but because three of the six board members present voted against the agenda, several items were brought back individually for consideration at a later meeting. Only one board member, newly elected District 4 member E'Lena Ashley, had the courage and wisdom to vote against accepting the grant and contract "with International Leadership of Texas, in partnership with Confucius Classroom Coordination Offices."

This map ran with the Daily Mail's story:

The story cites PDE's recent report, "Little Red Classrooms," and quotes several Members of Congress concerned by the findings:

Rep. Jim Banks is demanding the Education Department take action with 'urgency' in in order to terminate these 'disturbing' partnerships, he says in a letter to Sec. Miguel Cardona on Wednesday obtained by DailyMail.com.

'The Chinese Communist Party is not a trustworthy partner. Accepting funding and influence from our greatest adversary is a threat to America's children and national security,' Banks told DailyMail.com.

He wrote in the letter that the U.S. must 'take every measure' to strengthen its defenses against China including by 'blocking their ability to propagandize in America's K-12 schools.'...

PDE's "Little Red Classrooms" report also mentions Tulsa's "Carver Middle School... which became a "Confucius School" through Hanban&emdash;the subdivision of the Chinese Ministry of Education that, until 2021, operated Confucius Institutes and Classrooms. (This is mentioned on the Carver website under the Global Awareness tab and has beencaptured by the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.)

PDE discusses the use of third-party organizations to mask the funding ties to the Chinese Communist Party:

Other districts mask Chinese government funding through third-party nonprofit entities. Such is the case in schools in Oklahoma, Texas, and North Carolina.

Take the International Leadership of Texas Global, for example--a nonprofit organization that has taken on being an administration apparatus and passthrough for the continuation of the Confucius Classroom programming. Tulsa Public Schools' Board of Education has a contract with the Confucius Classroom Coordination Offices through the International Leadership of Texas Global. Highland Park Independent School District in Texas also received funding from the International Leadership of Texas Global to facilitate its "Chinese core curriculum."

As BatesLine reported last year, International Leadership of Texas operates a network of 22 charter schools, with four more campuses currently in development, plus 4 affiliated private high schools. Recent news items on their website indicate that alignment with China and its Communist government is a high priority for the organization, and also reinforce concerns raised by PDE about Chinese Communist influence over Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps Programs at Confucius Classroom schools:

• First and Only ILTexas Student Thrives in Chinese Flagship Program: A student ILTexas Katy-Westpark High School is the "first and only ILTexas student to attend the university's Flagship Program within its Intensive Chinese Program in the Summer Language Institute. Her accomplishments are so impressive, Ole Miss has offered to pay for the dual credit opportunity this Fall."
• ILTexas Opens New State-of-the-Art Marine Corps JROTC Facility: "ILTexas has the highest Marine Corps JROTC enrollment percentage of any high school in the country where MCJROTC enrollment is optional. An ILTexas cadet spoke at the ceremony, stating the new facility 'will be the center of gravity for cadets to learn leadership, develop their character, and become the best versions of themselves.'"
• Ole Miss Sees Record Number of Students for Chinese Program, Most from ILTexas: "The University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) welcomed 74 high school students for its Summer Language Institute, and reports in a University news article that the Intensive Chinese Program drew a record number of rising juniors and seniors. 69 of the 74 students who attended the summer program are ILTexas students.... International Leadership of Texas' mission is to prepare students for exceptional leadership roles in the international community. The United States declares Chinese as a critical language, recognizing it as a National Security Language. Therefore, all ILTexas students master Mandarin Chinese as part of the core curriculum."
• Summer Camp Highlights Cybersecurity, Language and Leadership for ILTexas Students: "In addition to Cybersecurity and Leadership, students also practiced their Mandarin Chinese during the summer camp, as it's a National Security Language. All ILTexas students take Chinese language classes during the regular school year with the goal of mastering the language by graduation."
• "This is the closest thing to actually going to China:" ILTexas Students Dive Into the Chinese Culture at the University of Mississippi : "ILTexas is proud to partner with the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) to allow our students to take part in a complete Chinese cultural immersion experience.... Chinese is recognized as a National Security Language, and is a pillar of the ILTexas core curriculum. "
• Chinese Ambassador Qin Gang Visits ILTexas : "International Leadership of Texas teachers and staff filled the gym of ILTexas Garland High School on Tuesday, May 31, to welcome the Chinese Ambassador to the United States Qin Gang. A special luncheon was held in the school library for the Ambassador and ILTexas leadership. The luncheon was followed by a ceremony where ILTexas teachers, students, and headquarter staff honored the Ambassador's visit. Senator Royce West and his wife, Carol West were also in attendance."

At the July 10, 2023, Tulsa school board meeting, renewal of the Confucius Classroom agreement was once again included in the "Consent Agenda," a list of 33 items to be approved as a group by the school board without debate, as item E.7.:

RECOMMENDATION: Renew the agreement for the Confucius Classroom Coordination Offices through the International Leadership of Texas, a 501c3 organization, an international partnership dedicated to building the field of Chinese language teachers and Chinese language learning in American schools for the 2023-2024 school year.

FURTHER RECOMMEND:
The attorneys for the school district approve the appropriate contract document(s) and the proper officers of the Board of Education be authorized to execute the document(s) on behalf of the district.

COST: No cost to the district

FUND NAME/ACCOUNT: Confucius Classroom 81-2273-1000-000000-000-07-735

RATIONALE:
This will be Booker T. Washington's fourteenth year to participate in a Confucius Classroom program. International Leadership Texas, in partnership with the CCCO, offers a quality program which will allow our students to continue in the study of the Chinese language.

Note that last year's agenda claimed that 2022-2023 would be the ninth year, but this year's agenda claims that 2023-2024 is the 14th year of the program at Booker T. Washington High School. Once again, E'Lena Ashley was the only board member to vote against the contract.

Meanwhile, only 27.9% of economically disadvantaged TPS K-5 students and only 25% of Grade 6-8 students are reading at or above the national median student, but TPS administrators feel great about it -- by 2027 they hope that only two-thirds of disadvantaged TPS students will be worse readers than the national median.

MORE: Stream of the July 10, 2023, Tulsa Public Schools Board of Education meeting.

UPDATE: The Tulsa County Republican Party hosted a forum on the August 8 vote on Thursday, July 27, 2023, at 6 p.m., at the Embassy Church, 7100 E. 31st Street. The panelists included City Councilors Christian Bengel and Grant Miller, Mayor's Chief of Staff Blake Ewing, and me, Michael Bates. Darryl Baskin moderated the discussion and provided a live stream, which is archived on his TulsaLiveEvents.com Vimeo channel.

On Tuesday, August 8, 2023, on a day when there is nothing else on the ballot, on a day when only 14 jurisdictions across the entire State of Oklahoma have an election, City of Tulsa voters will be confronted with four ballot propositions, one to enact a new sales tax, and three for new general obligation bond issues. Combined, voters are being asked to approve $815,415,000 in new capital spending, not counting bond interest and fees.

The "temporary" 0.95% sales tax would go into effect when the current 2021 Miscellaneous Capital lmprovements Temporary Sales Tax (approved in 2019) expires on December 31, 2025, or earlier if that tax raises $193 million before that time. Based on my tally of sales tax revenues since the Improve Our Tulsa 2 tax went into effect, and assuming a 5% increase in revenues year-on-year (which is based on recent numbers), we might hit $193 million collected in October 2025, boosted by the increase in the Improve Our Tulsa 2 tax rate from 0.45% to 0.95% in July 2025. Even so, it means that we will vote on a tax and the list of projects to be funded more than two years before the tax goes into effect. Why so early? Why not wait at least until a new mayor and council take office in November 2024 and have had time to assess priorities and re-estimate project costs?

The new sales tax would expire on June 30, 2030, with no provision for an earlier expiration if receipts are better than forecast. If the new sales tax is defeated, Tulsa's overall city sales tax rate would be 2.7% and combined state, county, and city sales tax rate of 7.567%. If the new sales tax passes, the overall city sales tax rate would be 3.65%, an increase of 35.2%.

On the jump page, the ballot language for the four propositions, the ordinances and resolutions approved by the City Council for each, and the list of projects for each:

For fun, I decided to look up the local newspaper from 50 years ago this weekend. I was particularly curious to see what kind of live entertainment was on offer, and what people were watching on TV. (News clips below are from newspapers.com. Click the image to see the original on that site, or you can "open image in new tab" to see it at its original size.)

The Tulsa Oilers (Class AAA, American Association, affiliate of the St. Louis Cardinals) had a free Little League clinic at Oiler Park at 5:30, sponsored by the Jaycees and KTUL channel 8, followed by the Oilers vs. the Denver Bears at 7:30, followed by Memorial Day fireworks after the game. Huckett's Downtown Bowl at 1221 S. Main offered student bowling for 43 cents per line.

Bell's Amusement Park, at the west end of the Tulsa Fairgrounds, offered "Double Fun Days" for the first week of summer: $3 to ride all rides except the Zingo, the big wooden roller coaster, between 11 am. to 3 p.m., and again between 8 p.m. to midnight, with "4 Hours of Super Rock Music by the 'Timbre' Group.' Lakeview Amusement Park at 4100 N. Harvard offered Dollar Days all Memorial Day Weekend: Ride all the rides you like for $1, from 1 p.m. until closing time. Amusement parks were typically pay-by-the-ride.

World Museum and Art Centre, the collection of evangelist T. L. Osborn on the south side of I-44 east of Peoria, announced new summer hours, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., and urged families to visit the World Museum FIRST before heading off on vacation to see "classic cars, buggies, and exquisite antiques... comical caricatures and whimsical junk-art... the Fine Arts Gallery... the imposing Polynesian and Oriental Expos."

The big entertainment event was Jethro Tull in concert, with Brewer and Shipley, at the Tulsa Assembly Center, with remaining tickets available for $5.00 and $4.50.

An even bigger legend would be singing on Sunday, not in a bar, but at Tulsa Baptist Temple: Wanda Jackson performing at "THREE GREAT SERVICES!" 9:45 am, 11:00 am, and 7 pm.

• Hear Her Thrilling Songs and Testimony
• Voted Outstanding Lady Western Singer of 1971
• Before Conversion, She Appeared at Tulsa's Leading Night Spots
• Bring a Carload of Your Friends

Plenty of country & western dancing on offer: Gene Mooney and the Westernaires at Cain's ($2.50, 9 pm - 1 am, BYOL, Singles Welcome); Johnny Leach and the Country Gentlemen at the Will Rogers Round-Up Club in Claremore; The Persuaders with Dale Postoak at Dutsch's Party Barn (1/2 mile east of 91st & Memorial).

Just down the road from Dutsch's was the Gaslight Dinner Theatre, performing Take Her, She's Mine by Phoebe & Henry Ephron.

The VFW offered sounds of the '40s ($3 couple, $2 male stag, $1.50 ladies). Across Central Park, the American Legion offered Bobby Wayne and His Band. (Ted Creekmore and the Tuf-Nut Rover Band had been there the week before.) Harry Arnold and His Orchestra were playing at Danceland Ballroom, 2635 E. 11th St., an old movie theater that was still standing until about 20 years ago, when Bama demolished it for more parking.

Nightclubs offered the California Malibus at the Aristocrat Club, 1543 S. Sheridan; hypnotist Richard DeLaFont at Captain's Cabin, 7970 E. 41st; Gus and The Band at the Cave Club in the Falls Apartments, 61st & Memorial; Karen Rondel at the Copa Club in the Hilton at I-44 & Yale (now the derelict OYO Hotel).

Dining options included several Lebanese steakhouses: Eddy's at 3510 E. 31st, Jamil's at 2905 E. 51st, and Elias' Garden Trails Steak House at 91st & Lewis. The latter offered a prime rib or filet dinner for $4.50, including "relish Dish, Humus, Pahini, Taboli, Cabbage Roll, Lebanese Salad and Baked Potato." The notorious Avalon Supper Club, just across the Creek County line near the Turner Turnpike gate, served dinner from 6 p.m. to 5 a.m. Other restaurants advertising: Peppe's (downtown at 14th & Main, Villa Capri at 61st & Sheridan); Henry Jin's Ricsha Cantonese Gourmet Restaurant, 3301 S. Peoria; Mondo's in their original location on 61st between Riverside and Peoria; D-J's Charburgers and Game Room; 2623 E. 11th; Sleepy Hollow, 6605 S. Lewis; Next Door at 5107 S. Harvard (Cheeseburger & Suzy Q's for 94 cents). The Sky Chef Americana restaurant invited the general public to Dinner for 2 Night, Friday, Saturday, and Monday: A prime rib dinner for 2 went for $6.95, and they'd validate your airport parking ticket.

For those interested in naughtier nightlife: The Pearly Gate, 1549 S. Sheridan, "Tulsa's Finest Adult Stage Show," featured Little Princess ("Tulsa's Favorite Act") and Miss Baby Dumpling, whose photo can be described as an early-day Rosanne Barr in a beehive hair-do and a nightie. The Far East Tavern at 1108 S. Harvard offered "Dancers Daily, 2 p.m. to 2 a.m.). "Sexy Shannon" was performing at Milt's Show Bar at 51st & Yale. The once-grand Majestic at 4th and Main and Studio 1 at 520 S. Main downtown offered "adult" "art films," as did the Capri Drive-In between Tulsa and Sand Springs. Loew's Brook, a mainstream movie house that is now a restaurant, was showing the X-rated United Artists production Last Tango in Paris, starring Marlon Brando. Demand for tickets was high enough that tickets had to be reserved in advance, unusual for movie theaters in that period. The Sunday paper had a form you could cut out and send in to the theater with your choice of days and times.

(MORE: The Pearly Gate, or sometimes Pearly Gates, had some legal troubles over the years: At the time of this ad, the City Commission suspended the bar's license for five days starting May 31 for an open-saloon violation. In 1977, a customer sued the bar after he was bitten by a lion, and there was another 3-day suspension for allowing drunks to loiter.)

There wouldn't have been much else happening in downtown Tulsa. Only one mainstream downtown theater remained open: The Rialto at 13 W. 3rd was showing Sweet Jesus Preacher Man, which was also showing at the Apache at Apache and Harvard.

In 1973, Tulsa had 30 movie screens, with two indoor twins (Village Cinema at Admiral and Garnett, Boman Twin at 31st and Sheridan) and two outdoor twins (11th Street Drive-In, Admiral Twin). The booming eastside of Tulsa boasted the city's first triplex theater, the Plaza 3, now home to Eastland Baptist Church. It was the newest theater in town; the Village twin was the next newest. The rest were single screens of varying vintages. Tulsa had six drive-in theaters, plus the 51 Drive In on 71st Street between Tulsa and Broken Arrow (which had been State Highway 51 before the Broken Arrow Expressway was completed. The only new G-rated movie that weekend was the musical Oliver! at the Village Cinema, but the Plaza 3 offered revivals of Gone with the Wind and Camelot.

The best place to watch a cinematic epic in Tulsa was the Continental, located east of the Skelly Drive and Broken Arrow Expressway interchange, roughly where Interchange Plaza office building is now. It was part of a small chain, with outlets in Oklahoma City and Denver. We went there to see the Pink Panther movies, and they always had the latest James Bond film. That particular night, the Continental was showing Hawaii, based on James Michener's historical novel, and starring Julie Andrews and Richard Harris. It must have been showing in OKC as well, because that's the address in the ad: United Founders Plaza at May and Northwest Highway.

I had never heard of the Vamp Theatre. The address would put it roughly where the Brookside Walmart Neighborhood Market is now located, and where the infamous Stables Lounge once was. Looks like someone had the idea of showing old-time movies, aimed at a family audience, but then you could go to Crystal's and watch Little Rascals (Our Gang) shorts while you ate pizza. The Mondo's ad mentioned silent movies, too.

(UPDATE: The first Vamp ad appears in the February 12, 1973, paper. The May 26th ad was its final appearance, as far as I can determine. That first ad promoted a concert movie of Leon Russell, but hinted that it would be a live performance. On April 21, Doctor Soul of KKUL radio would be there in person to host the screening of the Super Soul Show. Early May featured "Mick Jaggar" [sic], and May 10th and 11th boasted Tulsa's first continuous rock marathon, four straight hours of concert movies. An interesting idea -- show rock concert movies to paying customers -- that didn't draw the crowds the entrepreneur imagined. A late switch to classic movies (including The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from 1919 and Marlene Dietrich's Blue Angel from 1929) didn't turn things around. The same address is attached to McKay's Appliances in 1972 and furniture, etc. in 1974.)

The First Baptist Church ad for special worship services for singles is cleverly placed in the midst of the entertainment pages.

For those who preferred a quiet day in front of the television, KOTV channel 6 offered its usual Saturday afternoon line-up: Championship Wrestling at 2, the Wilburn Brothers at 3, Billy Walker's Country Carnival at 3:30, Buck Owens Ranch Show at 4, Nashville Music at 4:30, Porter Wagoner Show at 5, the CBS Evening News at 5:30, and Hee Haw at 6. I didn't appreciate country music in 1973, although I preferred the corny jokes and pretty girls on Hee Haw to Lawrence Welk on KTUL channel 8. Saturday afternoon TV on the other stations was focused on sports, but KTUL started the afternoon with Generation Rap, American Bandstand, and Soul Train. KTEW channel 2 had NBC's Big League Baseball.

KOTV had CBS's big prime time Saturday lineup, too: All in the Family, Bridget Loves Bernie, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart, and a special: The Musical Magic of Burt Bacharach. The other networks didn't compete with the last two hours, but just threw on old movies.

After the 10 p.m. news on all three stations, more old movies. KTUL ran the 30 minute Horn Bros. Country/Western Variety Show, advertising Horn Bros. Furniture on Admiral at I-44, and then Mazeppa's Uncanny Film Festival, this week showing Brother Orchid and House of Frankenstein, mixed in with the antics of Gaylord Sartain, Gary Busey, Jim Millaway, and the rest of the Mazeppa crew.

What was I doing that Saturday? None of the above other than watching TV. I might have ridden my bike around the neighborhood, maybe down to the In-N-Out convenience store at Admiral and 200th to get an Icee. Mom probably took my sister and me with her to go grocery shopping at Red Bud in the Rolling Hills Shopping Center. Some Saturday nights, I put together a Chef Boy-ar-dee pizza kit, mixing the dough, trying to spread it over the cookie sheet without leaving holes. (Mom would make Kraft Macaroni and Cheese because my sister didn't like pizza.) We would have tuned in for Hee Haw and later for Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart -- but not All in the Family. We would have switched over to watch Emergency! Dad loved the shows that Jack Webb produced (Dragnet, Adam 12) and the genre of cop and detective shows that were so popular in the '70s.

The whole region would have been watching the weather: There was a tornado watch until 3 a.m. Two lines of storms moved through northeastern Oklahoma that evening, one around 3:30, another around 8, producing a tornado that wiped out Keefeton, in Muskogee County, killing five, including four members of a family of 5 who were trying to get to the school to take shelter. Another twister took out most of Walker's Tourist Court on the east side of Locust Grove. In all nearly 20 tornadoes were observed around Oklahoma that Saturday night.

I've been asked to give a lecture to a civics class on City of Tulsa government. Below are the collection of links from which my presentation was drawn:

• Oklahoma Municipal Code (Oklahoma Statutes, Title XI, Cities and Towns)
• City of Tulsa charter (Municode)
• City of Tulsa ordinances (Municode)
• City of Tulsa executive orders
• City of Tulsa website
• Tulsa City Council website
• City of Tulsa Internal Audit Reports
• TGOV (televised council and authority, board, and commission meetings
• Tulsa City Council FB page, with meeting live-streams
• Fiscal Year 2022-23 Adopted Budget
• Fiscal Year 2023-24 Proposed Budget
• City of Tulsa campaign contribution reports
• Improve Our Tulsa proposed 2023 sales & property tax package
• Improve Our Tulsa 2023 sales tax ordinance
• Improve Our Tulsa 2023 "Brown Ordinance" -- vague list of project categories
• Tulsa Planning Office
• Tulsa zoning code
• City of Tulsa codes, Comprehensive Plan (PLANiTULSA 2010), and small-area plans
• PLANiTULSA proposed 2023 comprehensive plan update
• Oklahoma Tax Commission sales & use tax reports
• Tulsa County Assessor public data (assessed property value, millage rates)
• City of Tulsa Census quick facts

MORE perspective on local government and power dynamics:

• My April 2022 talk to City Elders on campaign finance in local elections, with links to supplementary reading.
• BatesLine's Tulsa City Hall category
• The Kaiser System, by Michael Mason: Mason approaches the topic with empathy and care as he exposes the groupthink, fear, and divisiveness created as a small group of people use immense wealth as leverage to control our community's civic direction.
• Tina Nettles's account of the revision of Tulsa's animal ordinance is a good case study in how Tulsa's authorities, boards, and commissions are filled with mediocrities, steered by bureaucrats, and indifferent to thoughtful citizen input.

Some thoughts on the April 4, 2023, school board and municipal results, from my live-tweet thread. (ThreadReaderApp unroll here.)

At 7:36 pm, early results in the Tulsa school board election came from 4 of the 18 precincts in District 1, all east of the river (and thus incumbent Stacey Woolley's home turf). Woolley led Jared Buswell 366 to 67, also dominating absentee and early voting, 160-29. At that point in the Bixby election, only absentee/early votes were in, with incumbent Matt Dotson leading Julie Bentley, 79-42.

In Tulsa and Bixby, challengers Buswell and Bentley were running on platforms supporting transparency and parental rights and opposing obscene materials in school libraries.

At 7:50 pm, we were still waiting for three big west-of-the-river precincts to report, but Woolley's home precinct was also yet to come in. Woolley was leading 865-359. Buswell won the two working-class precincts on the west end of Chas Page Blvd, but not downtown-adjacent neighborhoods, like Owen Park, The [formerly Brady] Heights, and Crosbie Heights.

By 8:00 pm, Woolley had won her home precinct, North Maple Ridge & Swan Lake, 412 to 80. Buswell won the precinct encompassing Red Fork and Carbondale, including Webster HS, 132 to 61 -- dominating but by a smaller percentage and with a much lower turnout.
Buswell won his own precinct (720123), but only 100-72. Woolley won the old West Tulsa precinct, just across the river from downtown. That precinct includes the Westport Apartments and a great deal of public housing. The only precincts yet to report were the Gilcrease Hills precincts in Osage County; those also went to Woolley.

There were upsets, but not in the high-profile Tulsa and Bixby school board races. In Berryhill, challenger Danny Bean defeated incumbent Doc Geiger, 170-76. Tracy Hanlon defeated incumbent Rusty Gunn for a seat on the Sand Springs school board, 289-220. Jerald Freeman defeated Skiatook city councilor Joyce Jech, 98-77.

In Broken Arrow, Oklahoma's 4th largest city, Mayor Debra Wimpee had a good night, even though she wasn't on the ballot. Her endorsed candidates won in all three council races. Adding this election to the 2021 results, the entire council is composed of her allies. Vice Mayor Christi Gillespie won a rematch against longtime councilor Mike Lester, the incumbent she beat in 2019. Challenger Joe Franco beat incumbent Scott Eudey. In the at-large council seat, incumbent Johnnie Parks survived with 45% of the vote. William Vaughn improved his 2019 performance with 36%, but voters opposed to Parks split their votes with two other candidates once again. Some conservative organizations backed George Ghesquire, who finished third.

The award for the lowest turnout in any Oklahoma election went to the Town of Ochelata in Washington Co., which had only 10 voters. There were two propositions on the ballot that each tied 5 votes for, 5 against. The propositions were to decide whether the Town Clerk and Town Treasurer would become offices appointed by the Board of Trustees, rather than elected. Ochelata has 279 registered voters. The Town of Avant in Osage County also voted whether to appoint Town Clerk and Treasurer, and the votes also were tied 8 to 8 for both propositions, but there are only 186 voters, so they managed 8.6% turnout!

Biggest turnout was for a regular election was for a seat on the board of the Indian Capital Tech Center -- 8,029 votes over 4 counties and parts of 4 more. Challenger Mark Walters defeated incumbent Scott Chambers, 4,158 to 3,871. Ascend Action was the consulting team supporting Walters's campaign.

The biggest turnout of all was for the Oklahoma County special election for County Clerk. Republican Marissa Treat (wife of State Senate President Pro Tempore Greg Treat) won 52% to 48%, with a total vote of 42,410.

Last results of the night came from Washita County. All precincts in the state had reported by 9:35 pm.

As I was tweeting, I was periodically refreshing the Oklahoma State Election Board results page, which brought to mind a number of suggestions for improvements, which I tweeted out @OKElections (but with no response):

• A visible permalink for each race, so I don't go all the way back to Achille when I'm refreshing the Tulsa results. This would also make it easier to point people (via Twitter and elsewhere on social media) directly to a specific result of interest.
• Make it possible to look up sample ballots without needing the name and birthdate of a voter in that jurisdiction. Right now there is no simple way to see the ballot title for a proposition in another jurisdiction except to find a voter in that jurisdiction and plug his/her name and date of birth into the OK voter portal.
• Put geographical name first in the list of entities, e.g. "Broken Arrow, City of," "Ochelata, Town of," so that all municipal elections in the results list sort by geographical name, as is the case for school districts. I don't always remember whether a municipality is a city or a town.
• Group local results by type of jurisdiction. Right now, the city and town results are mixed in alphabetically with K-12 and technology center school districts. All results for cities are between Cimarron Public Schools and Colcord Public Schools, and all results for towns are between Tonkawa Public Schools and Tulsa Public Schools.

The day after the election, the Tulsa Whirled decided to report on a Tulsa Public Schools audit finding involving $364,000 in questionably legal contracts. Although the report had been discussed in the TPS board meeting on Monday night, the Whirled delayed reporting on it until it was too late to inform voters deciding whether the school board president deserved another term. TPS board and administration deserve some blame as well -- the open records request wasn't answered until Wednesday morning. The report from the audit firm is dated March 30, 2023, the Thursday before the election.

April 4, 2023, is general election day across Oklahoma for school board races and for municipalities that use the default forms of municipal government established by state statute. Many cities with city charters that define a customized government structure still use the default dates for city elections. As is all too typical for local elections, many races failed to draw more than one candidate.

Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. To find your polling place and take a look at sample ballots, visit the Oklahoma State Election Board's voter portal.

Four Tulsa County school districts have school board races on the ballot. For Tulsa Office No. 1, incumbent Democrat Stacey Woolley faces Republican challenger Jared Buswell. For Berryhill Office No. 3, Danny Bean vs. Doc Geiger. For Bixby Office No. 3, Julie Bentley vs. Matt Dotson. For Sand Springs Office No. 3, Tracy Hanlon vs. Rusty Gunn.

Three Broken Arrow city council seats are on the ballot: Mike Lester v. Christie Gillespie in District 3, Scott Eudey vs. Joe Franco in DIstrict 4, and four candidates for the at-large council seat: George Ghesquire, Sonjia J. Potter, William Vaughn, Johnnie D. Parks. One Bixby city council seat, Monica Rios v. Ken Hirshey. One Skiatook seat: Joyce Jech vs. Jerald Freeman.

Below is a list of candidates running in Tulsa County school board and municipal elections. The name as it appears on the ballot is followed by the name under which the candidate is registered to vote, the party of voter registration, age as of election day, and then a list of web pages and social media profiles related to each candidate:

School Board seats

Except in the Tulsa school district, voters anywhere in a school district can vote in the election for any school board seat, regardless of election district. In the Tulsa school district, only voters in Election District No. 1 may vote.

Tulsa Public Schools, Office No. 1:

• Jared Buswell (Jared David Buswell), R, 39, 1860 W. 58th St.: campaign website, personal FB, campaign FB.
• Stacey Woolley (Stacey Ryan Woolley), D, 47, 1110 E. 20th St., incumbent: campaign website, personal FB, campaign FB.

Berryhill Office No. 3:

• Danny Bean (Daniel Earle Bean), R, 42: personal FB
• Doc Geiger (James Conrad Geiger), R, 73, incumbent: personal FB

Bixby Office No. 3:

• Julie Bentley (Julie Lynn Bentley), R, 52: personal FB, campaign FB.
• Matt Dotson (Matthew Ray Dotson), R, 42, incumbent: personal FB.

Sand Springs Office No. 3:

• Tracy Hanlon (Tracy Anne Hanlon), R, 42: personal FB
• Rusty Gunn (Rusty Don Gunn), R, 45, incumbent since 2013: personal FB

City Council seats

Three Broken Arrow city council seats are on the ballot. Under the statutory charter, registered voters from anywhere in the city can vote in all races. In Bixby, only residents of Council District 3 may vote; incumbent councilor Paul Blair is not seeking re-election. Under Skiatook's city charter, registered voters from anywhere in the city can vote in all races.

Broken Arrow City Council Ward 3:

• Christi Gillespie, (Christi D. Gillespie), R, 53, incumbent, vice mayor: personal FB, campaign FB.
• Mike Lester (Michael Edward Lester), R, 75, former incumbent: personal FB, campaign FB

Broken Arrow City Council Ward 4:

• Scott Eudey (Scott Riley Eudey), R, 49, incumbent: personal FB, campaign FB
• Joe Franco (Joseph Dale Franco), R, 45: personal FB, campaign FB

Broken Arrow City Council At-Large:

• George Ghesquire (George Camiel Ghesquire III), R, 54: personal FB, campaign FB
• Johnnie D. Parks, R, 75, incumbent: personal FB, campaign FB
• Sonjia J. Potter (Sonjia Juanita Potter), R, 76: No social media or website found
• William Vaughn (William Daniel Vaughn), R, 49: personal FB, campaign FB

Bixby City Council, Ward 3:

• Ken Hirshey (Kenneth Loyd Hirshey, Jr.), R, 63: Oklahoma Environmental Quality Board website, company website
• Monica Rios (Monica Joi Rios), R, 48: personal FB, campaign FB

Skiatook, Ward 3:

• Jerald Freeman, R, 85: personal FB
• Joyce Jech (Joyce May Jech), R, 77, incumbent: campaign FB

Endorsements:

If I could vote in the TPS Office 1 race, I would vote for Republican challenger Jared Buswell. Buswell, a member of Asbury Church, serves as chairman of the board of Favor International, a Christian ministry working in war-affected areas of Africa -- specifically northern Uganda and South Sudan -- to relieve suffering, proclaim the gospel, build churches and Christian leadership, educate, build community infrastructure, and train to empower economic development. Buswell has been involved with Favor since 2012 and has helped to build Favor's donor base from $300,000 to $6 million per year. Buswell also has a business called Look Inside Tulsa, which uses 360-degree spherical photography to provide VR views of home and building interiors. Originally from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he came to Tulsa in 2001 to attend Oral Roberts University and has lived in west Tulsa since 2007.

His opponent, incumbent Democrat Stacey Woolley, has presided over the continued decline of Tulsa Public Schools, which badly underperforms the rest of the state by every measure. The Whirled's endorsement is inadvertently damning. The Whirled says that, "Among her top accomplishments is refocusing school meetings to student achievement and simplifying operational votes to a consent agenda." This was a move against public transparency and accountability: Last July, the consent agenda was used to hide the board's acceptance of a grant from a non-profit funded by the Chinese Communist Party; it was only exposed because board members E'Lena Ashley, Jerry Griffin, and Jennettie Marshall voted against the consent agenda as a whole.

The Whirled also applauds Woolley for "help[ing to] update the superintendent's evaluation, making it among the nation's few based almost entirely on student outcomes." If that's so, why does Deborah Gist still have a job, when student outcomes continue to be abysmal? And yet Woolley has repeatedly voted to extend Gist's contract.

Election District 1 includes all of the Tulsa school district west of the Arkansas River, plus downtown Tulsa, the neighborhoods along Charles Page Blvd west of downtown, the southern portion of Gilcrease Hills, Brady Heights, Pearl District south of 6th Street, Tracy Park, Swan Lake, North Maple Ridge, and Riverview. Like most of his prospective constituents, Buswell lives west of the river, in a modest home valued by the county assessor at $119,221, located in Woodview Heights near 61st and Union. Woolley lives in the wealthiest neighborhood in the ward, North Maple Ridge, in the extreme eastern extent of the district, in a home valued by the county assessor at $585,301. It is a sadly frequent redistricting technique to gerrymander a few exclusive neighborhoods into an otherwise working-class, middle-class district, so as to maximize the number of the connected and wealthy on an elected board or council.

In the Bixby school board race, I would vote for challenger Julie Bentley over incumbent Matt Dotson. Bentley is a certified teacher who has taught 13 years in the Bixby district and is the mom of a current Bixby High School student. Dotson appears to be a subservient rubber stamp for superintendent Rob Miller, who has expressed his contempt for concerned citizens who speak at board meetings. Dotson refused to take a firm stand against inappropriate books in the curriculum and the library, preferring to invest total confidence in the district employee he's supposed to be holding accountable. (Miller's blog View from the Edge, which he ended in 2017, shortly before he was hired as Bixby superintendent, reveals his hostility to public accountability for the performance of public schools.)

Endorsements from conservative groups:

• Tulsa County Republican Party: Jared Buswell (Tulsa schools, Office 1), Julie Bentley (Bixby schools, Office 3).
• Bixby Parents Voice: Julie Bentley (Bixby schools, Office 3).
• Moms for Liberty: Jared Buswell (Tulsa schools, Office 1), Julie Bentley (Bixby schools, Office 3).
• Oklahomans for the Second Amendment (OK2A): Jared Buswell (Tulsa schools, Office 1), Julie Bentley (Bixby schools, Office 3); Christie Gillespie (Broken Arrow Council 3), Joe Franco (Broken Arrow Council 4), George Ghesquire (Broken Arrow Council At-Large). William Vaughn (Broken Arrow Council At-Large) also had an A-rated survey.
• Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights: Jared Buswell (Tulsa schools, Office 1), Julie Bentley (Bixby schools, Office 3); Christie Gillespie (Broken Arrow Council 3), Joe Franco (Broken Arrow Council 4). George Ghesquire and William Vaughn in the Broken Arrow Council At-Large election each had an A-rated survey, but OKHPR did not endorse in that race.

The incumbent and challenger in the Tulsa School Board District 1 race have each raised over $50,000 according to campaign contribution and expenditures reports filed with the Tulsa Public Schools district clerk.

As of the March 20, 2023, close of the pre-election reporting period, Democrat incumbent Stacey Woolley had raised $51,798, while Republican challenger Jared Buswell had raised $58,643.

Woolley's donor list includes contributors connected with the foundations whose influence has propelled Tulsa Public Schools toward its abysmal academic performance. Maximum $2,900 donors include the Lynn Schusterman Revocable Trust, the Stacy Schusterman Revocable Trust, Frederic Dorwart (attorney for the George Kaiser Family Foundation and related entities), and Philip Kaiser (son of George Kaiser). George Kaiser made a personal donation of $500. Big Democrat donors George Krumme and Burt Holmes also gave maximum donations. Attorney Robert A. Curry gave $1,500 in aggregate, and Joseph Parker Jr. and Robert Thomas each gave $1,000. Employees of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, the George Kaiser Family Foundation, Tulsa Community Foundation, Zarrow Family Foundations also appear on Woolley's list of contributors. Other notable names include left-wing Democrat Tulsa City Councilors Laura Bellis and Lori Decter Wright, former Democrat Mayor M. Susan Savage and her ex-husband Grant Hall, Democrat State Reps. Melodye Blancett and Suzanne Schreiber (also a former school board member), and Democrat former school board member Cindy Decker, head of GKFF-backed Tulsa Educare. "Friends of Shawna Keller," the campaign committee of the east Tulsa school board incumbent defeated a year ago by E'Lena Ashley, gave $1,000 to Woolley.

Republican challenger Jared Buswell raised $57,643.55, including $6,573.55 in in-kind contributions. Buswell received maximum $2,900 contributions from H. Michael Krimbill, L. Avery Krimbill, Christie Glesener, Tom Culver, and Vivienne Culver. The latter two contributions were in-kind as office rent reductions. Buswell received several large PAC contributions: Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee (OCPAC), $2,350; Women Working for Oklahoma PAC, $2,000; Oklahoma Realtors PAC, $1,000. Other lare donors include Brian & Pauline Robinson, $2,500; Kent Glesener, $2,500; Rob Prulhiere, $2,000; Julia Sublett, $2,000; Suzanne Behr, $1,500; Frances Fleming, $1,500; Michael Phillips, $1,500 (including $250 in-kind for yard signs); Jody Tell, $1,200; Matthew Watson, $1,000; Ken Sellers, $1,000; Thomas Carruth, $1,000; Michael Ross, $1,000; Reed Downey Jr, $1,000; Alvin Loeffler, $1,000. Former District Attorney Tim Harris, who ran unsuccessfully for the District 7 board seat last year, contributed $250 to Buswell. Buswell reports giving $2,750 to his own campaign, plus another $349.48 in in-kind contributions, purchasing push cards, yard signs, and other printing for the campaign.

The initial set of documents sent by inquiries@tulsaschools.org in response to my Open Records request did not include the full list of Woolley's contributors. Melissa Remington of Tulsa Parents Voice observed that the sum of itemized contributions in Schedule A was over $30,000 less than the reported contribution total. Remington also noticed that the list of contributions abruptly ended on January 17, 2023, despite a well-publicized fundraiser hosted by Democrat former Mayor Kathy Taylor and Democrat State Rep. Monroe Nichols on February 16. Remington called the discrepancies to the attention of Woolley, the school board clerk, the Oklahoma Ethics Commission, and others.

Remington and I subsequently received an update to our separate open records requests from Emma Garrett-Nelson, whose email signature gives "pronouns" "(she/her/hers)" and describes herself as Executive Director of Communications & Strategy, with the following statement: "We uncovered a glitch in our Adobe PDF reader that we've since addressed, so please use these rather than the files we sent you on March 28. This is everything responsive to your request." The attachment was an oddly-formatted report of contributions only, in which the page header appeared at different places on the page and contribution amounts appeared in a variety of font sizes, including unnecessarily small. The original version was clearly a scan of the filed hardcopy report, complete with the Tulsa Public Schools "RECEIVED" date stamp. The new contributions-only report has no scanning artifacts -- text is selectable and there are no date stamps.

The explanation of "a glitch in our Adobe PDF reader" doesn't fit the evidence. In the original version there are no indications that the reverse sides of pages were not scanned or that consecutive pages were missed by a scanner. An explanation more consistent with the evidence is that the Woolley campaign failed to submit a complete report by the deadline, whether or not accidentally.

This raises a concern with the current process. The "Executive Director of Communications & Strategy" is likely to depend on the goodwill of her boss, Superintendent Deborah Gist, for her continued employment. She would have some incentive to help cover over the mistakes of an incumbent candidate who has been an unquestioning supporter of her boss. It would be best for all concerned if all campaign ethics reporting, for every office and proposition in every political subdivision at every level, were through the Oklahoma Ethics Commission's Guardian system, rather than forcing citizens to make open records requests to access campaign filings that should be accessible to the public the instant they are submitted.

To its credit, for the first time in a long time the Tulsa Whirled reported on the pre-election ethics filings, but reporter Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton failed to notice the discrepancy in contributions and didn't find any significance in the maximum donations to Woolley. The Whirled reporter found it interesting that current school board member E'Lena Ashley contributed to Jared Buswell's campaign, but not that former board members Suzanne Schreiber, Cindy Decker, and Shawna Keller (via her campaign fund) did.

FILES: The following are the files provided by the Tulsa Public Schools district clerk in response to my open records request. I have run each through optical character recognition and changed file names to improve consistency and searchability.

• Ethics-Tulsa-School-D1-Jared_Buswell-2022Q4.pdf
• Ethics-Tulsa-School-D1-Jared_Buswell-2023-PreElection.pdf
• Ethics-Tulsa-School-D1-Stacey_Woolley-2022Q4.pdf
• Ethics-Tulsa-School-D1-Stacey_Woolley-2023-PreElection-Original.pdf
• Ethics-Tulsa-School-D1-Stacey_Woolley-2023-PreElection-Contributions-Revised.pdf

Augustine Christian Academy, Tulsa's pioneering classical Christian college preparatory school, is holding an open house for grades K-12 tomorrow, Friday, March 3, 2023, from 4 pm to 7 pm. The school is located at 6310 E. 30th Street, just west of Sheridan.

ACA was founded as St. Augustine Academy in 1997 and has been a member of the Association of Classical Christian Schools (ACCS) since 2005. ACA is interdenominational, not affiliated with any particular church or denomination, but holds to a broadly evangelical statement of faith, in accord with the historical creeds of Christianity.

Augustine Christian Academy exists to:

• To assist Christian parents in fulfilling the Biblical mandate to educate their children for the glory of God.
• To train young minds to learn, reason, and persuade from a distinctively Christian perspective.
• To examine the world and all human endeavors in the light of Holy Scripture.
• To provide for the development of all staff members for the purpose of achieving our educational goals.
• To be used of God to reclaim our culture for His Kingdom and Glory.

ACA's open house will be followed at 7 p.m. by the school's "Little Theater," a series of short performances by the show choir and the Intro to Theater, Advanced Acting, and Pre-Professional Acting classes. The main event of the evening will be a one-act play, The Diary of Anne Frank, presented by the Advanced Acting and Pre-Professional Acting students. ACA has a strong performing arts department, founded by the late Gale Post and headed by professional stage veteran Dawn Redden. This 15-minute interview with Mrs. Redden captures the standard of excellence that characterizes ACA academics as well as performances and also the love and Christian faith that ACA teachers bring to the classroom.

All three of our children have been ACA students and have been blessed and challenged by the experience.

There are a number of distinctives that set ACA apart from its peer schools. To name just a few:

A house system brings students across the schools of Dialectic (6-8) and Rhetoric (9-12) into four houses for service opportunities and intramural competition, including ACA's unique sport, Grailball.

Weekly chapel services bring the school together for praise and worship, and monthly "Salt and Light" chapels introduce students to Christians living out their faith in a variety of vocations.

For homeschool families seeking enrichment opportunities, ACA offers part-time status for grades 6-12. A homeschooler can take one or more classes and also participate in the school's theatrical and musical productions, house competitions, and special events alongside full-time students.

ACA's after-care program accommodates the needs of working parents who can't be available for pickup right as the school day ends.

ACA sponsors tours for juniors and seniors in alternating years to the East Coast to visit important places in American history and to Israel to see the places where the events of the Bible happened and the sweep of 4,000 years of successive cultures and empires.

Augustine Christian Academy is enrolling students for the 2023-2024 school year. You can learn about the admissions process, see the student and parent handbook, and look at this year's class schedule on the ACA Admissions page.

ACA is also hiring teachers who want to teach in a classical and Christian environment. Interested applicants are encouraged to send a cover letter and resume to John Ahrens, Headmaster, by April 1, 2023.

Tulsa Classical Academy, Oklahoma's first classical charter school, will open its doors to students from kindergarten to 8th grade this August for the 2023-2024 school year. TCA will add a grade a year in subsequent school years, becoming a full K-12 school with our first graduating class in 2028. Tulsa Classical Academy is a member school of the Barney Charter Schools Initiative, Hillsdale College's effort to develop public charter schools with a classical curriculum and teaching philosophy.

After a lot of ups and downs, TCA has a piece of land at 98th and Sheridan, has a building under construction, has a head of school (Mr. Jason Poarch), and a temporary office with a couple of staffers. Open enrollment ended in mid-January, followed in February by the state-mandated enrollment lottery, offers of admission, and acceptances. In a few months, the building will be finished and filled with furniture. Now all we need is teachers who share our passion for classical education.

TCA is hiring teachers for K-6 who will teach in self-contained classrooms, specialized teachers in Math & Science, Literature & History, and Latin for grades 7 and 8, and PE, Art, Music, and Special Education teachers for K-8. You can find job descriptions and instructions for applying on the tulsaclassical.org careers page. TCA teachers will participate in a two-week summer training program at Hillsdale College in Michigan and a two-week-long in-service in Tulsa just before the start of the school year.

While nearly all of the student seats have been filled for the coming year, TCA is taking applications on a rolling basis for the waiting list. Visit the TCA enrollment page for detailed information about the process and how to sign up. Information meetings for prospective parents are being held each month.

Tulsa County Republican Chairman Ronda Vuillemont-Smith is seeking a second two-year term in that office. During her first term, Ronda built a record of success in advancing Republican principles and Republican candidates.

I first met Ronda sometime around 2010, as she became active in local politics through the Tea Party movement, founding the Tulsa 9/12 Project to help promote the restoration of America's founding principles to government at every level. In 2012, Ronda and I were part of the coalition that defeated the county "Vision 2" tax increase. I proudly endorsed her in her first run for Tulsa County GOP chairman back in 2015, a race she lost by a slim margin.

In my 2015 endorsement, I wrote this, which I feel even more strongly today than I did then.

In a state where Republicans are overwhelmingly dominant, Democrats are not the chief threat to the implementation of Republican policies. The biggest threat comes from Republicans who wear the name but don't understand or adhere to the principles the party professes. They may simply be corrupt or self-dealing, or they may be liberals who have realized that registering Republican is their only hope of winning.

From Capitol Hill to City Hall, the actions and inactions of elected Republican officials have made the activists who helped them get elected wonder what, exactly, was the point of their exertions.

In such an environment, the role of party leadership must shift. When a party is a minority or just beginning to dream of majority status, you will gladly take any elected official who will bear the (R) after their name. But in our current environment, we need party leaders who will protect the Republican brand, who will be a voice for the grassroots party activists to counterbalance well-heeled lobbyists.

Ronda Vuillemont-Smith has shown herself willing to confront Republican elected officials when they need it. She's also shown herself to be a skilled and experienced organizer. That's why, if I were at this morning's Tulsa County GOP Convention, Ronda would have my vote.

Ronda has had numerous successes in her first term as chairman, but she knows that there is more to be done to build a party organization that successfully turns out the Republican vote and that builds our bench and at the same time improves local government by helping conservative Republicans win non-partisan races for city council and school board.

A leader, even a highly skilled organizer like Ronda, can only take on a handful of projects of reform and improvement at one time while still successfully executing the routine duties of the office -- running precinct meetings and county conventions three out of every four years, rallying volunteers for voter turnout, fielding questions from the media, providing resources to Republican candidates, keeping the office staffed, running county conventions, and raising money to keep all of these activities going. Tulsa County Republicans would serve themselves and their cause best by reelecting Ronda Vuillemont-Smith as Tulsa County GOP chairman.

The Route 66 Christmas Chute on Dewey Avenue in downtown Sapulpa, Oklahoma, has just two more nights to run, but it continues to be a popular attraction two months after its opening on November 3, 2022. Ten overhanging steel structures decorated with a variety of themes stand in the street where the parking would normally be, and the shops on Dewey and side streets are open for business into the evenings. Admission is free. A Sapulpa Herald article about a preview in September provides a good description of the event. The Christmas Chute's Facebook page is frequently updated.

My wife and I visited back on November 12. We stopped in at Gigi's Gourmet Popcorn and bought some praline pecans to share, had dinner at the brand new Crossroads Cookery, walked through one of the downtown antique malls, and got a coffee at CTX Coffee. It was fun to look at the decorations and cheery to see so many people out and enjoying themselves.

Crossroads Cookery was dealing with a few startup hiccups, but we enjoyed our meal, especially the crispy brussels sprouts. It's four things in one big space, decorated after the fashion of an early 1900s soda fountain -- a sit-down restaurant, a coffeehouse that roasts its own beans, an ice cream parlor (with baked treats, too), and a bar (that has Cabin Boys Brewery's Bearded Theologian on tap).

As we were walking back to the car, I happened to look up and notice the name "BRIN" on the cornice of the three-story building on the SE corner of Dewey and Park. I recognized this as the name of Tulsa bookseller Lewis Meyer's maternal grandparents. A peek through some old Sapulpa newspapers showed that the land was purchased from the city in 1909 by men's clothier Max Meyer (immortalized in Lewis Meyer's 1959 bestseller, Preposterous Papa) and his father-in-law and brother-in-law, Philip Brin and Ed Brin, respectively, of Terrill, Texas. The property had previously been occupied by a fire station and the city jail. The Brin Building opened in July 1910, and its first major tenant was Katz Department Store, based in Louisville, Ky. The building also housed a chiropractor and an ophthalmologist. Reading contemporaneous accounts of Max Meyer and seeing his display ads in old Sapulpa papers led me to the conclusion that nothing in Preposterous Papa was exaggerated. Max was simply larger than life.

Last week, NBC's Today Show featured the Christmas Chute on the final installment of its "Merriest Main Street" series. Crowds showed up to be on live TV despite the single-digit temperatures, and CTX and Crossroads Cookery were open to provide food, drink, and warmth while the crowds were waiting for airtime.

Last night, December 30, I had to drop off my son at an event west of Tulsa and afterwards decided to pay a return visit to the Chute to see if it was still running. It was a warm evening, in the 50s, and there were a lot of people out on the street and visiting shops and restaurants. Crossroads Cookery was packed. Rose the Reindeer was in front of the courthouse; for $20 you can sit in a sleigh and get a picture with Rose.

I walked the length of Dewey, and then a block south and back on Park and Water Streets. On Water Street, I came across a hot dog cart under a pop-up canopy in front of Chuck-It Axe Throwing Co. The food cart was launched as a way to draw attention to the axe throwing venue, but I was told that it has taken on a life of its own. I paid $7 for an excellent four-cheese grilled cheese sandwich, served in quarters with a little sauce cup of tomato bisque for dipping, perfect for eating and walking.

Dewey Avenue was closed to traffic on October 1 as the month-long construction process began. I am not sure how long it will take to dismantle the structures and reopen Dewey to traffic. It's not clear from the website or Facebook page when the final night is occurring, but there's a mention in the entry on Rose the Reindeer, suggesting that New Year's Day 2023 is the end of it: "Rose the reindeer will be at the Route 66 Christmas Chute from 5:00 - 8:00pm on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday! Feed and get photos with Rose for $20! What a great way to close down the first year of the Route 66 Christmas Chute--just as it began! See you there!"

This could be seen as an interesting experiment in pedestrianization. Pedestrianizing Main Street in downtown Tulsa in the 1970s killed the handful of retail businesses still there, although the Main Mall and Bartlett Square at 5th and Main provided a gathering place for the community, such as the First Night New Year's Eve celebrations in the early 1980s and Mayfest.

Sapulpa's businesses have received a lot of attention these past two months, and retailers were nervously optimistic after a big opening night. Business during the day, however, seemed to be pretty quiet when I stopped at CTX Coffee in mid-November for a coffee and a teleconference en route to Oklahoma City. My Table, a restaurant on the east end of the chute across the street from the courthouse and Christmas tree, "a location that has become notorious for short-lived eateries," closed permanently this past week, with staffing difficulties fueling unpredictable hours of operation. New restaurants have enough challenges that the street closure didn't necessarily hinder My Table's success, but it appears that they didn't have the personnel support to take full advantage of the crowds drawn to the Chute.

Meanwhile in Broken Arrow, Rhema Bible Training College's spectacular annual Christmas light display is also in its final two nights, with New Year's Day 2023 as the last night. We stopped by Thursday evening on a whim, as we were heading home from bowling with family at Broken Arrow Lanes. It looks bigger and better than ever. Admission is free, but you can purchase hot chocolate, hot cider, cappuccino, popcorn, and other treats from concession stands around the campus, and horse-drawn carriage rides are available for $10 per person.

And The Oklahoma Swing Syndicate has their traditional New Year's Eve dance at Southminster Presbyterian Church Community Center. Dancing lessons at 8 pm, with the dance proper running from 8:30 to half-past midnight. Admission is $7 for adults, $5 for students, with discounts for members.

MORE: We made one last visit, this time with two of our children, after church New Year's Day. We had brunch at Crossroads Cookery, and my daughter was interested in browsing the Purple Rabbit Emporium and Art. While waiting on her to browse I was standing near the front door, and a woman came in from the street, seeming a bit agitated, holding a pen and paper. "Could you help me, please?" (Still in coat and tie from church, I guess I looked official.) She was looking for Route 66, heading to Oklahoma City. (She just called it "Oklahoma" at first.) She was from County Clare, Ireland. I walked westward with her, explained that the blocked-off street was Route 66, closed for a two-month street festival. At Main and Dewey, I pointed to West Dewey Ave. as the direction she needed to go and listed the other towns she would pass on the way to OKC, just to confirm that was the way she intended to go. I motioned back to the east and said that that was the way to Tulsa. "Oh, we've been to Tulsa. We got lost there. It was a nightmare. We wound up on the motorway." When Sapulpa does this again next year, they need better Route 66 detour signs for through-travelers, and it sounds like Tulsa does as well.

In-person absentee voting will be available at in every county on Wednesday through Friday, November 2 - 4, 2022 from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and on Saturday, November 5, 2022, from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. In most counties, this will be at the County Election Board office or county courthouse; here is the full list of absentee-in-person voting sites. Seven counties have two absentee-in-person sites, including these four in the Tulsa metro area:

• Osage County: Fairgrounds Ag Building, Pawhuska; First Baptist Church, Skiatook (West Rogers Campus)
• Rogers County: Election Board; Central Baptist Church in Owasso
• Tulsa County: Election Board, 555 N. Denver; Hardesty Regional Library
• Wagoner County: First Baptist Church, Wagoner; NSU-BA, Broken Arrow

Polls will be open Tuesday, November 8, 2022, from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. In addition to the general election for federal, statewide, legislative, county, and judicial elections, runoffs for Tulsa City Council will be held in three seats. Unusually, there are no state questions on the ballot. Here is the complete list of ballot items, sorted by county.

NOTE: Precinct boundaries, voting locations, and district boundaries have changed, in some cases dramatically. Enter your name and date of birth on the Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter portal and you will see where to vote and your sample ballot.

In response to popular demand, I have assembled the guidance detailed below into a
downloadable, printable, single-page PDF.

Here are the candidates I'm recommending and (if in the district) voting for in the Oklahoma general election and City of Tulsa runoff election on November 8, 2022. (This entry will change as I decide to add more detail, link previous articles, or discuss additional races between now and election day. The entry is post-dated to keep it at the top.)

As I post this, I'm still unsure about several races, and there are other races I had planned to write about in detail, but time is short, people are voting, and many have asked for a summary of my recommendations.

Tulsa City Council:

District 5: Grant Miller (L)
District 6: Christian Bengel (R)
District 7: Ken Reddick (R)

Council races are officially non-partisan, and marking a straight-party vote doesn't cover these races. We need east and southeast Tulsa voters to elect all three of these conservative challengers, to defeat the left-wing incumbents, in order to have even the beginnings of a conservative voice at City Hall.

Statewide:

Governor: Kevin Stitt (R)
Lt. Governor: Matt Pinnell (R)
Attorney General: Lynda Steele (L)
Treasurer: Todd Russ (R)
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Ryan Walters (R)
Commissioner of Labor: Will Daugherty (L)
Corporation Commissioner: Kim David (R)

Why not straight-ticket GOP? A phony conservative and Biden donor, Gentner Drummond, won the GOP nomination for Attorney General with the help of massive amounts of dark money. The incumbent Labor Commissioner, Leslie Osborn, has expressed her loathing for conservatives and their values, despite the R by her name; I wouldn't be surprised if she follows Hofmeister and switches parties to run for governor as a Democrat in 4 years. Libertarian candidates are running in both elections, available for a protest vote.

Federal:

Whatever our disappointments with some of the Republican candidates this year, winning control of Congress requires us to elect as many Republicans as possible. Better still, we have the opportunity to re-elect a solid conservative in Kevin Hern and to add Josh Brecheen, a conservative with a solid legislative record.

US Senate (unexpired term): Markwayne Mullin (R)
US Senate (full term): James Lankford (R)
1st Congressional District: Kevin Hern (R)
2nd Congressional District: Josh Brecheen (R)
3rd Congressional District: Frank Lucas (R)
4th Congressional District: Tom Cole (R)
5th Congressional District: Stephanie Bice (R)

District Court:

District 14 District Judge, Office 12: Kevin Gray (R)

State Legislature:

State Senate 34: Dana Prieto (R)

State House 9: Mark Lepak (R)
State House 41: Denise Crosswhite Hader (R)
State House 66: Clay Staires (R)
State House 70: Brad Banks (R)
State House 71: Mike Masters (R)
State House 79: Paul Hassink (R)

County:

Tulsa County Assessor: John Wright (R)
Osage County Commissioner District 1: Everett Piper (R)
District Attorney, District 7 (Oklahoma County): Kevin Calvey (R)

Supreme Court retention:

Dustin P. Rowe: YES
James R. Winchester: NO
Dana Kuehn: YES
Douglas L. Combs: NO

Court of Civil Appeals retention:

Stacie L. Hixon: YES
Gregory C. Blackwell: YES
John F. Fischer: NO
Barbara G. Swinton: NO
Thomas E. Prince: YES

MORE INFORMATION:

OTHER CONSERVATIVE VOICES:

Here are some blogs, endorsement lists, candidate questionnaires, and sources of information for your consideration.

• Muskogee Politico news, questionnaires, and analysis
• Muskogee Politico on the judicial retention ballot
• Steve Fair and Georgia Williams on the judicial retention ballot
• Oklahoma Conservative PAC meeting videos, including candidate speeches
• Oklahoma Constitution Index: Scores incumbent legislators on voting record
• iVoterGuide surveys of Oklahoma statewide, federal, and legislative candidates
• City Elders Tulsa speakers' videos, including candidate speeches
• Oklahomans for Life candidate surveys
• Oklahomans for the 2nd Amendment (OK2A) endorsements
• NRA-PVF endorsements
• Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights (OKHPR) general election voter guide

ANTI-CONSERVATIVE VOICES:

Here are some endorsement lists that are negative indicators:

• Oklahomans for Public Education: OPE advocates for higher taxes, opposes school choice, and opposes efforts to keep leftist advocacy out of the classroom. They work to defeat principled Republicans. A yellow warning mark from OPE is a badge of honor for a conservative candidate. Here is the OPE voter guide for 2022 (backup copy).
• Oklahoma Education Association, state affiliate of the leftist NEA teachers' union, has endorsed nine Republicans in contested primaries. The list was leaked to Corey DeAngelis.

If you appreciate the many hours of research that went into this guide and into the rest of my election coverage, and if you'd like to help keep this site online, you can contribute to BatesLine's upkeep via PayPal. In addition to keeping me caffeinated, donated funds pay for web hosting, subscriptions, and paid databases I use for research. Many thanks to those generous readers who have already contributed.

An election eve assortment of thoughts:

Last week, I attended and live-tweeted the Tuesday, November 1, 2022, Red Wave rally in Oklahoma City featuring Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Kevin Stitt, and State Superintendent nominee Ryan Walters; the Wednesday Tulsa rally with Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, and a Wednesday lunch-time forum with Ryan Walters. In between the latter two events, I went for a walk in McClure Park.

On Saturday, I helped with a literature drop for Brad Banks, Republican nominee for the open House District 70 seat, going to almost every house. The area I covered was only 80 acres, an 1/8th of a square mile, but I walked 22,977 steps (10.8 miles), and it took me about 4 hours. It was a beautiful day for walking. I cheated a bit: We were supposed to hit every house, but I went home, downloaded the latest voter registration file, filtered down to the streets and blocks of the precinct section I volunteered to cover, did a unique sort on street and house number, put the list of house numbers in columns by street on a single workbook page, and used it to guide my walking. Making the list took me about 30 minutes. As it turned out, I probably didn't save much time, as this area had a registered voter at nearly every address. I didn't filter by frequency of past votes or party or change of address, which might have saved me a few steps.

More dark-money attacks in Monday's mail. One is from Imagine This Oklahoma (one of a raft of dark-money groups funded by Oklahoma Forward) targeting Stitt over inflation, complaining about the state's $3 billion rainy-day fund ("hoarding our tax dollars"), and subsidies that the legislature passed to try to attract Panasonic, Canoo, and Hollywood filmmakers. Of course, if Stitt had stopped any of these initiatives, they would have attacked him for killing job opportunities and smashing our state piggy bank.

The issues presented in the dark-money ads are never the real issues motivating the donors to attack their targets. If you knew who the donors were, you'd know their motivation, and you'd realize that the donors are seeking their own benefit at the expense of you, the taxpayer. So they stay hidden.

The City of Tulsa's odd and oft-changed election process comes to its 2022 conclusion Tuesday with runoffs in three of nine Tulsa City Council seats. Three incumbents, all registered to vote as Democrats, failed to reach the 50% threshold in the August general election and so face a runoff. The same three seats, Districts 5, 6, and 7, went to a runoff in the 2020 election as well.

Tulsa City Council races are on a separate printed ballot. Because they are nominally non-partisan (no party label appears on the city ballot), voting straight party on the main ballot for state, county, legislative, and judicial items will count for nothing on the city ballot.

In each of the three races, I urge you to vote for the conservative challenger. The Democrat incumbents are all embedded in the non-profit realm, with little or no exposure to the private sector where producing results for the customer determines your survival. The Council's unanimous allocation of $112,000 in federal COVID-19 relief funds to a sex survey targeting teens (with approval by Mayor GT Bynum IV) ought to be enough to convince you we need to throw all the bums out.

Currently there are no conservative leaders in Tulsa city government. Electing Grant Miller in District 5, Christian Bengel in District 6, and Ken Reddick in District 7 is an important first step toward ensuring that common-sense Tulsans have a voice at City Hall.

Thursday evening brought the news that AHHA, the Arts and Humanities Hardesty Arts Center in the "Tulsa Arts District," was closing its doors permanently on Friday.

At ahha, we've been dedicated to bringing arts to the Tulsa community since 1961. Over the years, we've expanded our partnerships to work collaboratively with at least eight area school districts, a local healthcare system, state and regional government agencies, and over 100 member arts and humanities organizations.

During the past few years, our community has seen some of the most challenging economic and social times in recent history. It is with great sadness that we announce the permanent closure of ahha Tulsa's Hardesty Center on Friday, November 4.

We will continue to pursue avenues to secure a long-term future for some of our programs and look to achieve that mission as quickly as possible.

We also learned this week that OKPOP is $30 million and a couple of years away from opening to the public; the first $30 million only paid for "skin and bones."

Two State Senate districts and six State House districts that overlap with Tulsa County have general elections on November 8, 2022. Neighboring counties add in four additional State House seats. Here's an overview with my recommendations in six of the races; details after the jump, and more to be added.

Senate 2: No recommendation
Senate 34: Dana Prieto (R)
House 9: Mark Lepak (R)
House 66: Clay Staires (R)
House 70: Brad Banks (R)
House 71: Mike Masters (R)
House 79: Paul Hassink (R)

District 4 Tulsa City Councilor-elect Laura Bellis, speaking at a recent fundraiser for incumbent District 7 Councilor and Council Chairman Lori Decter Wright, called the three challengers in the November 8, 2022, runoff, "actual fascists," called Decter Wright's opponent a "Nazi," and said that she has reported him to the FBI multiple times. Decter Wright embraces Bellis's words, saying, "I thank Laura for saying all the things I can't say, as chairwoman of the Tulsa City Council -- at least not publicly!"

I first saw this video here, but it had already been in circulation. The fundraiser appears to have been recent. I don't recognize the venue.

The Tulsa Fraternal Order of Police- FOP Public Page posted the video, but edited down to key sections (omitting Bellis's fundraising pitch for Decter Wright) and with captions.

Here is my attempt at transcribing. Bellis's grating "uptalk" sometimes makes it hard to distinguish questions from statements.

...reliant on sales taxes to fund big services for people? So it's really scary to watch people who are complete actual fascists? Running for office. It's actually -- it's every runoff that is happening right now there's an incumbent city councilor? Who is like a common sense person? Who is up against what I would say is a literal fascist? And it's scary. And we've seen it in recent, in the past several months, what it looks like when one of Those People gets a seat on our school board. They vote no on things like, just approving the agenda. They actually sow chaos. And we can't have that.

So it's never been more critical to be engaged on the local level, which is why I'm so amazed that you all are here? It's so important to pay attention to these things, because again These People are trying to infiltrate -- They don't have an interest in policy work. They don't have a vision for what they hope to see in our community. They're not interested in making people's lives better. They're too busy, saying the word "woke" a lot and being scared about critical race theory. It's ridiculous. You know, that's not a conversation for the City Council? We can of course talk about inequities and so much more and dig into policy there, but that's not what they're doing.

And again, this person, I don't think should be legally be allowed to run, but here we are. I've reported him to the FBI several times, and nothing has -- I'm not kidding -- like, I have all this [inaudible] and I keep sending them the pectures [sic] of -- and -- if you don't donate now into Lori Decter Wright, I am going to be asking you all to help foot my therapy bill, 'cause I'm gonna have to work with him. Don't do that to me. [Inaudible] doesn't deserve that.

Anyway it's never been more critical to support at a local level. It's never been more critical, especially given what has happened to reproductive rights to have women at decision-making tables. Please, please, please, tell all of your friends they have to keep Lori Decter Wright on the Council. She's been a phenomenal leader, and again, we cannot have someone who's actively a Nazi on our City Council. Our city deserves better.

So please donate to Lori, not just because her opponent is a complete f[---]ing nightmare, but because she's an incredibly competent, compassionate, courageous person who [sic] I really wanna get to work with and our city really needs at this [inaudible]. So thank you all so much. Um, I think we just, like, we need to clap for Lori and all the work she accomplished.

In case you're got lost on your way in, the fundraising envelopes are over here. I'll just stand here, if you start walking by, [inaudible] just grab one to go with you. I'll know. Please, please, please, just donate.

Decter Wright then responded:

Thank you, thank you so much. I thank Laura for saying all the things I can't say as chairwoman of the Tulsa City Council -- at least not publicly!

Decter Wright thus approved Bellis calling an elected African-American female school board member, E'Lena Ashley, an "actual fascist," a label that was also applied to the three conservative challengers (Grant Miller, Christian Bengel, Ken Reddick) running for city council. Decter Wright cheered someone calling Reddick, her conservative Republican opponent, "actively a Nazi" and "a f---ing nightmare." Decter Wright put her stamp of approval on Bellis's opinion that disagreement and debate in public meetings is "sowing chaos" and to the idea that when people who are not approved by the city establishment run for public office, "they're trying to infiltrate." She made no objection to Bellis reporting Reddick to the FBI for daring to run against her.

Bellis, Decter Wright, and their ilk claim to be defenders of democracy, but the theme running through these remarks is that governing needs to be left to the "experts," and we should only elect people who will rubber-stamp everything that comes before them. When three school board members voted against the "consent agenda," they were saying that some of the items on that list, such as accepting Chinese Communist Party money for a program in our public schools, deserved further scrutiny and debate in front of the voting public. If you think full and open debate is "sowing chaos," you have the wrong idea about democracy.

Note how Bellis and Decter Wright narrow the scope of acceptable, legitimate debate. When conservatives and libertarians seek office to stop the government from imposing mask mandates, vaccine mandates, or business closures, "they don't have an interest in policy work," according to Leftist fascists like Bellis and Decter Wright. Apparently, it's only legitimate policy work in their minds if you're debating which businesses to force to shut down, but not legitimate to debate whether the shut down is any use at all. "Making people's lives better" to them always means government action, never government restraint.

Conservative and libertarian Tulsans have a chance on November 8 to elect three city councilors who will stand against the truly fascist attitudes of Laura Bellis, Lori Decter Wright, MyKey Arthrell-Knezek, and Connie Dodson.

Vote for Grant Miller in District 5, Christian Bengel in District 6, and Ken Reddick in District 7. That won't give common sense a majority on the Tulsa City Council, but it will once again have a foothold.

MORE: Don't forget: Lori Decter Wright was on the committee that allocated $112,784 in federal COVID-19 relief funds to a non-profit to conduct a sex survey targeting teenagers. All nine incumbent city councilors, including Decter Wright, Connie Dodson, and Mykey Arthrell-Knezek, approved it.

Last week I received the sad news that Ron Palma, my high school Latin teacher, passed away on Monday, September 19, 2022, at the age of 75. He is survived by Fay, his college sweetheart and wife of 55 years, two daughters, and three grandchildren. His 38-year career at Holland Hall School placed him among the half-dozen longest serving teachers in the school's 100-year history.

Mr. Palma was not my first Latin teacher. I took Latin I in 8th grade, taught by Bill Bippus, who is an Episcopal priest these days, and Ruth Kaiser Nelson filled in for Mr. Bippus during his leave of absence the first semester. Mr. Bippus and Mrs. Nelson were memorable, enjoyable, and excellent teachers and gave me a great foundation in the Latin language. The three years I spent as Mr. Palma's student built in me a love for the language that remains to this day and which I've tried (and succeeded to varying degrees) to pass along to my children. The value I found in Latin learning was part of what led me to find a way to study Latin while a student at MIT, to embrace classical education for my own children and to seek, as a board member of the nascent Tulsa Classical Academy (opening 2023), to make this kind of education available to the wider Tulsa community.

My classmates and I first encountered Ron Palma in Latin II, in 1977, just four years into his 38-year career at Holland Hall School. He was in a doctoral program at the University of Cincinnati, a "Ph.D.A.B.D." (all but dissertation), when he was hired by Holland Hall in 1973. Above, that's his yearbook photo from his very first year of teaching.

Mr. Palma had a hearty and infectious laugh and a great deal of tolerance for the hijinks of high school boys. We called him Magister, merely the Latin word for teacher, but it became a term of endearment long after our time at school. His office during my freshman year was just off of the Barnard Commons (the eastern cluster of offices, first door on the right) and was a favorite hangout. When Mr. Palma's office moved to the mezzanine overlooking the commons, it became a target for excessive decoration, particularly around Christmas time. He was good-natured about the ribbing we gave him for supporting independent candidate John Anderson (10% in the 1980 presidential election).

And we learned Latin and learned to love it. In Latin II we completed our study of grammar; in Latin III we delved into prose and poetry; and in Latin IV we read the first six books of the Aeneid in Latin, following pius Aeneas from the burning ruins of Troy to the palace of Queen Dido of Carthage to the shores of Latium and the future site of Rome. Mr. Palma taught us dactylic hexameter, hendecasyllablic verse, and the rules of vowel quantity and elision, and he had us memorize the first seven lines of the Aeneid (of which I can remember the first two): "Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit...." One assignment involved writing epigrams, after the fashion of Martial; one of mine began, "O Boren bos bifrons...."

The fact that many students continued Latin into years 3 and 4 is a tribute to Mr. Palma's love of the language, his skill as a teacher, and his connection with students.

In addition to classroom duties, during his early Holland Hall career Mr. Palma also served as coach of the cross-country running team, Chess Club sponsor, and faculty advisor to Hallway, the school newspaper.

Shortly after my time at Holland Hall, Ron Palma was co-author of a very popular series of Latin textbooks, Ecce Romani, which teaches the language through a narrative about a Roman family. The series introduces an increasing number of authentic Roman texts as the student progresses. This review has a description of the Ecce Romani approach to Latin instruction.

In 1991, the College Board honored Mr. Palma for instructional excellence as an Advanced Placement Latin teacher, beginning in 1976. At the time of this Special Recognition Award, he estimated that 150 Holland Hall students had taken the AP Latin exam. (I was foolishly not among them, having opted to take a geology class as a senior that I didn't need for graduation instead of AP Latin.)

Mr. Palma loved travel, particularly to lands once part of the Roman empire, and enjoyed photographing the places he visited. I recall a stunning photo of red-tiled roofs against the caerulean Mediterranean sky which won a Tulsa Tribune photography contest.

After retirement in 2011, Palma spent the next three years writing a comprehensive history of Holland Hall School, in two volumes; Holland Hall: Since 1922 was published in 2016 by Grandin Hood, Nashville. It's a sad coincidence that he died just two days short of the centennial of the school he served, celebrated, and loved. I last saw him in April at the memorial service for his HH colleague, Carlos Tuttle.

A memorial service will be held at a later date. It was Mr. Palma's wish that gifts in his memory be made to the Holland Hall scholarship fund.

Third-year Latin is traditionally Caesar and Cicero. We read some of Caesar's Gallic Wars as well as The Millionaire's Dinner Party (Maurice Balme's adaptation for Latin students of the Cena Trimalchionis by Petronius). But in place of Cicero, Mr. Palma substituted the poetry of Catullus. Catullus was a contemporary of Caesar, a well-to-do young man from the provinces who had come to Rome, who lived fast and died young, around the age of 30. Some of Catullus's famous topics include his envy of the attention paid by his girlfriend to her pet sparrow (2) and his lament on the sparrow's death (3), a dinner invitation in which he asks his guest to bring food and drink, because his cupboard is bare (13), an appeal to his lover for thousands of kisses (5: "Vivamus, mea Lesbia, atque amemus... da mi basia mille"), a tribute to the boat which carried him home from Bithynia (4), and his joy at returning to his home in Sirmio after a long absence (31). Carmen 85 ("Odi et amo," "I hate and I love") captures in two lines the conflicted emotions of the disappointed suitor. There was a youthful vigor and clarity to Catullus's poetry that appeals to teen-aged Latin scholars in a way that the lengthy and allusive periodic sentences of a Ciceronian speech do not. (Be advised that some of Catullus's poetry, which, I hasten to add, we did not study in Mr. Palma's class, was a bit too vigorous and clear.)

Perhaps the most quoted and beloved Catullus poem is Carmen 101, his lament on arriving after a long journey at the grave of his brother, who died far from home. It seems a fitting way to end this tribute.

Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus
advenio has miseras, frater, ad inferias,
ut te postremo donarem munere mortis
et mutam nequiquam adloquerer cinerem,
quandoquidem fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum,
heu miser indigne frater adempte mihi.
nunc tamen interea haec, prisco quae more parentum
tradita sunt tristi munere ad inferias,
accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu
atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale.

Through many nations and through many seas borne,
I come, brother, for these sad funeral rites,
that I may give the last gifts to the dead,
and may vainly speak to your silent ashes, since fortune
has taken yourself away from me.
Ah, poor brother, undeservedly snatched from me.
But now receive these gifts, which have been handed down
in the ancient manner of ancestors, the sad gifts to the grave,
drenched with a brother's tears,
and for ever, brother, hail and farewell.

P.S. I would be happy to augment this entry with tributes from students and other friends of Ron Palma. Please email me at blog at batesline dot com.

P.P.S. P.S. stands for post scriptum, which is your actual Latin for "written after." The translation of Catullus 101 is from the 1894 translation by Leonard C. Smithers.

MORE: I reached out to Gilbert Lawall, professor emeritus of Classics at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, to ask about Mr. Palma's involvement with Ecce Romani. Prof. Lawall replied:

In addition to being an inspiring and influential teacher of Latin language and literature, Mr. Palma helped Professor Gilbert Lawall of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst revise the Scottish Classics Group's Ecce Romani into an American version. Along with other consultants, Mr. Palma helped Professor Lawall change much of the vocabulary, many pictures, and some of the essays in the Scottish version. Mr. Palma co-authored the 212 page Teacher's Guide for Ecce Romani III with David J. Perry of the Rye Country Day School, Rye, New York.

Mr. Palma frequently contributed articles to the Longman Latin Newsletter and to the Ecce Romani Newsletter, which contained lesson plans, teaching tips, exercises, work sheets, and sample quizzes and exams.

Triste dictu, Prof. Lawall advises that he no longer has copies of the print archive of newsletters that he mentions.

On Tuesday, August 23, 2022, Oklahoma Republicans and Democrats have a partisan primary runoff election in a number of statewide, federal, legislative, and county races, and the City of Tulsa will conduct a non-partisan citywide general election, including races in all nine council districts as well as three charter-change propositions. There are a smattering of other school, municipal, and county propositions across Oklahoma. Here is the Oklahoma State Election Board's list of all races and propositions on the August 23, 2022, ballot.

In-person absentee voting will be available on Thursday, August 18, 2022, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., on Friday, August 19, 2022, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m., and (because there are federal races on the ballot) on Saturday, August 20, 2022, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. For most counties, in-person absentee voting takes place at the county election board, but there are a few exceptions; click here for the full list of early-voting locations. Osage County will have an extra early voting location at First Baptist Church of Skiatook, W. Rogers campus, and Wagoner County will have an extra location at NSU-BA. Polls will be open Tuesday, August 23, 2022, from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m.

NOTE: Precinct boundaries, voting locations, and district boundaries were changed, in some cases dramatically, earlier this year. Enter your name and date of birth on the Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter portal and you will see where to vote and your sample ballot.

In response to popular demand, I have assembled the guidance detailed below into a downloadable, printable, single-page PDF.

Here are the candidates I'm recommending and (if in the district) voting for in the Oklahoma Republican runoff election and City of Tulsa general election on August 23, 2022. (This entry will change as I decide to add more detail, link previous articles, or discuss additional races between now and election day. The entry is post-dated to keep it at the top.)

As I post this, I'm still unsure about several races, and there are other races I had planned to write about in detail, but time is short, people are voting, and many have asked for a summary of my recommendations. My most enthusiastic choices are in bold; in other races, there may be one or two other candidates that would be acceptable, or I simply don't know the endorsed candidate as well as I would like. There are certain incumbents that I'd like to see defeated, but I don't feel comfortable endorsing an opponent at this point. I'll try to fill in TBDs and NOTs before the start of early voting.

US Senate (unexpired term): TW Shannon
2nd Congressional District: Josh Brecheen

Treasurer: Todd Russ
Superintendent of Public Instruction: Ryan Walters
Labor Commissioner: Sean Roberts
Corporation Commissioner: Todd Thomsen

State Senate 2: Jarrin Jackson
State Senate 26: Brady Butler

State House 66: Clay Staires

For City of Tulsa races, if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, there will be a runoff coincident with the state/federal general election in November.

Tulsa City Council District 1: Francetta Mays
Tulsa City Council District 2: Aaron Bisogno
Tulsa City Council District 3: Daniel Grove
Tulsa City Council District 4: Michael Birkes
Tulsa City Council District 5: Ty Walker
Tulsa City Council District 6: Christian Bengel
Tulsa City Council District 7: Ken Reddick
Tulsa City Council District 8: Scott Houston
Tulsa City Council District 9: TBD

Tulsa Proposition 1: YES
Tulsa Proposition 2: NO
Tulsa Proposition 3: NO

Tulsa County Commissioner District 3: Bob Jack

Osage County Commissioner District 1: Everett Piper

District Attorney, District 7 (Oklahoma County): Kevin Calvey

MORE INFORMATION:

OTHER CONSERVATIVE VOICES:

Here are some blogs, endorsement lists, candidate questionnaires, and sources of information for your consideration.

• Muskogee Politico news, questionnaires, and analysis
• Muskogee Politico runoff picks
• Muskogee Politico legislator tax votes, 2016-2018
• Oklahoma Conservative PAC meeting videos, including candidate speeches
• OCPAC 2022 Runoff Voter Guide
• Oklahoma Constitution Index: Scores incumbent legislators on voting record
• iVoterGuide surveys of Oklahoma statewide, federal, and legislative candidates
• City Elders Tulsa speakers' videos, including candidate speeches
• Oklahomans for Life candidate surveys
• Oklahomans for the 2nd Amendment (OK2A) endorsements
• NRA-PVF endorsements
• Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights (OKHPR) endorsements
• Endorsements from David Van Risseghem at Sooner Politics

ANTI-CONSERVATIVE VOICES:

Here are some endorsement lists that are negative indicators:

• Oklahoma Public Employees Association: State government employees union can be counted on to support bigger, less-efficient government and higher taxes
• Oklahomans for Public Education: OPE advocates for higher taxes, opposes school choice, and opposes efforts to keep leftist advocacy out of the classroom. They work to defeat principled Republicans. A yellow warning mark from OPE is a badge of honor for a conservative candidate. Here is the OPE voter guide for 2022.
• Oklahoma Education Association, state affiliate of the leftist NEA teachers' union, has endorsed nine Republicans in contested primaries. The list was leaked to Corey DeAngelis.
• TulsaBizPac is the political arm of the Tulsa Regional Chamber, a contractor to the City of Tulsa. They have not issued a list of endorsements, but David Harris in District 1, Michael Feamster in District 4, and Jayme Fowler in District 9 have all proudly announced their endorsement, when they really ought to be embarassed. Please read my 2016 article "Chambers of Horrors" to understand why social and fiscal conservatives, opponents of cronyism, and supporters of historic preservation should use TulsaBizPac endorsements as an indication to look for someone else to support.

If you appreciate the many hours of research that went into this guide and into the rest of my election coverage, and if you'd like to help keep this site online, you can contribute to BatesLine's upkeep via PayPal. In addition to keeping me caffeinated, donated funds pay for web hosting, subscriptions, and paid databases I use for research. Many thanks to those generous readers who have already contributed.

There are six candidates on the ballot for Tulsa City Council District 4, an open seat. As was the case two years ago, I'm not enthusiastic about any of them. This is my district, so I've had to make a choice.

A sex survey targeting teenagers was funded by the City of Tulsa using federal COVID relief funding. The survey was one of 70 non-profit projects selected for funding by a working group of four city councilors who are on next Tuesday's ballot -- Phil Lakin (District 8), Jeannie Cue (2), Lori Decter Wright (7), and Vanessa Hall-Harper (1) -- and approved by the full Council and Mayor GT Bynum IV. The survey, which remains online as of August 16, 2022, asks detailed questions of minors and concludes with links promoting websites for "tweens" and teens containing explicit sex ed materials.

Tulsa city officials routed $112,784 in federal American Rescue Plan Act funds to Amplify Youth Health Collective, a group that "coordinate[s] collective efforts within our community to expand access to sex education, promote healthy relationships, and engage the public in this conversation."

Two Oklahoma State University departments cooperated with the survey: The OSU Diversity and Rural Advocacy Group, and the OSU Center for Family Resilience of the OSU College of Education and Human Sciences.

The survey on "teen sexual health & well-being" targets children ages 15-17. A separate survey is aimed at adults, and versions of both teen and adult surveys exist in Spanish. A caption on online posters advertising the survey notes the city's support as a conduit of federal funds: "This project is supported, in whole or in part, by federal award number SLT-1498 awarded to the City of Tulsa by the U. S. Department of the Treasury."

The survey asks teenagers for their sexual orientation, "sex assigned when you were born," and gender identity (with "agender," "non-binary," and "gender fluid" as options), and to rate their current sexual health as outstanding, good, neutral, poor, or terrible, and defined "sexual health" as:

...a state of physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being related to sexuality; it is not merely the absence of disease, dysfunction, or infirmity. Sexual health requires a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships, as well as the possibility of having safe sexual experiences, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence. For sexual health to be attained and maintained, the sexual rights of all persons must be respected, protected, and fulfilled. (World Health Organization, 2002)

The survey later asks these minor children "questions about sexual health access," "about your own access to sexual health care [and] what you think and believe about access to sexual health care for other people," with "sexual health access" defined as:

The ability to get all of the resources you need to stay sexually healthy such as: (a) condoms (b) contraceptives (c) sexually transmitted infection (STI) testing & STI treatment (d) medically-accurate sexual health education (e) identity affirming communities/resources and (f) trusted adults.

A few questions near the end of the survey ask about COVID-19 impact on romantic relationships and access to sexual health services, presumably to justify the use of COVID-19 relief funds. The final page of the survey links to explicit websites with age-inappropriate discussions of sexual matters for pre-pubescent children and teens.

Here is a PDF of screenshots of the Amplify Tulsa / City of Tulsa-funded teen sex survey, including screenshots of the Tulsa Parks and Amplify Tulsa Facebook posts and the home pages of the sex ed websites linked at the end of the survey. These screenshots show the course of the survey after the respondent identifies his/her age as 15.

On Monday, July 18, 2022, the survey was promoted briefly on the Tulsa Parks Facebook page. An update was posted at 12:39PM CDT to the official Facebook account for the City of Tulsa Parks Department urging children as young as 15 years old to fill out an online survey about "teen sexual health & well-being." The post (at this link until sometime the morning of the 20th, when it appears to have been deleted) read as follows:

Attention, Tulsa! Our partners over at Amplify Tulsa need you to help them help Tulsa!

They are conducting a community needs assessment this summer to help identify how Tulsa can better support teen sexual health & well-being, as well as what parents, schools, healthcare providers, youth-serving organizations, & other community members need to support the young people in their lives.

There are two different surveys, one for teens 15-17 (to complete with permission from their parents) & one for adults. And, both are translated into Spanish. So, we hope you'll consider filling out this completely anonymous survey and/or sharing it with your community before August 15. Please & TY!

Here is a direct link to the surveys: https://okstateches.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_e2QBApTNODkN1Cm

#tulsaparks #amplifytulsa #communityhealthneeds #surveys

Yesterday, August 15, 2022, at 5 p.m., was the deadline for campaign contribution and expenditure reports for candidates in any August 23 election. This includes the City of Tulsa general election as well as runoff elections for statewide office, county office, and the legislature.

The legislature has created a mess of disparate filing offices and methods. Rather than making it convenient for candidates to file and citizens to search from a single ethics database for every election in the state, county candidates file paperwork at the county election board (at a time when election boards are scrambling to prepare for early voting and election day itself), school board candidates file with the school district clerk (who is hired by the incumbents and might have an incentive to make it very inconvenient for challengers to find out where the incumbents are getting their funds), and municipal candidates file with the city or town clerk. The legislature has just made things worse this session, opening the door to suppression of information and biased enforcement by larger cities.

Meanwhile, legislative, statewide, and judicial candidates file electronically with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission. For a few brief shining years, candidates for large municipalities and counties were also filing electronically through the same system, but apparently some public information can be too public for the comfort of some local officials, and their friends in the legislature reversed course.

The Tulsa County Election Board is always very prompt in responding to email requests for filings, sending scans in reply. The Tulsa Public Schools clerk demands an Open Records request, which she may or may not get around to processing before the election.

Of all the local-government ethics filing repositories I've dealt with, the City of Tulsa clerk's office is the best at making information promptly available to everyone. Here is the City of Tulsa campaign contribution report home page. When a filing comes in, it is physically time-stamped, scanned, and immediately posted to the website, with filings sorted to different webpages by office, and then within each page by candidate. Filings from previous elections are retained at the bottom of the page in an archive section. I appreciate this. There are some improvements that could be made: A standard naming template for PDFs and links, a way to download the entire collection of files, original electronic files (more searchable than scanned and OCRed paper reports).

If you are a candidate on the ballot, and your campaign committee has raised OR spent more than $1,000, you're required to file a Statement of Organization within 10 days and then you're required to file a Contributions and Expenditures report between 14 and 8 days before the election, covering all of your contributions and expenditures through the 15th day before the election. There are also quarterly filing requirements for the rest of the year. PACs who give to municipal campaigns are also required to file quarterly reports.

Based on the scans available on the City Clerk's website, here are the City of Tulsa candidates on the August 23 ballot who have filed timely reports:

• District 1: NONE
• District 2: NONE
• District 3: NONE
• District 4: Laura Bellis, Michael Birkes, Michael Feamster, Matthew Fransein
• District 5: Ty Walker
• District 6: Christian Bengel, Connie Dodson
• District 7: Lori Decter Wright
• District 8: Phil Lakin
• District 9: Lee Ann Crosby*, Chad Hotvedt

Some other candidates kinda-sorta made a half-hearted attempt at complying:

• District 1: Only David Harris has filed a Statement of Organization for the 2022 election cycle, but no candidate has filed any Campaign and Expenditures report for this cycle.
• District 2: Incumbent Jeannie Cue filed a 2022 Statement of Organization and quarterly reports up to and including the period ending June 30, but no candidate has filed the required pre-election report.
• District 3: Crista Patrick filed a 2022 Statement of Organization and filed a supplemental report for the $1,000 she received from the Home Builders Association, but no candidate has filed the required pre-election report.
• District 4: Bobby Dean Orcutt filed a 2022 Statement of Organization and a report for the period ending June 30, but has not filed the required pre-election report. Kathryn Lyons, a 2020 candidate who considered a 2022 race, and incumbent Kara Joy McKee, who made a late decision not to run for re-election, both filed reports earlier in the cycle.
• District 5: Incumbent Mykey Arthrell-Knezek did not file a Statement of Organization for the 2020 cycle, filed a contributions and expenditures report for the period ending June 30, but has not filed the required pre-election report. Adam "Grant" Miller filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report.
• District 6: Lewana Harris filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report.
• District 7: Jerry Griffin filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report. Ken Reddick filed a 2022 Statement of Organization but has not filed any contributions and expenditures reports.
• District 8: Scott Houston filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report.
• District 9: Incumbent Jayme Fowler filed a Statement of Organization and a June 30 report but has not filed the required pre-election report. Lee Ann Crosby filed a Statement of Organization, a June 30 report, and a "continuing report of contributions" including late July contributions, which suggests a confused but good-faith effort to comply.

In addition to candidates, two political action committees filed reports with the City Clerk.

Greater Tulsa PAC (GTPAC) had $14,346.35 in the bank as of June 30, but had not spent any money other than for administrative and fundraising costs. The PAC's chairman is Jacob Heisten, treasurer is Toni Garrison of Kellyville. This is presumably the PAC established to help Mayor GT Bynum IV re-elect rubber-stamp councilors.

Tulsa Biz Political Action Committee (TulsaBizPAC), an arm of the Tulsa Regional Chamber, filed a 2022 Statement of Organization, but has not filed the required quarterly report since 2018. TulsaBizPAC helps to ensure the election of councilors who will keep shoveling city tax dollars to the Tulsa Regional Chamber. Three candidates (David Harris in District 1, Michael Feamster in District 4, and Jayme Fowler in District 9) have announced their endorsement by TulsaBizPAC.

Voters in the City of Tulsa will be issued a separate ballot at the Tuesday, August 23, 2022, general election, which is also the runoff election for partisan races for federal and state office. The ballot will include the city council election for that district, plus propositions for three amendments to the Tulsa City Charter. Here is the sample ballot for Tulsa District 4, including the three citywide propositions.

My recommendations in summary:

• Proposition 1 (mayoral salary process clarified): YES
• Proposition 2 (one-year residence requirement for city office): NO
• Proposition 3 (increase auditor's term from 2 to 4 years): NO

Kudos to the council for including the actual language to be inserted in the charter as part of the ballot title, rather than just a summary that may or may not be accurate. That said, it doesn't show you exactly what's changing, so I will do that below, with strikethrough to show you what's being deleted and underscore to show what would be added if the proposition passes.

Proposition No. 1 would change Article III, Section 1.2:

During the first term of office under this amended Charter, tThe Mayor shall receive a salary of seventy thousand dollars ($70,000.00) per year payable as employees of the city are paid. Thereafter, tThe annual salary to be received by the Mayor may be changed shall be as provided by ordinance adopted by a majority vote of the entire membership of the Council; provided, no change in salary shall become effective prior to the commencement of the term of office next succeeding the term in which the change is made and then only in the event such change was approved prior to the general election for the next succeeding term.

It's healthy to be skeptical when something is called a "housekeeping amendment" as substantive changes are often smuggled in under that description, but this seems to be exactly that. It is useful to clarify that the vote to modify the salary involves the passage of an ordinance, as opposed to a Council resolution or some other sort of vote. As an ordinance, it would require not only passage by a majority of the full membership (five affirmative votes, even if some councilors are absent or abstaining) but also the mayor's signature. I will vote YES on Proposition 1. I hate to see the historical information deleted, because it's useful for comparing mayoral compensation to the cost of living increase since the charter came into effect in 1990. The amendment would be even better if it required approval of a salary increase at least 30 days prior to the general election -- enough time for the electorate to hear and consider before casting a ballot.

Proposition No. 2 would affect the residency requirements for city officers in Article VI, Section 7. As this is a wholesale replacement of text, it's going to be clearer to show old and new language side by side, rather than show insertions and deletions. Here's the current language, which includes some transitional language relating to an amendment to Article IV, setting the qualifications for City Auditor.

No person shall be eligible to hold the office of Mayor or City Auditor unless such person shall be a qualified elector and resident of the city at the time of filing for the office. In addition, no person shall be eligible to hold the office of City Auditor unless such person is a Certified Public Accountant or Certified Internal Auditor and maintains such certification during their term of office. The person elected City Auditor in the election held November 10, 2009, shall be eligible to hold that office and perform his or her duties, even if that person does not have the required certification, during the term of office beginning the first Monday in December of 2009. Thereafter, or in the event that person elected in November 2009 does not serve a full term, the person holding the office of City Auditor shall be required to comply with the certification requirements set forth herein. No person shall be eligible to hold the office of Councilor for an election district unless such person shall have been a qualified elector and resident of the election district for more than ninety (90) days at the time of filing for the office of Councilor for that election district. The requirement that a person shall have been a qualified elector of an election district for more than ninety (90) days at the time of filing for the office of Councilor for that election district shall not apply to the election district held immediately following the adoption of an Election District Plan; provided, persons desiring to become a candidate for the office of Councilor for an election district shall be qualified electors of the election district at the time of filing for the office of Councilor for that district.

Here is the proposed new language:

A candidate for Mayor or City Auditor must have been a qualified elector and resident of the City for at least three hundred sixty-five (365) days at the time of filing. A candidate for City Councilor must have been a qualified elector and resident of that election district for at least three hundred sixty-five (365) days at the time of filing. This requirement shall not apply to an adjusted election district which changed a candidate's residency to a different election district; provided, a candidate must have been a qualified elector and resident within their preexisting election district for at least three hundred sixty-five (365) days at the time of filing.

The significant changes here are changing the residency requirement to file for city office from 90 days to a full year -- no parachuting into the district at the last minute to run for office. The term "qualified elector" is defined in Article III, Section 1, of the Oklahoma Constitution:

Subject to such exceptions as the Legislature may prescribe, all citizens of the United States, over the age of eighteen (18) years, who are bona fide residents of this state, are qualified electors of this state.

The only exceptions I can find are in 26 O.S. 4-101, which excludes felons who have not completed their sentence and the incapacitated from registering to vote.

The language dealing with adjustments to election district boundaries could be clearer. "Preexisting" is an odd word to use; "previous" would make more sense. Does "adjustment" apply to decennial redistricting, or does it only apply to the minor adjustments the Council is authorized to make to account for changes in precinct boundaries? I would drop the third sentence entirely and change the second sentence: "A candidate for City Councilor must have been a qualified elector and resident within the boundaries of the election district as defined at the time of filing for at least three hundred sixty-five (365) days at the time of filing." Alternatively, you could make a person in such a situation eligible to run either in his old district or his new district, which would work against a spiteful Mayor or City Council "adjusting" boundaries to forestall a challenge to one of their council buddies. In 2011, for example, such a provision would have allowed John Eagleton to run for re-election to his District 7 seat, even after Dewey Bartlett Jr's allies on the Election District Commission gerrymandered him into District 9.

While I like the longer residency requirement in principle, I'm inclined to vote NO on Proposition 2 and ask the council to try again with more precise language dealing with changes caused by moving district boundaries.

By the way, despite the deletion of City Auditor qualifications in this section, passage would not eliminate those qualifications, as they are also present in Article IV, Section 1.

Proposition 3 changes the term of office for City Auditor in Article VI, Section 1.2.B:

City Auditor. The terms of office of and the City Auditor elected in the year 2009 shall commence on the first Monday in December in the year 2009, and shall expire on the first Monday in December in the year 2011; thereafter, tThe City Auditor shall serve for a term of two (2) years, with the following exception: the term of office of the City Auditor elected in the year 2013 shall commence on the first Monday in December in the year 2013 and shall expire on the first Monday in December in the year 2014. The City Auditor shall serve a term of two (2) years until the election year 2026. Thereafter Commencing with the election year 2026 and ever after, the City Auditor shall serve for a term of two (2) years four (4) years, beginning on the first Monday in December, in the year 2026.

Here's the proposed new text on its own:

City Auditor. The City Auditor shall serve a term of two (2) years until the election year 2026. Commencing with the election year 2026 and ever after, the City Auditor shall serve for a term of four (4) years, beginning on the first Monday in December, in the year 2026.

In a nutshell, the City Auditor's term will double from 2 to 4 years. The current auditor, Cathy Champion Carter, who was just re-elected because no one filed against her, will be up for re-election in 2024. One final two-year term will commence in 2024 and end in 2026, and then every term thereafter will be four years in length, elected in the cycle opposite the mayor. While we have yet to have a City Auditor play the adversarial role expected by the framers of the 1989 charter, and auditors have routinely won re-election with minimal or no opposition, citizens should not relinquish the ability to get rid of a bad city official promptly without having to go through a recall process. I will vote NO on Proposition 3.

The Tulsa Public Schools Board of Education, at a special meeting tomorrow, Thursday, July 14, 2022, at 1 p.m., will consider accepting a grant from a non-profit funded and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party for a Chinese language learning program at Booker T. Washington High School.

Here is the item on the Tulsa school board agenda for July 14, 2022:

C.4. RECOMMENDATION:

Enter into an agreement with the Confucius Classroom Coordination Offices through the International Leadership of Texas, a 501(c)(3) organization, an international partnership dedicated to building the field of Chinese language teachers and learning in American schools for the 2022-2023 school year.

FURTHER RECOMMEND:

The attorneys for the school district prepare/approve the appropriate contract document(s) and the proper officers of the Board of Education be authorized to execute the document(s) on behalf of the district.

COST: No cost to the district. The Chinese International Education Foundation will provide funding for operating expenses.

FUND NAME/ACCOUNT:

Confucius Classroom
81-2273-1000-000000-000-07-735

RATIONALE:

This will be Booker T. Washington's ninth year to participate in a Confucius Classroom program. International Leadership of Texas, in partnership with Confucius Classroom Coordination Offices offers a quality program which will allow our students to continue the study of the Chinese language and culture. This item aligns with our high school experience strategy as outlined in Pathways to Opportunity.

This was one of 29 items on the "consent agenda" on the regular Monday, July 11, 2022, school board meeting agenda. The consent agenda is meant to be a list of non-controversial items that are approved en masse and without debate but only if there is unanimous consent from the board. Any items that don't enjoy unanimous support should be removed from the consent agenda for consideration under regular order with public comment and debate.

You may have heard of the Confucius Institute, which established centers for study of Chinese language and culture, funded by the Chinese Communist Party, on dozens of American college campuses, including the University of Oklahoma. Confucius Classroom is the K-12 arm of the same initiative: To plant Chinese Communist agents in schools across America to propagandize on behalf of the butchers of Beijing and shape the rising generation's perspective of the totalitarians that crush political dissent in Tienanmen Square and Hong Kong, enslave Uyghur Muslims, persecute Christians and other religions, and unleashed a deadly virus that shut down the world's economy. A bipartisan chorus of critics said that these "free" programs encouraged recipient schools to refrain from addressing Communist China's human rights abuses and discouraged them from welcoming Chinese dissidents to speak on campus. From a May 2021 column by Lee Edwards:

Meanwhile Confucius Institutes, financed by the Chinese government and supervised by the Chinese Communist Party, are molding attitudes about China, painting an idyllic portrait in which Mao Zedong is a revolutionary hero and the Tiananmen Square massacre never happened. That the Confucius Institutes are instruments of propaganda was confirmed by Li Changchun, the head of propaganda for the CCP, who boasted that the Institutes were "an important part of China's overseas propaganda setup."...

China's dissemination of what amounts to communist propaganda on American campuses has attracted the attention of U.S. senators and congressmen across the political spectrum. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) referred to China's "tentacles of influence," such as the Confucius Institutes, the setting up of CCP cells in U.S. businesses, and espionage targeted at high-tech research. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) expressed concern about the Chinese government's aggressive attempts to use Confucius Institutes to influence critical analysis of "China's past history and present policies."

A bipartisan group of Senators ranging from Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) to Ted Cruz (R-TX) called out "those that seek to suppress information and undermine democratic institutions and internationally accepted human rights." Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Tom Carper (D-DE) asserted that absent full transparency of operations in the U.S. and full reciprocity for U.S. college in China, "Confucius Institutes should not continue in the United States."

U.S. intelligence agencies joined the chorus of concern, led by FBI Director Christopher Wray, who revealed that the Bureau was monitoring the activities of the institutes closely. As of this April, there were 47 Confucius Institutes in the U.S., down from a high of just over 100, led by Columbia, Stanford, UCLA, Rutgers, and George Washington University. There were also Confucius Classrooms in seven K-12 school districts. Many of the CI closures occurred in 2018 when Congress passed legislation forbidding schools with Confucius Institutes from receiving language funding from the Defense Department. Almost immediately, 22 schools closed their Confucius Institutes.

The University of Chicago shut down its institute after 100 professors signed a petition citing the "dubious practice of allowing an external institution to staff academic courses within the University." A University of Chicago professor called the Confucius Institutes "academic malware" injected into the university system. In response, Hanban attempted American-style rebranding, changing its name from Hanban to the Ministry of Education Center for Language Exchange and Cooperation. It created a separate organization--the Chinese International Education Foundation--which will fund and oversee Confucius Institutes.

But the raison d'etre remained the same--to present a carefully sanitized story of a powerful aggressive China. The 90 million members of the CCP are dedicated practitioners of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist-Xi thought as set forth in a recent document of the CCP's Central Committee. It warns officials across the country, including those who manage the Confucius Institutes, to be fully alert to the threat of certain Western ideas, known as the "Seven Don't Speaks": universal ideas; freedom of speech; civil society; civil rights; historical errors of the CCP; official bourgeoise universal ideas; and judicial independence.

As of June 2022, only 18 Confucius Institutes remain on American college campuses, but others have reopened under new names. According to a June 2022 report by the National Association of Scholars (NAS), the University of Oklahoma closed their Confucius Institute in October 2020, but "Maintained relationship with Beijing Normal University, having in 2006 signed agreement with BNU that established not only the CI, but also a number of other partnerships that survive the CI. The university also continues to publish Chinese Literature Today, a journal that originated in a 2016 agreement the university signed with Hanban and Beijing Normal University."

Confucius Classroom programs are not as high-profile as their higher-ed counterparts. According to the CIEF website, "As of the end of 2019, there were 550 Confucius Institutes and 1,172 Confucius Classrooms in 162 countries and regions." 560 Confucius Classrooms were in North America. A press release reported the May 2022 opening of the first Confucius Classroom in Dominica, a small Caribbean island nation.

OCPA's Ray Carter interviewed NAS senior research fellow Rachelle Peterson about the new report on Chinese Communist influence in American education and asked about Confucius Classrooms in Oklahoma:

The University of Oklahoma had a Confucius Institute on campus starting in 2006. In addition to its work at the university level, the OU Confucius Institute provided "teaching materials, funding to support teaching staff, and tools for Chinese language and culture programs" in K-12 schools around the state, including in the Oklahoma City, Tulsa, Edmond, Norman, Putnam City, Enid, Jenks, Bixby, Union, Owasso, Muskogee, Fort Gibson, Crescent, Lawton, and Comanche school districts.

Many K-12 schools still have Confucius Classrooms--effectively K-12 versions of Confucius Institutes--embedded in those districts, but Peterson said it is not known how many K-12 schools are doing so.

"Nobody has a list of Confucius Classrooms in the country," Peterson said. "We don't know how many there are or where they are."

Mentioned in the agenda item, International Leadership of Texas (ILTexas) is a network of 22 charter schools located in and around Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, and College Station. ILTexas Facebook pages touted the 2021 "Chinese Bridge" Chinese Proficiency Competition sponsored by the Confucius Classroom Coordination Office (CCCO); the event poster encourages students to use the Chinese Communist surveillance app WeChat to contact Confucius Classroom director Helen He.

A February 2022 news release about a Lunar New Year celebration describes the connection between ILTexas and CCCO:

ILTexas rang in the Lunar New Year with a big virtual celebration on Saturday, February 12, as part of their partnership with the Confucius Classroom Coordination Office (CCCO), an organization that helps promote Chinese culture and language in K-12 education. The event featured performances from 19 Dallas-Fort Worth area schools including nine from ILTexas.

According to Helen He, director of the Confucius Classroom at ILTexas Global, the CCCO, "serves to provide resources to Confucius Classrooms for Chinese language teaching, offer professional development opportunities to Chinese teachers, organize cultural events and competitions, and more." The organization supports 17 Confucius Classrooms in the DFW area, six of which are in ILTexas.

On May 31, 2022, the Chinese Communist ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, visited ILTexas Garland High School. In his speech, Gang said, "Language learning is critical and fundamental to the mutual understanding and the trust between our two countries. We will do our best to support Chinese language education in America." Gang presented a certificate recognizing ILTexas founder Eddie Conger for his "great contribution and accomplishment to the Chinese learning and teaching in Texas." The event received enthusiastic coverage in Communist Chinese-controlled media outlets, including Xinhua news agency and China Daily's YouTube channel.

According to the TPS agenda item, Confucius Classroom has been in Tulsa Public Schools for the last eight years. The rubber-stamp board members apparently thought it was uncontroversial to allow a program in our schools funded by a hostile Communist government, uncontroversial enough to include on a "consent agenda." Now that there are three board members (Jennettie Marshall, E'lena Ashley, Jerry Griffin) who are not rubber stamps for the superintendent and the foundations, they have objected to the placement of controversial items on the consent agenda. Rubber-stampers John Croisant and Susan Lamkin moved and seconded approval of the July 11 consent agenda, but in the absence of fellow rubber-stamp Judith Barba-Perez, they did not have the majority needed for approval. You can watch the discussion of the consent agenda, which begins about 15 minutes into the July 11, 2022, Tulsa school board meeting video. The vote happens at about 1 hr, 3 minutes, into the video. Croisant, Lamkin, and chairman Stacey Woolley voted yes on all items; Marshall and Ashley voted no on all. Griffin voted for a subset of the items; those he supported passed by a 4-2 vote, those he opposed fell short by a 3-3 vote.

Communist propaganda poster from the Flickr account of James Vaughan; used under Creative Commons license

UPDATE: Newly elected conservative school board member E'Lena Ashley raised concern about the source of the money, Gist gave a non-answer, and the final vote was 6-1 to accept Red China's blood money, with only E'Lena Ashley voting against. You can watch the full July 14, 2022, Tulsa school board meeting here.

MORE: In March 2021, Dan Currell and Mick Zais, who both served in the U. S. Department of Education in the Trump Administration, wrote a column for Newsweek addressing the problems with Confucius Classrooms:

China's authoritarian government works hard to dampen any criticism of the CCP, and reaching children with colorful, positive messages about China is a well-worn propaganda tactic. Preventing criticism and promoting praise for China is especially important to the CCP right now in light of its violent, anti-democratic actions in Hong Kong, intensified ethnic repression in Tibet, militarization of the South China Sea and actions in Xinjiang that the Canadian Parliament recently voted unanimously to declare a genocide....

First and most obviously, the programs lack reciprocity. The CCP does not allow other countries, and certainly not free democracies, to establish anything like Confucius Classrooms in China. The asymmetry is telling: the CCP jealously guards the thoughts of Chinese children. As it turns out, they care what American kids think, too.

A primary goal of the Confucius Classrooms program is to normalize the CCP. It does this by creating positive feelings about China and then equating China with the CCP. It's an effective tactic. China is an amazing place, so encouraging children's positive feelings about it is pretty easy to do, and never distinguishing between party and country is a core dogma for the CCP. Those positive feelings should rub off on the party--at least enough to dampen the worst criticisms.

But there are still many critics of China. Confucius Classrooms are intended to silence or, at least, distract from them. Teachers are trained to steer classroom discussions away from an ever-expanding list of issues: Taiwan, Tibet, Tiananmen Square, Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, the South China Sea and more. The problem isn't what is being said in Confucius lessons; the problem is what is not being said. Especially in U.S. high schools, this silence accomplishes important "thought work" for the CCP.

Beijing's most effective critics are Chinese dissidents, many of whom have settled in other countries to get away from the CCP. When the party plants its flag in a U.S. school, most Americans likely see it as an exotic international artifact. To a Chinese dissident, however, it is a message: do not criticize the party. Recent protests at Tufts University--which,
to its credit, closed its Confucius Institute last week--express exactly this concern.

The authors encourage Chinese language and culture programs, but independent of the CCP. Thanks to Neil Mavis for alerting me to this article.

Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority, also known as the Fair Board, has been discussing demolition of the historic Expo Square skyride since 2019, according to open-records research by Fox 23 reporter Spencer Humphrey, presented in a report on the July 7, 2022, newscast. (The text version of the story is available on KRMG's website.) Humphrey ran into some obstacles in getting TCPFA's public records:

Expo Square normally posts TCFPA [sic] meeting minutes to its website, but stopped doing that after February 2021. Expo Square officials told FOX23 they stopped posting TCPFA minutes online because of COVID-related staff reductions. But they continued to post meeting agendas.

So FOX23 requested meeting minutes and emails between officials about the Skyride. In an April 2021 email FOX23 obtained from Expo Square's CEO Mark Andrus to then-Tulsa County Commissioner Ron Peters, Andrus lists "Skyride removal" on a "list of 20+ projects" he said Expo Square had to do.

To find out more details, FOX23 asked all the officials involved for an on-camera interview. That included Expo Square CEO Mark Andrus, Expo Square COO Amanda Blair, Tulsa County Commissioners Karen Keith and Stan Sallee, former Tulsa County Commissioner Ron Peters and former Tulsa County spokesperson Jarrel Wade. Blair was the only one who responded and agreed to do an interview.

TCPFA emails from May, when reports of the Skyride's impending demolition reached public attention, point to a plan to go through the motions of an auction and then to proceed as intended to demolition, in defiance of public sentiment to save one of the last such skyrides in the country.

In a May 12 email, then-Tulsa County spokesperson Jarrel Wade emailed county commissioners that he would be "coordinating with Mark Andrus and his team and meeting with them tomorrow morning to learn where this came from."

Then Wade wrote he would tell news media that to his knowledge, "there has been no recent decision or action by the Tulsa County Commissioners and the TCPFA in regard to the Skyride."

The next morning, on May 13, Wade said in an email, "The plan going forward is to offer the Skyride for sale ... A sale has a potential to save expo money and preserve the ride ... a win/win ... if no bids come in, Expo should be able to keep their previous schedule."

FOX23 asked Blair what she thought Wade meant by "previous schedule."

"The Skyride demolition has been on our list since 2019," Blair said.

FOX23 also asked "When did the aspect of auctioning it come about?"

"I'm not certain when it specifically came about," Blair said.

We asked why the public wasn't notified about the plans about the Skyride until May.

"It's definitely not something that was not talked about publicly," Blair said. "It's been discussed in public meetings as well."

But FOX23 looked through TCPFA meeting minutes and records but couldn't find any specific mention of the plan to demolish or auction off the ride.

The mention of Jarrel Wade caught my ear. Wade was a Tulsa World reporter for over 8 years, covering local government. According to Jarrel Wade's LinkedIn profile, after leaving the World, he became a Senior Account Executive for Tulsa Regional Chamber, then spent two years as Communications Project Manager for Tulsa County. Just this month, he left the county role to become Communications and Development Coordinator for Housing Solutions. While I generally had a good impression of his reporting for the World, I have to wonder how, in a shrinking job market for journalists, the prospect of someday needing to find a job doing PR for one of the government agencies and non-profits you're covering would affect your reporting.

In November 2000 and on several other occasions, Tulsa County taxpayers have voted for tens of millions of dollars in funding for fairgrounds improvements. I don't think voters would have been as generous had they known the Fair Board would slowly erase many of the landmarks that held memories for generations of Tulsans -- Bell's Amusement Park, the Exchange and Youth Buildings (with the stage that hosted the annual KTUL talent show, beauty pageants, and telethons), Driller Stadium, the Children's Barnyard, and now the skyride -- history swept away for the sake of being able to market X square feet and Y parking spaces as a blank canvas for event tenants.

There is a website devoted to the fight to save the Tulsa Von Roll Skyride, with a page detailing the ride's construction and history and ideas for increasing ridership and revenue.

Scotty Martin, who is producing a documentary on the history and demise of Bell's Amusement Park, has been covering the proposed demolition of the skyride on his documentary's Facebook page.

MORE:

The KELi satellite was another Fairgrounds landmark unceremoniously discarded by the Fair Board It served as studios for KELi 1430 for many years and was a conveniently visible meeting place on the midway during the Tulsa State Fair. It was originally a viewing platform for National Supply during the International Petroleum Exposition. Other components from that exhibit -- the globe and the light standards -- were reused at Bell's Amusement Park.

A 1964 souvenir, posted to the web by Chris Miyata, shows the Tulsa County Fairgrounds as Tulsans remember it from the last third of the 20th century. It's a twelve-page program from the 15th anniversary award dinner of the Tulsa Exposition and Fair Corporation, held in the fairgrounds cafeteria on June 25, 1964. Photos show the evolution and expansion of the fairgrounds since the board was established in 1949 (over 512,000 sq. ft. of new building space).

• 1949: Two new 30' x 200' horse barns commissioned in July, costing $18,000, to be ready by September 15.
• 1950: $112,000 raised in June and July for 13 new livestock exhibit facilities, ready for the fair by September 15, 1950.
• 1951: 47' x 400' curtain wall on old grandstand, without support, removed and replaced with signboards.
• 1952: Five new livestock bays to the west of original 13, built for $54,000.
• 1953: $610,000 county bond issue for new agricultural building office, new 4-H/FFA dormitory. Five horse barns moved in line with other livestock buildings, milking parlor, and four new livestock bays added.
• 1954: Fair claimed to be fastest growing in the nation.
• 1955: Six more bays added to livestock building.
• 1956: National Junior Tractor Operators Contest established.
• 1957: Controversy over conflicting fair dates with Oklahoma City and Muskogee.
• 1958: June 8: Old grandstand burned to the ground, destroying 64,000 sq. ft. of commercial exhibit space and disrupting auto racing from June to August.
• 1959: New 80' x 800' commercial exhibit building near the race track, paid for by $200,000 insurance and $70,000 fair earnings.
• 1960: Oklahoma FFA Children's Barnyard opened.
• 1963: $3.5 million bond issue approved to build 456,000 sq. ft. building for the International Petroleum Exposition and other industrial shows.
• 1964: New administrative office, first unit of 1963 long range building plan, to be completed.

The online collection includes a photo of the IPE building near completion (also showing KELi Satellite, Pavilion, and Bell's Amusement Park).

Tulsa County Commission District 3 candidate Kelly Dunkerley has been falsely claiming an endorsement from a former Trump campaign official in mailings to voters. Stuart Jolly, who was national field director for the 2016 Trump campaign, denies ever having met Dunkerley and denies endorsing him.

Three mail pieces, sent before the June 28, 2022, primary, falsely tout an endorsement from Jolly. One mailer shows a photo of Jolly and the words "Endorsed by Lt. Col. Stuart Jolly, President Trump's National Field Director, Trump for President 2016 Campaign." Another contains a fabricated quote accompanied by a photo and what purports to be a signature: "Dear Tulsa, Please vote this Tuesday, June 28 for Conservative Businessman Kelly Dunkerley for Tulsa County Commissioner. Like President Trump, Kelly is the real deal!" A fake newspaper called "The Tulsa Times" featured an article that stated, "Jolly, who has endorsed Dunkerley in the GOP primary race for Tulsa County Commissioner is no stranger to political dynamics."

In response to a query from BatesLine, Stuart Jolly stated: "It's unfortunate that Tomahawk Strategies didn't ask or consult with me first. I don't know and have never met Kelly. He may be a great guy, but I never gave my permission to endorse him over Bob Jack. Someone there jumped the gun." Tomahawk Strategies is a paid consultant for Dunkerley's campaign.

Dunkerley (listed in voter rolls as John Kelly Dunkerley) is a graduate of David H. Hickman High School in Columbia, Missouri, and the University of Missouri. He is a former City of Jenks elected official, worked for State Farm in public affairs and government relations, and is currently an agent for Tedford Insurance. The Tulsa County check register shows Tedford Insurance as the only vendor appearing in the register for the Property Insurance account since FY2012, with the county spending $854,479.52 with Tedford in FY2022.

In the August 23, 2022, runoff, Dunkerley faces Bob Jack (in the voter rolls as Robert Ernest Jack), a retired construction executive with Manhattan Construction who has served in volunteer positions in the Tulsa County Republican Party and John 3:16 Mission. Bob Jack has been a Tulsa County resident for 44 years.

According to his LinkedIn profile, Jolly retired as a Lieutenant Colonel after more than two decades in the U. S. Army. He then served as executive state director for Oklahoma of Americans for Prosperity from 2006 to 2012, as executive director of Education Freedom Alliance, national field director for Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., and national political director of Great America PAC (a supporting PAC for the 2016 campaign). Jolly is now based in the Nashville area and is managing director of Cool Springs Financial.

More short takes on races for county offices, Tulsa area legislative seats, and judicial races.

There isn't a primary in two of the Tulsa County races up this year: County Treasurer John Fothergill did not draw an opponent at all, and District 1 County Commissoner Stan Sallee is unopposed for the Republican nomination, but will face Democrat Sean Johnson in the general election. (County Clerk, Court Clerk, Sheriff, and Commissioner District 2 are up in presidential election years.)

Tulsa County Assessor: John Wright. In 2018, John Wright succeeded his boss, Ken Yazel, and has continued to work to improve the office's professionalism and public access. A new assessor's office website is due to come online next week.

Tulsa County Commission District 3: Bob Jack. When he ran for State Senate 6 years ago, I was skeptical of Jack's conservative bona fides because of his past involvement with the Chamber, but I have had occasion over the intervening years to watch his service as a volunteer and elected official in the Tulsa County Republican Party. I have observed Bob Jack's solid commitment and willingness to advocate clearly for conservative principles, even in the face of public flack, as well as his increased wariness of forces that work under the GOP label but against the GOP platform. As a long-time but now retired leader in the construction industry, he is well equipped to scrutinize public works expenditures for waste.

Judicial District 14, Office 12: Kevin Gray. Gray, registered to vote as a Republican, has served as a prosecutor under District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler. Gray led the prosecution of the criminal who shot two Tulsa police officers, killing one. Incumbent Judge Martha Rupp Carter, first elected in 2018, did not seek re-election. The other candidates in the race are Tanya N. Wilson, a Democrat, and Todd Tucker, a Republican. Wilson has the financial backing of Kaiser System lawyer Frederic Dorwart and several other attorneys from his firm. Regardless of the winning percentage, the top two vote-getters in the Tulsa County-only primary will advance to the November general election for voters in both Tulsa and Pawnee Counties.

Only one other judgeship in District 14 was contested this year. There will be a November election for Office 13 between R. Kyle Alderson and David A. Guten. Both candidates are registered Republicans. The office was held by Judge William Musseman, Jr., who has been appointed by Gov. Stitt to the Court of Criminal Appeals.

Legislative seats:

We've seen that we can generally count on Oklahoma Republicans to advance the pro-life cause and laws that carry out the Second Amendment, among other culturally sensitive issues. Where many Republicans have tended to fail those who elected them is in letting themselves be lead around by special-interest lobbyists either directly, or via legislative leadership. Republican legislators who demonstrate independence of mind and determination to eliminate waste and protect taxpayers are routinely targeted for defeat in the primaries by their Republican colleagues. There are too many legislative races to evaluate in detail as I would like to do if I had time, but you can go to the Ethics Commission website to see who gave the candidates money, you can see how incumbents did in the Oklahoma Constitution index, and you can see who is endorsed or condemned by anti-taxpayer groups like OPEA, OPE, and the State Chamber PAC. Notes on a few races that touch Tulsa and surrounding counties:

State Senate 2: Jarrin Jackson was an infantry officer in Afghanistan and Bronze Star recipient. Jackson received Tom Coburn's endorsement when challenging incumbent congressman Markwayne Mullin in 2016 for the seat Coburn once held. Jackson was a frequent guest on KFAQ's Pat Campbell Show, which gave a wide audience opportunity to observe his intelligent analysis and commitment to America's founding principles. Ally Seifried has some endorsements from conservative organizations, but her donors (including the State Chamber PAC and Democrat donor Burt Holmes) and consultants point to her being the last candidate conservatives should want in office.

State Senate 10: Emily DeLozier. Her opponent, incumbent Bill Coleman, has been endorsed by the leftist Oklahoma Education Association and by OPE.

State Senate 12: Rob Ford has served as a town official in Mounds and for many years as a leader in the Creek County Republican Party, which is how I got to know him. Both candidates in the race got an A rating from OKHPR. Anti-taxpayer organization OPE gave a poisoned apple to Ford's opponent.

State Senate 34: Dana Prieto has been endorsed by OKHPR and OCPAC. Prieto is a long-time small business owner who was endorsed by Tom Coburn in his previous run for State Senate. Peixotto also got an A rating on his OKHPR survey. Either Republican would be preferable to incumbent Democrat J. J. Dossett, but from campaign filings Prieto seems to have a better organized campaign.

State Senate 36: David Dambroso is endorsed by OK2A, OKHPR, and OCPAC. Incumbent John Haste got a C from OKHPR for his voting record on matters of health and parental rights, and he has been endorsed by the leftists at OPE and OPEA.

House District 24: Chris Banning, an Air Force veteran who founded Banning Investment Group and Banning Contracting Services, two service-disabled veteran-owned small businesses that provide services to the U. S. Department of Defense and Department of Veteran Affairs. According to his LinkedIn profile, Banning also serves as a director of the Oklahoma Defense Industry Association. Banning has been endorsed by OKHPR, OK2A, and OCPAC. Incumbent Logan Phillips has been endorsed by leftists at OEA, OPE, and OPEA, and his voting record earned a D from OKHPR.

House District 29: No recommendation. Kyle Hilbert, the incumbent, has been endorsed by OCPAC and OK2A, has a B (but not an endorsement) from OKHPR for his voting record, but is also endorsed by OPE and OPEA. Hlibert's rating from the Oklahoma Constitution newspaper is a mere 58 over his career, although he managed an 80 in the 2021 session. His opponent, Rick Parris, ran for the seat as a Democrat in 2016.

House District 66: Wayne Hill, Osage County GOP chairman, OK2A chapter director, and board member of Mend Pregnancy Resource Center, has been endorsed by OK2A, OKHPR, and OCPAC. Gabe Renfrow has the support of OPE and OPEA, plus lots of money from PACs. Clay Staires, brother-in-law of State Insurance Commissioner Glen Mulready and son of the founders of Shepherd's Fold Ranch near Avant, and Sand Springs city councilor Mike Burdge are also running. Incumbent Jadine Nollan is term limited.

House District 76: Timothy Brooks is an agency partner with Flippo Insurance and volunteers as a Trail Life leader. Brooks was endorsed by OCPAC. Incumbent Ross Ford has been endorsed by OKHPR and OK2A, but also endorsed by leftists at OEA, OPE, and OPEA. Brooks's website has a long list of examples by date and bill number of Ross Ford's liberal voting record.

House District 79: Paul Hassink is an electrical engineer with degrees from Georgia Tech and Purdue and has special concern for the security and resilience of Oklahoma's power grid. Hassink was the consensus choice of the Tulsa 9/12 project, Tulsa Area Republican Assembly, and Tulsa County Republican Men's Club. Other Republican candidates are former Tulsa City Councilor Karen Gilbert and former Washington County Treasurer Stan Stevens, who left office in 2008, after pleading guilty to drug felonies involving charges of possession of opioids with intent to distribute. Gilbert is backed by the State Chamber PAC and numerous establishment types, including Democrat donor and Council-suer Burt Holmes. The incumbent is Democrat Melissa Provenzano.

Beyond Tulsa County boundaries:

Nationally renowned conservative commentator Everett Piper is running for the 1st District seat on the Osage County Commission. Piper, who served as president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, wrote the book Not a Day Care, decrying the trend toward safe spaces and trigger warnings on American college campuses.

Kevin Calvey had a sterling conservative record as state representative. He is running for District Attorney in Oklahoma County and would be excellent in that role.

I was pleased to see that my friend Jason Carini was re-elected Rogers County Treasurer without opposition.

The three-day filing period for the 2022 City of Tulsa election for City Council and City Auditor has concluded. All nine council seats are contested, but City Auditor Cathy Champion Carter has been reelected without opposition.

Here is the complete list of candidates who filed. Names, ages, and addresses are from the official county election board filing list, which has not yet been posted to the website. I've added party registration, incumbent status, other affiliations, and the candidate's name in the voter rolls in parentheses where it differs from the name that will be on the ballot. (UPDATE: Here is the official list of City of Tulsa 2022 election filings.)

The 31 candidates by party registration: 17 Democrats, 10 Republicans, 2 Libertarians, 2 independents.

Councilmember - Council District 1

• Vanessa Hall-Harper (Vanessa Dee Hall-Harper), incumbent Dem, 50, 2020 W. Newton St., Tulsa, OK 74127


• David Harris (David Jeremy Harris), Dem, 48, 1780 E 51st St N, Tulsa, OK 74130


• Francetta L. Mays (Francetta Lajuana Mays), Dem, 58, 1740 W. Haskell Pl., Tulsa, OK 74127

Councilmember - Council District 2

• Aaron L Bisogno (Aaron Louis Bisogno), Rep, 35, 7722 South Saint Louis Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74136


• Jeannie Cue, incumbent Rep, 68, 5313 S 32 Pl W, Tulsa, OK 74107

Councilmember - Council District 3

• Daniel Joseph Grove, Lib, 22, 1407 N. Evanston Ave., Tulsa, OK 74110


• Crista Patrick (Crista Caye Patrick), incumbent Dem, 48, 1918 N. Joplin Ave., Tulsa, OK 74115

Councilmember - Council District 4

• Laura Bellis (Laura Simon Bellis), Dem, 33, 224 N. Rosedale Ave., Tulsa, OK 74127


• Michael Birkes (Michael Bruce Birkes), Ind, 72, 1021 E 7th St., Tulsa, OK 74120 (registration address is 702 S Owasso Ave)


• Scott Carter (Martin Scott Carter), Dem, 56, 208 East 19th St, Tulsa, OK 74119 WITHDRAWN


• Michael Feamster (Michael James Feamster), Bynum-Chamber-Rep, 39, 2259 South Rockford Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74114


• Weydan Flax (Weydan Shawn Flax), Dem, 60, 1234 S Birmingham Ave, Tulsa, OK 74104


• Matthew Fransein (Matthew James Fransein), Dem, 34, 727 S. Louisville Ave, Tulsa, OK 74112


• Bobby Dean Orcutt (Robert Dean Orcutt), Dem, 39, 1630 S. St Louis Ave, Tulsa, OK 74120

Councilmember - Council District 5

• Mykey Arthrell (Michael William Arthrell-Knezek), incumbent Dem, 37, 1747 S Erie Pl, Tulsa, OK 74112


• Latasha Jim (Latasha Earlene Jim), Ind, 29, 11035 E 16th St, Tulsa, OK 74128


• Adil Khan (Adil Khalid Khan), Dem, 38, 9815 E. 21st Pl Apt C, Tulsa, OK 74129


• Grant Miller (Adam Grant Miller), Lib, 35, 1139 S. Canton Ave., Tulsa, OK 74112


• Ty Walker (Tyron Vincent Walker), Rep, 56, 8538 E. 24th St., Tulsa, OK 74129

Councilmember - Council District 6

• Christian Bengel (Christian D. Bengel), Rep, 54, 13173 E 29th St., Tulsa, OK 74134


• Connie Dodson (Connie L Dodson), Dem, 55, 13302 E. 28th St., Tulsa, OK 74134


• Lewana Harris (Lewana Michelle Harris), Dem, 45, 1505 S. 117th E. Ave, Tulsa, OK 74128

Councilmember - Council District 7

• Jerry Griffin (Gerald Ray Griffin), Rep, 78, 6552 E. 60th, Tulsa, OK 74145


• Ken Reddick (Kenneth Andrew Reddick), Rep, 39, 5008 S 85th East Ave, Tulsa, OK 74133


• Lori Decter Wright (Lori Marie Decter-Wright), Dem, 47, 8706 East 86th Street, Tulsa, OK 74133

Councilmember - Council District 8

• Scott Houston (Jon Scott Houston), Rep, 66, 8534 S. 70th E Ave, Tulsa, OK 74133


• Phil Lakin (Phillip Lawrence Lakin, Jr.), incumbent GKFF-Rep, 54, 9808 S. Knoxville Ave, Tulsa, OK 74137

Councilmember - Council District 9

• Lee Ann Crosby (Bobbie Leeann Crosby), Dem, 38, 3845 South Madison Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105


• Jayme Fowler (Jayme Don Fowler), incumbent Rep, 63, 5601 S. Gary Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105


• Chad Hotvedt (Chad Edward Hotvedt), Dem, 38, 1515 E 60th St, Tulsa, OK 74105

City Auditor

• Cathy Champion Carter, Dem, 67, 4120 E 22nd Pl, Tulsa, OK 74114

CORRECTION: In an earlier version of this entry, I had erroneously transcribed Ken Reddick's date of birth and the address on his declaration, and I incorrectly identified the full registration name for Christian Bengel in District 6 as Riley Christian Bengel (his son).

UPDATE 2022/06/17: Scott Carter withdrew his candidacy for District 4 by the Friday deadline.

At the end of the second day (June 14, 2022) of the three-day filing period for the 2022 City of Tulsa election for City Council and City Auditor, only two incumbents remain unopposed: District 3 Councilor Crista Patrick (D) and City Auditor Cathy Champion Carter (D).

All nine City Council seats and the City Auditor position will be on the ballot. The filing period continues through 5 p.m. Wednesday. The City of Tulsa filing packet is here. A candidate must turn in a notarized declaration of candidacy to the Tulsa County Election Board at 555 N. Denver, along with a $50 cashier's check as a deposit or a nominating petition signed by at least 300 registered voters in the district in lieu of a deposit.

In Tuesday's filings, incumbent District 8/GKFF Councilor Phil Lakin now has a challenger in Republican Scott Houston, an insurance company VP who is also an author and motivational speaker. On his campaign website, Houston emphasizes conservative values, limiting government overreach (specifically mentioning mask mandates and business shutdowns), and roads and infrastructure. Houston's filing means there are now conservatives running in four of the nine council races.

Incumbents Vanessa Hall-Harper (D, District 1) and Mykey Arthrell (D, District 5) filed for re-election, along with two more candidates in District 5, Latasha Jim (I) and Grant Miller (D). Lee Ann Crosby (D) filed in District 9; incumbent Jayme Fowler has yet to file for re-election.

The race for the open seat in District 4 added two candidates, Scott Carter (D) and Bobby Dean Orcutt (D). Carter is registered to vote as Martin Scott Carter; the publications list on the webpage of Scott Carter, Professor of Economics at the University of Tulsa, has Martin Carter listed as author for most of the articles listed.

Bobby Dean Orcutt is owner of the Mercury Lounge. He was planning a run for District 4, held off with the intention of backing Emeka Nnaka, but now that the district boundary modification in April has moved Nnaka into District 1, Orcutt has evidently decided to jump back in.

Party registration of the 24 candidates who have filed thus far: 14 Democrats, 8 Republicans, 1 Libertarians, and 1 independent.

Here is the complete list of candidates who filed as of Tuesday evening Names, ages, and addresses are from the official county election board filing list. I've added party registration, incumbent status, other affiliations, and the candidate's name in the voter rolls in parentheses where it differs from the name that will be on the ballot.

Today (June 13, 2022) was the first day of the three-day filing period for the 2022 City of Tulsa election for City Council and City Auditor. All nine City Council races will be on the ballot. The filing period continues through 5 p.m. Wednesday. The City of Tulsa filing packet is here. A candidate must turn in a notarized declaration of candidacy to the Tulsa County Election Board at 555 N. Denver, along with a $50 cashier's check as a deposit or a nominating petition signed by at least 300 registered voters in the district in lieu of a deposit.

This will be the first election using the Tulsa city council district lines drawn after the 2020 census. Precinct boundaries and numbers have changed as well. On April 6, 2022, the council adopted significant changes to the final redistricting plan produced by the Election District Commission in December 2021. The map below (click to see the full size version) shows the originally adopted 2021 plan in blue-and-white lines and the current districts as colored areas. A consequence of that change is that Emeka Nnaka, who came to the election board today to file for the open District 4 seat, learned that his Kendall-Whittier home was now in District 1. He left without filing.

As of the end of the first day, incumbents have filed for re-election in the auditor's race and five of the nine council districts. District 4 Councilor Kara Joy McKee announced earlier this year that she would not seek re-election. All other incumbent councilors are reported to be running for re-election, but incumbents in Districts 1, 5, and 9 have yet to file.

So far incumbents Crista Patrick and Phil Lakin (District 8) are unchallenged. Patrick is the latest member of the family dynasty to sit in the District 3 seat. Lakin is chairman of the George Kaiser Family Foundation and CEO of the Tulsa Community Foundation, and as such represents the stranglehold that billionaire George Kaiser has on Tulsa city government and the non-profit sector, pushing the city leftward. Challenging and defeating Lakin would be a good start on making Tulsa where community organizations once again represent the city's diversity.

Conservatives have filed for only three of the seats. Ty Walker, a restaurateur who ran for Mayor in 2020, has filed in District 5, a seat he sought in 2018 when no incumbent was running. In District 7, Tulsa school board member Jerry Griffin has filed to challenge incumbent Democrat Lori Decter Wright. In District 6, Christian Bengel is seeking a rematch with incumbent Democrat Connie Dodson -- two years ago, he advanced to a runoff but lost in November.

The open seat in District 4 has so far drawn only two candidates. Michael Feamster, an executive at Nabholz Construction Corporation, and Laura Bellis, a Planned Parenthood Great Plains advisory board member. Bellis has pronouns in her LinkedIn bio. In April 2020, Bellis made news for urging Gov. Stitt to lock down Oklahoma. Feamster's LinkedIn feed is full of cheerleading for the Chamber and G. T. Bynum, and raised over $28,000 as of March 31, from many of the usual establishment funders, including $5,000 from QuikTrip PAC and a maximum $2,900 donation from the Osage Nation. Michael Junk, Bynum's former deputy mayor and campaign manager, hosted a fundraiser for Feamster last fall, prompting questions about Bynum's support for Feamster's candidacy. Clearly, conservative voters and supporters of midtown neighborhood preservation don't yet have a candidate to vote for in the District 4 race; hopefully one will emerge by Wednesday.

While city elections have been officially non-partisan since 2016, all of the 16 candidates who have filed thus far are registered to vote with a political party: 9 Democrats and 7 Republicans. Republicans are a plurality of registered voters in Tulsa, at 86,796, compared to 84,320 registered Democrats, 43,460 independent voters, and 2,063 registered Libertarians. While party registration doesn't say everything that needs to be said about a candidate's views, particularly on city issues, and while RINOs abound, it is one more piece of information that a voter may find useful.

Here is the complete list of candidates who filed on Monday. Names, ages, and addresses are from the official county election board filing list. I've added party registration, incumbent status, other affiliations, and the candidate's name in the voter rolls in parentheses where it differs from the name that will be on the ballot.

Before Eisenhower's Interstate Highway System, before state highway officials collaborated to create a national highway numbering system in 1926, motorists traveling cross-country followed turn-by-turn directions contained in the Official Automobile Blue Book. These books are a time capsule of transportation history, not only mentioning routes, but road conditions, locations of hotels, garages, train stations, and trolley tracks.

Above is a map of Tulsa from the Official Automobile Blue Book, 1920 edition, Volume 7, p. 779. That link will lead you to the page that begins the Route 901, 126.9 miles from 2nd & Main in Tulsa to Robinson & Main in Oklahoma City.

Only the streets that matter for inter-city motoring are labeled. The reset have to be inferred from old maps.

Heading east, the route goes down 2nd, but bends left at Kenosha onto 1st Place, and then joins 1st Street at Lansing Ave. Two blocks east at Norfolk (misspelled as Norfork) it jogs north to Admiral Blvd, which is today the north service road for I-244. Admiral Blvd jogs north at Utica, and the route reaches Whittier Square at Lewis, where it forks three ways.

• To Independence and Joplin: North on Lewis, east on Dawson Road.
• Optional to Independence and Joplin: North on Lewis, east on Archer Street
• To Muskogee: South on Lewis, east on 11th Street.

The route to Oklahoma City turns south at 2nd and Boulder, west at 5th Street, which merges into 7th west of Houston Avenue. The route turns south onto Maybelle Ave to 11th Street, then diagonally southwest across the Arkansas River bridge -- this part of the route was obliterated for the SW Inner Dispersal Loop interchange. On the west side of the river, the map shows the route heading south on Quanah to 17th, west to a road that follows the east side of the Frisco tracks to 19th, then west on 19th to Union Ave (labeled Division Street on this map). It looks to me like the mapmaker misidentified Union as Division; the 1920 census enumeration district map shows present-day Quanah Ave was West Tulsa's Division Street, before the annexed town's street names were normalized with Tulsa's, so in all likelihood, the route followed Quanah south, then Southwest Boulevard, then Old Sapulpa Road through Oakhurst and Bowden, into Sapulpa on Mission Street and Dewey Ave, then following the old Ozark Trail / Route 66 alignment that parallels and passes under the Frisco tracks.

The trolleys mentioned in the turn-by-turn route instructions are the Tulsa Street Railway (specifically the 5th Street track and the car barns at 5th/7th & Lawton) and the Sapulpa & Interurban, aka Oklahoma Union Traction, with an interurban line crossing the Arkansas River at West Tulsa and city streetcar lines in Sapulpa.

The Tulsa map shows SL&SF (Frisco -- SW to NE), AT&SF (Santa Fe -- SW to N), MKT (Katy - W to SE), and Midland Valley (N to S) railroads, but we can only infer electric interurban lines from mentions in the turn-by-turn text. These railroad stations are shown but Midland Valley is absent:

• MKT at Main between Cameron & Easton.
• SL&SF/ATS&F at Boston south of the Frisco tracks (to be replaced by Union Station)
• West Tulsa station south of what would be 18th & Santa Fe, west of the tracks
• East Tulsa Frisco station at about Delaware Ave, south of the Frisco tracks

Civic amenities shown include Oaklawn Cemetery, Owen Park, Central (Centennial) Park, and Swan Lake Park, but only Admiral Park is named. Kendall College (now University of Tulsa) is misspelled as Kendale, but shown as a couple of buildings east of College Ave between 5th and 7th. The Fair Grounds were between Archer St and the Frisco tracks, from Lewis to about Archer Place. The near northside is hidden beneath the title and scale on the upper left, but deep Greenwood Ave is not hidden. A Post Office is shown on the east side of Madison just north of the Frisco tracks, which seems strange, as that location is isolated from the center of town.

Route 902 is a longer route to Oklahoma City, 168.4 miles via Okmulgee and Henryetta, but it avoids Creek County oilfield traffic. Route 905 takes the Ozark Trail from Tulsa to Joplin, but you go through Owasso, where there was an Ozark Trail monument, to get to Claremore. Route 906 links Tulsa with Bartlesville and Independence, Kansas, paralleling present day US 75. Route 910 goes from Tulsa through Bixby to Muskogee. Each route has its reverse: Route 931 heads back from Independence to Tulsa, concluding with a description of Bartlesville and an ad for the Ketchum Hotel at 5th & Main in Tulsa.

MORE:

Hathi Trust partial collection of Automobile Blue Book volumes

1919 Official Automobile Blue Book, Volume 7, Tulsa map. In this edition, there is no route description for Tulsa to OKC via Stroud, but the road is depicted on the overview map.

"The Official Automobile Blue Book, 1901-1929: Precursor to the American Road Map," John T. Bauer (Department of Sociology, Geography, and Earth Science, University of Nebraska at Kearney), Cartographic Perspectives (Number 62, Winter 2009): Includes a list of all known editions with a breakdown by volume -- very helpful for finding the volume of interest in the Internet Archive and other online libraries.

RELATED:

Automobile Club of Southern California's beautiful strip maps of the National Old Trails Road from Los Angeles to Kansas City, with branches to Denver, Cheyenne, Big Springs, Nebraska, and the Grand Canyon. The stretch from Las Vegas, NM, to Los Angeles was the starting point for US 66 in 1926.

The National Old Trails Road: The great historic highway of America, a brief resume of the principal events connected with the rebuilding of the old Cumberland--now the National old trails road--from Washington and Baltimore to Los Angeles: A 1926 book with lots of interesting history about the evolution of named and numbered highway systems, beginning with the National Road from Cumberland, Maryland, to Vandalia, Illinois. Includes an unsuccessful 1913 congressional proposal detailing 18 numbered highways that would be improved with money from a new federal tobacco tax. Roads 11 and 13 would pass through Muskogee and Oklahoma City, but Tulsa doesn't get a mention. Also much discussion about the proper and constitutional role of the federal government in road building.

This morning I spoke to the weekly meeting of City Elders about the recent school board elections, the Democratic candidates who won despite higher Republican turnout, and the connections of the donors who made their campaigns possible. Here are some links to further reading on the ideas and people I mentioned in my talk, plus some related information worth your time.

Elsewhere:

• The Kaiser System, by Michael Mason: If you read nothing else, read this. Mason approaches the topic with empathy and care as he exposes the groupthink, fear, and divisiveness created as a small group of people use immense wealth as leverage to control our community's civic direction.
• Election results from the April 5, 2022, school elections
• Tulsa Public Schools academic achievement indicator (school report card) from the Oklahoma State Department of Education. I showed the data from 2018-2019, pre-pandemic.
• Tulsa Public Schools: Oklahoma State Testing Report, October 2018. Shows significant decline in proficiency from 2017 to 2018 results.
• Controversial Owasso teacher 'is no longer in the classroom'
• George Krumme OpenSecrets.org donor report
• Burt Holmes OpenSecrets.org donor report
• George Kaiser OpenSecrets.org donor report
• Stacy Schusterman OpenSecrets.org donor report
• George Kaiser's Giving Pledge
• Lynn Schusterman's Giving Pledge
• George Kaiser 2005 Chicago speech on early childhood education
• GKFF Board of Directors
• Schusterman Family Philanthropies statement on "gender and reproductive equity"

At BatesLine:

• Tulsa's Yacht-Guest Subculture: The sycophants who keep the billionaires' boats afloat
• The Anthropomorphization of the GOP: Why it's a mistake to think of the Republican Party as having volition and direction. As Rand Paul has said, "The Republican Party is an empty vessel unless we embue it with values.
• Chambers of Horrors: If you're a conservative, the Chamber of Commerce is not your friend
• "Down with the gummint!" Tulsa's bullies and their willing toadies
• Clueless SOTs and their enablers: Tulsa's insiders refuse to criticize the bad ideas of their peers
• "Any society has to privilege some ethical viewpoint": Why conservatives shouldn't be shy about working to recapture the culture for the worldview and values that built a peaceful and prosperous civilzation
• 2022 Tulsa School Board campaign contributions: Keller, Lamkin backed by leftist establishment donors
• 2022 Union School Board campaign contributions: Democrat donors back McNeil
• The Usual Suspects: Tulsa Economic Recovery Advisory Committee
• Even billionaires deserve scrutiny and skepticism from the media
• Introducing the Tulsa Complacent Council
• Tulsa Election 2011: Pre-general ethics filings; Kaiser, Schusterman lead funders of "Working Tulsans"
• George Kaiser, GKFF, and Solyndra
• Council-suer, SOT member announce picks for City Council (UPDATED)
• Who convinced Tom Coburn to back the bank bailout?
• Great Plains Airlines article archive
• The Build PAC Boys: Post-election City Council contribution reports

Here's the recording of my City Elders talk. There is a bit missing from when the memory card filled up and had to be switched, about the time I was talking about the disappearance of local talk radio, which was a crucial element of media bypass and the modest success we had electing grassroots outsiders to city office in the decade of the 2000s.

Campaign contribution and expenditure reports from the recent school board election in Union, the school district that straddles the Tulsa-Broken Arrow boundary, include some names of prominent Democratic donors familiar from campaign filings in the two 2022 school board races in the Tulsa district.

As reported on his pre-primary campaign contributions and expenditures report, incumbent Democrat Christopher McNeil received maximum $2,900 contributions from Democrat megadonors George Krumme and Burt Holmes. Krumme, a retired oil man, was also a maximum donor to Susan Lamkin in Tulsa District 7 and Shawna Keller in Tulsa District 4. Krumme gave a further $2,900 to McNeil for the general election campaign. (Campaign contribution limits reset after the primary.) Holmes, notorious for suing Tulsa City Councilors for representing their constituents and for working to dilute geographical representation on the council, gave a $2,900 contribution to Lamkin. Home Builders Association of Greater Tulsa contributed $750 to McNeil's campaign. Former Tulsa County Democratic Party chairman Elaine Dodd and Heart of the Party, the local chapter of the Oklahoma Federation of Democratic Women, were among the $100 donors to the McNeil campaign.

Gwartney received a total of $1,500 from the Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee and $335.70 from Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights (OKHPR), Her largest aggregate personal donation came from Robin LaButti of Tulsa, $885.70 in the primary and general election combined.

As of the primary election, Democrat McNeil had raised $9,895.00. By contrast, Republican challenger Shelley Gwartney had raised $3,043.66. As of the pre-general-election filing (through March 31), McNeil had raised $14,650 and spent $6,016, while Gwartney raised $8,766.15 and spent $6,484.16. Keep in mind that this is not the final report of contributions and expenditures; a great deal of spending can occur in the final week of the campaign and billing may be deferred until after the election.

Here are the complete campaign contribution and expenditure filings for the candidates for Union Public Schools Office No. 2:

Shelley Gwartney, Union Public Schools District 2, 2022 campaign contribution and ethics reports
Christopher McNeil, Union Public Schools District 2, 2022 campaign contribution and ethics reports

Notwithstanding the gap in spending, Gwartney managed to force McNeil into a runoff, finishing just 11 votes behind the incumbent and just 53 votes shy of an absolute majority. But McNeil prevailed in the low-turnout general election, 687-566.

There were 10,081 active registered voters in Union's Election District 2 as of February 28, 2022, of which 5,723 were registered Republicans, 2,588 Democrats, 1,701 Independents, and 69 Libertarians. The partisan breakdown of primary voters was 677 Republicans, 267 Democrats, and 109 Independents. (There was apparently one ballot left blank.)

In the April general election, ballots were cast by 764 Republicans, 342 Democrats, 145 Independents, and 3 Libertarians. (Again, one ballot seems to have been submitted without a detectable mark.)

Published April 3, 2022, postdated to remain at the top of the page until the polls close on Tuesday, April 5, 2022.

Tuesday, April 5, 2022, is general election day for K-12 school board seats in Oklahoma. Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Seats on technology center boards (what we used to call vocational-technical, or vo-tech, schools) are also on the ballot. Some cities (Sand Springs and Sapulpa among them) have city council runoffs, and there are some municipal and school district propositions up for a vote as well. The Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter tool will let you know where to vote and will show you a sample of the ballot you'll see. Not everyone will have a reason to go to the polls, but the Tulsa Tech district covers a large area , so double-check, just to be sure.

As of a recent change to election law (HB 2082 in 2018), any contested school board seat will be settled on the first Tuesday in April, except that an election with three or more candidates can be won outright in the February primary if a candidate receives more than 50% of the vote. This happened this year in Broken Arrow Office No. 2: Conservative candidate Debbie Taylor received 51% of the vote in a three-way race for an open seat. While this was a happy result, because a smaller electorate turns out for a primary than for the general, it would be good to change the law so that every contested race has a two-candidate election on the April general election date. Some voters prefer not to turn up to vote until more informed voters have narrowed the choices for them.

While school elections in Oklahoma appear without party labels on the ballot, political parties and partisan political figures are free to support and endorse candidates. But schools have drifted from their original purpose of educating students according to their own community's values and priorities. Leftist ideologues have successfully gained a foothold through school boards and college-level schools of education to use public schools as part of a strategy of cultural transformation, the Gramscian "Long March through the Institutions." Pedagogy based on Critical Race Theory and Queer Theory (even if it doesn't use those names) has found its way even into rural public schools, as teachers and administrators come under the influence of organizations like leftist national teacher's unions and their state affiliates (the Oklahoma Education Association).

A second dimension driving the politicization of school elections centers on accountability: School boards are too often filled with rubber stamps who blindly approve whatever the superintendent puts in front of them. The result is administrative bloat, feather-bedding, insider deals, and, worst of all, educational failure. Taxpayer money doesn't find its way into the classroom to serve the needs of students. In the Tulsa Public Schools, this situation is exacerbated by the board and administration's entanglement with foundations which use their "grants" as chains to drag the district in the foundations' desired ideological direction. Parents, students, and taxpayers need board members who will operate the district in accordance with their needs, values, and priorities, rather than turning over these public institutions to the whims of private philanthropists.

State proficiency tests show Tulsa Public Schools performance lagging well behind the rest of the state in every subject at every grade level, by anywhere from 8 to 21 percentage points. 10% of TPS 7th graders were proficient in math, the district's best grade-level math score, but only 3% of TPS 8th graders were. Meanwhile, the majority on the TPS board keep voting early contract extensions for Superintendent Deborah "Cruella" Gist so that board members newly elected by the voters will not have the option of replacing here. This level of failure cannot be fixed by more funds; regime change is essential. At the moment, TPS has two board members who are not rubber stamps -- Jeannettie Marshall and Jerry Griffin. Electing E'Lena Ashley and Tim Harris would result in a majority of the 7 TPS board members committed to accountability.

The third political dimension affecting schools is the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand, you have parents and taxpayers who supported prudent precautions when the pandemic was new and its severity was unknown. The early response was driven by the since-disproven fear that the virus could be spread easily by people who showed no symptoms of illness. Now that the virus has become endemic, now that early variants have been supplanted by more infectious but far less severe variants, now that we know that children are at low risk of acquiring or transmitting the virus, now that we see the educational, developmental, and emotional damage that schoolchildren have suffered from mandatory mask-wearing and school closures, parents and taxpayers want to see schools back to their pre-pandemic practices, with in-person instruction, student athletics, music, and activities as before, and no mask or vaccine mandates.

The Democrat Party (but by no means all Democratic voters) has aligned itself with the agendas of cultural transformation, unaccountable insider dealing, irrational risk-aversion, and authoritarian health mandates. Although voters across the political spectrum oppose the Democrat Party's positions on these issues, the Republican Party and conservative organizations have emerged as a resource for Oklahomans of all political affiliations who wish to take the schools back from the Leftist ideologues and grifters and to restore the original purpose of the schools -- to teach children the knowledge and skills they need to be independent, free Americans, participating knowledgeably as in free citizens in a free republic, living effectively as free economic agents in a free market, and exercising personal freedom as they weigh risks and benefits.

Independent advocacy groups like Tulsa Parents Voice and Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights and local Republican organizations are making endorsements and rallying volunteer support for candidates who will work for accountability, parental involvement, and parental rights.

Here in the Tulsa metro area, pro-parent and pro-accountability forces are supporting the following school board candidates. Footnotes indicate which groups have endorsed each. Links are to each candidate's primary web presence.

Tulsa Public Schools, Office No. 4: E'Lena Ashley ^{1 2 3}
Tulsa Public Schools, Office No. 7: Tim Harris ^{1 2 3}
Jenks Public Schools, Office No. 2: Ashley Cross ^{1 2 3}
Sand Springs Public Schools, Office No. 2: MaRanda Trimble-Kerley ^{1 2 3}
Union Public Schools, Office No. 2: Shelley Gwartney ^{1 2 3}
Tulsa Technology District, Office No. 3: Mark Griffin ^{2 3}
Owasso Public Schools, Office No. 2: Joshua Stanton ¹
Bixby Public Schools, Office No. 2: Jake Rowland
Bartlesville Public Schools, Office No. 2: Jonathan Bolding ^{1 2}
Olive Public Schools, Office No. 2: Lori Bates ¹

¹ Endorsed by Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights
² Supported by Tulsa Parents Voice
³ Supported by Tulsa County Republican Party

All of the above candidates are registered Republican voters. All of the K-12 board candidates listed received an "A" survey rating and an endorsement from Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights, except for Bixby candidate Jake Rowland, who was given a "B" grade for his survey responses, and OKHPR did not make an endorsement in that race, nor has OKHPR weighed in on the Tulsa Tech board race. Note that since Bartlesville and Olive are in other counties, the Tulsa County GOP would not be involved in those races. While Bixby Parents Voice has not endorsed Rowland, they have expressed alarm at incumbent candidate Amanda Stephens's vote to keep sexually explicit books in the high school library.

MORE:

• Editorial commentary from the Tulsa Beacon.
• iVoterGuide for Tulsa County school board races

May 17, 2021 TPS board meeting: Starting about 19:30, TPS Board Member Jeannettie Marshall protests the payment of a check to the Tulsa Community Foundation for a contract made with a non-existent organization called "The Opportunity Project" and the fact that two TCF-affiliated board members (Schrieber and Barba Perez) voted on the matter without recusing themselves. Only Marshall and Griffin expressed concern about the lack of transparency; Office 4 incumbent Shawna Keller remained silent and voted to write a check to an organization which had not been awarded a contract. The board rubber stamps tried to slide this through on the "consent agenda." (Note that IT Director Joe Jennings and Chief Equity Officer Devin Fletcher have "their pronouns" listed on their Zoom IDs.)

Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association TPS District 4 candidate forum: Note that incumbent Shawna Keller (D) is still wearing a mask; challenger E'Lena Ashley (R) is not.

Tulsa Classroom Teachers Association TPS District 7 candidate forum: Tim Harris voices his priorities for parent involvement, teaching basic skills (a task which TPS is failing to perform), a forensic, line-by-line audit of TPS finances, and protecting children from inappropriate classroom content.

TYPROS TPS District 7 candidate forum: Former District Attorney Tim Harris (R) is running against Susan Lamkin (D). Lamkin is backed by the same donors and leaders who back the other rubber stamps on the board. Harris's experience managing the personnel, mission, and budget of a large government department -- the Tulsa County District Attorney's office -- will be a great asset to the board, as he will know from experience where to look for wasted money and mission creep.

Tulsa Tech Candidate Forum: Mark Griffin, the incumbent Republican, is being challenged by Democrat Jim Provenzano, husband of leftist Democrat State Rep. Melissa Provenzano.

Union Public Schools candidate forum: Incumbent Chris McNeil (D) vs. challenger and PTA leader Shelley Gwartney (R).

Campaign contribution reports show that the two registered Democrats running for Tulsa school board, District 4 incumbent Shawna Keller and Susan Lamkin, running for the open District 7 seat, are heavily backed by Tulsa's leftist establishment -- the band of philanthropists, politicians, and their hangers-on who hate Oklahoma's conservative values and seek to use their financial power to make Oklahoma "progressive."

Here are the complete campaign reports for the two candidates, as provided in response to an Open Records Act request to the Tulsa Public School district clerk. These PDFs have been run through OCR and renamed for improved search results.

Shawna Keller, Tulsa Public Schools District 4, 2022 campaign contribution and ethics reports
Susan Lamkin, Tulsa Public Schools District 7, 2022 campaign contribution and ethics reports

As of the March 21, 2022, pre-election reporting period deadline, Keller, running for re-election, had raised $14,130.20 in cash contributions, but had only spent $2,125.42 at that point, two weeks before election day. Lamkin, running in an open seat against a well-known opponent, had raised $35,805.00 and spent $16,523.28.

Familiar names connected with Democrat Party politics and influential local philanthropies appear on both candidates' donor lists. Many of the same names were donors to the effort to unseat Pastor Jennettie Marshall in her 2021 race for re-election to the school board. (But she persisted.) In general, these campaign donors have opposed grassroots candidates and supported current members of the rubber-stamp school board, which is failing to educate Tulsa children effectively.

Stacy Schusterman ($1,000 to Keller, $1,500 to Lamkin): Chairman of Samson Energy and Schusterman Family Philanthropies, whose agenda includes "gender and reproductive equity:

We support our partners in building an equitable world in which all women-including Black women, women of color, indigenous women, cisgender and transgender women-and non-binary people have access to reproductive health knowledge and care, to greater political and economic power and leadership, and to safety in all aspects of their lives.

George Krumme (max donations of $2,900 each to Keller and Lamkin): Retired head of Krumme Oil and major donor to Democratic candidates and causes.

Kathy Taylor ($2,000 to Keller, $500 to Lamkin): Democrat former mayor of Tulsa.

Philip Kaiser ($250 each to Keller and Lamkin): Son of George Kaiser, member of the George Kaiser Family Foundation (GKFF) board of directors, owner of Laffa restaurant and defunct Cosmo Cafe.

Nancy McDonald ($100 to Keller, $500 to Lamkin): Founder of Tulsa chapter of Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.

Tim Gilpin ($250 to Keller, $750 to Lamkin): Former Tulsa County Democrat Party chairman, Democrat nominee for Congress in 2018.

James Frasier and Sally Frasier ($200 combined to Keller, $300 combined to Lamkin): Husband and wife influential in national, state, and local Democrat Party politics. Jim Frasier has served as a member of the Democratic National Committee and as a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention. Sally Frasier has been honored as Democratic Woman of the Year and has served on the board of the local Planned Parenthood chapter.

Dennis Neill ($125 to Keller, $75 to Lamkin): Gay rights activist, Namesake of the Dennis R. Neill "Equality" Center, and connected with the Schusterman family as an executive at Samson and the Schusterman foundation.

Cynthia (Cindy) Decker ($100 to Keller, $150 to Lamkin): Former TPS board member and Executive Director of Tulsa Educare, a major initiative of GKFF.

Annie Van Hanken ($100 to Keller, $250 to Lamkin): Program Officer, GKFF, "oversees GKFF's early childhood education and common education initiatives."

Heart of the Party ($100 each to Keller and Lamkin): "As the 1st Congressional District chapter of the Oklahoma Federation of Democratic Women we promotes [sic] progressive political activism and the election of Democrats through local, statewide and federal elections."

Kara Gae Neal ($100 each to Keller and Lamkin): Former Tulsa County Superintendent of Schools (as Kara Gae Wilson), wife of former Tulsa World editorial hack Ken Neal.

While departing TPS Office No. 7 board member Suzanne Schreiber has not personally contributed to any campaigns, her husband, Tony Rittenberry, gave $1,250 to Lamkin, and her sister Sara Schreiber, executive director of America Votes (which calls itself the "coordination hub of the progressive community"), gave $250 to Lamkin. Her father, New Mexico rancher and anti-natural-gas activist Don Schreiber, gave $100 to Lamkin; his wife, Jane Schreiber, gave $200 to Keller. Schreiber is running as a Democrat for the House District 70 seat being vacated by Carol Bush. (Schreiber's mother is Democratic former New Mexico Lt. Gov. Diane Denish; Suzanne Schreiber worked on her mother's unsuccessful 2010 campaign for governor. Both of Suzanne Schreiber's parents signed a 2021 letter urging the University of New Mexico to divest from fossil-fuel energy investments.)

Other notable donors to Susan Lamkin's campaign:

Attorney Fred Dorwart, $2,000: The Frederic Dorwart Law Firm provides legal services to the network that Michael Mason has labeled "the Kaiser System."

Steve Mitchell, $1000: CEO of Argonaut, George Kaiser's private equity firm.

Ken Levit, GKFF executive director, $250. (Oddly, Levit is listed merely as "attorney" with no mention of his employer.)

Burt Holmes, $2,900: Maximum donor to Barack Obama, Great Plains Airlines board member, and litigant against city councilors who dared to represent their constituents. Holmes was at the forefront of "Save Our Tulsa", a partially successful effort to change the city charter. He sought to add three at-large members to the city council, to move city elections to Federal election dates, and to make city elections non-partisan, all of which give the advantage to the best funded campaign and make it harder for grassroots-supported candidates to win and have influence at city all. He also spearheaded a 2011 effort to replace independent-minded city councilors with rubber stamps.

UNOFFICIAL RESULTS UPDATE, with all precincts counted: The conservative, pro-parent school board candidates have either won outright (Debbie Taylor in Broken Arrow) or made it into a runoff (conservative Tim Harris against Susan Lamkin, who had the endorsement of the GKFF-connected incumbent and the support of the TPS establishment; conservative Shelley Gwartney against Union incumbent Chris McNeil). The top two candidates in both races were just a tiny margin apart -- 62 votes in Tulsa and 12 votes in Union. So the pro-parent candidates and supporters will have a busy eight weeks between now and the April 5, 2022, runoff. In addition to trying to help Tim Harris in Tulsa district 7 and Shelley Gwartney in Union district 2, there will also be a race in Tulsa district 4 (East Central area) between pro-parent candidate E'Lena Ashley and the Democrat incumbent, as well as two-candidate races for Jenks, Skiatook (2 seats), Owasso, and Sand Springs school boards, and Tulsa Tech Center board seat 3.

Smallest election in the state: 21 voters turned out in the Town of Tushka (just south of Atoka) and all of them voted for renewing their franchise with PSO. The Town of East Duke (in Jackson County near Altus) had 36 unanimous voters on their PSO franchise vote. East Duke appears on maps as just plain Duke, another situation, like New Cordell and Pryor Creek, where there's a mismatch between corporate and common name. In Tulsa, 11,314 turned out to vote for the PSO franchise, which passed by a 76-24 split, but I suspect that number was boosted a bit by the school board and bond issue elections happening in some areas.

Polls will be open today, Tuesday from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. The Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter tool will let you know where to vote (and if you have a reason to go to the polls) and will show you a sample of the ballot you'll see. Here's the complete list of elections today across Oklahoma.

Below are my thoughts on some of the races in the Oklahoma school board and municipal primary election on February 8, 2022.

This is last-minute and thrown-together, I am sorry to say. Someone decided to foment a crisis, which landed atop an intense work load, plus the final push of a busy MIT admissions interview season, which ended yesterday.

Serious challengers to the status quo have emerged in several school board races in the Tulsa metro area. These candidates are committed to serving the best interests of students and their parents, rather than the agendas of administrators or unions or overly-influential, control-freakish "philanthropic" organizations. Parent Voice of Tulsa has identified the strongest pro-parent and pro-student candidates in each race, listed below.

Tulsa School Board, Office No. 7: Tim Harris. The retired district attorney, a conservative Republican, is running for an open seat. He has been endorsed by Parent Voice of Tulsa, the Republican Party of Tulsa County, former Congressman Jim Bridenstine, Lt. Gov. Matt Pinnell, retired college president Everett Piper, and many other conservative voices.

His principal competitor is a registered Democrat who has no history of voting in school board elections and has the backing for prominent left-wing institutions and donors, including the outgoing GKFF-connected board member, along with a number of other GKFF-affiliated donors, former Democrat Mayor Kathy Taylor, and the Tulsa County Democratic Party. Voting for her would be to vote for keeping failed Superintendent Deborah Gist, for accepting more strings-attached "grants" from foundations, for keeping kids in masks or out of the classroom, failing to learn via Zoom.

Union School Board Office No. 2: Shelley Gwartney. Gwartney has four children in Union schools and has been very involved as a volunteer in the district and the community. Her website goes into detail on the issues that matter to conservative parents and taxpayers. Gwartney has also been endorsed by the Republican Party of Tulsa County and Parent Voice of Tulsa.

Broken Arrow School Board Office No. 2: Debbie Taylor. Taylor is mother to four BA graduates and grandmother to 9 current students in the Broken Arrow Public Schools. Taylor is also supported by Parent Voice and the Republican Party of Tulsa County in her race for the open seat.

City of Tulsa franchise election for PSO: NO. While most Tulsa voters will not have the opportunity to vote for school board, there is a citywide election. Voters will decide whether to continue to grant PSO a franchise to use its right-of-way -- including the right-of-way along your back fence -- for the next 15 years. Here is the description on the ballot:

Do you approve the City of Tulsa's Ordinance No. 24695, granting an electric franchise to Public Service Company of Oklahoma (PSO), so that PSO may use and occupy the streets, public ways and public places of the City for installing, operating and maintaining poles, wires and other equipment, for the purpose of furnishing electricity to the public? PSO will charge its consumers a reasonable, regulated fee for the electricity furnished. PSO must abide by the terms and conditions set forth in the Franchise Ordinance. PSO will pay fees to the City of Tulsa for the use of the public ways, as calculated in the Ordinance. This franchise will last for fifteen (15) years.

You will not find any reference to this election on the CityOfTulsa.org homepage, but Ordinance No. 24695 can be found on Municode, which hosts the city charter and ordinances. Here is a copy of the proposed City of Tulsa PSO franchise, which was approved by the City Council on November 17, 2021, and signed by Mayor G. T. Bynum IV the following day. Included in that PDF is a "redline" version showing how the new franchise differs from the one that has been in force since 1997, a quarter-century ago. The new franchise has a shorter term, only 15 years; it raises the franchise fee from 2% to 3% of gross receipts, a cost that will undoubtedly be passed on to Tulsa residents and businesses; it does not provide a way to revisit the franchise fee during the 15-year term; and it has a provision that would allow the City to order burying lines below ground, but the City (read: Tulsa taxpayers) would have to cover the extra cost.

As a rule, I think that voters ought to punish attempts by public officials to sneak something past them by putting it on a special ballot, and at the same time incurring the cost of of a special election and the burden on the election board and its volunteers. Whatever the positive or negative aspects, it ought to be on the same general election ballot we use to elect city councilors and the mayor. So I recommend a NO vote on the PSO franchise.

Catoosa Public Schools bond issue: NO. The bond issue would replace the current Cherokee Elementary School building (on the west side of Cherokee Street, built circa 1960 and formerly served as the junior high, middle school, and upper elementary) with a new building, which would also eliminate the district's use of the Helen Paul Learning Center, which was built by the Works Progress Administration in the 1930s and is just about the only historic building left in all of Catoosa. The administration is silent on what will happen to the Helen Paul building. I confess a personal interest: All but one of my classrooms from kindergarten to 8th grade have been demolished. The only one left is the classroom on the southeast corner of the intersection of the main corridor and the original entrance, where I was in Mrs. Helen Paul's 2nd grade class. This is also the only one of my mother's kindergarten classrooms remaining in Oklahoma. New facilities may be nice, but some of us recall the sparkling new J. W. Sam Elementary building from about 25 years ago, which was closed because of shoddy construction. I would vote no and demand some answers about historic preservation and construction quality. There is also an open school board seat on the ballot.

Also on today's ballot across the Tulsa metro area:

• Sand Springs: Two City Council races
• Bixby: $43 million bond issue for a performing arts center
• Coweta: A revote, due to failure to comply with public notice requirements, of last September's one-cent sales tax election
• Sapulpa: Vote to make the "temporary" 2% sales tax permanent
• Bixby Public Schools: Two bond issues, Prop No. 1 for $110 million to include a new high school building; Prop No. 2 for $4.5 million for student transportation
• Jenks Public Schools: Two bond issues totalling $14,025,000.

Remember that voting "no" on a bond issue is a way to send a vote of no confidence in your school's board and administration, even if you don't have the opportunity to vote directly for a board member.

Down the turnpike, Oklahoma City at-large city councilor David Holt (he has the ceremonial title of "mayor"), who has made his living as a professional schmoozer and never had a real job (as far as I can tell), is running for re-election. He is opposed by Carol Hefner, who is running as a conservative, pro-free-market, pro-public-safety candidate; Frank Urbanic, a lawyer who successfully challenged Holt's attempts to shut down city businesses during the pandemic; and Jimmy Lawson, an activist pushing for criminal justice "reform" and "equity." Carol Hefner has the endorsement of the Oklahoma County Republican Party, the Oklahoma Conservative Political Action Committee (OCPAC) and Oklahoma Second Amendment Association (OK2A). If no one gets 50% of the vote, there will be a runoff in April.

Holt refused to debate his challengers.

Unless conservative voters in Oklahoma's cities eject progressive mayors and councilors from office, these progressive mayors will continue to prioritize policies aimed at turning these cities "blue," moving Oklahoma toward a future where, like Michigan, Illinois, Georgia, and many other states, corrupt "progressive" urban centers will control elections for the whole state. We need mayors and councilors in Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Norman (we already have them in Broken Arrow!) who will make their cities attractive to conservatives who are refugees from other states.

Two Tuesdays from now, February 8, 2022, will be the first round of school board elections in Oklahoma for those races with at least three candidates. (Races with only two competitors will happen on April 5, along with any runoffs from the February 8 election. The Tulsa Public Schools Office No. 4 race between incumbent Democrat Shawna Keller and Republican challenger E'Lena Ashley will be on the April 5 ballot.)

On February 8 in the Tulsa metro area, there will be school board elections in Broken Arrow, Catoosa, Union; school bond issues in Bixby and Jenks; two city council seats in Sand Springs and one in Sapulpa; a PSO franchise renewal vote in the City of Tulsa; and city propositions in Bixby, Coweta, and Sapulpa.

This past two pandemic years, a growing number of parents and citizens have become aware of how bureaucrats and unions have taken control of our public schools and appear to be running them for their own convenience and in support of their own ideologies of social transformation. School board members are too often rubber stamps for administrators, when they should be holding the administration accountable to run a school district in accordance with the community's values and priorities. Tulsa's school board majority has been quick to insulate the superintendent from any consequences of her mismanagement by extending her contract beyond the reach of newly elected board members.

Groups like Parent Voice Oklahoma and their Tulsa chapter are organizing to elect better board members. It's all well and good for the legislature to ban indoctrination in accord with Critical Race Theory/Intersectionality and to ban mask mandates in schools (most countries didn't impose masks on school children), but we need good school board members to ensure that district administrators not only comply but cooperate with these democratic expressions of community values. If every district had a majority of good school board members who reflect community values, we might not need state laws to keep the public school administrators from going off the rails.

This year voters in the Tulsa school district could reclaim community control over our schools. In 2020, District 6 voters unseated a 24-year seat-warmer and elected Dr. Jerry Griffin, an experienced educator who is not shy about asking challenging questions politely and proposing ideas for improvement. In 2021, Pastor Jeannettie Marshall was re-elected in District 3, despite the massive funding advantage enjoyed by her opponent, who was backed by donors connected with the foundations that exert considerable control over TPS. Marshall had been a lone voice on the school board, the only member willing to vote against the 2020 scheme to extend controversial and unsuccessful Superintendent Deborah Gist's contract before newly elected board members could have a say in the matter. Two more seats could cinch a majority of board members committed to accountability and genuine educational excellence.

Longtime Tulsa County District Attorney Tim Harris is running for the open seat in Tulsa School Board Office No. 7, currently held by Suzanne Schrieber. Harris served 16 years as District Attorney for Tulsa County, retiring at the end of his term in 2014. Harris then taught constitutional law and criminal procedure at ORU for five semesters. After finishing first in the 2018 Republican primary to replace Congressman Jim Bridenstine, Harris fell short in an expensive runoff race with Kevin Hern.

In 2017, Harris served as chairman of the Tulsa County Sheriff's Foundation, raising money for body cameras for patrol deputies. Sheriff Vic Regalado hired Harris in 2019 as general counsel for the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office, where his responsibilities include civil rights and compliance issues at the county jail, covering issues as wide-ranging as keeping rival gangs separate, religious requirements for food and clergy, and access to health care, education, and a law library.

Harris was an advocate for children throughout his career in the District Attorney's office. As First Assistant DA under David Moss, Harris was part of a three-man team that developed a better way to care for children who came into contact with the criminal justice system as victims or witnesses. During Bill LaFortune's time as DA, Harris created a dedicated prosecution team for crimes against children with specialists in every courtroom, with Harris serving as the first Director of the Crimes Against Children Division.

Tim and his wife Tiari met as students at ORU and have been married for 37 years. They have two adult children and, as of a couple of months ago, a grandchild.

Harris had been praying about an opportunity to return to public service in some form or fashion, and on the second day of the filing period he heard a news report on the radio about an open seat on the TPS. After learning that it was for the district where he lives, he consulted with his wife, looked up the filing requirements, and put his name in.

As he delves into the details of curriculum and operations at TPS, Harris sees that this conservative city in the heart of the Bible Belt is being hit by the same wave of corrosive ideology, educational fads, and mismanagement that is sweeping over the rest of the nation. Curricula shaped by critical race theory and Marxist economics are taking the place of the skills and knowledge Tulsa students need to succeed. Harris told me about curriculum aimed at K-12 students that decries "environmental racism" and the "oppressive nature of standard English."

Meanwhile in many classrooms, teachers are reduced to proctoring students as they do lessons on screens. The result: 60% of 4th graders not reading at a 4th grade level. In 2019, state assessments showed that only 18% of TPS students were "proficient" or "advanced." And yet we have a highly paid superintendent that continues to be granted contract extensions by a weak, pliable school board. During his time in the DA's office, Tim Harris noticed that many of the criminals who came through Tulsa's courtrooms had passed through Tulsa Public Schools without being educated beyond an elementary level. While a lack of knowledge doesn't excuse crime, it makes it much more difficult to obtain honest employment, and a school system that fails to teach self-control along with basic knowledge further damages its graduates' chances to succeed.

As a prosecutor who has seen the tragic results of failed public schools, as a long-time volunteer serving young people, as an administrator with responsibility over a complex organization, and as a devout Christian husband, father, and grandfather, Tim Harris has the values and experience we need on the Tulsa school board. I urge you to vote for him on Tuesday, February 8, 2022, and to volunteer your time to help get him elected.

This is a reworking of a post from two years ago, but it has been updated with current information about open seats and candidates, and there is some new information below.

END OF FILING UPDATE, 2021/12/08: 5 of the 17 seats in Tulsa County had only one candidate (Berryhill, Collinsville, Glenpool, Liberty, Sperry), and one seat (Keystone) had no candidates file. The two Tulsa Public Schools seats drew two and four candidates, respectively. Former District Attorney Tim Harris and three other candidates will run for the open Office No. 7 seat being vacated by Suzanne Schreiber, and E'Lena Ashley will challenge incumbent Shawna Keller for Office No. 4.

In city races, two council seats and the mayor's office in Collinsville each drew only one candidate; likewise a single Owasso council seat drew a single candidate. Sand Springs Office No. 1 drew 3 candidates, and Office No. 2 drew 2.

We are in the midst of the annual filing period for public school board positions in Oklahoma, which ends Wednesday, December 8, 2021, at 5 p.m. Most K-12 school districts will have a single seat, Office No. 2, up for election to a five-year term. Dependent districts (Keystone is the only one in Tulsa County) have three seats that rotate through three-year terms. Skiatook, in far-north Tulsa County, also has Office No. 5 on the ballot. Tulsa Tech has Office No. 3 up for election, and the incumbent has drawn a challenger.

After two days of filing in Tulsa County, out of 17 seats up for election, 11 seats have drawn one candidate, only 5 have drawn two or more candidates. No one has filed in Keystone school district.

Filing is also open for a number of municipalities; candidates have filed for city office in Collinsville, Owasso, and Sand Springs.

(Here is the current list of candidates for Tulsa County school board seats. And here's where you'll find maps showing school district and election district boundaries.)

School board filing always comes at a busy and distracted time of year. As I've written before, it's almost as if school board elections were deliberately scheduled to escape the notice of potential candidates and voters.

The school board primary election will be held on February 8, 2022, for those seats where there are three or more candidates. If no one wins a majority of the vote in the February election, a runoff will be held on April 5, 2022. If a seat draws only two candidates, the election will be held on April 5, 2022.

The Tulsa district, largest in the state, has two out of seven seats up for election to a four-year term, Offices No. 4 and 7.

Tulsa Election District 4 is the east portion of the Tulsa school district, roughly south of Admiral and east of 89th East Ave. The current member for District 4 is Shawna Keller, a Democrat. She has filed for re-election and has not yet drawn an opponent.

Tulsa Election District 7 is the southern edge of the Tulsa school district, east of the river and south of 51st Street, plus the Patrick Henry neighborhood between 41st, Harvard, Yale, and I-44. Suzanne Schreiber, an employee of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, is the incumbent and is registered as a Democrat, but she has not yet filed for re-election. Susan Bryant Lamkin, an independent, has filed for the seat.

If you're a conservative, you should give serious thought to running for school board, even if you have no school-aged children, even if you have children that are homeschooled or in private school, even if you've never had a child in the public schools. The public school system exists to serve all citizens by educating the children of the community, so every citizen has an interest in the curriculum being used, the way discipline is handled, the condition of the school buildings, and the credentials, skills, and philosophical presuppositions of the teachers, principals, and administrators. Property owners support the school system through ad valorem taxes, and so they have a reasonable interest in the proper and efficient expenditure of those funds. So do all citizens who pay state income and sales taxes, which provide funds to supplement local property taxes.

If you are, like me, a homeschool or private school parent, you will have experience and valuable insights with successful, classical alternatives to the faddish and failing teaching methods, priorities, and content currently in use in the public schools.

The pandemic period has been an apocalypse -- an unveiling -- with remote learning and work-from-home giving parents a clear picture of how little their children are being taught, and how corrosive to society and civilization are the ideas that are being taught in our public schools. Parents began to ask pointed questions at school board meetings across the country, most notably in Loudoun County, Virginia, where parents launched a recall effort against board members. The National School Boards Association wrote Democrat U. S. Attorney General Merrick Garland a letter comparing protesting parents to "domestic terrorists" and asking for the Justice Department to invoke the Patriot Act, and Garland echoed the NSBA's language in a memo directing the FBI to investigate protesting parents, triggering a nationwide outcry and leading 17 state school board associations to cancel their membership in the NSBA.

Here in Oklahoma, Reclaim Oklahoma Parental Empowerment and Parent Voice Oklahoma, with local chapters like Parent Voice Tulsa, are among the groups supporting parents and taxpayers as they seek to reassert civilian control over our taxpayer-funded schools. Although school board ballots don't list party affiliations, the Tulsa County Republican Party is ready to help school board candidates who are registered Republican and who seek to bring conservative principles to public education.

Tulsa Public Schools daily attendance is plummeting. In the 2015-2016 school year, Tulsa ADA was 36,415.56. In 2020-2021, it was 26735.36. Even before COVID, TPS was losing students: ADA was 33,043.90 in 2018-2019, a 10% drop in three years. By comparison, Jenks ADA was 10,787.50 in 2015-2016. 11,768.39 in 2018-2019, and 11495.86 in 2020-2021. (Average Daily Attendance and Average Daily Membership data by district can be downloaded at the State Department of Education website.)

It seems that a substantial number of families move from the Tulsa district to the suburbs when their children reach kindergarten, or, if they stay, many opt for homeschooling or private schools. Those numbers make a strong case for new leaders in the Tulsa district. And if the school board is going to be strictly representative, at least two of the seven members should have children in homeschool or private school, and a majority should be conservative.

Filing is simple: A notarized declaration of candidacy, and a signed copy of the statutory requirements for school board candidates. For this office there is no filing fee. You can view the Oklahoma school board filing packet online. And although school board elections are officially non-partisan, the local and state Republican Party organizations will provide assistance to registered Republicans who are candidates for non-partisan office. (I suspect the same is true of the Democrats.)

There was a time when it was generally agreed that schools existed to transmit knowledge and the values of the community to the rising generation, working alongside parents. At some point, as part of the Gramscian long march through the institutions, the public schools were infiltrated by Leftists who saw them as a venue for missionary work, converting children away from the values of their parents, away from the ideals that made America a prosperous and peaceful nation. The Left has influence over schools of education, textbook publishers, teachers' unions, and continuing education for teachers, administrators, and board members.

If you live in a suburban or small-town district, you might suppose your district is safe from Leftist influence. Think again. Through their college training, their teachers' union newsletter, continuing education courses, peer relationships, and curriculum, your districts' teachers and administrators work in an atmosphere of Leftist presuppositions about the world. It takes strength, conviction, and vigilance for a conservative educator to be conscious of that atmosphere and to resist its influence.

There are, it must be said, many good conservatives, many devout Christians serving in Oklahoma's public schools. But they need support in the form of school board members who will set policy and curriculum and ensure that the paid staff adhere to it. Conservative school board members should not give undue deference to "professionals" who have been trained to see education through a Leftist lens. The subject matter taught, the methods used, and the values undergirding it all should be firmly under the control of our elected representatives on the school board.

Education is necessarily ideological, because it rests on presuppositions about knowledge, truth, goodness, and beauty. The ideology of the public schools should reflect the ideology of the community.

If I were running, here are some of the planks that would be in my platform:

• Introduce the classical trivium as the philosophy and method of instruction in schools that are currently failing. That includes a heavy emphasis on memorizing facts in the elementary years, which gives children a sense of mastery and accomplishment and provides a solid foundation for subsequent learning.
• Instill pride in our city, state, and country. America has its flaws, but it is a beacon of liberty and opportunity that inspires hope in hundreds of millions of people around the world who wish they could live and work here. Our children should understand the aspects of our culture and history that have made our country prosperous and peaceful. The "black armband" view of history should have no place in our schools. We would uphold the state's ban, passed this year as HB 1775, on teaching the racist ideas that collectively come under the heading of critical race theory and praxis.
• Keep the Land Run re-enactments in our elementary schools. It's a fun and memorable way to introduce students to our state's unique history. There is an activist in Oklahoma City who managed to convince historically ignorant principals and school board members there that the '89 Land Run was an act of genocide. Oklahoma City, founded by the '89 Land Run, no longer has reenactments of that event, because of a zealot who pushed her slanderous revision of history on ignoramuses in charge of the schools.
• Return music to the elementary grades. An early introduction to classical music and learning to make music by singing have tremendous developmental and behavioral benefits.
• Review all federal grants and determine whether the cost of compliance and the loss of independence is worth the money.
• Young people who foolishly believe that swapping sexes will solve their deep unhappiness deserve pity and guidance. It is utter cruelty to humor their misplaced hope that "changing gender identity" will cure their misery. Leadership at each school should craft a way to accommodate these deluded young people with compassion and dignity, while protecting the dignity of everyone else, and while affirming the biologically undeniable reality of the two sexes.

Our public schools need principled, intelligent conservative leadership. Will you step forward to serve?

FROM THE ARCHIVES: My 2015 post on school board filing included links to two important articles about the leftist direction of your local public school board, particularly on sexual morality and gender identity.

Stella Morabito wrote, "Ask Not Who's Running For President, Ask Who's Running For School Board," citing the recent battle in Fairfax County, Virginia, over transgender policy as one among many reasons.

Walt Heyer, a man who underwent sex-change surgery and then, realizing that the change failed to give him the happiness he had hoped for, changed back, wrote about the Obama Administration using its perverted interpretation of Title IX to force public schools to trample their students in the transgender war against science and reason.

My 2019 post included several then-current examples of leftist ideology on sexuality and race running amok in public schools.

See the end of this post for an update with the lawsuit's resolution.

Tulsa's Gathering Place, LLC, has filed a lawsuit in federal court against a family-owned coffeehouse in Shawnee, Oklahoma, 90 miles away.

The trademark complaint, filed on Friday, September 24, 2021, in the Western District of Oklahoma, claims that the Gathering Place Coffee Company is guilty of trademark infringement, false designation of origin and unfair competition, trademark dilution, common law trademark infringement and unfair competition, and unjust enrichment. The Tulsa big shots demand an injunction against the Shawnee coffeehouse, payment of any profits they've earned to the Gathering Place, triple damages, "corrective advertising," punitive damages, forfeiting their social media accounts, and paying attorney's fees.

While News on 6 and Fox 23 have covered this story, they've failed to note that this lawsuit is being brought by a public entity: The complaint states that Tulsa's Gathering Place, LLC, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the River Parks Authority, which is a public trust established by and benefitting the City of Tulsa and Tulsa County, under Title 60 of Oklahoma statutes.

Here are links to the complaint as filed, the cover sheet, the summons, and a notification to the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office. The case is 5:21-cv-00940-JD, TULSA'S GATHERING PLACE, LLC, v. BAYLY COFFEE, LLC., and is accessible via the PACER federal court records system.

The complaint lists two specific trademarks, which you can look up on the U. S. Patent and Trademark Office's Trademark Electronic Search System (TESS) (the system doesn't provide permalinks):

Registration No. 5,612,344 is a standard character mark (also called a word mark), the plain text phrase "GATHERING PLACE". This was registered on November 20, 2018, a year after the Gathering Place Coffee Co. in Shawnee opened for business. The goods and services associated with the mark are listed as:

IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Gardens for public admission; Providing facilities for recreational activities, namely, boating, fishing, biking and skating; Providing facilities for educational training; Providing recreation facilities; Providing recreational areas in the nature of play areas for children; Providing sports facilities; Recreational park services; Entertainment in the nature of a water park and amusement center. FIRST USE: 20180810. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20180908

Registration No. 5,788,797 is a design mark, registered on June 25, 2019, 19 months after the Gathering Place Coffee Co. in Shawnee held its grand opening. It has a Mark Drawing Code of (3): "DESIGN PLUS WORDS, LETTERS, AND/OR NUMBERS." Design Search Codes, a taxonomy used to describe design elements in words, are listed as:

• 02.01.33 - Grotesque men formed by letters, numbers, punctuation or geometric shapes ; Stick figures
• 02.07.26 - Groups, grotesque (having human features or attributes)
• 04.07.03 - Geometric figures or combinations of geometric figures representing a person ; Geometric figures representing a person ; Geometric shapes forming a person ; Person formed by geometric shapes
• 26.01.02 - Circles, plain single line ; Plain single line circles
• 26.01.21 - Circles that are totally or partially shaded.
• 26.01.30 - Circles, exactly four circles ; Four circles

This trademark is registered for the following goods & services:

IC 039. US 100 105. G & S: Boathouse services. FIRST USE: 20180810. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20180908

IC 041. US 100 101 107. G & S: Gardens for public admission; Providing facilities for recreational activities, namely, boating, fishing, biking and skating; Providing facilities for educational training; Providing recreation facilities; Providing recreational areas in the nature of play areas for children; Providing sports facilities; Recreational park services; Entertainment in the nature of a water park and amusement center. FIRST USE: 20180810. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20180908

IC 043. US 100 101. G & S: Provision of conference, exhibition and meeting facilities; Restaurant services. FIRST USE: 20180810. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20180908

Note that the "first use" of these trademarks is over two years after the Gathering Place Coffee Co. in Shawnee established a Facebook page and more than eight months after the Gathering Place Coffee Co. held its grand opening. It's also interesting that the complaint omits any mention of the "FIRST USE" dates listed in the trademark filings, which would seem to show that the Gathering Place in Tulsa didn't use those trademarks until after the Gathering Place Coffee Co. was well established under that name.

The more distinctive and complex trademark involving a circle with stick figures is the only one registered in association with "conference, exhibition and meeting facilities" or "restaurant services." These goods and services are not associated with the simple word mark; only with the design mark. But the logos of the Gathering Place Coffee Company, posted on Facebook in January 2016 and still in use, bear no resemblance to the design mark registered by Tulsa's Gathering Place, LLC.

I suspect that USPTO would not have allowed the simple phrase GATHERING PLACE to be registered for "conference, exhibition and meeting facilities" or "restaurant services" because the phrase is a generic description for a place to meet and because the phrase was already registered in those classes (IC 043, US 100 101) to a Denver non-profit that provides services to the homeless, which had registered the trademark (Reg. No. 4266870) on January 1, 2013.

Jared M. Burden and Penina Michlin Chiu, both with Frederic Dorwart, Lawyers PLLC, are the attorneys listed on the complaint. The Dorwart firm is the legal arm of what Michael Mason has labeled "The Kaiser System," representing the Bank of Oklahoma and related corporate entities, Argonaut Private Equity LLC, the University of Tulsa, Kaiser-Francis Oil Company, the Tulsa Community Foundation, and the George Kaiser Family Foundation. Burden's bio says he has a bachelor's and master's in classics from Texas Tech; Michlin Chiu got her bachelor's in materials science at MIT. Michlin Chiu is listed as the attorney of record for both of the aforementioned trademarks. As an MIT alum who studied classics, I'm disappointed that people with whom I share an academic background are responsible for this lawsuit, which looks to me like a baseless act of litigious sadism rather than a genuine claim of injury. Classicists and MIT-trained engineers ought to have more dignity than to put their talents at the disposal of billionaire-backed bullies.

The Gathering Place Coffee Company held their grand opening on November 24, 2017, in downtown Shawnee, but its Facebook page was created on January 9, 2016, under that name, and the first post to that page was this "before" picture:

Here's a picture of the coffeehouse's facade posted on May 20, 2020:

The coffeehouse has a covered back patio and a back room that has been used for yoga and other classes and can be rented out for special events.

A recent news story published by the Citizen Potawatomi Community Development Corporation describes the coffeehouse's history:

Originally owned and operated by Ogee family descendant Aaron Hembree and wife Jamie, The Gathering Place Coffee Co. opened in November 2017. It quickly became a mainstay in downtown Shawnee for its high-quality coffee, teas, baked goods and creative, laid-back atmosphere.

The Ingrams moved their plant house and floral studio, Bayly Botanicals, into the adjacent store space in 2019, and the Hiltons operated Fed+Well Kitchen, baking and selling delicious desserts, pastries and more to the coffee shop's customers. As the Hembrees looked for new opportunities in 2020, the Hiltons and Ingrams decided to partner together and expand both businesses by acquiring The Gathering Place Coffee Co.; however, they needed an understanding lender to help turn their dreams into a reality....

They took over operations from the Hembrees after the CPCDC approved their loan in late 2020.

"I was just sold on them from the very beginning," [CPCDC Commercial Loan Officer Felecia] Freeman said.

"We're lucky to have this in our community. It's almost like a little incubator, being that it's got three businesses, and it helps get kids and others thinking, 'What could I do in this community?' I think that's a great atmosphere.'"

(The story above was published on September 7, 2021. I have a suspicion that a news alert on the term "gathering place" set in motion the lawsuit that was filed last Friday.)

The most recent Google Street View of the 400 block of East Main Street in Shawnee is from 2012, and it shows a distressed block of single-story commercial buildings at least a century old. I haven't been to Shawnee in quite a while, but I suspect the advent of the Gathering Place Coffee Co. has inspired revitalization in this once-unfashionable stretch of Main, several blocks from the downtown core.

Long-time BatesLine readers will no doubt recall April 2006, when Tulsa's DoubleShot Coffee Co. was threatened by Starbucks. At the time, owner Brian Franklin wrote:

I received a letter last week informing me that I am infringing on a trademark that Starbucks has had since 2001, "Starbuck's Doubleshot." The lawyers advised me to cease using the DoubleShot Coffee Company name, to shut down my website (http://www.DoubleShotCoffee.com), and to destroy everything I have which bears the "DoubleShot" name. Come read the letter yourself-- it's framed and hanging on the wall, over the garbage can.

At first I frowned, then I smiled, then I laughed, then I experienced a little anger and fear, and then I went back to vengeance and irritable laughter. As you know, I don't take kindly to people telling me what to do. After briefly discussing the matter with my lawyer, and a gaggle of other lawyers who regularly patronize DoubleShot (my DoubleShot, not the can at the gas station), I don't think Starbucks has a leg to stand on. Doubleshot is a generic industry term for two shots of espresso. They have no exclusive rights to it. But they will try to scare me and lawyer me out of business if we give them the opportunity.

DoubleShot Coffee Co. did not give them the opportunity. News of the threat gained international attention (e.g. articles in Consumerist, AnandTech, Age of Reason), and six months later, Starbucks' lawyer wrote to withdraw the threat.

The Age of Reason blog listed several other threats by Starbucks against small businesses, such as a coffeehouse named Sam Buck's (owned by someone named Sam Buck) and a brewer who made a beer called Star Bock, pointing out that even though most of the small businesses prevailed over the corporate giant's specious claims, "that did not stop them from incurring legal fees that nearly bankrupted them. A small privately owned company with half a dozen employees does not have the money that a company like Starbucks has at its disposal for legal and court costs. Sometimes just the threat of a lawsuit can wield results."

Brian Franklin's successful strategy: Publicize the threat far and wide (starting with local media) and inflict shame and embarrassment on the aggressor. The story even inspired a filmmaker to spotlight DoubleShot in a full-length documentary: The Perfect Cappuccino. DoubleShot continues to grow and thrive, now in a much larger location on Boulder Avenue.

Shawnee, a small city of about 30,000 souls, has a couple of other independent coffeehouses, but if Tulsa's Gathering Place, LLC, pushes forward with their suit, with the power and wealth of the Kaiser Machine behind them, Shawnee residents will lose an important gathering place. Tulsa has lots of gathering places, many great coffeehouses, and our belligerent leaders seem determined to deprive a little city of one of the few they enjoy. I'm reminded of the prophet Nathan's speech to King David. Because this suit has been launched by a public entity, the governing officials -- Mayor of Tulsa, the City Council, the Tulsa County Commission -- will all have the death of this little coffeehouse on their hands, as will the man whose money sustains Tulsa's Gathering Place. If they are capable of feeling shame, they should demand withdrawal of the lawsuit and make apologies to the Hiltons and the Ingrams and the City of Shawnee.

UPDATE: On October 5, 2021, Tulsa's Gathering Place, LLC, Gathering-Place-Coffee-Lawsuit-Dismissal.pdffiled a voluntary dismissal of the case. There's a funny, telling error in the dismissal: Attorney Jared Burden subtitles himself, "Counsel for Defendant BOKF, NA." I guess he forgot which arm of the Kaiser System he was representing. A "joint statement" was issued to the media the same day:

In an effort to both protect trademark rights and to defray costs of litigation, Bayly Coffee, LLC and Tulsa's Gathering Place, LLC announce they have reached a mutually acceptable agreement pursuant to which Bayly will license the use of the GATHERING PLACE trademarks from Tulsa's Gathering Place.

I'm happy that the Gathering Place Coffee Company will be able to continue to trade under the name by which the people of Shawnee have come to know and love them. I'm very happy that the Kaiser System bullies have been forced by public outcry to back down. They damaged the reputation of Tulsa's Gathering Place far more than the remote possibility of confusion with a pretty, popular coffee house 90 miles away. Maybe they will learn that the rest of Tulsa -- the Tulsa that exists outside of City Hall, the Education Service Center, and the non-profits -- is full of people of character, people who don't kowtow to the wealthy, people who don't respect bullies.

Local (almost), live conservative talk radio has returned to the Tulsa airwaves, on the frequency that was the first full-time talk radio station in Tulsa over 40 years ago. AM 1300 KAKC, owned by iHeartMedia, has rebranded itself as 1300 The Patriot, as of September 15, 2021.

The station's line-up features live national talkers for most of the day. Glenn Beck is on live from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. after a long absence from Tulsa. Clay Travis and Buck Sexton, the Excellence in Broadcasting (EIB) Network's choice to fill Rush Limbaugh's shoes, are live from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Charlie Kirk, founder of Turning Point USA, is on from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Two competing afternoon drive shows are offered on delay: Jesse Kelly from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m., followed by two hours of the Joe Pags Show from 10 p.m. to midnight. The eerie Coast to Coast AM with George Noory is on from midnight to 4 a.m., followed by This Morning: America's First News with Gordon Deal, an hour-long show repeated four times, from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. (Looks like a couple of those repeats could easily make room for a local morning show.)

From 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., Lee Matthews, program director at KTOK 1000 in Oklahoma City, hosts "The Drive," a call-in show that is simulcast on KTOK. (Matthews also does a two-hour 6 a.m. to 8 a.m. morning drive slot on KTOK.) I called into Lee's show Thursday evening to call attention to my post on Tulsa City Council redistricting and was surprised to get right on the air. Lee was very gracious, and I hope to talk to him again soon.

News breaks feature the familiar voice of Brian Gann, former program director and news director at KVOO/KFAQ. Gann moved to iHeartMedia in 2014 and is now South Central Region News Director, covering Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana.

RadioInsight reported on September 15:

KAKC was one of two "Buzz" branded Sports station in the iHeartMedia Tulsa cluster running CBS Sports Radio programming around the clock, while 1430 KTBZ carried Fox Sports Radio programming. With Fox moving to Griffin's new "The Blitz 1170" KTSB, KTBZ is now simulcasting local programming from iHeart's recently launched "94.7 The Ref" KREF-FM Oklahoma City from 6am to 6pm and CBS Sports Radio at night.

It was a smart move by iHeartMedia, a response to Griffin Communications' decision to convert 1170 KFAQ from news/talk to sports talk, now rebranded as KTSB, The Blitz 1170, a result set into motion by KFAQ morning host Pat Campbell's medical challenges last year.

On January 12, 2020, Campbell had a car accident caused by a seizure that had been triggered by brain tumors. Although he returned to the air on January 22, he went on to endure radiation and chemotherapy and had additional seizures and additional absences. A seizure in October 2020 required him to be intubated, which left him "sounding like Carol Channing," requiring vocal therapy before he could return, which he did on Election Day, November 3, 2020.

But Pat's show on December 4, 2020, turned out to be his last. Casey Bartholomew, until recently a full-time radio freelancer -- in August, Casey was named program director for two Cumulus stations in Columbia, Missouri -- became Pat's permanent fill-in, broadcasting from his home studio in another state; KFAQ program director Jeremie Poplin had already taken over the 10:00 a.m. to noon slot. We heard that Pat's return was going to happen after the new year, then in late January, and then no planned date at all.

In early May 2021, Griffin Communications announced that Pat would not be returning and that there would be a nationwide search for his replacement. Pat continues to be active on Facebook and Twitter, reporting continued improvement, but he has not yet resumed his broadcasting career.

In late July 2021, Griffin announced that they were scrapping news/talk for sports talk for mid-August; the launch date was later delayed until September 6.

Poplin had been a sports talk host at KTBZ The Buzz, spending 18 years at the station before being caught in a massive iHeartMedia layoff in January 2020; he landed at Griffin Communications as the new KFAQ program director a few weeks later, replacing Shelby Travis. Poplin never seemed comfortable dealing with controversial political controversy, and it's understandable that he would steer the station back in a familiar direction. For Griffin, however, it seems like a strange move, given declining viewership for sports in recent years.

According to FCC records, the station debuted at 1310 kilocycles on January 9, 1939, as KOME, licensed to Harry Schwartz and Oil Capital Sales Corporation, with a transmitter at 3904 S. Newport Ave. in Brookside and studios in the American Airlines Building at 910 S. Boston downtown. The station moved to 1340 with the 1941 NARBA frequency reallocation, then in 1947 to 1300 with a higher powered transmitter (5 kw daytime, 1 kw nighttime) at 86th and Harvard. The call letters stood for Oklahoma's Magic Empire.

For many years, KOME's studios were on the second floor of 724 S. Main St., in the building that was home for many years to Harrington's. It was there in 1957 that KOME disk jockey Rocky Curtiss (later known as Rocky Frisco) began his 600-mile ride on a three-speed bike to see Elvis at boot camp in Fort Hood, Texas, a publicity stunt to try to supplant rock-and-roll radio rival KAKC, then at AM 970. In 2009, Jim Hartz, retired host of NBC's Today Show and PBS programming, and Mike Ransom, webmaster of Tulsa TV Memories, did some urban exploration and took photos in the old studios, where Hartz had begun his broadcasting career in 1958. The studios had been abandoned for 40 years at that point. The building has since been renovated as loft apartments.

In 1973, the station (along with KMOD) was purchased by San Antonio Broadcasting (which became Clear Channel in 1979 and is now iHeartMedia) and renamed from KCNW to KXXO. In the late 1970s, KXXO became the first full-time news/talk radio station in Tulsa, featuring network programming from CBS Radio (CBS Evening News with Douglas Edwards, CBS Mystery Theater) and the Mutual Broadcasting System (Larry King Show) and local programming including Hal O'Halloran's Sports Night, play-by-play for local teams, daytime news and talk hosts like Kitty Roberts and Glenda Silvey, and commentary from local activist Vince Sposato. KXXO and KMOD shared studios in the City Bank building at 5350 East 31st Street.

The news/talk experiment didn't last long. KXXO changed call letters and format in October 1980, becoming KMOD-AM, then KBBJ (big band & jazz) in April 1982, and ultimately KAKC in January 1987, picking up the call letters that once graced AM 970 as a pioneering rock-and-roll station. 1300 has had a variety of formats since that time, including oldies, a mixture of sports and news/talk (featuring syndicated shows like G. Gordon Liddy in the 1990s and a local morning drive show with "Commander" Ken Rank), Spanish language ("La Bonita"), and sports talk.

It's great to have talk radio back on AM 1300, and I hope that the station soon finds room in its schedule for truly local Tulsa talk.

Tomorrow, September 24, 2021, the City of Tulsa Election District Commission will hold a special meetingto consider a set of five proposed plans for redrawing Tulsa's city council district boundaries for possible presentation for public comment. The proposed plans were assembled by mapping staff at the Indian Nations Council of Governments (INCOG), which is a contractor to the City of Tulsa for planning services. The key agenda item: "Presentation and possible selection of alternative Council District Plans for public review and comment."

A series of four meetings for public comment on the proposals are planned for mid-October:

• Tuesday, October 12, 2021, 7:00 p.m. Martin Regional Library, 2601 S. Garnett Rd.
• Wednesday, October 13, 2021, 7:00 p.m. Hardesty Regional Library, 5131 East 91st
• Thursday, October 14, 2021, 7:00 p.m. Zarrow Regional (West) Library, 2224 West 51st
• Monday, October 18, 2021, 7:00 p.m. Rudisill Regional Library, 1520 N. Hartford

The proposed timeline for the Election District Commission calls for the commission to review input from the public meetings on October 22, select a preferred plan on November 5, hold a public hearing on the plan on November 19, then vote to approve the selected plan on December 10. The new plan will govern the 2022 Tulsa City Council elections.

Tulsa's city charter requires redrawing district boundaries following each decennial U. S. Census to take into account shifts in population. By charter, the city uses existing precinct boundaries as the atomic building block for districts, rather than going down to the block level as congressional and legislative redistricting must do.

Tulsa's 2020 population is 413,120, making the ideal district size 45,902. The five proposals deviate from the ideal between 3.0% and 4.3%. Currently, Districts 2, 3, 6, and 7 are overpopulated, 8 is slightly below the ideal, and Districts 1, 4, 5, and 9 need to add significant population. District 6 (53,536) has had the most growth in the last 10 years, thanks to new housing developments in the Broken Arrow school district (south of 31st and east of 145th East Ave). District 2 (51,363) has most of the territory that lies within the Jenks school district and has seen significant growth around Tulsa Hills. (One gets the impression that liberating the rest of the city from Tulsa Public Schools would encourage growth in those areas as well.)

The PDF of the proposed plans from INCOG includes statistics on the demographics of each district for each plan. Although African Americans now constitute 15% of Tulsa's population, the city is so racially integrated that it is difficult to draw a district that contains a majority of African Americans. Only INCOG plans 1 and 5 succeed in that, and only barely with African Americans comprising slightly over 50% of the population in District 1 in those two plans. (If we had 15 city councilors, more facets of Tulsa's population could be represented on the City Council.)

After approval of a charter change pushed by Mayor G. T. Bynum IV, the Election District Commission is now a five-member board, all appointed by the mayor. The board members are former City Councilors John Eagleton, Susan Neal, Rick Westcott, and Joe Williams, and the ubiquitous Sharon King Davis. ("Should we go out into the community, meet new people, and appoint someone without political and social connections, who's never served on a commission before? Nah, let's just appoint Sharon again.")

The 2011 commission was used by then-Mayor Dewey Bartlett Jr. and his allies as an instrument of political revenge against his critics. Eagleton was drawn out of his district; his District 7 precinct was attached to District 9, where Bynum IV was the incumbent. Westcott faced some disadvantageous precinct shifts, losing heavily Republican precincts on the east side of the river, but after he announced his intention not to seek reelection, the proposed boundary changes were reversed. Major population shifts between districts helped well-financed challengers unseat incumbents in Districts 3, 4, and 5, as the incumbents had to build support where they had no previous relationships with constituents and neighborhood associations, where the media narrative of bickering councilors was unchallenged by direct personal experience. In a nutshell, the mayor and his allies successfully used redistricting to wipe out any check or balance from independent-minded councilors.

Ten years later, we don't have any dissidents on the City Council at all, and elections are now officially non-partisan (but not really), so the motives shaping the process will be different this time. Three of the members have found themselves on the wrong side of the city establishment, and two of them were directly targeted by the last redistricting effort, which offers some hope for integrity in the final product. I suspect there will be an effort to protect District 8 councilor Phil Lakin, an important cog in the Kaiser System as CEO of Tulsa Community Foundation and Bynum IV's heir apparent in 2024, but I don't see any evidence of a serious challenge to his 2022 re-election.

Given that the 2011 map was a gerrymander that involved moving a large number of people between districts to punish certain councilors, it would be appropriate to reverse some of those changes. For example, Maple Ridge should be moved back into 9, and the area east of Yale that shifted to 9 ("Bartlett's Revenge") should go back into 7. It would be interesting to start with the 2001 plan and create a plan that equalized population with a minimum of precinct changes.

For the sake of inclusion and equity, it would be good to pack as many half-million dollar homes into one district as possible (two districts at the most). The wealthy have dominated and will always dominate the mayor's office because of the resources required to run a city-wide campaign; for balance, the council should maximize representation of Tulsans from the working class, middle class, and small business owners. Pursuant to that, District 9 should not expand further northeast; it would make sense instead to add precincts like 115, 123, and 124 to 9.

Many jurisdictions are using a free website, Dave's Redistricting App, to allow citizens to experiment with potential maps and submit them to redistricting commissions for consideration. (The screenshot at the top of this entry shows Dave's Redistricting App with the current Tulsa district map.) Tulsa is not officially supporting such an effort, but I have created maps showing the current (2011) and previous (2001) district maps, as well as the five INCOG proposals:

• City of Tulsa: current council district boundaries
• City of Tulsa: approximate district boundaries from 2001, before the Bartlett gerrymander of 2011. The boundaries on the 2001 map are only approximate, using current precinct boundaries, because of consolidation of precincts over the last decade.
• City of Tulsa: INCOG Plan I
• City of Tulsa: INCOG Plan II
• City of Tulsa: INCOG Plan III
• City of Tulsa: INCOG Plan IV
• City of Tulsa: INCOG Plan V
• City of Tulsa: INCOG Plan VI (added 2021/09/24)

I encourage you to sign up for a free account, duplicate the maps I've linked, make your own edits, and then publish and share your proposals.

MORE: My 1991 Tulsa Tribune op-ed in reaction to the Democrats' legislative gerrymander, setting out some principles that should govern redistricting, including the most important, communities of interest: "Ideally, districts should be centered around regions, cities, neighborhoods, and other natural affiliations. You should be able to give a simple geographic name to each district: northern Broken Arrow, Brookside, metro Oklahoma City."

UPDATE 2021/09/28: At the September 24, 2021, meeting of the Election District Commission, an additional map was introduced. Here is the current package of six maps. This is similar to Plan V, but it moves precinct 111 from District 2 to 9, precinct 123 from 9 to 8, and precinct 171 from 8 to 2. The change reduces the number of precincts moved from one district to another by 1, but increases the population deviation from 3.0% to 3.3%. I've added the map to Dave's Redistricting App and to the list above.

If you went looking for BatesLine recently and found nothing, it's because the server was offline from late Tuesday, July 13, 2021, until sometime Wednesday evening, July 14, 2021. According to BatesLine's hosting provider, the downtime was "due to a MAC address conflict after a chassis swap. However, they were unable to boot the server up by different means. As a last resort, they have restored guests from backup to idle hypervisors." Sounds like a planned upgrade (which we weren't notified about) that encountered a problem that should have been anticipated.

Just before everything went haywire, I added a couple of my old Urban Tulsa Weekly columns to the archives.

As faithful readers will no doubt recall, I wrote the weekly "Cityscope" column for UTW from September 2005 to May 2009. The newspaper ceased publication in November 2013 and the newspaper's web presence vanished shortly thereafter. Unfortunately, the website was set up in a way that was hard for the Internet Archive to navigate, and much of the site's content has been lost.

I kept copies of everything I submitted and retained my rights. (I stopped writing for UTW in May 2009 because I refused to sign the new freelancer's agreement which would have given UTW full "work for hire" rights.) Very slowly, over time, I've been posting those old columns and feature stories here, in the UTW Column Archive category.

Here are the two additions:

A recent essay by Addison Del Mastro calling for shared parking in suburbia prompted me to post my April 29, 2009, column proposing a parking pool for businesses and churches along Cherry Street and outlining a mechanism to make it worthwhile for all concerned.

In November 2008, I wrote a piece linking Thomas Kinkade, "painter of light," to urbanist Christopher Alexander, showing how Kinkade's paintings exemplify many of the patterns that comprise Alexander's Timeless Way of Building.

Although his work may be sold in suburban malls to be hung on suburban walls, the realities of suburban life do not intrude onto Kinkade's canvas.

In Kinkade's cityscapes, the townhouses and commercial buildings come up to the sidewalks and have windows that allow passersby to see inside. In his neighborhood scenes, the houses have porches and big windows facing the street.

The buildings have eye-catching details above the windows and along the rooflines. The scale of the buildings and the details are proportionate to the pedestrians passing by. The light is gentle, coming through building windows, from small lights reflecting on the façade or signage, or from subdued streetlights....

Kinkade's paintings sell because they depict places where people want to be, places that are full of life.

But thanks to zoning laws with their setbacks and segregations by use and minimum numbers of parking spaces, thanks to modern commercial building practices and lending practices, thanks to indiscriminate demolition and the lack of conservation ordinances, places like these are harder and harder to come by.

And so instead of inspiring in their suburban owners the hope of living in such a place, these paintings embody a bittersweet nostalgia for the kind of streets that, they have been led to believe, can not exist in the modern world. Oh, maybe in a big city on the east coast, or over in Europe, but not in a sprawling Sun Belt metropolis like Tulsa....

Imagine that Tulsa could be so beautiful and full of life that people who had never been here would hang paintings of our streetscapes on their walls and dream of someday coming here.

More to come, eventually.

Newspapers.com has some amazing content that can help to locate long-lost rural places around Tulsa. I was searching for information about Bethel Union School, later known as Paul Revere School (which I wrote about in conjunction with the centennial of Southern Hills Baptist Church), and I found a legal notice in the November 14, 1946, edition of Tulsa's Farm and Garden newspaper. The notice from the Tulsa County Board of Commissioners announced a bond issue election on December 17, 1946.

The election included two propositions. The first was to borrow $280,000 to build a bridge across the Arkansas River at Jenks. The bond, to be repaid over 20 years, was estimated to cost taxpayers a total of $530,000. The bridge, consisting of 19 pony trusses, was completed in 1948 and still stands, but open to pedestrians only since the new Jenks bridge opened in 1995. On the same ballot was a $1,250,000 bond issue to build a 200-bed county hospital.

The morning after the election the Bartlesville Examiner reported unofficial results with 181 precincts out of 190 reporting: The county hospital was defeated 3,006 (34.6%) to 5,690. The Jenks bridge was approved 7,246 (73.2%) to 2,652. The hospital issue had a significant amount of undervotes: 1202, or 12.1% of people who voted on the bridge question didn't vote on the hospital question. Opposition to the hospital focused on the ongoing cost of operation. A letter to the editor in the Tulsa Tribune (reprinted by the Collinsville News) pointed out that the city already owned the old Morningside Hospital building at 502 N. Boulder and could fit it out for 40 beds. Local government could pay private hospitals to take any additional indigent patients more economically than building and running a new facility.

In the state general election on November 5, 1946, 60,593 Tulsa County ballots were cast for the top two candidates (40,734 for Republican Olney Flynn, 19,859 for Democrat Roy Turner, who won statewide), so the special county bond election a month later and just a week and a day before Christmas had only a sixth of the turnout.

The legal notice for the December election listed all of the 138 precincts in the City of Tulsa on one page and the 52 precincts in the small towns and rural townships on the next, giving the name of the place, the address, the election judge, and the two election clerks. It's remarkable to see how many polling places were set up in homes.

In the list you'll find names of schools long demolished (e.g., Whittier, Jefferson, Dunbar, old BTW, Mingo, Paul Revere, Plainview) or renamed (e.g., Lee, Cleveland, Sequoyah, Roosevelt) and many other forgotten places, like the Rainbow Inn on North Peoria, somewhere between 66th and 126th Streets North.

The 52 rural precincts (all except for those in the towns of Sand Springs and Broken Arrow) are named after civil townships. Some precincts voted at locations lost to time: Dawson Precinct No. 7 voted at the Twin Oaks Filling Station; Frye Precinct No. 1 voted at the home of Mrs. Bessie Wade, 1 mile north of Kramer corner, wherever that was. Willow Springs citizens voted at the White Church, on 129th East Ave south of 121st Street. Some of the Lynn Lane polling places were right on the southeast edge of Tulsa's growth -- Paul Revere School at 51st & Lewis, the Fairgrounds Administration Building, the Tulsa Tennis Club at 28th & Columbia, a house at 1305 S. Memorial, Tulsa Lumber Company at 4112 S. Peoria, Crowell Heights Baptist Church, and Plainview School, shown on a 1914 USGS topographical map as on the north side of 11th Street between Garnett and 129th East Ave.

Civil townships are county subdivisions, exclusive of incorporated cities and towns, that had a governmental role for a few years after statehood, but township offices were abolished by all of the counties by the end of the 1930s, although they continued to provide a structure for census districts and voting precincts. Some civil townships share a name with an incorporated municipality (Owasso, Skiatook, Collinsville, Red Fork, Dawson, Bixby, Jenks, Glenpool) and some do not (Wekiwa, Lynn Lane, Fry, Boles, Willow Springs). In Tulsa County, civil township boundaries mainly followed cadastral township boundaries and the Arkansas River.

Tulsa County, from "Oklahoma Minor Civil Divisions and Townships," U. S. Census Bureau, 1941

From north to south:

• 186th St N to 126th St N: Skiatook township (W of Mingo); Collinsville township (E of Mingo)
• 126th St N to 66th St N: Owasso township
• 66th St N to Archer St: Dawson township
• Edison St / Archer St to 61st St S: Red Fork township (SW of the river), Wekiwa township (N of river, W of Tulsa), Lynn Lane township (E of river and Tulsa)
• 61st St S to 121st St S: Jenks township (W of river), Fry township (N and E of river, W of Mingo Rd), Boles township (E of Mingo Rd)
• 121st St S to 211th St S: Glenpool township (W of Harvard), Willow Springs township (E of Mingo, N of River), Bixby township (E of Harvard, S of river)

The 1955 Tulsa County Highway Map shows the township names and boundaries in greater detail.

Here are links to Newspapers.com clips of the 1946 Tulsa County precinct list. At some point, I hope to convert the information to a KML file, so it can be displayed as a map overlay.

• City of Tulsa 1946 precinct list
• Tulsa County 1946 rural precinct list

Conceptual drawing of a Gilcrease Museum expansion completed in 1963, by architect Joseph R. Koberling. From the Beryl Ford Collection.

You have five more days (Wednesday, June 30, 2021, to Sunday, July 4, 2021) to visit Tulsa's Gilcrease Museum before the museum, as you've known it for the last 57 years, goes away forever. The museum is open from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. every day, with extended hours to 8 p.m. on Thursday. You can book online. The museum is being demolished and replaced, the result of a bait-and-switch with Tulsa voters, who had approved funds for museum expansion.

The City had promised renovating 64,000 square feet of the museum and adding 20,000 square feet of new construction. Here's a video, preceding the 2016 Vision Tulsa vote, showing a floor plan for an expanded museum, with a new entrance, gift shop, and an upward expansion to make the museum visible from downtown.

Floor plan and conceptual drawing of Gilcrease Museum expansion as proposed prior to the 2016 Vision Tulsa sales tax vote

The change in plans was substantial enough to require public notice and City Council amendment of the Brown Ordinance governing the sales tax funds. The existing 134,000 sq. ft. building is being replaced with an 83,500 sq. ft. facility.

At 83,500 square feet, the new Gilcrease Museum will be markedly smaller than the existing one, a 134,000-square-foot structure built as a 1913 carriage house and subject to numerous expansions over the decades.

Note that this number is even smaller than reported when the demolition plan was first revealed.

While proponents claim, "By being thoughtful about the design, the 89,000-square-foot facility will have more exhibition space than the current 134,000-square-foot structure," I expect to learn, when the new building opens, that they tried and tried, but could not produce the added exhibition space within the constraints of the budget.

This past weekend, conceptual drawings of the new facility were released: A characterless glass box, surrounded by unshaded outdoor plazas. The Gilcrease Vision Task Force, appointed by Mayor G. T. Bynum IV, chose the firms redesigning the museum; I have so far been unable to locate a list of the members of this task force.

We had a rushed visit on Sunday afternoon, with plans to return one more time this week. Gilcrease Museum holds many happy memories for our family, like the 2006 city inauguration, which we attended with our brand new baby boy, celebrating the swearing-in of John Eagleton, Rick Westcott, and Maria Barnes; or special exhibits like Ansel Adams (2009), George Washington (2012), Thomas Moran, Norman Rockwell, and Dorothea Lange. For many years, Gilcrease hosted Santa Claus (aka my dad) for a special seasonal Funday Sunday; for our family, it was a chance for a family Christmas photo and to reacquaint ourselves with the masterpieces on display.

During our visit this past Sunday, several galleries were off-limits, including the gallery on the southwest corner of the building and the traveling exhibition gallery. The recreated artist's studio is gone. The large gallery that was once dedicated to paintings of the American West is now called "Americans All! / Americanos Todos!" devoted to art by immigrants. This gallery, uniquely in the museum, has captions in both English and Spanish. It includes works by great artists of the American West who once had dedicated galleries at Gilcrease -- Thomas Moran (from England), O. C. Seltzer (from Denmark), and Albert Bierstadt (from Germany) -- but it also includes works of less significance (to be kind) by more recent immigrants. Included in this latter category is a selfie-video of a young Mexican woman, Carmen Castorena, who was allowed to stay in the US under Obama's DACA program.

The Perfect Tommy Girl by Carmen Castorena

This performance piece examines my alteration process in becoming the ultimate American me. The setting is my bathroom. As I see my reflection and "operate" on myself through multiple bleaching procedures, lightening of my eyebrows, removal of facial hair, and changing the color of my eyes, I eat a bowl of fresh cacti. The phrase, "Nopal En La Frente (Cactus on Your Forehead)," is used to mock those who go around pretending they are not Mexican. The consumption of this native plant is a way to communicate that no matter what physical procedures you may undergo, a Mexican can never fool anybody into thinking they aren't Mexican. There is a battle between the exterior (seeing the physical changes) and interior (processing those changes) that forms the focal point of the performance. This video is my way of channeling years of alienation and reaching closure in the creation of my "ideal self."

(It's useful to know that attempts at trans-ethnic transformation are futile. The notion is applicable to other situations: "No matter what physical procedures you may undergo, a [male] can never fool anybody into thinking [he] [is]n't [male].")

A room of the gallery that might have been used to display more of the beautiful landscapes and Native American art stored in the vaults was instead used for two walls of editorial cartoons -- one by Bruce Plante, one by Thomas Nast -- advocating for unrestricted immigration -- and two walls with infographics designed to push the same political line.

This should be seen as a preview of the reborn Gilcrease Museum: The great works depicting the vast frontier of the American West will be displayed only to the extent needed to support new works that push a political message. The mingling of old and new is an effective strategy: We certainly would not have bothered with the exhibit except for the presence of iconic Gilcrease works by artists like Moran, Bierstadt, Seltzer, John James Audubon, and Augustus Saint Gaudens.

Want more evidence of the downgrade? Here's a video from Gilcrease Museum Senior Curator Laura Fry, speculating that painter Alfred Jacob Miller, his patron William Drummond Stewart, a Scottish nobleman and veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, and Antoine Clement, a French / Cree buffalo hunter, engaged in homosexual acts with one another, based on Miller never marrying and the friendship between the three men. Stewart had invited Miller to accompany him to the great trappers' rendezvous in 1837 in present-day Wyoming. Stewart commissioned Miller to paint scenes of the American West to decorate Murthly Castle in Dunkeld, Scotland. Clement was principal hunter of Stewart's traveling party. According to her LinkedIn profile, Fry was a member of the Mayor's Gilcrease Vision Task Force which authorized the ugly new building. The Gilcrease YouTube channel includes more of this sort of nonsense, like a presentation on "Gender in Pre-Columbian Cultures and Native Communities Today," part of a November 2018 symposium on gender.

Museums are part of the overall kulturkampf of the Left, the Long March through the Institutions. I will be saddened but unsurprised if long-time favorites, landscapes and scenes of the American West from the core of Thomas Gilcrease's collection, are never returned from storage, for lack of space, you understand.

According to some accounts, Thomas Gilcrease founded his museum in San Antonio in 1942 and moved it to Tulsa in 1949. But an Associated Press story in the December 20, 1942, Daily Oklahoman says that the "San Antonio oil man's 80-acre [Tulsa] estate has not been occupied for several years" and was being transformed "into a museum and orphanage for Indian children... by a crew of carpenters and painters.... The institution will be supported by the Thomas Gilcrease Foundation. The oil man has donated valuable assets and his extensive collection of Indian relics to the foundation."

Part of the building is said to date back to 1913. Walls of rough-hewn sandstone block can still be seen on the north and south sides of the building where they haven't been enclosed or superseded by later additions.

The Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art was transferred to the City of Tulsa on January 27, 1955, after citizens approved a bond issue in August 1954 for $2.25 million to pay the debts of oilman Thomas Gilcrease, staving off the dispersal of his priceless collection of the art and artifacts of the American West. (This video by Fry describes the early history of the museum.) The bonds were repaid over time by revenues from Thomas Gilcrease's oil assets. While the original mid-50s concept for the Civic Center included a 42,600 sq. ft. facility for the Gilcrease collection, in 1958, the existing grounds and building, which had been leased from Thomas Gilcrease, were deeded to the city. In 1961, Tulsans voted a half-million dollar bond issue for a museum expansion that opened to the public on October 27, 1963, which added the Vista Room and a 250-seat auditorium, tripling the size of the museum and enabling 40% of the collection at that time to be put on display. At the grand opening, the Gilcrease Foundation announced it was donating to the City 10.5 acres of land and its collection of art and artifacts, valued at $5 million in 1963.

A museum map from that period shows the following galleries:

1. Introductory to the Collections
2. American Classics
3. Remington Collection
4. Russell Collection
5. Taos Artist
6. Seltzer - Leigh - Johnson
7. Landscapes - Treaties - People
8. Special Exhibit - Willard Stone Sculpture
9. Thomas Moran
10. George Catlin - Alfred Jacob Miller
11. Artifacts

Gilcrease Museum expanded again in the 1980s, this time with $12.25 million in private funds, to add a gift shop, restaurant, and additional exhibit space, including Helmerich Hall with its double-barrel-vaulted ceiling as the new heart of the museum and space for a conservation laboratory and anthropological collections. The museum doubled in size to 127,786 sq. ft. The new space opened on November 7, 1987. During the 1980s, admission was free, and the museum was open weekdays 9 to 5 and 1 to 5 on Sundays. The City of Tulsa has since provided additional capital funding for improvements via "Third Penny" sales taxes and bond issues. In September 2014, the Helmerich Center for American Research opened its doors.

So go see Gilcrease before it is transformed into something expensively worse. And next election, replace Bynum IV and the City Council with officials who will insist that the City of Tulsa's Gilcrease collection of art be curated and displayed to celebrate the American West, in the spirit of the oil man who brought it together and gave it to us.

This past Saturday morning, after visiting the Greenwood Farmers and Artisans Market, I took some photos of the old Moton (Morton) Health Center complex just west of Rudisill Library, on the north side of Pine Street between Greenwood Avenue and Greenwood Place. According to the cornerstone, the original three-story, blond brick building dates to 1931 and was a municipal hospital. Charles Adrian Popkin was the architect; DeWitt and Howard were the contractors.

Sometime in the 1970s or 1980s (my guess, based on the style), an ugly extension was grafted on to the front of the building, and single-story outbuildings were constructed for additional clinic space. These outbuildings have signs labeling them as clinics for pediatrics, OB/GYN, nutrition, WIC, and dentistry. The roof of the historic building appears to be gone, at least partially. It appears to have been boarded up for at least a decade. Urban explorer David Linde has a photoset of the interior of Morton Health Center on Abandoned Oklahoma. The additions appear to have compromised the integrity of the historic building.

Tulsa Municipal Hospital (later known as Moton Memorial Hospital), 1931. The Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society. Accession # C1906.

The building was a hospital from 1932 to 1967, and was turned over by the city to a community board in 1941, when it was named Moton Memorial Hospital in honor of Robert Russa Moton, who had succeeded Booker T. Washington as president of the Tuskegee Institute.

In 1938, the Interracial Committee of the YWCA issued a "Study of the Conditions Among the Negro Population of Tulsa." The first page was devoted to medical care:

There is one hospital in North Tulsa located at 603 E. Pine St: Municipal Hospital.

Equipment: 32 beds, but no beds for children. Condition of equipment: Inadequate.

Staff of hospital: 1 doctor, 4 nurses, 2 orderlies, 1 janitor, 1 cook. Nurses work an eight hour day and for $65 per month.

Charges to patients: None to charity cases. In ward: $17.50 per week. $20 per week for private room.

Hospital is maintained by the County. "A" rating in the small hospital class.

Other hospitals in Tulsa to which negroes are admitted:

• St. John's Hospital at 21st and S. Utica: 13 beds
• Tulsa General at 744 W. 9th: 6 beds

Charges in above: Charity cases, none.
$17.50 per week in ward and $25 per week in private room.

The report goes on to note that an outpatient and general clinic was "held daily, with no charge to the patient" at the hospital, "maintained by the County and is staffed by the regular staff of the hospital." The Public Health Association maintained weekly clinics for tuberculosis, child welfare, "immunizating," and prenatal care at 509 E. Archer Street, provided by a public health nurse and attending physician at no cost to the patient, maintained by Community Fund. For venereal diseases, the Public Health Association worked with patients at the Municipal Hospital. Crippled children were helped at a clinic at the YWCA at 621 E. Oklahoma Place, maintained by the Crippled Children's Society.

An item in the February 20, 1942, edition of the Tulsa Herald All-Church Press announced that the Women's Society (W.S.C.S.) of the First Methodist Church was donating 51 full-size sheets and three "draw sheets" to Moton Memorial Hospital, "Tulsa's hospital for negroes." That summer, incumbent Tulsa County District 3 Commissioner Ralsa F. Morley, running for re-election, wanted voters to know that he stood for the Tulsa County Clinic, Moton Hospital, and "All Out for Victory for America." In the spring of 1957, Moton, Hillcrest, and St. John's hospitals were to hold a week-long clinic to administer the first of three doses for the new Salk polio vaccine.

In 1967, Moton Memorial Hospital was closed and the facility reopened the following year as an ambulatory (outpatient) clinic.

A Model Cities (urban renewal) project report from January 1971 mentions a planned $2.25 million expansion that would "double the Clinic's Current capabilities." This is presumably the source of the ugly 1970s additions.

The Morton website says, "In 1983, and as required by BHC, the center was renamed. The name chosen was Morton Comprehensive Health Service in honor of W. A. Morton, M.D., a local physician with a distinguished record of service at Moton Memorial Hospital."

In 2006, Morton Comprehensive Health Services moved from this facility to a new building at 1334 N. Lansing, on the site of a neighborhood that was cleared by the Tulsa Development Authority to create an industrial park.

It would be lovely to see the ugly additions cleared away, the 1931 building restored, and the empty space around it filled with new development in a traditional urban style, with street-fronting retail and offices or apartments above.

In 2013, the city used brownfield remediation grants to remove asbestos and other hazards from the main hospital building. In 2017, a Houston developer named Michael Smith won TDA approval for Morton's Reserve, a project that would restore the 1931 building, construct a three-story mixed-use building around it, with a four-story apartment building to the north. Smith & Company Architects from Stafford, Texas, developed the site plan. But after a flurry of PR in 2017, nothing more seems to have happened.

In May 2021, Mayor G. T. Bynum IV announced that the old hospital will become an entrepreneurship incubator called Greenwood Entrepreneurship Incubator @ Moton (GEIM). No timetable is mentioned for restoring the building, but the post mentions the Morton's Reserve project, and in the meantime, a program called MORTAR Tulsa will provide mentorship and training for for-profit entrepreneurs.

MORE: On May 6, 1980, Cheri Poyas with the Junior League of Tulsa interviewed physician and surgeon Dr. Charles Bate, who came to Tulsa in 1940 and did much of his early work at Moton. He recalls that Moton had a rope elevator, no laboratory facilities, and a poor-quality X-ray machine. He recounts the special challenges of anesthesia, home births, treating tuberculosis, venereal disease, and small pox, and doing blood pressure screenings.

UPDATE 2021/09/06: A story in Tulsa People says that the redevelopment project will happen, but now the Moton building rehab will be funded and managed by Tulsa Economic Development Corporation, separate from the new development, which still involves Michael E. Smith, a Tulsa native now living in Houston.

"The hospital building sits on a 3.83-acre tract of land," he explains, "and I'm doing everything outside of the hospital building.

"This project will bring another level of single-family homes into the area -- 12-16 really nice East Coast-style, vertical three-story townhomes -- and then 64 units of multi-family," Smith continues. The whole complex, a $20 million project, will be called Morton's Reserve.

Both organizations plan to start project design later this year.

We shall see.

POST-ELECTION UPDATE: While the winning percentage was lower than 2015, it was still 3-to-1 in favor. Turnout was only 17,599, a tiny increase over the 17,125 that voted in March 2015. That's about 11.5%. Most organizations require a quorum of the membership to be present to take any action; why shouldn't we require a quorum of 50% of eligible voters to cast a ballot in order for a proposition to be enacted into law?

The two municipal propositions in Lahoma and Spavinaw were franchise renewals for OG+E and PSO, respectively, and passed unanimously. Navajo Public Schools bond issue passed by 5 votes.

There's yet another election this Tuesday, June 8, 2021. The Tulsa Public School board scheduled a special election for four general obligation bond issue propositions totaling $414 million. TPS residents can express their lack of confidence in the TPS administration's stewardship of our tax dollars and our children's education by voting NO on all four propositions. Opponents of the bond issue will hold an Accountability Matters Rally Opposing TPS School Bond at 5:30 pm, Monday, June 7, 2021, at the Education Service Center, 3027 S. New Haven Ave.

Never mind that we had an annual school general election back on April 6. TPS decided to hold the bond election at a time when nothing else would be on the ballot, when most Oklahomans' minds would be on summer activities. In all of Oklahoma, only four places are having an election on June 8, 2021: The Town of Lahoma (Garfield County), the Town of Spavinaw (Mayes County), Navajo Public Schools (Jackson & Greer Counties), and Tulsa Public Schools, which requires four county election boards (Creek, Osage, Tulsa, Wagoner) to staff precincts.

A school bond issue requires a corresponding increase in property taxes in the district to repay the borrowed money. Even property owners (e.g., senior citizens) who enjoy a valuation freeze will see their taxes go up, because the bond issue increases the millage rate, not the valuation of the property.

Governmental taxing authorities like scheduling special elections, because it offers a great deal of control over who turns out to vote. School officials will be sure to remind teachers and administrative staff that there's an election, and they might target parents with an interest in a particular project slated to be funded by bond money. Otherwise they keep it as quiet as possible. There's unlikely to be an organized campaign against the bonds, because concentrated benefits motivate funding for the "vote yes" side, while diffuse costs mean that opponents don't have as strong a motivation to contribute financially to its defeat. The last bond election in March 2015 drew only 17,125 voters. As of March 29, there were 152,453 eligible voters in the TPS district. Under Oklahoma law, school bond issues require approval of 60% of those voting.

But such an election also is an unusual opportunity for parents and taxpayers to issue a vote of no confidence in TPS leadership. School board elections are seemingly set up to defeat democracy. In most districts, it is only possible to replace one of the five board members every year. As a large district, TPS has a seven-member board and four year terms, but in either situation, there is no way to "throw the bums out," to clean house, to elect a new slate of board members that will take the district in a different direction. Making matters worse, filing period is held in early December when everyone is thinking about Christmas, and the school board elections are often the only item on the ballot during the February primary and April general election.

A school bond issue offers every voter in the district a chance to vote at the same time. It is the perfect opportunity to let the school board know that you're unhappy with the superintendent, the board, curriculum, the COVID-19 response, school closures, and the district's too-cozy relationship with progressive philanthropic organizations.

None of a school district's operational funds come from bond issues, so defeating a bond issue does not jeopardize teachers' salaries or the day-to-day running of the schools. Defeating a bond issue just means that TPS will have to wait a bit longer to build another monstrosity like the new Clinton West Elementary (formerly Clinton Middle School), which was James Howard Kunstler's "Eyesore of the Month" in March of 2010.

Clinton West Elementary (formerly Middle School), Eyesore of the Month, March 2010.
James Howard Kunstler described the building as "a building that expresses to perfection our current social consensus about the meaning of education. It stares balefully at the street with the blank-faced demeanor of an autistic child preparing to explode in violent rage. It summarizes our collective aspirations about school as the unidentifiable contents of an inscrutable set of boxes."

This time around, there is an active campaign against the bond issue propositions. Both Tulsa Parent Voice and the Tulsa County Republican Party have announced their opposition to the bonds.

There are plenty of reasons that the administration and board of Tulsa Public Schools deserve a vote of no confidence. Here are just a few that come readily to mind:

1. Scheduling a bond issue election for the summer, when nothing else is on the ballot, is designed to discourage voter participation. A solid defeat of the bonds will discourage such anti-democratic behavior in the future.

2. TPS schools are failing. Out of 73 campuses receiving a State Department of Education report card in 2019, 57 received Ds or Fs (29 and 28, respectively). Only one school, Booker T. Washington High School, managed an A. (You can download grades and stats for every school in Oklahoma here.)

3. TPS is shrinking, but the demand for funds is unchanged. Since the 2015 bond, TPS enrollment has decreased by 6,500 students, but TPS is asking for as much as it did then, including money for new facilities. Ten schools that were promised 2015 bond money were closed instead: Jones, Park, Penn, Remington, Academy Central, Greeley, Grimes, ECDC Porter, Mark Twain & Gilcrease. Gilcrease was closed despite a petition signed by 2,500 residents.

3. The school board's 2020 decision to extend Superintendent Deborah Gist's contract through 2023 was timed to prevent newly elected school board members from participating in the decision, which shows profound disrespect for the voters.

4. TPS pushes progressive politics. Superintendent Gist's May 2021 personal statement about "equity" is filled with leftist jargon from the Critical Race Theory glossary, but the rot is by no means limited to Gist. The district's "Who We Are" page states that "living our values requires working actively to dismantle systems of racial oppression."

5. The information about the bond issue propositions on the TPS website is supportive marketing material, not neutral, just-the-facts information. This is in violation of state law.

6. TPS requires a formal request under the Open Records Act to release campaign contribution reports that, by state law, must be filed with the school district clerk. TPS does not respond to these requests in a timely fashion -- another anti-democratic policy.

7. TPS has a bloated administrative structure and spends millions on consultants.

8. TPS has continued to force children to wear masks and never returned to full-time in-person learning.

There are plenty of other reasons to revolt against the current TPS administration, many of which you'll see documented on the sos-tps.org website, which also has the specifics on the four propositions. A vote against the bond propositions is the simplest way to express a demand for change at Tulsa Public Schools.

Stage for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission's cancelled "Remember & Rise" commemorative event, set up in the middle of ONEOK Field. May 28, 2021. Copyright 2021 Michael D. Bates. All rights reserved.

Omar Villafranca of CBS News reports this morning that the cancellation of Monday's "Remember and Rise" concert, organized by the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, was due to demands made by lawyers representing the three living survivors and descendants of departed survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre:

CBS News has learned the event was canceled after a lawyer representing survivors and their heirs made demands that the organizing commission considered unreasonable.

A commission source showed CBS News an e-mail listing demands that was sent by the lawyer Sunday.

It includes $1 million each for survivors of the massacre and a non-negotiable $50 million pledge to a fund for survivors and descendants.

(National Geographic magazine estimates that the attack on Greenwood destroyed property that, had it accrued to the present day, would be worth approximately $600 million dollars, according to a statement made by historian Scott Ellsworth during his presentation yesterday at the John Hope Franklin Symposium.)

The source told CBS News the commission and lawyer had already agreed on financial terms, but the new demands couldn't be met, at least in time for Monday's commemoration.

The lawyer claimed to CBS News that the commission hasn't been negotiating in good faith for months, and he maintained that the survivors never agreed to participate in the event.

The story is also available on the KOTV News on 6 website.

Last night, when the cancellation was announced, the News on 6, Tulsa's CBS affiliate, reported, "News On 6 had a number of sources reach out citing specific reasons why the Remember & Rise event was canceled, but at this time, we have not been able to get anyone on the record."

That initial story quoted the Commission's news release: "due to unexpected circumstances with entertainers and speakers, the Centennial Commission is unable to fulfill our high expectations for Monday afternoon's commemoration event and has determined not to move forward with the event at this time." My suspicion was that Stacey Abrams and John Legend were made aware of the strife between the Commission and the community and were concerned about damage to their reputations if they participated in an event that was disavowed by massacre survivors and descendants. The statement could also be read as indicating that the Commission was unable to secure the participation of the survivors and did not want to go forward without it. There is also the unspoken threat of embarrassing protests. Dissenting members of the community had already set up a rival series of events, the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival, which will include nationally known politicians and entertainers.

Greenwood Rising Black Wall Street History Center, a $20 million project of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission. The building looks like the sort of thing a small-town bank with more budget than taste would have built in the 1960s, after knocking down their 1890s Romanesque Revival edifice. Copyright 2021 Michael D. Bates. All rights reserved.

UPDATE 11:30pm, 2021/05/28:

Below is the email from survivors' attorney Damario Solomon-Simmons to the Centennial Commission, obtained by News on 6. The email appears to have been written on Sunday, May 23, 2021, and refers to a meeting on Saturday, May 22, 2021.

The email mentions an article in the May 22 Enid News, reported by Janelle Stecklein, chief of the CNHI Oklahoma Capitol Bureau, which included the following statements from State Sen. Kevin Matthews, chairman of the Centennial Commission, commenting on the demand from the survivors for some of the money raised by the Commission to tell the 1921 story to help make whole those who lost everything in 1921.

However, Matthews said the plaintiffs don't have a right to the $30 million raised to construct the history center because the money was donated expressly to build it.

"The first goal is to tell the story, transparently," Matthews said. "That's the foundation of reparations."

He said that during the past 100 years there have been books, movies and documentaries about the massacre. Survivors haven't sought those profits, but now the efforts of local Tulsa residents trying to tell the story are being attacked.

"I will say that I am not angry about those accusations," Matthews said. "I think that they come from an honest place. Unfortunately when you have a community that is starved of resources and attention for so many years, these types of things happen rather than ... having meaningful discussions instead of pointing and blaming. And, unfortunately that happens in traumatized communities, families and relationships."

Matthews said one of the center's donors has independently agreed to pay the three survivors salaries and assist with their health care costs during the remainder of their lives.

But he said the survivors didn't mention that assistance during their congressional testimonies calling for reparations.

With that in mind, here is the letter from Solomon-Simmons:

Good evening Everyone,

First thank you for your time yesterday. Please know that we thought the meeting was productive. leaving the meeting we were cautiously optimistic that an agreement could be reached which would allow us to have a more unified Centennial commemoration. However, finding out today that Sen. Kevin Matthews, Chair of the Centennial
Commission, attacked the credibility and integrity of our survivors has set-us back some.

As a result, this is where we are and/or what we need in order to come to an agreement at this point:

1. $1M per survivor. We believe you understand this is a priority for us. We believe you understand there is a great sense of urgency. We understood that you are going to visit with the Commission/TCF/Funders to ascertain how much you can commit to providing to the survivors before May 31st 2021.

2. $50M pledge to our Survivor and Descendant fund.

a. After debriefing with our advisors, we have decided we will not agree with any other entity housing our fund.

This is non-negotiable. It is important to us and our community that our fund be housed at a Black bank.

b. As I explained during our meeting we have been working with our corporate counsel, Schulte, Roth, and Zable (including William Zable), and our mentor Bryan Stevenson of the Equal Justice Initiative to develop our fund. With Bryan's counsel we have identified 6 Black banks that we are currently in discussions with about the possibility of holding our fund.

c. With the help of our national partners, we plan to announce our fund at our May 31st, 2021 nationally streamed Survivor and Descendant Town Hall with an initial fund raising goal of $100M.

d. We request that the Commission/TCF/Funders pledge to raise $50M for our fund. If you agree to this, we would like for you to specify a date you plan to have this amount raised by.

3. Allot 33% of Greenwood Rising revenue to directly benefit survivors and descendants and the North Tulsa community. We understand you believe this ask is high. However, we understand you will visit with the Commission/TCF/Funder to ascertain what type of revenue split would be acceptable to you. We also understand that you would agree to make a public announcement to work towards establishing a TIF district for the Historical
Greenwood community that would directly and specifically benefit North Tulsa.

4. Greenwood Rising board make-up. We understand that you are going to ascertain whether the Commission/TCF/Funders will agree to expand the board by 6 to 15 and allow us to select those 6 new members.

5. Public Support of lawsuit. We understand that you will visit with the Commission/TCF/Funders to ascertain whether you all will publicly support our litigation and efforts to hold the perpetrators of the Massacre and its aftermath accountable.

6. Public apology from Commission Chairman Sen. Matthews for Attacking Survivors.

a. Sen. Matthews must immediately and publicly apologize for his inaccurate portrayal of the survivors, his misrepresentation of the proposed gift from GKFF, and our campaign for justice and reparations in the media. https://www.enidnews.com/news/last-tulsa-race-massacre-survivors-push-for-reparations/article_cf550c14-ba7c-11eb-b273-872233bcb49b.html.

b. GKFF and I agreed that any gift would be strictly anonymous to ensure the gift would not impede our larger reparations campaign. In fact, the grant agreement specifically states the grant would be "anonymous and not be announced in an way publicly or privately." Obviously, this confidential agreement was breached, and the proposed gift
is now being used to try to put the survivors in a false light to lessen their credibility and undermine our overall reparations fight. As a result, we will decline the grant.

c. Sen. Matthews needs to clearly state that no Commission donor has given any funds to Justice For Greenwood or the Survivors. Despite what Sen. Matthews and others have falsely stated, there was never an agreement to provide for the survivors "for the rest of their life" or "all of their medical needs." Sen. Matthews' public apology and clarification must occur by the end of business tomorrow Monday May 24, 2021.

7. Rise and Remember Event. If we can get to an agreement on the above, we would also want to help shape the program of the Rise and Remember event at ONEOK Field occurring on May 31, 2021. We want an opportunity to speak and honor the survivors and our work.

In regard to timing because our events begin Thursday May 27th 2021, and our schedules will be completely swamped from then on, we believe that we need to have an agreement on the above points by Wednesday May 26th 2021. As a result, we believe we should schedule our next meeting for tomorrow afternoon Monday, May 24th 2021. We are available between 3-5pm.

Please let us know what time will work for you. Dr. Crutcher will be in Dallas for a speech, so a Zoom call is preferable. Lastly, we request that until and unless we can get to an agreement please remove any refe[re]nce of survivors participating in any Commission events from your website.

Thank you.

Damario Solomon-Simmons, Esq., M.Ed.
Managing Partner
SolomonSimmonsLaw

In a brief press availability today, Matthews took no questions, but, according to News on 6, he stated that "they had been approached by legal representation of the three living survivors and said they had agreed to $100,000 per survivor, along with $2 million in seed money for a reparations fund. He said they had raised the money."

Michael Mason of the Center for Public Secrets posted late this afternoon on Facebook:

According to an unnamed source, Abrams and Legend backed out because the Commission would not bend to the survivor's demands.

This evening I walked through the Greenwood District and past ONEOK Field, still set up for Remember and Rise -- a massive stage in the outfield, seats in the infield, generators on the outfield concourse. Workers appeared to be packing stage equipment into cases. It seems a shame that, after all the preparation, with seats and a stage in place, nothing will happen there on Monday evening.

1915 Sanborn map showing the commercial section of Tulsa's Greenwood district a few years before its first destruction

To journalists, photographers, and visitors, pilgrims this week of the centennial of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre: Welcome to Tulsa. Some context may help you interpret what you see and hear this week.

The cultural foundation for violent mob action on May 31 and June 1, 1921 was laid over the previous four years by Tulsa's respectable government, media, and business leaders, who openly encouraged mob violence against labor union organizers and other undesirables during the World War and afterwards. In the Tulsa Outrage, November 7, 1917, masked vigilantes whipped, tarred, and feathered 17 men connected with the International Workers of the World, an event that the front page of the Tulsa World cheered with the headline "Modern Ku Klux Klan Comes into Being." The Center for Public Secrets is featuring a series of articles by historian Randy Hopkins, "The Trail of Atrocity." There's an exhibit at the Center's space at 573 S. Peoria, Architects of the Massacre, open daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. through Thursday, May 27, 2021. The exhibit illustrates the powerful Tulsans who set the tone for the 1921 pogrom and its roots in the extra-legal Councils of Defense established by Oklahoma governor Robert Lee Williams to suppress dissent after the U. S. entered World War I. Randy Hopkins spoke on this topic last night; tonight, Tuesday, May 25, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., Hopkins will speak again along with Chief Egunwale Asuman on "The Mask of Atonement: Tulsa's False Promise of Reparations."

Within a year of the 1921 massacre, Tulsa's African-American community rebuilt Greenwood, having first defeated in court an attempt by city officials to use zoning to block survivors from rebuilding on their own land, forcing the community further north. Survivors of the massacre called the rebuilt Greenwood greater than what had gone before. But Greenwood was destroyed a second time by city government, using federal highway and urban renewal money, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, driving an expressway through the district's very heart, and following up with the Model Cities urban renewal program that left only a single block of retail buildings and a handful of churches. City officials finally succeeded in driving Tulsa's African-Americans further away from downtown; displaced families were encouraged to relocate to cheaply built post-war subdivisions in far north Tulsa, neighborhoods that had been utterly white at the 1960 census.

1939 Sanborn map showing the commercial section of Tulsa's Greenwood district, an area known as Deep Greenwood, after its rebuilding

BatesLine has presented over a dozen stories on the history of Tulsa's Greenwood district, focusing on the overlooked history of the African-American city-within-a-city from its rebuilding following the 1921 massacre, the peak years of the '40s and '50s, and its second destruction by government through "urban renewal" and expressway construction. The linked article provides an overview, my 2009 Ignite Tulsa talk, and links to more detailed articles, photos, films, and resources, including the Solomon Sir Jones films, home movies that documented Greenwood and other black Oklahoma communities in the mid to late 1920s.

1951 aerial photo showing the commercial section of Greenwood ("Deep Greenwood") and the present-day path of I-244.

Carlos Moreno has written a series of feature stories, The Victory of Greenwood, on the men and women who built and rebuilt the community: John and Loula Williams, O. W. Gurley, A. J. Smitherman, Mabel Little, Ellis Walker Woods, to name a few. A book of the same title will be released on June 2.

You might notice that, up the hill and west of Martin Luther King, Junior, Boulevard (formerly Cincinnati Avenue), along John Hope Franklin Blvd (formerly Haskell Street) and nearby streets, there are empty blocks of land, with old brick foundations and concrete steps where homes used to be. These are not race massacre ruins. The homes you see, in a neighborhood that was untouched by the 1921 disaster, were acquired and cleared in the 1990s and 2000s by the city's urban renewal authority as part of the city's promise to provide 200 acres for a state university campus. About 80 acres of that land, now filled mainly with surface parking lots and a few academic buildings, came from the Greenwood urban renewal area; the rest came from west of MLKJr Blvd. I wrote a feature story, "Steps to Nowhere," for This Land Press, in 2014, about the history of this neighborhood, which was never part of Greenwood; that link will also lead you to photos and other articles about the neighborhood's history.

Photo copyright 2014, Michael D. Bates. 116 E. Fairview St., Tulsa. These are urban renewal ruins from the 1990s, not race massacre ruins from 1921.

The centennial commemorations have exposed divisions within Tulsa as a whole and even within the African-American community, with separate organizations sponsoring separate events.

The Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission is not an official body of state or local government, but it has become as unofficially official as possible, with elected officials appointed to its board, and the support of the City of Tulsa, the George Kaiser Family Foundation and other foundations, and the Tulsa Regional Chamber. This is the group sponsoring the new $20 million Greenwood Rising tourist attraction on the southeast corner of Greenwood and Archer; the group sponsoring the sold-out Remember and Rise event at the baseball stadium, headlined by Georgia politician Stacey Abrams and singer John Legend.

Many black Tulsans feel excluded and alienated by the Centennial Commission's plans. Former City Councilor Joe Williams seemed to speak for many people when he wrote:

This Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission and so-called remembrance of the destruction of Greenwood and slaughter of the several hundred innocent victims and celebration of Black Wall-Street is one entirely big joke. Most of US can't even get tickets to the main event including the Survivors and their Descendants because they were already saved up and reserved for the elite and other people from the outside. The power brokers and system are just trying to make it appear to the nation and world like we are all cumbaya and all good together here in T-town. They don't care at all about US or OUR community and the disrespect is intolerable. The day after May 31st our treatment will be back to the usual same-o-same-o status quo. They are pushing FAKE NEWS!

From a recent Human Rights Watch article on Tulsa:

Rather than working on such a plan [for reparations to survivors and descendants], city and state authorities have focused most of their efforts on creating the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission and its flagship project, the "Greenwood Rising" history center, which is meant to honor the victims and foster cultural tourism. The Centennial Commission has raised at least $30 million, $20 million of which went to build Greenwood Rising, but it has alienated massacre survivors and many descendants of victims by failing to adequately involve them in its planning....

At least one survivor, 106-year-old Lennie Benningfield Randle, has issued a cease-and-desist letter ordering the commission to stop using her name or likeness to promote the project. All three living massacre survivors have sued the city of Tulsa, accusing it of continuing to enrich itself at the expense of the Black community by "appropriating" the massacre for tourism and economic opportunities that primarily benefit white-owned or controlled businesses and organizations....

The three living survivors of the massacre have said they do not plan to participate in any of the Centennial Commission's commemoration events. They will instead headline a community-sponsored event called the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival, which is the only centennial commemoration that includes and centers the survivors. They will be joined by US Senator Cory Booker, US Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, and the creators of the HBO hit series "Watchmen," which was situated in Tulsa and depicted the race massacre in its opening scene. Unlike the Centennial Commission's events, the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival will emphasize the Black Tulsa community's demand for reparations.

The three survivors, Lessie E. Benningfield Randle, Viola Fletcher, and Hughes Van Ellis, Sr., along with Vernon A. M. E. Church, and descendants of survivors who have passed on, have sued the City of Tulsa, Tulsa Regional Chamber, Tulsa Development Authority, Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission, Tulsa County Commission, the Sheriff of Tulsa County, and the Oklahoma Military Department in district court under public nuisance and unjust enrichment law. From the complaint:

The problem is not that the Defendants want to increase the attraction to Tulsa, it is that they are doing so on the backs of those they destroyed, without ensuring that the community and descendants of those subjected to the nuisance they created are significantly represented in the decision-making group and are direct beneficiaries of these efforts.

I note that page 47 of the complaint uses a graphic I created for my initial column on the "Greenwood Gap Theory" in the June 13, 2007, edition of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The graphic (shown earlier in this article) is a section of a 1951 aerial photo, overlaid with names of streets, landmarks, and railroads, along with the present-day path of I-244, a path that was cleared in 1967.

(Unfortunately, the complaint also misuses, on page 52, a graphic from my 2014 This Land Press story about the lost Near Northside, a photo of steps on the south side of Fairview Street between Boston and Cincinnati Avenues (now MLKJr Blvd), from which the BOK Tower in the background had been digitally erased. As detailed in the article, based on land records, street directories, fire maps, and aerial photographs, this neighborhood was a white neighborhood in 1921, was not damaged in the massacre, and survived until the City of Tulsa's urban renewal authority acquired the land in the 1990s.)

In addition to the Centennial Commission and the John Hope Franklin Center for Reconciliation is hosting its annual symposium May 26-29, with a keynote speech by Prof. Cornel West, and many other talks and panel discussions.

The Greenwood Cultural Center, located just north of I-244, is offering tours of the Mabel Little House (a house that was relocated from further north on Greenwood and rescued from urban removal), a special exhibit of the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection, a Sunday, May 30, "Brunch with the Stars," featuring Alfre Woodard, Tim Blake Nelson, Garth Brooks, Wes Studi, and Stanley Nelson, a June 2 panel discussion on the "Bitter Root" Comic Series, the Greenwood Film Festival, June 12 - 14, and a virtual reality film, The Greenwood Avenue Experience, June 15-17.

There is also conflict within the African-American community over the significance of the last remaining block of 1922 Greenwood that survived urban renewal. Small business owners there, mostly African-American, regard it as primarily a place of business, as it was before and after 1921. Other members of the community seem to see it primarily as a sacred space of remembrance. The Greenwood Chamber of Commerce, representing the building owners and businesses, publicly opposed the application by the Black Wall Street Legacy Festival to close Greenwood Avenue and were condemned by many for evicting a small business early this year for non-payment of rent. Business owners had mixed feelings about the Black Lives Matter mural that was painted on the street in front of their shops during the protests of last summer, with some feeling that it distracted from the story of 1921.

The Greenwood Chamber of Commerce is hosting its own event, the Greenwood Centennial Marketplace Showcase, May 28-30, which will include live music, food trucks, an art gallery, and a welcome center at 101 N. Greenwood, on the northeast corner of Greenwood and Archer.

The Black Wall Street Alliance is hosting the Faces of Greenwood Timeline Experience at the Black Wall Street Alliance Art Hall, 100 N. Greenwood (northwest corner of Greenwood and Archer), Saturdays and Sundays, 11 a.m. - 4 p.m., through July 17th.

The Black Panther Movement is sponsoring a National Black Power Convention, May 28-30, featuring a Second Amendment Armed Mass March for Self-Defense on Saturday, May 29, at 4 p.m.

Enjoy your visit. Mourn and celebrate. Learn the history in all of its complexity, a history that didn't stop in 1921.

Sincerely,

Michael Bates

P. S. Members of the community have expressed a desire to add their own messages to this open letter to visitors to Tulsa -- watch this space for those in the coming days.

Saint Francis Health System is revoking full parental access to the medical records of teenage minors (ages 13-17), as of June 15, 2021, according to a notice sent to parents this week.

On Wednesday, May 19, 2021, I received the following message in MyChart, the web portal to the online medical records system used by Saint Francis Health System and many other hospital networks across the country. The message was from "MyChart System Administrator" and at the end of the message was the notice, "You cannot reply to this message."

Thank you for using MyChart to manage your child's medical care. You currently have proxy access to view your child's MyChart account. On June 15, 2021, current proxy access for minors ages 13 to 17 will automatically transition from full access to limited access. Your teen may choose to give you full access after they activate their MyChart account ("MyChart Teen Account").

Supporting Your Teen and Their Health Privacy

We encourage parents and guardians to discuss all healthcare conditions and questions with your teen. We also encourage you to partner with your teen and provide the guidance and autonomy necessary to teach your teen how to manage their own health into adulthood.

Why is this change being made?

Oklahoma law allow minors to consent to certain treatment and, in some circumstances, control related health information.

How does my teen request their own MyChart Teen Account?

Teens aged 13 to 17 can request their own MyChart Teen Account using their personal email address. THEY SHOULD NOT USE A SCHOOL EMAIL ACCOUNT. Saint Francis Health System patients can request activation online at www.saintfrancis.com/mychart, or during a visit to their Warren Clinic provider's office. OSU medicine patients can activate their MyChart account at their next clinic visit or by calling their primary care provider office.

What happens when a MyChart Teen Account is activated?

Once the MyChart Teen Account is activated, the teen can choose the parent's level of proxy access to the MyChart Teen Account. The options include:

• Full Access — Parent or guardian has full access to manage their teen's healthcare through MyChart.
• Restricted Access — Parent or guardian has access to the following functions in MyChart:
• request regular and e-visit appointments for the teen;
• request refills;
• review and print allergy and immunization information;
• message the teen's care team; and
• view and pay bills associated with the teen's account.
• Access Revoked — Parent or guardian has no access to the MyChart Teen Account.

What capabilities will my teenager have in a MyChart Teen Account?

They will be able to view test results, send a message their healthcare provider and schedule office visits. They will not have the ability to request prescription refills, schedule a virtual visit, or use telehealth functions.

Will I be able to access Private Messages in the MyChart Teen account?

If your teen provides you with proxy access to their MyChart Teen Account, you will be able to continue to see messages and replies between the teen and their care team. However, your teen can make messages and replies confidential by unselecting those with proxy access each time they start a new message.

Who should I contact if I have questions?

Parents and/guardians should contact their teen's primary care provider office for questions or additional information.

There is no contact information online for the Saint Francis Health System corporate office. The phone number for the legal department is 918-494-2483. I called and no one answered; I left a voicemail asking for a call back with an answer to the question, "What is the Oklahoma statutory provision behind this change?" I encourage other parents to do likewise. I have heard that St. Francis staff received an email about the change, stating simply that teens would be able to create their own MyChart accounts for access to their records, but saying nothing about revocation of access for parents.

So who made the decision? To whom do we appeal? The Saint Francis website isn't very helpful, but it does include a list of the Board of Trustees and Board of Directors.

Board of Trustees

• William K. Warren, Jr.
• The Most Reverend David A. Konderla
• John-Kelly Warren
• Judy Kishner
• Jeff Smith

Board of Directors

• John-Kelly C. Warren, Chairman
• Judy Kishner, Vice-Chair
• Mike Case
• Mike Cooke, J.D.
• Ashley Gable, M.D.
• Jake Henry Jr.
• Rev. Gary Kastl
• William R. Lissau
• Charles McEntee, M.D.

Bishop Konderla is the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa and Eastern Oklahoma. In his pastoral letter, "God Builds a House," Bishop Konderla names "Strengthing the Family and the Domestic Church" as the first of three priorities for the diocese.

The family is the foundation of all human society and is currently threatened by forces that could destroy or deform its nature and mission. While assisted by schools and parish programs, parents are irreplaceable as the primary educators of their children.

In light of that eloquent statement, I would expect Bishop Konderla to object to any effort to alienate children from their parents by blocking access to information that parents would need to guide their children on the path of life. So I emailed the bishop at the address on his webpage (bp.d.konderla AT dioceseoftulsa DOT org) in hopes that he would help reverse this policy.

Dear Bishop Konderla,

I am writing to you in your role as a trustee of the Saint Francis Health System to ask for your help regarding a policy change that undermines a parent's God-given responsibility to keep watch over their children, both body and soul, a policy change that will be used by teenagers to conceal sexual activity, abortion, drug use, and gender transition from their fathers and mothers.

Yesterday, parents of teenagers across northeastern Oklahoma were notified by Saint Francis Health System that as of June 15, 2021, they would no longer have full access to their children's medical records, but they would have to receive their 13- to 17-year-old children's consent to continue this access. The notification, sent through the MyChart online medical records website, is attached.

The anonymous message claims that "Oklahoma law allow [sic] minors to consent to certain treatment and, in some circumstances, control related health information." The message does not cite the relevant statutes. There is no signature, no indication of the person or board authorizing this change, no opportunity for parents to object. Parents are directed to "contact their teen's primary care provider office for questions or additional information."

I suspect that this change is being driven by administrators who are not in accord with Christian teaching, whose ethics have been formed by the Sexual Revolution, who believe that children should be free to experiment with sex, gender identity, and intoxicating substances free from the oppressive oversight of Mom and Dad. Parents already must contend with educational, mass media, and social media forces who want to alienate children from their parents; a Christian medical network should not add to that burden.

Certainly there will be situations in which a parent should not have access to his or her child's medical records at any age, e.g. where a child has been removed from a parent's custody for abuse or neglect. But surely the default should be access, with steps taken to remove access only in exceptional circumstances.

I urge you to exercise your spiritual authority as bishop and your corporate authority as trustee, for the sake of Oklahoma families, to identify those who are responsible for this policy and to seek a reversal of it.

Yours sincerely,

Michael D. Bates
Tulsa, Oklahoma

Increasingly, the idea of the family is under attack from both government and private institutions, who prefer to treat people as autonomous, atomized individuals, a world in which all interpersonal relationships are temporary, contingent, and negotiable. HIPAA means my wife and I have to file paperwork at every office and clinic to ensure that we can deal with every medical issue as a family; the default assumption is that we want to hide things from each other. FERPA means that Mom and Dad are expected to pay for college, but aren't entitled to know if Darling Son or Darling Daughter are keeping up with their studies.

Government and society used to assume that, unless proven otherwise, parents are loving and competent and therefore ought to direct their dependent child's medical and educational path, which requires being fully informed. Laws like HIPAA and FERPA assume that Mom and Dad are tyrannical or nincompoops or both and must be kept at bay to enable a young person to flourish. There are, of course, exceptional cases, where an abusive parent has had parental rights terminated or where a child has been placed in foster care because of abuse or neglect, but public and corporate policy increasingly treats these situations as the default; enabling normal parental involvement requires extra steps to be taken.

To expand on something I wrote in my letter to Bp. Konderla, the impetus behind this appears to trace back to the Sexual Revolution and the Psychodelic Sixties, the idea that a person's true self can only emerge through sexual and chemical experimentation. Societal restraints on this experimentation, such as guilt or embarrassment a child might feel if parents were aware of what the child is doing, are oppressive, so schools and doctors must provide cover to enable children true freedom to experiment. Accordingly, these same people believe it necessary that any negative medical or psychological consequences must be addressed privately, hidden from parental scrutiny. What a contrast to the traditional approach, in which societal institutions recognized the value of sexual continence and sobriety, joined with parents in proclaiming the dangers of sexual and chemical experimentation, and cooperated with parents to reduce opportunities for experimentation, and shame, guilt, and embarrassment served as powerful deterrents to foolish behavior.

During the Great Depression, the Federal Works Progress Administration (WPA) and Oklahoma Tax Commission (OTC) commissioned a series of maps in 1936 to document land ownership and taxable value. An example of the maps are shown above. Each map covers a Public Land Survey System (PLSS) township (6 miles by 6 miles, divided into 36 square-mile sections). Approximately 2,300 maps cover the entire state.

Municipalities are marked with heavy shaded boundaries; note that Turley, Dawson, and Alsuma are all still independent, while Red Fork had been recently annexed by Tulsa. Tax-exempt properties are marked with a diagonal cross; if the listed owner is a person's name, it's likely a tribal allotment. If taxable, two numbers are listed: L (land value) and I (improvements value). Areas without valuation may be platted subdivisions -- I notice a bunch of them along US 66 in east Tulsa: Glenhaven, Plain View Heights, Radio Heights, Romoland, Lynn Lane Drive, Indian Hills. Interesting to see some prominent names -- Kennedy and Gilcrease in SE Osage County, L. S. Robson and C. S. Avery in what's now east Tulsa, Waite Phillips around Southern Hills, Charles Page and the Sand Springs Home around Sand Springs, Mullendore in Osage and Washington counties.

Some of the Tulsa County maps include part of Osage County. The township, range, and section grid for the Osage Reservation is offset from the rest of the state. It is shifted about 1/4 mile south and 1/2 mile east of the rest of the state.

On maps of T19N townships, there is a heavy-dashed east-west line about 1/8 mile south and parallel to the N edge of the boundary. This is the Creek/Cherokee boundary, which continues west as the Osage/Creek boundary and then the southern boundary of the Cherokee Outlet. East of Lewis Ave in Tulsa this line is Admiral Place, while Archer Ave is the section and township line. You may have noticed that it's farther from Pine to Admiral than from Admiral to 11th Street -- that's why.

Browsing through one of the Osage County maps, covering an area west of Hominy that included Boston Pool, I discovered the location of 200 acres of land that my great-grandfather had owned in 1936, which led me to do more research at the Osage County Clerk's office back in February 2017.

The Tulsa County General Highway Map, Sheet 2, from 1937, shows Tulsa, Sand Springs, Turley, Dawson, and Red Fork, T20N R12E, T19N R11E, T19N R12E, which will provide some context for the WPA maps.

OSU's Oklahoma Digital Map Collection has the entire collection of WPA land maps for Oklahoma online.

BREAKING: After typing up this entry, I just discovered that someone has created a interactive, georeferenced mosaic of all the Oklahoma WPA maps, which also allows you to download maps of interest. This will be useful for locating lost and drowned municipalities, like Keystone, Antwine, Lugert, Centralia, and Hochatown. You can adjust the transparency of the WPA maps, allowing you to overlay it on a present-day satellite view.

Here are the Tulsa County maps, starting at the north end of the county and working west to east in rows.

• T22N R12E (126th St N to 186th St N; 81st West Ave to Peoria, far north Tulsa County and part of Osage County around Skiatook)
• T22N R13E (126th St N to 186th St N; Peoria to Mingo, far north Tulsa County between Skiatook and Collinsville)
• T22N R14E (126th St N to 186th St N; Mingo to 193rd East Ave, far north Tulsa County around Collinsville)


• T21N R12E (66th St N to 126th St N; 81st St West to Peoria; Sperry and vicinity)
• T21N R13E (66th St N to 126th St N; Peoria to Mingo; between Sperry and Owasso)
• T21N R14E (66th St N to 126th St N; Mingo to 193rd East Ave; Owasso and vicinity)


• T20N R12E (Archer to 66th St N; 81st West Ave to Peoria; southeast Osage County, north Tulsa, Turley)
• T20N R13E (Archer to 66th St N; Peoria to Mingo; north Tulsa, Dawson, Mohawk Park, airport)
• T20N R14E (Archer to 66th St N; Mingo to 193rd East Ave; northeast Tulsa)


• T19N R10E (Edison to 61st St S; 273rd West Ave to 177th West Ave; far west Tulsa County)
• T19N R11E (Edison to 61st St S; 177th West Ave to 81st West Ave; Sand Springs, Prattville, and vicinity)
• T19N R12E (Edison to 61st St S; 81st West Ave to Peoria; west Tulsa, Red Fork, Sand Springs, Berryhill; heavy dashed line is the Cherokee/Creek & Osage/Creek boundary)
• T19N R13E (Archer to 61st St S; Peoria to Mingo; midtown Tulsa; heavy dashed line is the Cherokee/Creek boundary at Admiral Place)
• T19N R14E (Archer to 61st St S; Mingo to 193rd East Ave; east Tulsa; heavy dashed line is the Cherokee/Creek boundary at Admiral Place)


• T18N R12E (61st St S to 121 St S; 33rd West Ave to Peoria; southwest Tulsa in Jenks school district, west Jenks)
• T18N R13E (61st St S to 121 St S; Peoria to Mingo; Jenks, south Tulsa, north Bixby)
• T18N R14E (61st St S to 121 St S; Mingo to 193rd East Ave; Broken Arrow, Union and vicinity)


• T17N R12E (121st St S to 181 St S; 33rd West Ave to Peoria; Glenpool and vicinity)
• T17N R13E (121st St S to 181 St S; Peoria to Mingo; Bixby and vicinity)
• T17N R14E (121st St S to 181 St S; Mingo to 193rd East Ave; Wealaka (Leonard) and vicinity, south Broken Arrow)


• T16N R12E (181st St S to 241 St S; 81st West Ave to Peoria; south Tulsa County, north Okmulgee County)
• T16N R13E (181st St S to 241 St S; Peoria to Mingo; south Tulsa County, north Okmulgee County)
• T16N R14E (181st St S to 241 St S; Mingo to 193rd East Ave; south Tulsa County, north Okmulgee County)

As we approach the centennial commemoration of the Tulsa Race Massacre at the end of this month, I was curious to look through contemporaneous records to learn more about the times in which it occurred.

On page 6 of the May 1, 1921, edition of the Tulsa Sunday World, there's a story about a $473,600 lawsuit brought by jewelry store owner Moescha Rosenberg against Sinclair Oil and Gas, owners of the building in which his store was located. On March 15, 1918, Rosenberg entered into a 10-year-lease for retail space on the northwest corner of the building, sitting right on the highly visible southeast corner of 5th and Main in downtown Tulsa, at the junction of two streetcar lines. His rent was $400 a month. According to 1919 and 1921 city directories, the shop was called Montrose Jewelry Company, located at 2 East 5th Street. Ads for the store, sometimes called "Montrose of New York" or "The Montrose Shop," appeared often in the papers, particularly in the run-up to Christmas.

According to Rosenberg, not long after he leased the space, Sinclair employees began harassing him to get him to leave. First, a company official, C. E. Crawley, "offered to buy his stock if he would give up his lease. When he refused he says that the company made threats to add two stories to the building and permanently close up the entrance which he was using." Then Sinclair employees cut the lights to the store at night, and he lost his insurance policy, which required the lights to be on all night, and that forced him to operate without insurance. After an automobile crashed into the shop window, Sinclair boarded it up and refused to replace it with new glass, and refused to let him put in "sectional glass." When Rosenberg put a sign on the boards saying that he was still open for business, the building superintendent tore it down. When Rosenberg hired two clerks to work for him, Sinclair claimed that he was subletting the space in violation of his lease and sought a court order to evict him; Rosenberg got an injunction to get the company to leave him alone. Finally, about two months earlier (late March 1921), he gave up, dismantled his store fixtures (worth $16,000), liquidated his stock at a loss of $75,000, and then vacated with seven years remaining on his lease. Rosenberg's lawsuit demand for compensation included his estimated $50,000 per year income on the remainder of his lease. Rosenberg claimed that the space would now have a rent of $2,000 per month. (The city directory for the following year, 1922, shows the Suzanne Shop, milliners, in the space at 2 East 5th.)

The situation has the appearance of a landlord trying to force out a tenant in hopes of either charging higher rents or providing a prime location to a better-connected tenant or both.

Rosenberg's case went all the way to the Oklahoma Supreme Court. The details of the case are not available online, and the ruling is terse, but it appears that Rosenberg prevailed in District Court, Sinclair appealed to the Supreme Court, and Rosenberg failed to file an answer to the appeal. The Supreme Court reversed the trial court and remanded the case "with directions to sustain [Sinclair's] demurrer to the petition." I was unable to find a newspaper story on the final disposition, but it appears that Rosenberg's cause was lost. The case has an entry in Pacific Reporter, Vol. 219, p. 650.

Moescha Rosenberg seems to have been quite a flamboyant businessman. When he was ready to close his shop in Glen Cove, Long Island, in preparation for a move to Tulsa, he placed an ad in the local paper threatening to publish the names of all the customers who had outstanding debts with the store. The story hit the wire services and was published all over the country. From the Long Beach Telegram, December 6, 1917.

IT PAYS TO ADVERTISE
Jeweler Collects All His Debts With One Piece in Paper

(Glen Cove, L. I., Cor. New York Times).

Moescha Rosenberg's advertisement in the local paper had its desired effect. He threatened to print today a list of those who owed him money and would not pay. All week and right up to press time Rosenberg was kept busy receipting old bills, and now he says that there is not a resident of this village who owes him a cent. Rosenberg is a jeweler and is closing up his store. Several thousand dollars was due him, and he wanted it before he left town. So he put in the advertisement in which he said: "I shall publish the name and exact address and vocation of each of the aforementioned deadbeats, giving in my usual style a psychological treatise of their character and make-up. The paper goes to press at 10:30 a m., and all who are anxious to have their characters defined in print should not settle their accounts before that time."

Immediately creditors began to appear and pay their bills. Men who had bought engagement rings on credit and others who had purchased presents that they did not care to have published, all paid up promptly, and the jeweler was happy. So today Rosenberg, published an advertisement on "Soiled Linen," in which he said: "There are those who firmly believe that there is no wrong that could not be corrected. That it all depends on the laundry. Some linen must be badly soiled, but all can be cleansed. It depends on how hard one rubs. We are glad to state that not one dollar that was owing to us last week is unpaid today. We do not want to congratulate our friends who paid up, but, rather, ourselves, as good, hard-rubbing launderers."

On December 11, 1917, the Brooklyn Daily Times reported that Rosenberg was leaving the jewelry business to become a pig rancher near Tulsa. I suspect he was joking, perhaps to suggest that he'd be happier dealing with pigs than his deadbeat Long Island customers.

The ex-jeweler who had stores also in Southampton and in Manhattan has disposed of all his business and abandoned his former vocation to conduct a pig ranch which he purchased near the city of Tulsa.

Three months later he had a 10-year lease on a prime space in a new shopping district at the south edge of downtown -- 5th & Main. He first appears in the city directory in 1919, living in rooms at 1408 S. Perryman Ave. Perryman Ave., named for the Muscogee Creek family whose ranch covered much of modern-day Tulsa, ran from 13th Street to 15th Street, and was renamed Carthage Ave. circa 1920 to conform to the city's new alphabetical street name system.

Soon thereafter, on March 16, 1919, Rosenberg, 43, had married Julia Goodman (née Finston), 29. Officiants were Rabbis Morris Teller and M. Himelstein, and the congregation was specified only as "Jewish Faith." At the beginning of 1920, according to census records, the couple lived at 1326 Perryman Avenue, in a building with three other families. On February 26, 1920, they had a son, Arthur Leonard Rosenberg, about whom more later. A 1920 city directory shows the family at 1436 S. Norfolk Ave., in an area demolished in the 1970s for part of the southeast interchange of the Inner Dispersal Loop -- a part that was never built. A daughter, Edna, was born to the couple in 1922. The 1923 city directory shows Mrs Julia Rosenberg at 1432 S. Norfolk, but no Moescha. Moescha's Miami obituary indicates that this is when he moved to Florida. 1436 S. Norfolk Ave. (Lot 2, Block 13, Broadmoor Addition) was purchased by Julia Rosenberg on February 12, 1920, and sold by her to Jacob Rosenberg on April 9, 1923.

In the 1930 census, the whole family turns up in Manhasset, North Hempstead, Long Island. By 1931, Moescha is in the papers again, but now in North Miami, having been robbed by three bandits of $100,000 in jewelry ($37,450 wholesale). His name turned up from time to time in newspapers for Florida's Jewish community. On November 6, 1931, the Jacobean reported that Moescha Rosenberg had returned from Manhasset to his home and had announced the opening of a new jewelry store on Lincoln Road in Miami Beach. In 1935, for Sukkoth (Feast of Booths or Tabernacles), Moescha invited up to a dozen men a day to come to the booth he set up at his home at 1728 Lenox Ave., Miami Beach, to converse with Rabbi Dr. Jacob H. Kaplan "the problems of modern life, such as the invited guest may suggest."

The 1935 Tulsa City Directory places Mrs. Julia Rosenberg once again at 1432 S. Norfolk Ave., with Beulah Cooper occupying the rear of the property (identified elsewhere in the directory as a maid, presumably occupying servants' quarters over the garage), and Mrs. Rose Finston (widow of Julia's brother Mark Finston, who was an executive with Bell Oil & Gas Co.) across the street at 1443 S. Norfolk. Someone named E. Frank Pumphrey lived at 1432 in 1934. Property records show that Rose Finston sold Lot 1, Block 13, Broadmoor Addition to Julia Rosenberg in 1937, who sold it on to Alice Osborn Cain in 1941. The lot had been in the Finston family since 1919. The State of Oklahoma purchased it in 1971 from R. G. & Lena Goodman for the never-built Riverside Expressway connection to the Inner Dispersal Loop.

Court records show that Moescha and Julia were divorced in Miami in 1935. He died on November 16, 1939. From the next day's edition of the Miami Daily News:

MOESCHA ROSENBERG

Funeral services were conducted at 10 a. m. today in the Miami Jewish funeral home by Rabbi Abraham Kellner for Moescha Rosenberg, 74, retired diamond merchant, 1728 Lenox Ave., Miami Beach, who died yesterday. He came to Miami 16 years ago from Tulsa, where he is survived by a son and daughter. Burial was in Woodlawn Park cemetery.

At some point, Julia and the children made their way back to Tulsa, where young Leonard attended Central High School, studied under legendary speech and drama teacher Isabelle Ronan (who also taught Paul Harvey), and graduated in 1937. (That's his senior yearbook photo on the right.) Julia, Leonard, and Edna were at 5 Riverside Drive, New York City, in the 1940 census, at the start of Leonard's long and successful career on Broadway and in radio, film, and television. You might remember him from The Odd Couple or Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? under his stage name, Tony Randall.

The Sinclair Building is in the news again. Having languished for several years under absentee ownership, the Ross Group is renovating it as apartments and retail space. Perhaps they will find a way to commemorate the first tenant of that coveted corner space (and his better-known son).

MORE: "Love, Lennie," a 2016 article in This Land Press by Charles Morrow: A brief biography of Leonard Rosenberg, aka Tony Randall, with a special focus on his Tulsa years and his later TV series, "Love, Sidney." The author's father had been a Central class of '37 classmate of Lennie, as he was known then: "When I asked Dad if they'd been friends, he frowned. 'No, he didn't talk to anybody. He was a snob.'"

TulsaTVMemories has several reminiscences of Tony Randall and his later visits to Tulsa. He spoke at the 1975 dedication of New Kendall Hall, having just learned earlier in the day that his childhood home had been demolished for an expressway. His driver that day, Edwin Fincher, recalls, "He was crushed, then cried, then cursed. He vowed to never come back again & made a horrible scene - live - during his speech on 'progress' in his old hometown, reading the original speech as it was written, but inserting 'remarks'."

Nigel Farage, described as the most consequential British politician of our time for his leadership of Brexit, the successful, 27-year effort to extricate the United Kingdom from the regulatory chains of the European Union, will be speaking in Tulsa on Thursday, May 13, 2021, at 6:30 p.m. The visit is part of America's Comeback Tour, a cross-country series of events organized by FreedomWorks. Farage's Tulsa appearance is being presented in conjunction with the Tulsa 912 Project, a grassroots group that grew out of the Tea Party movement. Tickets are free, but seats must be reserved in advance through Eventbrite.

Dercy Teixeira, grassroots coordinator for FreedomWorks, says that the group invited Farage to deliver a positive message that will re-energize the conservative grassroots across America. "A lot of conservatives are feeling disillusioned, thinking 'What's the point?' We're bringing on Nigel to tell them you can't give up now. Maybe we're down in the first half, but we have the second half still ahead of us, especially with the midterms coming, and then the 2024 presidential election." America's Comeback Tour draws on the sports analogy of rallying at half-time for a come-from-behind victory in the second half.

Teixeira sees similarities between America's Tea Party movement and the Brexit movement in the UK, each starting from little pockets of the grassroots frustrated with the political status quo. The British political establishment dismissed the Brexit movement and Farage, its most visible figure, as worthy only of ridicule, but through positive messages, Farage and his colleagues were able to keep activists motivated, pressuring the politicians toward the UK's formal departure from the EU on January 31, 2020.

As someone who closely followed the long march of Brexit and toasted its realization with a pint at our local English pub, I am delighted that Nigel Farage will be coming to speak here in Tulsa. His example of cheerful perseverance in the face of ridicule, attacks, and hostility from the political and media establishment to accomplish this nation-shaping goal is the encouragement that American conservatives need right now.

The Brexit story began when Conservative PM John Major signed the 1992 Maastricht Treaty, which set what had been a free-trade community on a trajectory to become a centralized, bureaucratized European super-state that would extinguish British sovereignty and self-government. In response, Farage joined with others to found the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) to push for UK withdrawal from the EU. The party's presence and early successes pressured the major parties to keep Britain out of some of the worst aspects of European integration, like the Euro single currency and the borderless Schengen Area.

Farage led UKIP to victory in the 2014 European Parliament elections, the first time a new party had won a national election in over a century. The result that pushed the Conservative Party to promise in the 2015 General Election to give the British people a referendum on leaving the European Union. Although the political and media establishment were united in support of remaining in the EU, Farage's pro-Leave forces were victorious in the 2016 Brexit referendum. But it soon became clear that Teresa May's Conservative Party government intended to deliver a Brexit in name only that would forever shackle the UK to European regulation. In response, Farage founded the Brexit Party, which won the 2019 European Parliament election less than six months after its establishment, leading to May's resignation, an early general election, and a relatively clean break with the EU in January 2020.

Farage's Brexit Party succeeded by adopting new methods of grassroots organization, communication, and mobilization geared to the Digital Age. Rallies across the country, streamed over social media, drew growing crowds and amplified enthusiasm. The party reached across old party lines to unite around a common cause. I found the rallies compelling listening, as the party's candidates for Member of the European Parliament (MEP), most of whom had no political background, talked about why Brexit mattered to them, their professions, and their communities. Each rally was capped with a rousing speech from Farage that never failed to bring the crowd to its feet. (MORE: See the bottom of this entry for a couple of examples of Farage's rousing speeches in front of audiences both friendly and frosty.)

Teixeira described Farage as "a perfect ambassador" for FreedomWorks, an organization that empowers grassroots activists to impact politics. "Many world figures appear personable on screen, but Nigel actually likes interacting with people," going pub-to-pub during his campaigns to interact directly with voters.

In this video from the start of the tour in Florida, Nigel Farage explains what he hopes to accomplish as he travels across America:

Also speaking at the Tulsa event will be FreedomWorks Director of Policy Sarah Anderson, and John Tamny, FreedomWorks VP and Director of FreedomWorks' Center for Economic Freedom. Tamny is author of the recent book, When Politicians Panicked: The New Coronavirus, Expert Opinion, and a Tragic Lapse of Reason, about the economic devastation wrought not by COVID-19, but by the political overreaction to it.

In addition to his visit to Tulsa, Farage will speak in Perrysville, Ohio, Palm Beach, Chicago, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Dallas, San Antonio, Phoenix, and Jackson, Wyoming. Tulsa is the only Oklahoma stop on America's Comeback Tour.

MORE:

After the jump, some videos showing Farage's geniality and humor, both in the face of hostility (his final speech as an MEP before Britain's formal departure from the EU) and surrounded by supporters (at a Brexit Party rally).

In a social media post last Wednesday, Tulsa City Council chairman Vanessa Hall Harper labeled U. S. Sen Tim Scott (R-South Carolina) with a racist slur. As of this writing, Hall Harper has yet to retract or apologize for the slur, which remains posted on her personal Facebook profile, accessible to anyone on or off Facebook.

Reacting to Sen. Scott's response to Joe Biden's address to a joint session of Congress last Wednesday, April 28, 2021, Hall Harper posted the picture above, paraphrasing a sentence from Scott's speech, followed by a single word reaction:

"America is not racist"....SAMBO!!!!

Sen. Scott delivered a slightly different line as part of the following passage of his speech:

When America comes together, we've made tremendous progress. But powerful forces want to pull us apart.

A hundred years ago, kids in classrooms were taught the color of their skin was their most important characteristic -- and if they looked a certain way, they were inferior.

Today, kids again are being taught that the color of their skin defines them -- and if they look a certain way, they're an oppressor.

From colleges to corporations to our culture, people are making money and gaining power by pretending we haven't made any progress. By doubling down on the divisions we've worked so hard to heal.

You know this stuff is wrong.

Hear me clearly: America is not a racist country.

It's backwards to fight discrimination with different discrimination.

And it's wrong to try to use our painful past to dishonestly shut down debates in the present.

The photo on the right in Hall Harper's post is Sen. Scott. A reverse image search links the image on the left to the homepage of black-face.com, where it is an illustration in a series of negative stereotypes of African Americans with the caption: "The Buck is a large Black man who is proud, sometimes menacing, and always interested in White women." A further reverse image search on Yandex.com suggests that it was based on the following 1907 poster, reversed and converted to grayscale:

That's African-American comedian, bandleader, and impresario Billy King (1875 - 1951). King wrote, produced, and directed musicals, and led a touring company called the Billy King Road Show, which evolved into the legendary Oklahoma City Blue Devils big band, which in turn spawned the Count Basie Orchestra.

Although Hall Harper did not elaborate on her remark, it could be inferred that she disapproved of Sen. Scott's speech, regarding him as a negative stereotype, a traitor to his race, inauthentic. The term "Sambo" traces back to the book The Story of Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman, originally a fable set in India, in which a boy outwits a group of tigers, who turn into ghee. Illustrations used for American editions of the book drew on negative stereotypes of African Americans, and the name Sambo itself became a derogatory term, even without the "Little Black" prefix.

(In 2020, in response to a petition drive, the original and last surviving location of the Sambo chain of pancake restaurants changed its name to Chad's. The chain used illustrations depicting the Sambo story with an Indian character. All but a few locations of the chain had dropped the name in the early 1980s. Tulsa had a Sambo's at 31st and Sandusky, which was converted to a Goldie's Patio Grill location decades ago. The Goldie's location, which retained many of the original Sambo's furnishings, closed with the pandemic in March 2020 and has not reopened since.)

Many more leftists on social media labeled Sen. Scott an "Uncle Tim," a play on his first name and the term "Uncle Tom," used over the last half century as a slur against African Americans who object to leftist social policies. So many people used the derogatory term that it became a trending topic on Twitter for nearly 12 hours until the social media platform was shamed into removing it.

Councilor Hall Harper has not yet, however, been shamed into removing her post about Sen. Scott. Her juxtaposition of photos of Billy King and Tim Scott inadvertently reinforces Scott's assertion of America's significant progress toward reconciliation and racial equality. Despite his great talents, King's career was limited by unjust discrimination, both official and unofficial. Today, the color of one's skin is no barrier to achieving the highest position in any field, whether as President of the United States, the billionaire head of a media conglomerate, a U. S. Senator from a state once known for slavery and discrimination, or even the chairman of the Tulsa City Council.

On Wednesday, April 28, 2021, the Tulsa City Council approved a massive rewrite of the city's animal ordinance (Title 2), which covers everything from pets to livestock to homing pigeons, at its regular 5 p.m. meeting. But the update didn't make any changes to the rules for raising chickens in residential areas, despite much input from citizens hoping to introduce best practices from other cities which line up with the practicalities of raising a healthy home flock.

The draft ordinance was developed by a commission of socially connected non-experts (with one exception), led by former Democrat Mayor Susan Savage. That draft passed through the Council committee process the previous two Wednesdays, and a few councilors proposed significant amendments. In the end, the revision didn't touch the poultry rules, was passed unanimously without debate, and with only one comment from the public.

The agenda item for the revised animal ordinance had three files linked, which I've uploaded here for future reference.

• The new Title 2, as approved by the City Council
• The new Title 2, using markup to show insertions and deletions from the previous ordinance.
• Summary of changes to Title 2, updated by City Council staff

You can watch the entirety of Wednesday's meeting, a mere 40 minutes long, on Facebook and (eventually) on the City of Tulsa video on demand platform.

The new ordinance was delayed for over a year to the CCP Bat Virus; the commission had completed its work just before everything was shut down for the pandemic. In March 2020, BatesLine published an essay by Tina Nettles, on the Tulsa Animal Welfare Commission's contempt for the input of ordinary Tulsans who are knowledgeable about animals. Nettles, a writer and Tulsa resident, raises chickens in her backyard for the eggs as part of an effort to improve her family's self-sufficiency: She also grows vegetables and has a number of dwarf fruit trees in her backyard -- a lot typical for their 1950s midtown neighborhood. She and a group of her fellow backyard chicken farmers took every opportunity to share their input and expertise with the commission, to clear up misconceptions, and to point the commission to better ordinances in use in our peer cities. All to no avail -- their input was ignored.

After the commission completed its draft ordinance, the focus shifted to the City Council. While a couple of councilors were willing to give Tulsa's chicken owners a hearing, many seem to have closed their minds. A Public Radio Tulsa report on last week's Council committee meeting on the chicken rules and explains why councilors were unable to agree on changes relating to poultry. The following comments were in response to Democrat District 4 Councilor Kara Joy McKee's proposal to reduce the required minimum distance between a chicken coop and the nearest home from 35 feet (the distance in the current proposal) to 25 feet, to give residents on smaller lots the opportunity to raise chickens if they choose. The dismissive attitudes on display ought to dismay every Tulsan across the political spectrum.

[Democrat] District 7 Councilor Lori Decter Wright said cutting the minimum distance even more isn't a good idea.

"In our cul-de-sac neighborhoods especially, 25 feet in a cul-de-sac, every backyard could have a chicken coop. That's not going to be clean or safe," Decter Wright said.

It's highly doubtful that large numbers of residents of Decter Wright's district in south Tulsa are going to raise chickens in their backyard, much less a whole cul-de-sac full. Most of the neighborhoods in her district have large enough lots that the higher minimum distance wouldn't prevent everyone who wanted chickens from having them, but the higher distances would pose a problem to homeowners on smaller lots in less affluent districts.

[Democrat] District 5 Councilor Mykey Arthrell-Knezek said less than 35 feet didn't fly with Animal Welfare Commission Chair and former Mayor Susan Savage.

"When I proposed a 30-foot, Mayor Savage said no way. She was, like, '35 minimum,'" Knezek said.

Now, I credit Arthrell-Knezek with listening to chicken owners and proposing amendments to make the laws line up with best practices (as you'll see in the next paragraph). But this comment reveals an attitude that cripples democracy in Tulsa: The idea that elected city councilors need the permission of bureaucrats, appointed board members, or lobbyists to set policy. Susan Savage hasn't been mayor since 2002. She was appointed to lead the committee that reviewed the animal ordinance. Savage has no expertise in this area. With one exception (Christine Kunzweiler, wife of the DA and a veterinarian), none of Mayor Bynum IV's appointees to the Tulsa Animal Welfare Commission have any expertise, as I detailed in my intro to Tina Nettles's essay.

In any event, the Commission's work is over, they've made their recommendation, and now it's the Council's power and obligation to modify the recommendation or reject it altogether in the interest of the ordinary Tulsans who can't afford to hire lobbyists and don't have social connections like Savage & Co. The only lever most of us have over city government is our vote. If the City Council has been gaslit into believing that they must defer to unelected experts, our influence is limited to selecting which person gets to draw a salary to be a rubber stamp.

Arthrell-Knezek has also proposed allowing people to have up to 10 adult birds and doing away with a ban on roosters older than eight weeks, but some councilors would like to refine that. [Democrat] District 3 Councilor Crista Patrick said she wants to see a limit of one rooster per flock of hens.

"Only to avoid in my neck of the woods, we have less-than-honorable people that like to engage in cockfighting, and I do not want them to legally be able to say, 'I'm allowed to have 10 roosters at a time,'" Patrick said.

Cockfighting is already against the law. Those who are already breaking the law to hold cockfights have already found a way around rooster limits, but rooster limits hurt people raising chickens to feed their families.

The eight-week limit is problematic because chicks don't get big enough by that time to be harvested for meat (except for the commercial, factory-farm raised breed). This has been explained to the Animal Welfare Commission and the city councilors by the backyard chicken growers, but the commission ignored their input and most of the council seems ready to do the same.

Patrick's district primarily covers northeast Tulsa. District 8 Councilor Phil Lakin said his constituents have an entirely different perspective.

"For some reason, people in my area -- maybe because we're just more urban down in south Tulsa, there's not very much open space -- they're not very keen on -- the ones at least who have responded to me so far, I'll get a completely different reaction probably as I say this -- are just not keen on allowing any roosters whatsoever," Lakin said.

It seems unlikely to me that the residents of one of Tulsa's wealthiest council districts are likely to want to raise chickens to feed their families. I suspect that homeowners' association rules and deed restrictions would prevent it even if the law allowed it. Lakin's reaction points the problem with one-size-fits-all policies for a city as geographically large and economically diverse as Tulsa. Nearly all of our peer regional cities have a zoning tool often known as a neighborhood conservation district, a concept I've been championing for more than two decades, which allows customizing land use rules to protect the character of an established neighborhood.

Lakin's comment also reveals an atrophied view of liberty. Because his constituents don't want the option to raise chickens, no one in Tulsa should have it. Easy for the head of a multi-billion-dollar foundation to say.

If you're wondering why there was only one public comment on this massive change to city law: Using COVID-19 as a justification, the Council allows public comment to be submitted only via email or audio recording via phone by 5 pm the day before the meeting, as described in today's agenda. (You could still email your councilor at distX@tulsacouncil.org, replacing the X with the district number, but those comments won't be presented as part of the public meeting.)

One problem with this approach is that members of the public cannot adjust their remarks in response to previous comments, official presentations, or the demeanor of the councilors. When making live comments, it's possible to say, "I agree with what the previous speaker said, and here are some additional arguments in favor of this view," or "Let me clarify what the previous speaker was trying to say." Without the ability to react to other speakers, public comments are apt to repeat the same points over and over again, and the councilors are apt to tune them out. When commenting at an in-person public meeting, you could make eye contact with each of the councilors, even address each by name if you sense attention is drifting. Remote meetings eliminate this avenue for citizen influence, along with the power of filling the gallery of the council chamber with angry citizens, applauding and booing.

A Facebook post from Bob Wills' Texas Playboys under the direction of Jason Roberts:

Many of you have asked about the annual Bob Wills Birthday Bash at the historic Cain's Ballroom. We have been working with the folks at Cain's for the past couple months trying to figure out a sensible way to make it work. Simply put, the protocols in place in the city of Tulsa would limit our capacity severely, not to mention the inability to dance. We are still hopeful something can be done in 2021 and we'll keep you posted. The 2020 birthday bash was the last full capacity event held at Cain's Ballroom. One thing we're certain of though - we're planning a bigger and better Bob Wills Birthday Bash for the weekend of March 5, 2022. So make your plans now and come dance with us. Let's all do our part to get venues like Cains Ballroom back to full capacity sooner than later.

Doesn't sound like there's going to be anything at Cain's Ballroom for the weekend of Bob Wills Birthday. (Wills was born on March 6, 1905.) But if you want to hear the Texas Playboys next week, you can drive down to Billy Bob's Texas in Fort Worth on Thursday, March 4, 2021, for the Texas Cowboy Hall of Fame induction ceremony, where Bob Wills will be one of seven to be honored. The Texas Playboys will be performing after the ceremony.

Bob Wills' Texas Playboys under the direction of Jason Roberts will be playing immediately upon the conclusion of this induction ceremony at Billy Bob's Texas. We are honored to be asked to help induct Bob Wills as well as the other deserving inductees into this great institution. Only a few tables and seats left. It will be a great night. Join us.

It's a little pricey at $150 per person, but that's for the entire evening, including cocktails, a silent auction, "cowboy cuisine," and the Texas Playboys. Billy Bob's is taking many precautions against the Chinese Communist Bat Virus, operating at half capacity, using a non-intrusive thermal camera to spot people who may be running a fever as they enter, requiring hand sanitizer and masks (except at your table), and enforcing social distancing. Dancing will be limited to 30 people at a time, but dancing will be allowed.

If Fort Worth can allow venues to reopen and special events to occur, surely Tulsa could as well.

If nothing else, Bob Wills' Birthday Bash could be turned into the Bob Wills Birthday Protest against Repressive City Policies. One can protest while two-stepping, can't one?

Polls are open today until 7 p.m. The Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter tool will let you know where to vote and will show you a sample of the ballot you'll see.

Below are my thoughts on some of the races in the Oklahoma school board primary election and Tulsa County special election on February 9, 2021. (The entry is post-dated to keep it at the top.) This isn't the usual ballot card, mainly because I don't feel I can make strong recommendations in any of these races. Part of my reluctance stems from the apparent reluctance of most candidates to offer a specific platform or even to offer specific criticisms of the governmental entities they seek to govern.

In an earlier entry, I provided links to candidate websites, social media profiles, and candidate forums for elections and bond issues on the February 9, 2021, ballot in Tulsa County. Candidates are very careful nowadays to scrub social media of anything controversial -- or even anything interesting. Campaign websites have turned into the online equivalent of the photo that came with the picture frame -- pleasantly generic.

At the other end of the turnpike, Oklahoma City, Edmond, and Norman have city council races on the ballot, and there is a special primary (both Democrat and Republican) to fill the State Senate District 22 seat vacated by U. S. Rep. Stephanie Bice. The group Unite Norman, which emerged to oppose radical anti-police sentiment on the City Council, has endorsed a slate of five candidates. The Daily Oklahoman asked the 18 candidates running in 3 Oklahoma City wards about police funding, crisis counselors, and mask mandates. Jake Merrick, interviewed here, has the backing of my conservative friends in central Oklahoma and is part of a "Liberty Ticket" running for legislative, school, and city office in Edmond.

Campaign contributions often tell a story about a candidate's ideological leanings or close ties with local power brokers. Campaign expenditures can be telling, too. Unfortunately, our state legislators have made this harder for us to find than it should be. While statewide, legislative, and judicial candidates file their required ethics reports electronically with the Oklahoma Ethics Commission, school board candidates file their reports with the school district clerk, county candidates file theirs with the county election board, and municipal candidates with the town or city clerk. Ideally, all of the recipients of ethics reports would immediately scan and post them on the website, but usually one has to file an Open Records request, and which may or may not receive an answer between the ethics report due date and the election a week later. The Tulsa County Election Board is always very quick to respond to my email requests. The Tulsa City Clerk's office is usually prompt about posting all reports online shortly after they are received. I submitted an Open Records request through the Tulsa Public Schools website on Thursday -- three days after the reporting deadline. (I was able to obtain a copy of Judith Barba's report from someone who had requested that report only from TPS a few days earlier.)

Tulsa County Treasurer: Three candidates filed for the seat, but the only Democrat dropped out, so the vacancy left by the sudden retirement of long-time County Treasurer Dennis Semler will be filled in today's special Republican primary.

When former County Assessor Ken Yazel retired, he didn't run for re-election, and four Republicans filed to replace him, which made for a vigorous contest and a meaningful choice for the voters. Semler arranged his departure to benefit his handpicked successor.

John Fothergill has been serving as acting treasurer since Semler's resignation in September. Fothergill had been Chief Deputy to Democrat County Commissioner Karen Keith, was hired by Semler as First Deputy (behind the Chief Deputy) on January 1, 2020, then became Chief Deputy on May 1, 2020, when the previous Chief Deputy, Steve Blue retired, then became acting treasurer when Semler retired. During the Tulsa 912 Forum, Fothergill related that he had planned to run for County Commission District 2, but had become burned out on constituent service, and decided to accept Semler's offer to succeed him. (Fothergill discussed this at the Tulsa County Treasurer forum, about 15 minutes in to the recording.)

Fothergill's rise as Semler's chosen heir is worrisome to me. Semler was not a friend of transparency in his role as a member of the county budget board. When then-County Assessor Ken Yazel pushed to account for all county funds, including earmarked funds that were exempt from the budget process, Semler was on the other side of the issue. Based on Fothergill's comments, Semler had plans to retire going back at least into 2019, just a few months after taking office for his seventh term, but Semler kept his plans hidden from the public. A press release announcing Semler's retirement was issued on September 29, 2020, just a day before his resignation was effective. Fothergill filed his statement of organization on September 8.

Joe Hart, on the ballot as Francis Joseph Hart II, has been active in the Tulsa County Republican Men's Club and as a volunteer for Republican candidates. He is an Eagle Scout. Hart seems like a sincere and decent person, motivated in part by the admirable sentiment that no one should run unopposed. But he doesn't appear to have had a plan to fund and run a campaign with a chance of winning.

Last Tuesday, February 2, 2021, the morning after pre-primary campaign finance reports were due, I checked with the Tulsa County Election Board, and only Fothergill's statement of organization had been filed the previous September. I contacted both candidates shortly before 2 p.m.: Hart told me he did not raise or spend enough money to be required to file. Fothergill told me that he "was out of town at a conference as the Treasurer and just got back. I drove straight to the election board and filed the documents." He sent me cell phone pictures of the filings; according to election board timestamps these were filed at 2:58 pm on February 2, 2021.

Here are all of Fothergill's campaign finance reports for the campaign. Fothergill received a $500 contribution from the Bank of Oklahoma Finance (BOKF) PAC; the "vast majority" of Tulsa County deposits, according to Fothergill, are held by Bank of Oklahoma.

Friends who have worked closely with Fothergill when he was on staff at the City Council speak very highly of him. He has plans in mind to increase transparency and efficiency, plans that he thought should wait until he had been elected to the office in his own right, rather than as a caretaker. He supports televising the Tulsa County Budget Board meetings. At the Tulsa County Treasurer forum, Fothergill professed support for competitive bidding for bond issues for county entities, which is routinely waived, although he noted that bond issues are under the control of the Board of County Commissioners; presumably he was referring to their role as the board of the Tulsa County Industrial Authority. As he is almost certain to win, my hope is that Fothergill will use the relationships and good will he has already built at the county courthouse to follow through on his stated commitment to transparency, particularly with regard to the county budget.

Tulsa School Board, Office No. 2: This is an open seat. If no one gets 50% today, there will be a runoff between the top two candidates in April. All three candidates are registered Democrats. None of the candidates are conservative.

Judith Barba, Community Leadership & Mobilization Manager for Growing Together, a non-profit supported by the George Kaiser Family Foundation, has the financial backing of many Tulsa establishment figures, including former Mayor Kathy Taylor ($1,000) and her husband Bill Lobeck ($1,000), former board member and Educare director Cindy Decker, Stacy Schusterman ($1,000) and Lynn Schusterman ($1,000), and GKFF Executive Director Ken Levit ($250), which leads me to believe she will be a rubber stamp for the foundations and Superintendent Gist. Departing board member Jania Wester's campaign account contributed $ 2,304.85. (Here is a PDF of Judith Barba's campaign contributions and expenditures reports.) During last week's TCTA candidate forum, Barba had to have several questions translated for her and was unable to reply in English to several questions, which raises doubts about Barba's ability to participate fully in board meetings.

From her social media posts, it seems that Theresa Hinman and I are far apart on national political issues. Her conversation is full of identity politics lingo, which is worrisome. At the same time, it's apparent that Hinman is a devout Christian, a member of First Baptist Church, and a founder of Circle of Nations, a ministry to Native Americans in Oklahoma. I admire Hinman's willingness to challenge the school administration over the past year for their use (or misuse) of Federal funds earmarked for Indian education. She demonstrates an energetically skeptical mindset and pledges to building a kitchen cabinet of advisors who will help her analyze specific issues; for example, she mentioned a district resident who would help her analyze issues involving district real estate and facilities. She wants to bring accountability measures to bear on the expensive consultants that TPS hires (often with foundation grants). Her drive and initiative would be a welcome addition to the board, and I could imagine her working closely with Jerry Griffin to ask salient questions at board meetings and to develop a strategic plan for the district.

Marsha Francine Campbell is a 17-year veteran teacher in Tulsa Public Schools. She is probably the best equipped of the three to speak to how best to attract, respect, and retain teachers, and her answers seemed reasonable. Campbell would be a better choice than Barba, but Hinman's positive but critically inquisitive attitude is what district taxpayers, parents, and students need most at the moment.

Owasso City Council, Ward 2: There are two candidates for the open seat. Pastor Alvin Fruga is to be commended for his willingness to answer questions on his Facebook page, but it's clear from this Q&A session that Fruga would be a rubber stamp for the current city administration. Fruga offered no criticism of the current councilors and defended the city's long-term subsidy of the Bailey Ranch golf course. Likewise, Kyle Davis, a loan officer for Community Bank, offered only vague replies to some specific questions about his views on city policies and no criticism of the current council or city manager. Owasso used to have a couple of city councilors who would ask tough questions and push for accountability. That no longer appears to be the case and doesn't look to change, no matter who wins this seat.

Owasso School Board Office No. 2: Kristin Vivar has been endorsed by Oklahoma Republican Party Chairman David McLain and by Oklahomans for Health and Parental Rights.

Tulsa Technology Center Board Office No. 6: It puzzles me that there should be so little noise about a rematch between the incumbent board member and the previous incumbent, in a board district where 70,000 voters live across eastern Tulsa County and western Wagoner County, for a seat on a board that controls hundreds of millions of dollars in real estate and annual budget (good luck finding the budget or CAFR; here's the most recent audit, from 2018). Perhaps Whelpley (the current incumbent) and Kroutter (the former incumbent) each have their small platoons of voters that they will quietly turn out via phone, without arousing the interest of the rest of the electorate.

TIP JAR: If you appreciate the many hours of research that went into this guide and into the rest of my election coverage, and if you'd like to help keep this site online, you can contribute to BatesLine's upkeep via PayPal. In addition to keeping me caffeinated, donated funds pay for web hosting, subscriptions, and paid databases I use for research. Many thanks to those generous readers who have already contributed.

This coming Tuesday, February 9, 2021, Oklahoma voters will vote in school board primaries, some municipal primaries, school bond issues, and special elections.

Early voting will be available tomorrow, Thursday, February 4, and Friday, February 5, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Because there are no state or federal offices on the ballot, there won't be any early voting hours on Saturday. Early voting sites are typically at the county election board, which is the case in Tulsa and surrounding counties, but there are a few exceptions.

Tulsa County Republican voters will choose a new County Treasurer to replace Dennis Semler, who retired last fall. (One Democrat filed for the seat, but withdrew, so the winner of the two-man primary will be elected.)

School board seats will only be on this Tuesday's non-partisan primary ballot if three or more candidates filed for the office. Seats that drew only two candidates will be on the April 6 general election ballot, along with any runoffs from this Tuesday. In Tulsa County, there are primaries for Tulsa Schools Office 2, and Collinsville and Owasso Office 1. Tulsa Tech Center Office 6 has a two-candidate election -- Tech Centers weren't included in the legislation that moved two-candidate elections to the general.

Jenks Public Schools patrons will vote on two bond issues, and there is a two-man race for Owasso Ward 2 councilor.

Here are some links and info about the candidates:

Tulsa County Treasurer:

• John M. Fothergill (R), 47, Sand Springs. (Registered to vote as John Marion Fothergill.) Served as Tulsa City Council Director of Constituent Services, chief deputy to Democrat County Commissioner Karen Keith, chief deputy to Republican County Treasurer Dennis Semler. Became acting County Treasurer after Semler's resignation last fall. Website. Campaign Facebook page. Personal Facebook profile. LinkedIn profile.
• Francis Joseph Hart III (R), 39, Broken Arrow. Better known as Joe Hart. Active as a volunteer for Republican candidates and the county GOP. Website. Campaign Facebook page. Personal Facebook profile. Photography business website. Photography business Facebook page. LinkedIn profile.

On February 1, 2021, Tulsa 912 Project held a forum for the candidates for Tulsa County Treasurer.

Tulsa Public Schools, Board Member - Office No. 2:

• Marsha Francine Campbell (D), 65. Campaign Facebook group. Personal Facebook profile. Earlier Facebook profile. Still earlier Facebook profile. LinkedIn profile.
• Theresa Hinman (D), 52. (Registered to vote as Theresa Marie Hinman.) Twitter account. Campaign Facebook page. Personal Facebook profile. Business Facebook page. LinkedIn profile. TalkJive.org intervew
• Judith Barba (D), 30. (Registered to vote as Judith Barba Perez.) Campaign Facebook page. Personal Facebook profile.

On February 2, 2021, Tulsa Classroom Teachers' Association held a forum for
candidates for Office 2, on Tuesday's ballot, and Office 3, which will not be on the ballot until April.

City Of Owasso, Council Member, Ward 2:

• Alvin D. Fruga (R), 58. (Registered as Alvin Darryl Fruga.) Campaign website. Campaign Facebook page. Personal ministry website. Church website. Personal Facebook profile. Personal Twitter account. LinkedIn profile.
• Kyle Davis (R), 39. (Registered as Kyle Andrew Davis.) Campaign Facebook page. Personal Facebook profile. LinkedIn profile.

Incumbent Owasso City Councilor Chris Kelley is not running for re-election.

Collinsville Public Schools, Board Member, Office No. 1:

• James R. Roderick (R), 62. (Registered as James Randall Roderick.) Campaign Facebook page. Personal Facebook profile. LinkedIn profile. Archived business website. Archived consulting website.
• Tim Reed (R), 63. (Registered as Timothy N. Reed.) Incumbent since 2013. Campaign Facebook page. LinkedIn profile.
• Ryan Flanary (R), 40. (Registered as Ryan Dean Flanary.) Personal Facebook profile. Business website.

Owasso Public Schools, Board Member, Office No. 1:

• Rick Lang (I), 42. (Registered as Richard Joseph Lang.) Campaign Twitter account. Campaign Facebook page. Personal Facebook page.
• Kristin Vivar (R), 42. (Registered as Kristin A. Vivar.) Campaign website. Campaign Facebook Page. Personal Facebook profile.
• Lisa M. Anderson (R), 48. (Registered as Lisa Marie Anderson.) Campaign Facebook page. Personal Facebook page.
• Lynn Cagle (D), 70. (Registered as Marguerita Lynn Cagle.) Campaign Facebook page.
• Stephanie Ruttman (D), 42. (Registered as Stephanie Kenkaye Ruttman.) Campaign website. Campaign Facebook page. Personal Facebook profile.

Incumbent school board member Pat Vanatta is not running for re-election. More information on this race from Owasso Chapter of Parent Voice Oklahoma, Compilation of Owasso School Board Candidates, and Owasso Rams Hand in Hand.

Tulsa Technology Center, Board Member, Office No. 6:

• Paul J. Kroutter, Jr. (R), 67. (Registered as Paul Joseph Kroutter, Jr.) Held the seat from 2004-2014. Archived board member page. Personal Facebook profile. Faculty page at University of Arkansas at Fort Smith. LinkedIn profile.
• Sharon A. Whelpley (R), 76. (Registered as Sharon Ann Whelpley.) Incumbent, first elected 2014. Board member page. Personal Facebook profile.

Jenks Public Schools bond issues:

• Proposition No. 1: $15,060,000 general obligation bond issue for school facilities.
• Proposition No. 2: $1,045,000 general obligation bond issue for transportation equipment.

Here is a PDF sample ballot for the Jenks Public Schools bond issues, and the disclosure of currently outstanding Jenks Public Schools bond issues required by the Bond Transparency Act. Jenks currently has five outstanding general obligation bond issues, with $96,885,000 in outstanding principal, and another $97,100,000 in "unissued building bonds authorized at an election held on the 10th day of February 2015." (Original link to BTA disclosure on JPS website.)

In a recent public letter, Michael Wallis, historian of Route 66, Oklahoma, and the American West, has called on Tulsa government leaders to keep the Midland Valley Pedestrian Bridge over the Arkansas River. Wallis was a member of the advisory committee that considered designs for a replacement for the bridge, but he urges preservation of the historic Midland Valley bridge

Wallis writes that Tulsa's apathy toward historic preservation was apparent even as he and his wife decided to make Tulsa their home in the early 1980s:

In 1980, while working as a Time-Life correspondent, I visited Tulsa and spent almost a week roaming the city. I was impressed by what I encountered.

Yet, I came away thinking more could be done to preserve Tulsa's past. It was apparent more attention was needed to highlight the Art Deco architecture, legendary Route 66 and the corridor along the Arkansas River.

Here's the saddest (and the most Tulsa) part of the letter:

At one of our sessions, I said that perhaps we should reconsider removing the pedestrian bridge, if only because of its historic significance.

In the end, however, the design was selected that some of us knew from the get-go would be chosen from the start.

This is an experience that countless Tulsa citizens have had on city boards and commissions or in public hearings. Their input is solicited and encouraged, but then promptly discarded, as Tina Nettles learned earlier this year when she and other backyard chicken owners tried to offer their expertise to the framers of a new animal ordinance.

The selected design was presented by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, the firm that designed The Gathering Place for the George Kaiser Family Foundation.

Wallis concludes:

I still believe there is a place for the old bridge. We cannot save everything, but we must preserve at least examples of our past.

Hopefully, that can happen again.

To make that happen again, sign the petition to save the Midland Valley Pedestrian Bridge at pedbridge.com, then contact the Mayor's office and your city councilor and urge them to stop the demolition of the bridge.

From the Oklahoma Taxpayer Alliance, news on the vindication of the late Owasso City Councilor Patrick Ross in his fight to release a report investigating alleged wrongdoing by City Manager Rodney Ray, whose 20-year tenure ended in 2013 under an ethical cloud but with a hefty severance package from the City Council. Posted here with their permission:

THE OKLAHOMA STATE SUPREME COURT RULED...PATRICK ROSS WAS RIGHT

In August 2013 then city councilor Patrick Ross filled a lawsuit against the City of Owasso for refusing to release the "Fortney Report" which was an investigation into the alleged criminal actions of former city manager Rodney Ray. In 2017 District Court of Tulsa County ruled in the city's favor. Mr. Ross then appealed this decision to the Court of Civil Appeals.

On April 30, 2020, a three-judge panel from the Court of Civil Appeals unanimously ruled that the "Fortney Report" concerning the investigation of former city manager Rodney Ray shall be released and made public.

The judges who sat for this hearing were Judge Thomas Thornbrough (Presiding Judge), Special Judge John Reif and Judge Jane Wiseman. Special Judge Reif served on the Oklahoma State Supreme Court from 2007-2019 and was the Chief Justice for the Supreme Court from 2015-2016.

In their fourteen-page ruling the judges not only explained why the report was not an internal personnel matter protected from being made public by the Open Records Act (ORA) but they also spent time reviewing why Mr. Ray was paid a severance package in violation of his employment contract.

WE FLATLY DISAGREE

Rodney Ray
Owasso City Manager
1985-1998, 2001-2013

THE LEGITIMACY OF THE MAYOR AND CITY COUNCIL

In closing the judges stated "The balance of this case clearly favors disclosure. The ORA request is evidently not one motivated by mere curiosity into a personnel matter, or some general desire to broadly monitor the workings of government. It involves a high profile employee in an official position, not routine day-to-day personnel employment matters. It involves specific questions of why the City Manager, who was accused of misconduct, was granted a substantial severance package, paid for by the taxpayers of Owasso, instead of being fired. In short it is a 'core' Open Records matter going directly to the questions of the legitimacy of the Mayor and City Council's good governance and use of funds, and the citizens' inherent political power to inquire into these matters. City identifies no valid privacy, state, or public interest in withholding the Report. As such, we find that it should be disclosed pursuant to the ORA."

Following the Appeals Court ruling the city appealed the verdict to the Oklahoma State Supreme Court. On November 17, 2020 after reviewing the Court of Civil Appeals ruling the Oklahoma State Supreme Court choose to allow the Court of Civil Appeals ruling to stand.

Patrick Ross
Owasso City Councilor
2011-2014

Many folks over the years have voiced their opposition to Mr. Ross's actions with his lawsuit and he was dragged through the social media mud for doing so. His character and reputation were attacked and he was labeled with numerous slanderous names.

He and his wife spent thousands of their own dollars in attorney fees in order for this fight to continue. Mr. Ross believed in what he was doing and he knew he was on the right side of the law.

If you care anything at all about your government, at any level you should be very thankful for this ruling. It stands at the very foundation of any government agency being transparent about how they spend YOUR tax dollars. Without this type of ruling any government agency could have a free ride at spending taxpayer dollar without any citizen oversight.

We live in a nation where everyone has the right to their own opinion and to be able to state that opinion. And if you feel your rights have been violated, you have the ability to take your case to court to air your grievances and seek justice. Mr. Ross did just that and the courts agreed with him.

Our founding fathers fought with their lives and fortunes in order to bring about this great nation. They left us with a constitution that allows "We the People" to hold government accountable. At a young age Mr. Ross fought for this nation in the US Navy in Vietnam. He continued fighting for his community as a city councilor. And after he was no longer on the city council he continued to use his own money to fight for honest and transparent government.

Makes you wonder what kind of city, state or nation we would have if more people were like Patrick Ross and felt strong enough about honest and transparent government to make a stand and fight...no matter if no one else was fighting with them.

Patrick Ross was a true American warrior and patriot. We could use more people like him.

Court docket files:

• Tulsa County CV-2013-898: Ross v. City of Owasso, the initial suit brought by Councilor Ross to make the Fortney Report available to the public under the Open Records Act.
• SD-115210: Three-judge appellate panel determined that the case would not yet be ripe until the City Council, not just a city employee, rejected Ross's Open Records Act request. Here is the decision in that appeal.
• MA-117599: Appeal to the Oklahoma Supreme Court by one of the defendants
• SD-117321: Appeal by Patrick Ross following the Owasso City Council's action to deny Ross's Open Records Act request.

This is big, but justice delayed is justice denied. It's ridiculous that the process took over seven years to reach a conclusion, during which time the voters of the City of Owasso have been denied an opportunity to evaluate the way their elected representatives handled the accusations of wrongdoing on the part of the longtime City Manager.

(In 2013, Freedom of Information Oklahoma head Joey Senat described Ross's original lawsuit and the abuse of the Open Records and Open Meetings Acts by the pro-Ray majority on the Council alleged in the complaint.)

It took seven years through the courts to reach a fairly tentative decision on whether citizens should know about possible malfeasance by the City Manager and to decide whether the the City Council majority's decision to give him a fat severance package was justifiable or a travesty of justice. In the meantime there have been two full cycles of City Council elections. Owasso Taxpayer Alliance points out that two members of the Council that denied Ross's Open Records request still sit on the Owasso City Council: Doug Bonebrake and Chris Kelley. Ray's internal memo ordering the deletion of video of a police traffic stop of Chris Kelley for suspected DUI was one of the actions that led to his departure as City Manager.

The exemptions in the Open Records and Open Meetings Act for personnel matters are there to protect the clerk who processes your water bill and the worker who fills potholes, the same sort of people who are under Civil Service protections. They exercise little discretion in the conduct of their jobs, and they set no policies.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court voted 6-2 to deny certiorari, and although I'm glad for Carole Ross, the widow of Patrick Ross, that the case is over, I wish the Supreme Court had heard the case. The two dissenting justices, John Kane and Dustin Rowe, questioned the balancing test that was applied by the Court of Civil Appeals panel. Without a Supreme Court ruling on when municipalities must disclose personnel records involving executive city officers, there isn't a precedent on which citizens and municipal governments can rely in the future. The opinion of the Civil Appeals Court has not been published, although the ruling is available through the case docket.

There is a clear distinction to be made between public employees who have limited or no discretion and those who serve in an executive capacity, setting policy and direction for a public body. For officials in the latter category -- city managers, school superintendents, library directors, city attorneys, directors of city departments, and others with executive responsibilities -- their administration (or maladministration) of their duties are matters of clear public interest, and the Legislature should amend the Open Records Act and the Open Meetings Act to reflect this fact, by mandating that personnel records for these officials must be made public and discussions concerning their performance must be held in open session of the relevant council or board.

A clue to the level of executive discretion enjoyed by Rodney Ray: This 2008 snapshot of his page on the City of Owasso website included his State of the City address and the City Manager's vision for Owasso government. That's the sort of thing a Head of State puts out, not a menial functionary.

When I was in college, I worked on a research project for MIT's Urban Planning department. We were investigating the impact of a Massachusetts initiative (Proposition 2 1/2) to limit property tax on municipal government, traveling to different cities and towns to interview local officials about how they were coping. On one of our visits, we had a brief meeting with the uncrowned king of Worcester, Mass., Francis J. McGrath, who was nearing the end of his 34 years as City Manager of the second largest municipality in the Commonwealth. When we were allowed to enter, it was like walking into a throne room. McGrath's longevity seems linked to the public works projects he shepherded, the typical post-war redevelopment that scraped historic neighborhoods and replaced them with highways and new brutalist public facilities, and to his carefully cultivated relationship with the monopoly local newspaper. In the minds of some who served with him, McGrath's successors as city manager have been more openly autocratic and dismissive of the elected city councilors, who appear to have become complacent and passive during McGrath's tenure.

The most powerful man in New York City from the 1930s through the 1960s, Robert Moses, never held an elective office. He was City Parks Commissioner and Chairman of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority, among many other roles, all of them appointed. Surely personnel actions involving someone able to decide the routes of expressways and to clear neighborhoods for public housing are a legitimate matter of public interest and ought to be in the public record.

City managers typically serve at the pleasure of the city council. That can make the role vulnerable to scapegoating by elected officials. If something goes wrong, it's easy for councilors to lay the blame on the city manager and "send him out of the camp." But a canny city manager can find ways to protect his position. It's easy to imagine a corrupt arrangement could occur in which the city manager uses his authority over the city bureaucracy to protect his allies on the council from embarrassment or perhaps to benefit them or their businesses in some other way and at the same time to punish his council detractors. Meanwhile the city manager's council allies continue to keep him employed or, in the event of scandal, provide him with a golden parachute.

The courts have found the City of Owasso liable for court costs and reasonable attorney fees; a hearing to determine that amount has been scheduled for February 11, 2021, in Judge Bill LaFortune's courtroom. Owasso Taxpayer Union estimates the City's liability at $250,000. The City Council is now under a court mandate to release the Fortney Report on the investigation into Rodney Ray's actions.

Resistance is gathering to the plan to demolish the Midland Valley Pedestrian Bridge across the Arkansas River. Although an engineering analysis from 2015 shows that the 110-year-old railroad bridge is safe for its pedestrian use and can be affordably rejuvenated for another century, the Powers That Be want a monumental, starchitect-designed new bridge that will sweep majestically into the new private park on the east bank of the river. The City of Tulsa amputated the eastern landing of the historic bridge to conform to a private entity's preferences for the design of Riverside Drive.

Tulsan Jonathan Pinkey has been leading the charge to preserve and refurbish the Midland Valley bridge. He has initiated an online petition, a website, and a Facebook page as focal points for opposition to replacement of this historic bridge with an inferior substitute.

In April 2016, City of Tulsa voters approved a sales tax to pay for "economic development" projects. Title 43-K, the ordinance controlling the expenditure of those funds, set aside $63,000,000 for "Zink Lake and Related Amenities; Low-Water Dam with Recreational Gates & Flume and New Pedestrian Bridge; Mitigation, Bank Stabilization & Outfall Protection."

The Midland Valley bridge is historical in its own right as a railroad bridge, part of the rail link connecting Wichita and Tulsa with Bixby, Jenks, Glenpool, Muskogee and Fort Smith, but also as the first significant element of today's River Parks system. In 1974, the Missouri Pacific Railroad, which had acquired the Midland Valley in 1964, abandoned the bridge and its tracks north of the bridge. That same year the River Parks Authority was created by the Tulsa City Commission and the Tulsa County Commission, and the MoPac gave the bridge and the right of way to the City of Tulsa. This became the first segment of the Midland Valley Trail, from Riverside Drive to 21st Street. In 1975, the River Parks Authority raised funds with the help of the Tulsa Tribune to create a lower deck for pedestrians which initially extended only halfway across to an upper deck observation platform. These simple steps, connected with an older gravel jogging path from 11th Street to 56th Street on the east bank of the river, were the beginnings of the Arkansas River as a place of recreation for Tulsa residents. (The KRMG Great Raft Race, inaugurated on Labor Day 1973, was an important milestone in that regard.) A few years later, agreements were made with the Texaco Refinery, whose property extended to the west approach of the bridge to allow the completion of the pedestrian underdeck with connection to a west bank trail.

All of these early steps were taken without an added local tax burden. In 1969, Tulsans had rejected, 71%-29%, a bond issue to pay for the grandiose River Lakes Park plan for three low-water dams and a shopping concourse over the river. They also rejected funds for Riverside Expressway, which would have used the Midland Valley right-of-way to link Riverside to the southeast junction of the Inner Dispersal Loop. (My January 2007 Urban Tulsa Weekly feature story on the Arkansas River details the long history of Tulsa's river development proposals.)

I can remember visiting the pedestrian bridge when it was new and only extended halfway. It seems like every couple of weeks our 7th & 8th grade boys' P. E. class would take the school's bus to a more interesting place to run than the usual block around our neighborhood, and the Pedestrian Bridge at River Parks was one of those destinations.

The bridge offers a shaded respite for walkers and runners and great views upstream towards downtown and downstream towards Turkey Mountain.

The Midland Valley bridge is an early Tulsa example of adaptive reuse of historic resources. Tulsa has an unfortunate pattern of preferring to demolish history and build from scratch; this bridge stands as a testament that a better way is possible.

A 2015 engineering report from HNTB provides information that the existing bridge could be renovated for less than the planned cost of building new.

The Tulsa Whirled story on the bridge preservation effort is full of revealing tidbits. As you would expect, the Voice of the Cockroach Caucus is going to devote most space for those who want to spend more money and destroy history in the process.

When City Engineer Paul Zachary talks about the cost of renovating the existing bridge, he's including the price of upgrades -- a newly resurfaced upper deck with approaches for cyclists.

"It was our desire to use the existing bridge, that's what our plan was," Zachary said. "We like the way it looked. It was a neat-looking bridge, but what we had to realize was, if we did rebuild it being the way it was, we would still have a substandard trail width for the pedestrians and not necessarily the (required space) for bicyclists up on top."

Maybe shade and history are more important to Tulsans than trail width and bike lanes.

Another factor to keep in mind, Zachary said, is that the Gateway Bridge is designed not only to complement the Gathering Place design but to flow seamlessly into the park's west entrance. That is not the case for the existing bridge.

Maybe the Gathering Place should have planned around the existing bridge instead of designing for a non-existent bridge.

The HNTB 2015 report estimated a range of $17.5 to $19.9 million which would include the upgrades. Eliminate the upper bicycle deck and, according to a back-of-the-envelope calculation based on the HNTB report, the cost would drop to about $10.5 million, less than half of the $27.4 million budgeted for the new bridge.

It's funny, too, that Zachary is excited about a new bridge with a 75-year design life to replace a bridge that has been standing for about 110 years.

But even with the upper cycling deck, rehabbing the existing bridge is a significant savings over the new bridge, which will lack the shade, wooden decking, and enhanced seating originally promised.

Even at the higher $35 million budget, the new bridge plans didn't include adequate shade.

Tulsa's Gathering Place LLC Director and Trustee Jeff Stava is overseeing the bridge project. He said shade structures on pedestrian bridges are uncommon, and this one would have to be built to withstand winds up to 75 mph.

"The very cheapest shade structure that would be safe ... was around $5 million or $6 million, and that one really didn't provide enough shade. It wasn't a continuous shade. It was really more like if you've ever been under kind of like a pergola," Stava said.

Which is funny because the existing bridge has withstood 110 years of all kinds of weather, including major floods. 45 of those years have been in the current configuration, with the modifications related to the added lower deck.

This planned new bridge is being funded by the public, but all the decisions are being made and the project is being handled by a private institution:

The man managing replacement of Tulsa's Arkansas River pedestrian bridge told a board that oversees sales tax-funded projects its estimated cost has fallen closer in line with its $27 million budget....

The Gathering Place is handling the brige [sic] project on behalf of the City of Tulsa.

Gateway Bridge was designed by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, the same firm that designed the Gathering Place.

Please sign the petition, contact your City Councilor, and show your support for preserving this beloved piece of Tulsa's Arkansas River transportation and recreation heritage.

MORE: The OKBridges website has a page dedicated to the Midland Valley Arkansas River bridge, with photos from before the destruction of the 1937 Riverside Drive viaduct and the easternmost span of the bridge.

Photos copyright 2016 by Michael D. Bates, taken on February 14, 2016, after the start of construction on Riverside Drive and the Gathering Place, when the bridge was still accessible from the west bank. 2016 Tulsa's Arkansas River album on Flickr.

I voted in person yesterday at 9:35. The line was out the door, but not very far, and I slid my ballot into the scanner and was finished in 20 minutes. The other, larger precinct that votes at the same church had a line across the parking lot, but I suspect that many of those people were from my precinct but had just joined the first line they saw. When I drove back by mid-afternoon and toward the end of the day, there were no lines at all, and that was true of other precincts I passed.

We opted for a home watch party -- me, my wife, our younger two kids (the oldest is away in grad school). We started out scanning local stations at 6 pm, as states began to report results, but they were all in local-news mode, and only PBS was covering national results. We couldn't tolerate that for long, so we switched the screen to the computer, and pulled up Fox News on one size and DecisionDeskHQ.com on the other. We had carryout chicken tikka masala from Desi Wok and later snacked on some Plymouth East Meadow Cheddar I'd brought back from a recent visit to Calvin Coolidge's home town and the cheese factory founded by his father and revived by his son.

I did go out at about 8:30 to take pictures of posted results from nearby precincts. Our precinct officials posted the tape in the window, as required, but they allowed enough overlap with a notice posted next to it so that the results for the presidential and U. S. Senate races were hidden by the other piece of paper.

What I could see was encouraging. Although the midtown precincts I checked were fairly evenly divided between Democrat and Republican candidates, State Question 805 was losing by a substantial margin.

While driving around I flipped through the radio stations. KRMG's Dan Potter had current Mayor GT Bynum IV and former Mayor Susan Savage. I wondered on Facebook why KRMG didn't include a Republican in their coverage, but Democrat allies on past city tax and zoning battles reminded me that they didn't include a Democrat either. Both mayors are proud members of the Money Belt Uniparty who may have only a vague idea where the three eastside seats on the ballot are located. Bynum and Savage were both gleeful about the defeat of District 5 Councilor Cass Fahler, the strongest council ally for Tulsa police officers and the strongest opponent of mask mandates. Bynum called Fahler's campaign "lazy," contrasting it with Mykey Arthrell's tireless pursuit of votes. They also sounded thrilled about the re-election of Connie Dodson in District 6 and Lori Decter Wright in District 7.

I thought that Republicans had a good chance at taking two of the three City Council races on the ballot; Dodson had forged a moderate path on police and masks and seemed likely to win re-election. Fahler's re-election was killed by another 2-to-1 early vote advantage; he won election day but lost the total by 347 votes. I have heard that neighborhood social media pages in the northwestern part of the district were extremely hostile to Fahler, particularly over his stance on mask mandates. These seem to be popular areas for progressives who want to live near the city center but can't afford to live any nearer than Yale Ave. District 6 wasn't close; challenger Christian Bengel was badly underfunded, and the FOP had endorsed incumbent Dodson very early in the race. Wright's challenger Justin Van Kirk poured a ton of his own money into the race, narrowly won among election day voters, but lost by about 1600 votes because of Decter Wright's 3-1 early voting ratio.

Here is a problem with non-partisan city elections on the same ballot as highly partisan races like President and Senate: Voters mark the straight-party line (as Republicans were encouraging voters to do), but that doesn't cast a vote for allegedly non-partisan council races. On such a long ballot, with as many as 18 items for some voters, a non-partisan race at the very end is easy to ignore, and it's easy to vote for the familiar name.

It's apparent that the Tulsa County Democratic Party has been taking local elections seriously and helping Democrats seeking local non-partisan office. The Tulsa County Republican Party needs to follow suit, to work on local races throughout the election cycle, identifying and recruiting potential candidates who support the GOP's values and policy aims, clearing the path for good candidates (perhaps by conducting an endorsing convention to decide among multiple Republican contenders), and connecting them with money and volunteers. The Tulsa GOP needs to be monitoring the performance of our city, county, and school officials, with reporters at every meeting, recording and highlighting examples of bad judgment and favoritism. It's not enough to get busy in the last few months before an election. The Oklahoma GOP's dominance in the legislature was built by party officials back in the late '90s and early 2000s by men like 1st Congressional District Chairman Don O'Nesky, 2nd District Chairman Bob Hudspeth, 4th District Chairman Steve Fair, and State Chairman Gary Jones, who identified candidates from among local leaders, respected by their communities, not necessarily active in politics, but who had a conservative outlook on public policy. The candidates who will put themselves forward aren't always the best positioned to run a serious race or to govern well; a party's job is to identify good candidates, encourage them to run, and facilitate their efforts with resources.

Back at the house: Fox's reluctance to call states that were obviously in Trump's column and out of reach for Biden (like Texas and Florida) got frustrating after a while, and we switched to Newsmax, then eventually to the Daily Wire for their running commentary.

The four of us were doing our own results reporting, each digging into county-by-county results on DecisionDeskHQ.com on our own computers and sharing interesting finds, while listening for commentary or breaking news. I enjoyed using the map results on the Oklahoma State Election Board results page to drill down to the precinct level to see which precincts were still outstanding and the patterns of support for each candidate. The only big flaw is that it doesn't show different colors in the non-partisan races, so there's no easy way to tell where 805 won and lost or which Tulsa City Council candidates won which precinct.

We stayed up long enough to see Trump apparently about to win Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, and suddenly the numbers stopped updating. There were reports that vote counting would stop in Philadelphia and in Atlanta, an obvious move to wait for downstate votes to finish coming in so corrupt big-city machine officials could manufacture enough ballots to tip the states to Biden, the same way Kennedy won Illinois in 1960. We all headed to bed shortly thereafter.

Jamison Faught at Muskogee Politico has a map-filled post on the Oklahoma results. Trump and Inhofe won all 77 counties. This is the fifth presidential election in a row that the Republican nominee has swept the state, although the margin in Oklahoma County was only 3400 votes. Democrats lost their last three rural seats in the State House, plus two in Oklahoma County. Republicans now control the House by 82-19 and the Senate by 39-9, and all of the Democrat seats are in the two biggest cities (OKC and Tulsa) and college towns (Norman and Stillwater). This is almost a complete reversal from the situation in the early 1990s, when rural districts (except northwest Oklahoma's wheat country) were solidly Democrat and nearly all Republican seats were in Tulsa and OKC and their suburbs.

I was disappointed to see the defeat of Republican Cheryl Baber in Senate District 35, a seat that had been held for 32 years by conservative Republicans (Don Rubottom, Jim Williamson, Gary Stanislawski), and before that by long-serving moderate Republican Warren Green. Baber had survived a bruising primary and runoff with establishment-backed Kyden Creekpaum. Although Creekpaum endorsed Baber in the general election (wisely so if he hopes to have a future in Oklahoma Republican politics), the endorsement came late in the game, and Democrat Jo Ann Dossett had racked up a two-to-one advantage in absentee-by-mail ballots, 7402 to 3723. Baber dominated election day voting, but fell short by 638 votes. The same pattern can be seen in the Tulsa County Commission race and in several vulnerable Democrat seats. Republicans are going to have to match and surpass the Democrats efforts in early voting, and to plan for targeting voters soon after the ballot is set.

Massive early voting allows well-funded candidates to target and influence voters and lock in their votes before the candidate with fewer dollars, who delays mailers until closer to election day to make her money stretch as far as possible, has put any information in front of the voters. One of the saddest news items in this election season was a surge of searches on the question "Can I change my vote?" after the second presidential debate.

Pat Campbell with Daryl Simmons and Jarrin Jackson, on Election Day 2020. Photo from TalkRadio1170.com

Introduced by Aerosmith's "Back in the Saddle," Pat Campbell, long-time morning host on Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ, was back on the air this morning after a four-week absence. He was in studio for the full three hours with regular guests Jarrin Jackson and Darryl Simmons, discussing today's election and taking calls.

Pat reported that his absence was the result of voice problems caused by being intubated following a seizure. The intubation left him sounding, he said, like Carol Channing. He went through weeks of physical therapy to restore his vocal performance and allow him to return to the airwaves. He is still clear of cancer; earlier this year, a seizure revealed three cancerous brain tumors, which were surgically removed and followed with a course of chemotherapy and radiation.

Pat expressed his gratitude for the prayers and encouragement of his listeners. He was strongly motivated to come back this morning both to reconnect with his audience and to voice his strong opposition to State Question 805, the pro-career-criminal amendment to the Oklahoma Constitution backed with millions of dollars from out-of-state leftist organizations.

Pat is a great friend of BatesLine, and it was wonderful to be able to speak with him during today's 8 o'clock hour. His voice has been sorely missed, particularly during these critical weeks before the election, but we're blessed to have him back in the saddle again to guide us through whatever its aftermath brings.

A little diversion from all the political stuff: I just came across a fascinating unpublished 1981 interview with Smoky Dacus (1911-2001), the original drummer for Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. The interview was conducted by Scott K. Fish for Modern Drummer magazine. Dacus tells of his early days growing up in Blackwell, Oklahoma, getting recruited to the University of Tulsa to play in the college's dance band, and Bob Wills discovering him and making him the core of the Playboys' distinctive rhythm section. Dacus describes the motivation behind Wills's revolutionary idea of adding drums to a string band, tells about his role models and inspirations as a drummer, and recounts the band's demanding schedule and wild popularity.

After rediscovering the interview, Fish decided to publish the complete transcript; as only short excerpts were used by the magazine.

Here are direct links to the three parts of the interview:

• Smokey Dacus: Pioneer of Western Swing Drumming: Pt. 1
• Smokey Dacus: Pioneer of Western Swing Drumming: Pt. 2
• Smokey Dacus: Pioneer of Western Swing Drumming: Pt. 3

Here's a great anecdote about Bob Wills's habit of breaking meter when singing or playing fiddle:

A while ago I mentioned Earl Hines. Well, Bob loved Blues tunes. Earl Hines' recording of Rosetta was absolutely one of my tops. Bob decided he wanted to learn Rosetta. This was getting up in 1937 or 8, you know. Bob had a great big two-story house. All his family lived with him. All of his sisters and brothers, and Aunt Lou [sp.?] and Uncle Peak [sp.?] -- the whole bunch. So he had to have a great big house. We'd go out to Bob's and rehearse on a night. Like we were off -- which had to be like a Sunday night or something -- if we hadn't played a theater someplace that day.

So, okay. Bob wanted me to bring my old 78 of Earl Hines Rosetta. Bob lived right on the Northwest corner of Second and Peoria in Tulsa. Now, right straight across the corner on the Southeast was one of these little, long, one-story grocery stores. Just a flat roof.

So, okay. I brought my record and Bob played it. He's learning the words and the melody and all. But he kept breaking meter. When he'd sing, "Rosetta-aaaa," he'd hold it too long. After about 30-minutes of that I couldn't stand it anymore. I'd been [with the band] about three years then. I went over to the phonograph machine and I took that 78 of Earl Hines off there and I started to the front door.

I said, "Bob, you've got the right to play anything you want to play. But you do not have the right to mutilate!" And I walked out on the front porch and I sailed that 78 catty-corner across the street and it come down on top of that grocery store over there. We laugh about it yet. As far as we know it's still laying up there. He just wasn't going to tear old Earl Hines' band up like that.

SKF: Did he ever get it right?

SD: No!

SKF: He never did?

SD: Never did. And he never got it the same way twice! There's 32 bars. A standard chorus. Depending on how big a breath he got when he'd sing, "Rosetta-aaaa," it might wind up with 31 bars. The next night it might wind up 31-and-a-half. And the next time we played it -- it might wind up 33 and-a-half. Our piano player, Al Stricklin, tells this story in is book, My Years with Bob Wills.

That's an interesting piece of Tulsa history -- Bob's address at 2nd and Peoria, in the same neighborhood where, five blocks away, Paul Harvey was a high schooler and embarking on his own radio career.

There are a few transcription errors that come from Fish's lack of familiarity with people and places Dacus mentions. "O. W. Mayall" is O. W. Mayo, and I'm pretty sure "Poplar City" is Ponca City, which is not far from Dacus's hometown.

BONUS: After the jump (if you're on the homepage), a video interview by Jack Frank with Smokey Dacus and rhythm guitarist Eldon Shamblin at Cain's Ballroom, home of the Texas Playboys:

The only contested Tulsa County office on the ballot is a rematch for Tulsa County Commissioner, District 2. Republican Josh Turley seeks to defeat 12-year incumbent Democrat Commissioner Karen Keith.

Dr. Turley, whose doctorate is in organizational leadership, had a distinguished 24-year career at the Tulsa County Sheriff's Office, serving as the TCSO's first civilian crime scene investigator and developing the department's first Risk Management program, which succeeded in reducing car accidents involving deputies and tort claim payouts. Turley independently developed policies and procedures to be used by smaller sheriff's offices and county jails to improve performance and minimize risk. Turley has since built a private company, Everything Behind the Badge, which develops custom policy and procedure manuals to help local law enforcement agencies improve their professionalism at an affordable price. Turley has been endorsed by the Tulsa County Deputy Sheriff's local, the Tulsa Police local of the Fraternal Order of Police, the Oklahoma Second Amendment Association (OK2A), and State Sen. Nathan Dahm, among many other endorsements displayed on the Dr. Josh Turley for Commissioner Facebook page.

Turley is an advocate for genuine transparency in Tulsa County government. Turley wants Tulsa County to follow an open data policy -- by default, data used and generated by county officials (except for personal data restricted by law) would automatically be made available to the public, without the need for an open records request.

A county commissioner is responsible for maintenance of all public roads in the district that are not state highways or within city limits. District 2, which covers the western arm of Tulsa County, includes a great deal of unincorporated territory where the only roads are county-maintained roads. Turley has called attention to the terrible state of roads like West 41st Street, the main east-west artery in western Tulsa County south of the Arkansas River, and Old Highway 51, which is popular for cycling and access to fishing on the river below Keystone Dam. He says that incumbent Karen Keith hasn't fulfilled her road responsibilities during her 12 years in office. Rural roads are perhaps out-of-sight and out-of-mind for a midtowner like Keith.

Democrat incumbent Karen Keith, a former television reporter and anchor, was first elected in 2008. She has been very visible this year representing Tulsa County at daily COVID-19 press conferences. She was also very visible in her opposition to President Trump's visit to Tulsa in June, calling for city officials to say no to Trump in order to "preserve our image and save our downtown and arena." Turley ran a strong race against Keith in 2016, but fell short against Keith's name recognition and fundraising advantage.

Keith is unquestionably likeable, and her likeability seems to have tempted many Republicans to consider voting for her as their one gesture toward bipartisanship. That would be a mistake. We need new county commissioners, regardless of party, because the current commissioners aren't being good stewards of taxpayer resources. Electing Josh Turley to District 2, the only seat on the ballot this year, would be a great first step.

Tulsa County Commissioners, acting as the board of the Tulsa County Industrial Authority (TCIA), have authorized hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds. Some of these are revenue bonds, borrowing money now to fund projects, and pledging future sales tax revenues to pay the debt. As of June 30, 2019, according to the TCIA's 2019 annual audit, TCIA had $111,729,421 in outstanding revenue bonds. Counties, like cities and school districts can also issue general obligation bonds which are repaid by higher property tax rates. According to Tulsa County's 2019 CAFR, the county has no general obligation debt.

TCIA also issues bonds known as conduit debt to finance construction projects for businesses (e.g. nursing homes, apartment complexes) and non-profits (e.g. schools, hospitals) that "promote the development of industry and culture and industrial, manufacturing, cultural and educational activities... [to] benefit and strengthen culture and the economy." Tulsa County taxpayers are not on the hook for these bonds; they are repaid by the end user. The end user benefits in that the bonds are typically tax-exempt, making them more attractive for investors. As of June 30, 2019, TCIA had $604,545,944 in outstanding conduit debt, an increase of $73.6 million from the previous year, "the result of a $53.7 million lease revenue note and a $66.9 million revenue bond being issued during the fiscal year, offset by debt repayments."

MunicipalBonds.com has a couple of examples of how conduit bonds can be controversial when they are issued to finance private companies that were rejected by banks. Back in 2003, BatesLine called attention to conduit debt TCIA issued to finance the purchase of apartment complexes for low-income housing by company run by a "dear friend" and bond adviser of one of the county commissioners; TCIA then issued bonds for double the original amount to a non-profit that purchased the complexes from the first company.

2003 was before Karen Keith was a commissioner, but just yesterday I was made aware of a case of securities fraud that involved numerous conduit bond issues from various local authorities, including $5,700,000 in bonds issued by Keith and her fellow TCIA board members on March 21, 2014, to an entity controlled by Atlanta nursing home developer Christopher Brogdon. I am just learning about this, so I don't know all the details, but at the very least it looks like Keith and the TCIA should have done more due diligence before issuing the bonds, given that this deal was the last in a long string of questionable deals cited by the Securities and Exchange Commission. In any event, it's clear that we need analytical, skeptical county commissioners on the TCIA who will carefully scrutinize every entity that seeks to borrow against our county's reputation.

What revenue bonds, general obligation bonds, and conduit bonds have in common is that the three county commissioners (acting as TCIA board members) decide whether to waive competitive bidding in deciding which law firm will serve as bond adviser and which financial institution will issue the bonds. I have yet to find an instance when the TCIA opted for competitive bidding for a bond issue, or even an instance when any one of the three commissioners voted for competitive bidding.

During the 2016 campaign, I called attention to a contemporaneous news item relevant to this topic: Then-state bond adviser Jim Joseph and then-State Auditor and Inspector Gary Jones spoke out against the widespread practice of school districts waiving competitive bids for bond issues.

Oklahoma school districts are spending millions of taxpayers' dollars every year by paying high fees for financial advisers, bond counsel and underwriters, says Jim Joseph, the state's bond adviser.

Many school districts continue to do the same thing year after year, while stubbornly refusing to use cost-saving competitive selection measures, he said.

"It's like picking a roofer right after a storm because he's the first guy who came to your door," Joseph said. "You're not going to get a deal, that's for sure."

State Auditor Gary Jones agreed school boards could save Oklahoma taxpayers money by obtaining competitive quotes.

"There could be tens of millions of dollars saved over a short period of time," Jones said.

Joseph went on to compare the massive fees paid by school districts to bond counsel and financial advisers, often a percentage of the bond issue, with the smaller amounts state agencies paid for much larger bond issue. Several were listed; here's one example:

For example, Midwest City-Del City Public Schools did a $72.62 million bond issue in 2012 without competitive bids. It paid the Floyd Law Firm of Norman $363,100 for serving as bond counsel and allowed Stephen H. McDonald & Associates and BOSC Inc., a subsidiary of BOK Financial Corporation, to equally split $508,340 for serving as co-financial advisers, records show.

Compare that with a $310.48 million bond issue by the Grand River Dam Authority that was done in 2014 through a competitive process. The state paid a $114,000 bond counsel fee and a $133,448 financial adviser fee.

Although the Grand River Dam Authority bond issue was more than four times as large as the Midwest City-Del City school bond issue, the school district paid more than triple the amount in bond counsel and financial adviser fees, records show.

Joseph pointed out that bond counsel, underwriter, and financial advisers often each take 1% of the bond issue as their fee, which Joseph says "makes no sense at all. It doesn't take any more work to do a $20 million issue than a $10 million issue for the bond counsel and financial adviser, but the fee is twice as high, if payment is on a percentage basis."

What does this have to do with Tulsa County? Joseph noted that the firm of Hilborne & Weidman was frequently listed as bond counsel for these competition-waived bond issues. Hilborne & Weidman was also one of two bond counsel firms selected in 2003 by the Tulsa County commissioners (acting as the Tulsa County Industrial Authority) for the Vision 2025 revenue bonds, a massive bond issue against up to all 13 years of the new sales tax. I urged at the time that Tulsa County put all Vision 2025 bond-related contracts up for competitive bid, as commissioners haggled publicly over which firms would get a piece of the action, but they waived competitive bidding and split the baby, giving each favored firm half of the business.

Over the last 17 years, there's been a complete turnover on the County Commission, but the tradition of waiving competitive bidding has persisted. Here's one example from May 26, 2009, in Karen Keith's first year as a commissioner ($110 million in bonds), another from February 1, 2010, and yet another unanimous vote to waive competitive bidding from this year, from the September 21, 2020, meeting of the Tulsa County Industrial Authority.

On May 23, 2016, the commissioners, including Karen Keith, voted unanimously to waive competitive bidding on indebtedness, but neither the minutes nor the agenda explain the amount or nature of the indebtedness. Given the proximity to the April 2016 Vision Tulsa vote, my guess is that the vote was on the revenue bonds pledged against that new 15-year sales tax stream.

How many more projects might have been built if Vision 2025 bonds had been competitively bid? Could we have had a new juvenile justice facility without being asked for more tax dollars in two separate elections (2005 and 2012)?

Given the size of these bond issues, even a 1% fee would be a huge amount for a small firm. The temptation to corruption would be immense. Think of the money the former Skiatook superintendent got in kickbacks from the janitorial supply company. That would be chump change compared to even a small cut of 1% of a $500 million bond issue.

Oklahoma taxpayers need legislation to require competitive bidding on bonds and to require counties, school districts, and cities -- and their associated Title 60 trusts -- to use the state bond adviser rather than hiring their own favored exclusive firms.

Until we get that legislation, we need county officials who will support transparency and fiscal prudence. We need more than mere niceness; we need intelligence, initiative, and analytical skill. Dr. Josh Turley, a good man with many years' experience as a county employee, can provide that kind of leadership, and I hope Tulsa County District 2 voters elect him as their new county commissioner.

Oklahoma state statute and Oklahoma Ethics Commission rules require campaign committees for city elections to file a campaign contributions and expenditures report with the City Clerk's office 10 days prior to an election (effectively 8 days, since the clerk's office is closed on the weekend, so the report is due that Monday at 4:30 pm), as well as last-minute contribution reports within 24 hours of receiving donations larger than $1,000 within the last two weeks. Reports are also due one month after the end of each quarter.

For the six candidates for Tulsa City Council on the November 3, 2020, ballot, that means their pre-election report was due to the Tulsa City Clerk at 4:30 pm on Monday, October 26. So far District 5 incumbent Cass Fahler (R) and challenger Mikey Arthrell (D), District 6 incumbent Connie Dodson (D), District 7 incumbent Lori Decter-Wright (D) and challenger Justin Van Kirk (R) have filed their reports. District 6 challenger Christian Bengel's (R) pre-election report is the only one of the six that does not appear on the City Clerk website, but he has provided me his report directly, and it is available below.

There are several important omissions from the reports that were available online. This may be an error in the City Clerk's uploading of the reports, rather than an omission by the candidate. Connie Dodson's pre-runoff Schedule A, a list of itemized contributions, is missing; the cover page of the report indicates that it includes $4,250 in PAC contributions which would be quite interesting. Likewise, there is no itemization of Mykey Arthrell's $3,545.83 pre-general election expenditures.

Several PACs are shown on individual candidate reports to have made contributions, but none of them filed reports: Tulsa Biz PAC (affiliated with the Tulsa Regional Chamber), Fraternal Order of Police, International Association of Fire Fighters, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.

For the candidates who were on the August 25, 2020, city general election ballot, but not on next Tuesday's runoff ballot either because they won without a runoff or lost, their post-election quarterly report will be officially due Saturday, October 31, will be effectively due Monday, November 2, 2020, at 4:30 pm, but those reports could have been filed at any time since the beginning of this month, since they only cover contributions through September 30. Many of the candidates failed to file reports prior to the August election; we're looking forward to learning how much they raised and spent.

Here are the aggregate totals for the candidates in Tuesday's Tulsa runoff election, with a list of notable contributions. The name of the seat has a link leading to the Tulsa City Clerk's ethics report webpage for the district; the candidate name has a link to a PDF compiling all of the candidate's reports for this election cycle, which I have compiled, bookmarked, and OCRed.

Putting this together is a very tedious process -- clicking dozens of links, merging PDFs in the right order, then combing through the reports for contributors, double-checking sloppy reporting, and summarizing all of it below -- but BatesLine is the only place you can find organized campaign finance information for the 2020 City of Tulsa runoff. If you appreciate the hours that I've put into this, hit the tip jar and help cover the costs of keeping BatesLine going, which include web hosting, database access, domain registration, and computer equipment. If you'd like to support the site with advertising, contact me at blog@batesline.com.

In the past, when all the records were on paper only, the daily paper would have a City Hall reporter compile the list of contributions (back then $200 and under did not have to be reported). They don't bother nowadays. I find one recent story about campaign finance, focused on an out-of-state organization called the Accountability Project Institute, which is making independent expenditures against Mykey Arthrell and Lori Decter Wright; these candidates support an Office of Independent Monitor for the Tulsa Police Department, which the FOP opposes. No stories at all about the candidate's campaign finance reports. Perhaps they feel that now that the information is online, there's no need to bother. But busy voters need someone to curate the massive amounts of public information now available.

In most cases (every candidate except Cass Fahler), the totals on the most recent report don't match the sum of the amounts reported on each report to date. Candidates (or their treasurers) seem confused on the meaning of the Aggregate Total column. I've put my figures in square brackets. I have not double-checked that the reporting period totals are correct; in some cases this is impossible because key pages are missing from the online records. Most of the mistakes in calculating aggregates for the campaign and for individual contributors would be avoided if candidates were required to use the Oklahoma Ethics Commission system, as they were for a few years in the late 2000s and early 2010s, where individual transactions are uploaded, and the system calculates the totals.

District 5:

Cass Fahler (R): Carryover, $0.96, individual contributions, $15,785.00; PAC contributions, $9,500; total $25,285.96. Expenditures, $20,491.71. Notable contributions: Tulsa FOP, $5,000; Greater Tulsa Association of Realtors, $2,500; Tulsa Biz PAC; International Association of Fire Fighters, $1,000; Robert Zoellner, $2,700; Kurt Dodd, $2,000; Justin Van Kirk, $1,000; Bobby Van Holt, $1,000; John Stava, $1,000; Martha Blackburn, $750; CeCe Siegfried, $750; Meyer Siegfried, $750; Cord Charvat, $500; Jay Helm, $500; Steve Edwards, $500; Warren Ross, $250; Lou Reynolds, $200; Dewey Bartlett, Jr., $200;

Mykey Arthrell (D): Individual contributions, $13,255.00 [$13,355]; in-kind contributions, $1,000; total $14,255.00 [$14,355.00]. Expenditures, $11,094.38 [$12,094.38]. Notable contributions: Robin Flint Ballenger, $2,800; RE UP Dispensary, $1,000; Justin Schuffert, $1,000; George Krumme, $1,000; Kathy Taylor, $500.

District 6:

Christian Bengel (R): Individual contributions, $2,086.64 [$2,196.94]; PAC contributions, $1,000; loans (all from self), [$7,573.37]; total $3,086.64 [$10,670.31]. Expenditures, $3,086.64. Notable contributions: IBEW PAC, $1,000.

Connie Dodson (D): Carryover, $1,546.69; Individual contributions, [$10,435.00]; PAC contributions, $9,750 [$13,750]; total $18,561 [$25,731.69]. Expenditures, [$14,525.77]. Officeholder expenses, [$1,158.70]. Notable contributions: FOP 93 PAC, $3,500; IBEW Local 584, $3,000; Realtors PAC, $2,000; Tulsa Firefighters Local 176, $1,000; Lloyd Robson, $2,800; Cindy Robson, $2,800; Joe Robson, $1,000; Joe Chadwick, $1,000; Amulfo Murillo, $1,000; Sharon King Davis, $150; Lou Reynolds, $200.

District 7:

Justin Van Kirk (R): Individual contributions, $32,885.00 [$25,085.00]; PAC contributions, $7,500; loans (all from self), $10,300.00 [$10,500.00]; total $50,685.00 [$43,085.00]. Expenditures, [$40,135.21]. Notable contributors: FOP PAC, $7,500; Cord Charvat, $3,300; Robert Zoellner, $2,800; Justin Van Kirk, $2,800; Mike Case, $2,700; Albert Reynolds, $2,000; Jim Taylor, $1,105.

Lori Decter Wright (D): Carryover, $148.12; individual contributions, $17,689.50; PAC contributions, $3,500; political party contributions, $550; in-kind contributions, $3,328,49; total, $21,739.50 [$25,216.11]. Expenditures, $20,556.69 [$20,786.08]. Notable contributors: Tulsa Biz PAC [Tulsa Regional Chamber], $1,000; Tulsa Firefighters IAFF PAC, $2,500; Heart of the Party Tulsa County Federation of Democratic Women, $550; Cheryl Roberts, $1,400; Friends of Crista Patrick [District 3 Councilor], $500; Kathy Taylor, $800; Bill Lobeck, $500; Vanessa Hall-Harper [District 1 Councilor], $50; Ken Levit, GKFF executive director, $150; Teresa Burkett, $250; Sharon King Davis, $150.

Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum IV narrowly avoided a November runoff, winning re-election outright with 51.9% in this first round of City of Tulsa voting. 30-year-old Greg Robinson II, running to Bynum's left, garnered 28.8% of the vote. Ken Reddick, running to Bynum's right, finished third with 13.8%, followed by Ty Walker at 2.8% and Craig Immel at 1.9%, the remaining candidates were below 1%. Turnout was 70,745, with 23.0% voting early. Had another 2,637 voters turned out to vote for candidates other than Bynum, he would have faced a November runoff with Robinson.

I'll be on Talk Radio 1170 KFAQ at 7:30 am Wednesday morning to talk about the results with Pat Campbell.

I had an enjoyable time as a member of a panel of commentators for KJRH's election night coverage, talking about the results and their significance. One of the striking things about the conversation was hearing about the Democratic Party's endorsement of Robinson, setting a precedent that Republicans would do well to follow. The Tulsa County Democratic Party chairman said something about flipping a council seat, which was humorously revealing. We all know that political philosophy matters, even in city government, and that people have party affiliations, despite the lack of a partisan primary. About 15 years ago, I proposed an idea I called multi-partisan elections, in which candidates of all parties would run on the same ballot, but with party labels, which might include words and phrases other than the names of national parties. The label next to a candidate's name might be that of a local coalition formed around local issues.

I started playing around with maps. I have QGIS, an open-source graphical information system suite, precinct and municipal boundary shapefiles from OK Maps, and precinct-by-precinct results from the Oklahoma State Election Board. I used Microsoft Access (I know, I know) to process the election board data before linking it to the precinct map. Here's my first, clumsy effort: A map showing the "swing" between Bynum's June 2016 vote and his vote today. The deepest purple shows precincts where Bynum's share of the vote fell by at least 25 percentage points; darkest green shows where Bynum's share of the vote went up by at least 25 points; in precincts with no color, his 2020 share of the vote was within 5% either side of his 2016 share.

Recall that in 2016, Bynum was effectively the Democratic nominee, the progressive candidate, as no prominent Democrat sought the office. Bynum won with support from Democrats along with those Republicans who were disappointed with Dewey Bartlett Jr's service as mayor. This year, Greg Robinson captured those left-wing voters, while there was no well-funded or well-organized candidate to Bynum's right. Bynum's vote slid most dramatically in north Tulsa and midtown, while his vote improved in south Tulsa.

Now, there are all sorts of problems with the map above. I haven't figured out how to tweak the projection so that a line drawn north through the center of Tulsa points straight up (the shapefiles I'm using are based on Oklahoma as a whole). I haven't figured out how to add a legend, and I didn't bother adding precinct numbers as labels. I haven't done an intersection between the precinct shapefile and the municipal shapefile so that I only show the portions of precincts that are within the city limits. There's no proprietary watermark. All that said, it does give you a picture of how votes shifted, and I hope to put together additional (and more attractive) maps in the near future.

Here's one more: The percentage voting yes or no for Proposition 2, which involved changing a handful of references in the City Charter from he/him to they/them to be "inclusive." Darkest blues are yes > 70%, darkest reds are yes < 30%. Overall, the proposition passed by the narrowest margin of the five on the ballot, with 54.7% support.

Polls are open today until 7 p.m. The Oklahoma State Election Board's online voter tool will let you know where to vote and will show you a sample of the ballot you'll see.

Click the link above to download a printable ballot card listing the candidates I'm recommending and (if in the district) voting for in the Oklahoma runoff and City of Tulsa general election on August 25, 2020. Below I'll add more detailed information on issues and candidates. (This entry will change as I decide to add more detail, link previous articles, or discuss additional races between now and election day. The entry is post-dated to keep it at the top.) Please note that the rows on the chart are alternately shaded and unshaded for readability. The presence or absence of shading has no other significance.

As I posted this late Thursday night, there were races I had planned to write about in detail, but time was short, people were voting, and many have asked for a summary of my recommendations, so I've started by posting my printable ballot card and will fill in some details as I have opportunity between now and Tuesday.

Below you'll find some links to websites I found helpful in learning about candidates, their values, backgrounds, and political opinions.

When in doubt, I look at campaign contributions, which often tell a story about a candidate's ideological leanings or close ties with local power brokers. Campaign expenditures can be telling, too: Certain consulting firms have strong associations with the pay-to-play culture that makes our Republican supermajority legislature more crony-infested than conservative. Then there are principled conservative consultants; their presence on a campaign team is always a hopeful indication that the candidate is also a principled conservative.

In addition to runoffs in federal, state, and county primary elections, the City of Tulsa has an election for mayor and seven of the nine city councilors. (The auditor and the other two councilors won re-election unopposed.)

State law requires City of Tulsa campaign contributions and expenditures to be submitted to the City Clerk's office; the City Clerk posts them on the City's website. Sadly, many city candidates don't seem to have noticed that their pre-election reports were due on Monday, August 17, 2020, even though that information was included in the election packet that was provided to each city candidate who filed for office and which was also posted on the county election board website.

NOTES ON SPECIFIC BALLOT ITEMS:

U. S. House, District 5: Terry Neese. Winner of this runoff will go on to try to win back the seat taken two years ago by Kendra Horn, Oklahoma's lone congressional Democrat. The other runoff candidate, State Sen. Stephanie Bice, voted to raise taxes on Oklahomans in 2018, bypassing a vote of the people. I should note that there are controversies surrounding Neese's business practices and claims of Native American roots. (My primary pick, David Hill, would have been a much better choice than either Neese or Bice.)

Senate 35: Cheryl Baber. Baber is a known quantity among conservatives in state and local conservative circles. Creekpaum's strong backing from "the Kaiser System" should worry conservatives. Baber is the only candidate in the race who was wise enough to oppose SQ802. Baber has been endorsed by Governor Stitt, Senator Lankford, former Governor Keating, and the current and previous senators for District 35, Gary Stanislawski and Jim Williamson, both solid conservatives. I'm hoping this year will be an echo of Stanislawski's first race in 2008: City Councilor Cason Carter, a favorite of the Money Belt establishment, ran first in the primary, 44.5% to 40.6%, but fell short of a majority and lost the runoff to Stanislawski.

City of Tulsa proposed charter amendments: Yes on 1, 3, 5 (the odds are good), No on 2, 4. Click the link to read the actual charter changes that each proposition would enact, and why I support or oppose each.

Mayor of Tulsa: Ty Walker (R). Walker is a small businessman and a political conservative who deals with Tulsans from all walks of life on a daily basis. As someone who has lived on both sides of the tracks, as he puts it, Walker can be a bridge to link the disparate communities of our city, with a focus on encouraging home-grown businesses. This was a tough call, but I believe that Walker is the better candidate of the two conservatives running. You can read his response to the BatesLine questionnaire here. You can read my comments on each of the candidates in my article endorsing Walker.

The incumbent mayor is blind to the needs of the city beyond his little Midtown Money Belt world, indecisive, two-faced, and in thrall to progressive philanthropy. His disastrous handling of COVID-19 and of the George Floyd protests managed to make everyone angry at him, inspiring seven candidates from across the political spectrum to run against him.

In the council races, I support replacing all of the City Councilors, except Cass Fahler in District 5.

Tulsa Council District 1: Jerry Goodwin (D).
Tulsa Council District 3: Paul Eicher (D).
Tulsa Council District 4: Kathryn Lyons (R). Lyons was the only District 4 candidate to respond to the BatesLine questionnaire, and she gave solid answers. (The incumbent councilor, Kara Joy McKee, allowed constituents' homes to be condemned without investigating the situation, and she made a promise she didn't keep about initiating the revocation condemnation promptly at the beginning of 2020.)
Tulsa Council District 5: Cass Fahler (R). At a time when law enforcement is under attack, we need a strong advocate for law and order on the council.
Tulsa Council District 6: Christian Bengel (R).
Tulsa Council District 7: Justin Van Kirk (R).
Tulsa Council District 9: Jayme Fowler (R).

MORE INFORMATION:

Here are some blogs, endorsement lists, candidate questionnaires, and sources of information for your consideration.

• Talk Radio 1170 Pat Campbell podcast archive
• Sheridan Church's Tulsa Town Hall candidate forum
• 918 Vote / League of Women Voters mayoral forum
• iVoterGuide: Candidate responses to a detailed questionnaire written from a conservative Christian point-of-view
• Muskogee Politico news, questionnaires, and analysis
• Muskogee Politico 2020 runoff election tips and picks
• Charlie Meadows's picks
• Oklahomans for Life candidate surveys
• Oklahoma Constitution newspaper's Oklahoma State Senate ratings and Oklahoma State House ratings.
• Endorsements from Tulsa Area Republican Assembly and other Tulsa conservative groups
• NRA-PVF endorsements and grades
• Oklahomans for Public Education 2020 voter guide: This is a kind of reverse-psychology voter guide. The red apple next to a candidate's name probably means he or she supports higher taxes, no reduction in school administrative bloat, and no meaningful educational choice for our children and their parents. You should treat a yellow triangle as a gold medal -- this is likely a candidate who will defend taxpayers' interests and work for school choice and educational efficiency.

TIP JAR: If you appreciate the many hours of research that went into this guide and into the rest of my election coverage, and if you'd like to help keep this site online, you can contribute to BatesLine's upkeep via PayPal. In addition to keeping me caffeinated, donated funds pay for web hosting, subscriptions, and paid databases I use for research. Many thanks.

UPDATE 2020/08/25, 12:46pm: I have updated the printable sheet to change my recommendation in Senate District 7, based on recent information from Jamison Faught.

What looked like a sleepy re-election run, for Tulsa Mayor GT Bynum IV as recently as the beginning of May, with one declared opponent and a perennial candidate in jail, turned into a free-for-all. As soon as he had some tough decisions to make, the smiley guy that everyone liked was suddenly the weak-kneed wimp whom everyone despised. COVID-19 (aka the Chinese Communist Bat Virus) and Black Lives Matter protests, and the Trump rally which linked the two, left GT unable to find decisions that would make the vast majority of Tulsans happy. Instead, his vacillation managed to anger Tulsans left, right, and center, and the peak of the first wave of dissatisfaction fell just as filing opened for city office. Seven opponents filed to challenge his re-election.

The Bynum administration has reaffirmed my belief that executive experience in a mayor is not necessary for keeping the city running. (It may be that having a pulse is not necessary for keeping the city's basic functions running.) We've never had a mayor under the current charter with previous experience running a business the size of city government. The various departments that manage basic city functions continue to run regardless of who's mayor. Every mayor since 1990 has had someone either serving as a city manager in all but name (with a title like Chief Administrative Officer or Chief Operating Officer) or with the title City Manager, even though Tulsa's charter calls for a strong mayor, unlike the "weak mayor / council / city manager" government that Oklahoma City has and which is established under the default charter in the state statutes, used by cities like Broken Arrow. Even under a wishy-washy schmoozer like GT Bynum IV, the machinery of city government chugs along. The trash is picked up, clean water flows through our faucets, street projects move forward, police officers and firefighters do their essential work. It's a bit like the body's autonomous nervous system, keeping the heart pumping, the lungs going, and the guts digesting regardless of what is or is not happening in the brain.

What we do need in a mayor is a functioning moral compass, an ability to make sound decisions and stick with them, and a vision that encompasses all of Tulsa. He needs to understand government's proper sphere in the functioning of society alongside families, churches, businesses, voluntary organizations, and other non-governmental mediating institutions, as well as the practical limits on government's ability to fix problems without creating others. We don't have that right now, and I only see one candidate that comes close to meeting that set of criteria: Ty Walker. I have voted for Walker, and I encourage you to do the same.

If you make decisions based on your billionaire backers' priorities or what you see your buddy in Oklahoma City doing, if what you mean by "data-driven" is really just following the conventional wisdom that will make you look smart in the eyes of New York Times reporters or among your homies in the Midtown Money Belt, you're going to have a tough time when difficult dilemmas come your way, and you won't be serving the best interests of the citizens.

A few examples of Bynum IV's bad judgment and lack of vision (from memory, so no links):

• Supporting a tax package (as a councilor and mayoral candidate) that included unnecessary low-water dams, then failing (as mayor) to use the Muscogee Creek Nation lack of interest in funding as an opportunity to repurpose taxpayer dollars in more useful ways.
• Decreeing by executive order that the City of Tulsa will officially pretend that there is no valid distinction to be drawn between real women and autogynephiliacs, thus endangering private spaces for females and separate female athletic competition.
• Allowing the condemnation of a historic neighborhood where young families have been reclaiming old homes in order to protect an office building that was built in a 100-year flood plain, rather than finding a solution that would mitigate stormwater issues while saving the neighborhood.
• Allowing other historic neighborhoods, like Crutchfield and Crosbie Heights, to live under the threat of blight declarations.
• Pushing restriping of city streets to the confusion of the vast majority of street users (drivers).
• Being a tough guy for Pat Campbell's conservative audience, vowing not to cave to protestors, and then a few hours later, caving to protestors, cancelling Tulsa's participation in a show (LivePD) which seemed to offend the protestors because it showed Tulsa Police officers ably handling difficult challenges.
• Waffling on President Trump's appearance in Tulsa -- neither asking him to stay away out of concern for the spread of COVID-19 and civil unrest, nor taking advantage of Trump's visit to show off Tulsa to our nation's leaders or to call the President's attention to opportunities for city/federal cooperation.
• Choosing not to institute a curfew. Other cities used curfews to allow peaceful protests to continue, while halting after-dark gatherings that often led to the smashing of store windows and dangerous obstruction of major streets.
• Shutting down Tulsa's small retailers while allowing big-box stores which sell the same products to stay open during the pandemic. Bynum followed the herd, rather than creatively adapting lessons from places like Hong Kong, which combined moderate closures (schools and large gatherings), voluntary mask wearing, and reduced business capacity to allow businesses to stay open.
• Pushing for an Office of Independent Monitor that would subject police officers to the oversight of a board without any law enforcement experience and without direct accountability to the public.
• Pushing to raise the permanent sales tax level to pay for a basic function of government.

I could go on, but I need to finish this and get some sleep.

Bynum needs to go, but who should replace him? Can a challenger beat an incumbent who has raised over $600,000 for re-election? Let's go through our list of options, starting with a few easy discards.

Ricco Wright is on the ballot but ended his campaign after attempting to handle an accusation of sexual assault by stating his belief in the woman's account (Believe All Women!) but implausibly blaming his actions on being "roofied." (Rohypnol -- "hypno" is in the name -- causes "loss of muscle control, confusion, drowsiness and amnesia," not uninhibited sexual aggression.)

I discussed perennial candidate Paul Tay during the filing period. Someone who filed for office the day he finished a five-month jail sentence for outraging public decency doesn't deserve further consideration.

Zackri Whitlow seems to be running on a whim. He did not show up in the voter registration database in Tulsa prior to filing for office. He has not filed any campaign finance reports with the City Clerk, not even a Statement of Organization, indicating that he has not raised or spent any significant money to reach and persuade voters. He has appeared in a few online forums to promote a few pet ideas.

Craig Immel has impressed me with his willingness to respond to voters' questions on various platforms, including the BatesLine mayoral questionnaire. Even when I can't agree with him, I respect his thoughtfulness. I also admire his willingness to serve as the lead plaintiff against the plan (supported by Bynum) to convert riverfront park land to a basic shopping center. Of all the candidates, he has the best grasp of urban planning and development issues. If it were a head-to-head matchup between Immel and Bynum, I'd vote for Immel. But on other issues, he is left of center. His support for SQ 805 and SQ 780 points to a naive view of crime and its causes that would jeopardize the lives and property of Tulsa citizens. His stated disdain for the State of Oklahoma reflects an unbecoming elitism and sends a signal to small-town and rural Oklahomans who come to the metro area for jobs that they'll feel more at home in the suburbs.

Greg Robinson II has done an impressive job of organizing a substantial last-minute challenge to a well-funded incumbent mayor. His fundraising has unofficially surpassed $200,000 (but his campaign is one of several that has neglected to file the required pre-election report of contributions and expenditures). I've received almost as many mailers from Robinson as I have from Bynum, which points to a well-organized effort to reach and energize voters. In 2016, Bynum was helped by the fact that no Democrat bothered to file; instead, Bynum was effectively the Democrat nominee in the officially non-partisan mayor's race. Now Robinson may scoop up the base of Bynum's 2016 support.

Robinson's rhetoric and resume point to him being a doctrinaire leftist, but there are a couple of facts about him that are intriguing for the conservative voter: First, Robinson's father, Greg Robinson, Sr., was a Republican who came within 900 votes of unseating incumbent Democrat county commissioner Wilbert Collins in 2002. (Milton Goodwin, the Republican nominee in 1998, ran as an independent in 2002 and acted as a spoiler.) Tragically, Greg Sr. died suddenly of a heart attack at the age of 48, just 10 weeks after the election. Greg Jr. was a young teenager at the time. Second, Robinson (Jr.) is a founder of Greenwood Leadership Academy, a charter school, so there may be some openness to school choice that the incumbent (whose parents could afford an educational alternative) doesn't share.

A conservative case could be made for preferring Robinson over Bynum. It would be refreshing to have a mayor, for the first time in almost three decades, with a clue about life outside the Money Belt. And I've noticed that it's easier to mobilize certain Republican officials to oppose bad ideas when they've been proposed by Democrats; if a RINO backs the idea, they fall in line.

To the alarmists out there: No one can win on Tuesday unless they get 50% of the vote. If a majority of voters don't vote for Robinson, he won't win. If a majority of voters don't vote for Bynum, he won't win on Tuesday. A November runoff, even if it's between Bynum and Robinson, the two best-funded candidates, would be a better result than if either candidate succeeded in getting 50% on Tuesday. Both would have to find ways to reach out to the conservatives they've spurned if they want to win. But I'd rather see a conservative in the runoff.

A conservative with political experience was unlikely to risk running against a well-funded, well-heeled incumbent who was (until a few months ago) quite popular and a registered Republican, albeit a RINO. So the two conservative claimants in the race are not well-funded, are still working their day jobs, don't have the background in city policy that you might hope for, and do have some things in their past that aren't very attractive.

Ken Reddick was the first to step up to challenge Bynum. He ran a credible race for City Council District 7 in 2018. But despite the early start, he failed to lay the groundwork necessary for a successful challenge, a task that involves fundraising, garnering endorsements (or at least persuading people not to line up behind the incumbent) Reddick has filed no campaign contribution and expenditure reports at all beyond the Statement of Organization for his campaign committee.

Restaurateur Ty Walker joined the race on the final day of filing. He had been thinking about preparing for a 2024 run, but he was persuaded by some regular customers to go ahead and file this time around. He also ran for City Council in 2018, in the race for the open seat in District 5.

I reached out to both candidates shortly after filing closed and encouraged them to meet and discuss if either of them would be willing to drop out and support the other. As far as I know that never happened. This would have been an ideal situation for state or county Republican leadership to intervene, perhaps by holding an endorsing convention to take the place of the primary that was eliminated by the move to non-partisan elections. But despite my private encouragement, nothing was done.

Because of CCP Bat Virus (which is real, which can kill and maim people, and which spreads through droplets) I have minimized my person-to-person interactions and have been grateful that I can work, for the most part, from home. But I did attend one meet-and-greet each for Reddick and for Walker. At the Reddick meet-and-greet at the Interurban Restaurant, I watched Reddick passively listen to various attendees vent their spleens about their pet issues. I waited around for close to an hour in hopes that the candidate would stand up and talk about his priorities and plans and take questions, but I got tired of waiting and went home.

A few weeks later I attended Ty Walker's meet-and-greet in a supporter's home. Walker had been out knocking doors in neighborhoods around Tulsa. His campaign team seemed sharp and focused (although they failed to get his pre-election contribution filing in as of this time). He held forth for a couple of hours, talking about his priorities and answering questions from the audience. I didn't agree with all of his answers, but his principles and his heart were clearly in the right place. Many of those differences reflect a perspective formed by growing up in Tulsa's North Community. As he points out often, he has lived on both sides of the track and uniquely among the options on our ballot can be a bridge across that track.

A BatesLine reader writes:

I believe that Ty Walker has the skills, temperament, and ethics needed for the job as mayor of Tulsa.

• I believe him to be the most free of political influence. With several activists running for the position, and a mayor with a track record of heavy outside influence, Walker leads the pack.
• I believe he's best equipped to guide the city through the economic recovery necessary from Covid. As a small business owner, specifically in the food service industry, he's well aware of the hardships small businesses face. I believe he's capable of not only seeing the current economic recovery, but he can help underserved communities grow their currently limited economic infrastructure.
• I believe he's an inspiration to everyone on the personal struggles needed to be successful, and I believe that will help him be a positive agent for growth and helping the city mend it's current socio and economic divides.
• I believe he's the most practical candidate, in terms of wanting to achieve practical goals. He's a crawl - walk - run type of candidate who won't be overly fixated with trying to fix everything with one singular action.

Walker isn't beholden to local or national philanthropists or interest groups. As someone actively involved in owning and running a restaurant, he's understands what our small businesses need as we try to recover from the COVID-19 shutdowns. He also understands the specific challenges that exist in the parts of the city where businesses have had difficulty taking root. He understands what it is to try and fail and try again. His vision is practical consisting of modest, incremental steps.

Something I noticed when watching the Sheridan Church Tulsa Town Hall forum (which was very well done) is that Ty Walker was one of the few candidates actually settled and involved in a church. (The question about church involvement is asked at about 58 minutes into the video.) Walker is an associate pastor at New Salem Missionary Baptist Church in Okmulgee. At the beginning of this video from a few weeks ago, Ty Walker is giving some remarks (the video comes in after he has started) prior to the sermon, reminding the congregation that we will all meet death, none of us know when, and that we should all seek to be ready, walking in God's will.

Ty Walker is the candidate for Tulsans who want to bridge the cultural and ethnic divides in our city (without the kind of radical policies that are tearing other American cities apart), who want a conservative mayor who values the free market, economic opportunity, and growing local business (rather than lavishing incentives on billionaires trying to land the big fish).

I voted (at the election board Friday) for Ty Walker for Mayor, and I urge you to do the same. If he wins against all odds, Tulsa would be blessed. If Walker falls short, a large vote for him would signal that the remaining candidates need to reach out to conservatives in the November runoff.

A postscript: A few weeks ago, I was made aware of some accusations about Ken Reddick's marital history. I've been to the county court clerk's archive, looked at his divorce file, asked him some questions. I want to be careful about how I talk about these things for the sake of all involved, and I hope to post something this evening for the many people who are asking about it. Bottom line is that in my opinion there are internal inconsistencies in Ken Reddick's own account of his past and between his account and the official records, and that reinforces my doubts about his qualities as a candidate and a leader.

Back on August 12, I sent the three eligible candidates for City Council District 4 a questionnaire using the email addresses provided in their declarations of candidacy or on their websites. The questionnaire included the 18 questions I asked the mayoral candidates, plus a question about neighborhood conservation districts and a question about the candidates for mayor.

I received only one reply, from Kathryn Lyons.

Kathryn Lyons:

Age: 53
Employment: Community volunteer, former property manager
Neighborhood: Lakewood Heights
Voter registration: Republican
Campaign web page: kathryn4tulsa.com
Campaign Facebook page: Kathryn Lyons for Tulsa City Council

The detailed responses to the questionnaire, if you're viewing this on the home page, are after the jump.

Last Wednesday, BatesLine sent a questionnaire to the six serious candidates for Mayor of Tulsa, using the email addresses provided in their declarations of candidacy or on their websites. We sent two reminders. We received replies from three candidates: Craig Immel, Ken Reddick, and Ty Walker.

The survey consists of 18 questions, selected and adapted from over 60 questions suggested by BatesLine readers. I tried to cover a wide range of topics while keeping the number of questions at a reasonable level for candidates busy in the final stages of the campaign.

Rather than split the answers up in separate entries by candidate, I'm presenting them side-by-side, which runs the risk of someone reading an answer and connecting it with the wrong candidate. To help you mentally associate the answer with the candidate who gave it, I've added social-media-type icons in front of each response.

Here is a brief overview of the candidates who responded to the questionnaire:

Craig Immel:

Age: 44
Employment: Construction manager
Neighborhood: near Gilcrease Hills (Council District 1)
Voter registration: independent
Campaign web page: movetulsaforward.com
Campaign Facebook page: Craig Immel - Independent for Tulsa Mayor
Twitter account: @MoveTulsaFwd
Immel hosted a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) session.

Ken Reddick:

Age: 37
Employment: Owner, Clean Slate Contracting LLC and Tulsa Fence & Roofing Company
Neighborhood: Regency Park (Council District 7)
Voter registration: Republican
Campaign web page: kenreddick4mayor.com
Campaign Facebook page: Ken Reddick for Tulsa Mayor 2020

Ty Walker:

Age: 54
Employment: Owner, Wanda J's Next Generation Restaurant
Neighborhood: Virginia Lee Addition (Council District 5)
Voter registration: Republican
Campaign web page: tywalkerfortulsa.com
Campaign Facebook page: Ty Walker for Tulsa Mayor

The detailed responses to the questionnaire, if you're viewing this on the home page, are after the jump.

Five amendments to Tulsa's city charter -- our city's constitution -- will be on the August 25, 2020, ballot. As usual, the summaries you will see on the ballot paper only tell part of the story.

For the TL;DR folks, here are my recommendations:

Proposition No. 1: Yes
Proposition No. 2: No
Proposition No. 3: Yes
Proposition No. 4: No
Proposition No. 5: Yes

Or to put it even more briefly, vote YES on the ODD numbered propositions, NO on the EVEN numbered propositions. ODD is GOOD, EVEN is BAD.

Now the details, after the jump. Strikethroughs show language that would be deleted if the proposition passes, underlines show language that would be added.

I'm hearing that minions of Mayor Bynum IV are putting the word out that voting for one of his conservative opponents in the August 25, 2020, election will help elect someone further to the Left than the left-of-center Bynum. The rumor is self-serving garbage, preying on ignorance of the confusing new election process that Bynum IV and friends quietly slid into the charter three years ago, the sixth change to the city election process in 11 years.

Here's the truth: Unless one candidate has the support of 50% of the voters on August 25th, there will be a runoff in November with at least two candidates. Putting it another way: If a majority of voters vote against incumbent Bynum IV, and if a majority of voters also vote against Greg Robinson, the leading registered-Democrat candidate, neither will win the election outright on August 25.

The crucial task for conservative Tulsans who want a conservative mayor is to unite on August 25 behind one of the two conservative alternatives to Bynum (Ty Walker or Ken Reddick) so that we have a real conservative to vote for in November and Bynum can retire from being a failed mayor and resume his career as a schmoozer.

2020 is the first Tulsa mayoral election that will use the new election procedure approved by voters in a low-turnout November 2017 special election. (Only charter amendments on the ballot; only 10,425 votes were cast on this ballot item compared to 58,848 in the June 2016 mayoral primary. There ought to be a state law limiting city charter changes to high-turnout elections, or perhaps setting the threshold as 50% of the votes in the previous presidential election.)

Here is a direct link to the current charter language, Article VI, Section 2.2. Here's the key language:

If a candidate for office is unopposed at the election or becomes unopposed by death, disqualification or withdrawal, such candidate shall be deemed elected. If a candidate for an office receives more than fifty percent (50%) of all votes cast for that office at the election, such candidate shall be deemed elected. If more than two (2) candidates file for an office and no candidate receives more than fifty percent (50%) of all votes cast at the election for that office, the names of the several candidates for the office receiving the greatest number of votes totaling fifty percent (50%) at such elections shall be placed on the ballot at a run-off election in November, on the day specified by the laws of Oklahoma, and the candidate receiving the greatest number of votes cast at said run-off election shall be deemed elected. In the event of a tied vote among the said candidates, the election shall be decided by lot.

The same process applies to election for any Tulsa city office, including city councilors and the city auditor.

Note that the runoff may involve only two candidates, but if votes are split evenly enough between the candidates, it may involve more. Here are a few possible scenarios. Note that the numbers are entirely made up -- I have no polling data -- used simply to illustrate how different spreads of votes among candidates will lead to different runoff possibilities.

Scenario 1 is simple: If a majority of the August 25 voters support one candidate, he is elected to a four-year term as mayor. This is what happened in June 2016.

In Scenario 2, no one gets a majority of the votes on August 25, but the total of the top two is greater than 50%. In the illustrated scenario, Robinson and Bynum are the top two ranking candidates, and the sum of their percentage is 60%, so those two candidates advance to the November runoff. Note that in this hypothetical scenario, the two conservative candidates, Walker and Reddick, have enough votes that if they had all coalesced behind one of the two, the conservative candidate would have beaten out Bynum for the 2nd spot in the November runoff.

Scenario 3 illustrates what happens if the top two candidates fall short of a combined 50% total. In this case, Robinson and Walker would combine for 49% of the vote, so the third-place candidate, Immel, also would advance to the November runoff. Since those three combine for 68% of the vote, the condition would be satisfied, and no more candidates would advance to the runoff.

Scenario 4 is an extreme example to illustrate what would happen if the voters were very evenly spread among all seven of the active candidates. The top three candidates combine for only 46%, so one more candidate would have to be added to the November runoff ballot to reach the 50% threshold.

Scenario 5 is the most extreme hypothetical of all. Supposing all eight candidates got exactly the same number of votes -- 12.5% each. In this case, four candidates would advance (because the language says "totaling 50%," not exceeding 50%), and which four candidates advance would be decided by lot.

Note that there is no runoff after the November runoff. If more than two candidates advance to the November runoff, the election becomes a first-past-the-post race -- the candidate with the greatest number of votes, even if well short of a majority, is elected.

In addition to all the usual federal, statewide, legislative, and county races on the Oklahoma ballot next Tuesday, June 30, 2020, this is also the school board general election, which was postponed from April due to the CCP Bat Virus. Two of Tulsa's seven school board offices are on the ballot -- Office 5 is an open seat, and Office 6 features a challenge to a 24-year-incumbent.

Last time I posted campaign contributions and expenditures for school board races, before the February primary, I had to go to the Education Service Center, to the school district clerk's office, and take photos of the reports. This time, that wasn't going to be possible or advisable, given everyone's desire to minimize contact, so I filed an open records request through the Tulsa Schools website and sent an email directly to district clerk Sarah Bozone. I have yet to receive a reply.

UPDATE 2020/06/29: At 9 a.m. the day before the election, TPS has responded to my open records request. I will not have time to turn these PDFs into a tabulated account of campaign contributions, so you will have to look at them yourselves. I have taken the files provided, given them more meaningful file names, and run them through OCR, but that's it. Each file contains all of the ethics reports filed by the candidate during this campaign.

*Pendleton finished third in the primary. He was the only candidate not advancing to the general who managed to raise and spend enough money to be required to file ethics reports.

I shouldn't even have to ask: When the clerk receives a report, it ought to be immediately scanned in and posted on the district website. Better yet, let's fix the law so that all candidates and campaign committees in the state use the Oklahoma Ethics Commissions's electronic filing system. Currently, county candidates file ethics reports with their county election board, school board candidates file with the district clerk, municipal candidates file with the city clerk. Having one system with a consistent interface and electronic records would serve everyone better -- except perhaps for candidates with something to hide.

Which brings me back to the topic. Knowing that I was unlikely to get a timely reply from the district clerk, I emailed the candidates directly on Tuesday, requesting their ethics reports, asking who had endorsed their campaigns, and asking for their opinion on the plan to extend Superintendent Deborah Gist's contract for an additional three years in a snap vote one week before new school board members would be elected.

All four candidates responded, but only two, Shane Saunders, candidate for Office 5, and Jerry Griffin, the Office 6 challenger, both Republicans, sent me their campaign contribution reports. Office 5 candidate John Croisant and 24-year Office 6 incumbent Ruth Ann Fate, both Democrats, said that they had filed their reports with the district clerks -- a very passive-aggressive response.

Three of the four objected to the school board voting to extend Gist's contract right before the election; Fate, the incumbent, wrote, "I will be making my decision tonight." Only two of the seven school board members, Jennettie Marshall and Stacey Woolley, voted against the contract extension. Next week that vote might have been 4-3 against extension.

Endorsements reported to me by the candidates:

• Tulsa World: Croisant, Fate
• Tulsa Regional Chamber: Saunders, Fate
• Tulsa County Republican Party: Griffin
• American Federation of Teachers: Griffin

Griffin has also been endorsed by John Remington, the third-place candidate in February's primary.

Notable contributors during this reporting period: Shane Saunders received contributions from his erstwhile boss, former Congressman John Sullivan (Saunders served as Sullivan's press secretary), and from former Tulsa Mayor Robert J. LaFortune. Jerry Griffin received a contribution from the Tulsa County Republican Party; parties are allowed to help candidates running in non-partisan elections. Griffin also received a donation from the American Federation of Teachers.

Please read my previous report on the pre-primary contributors to all of the Tulsa School Board candidates, including the two who are refusing to provide BatesLine with copies of their pre-general reports.

Contributors and vendors are from Tulsa unless otherwise noted. If you're reading this on the home page, the lists for each candidate are after the jump.

My family would like to have gone to the rally, but it was too soon to want to be around 18,000 people, or to stand outside for hours in the hot sun without a good chance of getting in. Hearing about hundreds of thousands of ticket requests reinforced the feeling that it would have been unpleasantly crowded and possibly futile.

We decided to drive downtown and have a look around. We got into the downtown area at about 2:20 pm. I drove us into downtown on 11th Street, up Boston Ave to 3rd, west to the barricade at Boulder, north and east through the Bob Wills District, north on Elgin through the OSU-Tulsa campus, south on Greenwood to 1st, through the Blue Dome district. I was surprised that there weren't that many cars downtown, especially with so many parking facilities blocked off. It was an early indication that the President might not be speaking to a full house, unless people were shuttled in from remote parking lots by bus. There weren't many people walking around either; I assumed it was because the attendees had already moved into the secured area, since it was nearly time for the doors to open at 3 pm.

On the west side of Boston Avenue between 5th and 6th, the new DGX (Dollar General Express) store was boarded up, as was Farmer's Insurance, Decopolis, and Jimmy John's. Elote was closing at 4 pm, and Poke Love had a sign saying it would be closed Friday and Saturday. Shops on the east side of Boston weren't boarded up. The vast majority of downtown businesses we passed were not covered with plywood.

At the Greenwood Cultural Center, we noticed a small event involving a few hundred people that seemed to be ending. The Black Wall Street Memorial had been covered and wrapped tightly with a sign that read, "This is sacred ground, not a photo-op." Evidently those responsible didn't want to give Vice President Pence the chance to pay his respects and possibly seem compassionate and human (when they're certain that he isn't).

We decided to park and walk around the perimeter to see what was going on. We found a space on 8th Street just east of Main, which was not too far away, and walked up Boulder to where everything seemed to be happening. There were lots of vendors selling buttons and flags, hats and T-shirts, some pro- and anti-Trump protesters and some street evangelists, but no one was blocking the gate at 4th and Cheyenne. Boulder was pedestrianized between 3rd and 5th, and 4th was closed to cars between Boulder and the entrance to the secured area at Cheyenne. We noticed Oklahoma National Guard members staging in the Arvest parking garage at 5th and Boulder. National Guard, Tulsa Police, and Tulsa County Sheriff's Office were visible.

Coney Island was boarded up, but Orpha's Lounge was open for business. There were a few small marquees along that block of 4th, including one belonging to Info Wars, and there seemed to be a broadcast in progress. Nearer to the gate at 4th and Cheyenne there were numerous empty lawnchairs (some folded, some deployed), coolers, and trash, the detritus of those who had arrived early to be first in line to get into the arena.

If we'd wanted to, we could have strolled right in at that point and joined the rally. (This was at roughly 3 pm.) There was no line at the gate. As we all have contact with people at particular risk for CCP Bat Virus, we opted not to go in. If we had known how many available seats there were in the upper tier, with room to spread out from other people, we might have chanced it. (If I'd known that Nigel Farage was in the house, I certainly would have gone in.) This was at about 3. We walked back to Main, and north to 3rd to see if we could get a better glimpse of the entrance to the BOK Center, but we couldn't see, as the street was blocked off to vehicles and pedestrians at Boulder, two blocks east. When we came back by 4th Street at about 3:30, it was still clear sailing to get into the gate.

I've heard reports of people being refused entrance, but there's some indication that this occurred around 6 pm. I'm trying to track down reports. My suspicion is that people watching the coverage realized that there was plenty of space available, made their way downtown, but got there after the gates were closed as the President was about to arrive at the BOK Center. Was this a planned closure for security purposes or, as some rumors suggest, because protesters jammed up security to keep more people from getting in? I have been sending messages to some of the people who say they tried to get in but could not, to get details and clarification. (UPDATE: My suspicion has been confirmed by one reply: They were attempting to get in, with tickets, between 6 pm and 7 pm, after their friends had texted with pictures to show that there was still plenty of room. Word was that there were "not enough screeners" and so the gates were closed. Trying to find out what that means and where that information originated.)

Gary Eubanks, who had made it into the secured area, noticed that around 5 o'clock that no one was manning the temperature screening station, and you couldn't go on to the Secret Service security checkpoint until you had been checked for a fever. He also said that every other seat in the arena had been blocked off initially, and that even after passing through the temperature and security checkpoints, attendees were being held outside the BOK Center entrance and only allowed into the building in groups of 100 at long intervals. I have reached out to BOK Center and ASM Global, which has the contract to manage the center, for their response to these reports and for a timeline of changes affecting those attempting to attend the rally.

Back to our journey: After we got back to our car, a little before 4 pm, we drove down Boston Ave. -- Mrs. DeHaven's Flower Shop and The Gadget Company were boarded up -- and noticed a Trump Baby balloon floating above 18th and Boston. When we got there, there were two balloons. A counter-event in Veterans' Park had a few marquees set up and a handful of people; this was at about 4 pm.

My complete album of photos and videos from outside the Trump Tulsa rally is here on Flickr.

MORE: Tim Murtaugh, communications director of Trump 2020, tweeted video of an MSNBC report of protesters causing the 4th and Cheyenne gate to be closed not long after we left the area. Here's what the MSNBC reporter said; the time bug on screen indicates 4:03 to 4:04 pm CDT.

And again, one of these gates -- there are three places where you can enter to get to the BOK Center, three gates -- this one has now been shut, because there was some kind of incident, there were Black Lives Matter protesters who made their way here, and they had a very brief standoff, a very brief standoff with the police, who were backed by the National Guard, and they were slowly moved back. They're still slowly moving that line back. But again, it's forced the shut [sic] of one of those three entry points. You can hear we're now sorta being surrounded by Trump supporters who are trying to get their message out on our air. But the situation here is now a tense one because you have these three different groups that have all converged on this one street, and we're now seeing the National Guard trying to move that crowd back and get these gates open again. The gates at the actual BOK Center are scheduled to open right now. I don't know if that will be delayed, because this entryway, as I said, is now completely shut....

MORE: At 3:42pm, News on 6's Reagan Ledbetter posted video of the 4th and Cheyenne gate being blocked by protesters, with TPD lined up on the other side of the intersection and instructing protesters to back away from the gate. A 3:57pm video shows Oklahoma Highway Patrol troopers instructing the crowd that they had to back up past the alley (about 160 feet away) before the troopers would allow the gate to be reopened.

STILL MORE: Citizen-journalist Drew Hernandez has video of altercations in downtown Tulsa before and after the Trump rally.

EVEN MORE: David Van Risseghem of Sooner Politics has some thoughts on the real reasons attendance was so low and includes his experience (twice) of the checkpoint process. (I'm inclined to agree with his thoughts.) He also captured video of an attack on a Trump supporter waiting outside the BOK Center on Thursday.

I will be updating this entry as new information becomes available.

MIDDAY UPDATE:

Two more candidates have filed for mayor this morning: Gregory Robinson II, a Democrat, who was introduced at his Election Board press conference by Dr. Tiffany Crutcher, and Craig Immel, an Independent, who was the lead plaintiff in the battle to keep park land on Riverside Drive from being turned into a shopping center that might possibly someday have an REI-type store in it.

As previously announced, incumbent Democrat District 1 City Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper has filed for re-election. She has one opponent so far, Jerry Goodwin, also a registered Democrat.

Auditor Cathy Champion Carter and City Councilors Jeannie Cue, Crista Patrick, Cass Fahler, and Phil Lakin remain unopposed as of noon Wednesday.

No other new filings as of noon today. Candidates must file a notarized declaration of candidacy along with a $50 cashier's check or 300-signature petition at the Tulsa County Election Board, 555 N. Denver Ave., by 5 pm, today, Wednesday, June 10, 2020.

CLOSE OF FILING:

Two more candidates, Republican Ty Walker and Democrat Ricco Wright, filed for Mayor Wednesday afternoon, bringing the total number of candidates to eight.

City Auditor Cathy Champion Carter and two city councilors, Jeannie Cue (District 2) and Phil Lakin (District 8), failed to draw an opponent and have been reelected to another two-year term.

Two previously unopposed incumbents now have opposition. Paul Eicher, a Democrat, will face District 3 councilor Crista Patrick. Republican District 5 councilor Cass Fahler drew four opponents during the final hours of filing, all of them Democrats in their 30s, including 2018's second-place finisher Michael William Arthrell-Knezek aka Mykey Arthrell.

Kathryn Lyons, a Republican, filed in District 4, and Cheyenna Morgan, a Democrat, filed in District 6. Both districts have Democrat incumbents.

The names, ages, and addresses below are from the Tulsa County Election Board's official list of Monday filings. I've added incumbent status, registered voter name in brackets if it differs from the name used for filing, and party affiliation, which I checked against the current voter registration database.

Mayor
GT Bynum, 42, 3607 S. Florence Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, incumbent, Republican
Paul Tay, 57, 415 W Archer, Tulsa, OK 74103, Independent
Ken Reddick, 37, 5008 S 85th East Ave, Tulsa, OK 74145, Republican
Zackri Leon Whitlow, 39, 2951 W 66th St, Tulsa, OK 74132, Democrat
Craig Immel, 44, 1739 West Newton Street, Tulsa, OK 74127, Independent
Gregory C. Robinson II, 30, 2307 E 29th Pl N, Tulsa, OK 74110, Democrat
Ty [Tyron Vincent] Walker, 54, 8538 E 24th St, Tulsa, OK 74129, Republican
Ricco Wright, 38, 1913 N Santa Fe Place, Tulsa, OK 74127, Democrat

Council District 1
Jerry [James G] Goodwin, 57, 2406 W. Pine Pl., Tulsa, OK 74127, Democrat
Vanessa Hall-Harper, 48, 2020 West Newton Street, Tulsa, OK 74127, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 2
Jeannie Cue, 5313 S 32 Pl W, Tulsa, OK 74107, incumbent, Republican

Council District 3
Crista Patrick, 46, 1918 N. Joplin Ave., Tulsa, OK 74115, incumbent, Democrat
Paul Eicher, 31, 509 S 76 East Ave, Tulsa, OK 74112, Democrat

Council District 4
Kara Joy McKee, 41, 1119 S Quebec Ave, Tulsa, OK 74112, incumbent, Democrat
Landry Miller, 26, 221 N Union Ave, Tulsa, OK 74127, Democrat
Casey Robinson, 38, 1260 E 29th Pl, Tulsa, OK 74114, Republican
Kathryn Lyons, 53, 2831 E 28th St., Tulsa, OK 74114, Republican

Council District 5
Cass [Cassidy G] Fahler, 47, 7383 E 24th St, Tulsa, OK 74129, incumbent, Republican
Mykey Arthrell [Michael William Arthrell-Knezek], 35, 1747 S Erie Pl, Tulsa, OK 74112, Democrat
Justin Schuffert, 35, 2216 S. 78th E. Ave, Tulsa, OK 74129, Democrat
Rachel Shepherd, 30, 5719 E. 30th St, Tulsa, OK 74114, Democrat
Nat Wachowski-Estes, 34, 1213 S 87th E Ave, Tulsa, OK 74112, Democrat

Council District 6
Christian Bengel, 52, 13173 E. 29th Street, Tulsa, OK 74134, Republican
Connie Dodson, 53, 13302 E. 28th St., Tulsa, OK 74134, incumbent, Democrat
Cheyenna Morgan, 29, 9 South 185th East Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74108, Democrat

Council District 7
Chad Ferguson, 40, 6751 S. 71st East Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74133, Republican
Justin Van Kirk, 29, 10709 E 100 Pl, Tulsa, OK 74133, Republican
Lori Decter Wright, 45, 8706 E 86th St, Tulsa, OK 74133, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 8
Phil [Philip Lawrence] Lakin Jr., 52, 9808 S. Knoxville Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74137, incumbent, Republican

Council District 9
[Bobbie] Leeann Crosby, 36, 3845 South Madison Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, Democrat
Jayme Fowler, 61, 5601 S Gary Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, Republican

City Auditor
Cathy Champion Carter, 65, 4120 E 22nd Place, Tulsa, OK 74114, incumbent, Democrat

UPDATED to include Justin Van Kirk and Jayme Fowler, whose names I overlooked when initially composing this report. UPDATED again to include information from Zackri Leon Whitlow and Landry Miller about their voter registration.

I've made this plea repeatedly on social media, on Pat Campbell's show on 1170 KFAQ, and here on this blog. And yet I look at the list of candidates after two of the three days of the filing period, and I am amazed to see so many unopposed candidates. Four of the city councilors do not have opponents, nor does the city auditor.

It's especially surprising after a fortnight that has put the spotlight on the importance of city government. Questions of law and order, police protocols and accountability are at the top of everyone's minds, and these questions are answered by our city council and mayor. Providentially, while we're all thinking about the importance of municipal policy, we have the greatest opportunity to make a difference, because it's filing period for city offices.

We only get to choose a new mayor once every four years, and now is the time to make sure there's someone on the ballot that you'd be happy to vote for. We only get to choose a new auditor and councilors every two years. There seems to be a lot of discontent, from across the political spectrum, with Tulsa City Hall, and I'd have thought that that discontent would burst forth this week in an outpouring of candidates for city office.

Do people still believe in elections? It looks like the protesters that blocked interstates and arterial streets don't. Instead of trying to elect a new mayor and councilors who are in agreement with their aims, to have a real seat at the table, it appears that the protesters' plan is to continue to protest, presumably in hopes that the existing mayor and council, whatever they may personally believe, will be inspired or intimidated by the protests into adopting the protesters' platform.

Perhaps because the news media loves the drama of protest and civil (or uncivil) disobedience more than the slog of legislation and debate, mass protests caught the public imagination as the way to effect change. Even the venerable Atlantic magazine is talking about "toppling" President Trump, as if we didn't have a presidential election in five months. Protesters in the US and the UK are defacing monuments and demolishing statues, as if it were impossible to enact the removal of offensive monuments through the ordinary processes of representative government.

You've heard the marchers' chants: "This is what democracy looks like!" No, this is what ochlocracy looks like. Democracy looks like people knocking doors for candidates, casting ballots, and sitting around committee tables poring over budget books.

In February 2020, the City Council voted 5-3 against putting a charter amendment on the ballot to create an Office of Independent Monitor (OIM) to review use of force cases by the police. Councilors Vanessa Hall-Harper (District 1), Kara Joy McKee (District 4), and Lori Decter Wright (District 7) were the only votes in support of putting Mayor Bynum's proposal on the ballot. All three have drawn opponents.

Councilors Jeannie Cue (District 2), Crista Patrick (District 3), Connie Dodson (District 6), Phil Lakin (District 8), and Ben Kimbro (District 9) voted against the OIM charter change, and Cass Fahler (District 5), who was absent, had voiced opposition to the proposal. Kimbro isn't running again, but only one of the other five (Dodson) has drawn an opponent. Only two candidates have bothered to file for the open District 9 seat.

Marlin Lavanhar, senior pastor of All Souls Unitarian Church, has drawn a couple of scathing cartoons critical of Mayor Bynum's response to the protests. So where is the challenger to Bynum from the left side of the spectrum?

I've checked a few names prominent in the protests and found that some of them are registered to vote in these districts whose councilors are opposed to their goals. If I dug further, I suspect I'd find that there's a leading protester in each one of these council districts. Why aren't they using their youth, enthusiasm, and energy to run for a real seat at the table, instead of being satisfied with scraps?

So who are the candidates who have already filed? Let's start with a look at the mayoral candidates.

GT Bynum is running for a second term. A professional schmoozer in one form or another for his entire career (Senate staff assistant, public relations, corporate communications, governmental affairs, lobbyist), Bynum IV is clearly in over his head, particularly now that the job demands tough decisions, not just ribbon-cutting and pious virtue signalling. Michael Mason has documented Bynum's deep ties to billionaire George Kaiser. In the words of New York Times writer Cassidy McDonald, "Kaiser has turned Tulsa into 'beta city,' U.S.A," a guinea pig for his social experiments, which are grounded in the materialistic worldview set out in his "Giving Pledge." However noble, Mr. Kaiser's intentions, Tulsans should not give him carte blanche to direct city resources to carry out his private philanthropic aims. Tulsans need elected officials who are not beholden to a billionaire who seems to see us as lab rats.

Ken Reddick is running as a conservative Republican and has already been campaigning for a few months. After many years as a manager for an electrical utility contractor and as an electrician, Reddick now has his own business managing projects for contractors in the utility and electrical fields, helping them to streamline processes and find efficiencies. Reddick ran a credible special election race for District 7 City Councilor in November 2018, but conservative support was divided among several candidates.

Paul Tay, who has run many times for mayor and city council, and made an infamous cameo appearance at the 2016 RSU-TV mayoral debate between incumbent Mayor Dewey Bartlett and challenger GT Bynum, was released Monday after five months in the Tulsa County Jail for outraging public decency. I won't repeat the specifics of his crime, for which he was convicted in a jury trial in January, but the state's witness list and the judge's instructions to the jury will tell you more than you wanted to know. Tay also has felony charges pending for possession of a stolen vehicle and violation of a protective order. When I first met him, way back in 1998, he had some cogent thoughts on urban planning and bicycles, but there's nothing cogent about his increasingly bizarre behavior. On his declaration of candidacy, Tay listed the Day Center for the Homeless as his place of residence, contrary to his voter registration address.

The fourth candidate, Zackri Leon Whitlow, doesn't appear in the voter registration database at all. Whitlow shows up on LinkedIn, Facebook, and IMDb. It appears that he is an insurance agent and broker, and that his agency may have been located in California, in Langley, Oklahoma, and now in Tulsa. It appears that he served as a butler at the Playboy Mansion, credited with an appearance on the reality series based there, "The Girls Next Door." I haven't found anything indicating his views on city issues.

City Auditor Cathy Champion Carter (formerly Cathy Criswell) is still unopposed. She has held the post without a challenger since her first election in 2013, when she defeated appointed incumbent Clift Richards and Josh Lewis. If the listing of internal audit reports on her City Auditor website is complete, Tulsa hasn't had a sensitive payments audit since FY 2017, and the pace of internal audits in general has slowed considerably over the past few years. It was the intention of the framers of our City Charter that the city auditor should be an "anti-mayor," acting as a whistleblower on abuse and corruption. Instead, Carter continues to follow the pattern set by Phil Wood, the first city auditor under the 1989 charter, quietly churning out reports but doing little or nothing to call attention to her team's findings, findings that might uncover inefficiency, waste, or even corruption.

If you're wondering whether or not to file, go for it. Every councilor should have a challenger. After filing closes at 5 pm Wednesday afternoon, you've got two days to investigate and speak with the other candidates who have filed, and if you'd rather back one of the other candidates you can withdraw by 5 pm Friday and take your name on the ballot. But let's at least make sure that every voter has good choices in every office and district.

At the end of the second of three days of candidate filing for the 2020 City of Tulsa elections, the incumbent mayor, auditor, and seven of the nine incumbent city councilors have filed for re-election, with Mayor GT Bynum IV drawing three opponents and incumbent Democratic Councilors Kara Joy McKee (District 4) and Councilor Lori Decter Wright (District 7) each drawing two opponents. Five council seats and the auditor's office have only one candidate each. Incumbent Democrat councilors Connie Dodson (District 6) has also drawn a Republican opponent. Republican District 9 councilor Ben Kimbro is not running for re-election; two candidates have filed thus far for that seat. Democrat District 1 Councilor Vanessa Hall Harper has confirmed to BatesLine that she will file tomorrow; Jerry Goodwin has already filed as a challenger for the seat.

Three candidates may have issues with their voter registrations, or lack thereof. District 4 candidate Landry Miller is not in the current state election board voter registration database as of noon today. Perennial mayoral candidate Paul Tay is registered to vote at 6104 N. Boulder, which does not match the residential or mailing address (both 415 W. Archer St., the Day Center for the Homeless) he supplied on his declaration of candidacy. The voter registration database also does not have a record for mayoral candidate Zackri Leon Whitlow; there is someone with a similar name and age registered to vote at a different address.

(UPDATE 2020/06/10: Zackri Whitlow responded to my inquiry about his voter registration: "I just submitted my Tulsa Voter Registration on Friday. I am an Oklahoma Native but had moved to California back in 2006. I was last registered in Riverside County and that should be in the process of them transitioning my new Voter Registration to Tulsa County." Whitlow says he has registered in Oklahoma as a Democrat. Landry Miller responded to my inquiry: "I am registered in District 4, under my current address. This was only recently changed because I hopped around Tulsa for a while trying to find the perfect spot to live. So therefore my previous registration was in Rogers County, where I waited to update my registration until March, so I could still vote in the presidential primaries (in Rogers County).")

In addition, four candidates -- Jerry Goodwin, Cass Fahler, Phil Lakin, and Leeann Crosby -- have filed under names that do not match their voter registration records. While state law permits a candidate to specify a ballot name that differs from their legal name, both of which are specified on a declaration of candidacy for state office, the Tulsa City Charter does not. In the past, I can recall a number of occasions where a city candidate's full name (including middle name and suffix) appeared on the ballot, even if it differed from the name by which the candidate was popularly known. This 2009 City of Tulsa primary ballot for Mayor and Council District 8 has middle names for almost all of the candidates.

This name-matching requirement seems to have motivated candidates to change their voter registration. For example, the mayor is registered as last name "Bynum," first name "G T," which allows his name to appear as "G T Bynum" on the city ballot, even though that would appear to be in violation of the section of law (26 O.S. 4-112) that requires each voter to register with his full name, in his case, George Theron Bynum IV.

The Tulsa City Charter, Article VI, Section 3.1, requires, "Any person who desires to be a candidate for a City office shall file with the Election Board of Tulsa County or its successor a Declaration of Candidacy which shall contain: A. The name and residence street address of the person as it appears on the voter registration records;...." A candidate who has provided a name and address combination that doesn't match a voter registration record for an address in the City of Tulsa would be in violation of that charter provision.

A candidate with an invalid declaration of candidacy could have his candidacy contested by an opposing candidate or, if no other candidate has filed, by any eligible voter registered to vote for the candidate. Contests must be filed by 5 p.m. Friday with a $250 deposit. Contests are governed by Title 26, Chapter A1, Article V of Oklahoma Statutes, sections 118 to 131. Section 117 states that the relevant election board can reject a Declaration of Candidacy "which on its face shows that the candidate does not meet the qualifications to become a candidate for the office set forth as contained in the Oklahoma Constitution, statutes or resolution calling the election."

Filing continues for one final day, tomorrow, Wednesday, June 10, 2020 at the Tulsa County Election Board, 555 N. Denver Ave., Tulsa, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. More about the filing and election process here.

The names, ages, and addresses below are from the Tulsa County Election Board's official list of Monday filings. I've added incumbent status, registered voter name in brackets if it differs from the name used for filing, and party affiliation, which I checked against the current voter registration database.

Mayor
GT Bynum, 42, 3607 S. Florence Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, incumbent, Republican
Paul Tay, 57, 415 W Archer, Tulsa, OK 74103, Independent
Ken Reddick, 37, 5008 S 85th East Ave, Tulsa, OK 74145, Republican
Zackri Leon Whitlow, 39, 2951 W 66th St, Tulsa, OK 74132, Democrat

Council District 1
Jerry [James G] Goodwin, 57, 2406 W. Pine Pl., Tulsa, OK 74127, Democrat

Council District 2
Jeannie Cue, 5313 S 32 Pl W, Tulsa, OK 74107, incumbent, Republican

Council District 3
Crista Patrick, 46, 1918 N. Joplin Ave., Tulsa, OK 74115, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 4
Kara Joy McKee, 41, 1119 S Quebec Ave, Tulsa, OK 74112, incumbent, Democrat
Landry Miller, 26, 221 N Union Ave, Tulsa, OK 74127, Democrat
Casey Robinson, 38, 1260 E 29th Pl, Tulsa, OK 74114, Republican

Council District 5
Cass [Cassidy G] Fahler, 47, 7383 E 24th St, Tulsa, OK 74129, incumbent, Republican

Council District 6
Christian Bengel, 52, 13173 E. 29th Street, Tulsa, OK 74134, Republican
Connie Dodson, 53, 13302 E. 28th St., Tulsa, OK 74134, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 7
Chad Ferguson, 40, 6751 S. 71st East Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74133, Republican
Justin Van Kirk, 29, 10709 E 100 Pl, Tulsa, OK 74133, Republican
Lori Decter Wright, 45, 8706 E 86th St, Tulsa, OK 74133, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 8
Phil [Philip Lawrence] Lakin Jr., 52, 9808 S. Knoxville Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74137, incumbent, Republican

Council District 9
[Bobbie] Leeann Crosby, 36, 3845 South Madison Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, Democrat
Jayme Fowler, 61, 5601 S Gary Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, Republican

City Auditor
Cathy Champion Carter, 65, 4120 E 22nd Place, Tulsa, OK 74114, incumbent, Democrat

UPDATED to include Justin Van Kirk and Jayme Fowler, whose names I overlooked when initially composing this report. UPDATED again to include information from Zackri Leon Whitlow and Landry Miller about their voter registration.

Update as of 1:30 pm Tuesday: Republican Ken Reddick, 37, 5008 S 85th East Ave, has filed for mayor, and Republican Casey Robinson, 38, 1260 E 29th Pl, has filed for District 4 City Councilor. District 2 Republican incumbent Jeannie Cue, and District 7 Democrat incumbent Lori Decter Wright, 45, 8706 E 86th St, have filed for re-election. Cue is unopposed at this point, Wright has a Republican opponent, and there are now three candidates each running for mayor and District 4 city council. Landry Miller is not in the current state election board voter registration database. Paul Tay is registered to vote at 6104 N. Boulder, which does not match the residential or mailing address he supplied on his declaration of candidacy.

At the end of the first day of filing for the 2020 City of Tulsa elections, the incumbent mayor, auditor, and five of the incumbent city councilors have filed for re-election, with the mayor and two city councilors drawing one opponent each. Six council seats and the auditor's office have only one candidate each. No one has yet filed for the District 2 seat, currently held by Jeannie Cue. District 7 councilor Lori Decter-Wright has announced her intention to run for re-election. District 9 councilor Ben Kimbro is not running for re-election.

Filing continues Tuesday and Wednesday at the Tulsa County Election Board, 555 N. Denver Ave., Tulsa, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. More about the filing and election process here.

Perennial candidate Paul Tay has listed the Day Center for the Homeless at 415 W. Archer St. as his residence.

The incumbent auditor, the former Cathy Criswell, married William Lloyd Carter, Jr., last July and will be on the ballot this year as Cathy Champion Carter.

The names, ages, and addresses below are from the Tulsa County Election Board's official list of Monday filings. I've added incumbent status, registered voter name in brackets if it differs from the name used for filing, and party affiliation, which I checked against the current voter registration database. I wasn't able to locate Landry Miller's record.

Mayor
GT Bynum, 42, 3607 S. Florence Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, incumbent, Republican
Paul Tay, 57, 415 W Archer, Tulsa, OK 74103, Independent

Council District 1
Jerry [James G] Goodwin, 57, 2406 W. Pine Pl., Tulsa, OK 74127, Democrat

Council District 3
Crista Patrick, 46, 1918 N. Joplin Ave., Tulsa, OK 74115, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 4
Kara Joy McKee, 41, 1119 S Quebec Ave, Tulsa, OK 74112, incumbent, Democrat
Landry Miller, 26, 221 N Union Ave, Tulsa, OK 74127, unknown

Council District 5
Cass [Cassidy G] Fahler, 47, 7383 E 24th St, Tulsa, OK 74129, incumbent, Republican

Council District 6
Christian Bengel, 52, 13173 E. 29th Street, Tulsa, OK 74134, Republican
Connie Dodson, 53, 13302 E. 28th St., Tulsa, OK 74134, incumbent, Democrat

Council District 7
Chad Ferguson, 40, 6751 S. 71st East Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74133, Republican

Council District 8
Phil [Philip Lawrence] Lakin Jr., 52, 9808 S. Knoxville Avenue, Tulsa, OK 74137, incumbent, Republican

Council District 9
[Bobbie] Leeann Crosby, 36, 3845 South Madison Ave, Tulsa, OK 74105, Democrat

City Auditor
Cathy Champion Carter, 65, 4120 E 22nd Place, Tulsa, OK 74114, incumbent, Democrat

In addition to the high-stakes presidential race, the City of Tulsa has its own high-stakes elections this year. All nine Tulsa City Councilors and the Tulsa City Auditor are on the ballot every two years, but in presidential years, the Mayor's office is also up for grabs. Filing period begins Monday, June 8, 2020, and ends Wednesday, June 10, 2020. Candidates file in-person at the Tulsa County Election Board, 555 N. Denver (in the old Marina-style Safeway building), between the hours of 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. daily.

I'll stick to the nuts and bolts in this item; later I hope to explain why Tulsans should want to run for office and change the personnel running our city government.

Filing involves filling out a declaration of candidacy, getting it notarized, and presenting it at the county election board with a cashier's check for $50 for the filing fee. The filing fee is really a deposit, intended to deter frivolous candidates: If you get more than 15% of the vote when your name first appears on the ballot, or if you're unopposed, you get the cashier's check back. In lieu of the filing fee, you have the option of filing a petition signed by 300 registered voters in your election district if you're running for council, or city-wide if running for Mayor or Auditor. The information packet with all the forms, including the declaration of candidacy and all ethics disclosure forms, is on the Tulsa County Election Board website.

City elections are governed by Article VI of the City Charter. Council races are run by district. Our council districts were gerrymandered in 2012 evidently with the intent of eliminating then-Mayor Dewey Bartlett's harshest critics. The lines will be redrawn next year following the publication of the 2020 census results by a five-person committee appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the City Council. If the next council consists of the mayor's yes men, the mayor will be able to redraw the district lines to benefit his most loyal councilors.

To find your district, consult the Oklahoma Voter Tool, or use the city's interactive map, or consult this set of static maps, showing the precincts contained within each council district.

Tulsa's municipal elections are non-partisan, and the process has changed since the last mayor's election in 2016, going from three stages to two. The August 25, 2020, election is considered a general election. (The same date is used for runoffs for candidates for Federal and State Legislative offices.)

If two candidates are running for an office, the candidate receiving the most votes at the August election wins. If more than two candidates are running, the number of top candidates whose votes total at least 50% advance to a runoff on November 3, 2020, the same date as the general election for U. S. President, Senator, Congressmen, and state legislators.

To give you an idea of how this would work, suppose the top two candidates for Mayor fell short of 50% of the vote combined in a very evenly divided race.

Candidate A 25%
Candidate B 23%
Candidate C 14%
Candidate D 11%
Candidate E 10%
Candidate F 9%
Candidate G 8%

If these were a regular Oklahoma primary, only Candidates A and B would advance to the November runoff, but because their combined total falls short of 50%, one more candidate, C, would advance. Because A, B, and C's vote share exceeds 50% (62%) only those candidates will advance to November. This is a highly unlikely spread, except perhaps in a race for an open seat; in most cases, it will simply be the top two candidates advancing to the November runoff.

If you're unhappy with a mayor who makes concessions without consulting all stakeholders involved in a decision, if you're unhappy with a mayor who refuses to enact a curfew to protect Tulsa residents and businesses, if you're unhappy with a council that fails to hold the mayor accountable, if you're unhappy with councilors who break their promises to constituents who are facing the destruction of their homes by eminent domain, if you're unhappy that most of our elected officials are beholden to a billionaire who sees Tulsa as a lab rat for social experimentation, you ought to consider running for office. We can't have change unless we have different candidates to choose from.

A young friend of mine was incensed at the attitude of older folks about the incident on the North Detroit overpass of Interstate 244. "The point of a protest is this: How does it feel to be powerless?" So it was fine, in the eyes of this homeschooled, Christian young adult, for people to wander off of the planned demonstration route (on Detroit under the I-244 overpass), block traffic on a busy, elevated motorway, box in a driver towing a horse trailer, so that they could make the drivers feel powerless, too. And this is supposed to advance constructive change?

But people aren't powerless. Next week -- Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, June 8-10, 2020 -- is the filing period for City of Tulsa offices. Every office is on the ballot: Mayor, Auditor, and all nine City Councilors. If you don't like the way the police department is run, if you think laws are unjust or unjustly enforced, run for office. Pour your energy into finding candidates, organizing, and knocking on doors. This year, more than ever, leading up to the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa Race Massacre, the message that motivated the peaceful protest late Sunday afternoon in Greenwood is going to be enthusiastically amplified by local broadcast and print media. (Here's the City of Tulsa 2020 election packet.)

Nicole Gelinas, a New York-based columnist and analyst on urban issues, tweeted to a 20-year-old who lamented that she couldn't attend the protests because she cares for an elderly grandparent:

Most responsible thing to do is stay home, plan long-term strategy for constructive, deliberate change. Throwing bodies on street to pandemic solves nothing, endangers people, actually creates huge anti-progressive backlash. (permalink)

When politicians see massive street protests, all they see is people who can't organize themselves into targeted, deliberate coalitions for *specific* action items. Rich white pols at home, vulnerable minorities on street risking COVID-19 death ... to maintain power structure. (permalink)

The other part of this is that massive, well-meaning, but naive and COVID-deadly street protests provide cover for well-organized anarchists with a *real* agenda. (permalink)

After tuning in at 10 to watch the news (with my shiny new, roof-mounted aerial antenna -- we've recently cut the cord), I stayed up late Sunday night, watching coverage and tweeting about it, for as long as the local stations were on the air. Fox 23 (KOKI) and News on 6 (KOTV) did a good job of covering the confrontations in Brookside, on Peorial between 36th Street and I-44. Amazingly, 2 Works for You (KJRH) was AWOL, even though the protest parked itself right in front of the station's studios for a long time. KJRH was busy covering a candlelight vigil at Archer and Greenwood during their 10 o'clock news, then ran their scheduled paid programming from Joel Osteen. KOTV packed it in shortly after midnight, after KOTV caught video of vandals breaking into Cash America pawnshop and Round the House consignment mall in the Bellaire shopping center (just north of I-44 on the east side of Peoria), shortly after which the thugs bashed in KOTV reporter Emory Bryan's car windows. KOKI called it a night a few minutes later. If we ever have actual news after midnight in this town, will anyone from our TV and radio stations be listening to the scanner to cover it? Who's got the night watch?

The two big confrontations on Sunday were on I-244 at Detroit, during the Black Lives Matter Rally in the afternoon, and on Brookside Sunday night. The organizer of the rally, Tykebrean Natrail Cheshier, has said publicly that these two protests were not part of her rally.

Friday night, May 29, Cheshier posted a description of the rally:

Sunday May 31, 2020
5pm
( show up @ 4pm to help set up)
Canned food donations go to the Vernon AME Church ( please put them on the front steps) !!
Also they have food drives all the time as well ( support that)
Water stations will be set up ( will need donated waters )
Snacks stations will be set up ( will need donated snacks)
Poster board station as well! Bring your own and extras as well! ( markers are welcomed)
Trash cans will be set up as well!

Speakers will start @ 5pm in the field by the church on Black Wall Street !
After the speakers we will March to the John Hope Franklin Park around 630 and that's where it will end!

I still have room for a couple more speakers!
If your wanting for speak you have to be on the list! ( please message me )

I will also need tables & chairs for the volunteers!!

This will be downtown on green wood!

Please park @ OSU Tulsa and walk to greenwood!!

SUPPORT BLACK OWNED BUSINESS!!

T shirts will be for sell from those businesses!

Please take time to look @ all of the plaques on the ground and walls as we walk around greenwood !!

THIS WILL BE THE 99 Year Anniversary of Black Wall Street being burnt down!

THIS IS A PEACEFUL RALLY AND IT WILL STAY THAT WAY!!

I hope this answers more questions!!!

At 5:24 am Monday, Cheshier posted a map of the intended route -- from the field next to Vernon AME Church, south on Greenwood, west on Archer, north on Detroit, east on Reconciliation Way (formerly Brady, north on Elgin to Reconciliation Park, stating:

Here was the route from yesterday but once I passed out in front a couple other "activist " Decided to leave me and take over. This route is what the cops wanted for us. No highway . I do apologize again. I didn't stay hydrated and got over heated ..

At 10:10 pm Sunday, Cheshier posted:

My rally was over around 7.. Whatever else happens tonight has nothing to do with my rally. Mine was peaceful up til I passed out and someone took over and went on the highway.... ( the people that were hit are ok( so I've heard)) other then that the rally was peaceful and I'm thankful .. I'm going to rest now.. thank y'all

Going back through her Facebook feed and the event page for the rally, the rally seems like an earnest but hastily organized response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, tying the protest into the 99th anniversary of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, and it's clear that Cheshier and her fellow organizers had nothing to do with the foolhardy stroll on the interstate or the street blockade and vandalism on Peoria.

In Brookside on late Sunday night, Tulsa police officers with shields maintained a distance from the crowds and responded to objects thrown at them with pepper balls and, after things got completely out of hand, tear gas canisters. TPD officers handled themselves well, but were constrained by the presence of non-violent protesters and members of the general public from dealing with the violent characters present in the crowd.

As I write this early Tuesday morning, all of the Tulsa TV stations have ceased live coverage -- KTUL News 8 and Fox 23 were the only stations on the scene when I tuned in around 11:30 pm. The action was north of the intersection of 71st and Memorial, the heart of south Tulsa's retail corridor, some people were breaking store windows, some were standing in the middle of the street. The Oklahoma National Guard were present to back up the Tulsa Police Department. Again, pepper balls and tear gas were used to respond to violent provocation.

At Monday's news conference, Tulsa Mayor G. T. Bynum IV declined to issue a curfew or to take any other action that would make it easier for law enforcement to separate peaceful protesters from those intending to cause mayhem or do damage.

The situation would seem to fit Title 21, Chapter 55, Sections 1311 through 1321.10, of Oklahoma Statutes, which defines what a riot is, what constitutes participation in a riot, and the penalties that apply. The Governor can declare a state of emergency. The Governor can ban people from the streets, impose a curfew, ban the sale of fuel that might be used by rioters, ban other normally lawful activities. Municipalities are authorized "authorized to enact ordinances in general conformity with the provisions of this act," and if state and local laws differ, the stricter provision applies.

Title 8 of Tulsa Revised Ordinances authorizes the mayor to declare an emergency, order a general curfew, and close businesses that might fuel the rioters. Title 29, Section 105, declares (emphasis added):

It shall be the duty of the Chief of Police to preserve the public peace, to prevent the commission of crime, to arrest offenders, to protect the rights of persons and property, to provide police officers at fires to protect the firefighters and property, to suppress riots and insurrections and disperse unlawful and dangerous assemblies, to preserve order at all elections and all public meetings and assemblies, to prevent and regulate the movement of vehicles in the streets and to prevent the violation of all laws and ordinances.

For years I had heard and used phrases like "she read him the riot act" without knowing the historical basis for the cliché. Then a few years ago I was driving through the town of Young, New South Wales, Australia, on my way from Wagga Wagga to Cowra, and the sign above caught my eye.

Young was the site of the Lambing Flat riot. Australian gold miners, envious of the organization and success of immigrant Chinese miners, attacked the Chinese miners and drove them away, destroying their camps and looting their belongings. When the police arrived to restore order and to arrest the riot ringleaders, the rioters responded with an attack on the police camp. The Gold Commissioner read the proclamation prescribed in the 1714 Riot Act, which declared the mob to be an unlawful assembly, ordered everyone to disperse, and made anyone remaining guilty of a felony, and the authorities will not be liable if any of the rioters are injured as the authorities attempt to arrest or disperse them.

What follows is the short version; you can read the full 1714 Riot Act here.

If any persons to the number of 12 or more unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assemble together to the disturbance of the public peace and being required by any Justice by proclamation in the King's name in the exact form of the Riot Act, I George I, Sess. 2, c. 5 s. 2, to disperse themselves and peaceably depart, shall to the number of 12 or more unlawfully, riotously and tumultuously remain or continue together for an hour after such proclamation shall be guilty of a felony.

Our sovereign lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King.

It's past time that Gov. Stitt or Mayor Bynum IV read the local equivalent of the Riot Act, and put everyone on notice that every law-abiding Tulsan should be off the streets after a reasonable hour Tuesday night, and anyone gathering in traffic or in the company of those damaging local businesses will be presumed to be a rioter and dealt with accordingly.

MORE: This KJRH drone video provides context for the I-244 confrontation, showing the crowds diverting up the Detroit eastbound on-ramp and the concrete embankment and gathering on the eastbound lanes. You can see that cars are still arriving from the west, unaware of what is ahead. You can see the red pickup with large horse trailer, and in front of it, a silver car that the crowd allowed to pass through. A couple of police cruisers appear briefly on the edge of the frame, parked on the shoulder at the Elgin overpass, possibly as a vantage point for watching the march below.

MORE VIDEO:

Fox 23: Tulsa protest organizer Tykebrean Cheshier, speaks out against violent demonstrations. As on her Facebook posts, she disavowed and denounced those who went up onto I-244, and those who participated in unlawful street-blocking and vandalism over several nights.

Another video of the I-244 confrontation, provided to local news outlets, taken from the right side of the pickup, show an older man waving the truck ahead and urging his fellow demonstrators to clear the path. After the truck began moving, protestors moved into block his progress. I saw it first on Fox 23, but this looks like the same video, minus Clay Loney standing in front, so it's clearer to see that the truck's initial movement was into a cleared space, that the mob moved back in to obstruct the truck, and that the mob began beating on the truck before the truck began to move forward again.

Back at the beginning of March, we reported that Gilcrease Museum would not be renovated and expanded, as Tulsa voters were promised in April 2016, but would instead be demolished and rebuilt as a smaller facility, with the help of funding from the University of Tulsa and other donors.

The change is substantial enough that the new plans will not fit within the broad language of the "Brown Ordinance" adopted in advance of the April 2016 tax vote, so the provisions of the ordinance have been invoked and a legal notice has been published, announcing public hearings on June 10 and June 17, 2020, to consider an amendment to Title 43-K to change the name of the line item "Gilcrease Museum Expansion" to "Gilcrease Museum Facilities Improvements."

The "Brown Ordinance" is named in honor of former City Attorney Darven Brown. City of Tulsa capital improvements were traditionally financed by general obligation bond issues (repaid by property taxes) or revenue bond issues (repaid by, e.g., water and sewer customers, parking garage customers, airline passengers). In 1979, Mayor Jim Inhofe attempted to pass a one-cent sales tax to fund a backlog of capital improvement needs, but the vote failed, in part because a sales tax, once in effect, could be spent on anything, even operational costs, unlike a bond issue, which could only be spent on the named improvements. Brown came up with the idea of an ordinance which set out the specific projects to be funded and the amount allocated for each, provided for a Sales Tax Overview Committee to monitor spending, provided for a process to ensure sufficient public notice of proposed changes, and established penalties (including removal from office) for spending any of the money contrary to the ordinance. With the Brown Ordinance in place (and with the Zink Lake low-water dam removed from the package), the sales tax passed on Inhofe's second attempt in 1980. A Brown Ordinance has been enacted for each city capital improvements sales tax vote ever since.

Title 43-K is the Brown Ordinance attached to the 2016 Vision Tulsa tax. It was amended within a year that of its passage. The promise that the South Tulsa/Jenks low-water dam would be cancelled and its $64 million in funding reallocated if Tulsa and the Muscogee Creek Nation could not reach a partnership agreement by December 31, 2016, was nullified in February 2017 and replaced with a deadline at the end of this year. (The original proposed change was to a vague deadline of "within a reasonable time.") The ordinance was changed again in May 2019 to move all $3.6 million designated for OSU-Tulsa to increase the BMX World Headquarters funding from $15 million to $18.6 million.

I hope that Tulsans will register their objections to this proposal publicly through social media and with their city councilors. Tulsans voted for expansion of Gilcrease, not contraction, not relocation, and certainly not demolition of this historic facility. The proposed new language doesn't fit the announced plans: Total or near-total demolition can hardly be considered a "facilities improvement." This could be considered an attempt to deceive in the legal notice and could subject the councilors to lawsuits and removal from office if they go ahead with it. Tulsans should insist that their councilors approve an honest title for the line item: "Gilcrease Museum: Demolition and reconstruction as a smaller facility," and it is this title that should be published as a legal notice.

Tulsans should also insist that this change not move forward unless and until the City begins to disentangle our priceless Gilcrease collection from the troubled University of Tulsa. The City should terminate its management contract with TU, reject any contributions from the Kaiser System (the name given by Michael Mason to the network of organizations linked to the Obama-backing billionaire), and insist that the collection remain at the same site. Any additional money needed could be reallocated from the dam project that will likely never happen. Some of these stipulations could be written into the Brown Ordinance to ensure compliance.

RELATED: President Trump tweeted on Wednesday:

The Tulsa, Oklahoma area has been approved for a transportation loan from the @USDOT of up to $120M to help expand highway on the Gilcrease Expressway West Project. This will mean less congestion and faster routes to popular spots! @GovStitt

The loan will be to the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority, which will repay the loan from the tolls it will be collecting on the five-mile stretch of the west leg of the Gilcrease Expressway between the I-44/I-244 west junction and US 412 at 57th West Avenue.

It's cringe-worthy. Some persons, apparently with the permission of the Tulsa County Public Facilities Authority, painted the Tesla logo on the chest of the Golden Driller, and painted the name Tesla on his belt buckle, over the word Tulsa. If that weren't bad enough, used some kind of wrap to cover the statue's face to turn it pale, almost white, to try match the appearance of Tesla chairman Elon Musk's pale, square face.

Images of this work began circulating on social media on Tuesday, May 19, 2020, and many people thought it was some kind of lame photo-manipulation meme. At 2 pm on Wednesday, Tulsa Mayor G. T. Bynum IV led an "unveiling" of the modified statue -- unveiling consisting of a big white sheet (twin size, if the Golden Driller had a bed) held by two cranes in front of the statue, then dropped on cue.

Meanwhile someone created a webpage called bigf***ingfield.com, urging Musk to locate his new "cybertruck gigafactory" in Tulsa.

While some Tulsans on social media applauded the effort, many more expressed emotions ranging from amusement to dismay at these gestures which were endorsed by our city's leaders, describing the promotions as cringe-inducing, pathetic, needy, and desperate. Some thought the Tesla logo on the Golden Driller was reasonable, but the Elon Musk mask was just creepy. (It reminded me of fictional TV celebrity Alan Partridge's visit to an obsessed fan's home.)

All this was triggered by a story in TechCrunch on May 15:

Tesla officials visited two sites in Tulsa, Oklahoma this week to search for a location for its future and fifth gigafactory that will produce its all-electric Cybertruck and Model Y crossover, a source familiar with the situation told TechCrunch.

Company representatives also visited Austin. A final decision has not been made, but Austin and Tulsa are among the finalists, according to multiple sources. The AP also reported Tulsa and Austin as top picks for the gigafactory.

It was earlier last week that Musk, frustrated by CCP Bat Virus-related restrictions in Alameda County, California, threatened to move the Fremont factory and Tesla headquarters out of California. On May 9th, Musk tweeted:

Tesla is filing a lawsuit against Alameda County immediately. The unelected & ignorant "Interim Health Officer" of Alameda is acting contrary to the Governor, the President, our Constitutional freedoms & just plain common sense!

Frankly, this is the final straw. Tesla will now move its HQ and future programs to Texas/Nevada immediately. If we even retain Fremont manufacturing activity at all, it will be dependen on how Tesla is treated in the future. Tesla is the last carmaker left in CA.

Neither Texas nor Nevada have an income tax, and Tesla already has a gigafactory east of Reno where batteries for its vehicles are manufactured.

I have the sneaking suspicion that rumors of Tulsa being considered were designed to frighten the City of Austin and the State of Texas into sweetening the deal. When a company comes to a vendor right before a deadline and asks for a quote, it's often an indication that the company has already selected another vendor for the work, but needs a competing quote to satisfy internal policies or as leverage to improve the preferred vendor's bid. The result is a lot of activity and expense with little realistic hope of a good result.

Several people have noticed the interesting timing of City of Tulsa's spat with Navistar IC Bus, the bus manufacturer that operates in Air Force Plant No. 3. The plant, used for building bombers during World War II, has a footprint of about 1.3 million square feet. Tesla's Nevada factory has a footprint of 1.9 million sq. ft.

When I was a young man, I learned the hard way that, contrary to TV shows and movies and the poetry we read in English class, wearing one's heart on one's sleeve, declaring one's undying and complete devotion to one's beloved, is not an effective courtship strategy. The object of such attention is apt to respond with indifference, pity, or revulsion. Those who went about their lives with confidence and purpose, without regard to the impression they made on the opposite sex, were far more successful with the opposite sex.

In 1908, a five-car train carrying 113 Tulsans, including a brass band, went around the northeastern and midwestern US on a two-week excursion to promote the city to potential businesses and residents. The Booster Train's itinerary included St. Louis, Indianapolis, Louisville, Cincinnati, Washington, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago, Des Moines, and Kansas City. They were welcomed heartily everywhere they went. One participant, C. W. Deming, told the Tulsa Democrat upon their arrival home:

We arrived on fairly good time in all cities, unloaded ourselves, 113 strong, lined up behind the band and marched through the streets. Six or eight of us would walk along the sidewalks with an arm load of the special issue of the Booster [a daily paper printed on board the train] for every town we visited, throwing them in doors, mingled with the people and handed them papers out right and left through the large crowds which blocked the sidewalks and street crossings.

The Tulsa Boosters didn't go pleading with businesses to move to the city or trying to bribe them with incentive payments. They didn't focus flattery on Eastern kingpins in hopes of winning their investment. The Tulsa Boosters projected confidence and pride in their city, which had grown in eight years from a population of 1,313 to about 16,000. They touted the availability of energy for manufacturing. They brought an exhibition car to demonstrate the natural resources of the city and its environs. From page 3 of the April 20, 1908, New York Sun:

Out of alfalfa growing knee high in the exhibition car of their own private train..., more than 100 representative citizens of Tulsa, the greatest town of Oklahoma -- ask them! -- stepped upon the soil of Jersey and walked as quickly as possible to the ferryboat which was to give them an Easter morning glimpse of New York....

Alfalfa isn't the only thing growing in the car of the special train over in Jersey City. Whole branches of cherry trees are there, with cherries as big as they ought to be in April growing on them, branches cut from the trees a week ago whose fruit shows, as the Tulsans say, that the cherries left on the trees in Tulsa will be ripe and waiting for them when they reach home again in ten days more. Besides these there are samples of all the woods of the Tulsa region of Oklahoma and samples of the limestone, the shale and the other natural ingredients of Tulsan success and prosperity, and also photographs showing what a town situated on ten railroads can do in the way of growing in six years of lifetime. ...

The excursion is really a big one for Tulsa, more than a hundred of her business and professional men leaving their occupations and paying their share of a $25,000 or $30,000 trip of 3,500 miles for the purpose of bringing Tulsa to the world's notice and the hope of bringing the world to Tulsa. Tulsa buys of New York merchants, to be sure, but she buys mainly through St. Louis, Chicago and Kansas City branches or houses. Her business men feel that they might do better for themselves and better for New York also if they could deal direct with the metropolis.

This they desire to bring about to some degree if they can get acquainted to-day with Broadway -- the business part of Broadway. They also want to tell people that Tulsa can furnish 200,000,000 feet of natural gas every twenty-four hours at two cents per foot [per thousand feet, according to other stories] for manufacturing concerns which might find it convenient to establish there branches to take care of the great Southwestern trade.

It would be a great thing for Tulsa to gain a few thousand manufacturing jobs, but pathetic, needy, creepy gestures will not impress those who are selecting the site. So many of the people I've seen expressing enthusiasm for the Elon Musk mask on the Golden Driller or the vulgarly named website are also among those who frequently express shame and embarrassment about Oklahoma and our state's church-going ways. They seem to hope that Musk and company will come here to transform Tulsa into a progressive paradise, rather than to benefit from our conservative character. Perhaps that makes it hard for them simply to be dignified and confident in what our city and state has to offer.

Tulsa's leaders should emulate their predecessors from a century ago: Make Tulsa the best Tulsa we can be (not San Francisco or New York City or even Austin) and be confident enough in what we have to offer that we simply let the world know what they can find here, rather than grovelling in hopes of becoming something different.

MORE: The American Oil & Gas Historical Society has an article on the evolution of the Golden Driller, including the earlier, very different 1953 and 1959 versions for the International Petroleum Exposition (IPE). The present-day driller was built in 1966 alongside the permanent 9-acre IPE Building. This Land Press published the story of the permanent Golden Driller and its Greek immigrant designer, George Hondronastas. In dire shape, with a hole in his boot, the Driller escaped the wrecking ball and was refurbished in 1979.

Tulsa Gal, Atlas Obscura, Roadside America, and Wikipedia all have articles on the statue. Mental Floss ties the story of the Golden Driller into Tulsa's history as Oil Capital of the World. The Tulsa World has the story of Spooky, the cat who was rescued from the statue in 1976, at a time when the statue's skin was flimsier than it is now. Kent Schnetzler has posted a May 1966 photo of the Golden Driller, taken by his father, Robert Schnetzler, which shows the original, thinner shell of the statue, with the rebar grid clearly visible.

A scale replica of the Golden Driller stands in front of a 216 ft free-fall ride of the same name in Fraispertuis City amusement park in the historic province of Lorraine, in the northeast of France.

Does G. T. Bynum IV know anyone who lives east of Yale, north of 21st, or west of the river?

I've been watching the creation of blue ribbon panels for years, and this list is disturbingly familiar.

The mayor's picks for his Economic Recovery Advisory Committee are yet another expression of the tunnel vision of this city's ruling class, which can't see beyond its own little network of friends and associates, and which thinks of north, east, and west Tulsa as empty places you speed through to get to the airport, the lake, or Dallas.

When I posted this list to social media, all but one of my friends who replied spotted the deficiencies immediately. If you're in The Money Belt Bubble, if you're a Yacht Guest, you probably won't see any problem at all -- you'll think that this list is comprehensively representative of the city's economic life.

Small companies that make products and provide services for customers across the country and around the world -- they may as well not exist as far as Tulsa's trust-fund babies are concerned. Small, unfashionable businesses that serve the residents of Tulsa's forgotten neighborhoods -- barbers and beauty salons, cafes, neighborhood bars, local retailers, the businesses that are most vulnerable to a prolonged shutdown -- don't rate inclusion in a discussion of Tulsa's economic future.

TU is included, but not ORU, a university that draws students to Tulsa from around the world, many of whom stay after graduation and contribute to Tulsa's economy.

Churches aren't in the picture at all. Bynum IV apparently has no interest in the institutions that provide spiritual, social, and often financial support to vast numbers of Tulsans, institutions that have had to shut their doors and have taken a financial hit along with the rest of the economy.

Let's break down the list. First, you've got the power behind the throne, the woman who was rejected by the voters but found in Bynum IV a vehicle back to the Mayor's office: Kathy Taylor.

Then there are the Kaiser Konnections: Argonaut is George Kaiser's private equity fund, BOK is George Kaiser's bank, GKFF is George Kaiser's foundation, the University of Tulsa is George Kaiser's Kollege, and G. T. Bynum IV is George Kaiser's politician. I seem to recall reading that Gerry Clancy was too ill to continue as president of TU and had to stand aside, to be replaced by the wife of GKFF's executive director, but somehow he has the strength to nurse the city's economy back to health?

Three of the city's hospitals are represented and the city's largest private employer, American Airlines, which seems reasonable. But why do you need to hear from the general manager of the BOK Center, which already enjoys a $200 million public subsidy and is going to be propped up by the taxpayer however bad the economy may get?

There's a city councilor on the panel, and of course it's the councilor for the only district that matters, District 9, which contains the midtown portion of the Money Belt.

Arch-Chamberpot Mike Neal is on the list, head of a quango that pretends to be a branch of government when it's convenient (when it comes to taking tax dollars or hosting the State of the City address as a fundraiser) and a private club when it's not (when it comes to openness and accountability). Most of the rest of the names on the list are also members of the Tulsa Regional Chamber Board of Directors -- the same names that pop up time and again on public boards and commissions.

Tulsa is known around the world as the setting for the bestselling youth novel The Outsiders and the location for Francis Ford Coppola's beautiful film adaptation of the book. But Tulsa was then and still is run by a band of Socs who refuse to acknowledge that the rest of the city exists. This election year, Tulsa needs an Outsiders revolution. Tulsa's ignored neighborhoods need to drive off the mis-leadership of Bynum IV and his Soc cabal and elect a mayor and councilors who represent all of Tulsa.

MORE: Here's the official press release, for the record:

Mayor's Economic Recovery Advisory Committee Formed to Help Restore Tulsa Economy Amid COVID-19 Response

The City of Tulsa and the Tulsa Regional Chamber announced the creation of the Mayor's Economic Recovery Advisory Committee today to help guide near-term strategy around Tulsa's economic recovery while also identifying long-term opportunities for growth as the Tulsa community responds to the COVID-19 threat.

"As we manage a public health crisis using guidance from independent local public health experts, so too will we rely upon guidance from some of the best minds in Tulsa's private sector to recover from this economic crisis," said Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum. "I am very grateful for these Tulsans stepping up with their time and expertise across a broad array of industries. Working together, we will work to restore Tulsa's economy while protecting public health."

The Mayor's Economic Recovery Advisory Committee will focus on two main goals. First, to develop guidelines for safely reopening the Tulsa economy during the coming weeks and months, and second, to identify what the Tulsa-area business community needs to do to drive a stronger post-pandemic economy.

"We are confident that the City of Tulsa working in concert with the local business community can ensure we rebound as safely as possible," said Mike Neal, president and CEO of the Tulsa Regional Chamber. "This committee will also leverage the collective brainpower of many of Tulsa's brightest leaders in hopes of helping us all emerge from this challenge as quickly as possible."

Mayor's Economic Recovery Advisory Committee:

Steve Bradshaw, Bank of Oklahoma
Chet Cadieux, QuikTrip
Gerry Clancy, University of Tulsa
Carlin Conner, SemGroup (retired)
Kevin Gross, Hillcrest Medical Center
Marilyn Ihloff, Ihloff Salon & Day Spa
Ben Kimbro, Tulsa City Council
Dave Kollmann, Flintco
Paula Marshall, Bama Foods
Josh Miller, George Kaiser Family Foundation
Steve Mitchell, Argonaut Private Equity
Mike Neal, Tulsa Regional Chamber
Elliot Nelson, McNellie's Group
Jeff Nowlin, Ascension St. John
Erik Olund, American Airlines
Pete Patel, Promise Hotels
Anja Rogers, Senior Star Living
Larry Rooney, Manhattan Construction
Peggy Simmons, American Electric Power
Casey Sparks, ASM Global
Barry Steichen, Saint Francis Health System
Kathy Taylor, Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation
Rose Washington, Tulsa Economic Development Corp.

*Lead Staff: Kian Kamas, City of Tulsa Chief of Economic Development and Justin McLaughlin Tulsa Regional Chamber Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer.

For the most up-to-date news, information and business resources in Tulsa, visit www.cityoftulsa.org/COVID-19.

MORE: Longtime reader Bob comments:

Yes, again the Tulsa Regional Chamber of Commerce appears to be picking the Committee members.

For the actual business executives appointed to the Committee, I wouldn't see how they would actually have any real spare time to devote to a Recovery Committee.

BOKF CEO Steve Bradshaw, Q-T CEO Chet Cadieux, and the CEO's of Hillcrest, St. John's and St. Francis are all probably working double-overtime to save their businesses. And, the American Airlines executive appointed has EIGHTY AA jets parked at Tulsa International Airport, totally idle.

BOKF's stock has been plummeting, falling in the past year from $89 per share to a recent low of $35, and only very recently climbing back to $45 per share. Additions by the major banks to their Provision for Loan & Lease losses has been huge at the U.S. Multinational banks at quarter end 3/31. I'll look up BOKF's shortly.

Due to a cessation of elective surgeries, which provide all 3 Tulsa hospitals with the majority of their revenue, they've got to be hemorraging $$.

How much of his valuable time would the SFHS CEO who earned $1.7 million back in 2017, according to OCPA's "Perspective" newsletter, have to devote to a City of Tulsa committee?

What are Bynum's and the Chamber's REAL strategy?

Another "emergency" sales tax INCREASE to "save" City Government.

WHY? Because in the same Tulsa World edition as announcing the Economic Recovery Committee, Mayor Bynum announced a measly 3% cut in the city budget for the Fiscal Year 2021 beginning July 1.

That's Fantastical! The city is intentionally building in a revenue crisis that will hit later this year, but in time for a new Sales Tax initiative, probably a special election, because of the funding "Emergency".

There are now 26.5 MILLION people out of work nationally. The U.S. government accumulated Federal Debt will exceed our 2020 Gross Domestic Product!

There is NO revenue flowing to City facilities at the BOK Arena, Driller Stadium, or the PAC.

As measured earlier this week, less than 180 passengers were cleared that day by TSA at Tulsa International Airport. Normal volume is 5,000 daily.

All the malls are closed. That means no city sales tax generated.

Restaurants are drive-in, take-out, or home delivery only.

Oil prices have collapsed. closing at $17 per bbl today, after actually closing at negative $13 on Monday for the first time EVER. Meaning oil sellers of WTI were paying buyers to buy their May crude oil delivery contracts.

All the oil service companies are announcing layoffs, and capital spending reductions. Oil production companies are shutting in their wells all over the U.S, and offshore. Too much oil for the level of demand.

That's a fair point about the likely level of participation by the CEOs. If the people calling the shots already know the preferred outcome, the members of the Blue Ribbon panel are just there for window dressing. The last thing they want on such a committee is a member who will do research on his own time, who will ask probing questions, and who may come to a different conclusion than the prescribed result.

And in the spirit of Rahm Emmanuel's maxim -- "Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste" -- it wouldn't surprise me if the aim is to create a fiscal crisis that demands higher tax rates.

The weekend was lovely, just about my favorite time of year in Oklahoma. Redbuds were at their peak, dogwoods starting to bloom. One of our redbuds has developed clusters of blossoms along its trunk, which is quite fetching. Azaleas are starting to pop. There are magnificent purple draperies of wisteria around the city; one of them overhangs the westbound lanes of the Broken Arrow Expressway at the bend just west of the Harvard Avenue exit.

A new and stricter shutdown was announced last Saturday, effective that night, so I thought I'd better pick up the items I needed for a couple of home repairs while I could.

I made the mistake of going to a home improvement superstore, thinking I could get everything at once. The parking lot was quite full, and the store made no effort to meter the number of customers entering the building. It seemed like most of the other customers hadn't heard of social distancing or didn't care.

As it happened I couldn't find everything I was after, but I went to wait in line for the self-checkouts for the items I had. There are four self-checkout registers, two on each side, without much space between them. They really ought to close the near one on the left and the far one on the right to provide the proper distance. The proper six-foot distances had been marked on the floor with painter's tape, so I was waiting with my cart across the front transverse aisle from the registers. As soon as a register opened up, a couple of women swooped in to claim it, not noticing me.

After I checked out, there was a traffic jam at the exit, as customers, a couple with two carts, were talking to the supervisor about something doubtful on a receipt. I abandoned my cart and squeezed through with my purchases. Someone needed to be directing traffic, but no one was.

Sunday I still needed those items I couldn't find. I drove past a competing superstore. Their parking lot was packed. I didn't go in.

I headed to Midtown True Value Hardware, a little (7,000 sq. ft.) locally owned hardware store on 31st Street at Sandusky, a few blocks west of Yale. They've got nearly everything you need for home repair, home maintenance, and lawn and garden. Brooms, hammers, screws, drawer pulls, light bulbs, batteries, wire, zipties, bypass pruners, hoes, shovels, grass seed, mulch, top soil -- you name it. And they can sharpen blades, cut keys, cut glass, fix window screens, ship UPS packages, rewire lamps, and locate vintage hardware. If you know exactly what you need, you can go in, get your items, and get out in a few minutes, without fighting the crowds at the big-box stores. They're offering curb service as well during the current crisis.

We used to have a bunch of these neighborhood hardware stores in Tulsa. Swinney's in Whittier Square always had a good stock of plumbing supplies. (They had a notary, too. I got my last-minute declaration of candidacy for my 1998 run for city council notarized there.) There used to be one across Harvard from Lanier Elementary. Between Midtown, Harvard, and Swinney's I could usually find what I needed. Of the three, only Midtown is still open. Dawson Hardware, near White River Fish Market on N. Sheridan, is the only other locally-owned hardware store that comes to mind. The owner of Best Electric and Hardware at 37th and Peoria announced earlier this month his intention to liquidate his stock and close the doors; Best wasn't open when I drove through Brookside on Sunday; a sign says they're closed to the public, but available by phone.

The last item I needed that Midtown Hardware didn't have, I was able to find at Westlake Ace Hardware at 41st and Peoria. It's part of a Kansas-based chain with stores in 12 states, and here in the Tulsa area, they have a number of stores in former Safeway/Homeland supermarket buildings. At about 38,000 sq. ft., Westlake is about a quarter the size of Lowe's, and it was not at all crowded. This one took the place of our local grocery store when we were newlyweds in the neighborhood. They have erected acrylic sheet partitions as cough and sneeze guards at each register to protect cashier and customer from one another.

One of my worries about these decrees to shut "non-essential" businesses is that small, locally owned businesses will suffer at the expense of big-box stores and online ordering, and that public health will be the worse for it. Which is better for avoiding contagion: Everyone packing into Lowe's to buy flats of pansies and seedling trees, because they're still open for browsing, or smaller numbers of people going to neighborhood nurseries and garden stores like Ted and Debbie's or Rancho Flores to get some items for beautifying the yard where they're spending much more of their time than usual? Which is better for reducing community spread of the CCP Bat Virus: Amazon hiring more workers to crowd into their fulfillment centers to ship office supplies, toys, and craft materials, or local "non-essential" shops serving customers with private browsing by appointment or curbside pickup of phone orders?

By the way, many local "non-essential" retailers I've been worried about have indeed found ways to continue to serve customers. Ted and Debbie's Flower and Garden at 39th and Harvard has expanded delivery service to include garden materials: "For A Small Fee We Will Deliver Flats of Pansies, Mulch, Potting Soil & Everything Available In Our Green Houses." They also offer curbside pickup -- call in an order, drive over, and they'll bring it to your car. They are open 9 to 6 weekdays, 8:30 to 6 Saturdays, and 12:30 to 5 Sundays.

A block north, Kiddlestix, a wonderful locally owned toy store that carries Lego, Playmobil, wooden train sets, games, books, and much more, is also offering online or phone ordering with touch-free curbside pickup, and they will deliver orders over $50 within 5 miles of the store. Kiddlestix is open 10-4, Tuesdays through Saturdays. (They carry Magformers, a favorite building toy with our kids, which consists of colorful magnetized shapes, safe to have around toddlers, and mesmerizing for hours.)

Kiddlestix says, "If you don't see something you're looking for on our website, give us a call! We are constantly getting in new toys and games and are working very hard to get as much as we can online." One silver lining of the current crisis is that it is prompting small retailers to improve their online presence and be better placed to compete with the big-box stores and online behemoths.

Even though they're still in business, these local retailers are at a disadvantage when it comes to browsing and impulse purchases. People can still browse and buy garden materials, toys, camping equipment, electronics, craft and sewing supplies, and clothing at Walmart or Target because they also sell groceries and hardware. Retailers focused on one segment are closed to browsing. Prior to the more general stay-at-home orders, some jurisdictions allowed retailers to offer appointments to browse alone in the store, which seems to me to be a much safer alternative than everyone going to Walmart.

With more time on our hands, this is a good opportunity for all of us to recalibrate our instincts. Instead of reflexively opening your Amazon app or making a beeline for the big-box stores, take some extra time to find a local retailer who can meet your needs.

NOTE: I started writing this just after last weekend, but I finished and took photos today, Saturday, April 4, 2020. I left the date on the post so as not to have to change all the relative time references.

The Rev. Merle Dry, 55, Berryhill resident, United Pentecostal minister, and grounds manager at Oral Roberts University, is the first death resulting from Wuhan Chinese Bat Virus in Oklahoma. Metro Pentecostal Church, where Dry was a member, posted the following information on its Facebook page:

It is with great sadness that I have to announce our dear Bro Merle Dry made his journey from earth to glory at 8:01pm. Sis Dry and family are under quarantine and cannot receive guests. Please text her instead of calling. Thanks to everyone for your prayers. We need the hand of God to guide us. He was so loved by the Metro Pentecostal Church. Details of his funeral will be forthcoming.

DUE TO MISINFORMATION:

Merle Dry was in good health as far as we all knew. He was fighting a cold and then he contacted the corona virus. He was diagnosed on Tuesday and passed away on Wednesday. He was unable to breathe. He was age 55 and Cherokee. He had not been at the Church for a bit due to his not feeling well. We are taking all precautions to allow the virus to die out in the area he would have been in.

He was over the grounds at Oral Roberts University. He won awards for his exceptional work there. Those who knew him knew he loved people. He always interacted with the students. He is from Haskell, OK.

He leaves his dear wife, Carrie (McNulty) Dry, son, Jesse, age 22, daughter, Pamela, age 17. Pamela will graduate this year. His wife is a Tulsa Public School Teacher. They live in Berryhill.

Prayers are needed for this exceptional family. They are loved by all.

Carrie Dry is a language arts teacher at Edison Middle School.

KJRH has more details of Dry's illness from Metro Pentecostal pastor Don Martin:

"All we know is he had a cold, he didn't even go into ER until Sunday because he was having trouble breathing," Pastor Martin said. "And he wasn't diagnosed with the virus until Tuesday, and he passed away the next day, this past Wednesday."

Pastor Martin says Dry told him Monday, "I'm going to beat this thing."

Rev. Dry was on the ministerial staff at Metro Pentecostal Church, a licensed minister in the Oklahoma District of the United Pentecostal Church International, and served as secretary of the Oklahoma District's Childrens Ministry committee. Numerous comments on the Metro Pentecostal Facebook post pay tribute to his positive influence as an evangelist and mentor.

A December 2018 profile of Merle Dry in the ORU Oracle reveals his creative and whimsical approach to designing and maintaining the campus's beautifully kept grounds:

Though their days are long and full of hard work, the groundskeepers truly enjoy their work and are always ready to wave "hello" to students and other passersby.

"I like working around the people out here and helping, being involved," said Dry. "When people come to the campus, I want the campus to have an impact, to reach out and grab somebody and say, 'Hey, you need to be here as a student.' I want them to be able to say the campus looks good, and if it looks good, they'll feel comfortable being in a place that looks good. We try to maintain it the best we can at all times."...

Dry's system falls in line with the yearly seasons. A few weeks ago, the fall flowers were planted, yellow and purple pansies, chosen to match the school colors of gold and blue in a flower that will stay alive through the harsh, winter winds. They are now in the planning process for spring and will begin planting the spring flowers in January, as the weather warms up. The spring flowers will stay throughout the summer. Though Dry and the guys keep the campus fresh on the day to day, they're always thinking six months ahead.

In addition to keeping the campus bright and lively year round, the groundskeepers have found a creative outlet within topiary, which is the process of shaping perennial plants into shapes.

"We shape them in all kinds of ways, like birds," said Lionel Parra, one of the groundskeepers. "We say, 'Let's try to make this one this way,' and we do it. It's a little bit more work, but we like it."

In these living sculptures, the groundskeepers find ways to have fun at work.

"When we get plants in, sometimes if their oddly shaped, we won't leave them oddly shaped, and these guys will get creative and make something out of them," explained Dry.

Dry was employed by Sodexho, which has the contract for food, maintenance, grounds, and custodial services at ORU.

On Tuesday, March 17, 2020, Tulsa Mayor G. T. Bynum IV issued an executive order closing down dine-in service for all restaurants and shutting all bars, theaters, gyms, and recreational facilities in response to the Wuhan Bat Virus / COVID-19 pandemic. (Original link here. FAQ here.) Restaurants may offer take-out, drive-through, and delivery service. Institutional and business cafeterias may remain open. The dining facilities past security at the airport, soup kitchens, groceries, health care and childcare facilities are are among the exemptions.

The order mentions the pandemic declaration by the World Health Organization, and the emergency declarations by President Trump on March 13, Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt on March 15, and by himself on March 16. The authority cited for the order:

Tulsa Revised Ordinances Title 8, Section 100 (G) provides that the Mayor, after proclaiming a civil emergency may in the interest of public safety and welfare make "Such other orders as are imminently necessary for the protection of life and property.

The closures took effect at 11:59 p.m. March 17 and will remain in effect indefinitely. Restaurants without their own off-street parking can request the city to designate an adjacent on-street parking space for curbside pickup. Restaurants will be able to allow customers to enter to place an order to go, but won't be allowed to sit down. Bars that serve food will be able to provide the same takeout service, but only for food. (No margaritas to go.) Retail stores may remain open.

As of 9:15 a.m. Oklahoma had 17 verified cases of coronavirus, with 247 negative tests, and 82 test results pending. That's almost double in the course of 24 hours. These are people who have been asymptomatic until very recently, going to church, going to work, shopping, hanging out in bars, giving you a hug, or shaking your hand.

The US is now ahead of the curve of growth in cases that Italy experienced. If you make a graph of COVID-19 infections vs. days, the US is about 11 days behind Italy. (Think of it like comparing your kids on a growth chart. I can tell by comparing my youngest son's height on each birthday to my oldest son's height on the same birthday that my youngest is on track to be taller than the oldest when he's fully grown.) Last week it was observed that the US curve matched the Italian curve almost exactly, but now the US infection numbers are rising faster than the Italian numbers.

Katherine Wilson, an American mother living in Rome, offered some advice yesterday to American parents:

The virus has ravaged our country. Hospitals in the north are on the verge of collapse. Intensive-care units are full of people who are elderly, but also people who are 40 and 50. The streets are empty, and restaurants are closed. You have to have an authorization paper to walk your dog.

Only 10 days ago in Rome, this wasn't the case. The government had closed schools and most sporting facilities, but nothing else. Our teenagers were socializing in the evening with their friends. Kids had time on their hands and were healthy and well rested. Did we, as parents, really want them at home on their screens, where they'd been all day?...

Our teens were going stir-crazy at home. Their friends were going out, and the government hadn't told us to restrict their activities. So, reasoning that this was a disease that didn't strike teenagers, we told them to wash their hands and unleashed them onto the sidewalks and piazzas, into other people's cars and homes....

The only thing that could have prevented -- or mitigated -- this tragedy in Italy is social distancing.

I'm not talking about a high-five instead of a handshake, or grandchildren not hugging their grandparents. I'm talking about not being close to another human being who is not your immediate family. This is the only available and effective measure to help slow the transmission of the disease.

When your teen complains that other parents are letting their kids go out and party, your reply should be something along the lines of "Where are my Beats?" Tune them out.

If in a few weeks reality reflects that you were too conservative, then hallelujah.

Wilson urges parents not to worry about screen time, not to hoard supplies, to get anyone traveling back home as soon as possible because of the possibility of travel restrictions, to find fun things to do together as a family, and not to get obsessive about the news.

In about 10 days we shall be able to see clearly how widespread the disease is, as infections become symptomatic, and shall be in a better position to know who is safe to be out and about and who is not. Social distancing now, while the infection is present but not yet symptomatic, gives us the best shot at protecting our loved ones.

MORE:

Sydney Morning Herald reported on March 13, 2020, on the physical effects of the Wuhan Bat Virus:

But when it's bad, it can mount an attack on the whole body - and start a storm in the lungs.

How it plays out depends on the two factors important to any invasion: the strength of your defences and the strength (or dose) of what you've been hit with....

As the body fights off the virus, inflammation starts in the lungs and can sometimes develop into pneumonia. In more severe cases - about 14 per cent - breathing becomes difficult as blood vessels leak and fluid builds up, restricting the lungs' ability to pump oxygen through the body. Patients might need a ventilator to breathe. A secondary bacterial infection might also hit, requiring antibiotics....

At the World Health Organisation, assistant director-general Bruce Aylward warns when danger strikes, it's often fast-moving. Doctors report patients can go downhill quickly during those "critical" second and third weeks and urge people with or suspected to have the virus to monitor their symptoms, particularly their breathing and fever....

As the immune system ramps up its defences, blood vessels start to leak and the lungs can be flooded with cellular debris, making it harder for them to pump oxygen to the rest of the body - and harder for patients to draw breath. "They start to drown," Professor Collignon says.

Falling blood oxygen levels put pressure on other organs, in particular the heart. More systems can start to fail, and blood pressure too, which, if it falls low enough can tip the body into septic shock, a whole-body infection....

Whatever your personal vulnerability, the dose of virus you first receive - say, from touching a contaminated door knob versus caring for an infected person over several days - also plays a big part in how your body copes. "The higher the dose the faster you will get sick, and the harder it will be on you," Professor MacIntyre says.

That could explain why otherwise young and healthy medical workers have died from the disease. Li Wenliang, the 34-year-old doctor who blew the whistle on early cases of COVID-19, went through a gamut of treatments after falling ill himself, including antivirals, antibiotics, even having his blood pumped through an artificial lung, but he died weeks later. As with SARS, clusters of severe infection are emerging in hospitals and households as people come into sustained close contact.

UPDATE 2020/04/27: CCP Bat Virus has delayed the Tulsa City Council's final vote on the new animal ordinance, which is now set for the regular council meeting on May 11, 2020, 5 p.m., at City Hall. If you raise backyard poultry in the City of Tulsa, if you sell feed and equipment to people who do, if you have expertise in animal husbandry, or if you simply think government shouldn't block Tulsans from growing their own food in their own backyards, please volunteer to speak at the City Council meeting. As you'll read below, the "blue-ribbon commission" that rewrote the animal ordinance did not include anyone with expertise in this area and ignored the information that was provided to them by knowledgeable members of the public. This is a chance to make the case directly to those who will make the decision. Tina is hoping to have at least a half-dozen speakers, but the more the merrier.

Tina writes, "If you are willing but don't know what you'd say, I can help you. All last year I laid out information for the Mayor's commission, handing them dozens of pages of evidence that our ordinances for chickens are unreasonable currently, with footnotes, and we were soundly ignored. The commission has handed their recommendations (utterly unchanged by our recommendations) to the City Council, who will be voting to keep things restrictive if we don't show up and inform them of all the things they are not considering. This is our last stand. This is our Alamo (we probably won't die, though). I have information I can put in your hands to allow you to speak for up to 5 minutes, knowledgeably, confidently, and maybe make a difference in Tulsa for backyard poultry owners." Contact Tina through Facebook to volunteer.

Earlier this year, Tina Nettles, a resident of the Hoover neighborhood and a good friend of our family's, wrote to me about her eye-opening experience in dealing with bureaucrats and board members at Tulsa's City Hall. Tina raises a small number of chickens in her backyard, as do many other Tulsans, and she got involved in providing input to a city board that has been rewriting Tulsa's animal ordinance. What she learned is something that many other Tulsans have experienced when they attempt to participate in city public hearings -- City Hall doesn't want your expertise or your input if you're not wealthy or well-connected.

Former Mayor Susan Savage, who has lived in the Money Belt for as long as I am aware, and who as mayor had a documented problem appointing people outside the Money Belt to authorities, boards, and commissions, is the chairman of the Tulsa Animal Welfare Commission which headed up this rewrite. Four of the five members of the commission live in the Money Belt; three in the midtown portion. As far as I can determine, none of the commissioners live northeast of 71st and Harvard, north of 21st Street, or west of the river, and none are involved in agriculture. Home values range from $234,000 to $523,308. (Zillow's current estimate of Tulsa's median home value is $127,893.) Three commissioners are registered Democrats (Savage, Robin Flint Ballenger, Cordell Dement) and one of the registered Republicans, Teresa Burkett, only has contributions to Democrats and to ActBlue in the FEC's database of federal campaign contributions. (The other Republican is Christine Kunzweiler, a small-animal veterinarian who also happens to be the wife of District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler.)

Savage and Burkett presented the proposed revisions to the Tulsa City Council's Urban and Economic Development committee this past Wednesday, March 11, 2020, with Savage doing nearly all of the talking. Ballenger was also present but not at the table. The legislation had a First Reading at that night's City Council meeting (a formality, with no discussion), with a scheduled Second Reading scheduled for March 25, 2020. Here is the draft ordinance to be considered by the City Council, with backup material. Here is a local copy of the draft ordinance (50 MB PDF) which has been OCRed.

You can watch the video of the 50-minute committee presentation here. Councilors Cue, Decter Wright, Fahler, Hall-Harper, Lakin, and McKee were present, but only Hall-Harper and McKee had any substantial comments, and only McKee mentioned agricultural animals, specifically relaying constituent interest in raising goats in residential neighborhoods. Savage made reference to public comment, but it seems to have had no affect on the proposed changes. When Savage acknowledged the input of subject-matter experts, she referred specifically to the city's legal department and the Tulsa Planning Office -- in other words, the only expertise they wanted involved legal enforceability and compatibility with zoning laws, not expertise on animal agriculture in an urban context. No one from the public was invited to speak. The council did not review the legislation at all; once Savage's presentation was over, the council moved on to the next agenda item without (as far as I could see) voting on whether to advance it.

The revised animal ordinance has been placed on the March 25, 2020 May 11, 2020, 5 p.m., Tulsa City Council agenda. Now is the time to contact your city councilor (dist#@tulsacouncil.org, replace # with your district number 1 through 9) to urge them to listen to Tulsa citizens with hands-on experience raising chickens and other agricultural animals. (UPDATE 2020/04/27: Date changed to reflect the city's CCP Bat Virus lockdown.)

Here (and continuing on the jump page) are Tina Nettles's observations on the process of rewriting Tulsa's animal welfare ordinance. The accompanying photos are courtesy of Tina Nettles and show her hens and a collection of the eggs they've laid.

Monday December 2, 2019
10th floor, One Technology Center,
Tulsa City Hall
Tina Nettles

I'd stood before this microphone every month for the last five months with no difficulty, but tonight was so different, in the worst possible ways.

No fan of speaking in front of crowds, I hadn't suffered from this debilitating condition, of the dry mouth and the pounding adrenaline, the sound of my heartbeat whooshing behind my eardrums, until tonight. I literally felt the room was spinning around me and I clutched the lectern with trembling hands to try and make it all go still. What made this one moment feel like it was suddenly running in slow motion, with the whole universe coming unraveled as I struggled to connect even two sensical words together?

My eyes were finally open to how my nice little midwestern city's government had never been what I thought it was - the very picture of red-state conservativism, with minimal interference into the daily lives of its citizens. No. That's not what I was watching unfold before my eyes. Minutes before, the head of the commission had moved that the current wording of the chicken ordinances be voted on and passed to the city council in the near future, before we had even reached tonight's public comment, with no regard to what we had advised in all the months leading up to this moment, nor regard for what we were about to further advise.

[continued after the jump]

The Oklahoma Retail Crime Association issued its annual retail theft survey today, noting "massive spikes in both the numbers of losses due to theft and the amounts taken" for Oklahoma retailers.

Already hard-hit by the growth of online sales and the (hopefully temporary) impact of coronavirus, retailers don't need the state legislature to add insult to injury by discarding the tools to deter systematic theft.

We aren't talking about Javert relentlessly pursuing Jean Valjean for stealing a crust of bread to feed his starving family. We're talking about organized crime gangs who consider fines and brief imprisonments just the cost of doing business, and who are taking the bread out of the mouths of retail workers and their families.

The Facebook page Repeal SQ780 is a good source for stories on the impact of reducing penalties for so-called "non-violent crimes," such as shoplifting, burglary, and car break-ins. The page recently linked to a infographic showing that the loss amount from the average "pushout" theft -- when someone simply pushes a cart out the door without paying -- for our region doubled last year, from $778 in 2018 to $1544 in 2019. 59.5% of pushout robberies involved organized retail crime, and 10% involved violence against store personnel.

Here is the press release from the OKRCA:

The Oklahoma Retail Crime Association (OKRCA) has completed the 2020 Oklahoma Retail Theft Survey - which draws on retailer's internal theft data, as opposed to just numbers reported to law enforcement.

Once again, Oklahoma retailers saw massive spikes in both the numbers of losses due to theft and the amounts taken.

Oklahoma retailers are also reporting increased violence against store personnel.

According to OKRCA President, Norm Smaligo, "Retailers from around the country want to know why their theft rates in Oklahoma are so much higher than other states they operate in. I have to point to our laws and the permissive attitude the courts take towards retail theft."

"Organized Retail Crime (stealing for profit) has exploded here in recent years, because of our loosening of penalties for theft and our failure of our laws to address the people who steal for a living and those that sell it for them."

According to the most recent National Retail Federation (NRF) Organized Retail Crime survey, states that have raised felony theft limits have seen increases in theft activity. [Here is the complete National Retail Federation Organized Retail Crime Survey.]

In Oklahoma this effect is amplified by the fact that Oklahoma law allows cities to prosecute these 'misdemeanor crimes' as a municipal infraction similar to a speeding ticket. This hardly serves as a deterrent to criminal activity.

Smaligo said: "This year's survey just builds on the bad numbers we saw last year. We're seeing increased thefts, increased amounts and increased violence against our people. Retailers are begging for help. Our legislators at some point are going to have to decide: Do they want to help tax producing businesses lose less, or do they want to help criminals steal more?"

Smaligo said there are currently three bills pending before the Oklahoma legislature that they hope will help curtail some of the theft activity: Senate Bill 1587 would allow law enforcement to aggregate multiple larcenies over a one year period as opposed to the current 90 days - which Smaligo said is less time than it takes for an arrest warrant to be issued in many cases.

Senate bills 1689 and 1691 would prohibit Pawn Shops from buying fraudulently obtained gift cards and new-in-box items stolen from stores without some proof of purchase, such as a receipt.

According to Smaligo - the easy cash that criminals receive for selling these items is what is driving most of the theft activity. "They're not stealing four power tool kits for personal use! They're selling them within minutes of stealing them".

Norm Smaligo is the President of the Oklahoma Retail Crime Association - a group of retailers and law enforcement working together to identify and prosecute Organized Retail Crime offenders in this state.

Smaligo can be reached for comment at:

nsmaligo@gmail.com
or
(918)698-2626

After the jump, the text of the report itself.

Remember when we voted on the Vision Tulsa package in 2016? Did you know you were voting to demolish Gilcrease Museum and build a smaller one in its place? Me, neither. But it was announced last month that demolition is what we're getting for our money. The historic 134,000-square-foot facility will be torn down and replaced with an 89,000-square-foot building that will, we are promised, have better storage conditions for artifacts and more display space.

In 2016, City of Tulsa residents voted for a package that included $65 million for renovation of the main building of the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art, to better house the priceless collection of artwork and artifacts of the American West, a collection that the citizens of Tulsa purchased from oilman Thomas Gilcrease using a bond issue in 1954. Gilcrease bequeathed additional collections to the city upon his death. Tulsa citizens have continued to support the museum with taxpayer dollars.

According to the Gilcrease web page about Vision Tulsa, there are $73.6 million in public funds available for the rebuilding project, plus a $10 million donation from the A.R. and Marylouise Tandy Foundation. But another web page states that "Gilcrease Museum's managing partner, The University of Tulsa, is committed to raising an additional $50 million in private funds for an endowment to ensure the long-term sustainability of museum operations." You can well imagine the strings that will come attached to funds raised by GKU.

It was chilling to learn that the museum's executive director is former city councilor Susan Neal, an ardent opponent of historic preservation during her time as an elected official and as an aide to Mayor Kathy Taylor. In 2006, Neal pushed for watering down the CORE recommendations for downtown historic preservation, recommendations which were ultimately shelved. You can read my overview of Neal's political career in my report on the 2014 opening of Gilcrease's Helmerich Center for American Research.

Not only do I distrust Neal for her previous political behavior, it's worrisome that she serves in dual roles as Gilcrease executive director and as Vice President for Public Affairs at the University of Tulsa. In 2017, Neal was named as executive director not by the governing body of the owners of Gilcrease Museum and collection, but by then-University of Tulsa president Gerry Clancy, part of the public-private partnership deal enacted when Kathy Taylor was mayor in 2008 and extended for another decade by Dewey Bartlett Jr. in 2014.

In other words, Tulsa's priceless art collection is at the mercy of a failing university that has just undergone a hostile takeover and whose faculty is still in revolt.

The claimed reason for the City of Tulsa taking on TU as "managing partner" is the university's "nationally recognized academic expertise in western American history, art history, anthropology, and archaeology." Under TU's "True Commitment" plan, it will not be possible to earn a Master's in history, a Ph.D. in anthropology or archaeology, or to major in art history.

It's easy to imagine TU and its major donors using the leverage of the management partnership and the proposed $50 million to relocate the museum (to the Gathering Place, perhaps, or the TU campus), or to eliminate politically incorrect artwork (anything by white people depicting Native Americans, for example) and artifacts (e.g., the 1777 copy of the racist Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation), to so entangle the collection with TU and their management and donors that the citizens of Tulsa will never be able to reassert control over the museum and the collection.

Maybe everything will work out wonderfully, but my anxiety for Gilcrease comes from experience: Our city government has a terrible record when it comes to caring for our heritage and history, and for those of us who have been around for a while, it's chilling to see the likes of Susan Neal, an opponent of historic preservation during her time on the City Council, in a position of authority over this priceless collection. TU's role in Gilcrease is another source of concern, particularly with the recent conquest of TU's board. The Gilcrease collection was purchased by the City of Tulsa for the citizens of Tulsa; I am wary of the involvement of third parties who are unaccountable to the voters.

Tulsa's elected officials need to reassert the citizens' control over our priceless treasure and cut all ties with TU. If the current mayor and councilors won't do it, we need to elect new officials who will.

Back on February 4, 2020, Jacob Howland, University of Tulsa professor of philosophy, and a leader in the fight against the corporate takeover of the university, spoke at Hillsdale College on TU's restructuring, on the influence of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, on GKFF's view of Tulsa as "beta city" -- a place to engage in social experimentation -- and the bigger connections to the surveillance state. Howland walks the listener through his process as he began to ask questions about the radical restructuring of the University, and began to find connections in ever-widening circles.

I spoke about this when I was last on with Pat Campbell, but neglected to publish the link. Unfortunately, there's no way to embed this video. Here is the video of Jacob Howland's speech at Hillsdale College.

Here is the report of Howland's talk in the Hillsdale Collegian student newspaper:

Corporate interests are taking over the University of Tulsa with the goal of turning its students into meek, interchangeable cogs to serve the new knowledge economy, said Jacob A. Howland, professor of philosophy at the University of Tulsa. He gave his lecture "The Crisis of Liberal Education in America: Does it Have a Future?" on Feb. 4.

According to Howland, leaders at TU have one thing in common -- a connection to billionaire George Kaiser, the controlling shareholder of the Bank of Oklahoma. Interestingly, the Bank of Oklahoma controls half of TU's 1.2 billion endowment.

Howland said that this corporate takeover "was designed to extract value from TU for Kaiser, his trustees and administrators, and to promote Kaiser's progressivist causes."...

No matter what training they choose, however, the greater goal is to turn students into a new kind of human capital.

"Education is, in many ways, the new oil," Howland said. "The monetization and commodification of human capital requires a standardized product that will be pumped out in large quantities."

Essentially, the goal behind the restructuring of TU is to transform students into this standardized product. According to Howland, the ideal future TU students will be "individuals ground down smooth into workers and managers who will fit interchangeably into a globalized and digitalized system of production. This endeavor requires new levels of behavioral conditioning, which is quite adequately supplied by the imperatives of progressive ideology."

If this sounds dystopian, perhaps that's because Gerard Clancy, former president of TU and a close associate of Kaiser, sought to emulate the University of Beijing's branch campus in the city of Karamay, China. According to Howland, Clancy was particularly impressed by Karamay's heavy investing in the "knowledge sector"-- namely, technology information systems and information service industries from all over the world.

The city of Karamay has served as a testing ground for the newest security systems in China, including drones, wearable computing facial recognition, and predictive video that Clancy praises as "helping law enforcement fight crime and maintain public safety."

One of the intriguing facts Howland relayed dealt with a TU plan to turn parts of the Pearl District and Kendall Whittier neighborhood into a Cyber District. He managed to download a copy of the prospectus for the Tulsa Enterprise for Cyber Innovation,
Talent and Entrepreneurship (TECITE) Cyber District, which has since been removed from the web:

This proposal asks for the creation of a Tulsa Enterprise for Cyber Innovation, Talent and Entrepreneurship (TECITE.) The backbone of this enterprise is a set of co-located cyber centers of excellence that link industry, federal agencies and The University of Tulsa in a united effort in defense of our information systems. The proposal takes advantage of Tulsa's low cost of living, ability to recruit and retain young talent and the near downtown Tulsa Opportunity Zone along 6th Street. The proposal leverages The University of Tulsa's 20-year history as the lead supplier of Top Secret Security Clearance talent to federal agencies and as a national center of excellence in cyberdefense education and research. All of this is an effort to significantly grow additional cyber workforce and innovations in Tulsa.

Specifically, we propose four co-located Centers of Excellence; an Engineering Research Center at The University of Tulsa focused on cybersecurity, a Multi-Federal Agency Cybersecurity Center of Excellence, a Cybersecurity Insurance Institute to gather and analyze data on cyber risks, and a Consortium of Business Sectors in banking, energy, retail, health and transportation focused on cyber defense research and innovation. We propose the co-location of these centers of excellence along the 6th Street Opportunity Zone Corridor, linking downtown Tulsa with The University of Tulsa.

One wonders how this might dovetail with Tulsa Development Authority's redevelopment plans for these neighborhoods.

Unofficial RESULTS from the Oklahoma State Election Board:

• Tulsa School Board, Office 5: John Croisant 1,063, Shane Saunders 633, Scott Pendleton 400, Kelsey Royce 313, Ben Croff 17. Croisant and Saunders advance to the April 7 runoff.


• Tulsa School Board, Office 6: Jerry Griffin 377, Ruth Ann Fate 335, Stephen Remington 311. Griffin and Fate advance to the April 7 runoff.


• Bixby School Board, Office 5: Tristy Fryer 681, Jason Prideaux 43, Todd Hagopian 41. Fryer exceeds 50%, wins outright.


• Owasso School Board, Office 5: Frosty Turpen 799, Beth Medford 306, John H. Haning 115. Turpen exceeds 50%, wins outright.


• Collinsville, Mayor: Larry Shafer 298, Jerry Garrett 289. Shafer wins.


• Sand Springs, Commissioner, Ward 3: Mike Burdge 42, Justin Sean Tockey 32. Burdge wins.


• Jenks school bonds: Prop. 1 passes with 83.23% of 1,884 votes, Prop. 2 with 83.52% of 1,887 votes


• Liberty school bonds: Props. 1 and 2 pass with 86.39% of 169 votes.


• Owasso school bonds: Prop. 1 passes with 76.27% of 1,298 votes, Prop. 2 with 77.18% of 1,297 votes

Postdated to remain at the top through the end of the election.

Polls are open in selected precincts across Oklahoma in the February 11, 2020, school board primary election from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Some municipalities also have elections today. The Oklahoma State Election Board's new Oklahoma Voter Portal will tell you where to vote and let you view sample ballots before you go to the polls. Here is the complete and official list of elections in Oklahoma today, February 11, 2020, sorted by county.

Yesterday I was on 1170 KFAQ to discuss today's election with Pat Campbell; here's the audio.

School elections

Only school board races with three or more candidates will have a contest today. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote today, a runoff will be held on April 7, 2020, between the top two candidates. Races for which only two candidates filed will also be held on April 7.

Four school board seats are on the ballot in Tulsa County:

Bixby Public Schools, Office No. 5

• Tristy Fryer, Republican (Facebook)
• Todd Hagopian, Libertarian (Facebook)
• Jason Prideaux, Republican (Facebook)

Candidate forum for Bixby school board, Office 5

Owasso Public Schools, Office No. 5

• John H. Haning, Republican (no online presence found)
• Beth Medford, Democrat (Facebook)
• Frosty Turpen, Democrat, incumbent since 1995 (Facebook)

Tulsa Public Schools, Office No. 5: BatesLine endorses Scott Pendleton

• Ben Croff (withdrew from race but still on ballot)
• John Croisant, Democrat (questionnaire, website, Facebook)
• Scott Pendleton, Republican (endorsement, questionnaire, website, Facebook)
• Kelsey Royce, Democrat (questionnaire, Facebook)
• Shane Saunders, Republican (questionnaire, website, Facebook)

Tulsa Public Schools, Office No. 6: BatesLine endorses Jerry Griffin.

• Ruth Ann Fate, Democrat, incumbent since 1996 (questionnaire, website, Facebook)
• Jerry Griffin, Republican (endorsement, questionnaire, website, Facebook)
• Stephen Remington, Democrat (questionnaire, Facebook)

Note: Remington and Fate did not respond to the questionnaire.

Campaign finance reports for Tulsa school board candidates.

Three Tulsa County districts each have two general obligation bond issues on the ballot. These require passage by 60% of the vote. Links go to the official bond disclosures required by the Bond Transparency Act of 2017, for each. Each disclosure provides detailed purposes for each bond proposition and lists all previous bonds that remain outstanding:

• Jenks Public Schools: Proposition 1, $11.4 million for Freshman Academy expansion, textbooks, technology, classroom equipment; Proposition 2, $870,000 for student transportation equipment.
• Liberty Public Schools: Proposition 1, $780,000 for asphalt resurfacing, fencing, and other repairs; Proposition 2, $320,000 for vehicles for pupil transportation.
• Owasso Public Schools: Proposition 1, $9,805,000 for district-wide facility upgrades (air conditioning, roofs, parking lots, paint, lighting, etc.), technology, instructional materials, weight room, fine arts and athletic uniforms and equipment; Proposition 2, $1,570,000 for vehicles for pupil transportation.

Municipal elections

City Of Collinsville, Mayor

• Jerry Garrett, Democrat, former city commissioner (Facebook)
• Larry Shafer, Republican, incumbent city commissioner for Ward 3 (website, Facebook)

City Of Sand Springs, City Councilmember, Ward 3

• Mike Burdge, Republican, incumbent (Facebook)
• Justin Sean Tockey, Independent (no campaign internet presence)

The Tulsa school district needs drastic reform. Enrollment and attendance are dropping, teachers are fleeing, and more and more schools are closing. In the first quarter of Fiscal Year 2016, the Tulsa district had an Average Daily Membership of 39,167. Four years later, ADM for the first quarter of FY2020 was 35,403. (Here's the State Department of Education page with Average Daily Membership and Average Daily Attendance statistics.)

Parents and taxpayers from across the political spectrum want to see Superintendent Deborah Gist gone. Tulsans were outraged by her handling of the recent round of school closings, which seemed to treat board approval as a mere formality, and the controversial handling of federal funds for Indian Education.

We need board members that will treat the superintendent as a hired hand and who will take seriously their responsibility to set policy and monitor spending. We need board members who see the voting public as their bosses, not the philanthrocapitalists that are pushing for experimental curricula in the schools.

After reviewing the questionnaires from the four active candidates for Office 5 and their campaign contribution reports, my choice is clear. I'll be voting for Scott Pendleton in the Tuesday, February 11, 2020, election.

For all the reasons described in my previous post, Tulsa's students, parents, teachers, and taxpayers need an upheaval on the Tulsa Public Schools Board of Education. Only two seats, at most, out of seven are up for election in any given year, but good candidates in both races will allow us to begin the process.

Ruth Ann Fate, a Democrat who was first elected in 1996, is seeking her seventh term on the school board. Fate has been an unapologetic cheerleader and rubber-stamp for Superintendent Deborah Gist. If we want accountability and reform in Oklahoma's largest school system, step 1 is to replace Ruth Ann Fate.

Democrat Stephen Remington refused to submit a response to the BatesLine candidate questionnaire, writing in response to my reminder: "I apologize but I am not filling out your questionnaire. Endorsements are fine but I am not looking to get any. My campaign is not asking for donations either. Ruth Ann has not filled one out either which indicates we will not have a fair assessment of this race." So Mr. Remington's views must remain a mystery. He has also not filed any of the campaign finance reports; his wife has stated on Facebook that he has not raised nor spent more than $200. I find it hard to believe that you can run a competitive race for this district without spending at least $500. Printing alone, even if you're taking photocopied flyers door-to-door, is likely to take you over the reporting limit. (CORRECTION: The threshold requiring a candidate committee to file reports is now $1,000, whether in contributions or expenditures. It's somewhat more plausible that a candidate could manage without spending more than $1,000, but it doesn't seem very probable. )

Dr. Jerry Griffin, a registered Republican, was the first candidate in either district to respond to my questionnaire, and he gave detailed and intelligent answers.

Griffin is committed to exercising real oversight over the superintendent and school administration, which he calls the "primary duty of the school board." He notes the lack of public discussion or pushback from the current board on any administration proposal. "Generally, the votes are 7-0 to approve any proposal with little to no discussion or open debate." As a college professor for the past 20 years, he has seen in his students the damage done by a "fad-of-the-year" K-12 curriculum that has left them unprepared for work at the collegiate level; the board needs to take an active role in setting the educational philosophy and curriculum for the district. The board should openly and publicly scrutinize every grant from federal, state, or philanthropic sources, weighing the costs and benefits before accepting and auditing for compliance with the terms of any accepted grants.

In his response to my question about schools and American patriotism, Griffin wrote:

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me; I lift my lamp beside the golden door." These masses came seeking a better life and a country in which they could experience freedom and achieve their dream. Being an American means, it does not matter your race, class, religion or ethnic heritage - you are first and foremost an American. The schools have a definite role in teaching and developing a sense of patriotism in our youth. This does not mean teaching an ideological or party focus but a pure love for America - that is celebrated daily.

Concerning transgender issues at TPS, Griffin details the changes in Federal Title IX guidance between the Obama and Trump administrations, but notes that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos reaffirmed her department's commitment to a learning environment free from bullying and harassment. Griffin wants TPS to return to the pre-Obama policy of limiting private female spaces to females, while having single-stall facilities available.

Griffin is a graduate of Tulsa's Edison High School, has his bachelor's degree from University of Tulsa, an MBA from Southern Methodist University, and a Doctorate of Education from TU. He is an adjunct professor at a number of universities, including the University of Oklahoma and the University of Phoenix, with a focus on criminal justice. In Fall 2016, for example, he taught an upper-level course for University of Oklahoma, "Comparative Justice Systems," and a graduate-level course, "Mediation and Conflict Resolution in the Criminal Justice System."

If I lived in Election District 6, I would vote for Jerry Griffin to bring fresh perspective and careful oversight to the Tulsa school board.

UPDATE: Jerry Griffin emails with his complete report, which includes itemized expenditures, and which he says he filed. Either the district clerk's copy got lost, or I overlooked it. I've added the information below.

Below are the campaign ethics reports filed with the Tulsa Public Schools district clerk as of this morning for candidates running for Tulsa school board offices 5 and 6. No paperwork was on file for Kelsey Royce or John Remington. (Ben Croff filed for Office 5, but has announced that he is not running an active campaign, although is name is still on the ballot.) No school district political committees filed a report, and none of the candidate reports showed donations by political action committees.

Because Oklahoma state law is designed to make it as difficult as possible to track campaign donations for local candidates, Friday morning I went to the Education Service Center, where newly appointed district clerk Sarah Bozone provided me with a folder of all the campaign filings received to that time. I photographed each page, and then this evening, when most of you were relaxing, I transcribed and organized the reports by candidate, and by donor in decreasing order of contributions. I'm happy to be notified of corrections. If you'd like to thank me, there's a PayPal Donate button on the home page. You're welcome.

Electronic filing would make this process easier for all concerned. A computerized web app would ensure consistency and would prompt candidates to provide all required information. John Croisant provided occupation and employer for his contributors, but not their addresses, which are also required, and yet he provided addresses for his vendors. Shane Saunders provided contributor addresses, but for many of the donors occupation and employer are "Requested," i.e., not provided. Scott Pendleton and Jerry Griffin managed to get addresses and occupations from all of their donors. Ruth Ann Fate's reports are handwritten and have addresses but not occupations or employers. Jerry Griffin was the only candidate who neglected to itemize his expenditures. [CORRECTION: Griffin says he provided itemized expenditures with his report; these are now listed below.]

The totals below are as reported on the forms. I attempted to double-check a few, but gave up, because candidates differed in how things were supposed to be totaled. John Croisant's forms misused the "Aggregate Total" column, using it for the campaign as a whole, rather than for the total for a particular contributor or vendor over the course of the campaign, and he put campaign totals in the "$50 or less boxes" at the top of the page.

Some observations, based on my many years of looking at campaign contributor lists:

John Croisant is clearly the establishment's pick in Office 5. Croisant's contributors include a who's who of Yacht Owners and Yacht Guests: former Tulsa Mayor Kathy Taylor; two former school board members, Cathy Newsome and Cindy Decker (Decker is now executive director of George Kaiser Family Foundation's Educare); former Cherokee Principal Chief Ross Swimmer; former Oklahoma Corporation Commissioner and Tulsa Finance Commissioner Norma Eagleton; former Oklahoma Policy Institute head David Blatt; retired oilman and major Democrat donor George Krumme; developer and Democrat donor Sharon King Davis; QuikTrip spokesman Mike Thornbrugh; donors associated with BOK Financial and with the Frederick Dorwart law firm; former Tulsa County Superintendent of Schools Kara Gae Neal, wife of retired Tulsa World editor Ken Neal; and former City Councilor Gary Watts, who now serves as the attorney for Sand Springs Public Schools.

Former school board member and GKFF Educare executive director Cindy Decker gave $100 each to John Croisant and Shane Saunders.

One small expenditure caught my eye: Croisant paid for the Democratic Party's canvassing app, which, I assume, would give his campaign access to the party's voter database.

Shane Saunders has the biggest war chest, but fewer donors. Two-thirds of his funds came from two couples: Frank and Diane Murphy of Dallas and Charles and Krista Bendana of Tulsa. Mindy Taylor, Saunders's successor as chairman of Iron Gate ministry, is one of his donors.

Scott Pendleton seems to be funded mainly by family and friends around the country, which is a typical pattern for a candidate who is running on their own initiative, rather than as the minion of the local power structure.

Ruth Ann Fate and Jerry Griffin are both the biggest donors to their own campaigns.

Contributors and vendors are from Tulsa unless otherwise noted. If you're reading this on the home page, the lists for each candidate are after the jump.

BatesLine sent a questionnaire to all of the candidates for Tulsa school board in the two seats up for election in the Tulsa Public School district. The eight questions dealt with the board's authority with respect to the administration, curriculum, music, history and patriotism, the role of philanthropists, and the practical implications of transgenderism.

All four candidates running in the open Office 5 seat submitted a response, but only one of the challengers for Office 6 took the time. (Ben Croff filed for Office 5 but has withdrawn from the race, although his name will appear on the ballot.) The election district for Office 5 is shown in the map above in Harvest Gold, while Office 6 appears as Avocado Green -- very '70s colors.

The primary election will be held on February 11, 2020; if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, a runoff will be held on April 7, 2020.

Here is a list of the candidates, with age, address, party registration, and links to their responses, if provided. (While school board races are non-partisan, a candidate's party registration is a publicly available piece of information that I consider informative.)

Office No. 5:

• John Croisant, 42, 62 Woodward Blvd., Tulsa, OK, 74114, Democrat
• Scott Pendleton, 64, 2534 E. 45th St., Tulsa, OK, 74105, Republican
• Kelsey Royce, 37, 336 E. 45th Ct., Tulsa, OK, 74105, Democrat
• Shane Saunders, 39, 4117 S. Birmingham Ave., Tulsa, OK, 74105, Republican

Office No. 6:

• Ruth Ann Fate, 83, 7014 E. 60th St., Tulsa, OK, 74145, Democrat (Did not respond)
• Jerry Griffin, 75, 6552 E. 60th St., Tulsa, OK, 74145, Republican
• Stephen Remington, 42, 4909 E. 2nd St., Tulsa, OK, 74112, Democrat (Did not respond)

BatesLine has sent a questionnaire to all of the candidates for school board in the two seats up for election in the Tulsa Public School district. The same questionnaire was provided to all four candidates in the Office No. 5 race, and all four responded.

Tulsa Election District 5 is midtown Tulsa, bounded by Riverside Drive, Yale Avenue, 11th Street, and 51st Street, minus the area NW of 21st and Peoria, minus the area SE of 41st and Harvard, and plus a few streets south of I-44 between Riverside and Peoria. This is an open seat. Brian Hosmer, the appointed incumbent who replaced the winner of the 2016 election, Cindy Decker, is not running for the seat. The primary election will be held on February 11, 2020; if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, a runoff will be held on April 7, 2020.

Scott Pendleton sent a detailed response, which (if you're viewing this on the home page) is after the jump. His campaign web page is www.scottpendleton.us and he has a Facebook page.

Pendleton welcomes questions from voters via email at scott@scottpendleton.us or by phone at 918-688-7318.

My questions are in bold and italics; Pendleton's responses are in normal type except where bold and underlining were used in his answer.

BatesLine has sent a questionnaire to all of the candidates for school board in the two seats up for election in the Tulsa Public School district. The same questionnaire was provided to all four candidates in the Office No. 5 race, and all four responded.

Tulsa Election District 5 is midtown Tulsa, bounded by Riverside Drive, Yale Avenue, 11th Street, and 51st Street, minus the area NW of 21st and Peoria, minus the area SE of 41st and Harvard, and plus a few streets south of I-44 between Riverside and Peoria. This is an open seat. Brian Hosmer, the appointed incumbent who replaced the winner of the 2016 election, Cindy Decker, is not running for the seat. The primary election will be held on February 11, 2020; if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, a runoff will be held on April 7, 2020.

Shane Saunders sent a detailed response, which (if you're viewing this on the home page) is after the jump. His campaign web page is shanesaunders.org and he has a Facebook page.

Saunders welcomes questions from voters via email at shane.saunders@gmail.com.

My questions are in bold and italics; Saunders's responses are in normal type except where bold and underlining were used in his answer.

BatesLine has sent a questionnaire to all of the candidates for school board in the two seats up for election in the Tulsa Public School district. The same questionnaire was provided to all four candidates in the Office No. 5 race, and all four responded.

Tulsa Election District 5 is midtown Tulsa, bounded by Riverside Drive, Yale Avenue, 11th Street, and 51st Street, minus the area NW of 21st and Peoria, minus the area SE of 41st and Harvard, and plus a few streets south of I-44 between Riverside and Peoria. This is an open seat. Brian Hosmer, the appointed incumbent who replaced the winner of the 2016 election, Cindy Decker, is not running for the seat. The primary election will be held on February 11, 2020; if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, a runoff will be held on April 7, 2020.

Kelsey Royce sent a detailed response, which (if you're viewing this on the home page) is after the jump. She has a campaign Facebook page.

Royce welcomes questions from voters via email at kelseyroycefordistrict5@gmail.com.

My questions are in bold and italics; Royce's responses are in normal type except where bold and underlining were used in her answer.

BatesLine has sent a questionnaire to all of the candidates for school board in the two seats up for election in the Tulsa Public School district. The same questionnaire was provided to all four candidates in the Office No. 5 race, and all four responded.

Tulsa Election District 5 is midtown Tulsa, bounded by Riverside Drive, Yale Avenue, 11th Street, and 51st Street, minus the area NW of 21st and Peoria, minus the area SE of 41st and Harvard, and plus a few streets south of I-44 between Riverside and Peoria. This is an open seat. Brian Hosmer, the appointed incumbent who replaced the winner of the 2016 election, Cindy Decker, is not running for the seat. The primary election will be held on February 11, 2020; if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, a runoff will be held on April 7, 2020.

John Croisant sent a detailed response, which (if you're viewing this on the home page) is after the jump. His campaign web page is www.johncroisant.com, and he has a Facebook page.

Croisant welcomes questions from voters via email at john@johncroisant.com.

My questions are in bold and italics; Croisant's responses are in normal type except where bold and underlining were used in his answer.

BatesLine has sent a questionnaire to all of the candidates for school board in the two seats up for election in the Tulsa Public School district. Three candidates are running for Office No. 6: The incumbent of 24 years, Ruth Ann Fate, a Democrat, and two challengers, Stephen Remington, a Democrat, and Jerry Griffin, a Republican. The primary election will be held on February 11, 2020; if no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, a runoff will be held on April 7, 2020.

The same questionnaire was provided to all four candidates in the Office No. 5 race, and all four responded. These will be posted as soon as possible.

Tulsa Election District 6 is bounded roughly by I-244, 61st Street, Yale Avenue, and 89th East Avenue, minus wedges of land NE of I-44 & 31st (around Skelly Elementary) and SW of I-44 and 41st Street (around Promenade Mall), and minus the section SW of 51st and Sheridan.

Mrs. Fate did not respond to attempts to contact her via her district email address, and she did not appear to have a web presence at the time the questionnaire was sent. Mr. Remington acknowledged the questionnaire, but refused to respond: "I apologize but I am not filling out your questionnaire. Endorsements are fine but I am not looking to get any. My campaign is not asking for donations either. Ruth Ann has not filled one out either which indicates we will not have a fair assessment of this race."

Dr. Jerry Griffin sent a detailed response, which (if you're viewing this on the home page) is after the jump. His campaign web page is www.drgriffinforschoolboard.com and he has a Facebook page and a Twitter account.

Griffin welcomes questions from voters via email at drgriffinforschoolboard@gmail.com or by phone at 918-521-2623.

My questions are in bold and italics; Griffin's responses are in normal type except where bold and underlining were used in his answer.

Tonight at 5:30 pm, Tulsa District 4 City Councilor Kara Joy McKee is hosting a"2020 Priorities Visioning and Pie Party" at Will Rogers High School.

This is an opportunity to support the preservation of the Pearl District and oppose eminent domain abuse, not only in the Central Park Place subdivision, but also on the opposite side of downtown, in Crosbie Heights. The homeowners in the footprint of the unfunded and unneeded Elm Creek West Pond, in Paul Harvey's neighborhood, are still on "pause" with no information from city officials. At the final council meeting of 2019, Councilor McKee promised to take action to terminate the pending condemnation cases when the Council reconvened in the new year, but nothing has been done, and the issue has yet to be taken up at any Council committee meeting or regular meeting.

Back in December, Pearl District residents and other citizens raised concerns about the lack of action during the public comment period of the regular city council meetings. On December 4, 2019, John and Tara Dawson, the couple whose family home is in condemnation proceedings, stormwater management consultant Guy DeVerges, and I spoke to the council. Councilor McKee was out of town, but our remarks were recorded on video.

On December 18, at the same meeting at which Fletcher Stewart spoke about Crosbie Heights concerns, resident Dale Lawton and Chad Reese of the Institute for Justice spoke. Reese called on the Council to take specific actions: To make the "pause" official by revoking the condemnation order, and to reevaluate the entire flood mitigation plan and to find a better way if indeed flood mitigation is still needed. Following Reese's comments, Councilor McKee expressed regret for not having previously taken action to stop the condemnation process and got choked up at the thought that the possibility of losing their home would be hanging over the Dawsons' heads over the Christmas holidays. She expressed sorrow that the property was taken in the first place and apologized for focusing on the flooding issue and not pursuing relief for the Dawsons.

MORE: Links to video, maps, and other documents regarding the Elm Creek West Pond from the neighborhood meetings held on October 14 and 15, 2019

Homeowners in a revitalizing historic neighborhood west of downtown Tulsa are feeling threatened by a sudden drop in the County Assessor's valuation of their lots and the persistent interest of the Tulsa Development Authority, the agency that seeks "blighted" property for redevelopment.

The Crosbie Heights neighborhood is comprised of several early Tulsa subdivisions. Roughly speaking, the neighborhood extends from the west leg of the Inner Dispersal Loop west to 25th West Avenue (Gilcrease Museum Road), and from the Sand Springs Expressway (US 412, US 64, OK 51) south to Charles Page Boulevard and the Arkansas River.

Last fall, property owners in the Crosbie Heights neighborhood started to notice that the value of their property, as determined by the Tulsa County Assessor's Office, had decreased, despite home sales in the area that indicated increasing market value for the neighborhood. Specifically, the value of unimproved land -- what a lot would be worth if there were no building on it -- was cut from as high as $19,563, but typically closer to $7,500, to a nearly uniform $3,000.

Crosbie Heights home owner Fletcher Stewart began to investigate. He and neighbors went through the Tulsa County Assessor's website, tabulating property values for every lot in the four largest subdivisions (Crosbie Heights, Mitchell-Crosbie, Overlook Park, and Owen Addition) in the neighborhood, and saw a disturbing pattern. According to the neighborhood's tabulations, values for 69 of 125 properties in Owen Addition and 6 of 9 properties in Overlook Park subdivision owned by Quapaw Investments LLC dropped to $3,000 in 2018; in 2019 the same drop was applied to nearly every other property in those two subdivisions plus the Crosbie Heights subdivision proper. (Lot values in the southernmost subdivision of the neighborhood, Mitchell-Crosbie, south of 7th Street along Nogales, Olympia, and Phoenix Avenues, were not similarly affected.) Stewart made open-records requests for assessment appeals and verified that Quapaw Investments LLC had protested the assessment on many of its properties in 2018.

On January 1, 2020, KTUL ran a news story on the Crosbie Heights land value situation, talking to Fletcher Stewart, Tulsa County Assessor John Wright, and the Tulsa City Councilor for the neighborhood, Kara Joy McKee.

At the last Tulsa City Council meeting before Christmas, on December 18, 2019, he presented his findings during the untelevised public comments period. He kindly provided me with his prepared remarks to publish here at BatesLine. I'll add some comments and further background info at the end.

My name is Fletcher Stewart, I own my home in Crosbie Heights, which is the neighborhood that immediately borders downtown to the west. It is one of Tulsa's oldest neighborhoods, we have some amazing views of the skyline, and easy walkability to the BOK Center and Tulsa Arts District. I love where I live and wouldn't want to be anywhere else. But according to the City and County, ours is a blighted neighborhood and our homes sit on virtually worthless land. There is a lot of fear among the neighbors about the future of the neighborhood, and the facts I'm going to present will show why those fears are valid.

First, I want to bring attention to what has happened to property values, as assessed by the county. In Crosbie Heights, there is a developer who, according to my math, owns about 22 percent of the total lots. In 2018, he protested the land values for dozens of his properties. Regardless of the size of the lot, or the previous land value, the protests he submitted stated the land values should be dropped to $3,000. The assessor's office essentially rubber-stamped agreement to the protests and lowered the values. In 2019, because of the protests filed, this new land value was applied to most of the other properties in the neighborhood, leading to dramatic drops. I compiled a spreadsheet with data from the tax assessor that catalogues the property values over the last three years, and the results are shocking. The land my home sits on dropped in value from $7,600 in 2018 to $3,000 in 2019. I found a property that dropped from $18,000 to $3,000. Over and over and without variation, $3,000 is what the county says our land is worth, regardless of lot size, previous year value, or even if a sale had taken place recently.

I want to emphasize how abnormal this is. I could not find any other neighborhoods in Tulsa County with a similar pattern of land values. In fact, I can say confidently that Crosbie Heights has the lowest average land values anywhere in the county, and I've been looking. I have looked at neighborhoods all over: Turley, West Tulsa, the homes in the Pearl that are facing Eminent Domain. I even searched for news articles to see what neighborhoods had experienced multiple shootings and homicides, and even those had higher land values than our downtown adjacent homes.

The other pressing issue that must be addressed is the Crosbie Heights Blight Study. Without preamble or outreach to the neighbors, the Tulsa Development Authority commissioned the Blight Study. Its stated purpose is not to determine if Crosbie Heights is blighted, but simply to "document blight conditions" on the neighborhood. It concludes, after several pages of images of boarded up houses, that Crosbie Heights is indeed blighted, and "is detrimental to public health, safety, morals and welfare of the city." This study provides no recommendations, nor path to rehabilitate the neighborhood; it just lists and describes the conditions of blight.

Now the term blight carries real weight as a legal term. Being labeled blighted means the city may now exercise Eminent Domain and acquire our homes. With that in mind, just across the highway that separates us from downtown, there is an unprecedented boom in development and vibrancy. The BOK Center, Drillers Stadium and other recent developments brings thousands to the heart of the city. There is so much more planned, the next few years will bring in even more growth to downtown - so why does the vitality end at the IDL?

There has been so much discussion lately about affordable housing in Tulsa. Well that's us - our neighborhood is affordable downtown housing. Why are we the subject of a blight study, and not part of the conversation about affordable housing and our place in it?

Here's the writing on the wall, the extrapolation of the facts I presented, and the reason I'm scared: Over the next few years. Our neighborhood will deteriorate. The falling values will scare off investment, and will make it easy for developers to acquire property, clear the houses on them, and sit on the vacant lots. At some point in the near future a plan will be presented. My guess would be high-rise condos, sold on skyline views and close access to downtown. The city, which has already made the determination the area is blighted, will exercise its power of Eminent Domain to clear the remaining homes- and that will be it. Some people will probably make a bunch of money, but it won't be us, the residents of the neighborhood. We'll lose our homes, and with them, Tulsa will lose another piece of its past.

I'm here to ask the city for help. Publicly disavow the blight study, and make a commitment to the downtown neighborhoods regarding future use of Eminent Domain. Work with us so the booming success of downtown is felt by more Tulsans, and the vitality doesn't just end at the IDL.

As you can see from the 1908 and 1911 newspaper ads in this entry, these subdivisions were prestigious locations when built. Developers were keen to let the public know that prominent and prosperous members of the public were building homes in the area, and that covenants would ensure that only quality homes were built. Proximity and strong connections to downtown (both streetcar companies and the Sand Springs interurban served the neighborhood) were major selling points. Homes of similar vintage and quality in other Tulsa neighborhoods are under Historic Preservation zoning protection.

As Mr. Stewart notes, in 2018, the Tulsa Development Authority conducted a "blight study" of the Crosbie Heights neighborhood. The blight study turned its survey of resident requests for improvements into a justification for a finding of blight, which would open the door for forcible acquisition by eminent domain. On March 27, 2019, the TDA asked the City Council to ratify its finding of blight, prompting strong protests from residents, which led the City Council not to act on the TDA's recommendations.

Oklahoma has a ridiculously loose definition of blight. Nearly any piece of property could qualify. If a city council makes a finding of blight, the courts generally defer. The Castle Coalition, a project of the Institute for Justice, has given Oklahoma an F for its failure to protect property rights because of this loose definition of blight. Here is the definition in 11 O.S. 38-101, part of the Oklahoma Municipal Code:

"Blighted area" shall mean an area in which there are properties, buildings, or improvements, whether occupied or vacant, whether residential or nonresidential, which by reason of dilapidation, deterioration, age or obsolescence, inadequate provision for ventilation, light, air, sanitation or open spaces; improper subdivision or obsolete platting of land; deterioration or demolition of structures without repair, replacement or reinvestment; improper street layout in terms of existing or projected traffic needs, traffic congestion or lack of parking or terminal facilities needed for existing or proposed land uses in the area, predominance of defective or inadequate street layouts; faulty lot layout in relation to size, adequacy, accessibility or usefulness; insanitary or unsafe conditions, deterioration of site or other improvements; diversity of ownership, tax or special assessment delinquency exceeding the fair value of the land; defective or unusual conditions of title including, but not limited to, highly fragmented interests; any one or combination of such conditions which the municipal governing body determines substantially impairs or arrests the sound growth of the municipality and constitutes a substantial liability, or which endangers life or property by fire or other causes, or is conducive to ill health, transmission of disease, mortality, juvenile delinquency, or crime and by reason thereof, is detrimental to the public health, safety, morals or welfare;

11 O.S. 38-102 makes a legislative finding that condemning a blighted area is a public use, presumably to satisfy Article 2, Section 23, of the Oklahoma Constitution, which limits eminent domain to public use, as opposed to public purpose or public benefit. 11 O.S. 38-103 authorizes a municipality to take blighted properties. 11 O.S. 38-105 requires a municipality's governing body to make a finding of blight before the condemnations can begin. Similar provisions in Title 27, Article 5, govern a county's use of eminent domain.

Although in 2006 the Oklahoma Supreme Court in Board of County Commissioners of Muskogee County v. Lowery (2006 OK 31) affirmed the Oklahoma Constitution's prohibition of condemnation for economic development, a tighter standard than the U. S. Supreme Court applied in Kelo v. New London, they added a qualification that left an enormous loophole, enabling corrupt politicians to continue to seize private property for the benefit of their friends:

We further hold that takings for the purpose of economic development alone (not in connection with the removal of blighted property) do not constitute a public use or public purpose to support the exercise of eminent domain as a matter of Oklahoma constitutional law, nor does it satisfy the public purpose requirement of 27 O.S. 2001 § 5.

This is not the first time that the Crosbie Heights neighborhood has been threatened with eminent domain. Back in 2000, during the second failed attempt to assemble a package of projects that would convince voters to raise taxes for an arena, there was discussion about adding some form of "river development" as a sweetener for voters, and Crosbie Heights south of 3rd Street was targeted for replacement with an entertainment district / amusement park -- "Tulsa's Six Flags," as one proponent called it. Raising a public alarm caused the idea to be shelved.

More about that later, but as I wrote at the time, "It's never too early to stop a bad idea." The bulldozers aren't running yet, the Council hasn't yet acted on the TDA's requested blight declaration, but there are worrying signs that someone is trying to line everything up to clear this historic neighborhood for private redevelopment. We must remain vigilant.

It's a commonplace sentiment among fans of streetcars that a cabal of car and tire manufacturers bought out city streetcar systems one by one and shut them down, replacing the wonderful old PCC trolley cars with diesel-belching buses. In reality, there were many factors undermining the popularity and financial feasibility of streetcars: Municipal governments fixed the fares too low for franchisees to make a profit; jitneys competed with streetcars for passengers, offering faster and more comfortable service; the automobile became more affordable, fueling urban growth beyond the reach of the trolley systems. This last factor was the nail in the coffin: More and more people were driving automobiles, the streetcars were blocking traffic, and the tracks were damaging autos.

For example, in the May 26, 1922, edition of the Tulsa World, reader A. E. Stephens complains in a letter to the editor about the decrepit state of the roads leading into Tulsa. Stephens' bitterest complaint is reserved for North Peoria Avenue:

Entering from the north we have for the welcome of out-of-town visitors, the Avenue of Horrors, or our North Peoria street sinkhole, with the only spot where driving is possible, taken up by our antedeluvian relic, the Tulsa Street railway, with rails protruding 4 to 12 inches above the other part of the street. The Avenue of Horrors also takes visitors through the Plunge of Death, or the Peoria Street viaduct under the Frisco railway.

Maps show the TSR tracks extending along Peoria from King Street to 1st Street, where it joined the Kendall branch on the way into downtown. Stephens also complained about the Third Street viaduct over the Frisco tracks, the main route into Tulsa from Sand Springs, "which is a very narrow, roughly paved street and also infested with our old eyesore, the decrepit Tulsa Street railway."

Gil Propp grew up in Brookline, Mass., between the B and C line of the MBTA Green Line streetcar network. His curiosity about some oddities -- the lack of an A line, discrepancies between old and new maps about the E line -- led him to research the history and evolution of the MBTA's streetcar system. A few years ago he turned his research into a short film called "Streetcar Tracks: A Reconstruction of Boston's Lost Streetcar Empire." The film and its script are available for viewing on bostonstreetcars.com, and you can view "Streetcar Tracks" directly on YouTube.

Propp has also posted many detailed articles on the site about the individual lines in the Boston fixed-rail transit system and the slow consolidation of the network and elimination of streetcar lines to the system we see today. The article "Why Are There Still Streetcars in Boston?" offers a compelling explanation for the survival of a handful of lines -- and why so many others disappeared: "The answer is simple: they have private right-of-ways that lead to subways."

The extension of subway tunnels prior to World War II allowed three streetcar lines (B, C, and E) to avoid busy intersections like Kenmore Square. After surfacing, the three lines also had reserved right-of-ways down the middle of Commonwealth Ave., Beacon Street, and Huntington Ave., respectively. Only the E line did not have a reserved right-of-way for its full length, and at the end of 1985, service was cut back to the end of the reserved right-of-way at Heath St. The fourth currently operating branch, the D line to Riverside, is on a former steam railway line that was linked into the subway tunnels. While the A line to Watertown also connected to the subway tunnels, it was street-running all the way, impeding car traffic. In Cambridge, there had been street-running trolleys that fed into the subway via an incline at Harvard Square. These were replaced with trackless trolley buses that used the same overhead wires but could pull to the curb for loading passengers, while the underground tracks were converted from overhead trolley wires to third-rail operation.

One other Boston streetcar line has survived: The Mattapan High Speed line, which runs in a private right-of-way, not parallel to any street and thus not easily bustituted, and provides a connection to the Ashmont branch of the Red Line. This is the last line of the MBTA that runs the old PCC cars -- when I was in college they also ran on the C and E branches of the Green Line.

I have often wondered how Tulsa's streetcar system might have evolved had it and the city begun 20 years earlier. I suspect there would have been at least two cut-and-cover subways through downtown -- one along Main Street and another along 3rd Street, with other east-west streetcar lines being rerouted to take advantage. That might have kept the Oklahoma Union Traction interurban to Sapulpa (now the Tulsa Sapulpa Union Railway) and the Sand Springs Railway interurban, both of which had dedicated right-of-ways outside of downtown. Perhaps a dedicated right-of-way along 3rd or 11th Streets would have been built to maintain service to the east.

UPDATE 2019/12/03: Here is the final list of candidates who filed for the February / April 2020 school board and municipal elections in Tulsa County. The following school board seats had only a single candidate file (Office No. 5, unless otherwise noted):

This is a reworking of a post from four years ago, but it has been updated with current information about open seats and candidates, and there is some new information below.

We are in the midst of the annual filing period for public school board positions in Oklahoma, which ends Wednesday, December 4, 2019, at 5 p.m. K-12 school districts will have a single seat, Office No. 5, up for election to a five-year term. K-8 dependent districts (Keystone is the only one in Tulsa County) have three seats that rotate through three-year terms. Liberty, in far-south Tulsa County, also has Office No. 4 on the ballot. After the first day of filing in Tulsa County, 9 seats have drawn one candidate, but only 4 have drawn two candidates. No one has filed in Skiatook, Broken Arrow, or Keystone school districts, or the Tulsa Technology Center board.

Filing is also open for a number of municipalities; candidates have filed for city office in Collinsville, Owasso, and Sand Springs.

(Here is the current list of candidates for Tulsa County school board seats. And here's where you'll find maps showing school district and election district boundaries.)

School board filing always comes at a busy and distracted time of year. As I've written before, it's almost as if school board elections were deliberately scheduled to escape the notice of potential candidates and voters.

The school board primary election will be held on February 11, 2020, for those seats where there are three or more candidates. If no one wins a majority of the vote in the February election, a runoff will be held on April 7, 2020. If a seat draws only two candidates, the election will be held on April 7, 2020.

The Tulsa district, largest in the state, has two out of seven seats up for election to a four-year term, Offices No. 5 and 6.

Tulsa Election District 5 is midtown Tulsa, bounded by Riverside Drive, Yale Avenue, 11th Street, and 51st Street, minus the area NW of 21st and Peoria, minus the area SE of 41st and Harvard, and plus a few streets south of I-44 between Riverside and Peoria.

The current member for District 5 is Brian Hosmer, a professor of Western American History at the University of Tulsa. He was appointed in February to replace Cindy Decker, who was elected in 2016 and resigned to serve as director of Educare, a project of the George Kaiser Family Foundation.

As of Monday night, Hosmer has not filed for re-election, but Kelsey Royce and Shane Saunders have filed for the seat. Royce, a registered Democrat, wrote a strongly critical analysis of Tulsa Public School finances published in Tulsa Kids in September 2019. Saunders, a conservative Republican, is current vice chairman and former chairman of Iron Gate, head of Trident Energy, and served as press secretary and legislative assistant to Congressman John Sullivan. He applied to fill the vacant seat when Decker resigned. It looks like either candidate that has filed so far would be an improvement and would hold the administration accountable on fiscal issues, but it remains to be seen where they stand on educational and social issues affecting the schools.

Tulsa Election District 6 is just to the east of District 5 bounded roughly by I-244, 61st Street, Yale Avenue, and 89th East Avenue, minus wedges of land NE of I-44 & 31st (around Skelly Elementary) and SW of I-44 and 41st Street (around Promenade Mall), and minus the section SW of 51st and Sheridan. The incumbent is Ruth Ann Fate, a registered Democrat who was first elected to the seat in 1996. She has one opponent so far, Jerry R. Griffin, a registered Republican.

Two candidates have filed for Bixby Office 5: Tristy Fryer (Republican) and Todd Hagopian (Libertarian).

Two candidates have filed for Union Office 5: Ken Kinnear (Republican) and Brad Swearengin (Democrat).

In addition, Tulsa Technology Center board seat 4 is up for a seven-year term, representing the City of Tulsa west of the river, plus midtown Tulsa from 21st to 81st, Riverside to Yale, plus a square mile from 71st to 81st, 49th West Ave to 33rd West Ave in Creek County, and the half-section from Yale to Hudson, 21st to 31st in Tulsa. TTC seems to have more money than it knows what to do with; it would be lovely to have a fiscal conservative on the board who could curb their building spree. Incumbent David Charney, a real-estate developer and a registered Democrat, has not yet filed for re-election and no one has yet filed to challenge him.

Looking through the online biographies, I think it's fair to assume that there is not a single conservative on the Tulsa School Board. Five (Stacey Woolley, Jennettie Marshall, Shawna Keller, Ruth Ann Fate, and Suzanne Schreiber) are registered Democrats; two (Jania Wester in District 2 and Brian Hosmer in District 5) are registered as independents.

TPS has received increasing criticism from across the political spectrum for fiscal irresponsibility and educational failure:

Black Wall Street Times, 11/26/2016: Anonymous teacher writes, "I literally feel like at TPS, we are set up for failure," cites disastrous educational results, teacher resignations. The same article includes achievement statistics for African-American students; Deborah Brown charter school leads the way with 45% meeting proficiency, while numbers at all but a few schools are in the single digits.

Tulsa World, 11/26/2016: The number of Tulsa schools receiving an F on the Oklahoma School Report card increased from 21 to 28. Only Booker T. Washington High School received an A in academic achievement; Edison HS has a B, Webster, Memorial, and Will Rogers have Ds; the rest of the high schools have Fs. Only 18% of TPS students who were assessed were at or above grade level.

If you're a conservative, you should give serious thought to running for school board, even if you have no school-aged children, even if you have children that are homeschooled or in private school, even if you've never had a child in the public schools. The public school system exists to serve all citizens by educating the children of the community, so every citizen has an interest in the curriculum being used, the way discipline is handled, the condition of the school buildings, and the credentials, skills, and philosophical presuppositions of the teachers, principals, and administrators. Property owners support the school system through ad valorem taxes, and so they have a reasonable interest in the proper and efficient expenditure of those funds. So do all citizens who pay state income and sales taxes, which provide funds to supplement local property taxes.

If you are, like me, a homeschool or private school parent, you will have experience and valuable insights with successful, classical alternatives to the faddish and failing teaching methods, priorities, and content currently in use in the public schools.

I ran some numbers, comparing 2010 census data, broken down by age, with the closest school attendance data I could find, from the 2010-2011 school year. In the Tulsa school district, the average daily attendance was only 67.2% of the number of school-aged children (5-18) who lived in the district on Census Day 2010. That means about a third of school-aged kids were either homeschooled or in private schools, the highest proportion of any district in the metro area. The Tulsa district also had the lowest percentage of residents in the 5-18 bracket -- 17.9%. Compare that to the Sperry district, where 91% of school-aged residents attended the public school, and where 22.6% of the residents were school-aged.

It seems that a substantial number of families move from the Tulsa district to the suburbs when their children reach kindergarten, or, if they stay, many opt for homeschooling or private schools. Those numbers make a strong case for new leaders in the Tulsa district. And if the school board is going to be strictly representative, at least two of the seven members should have children in homeschool or private school, and a majority should be conservative.

Filing is simple: A notarized declaration of candidacy, and a signed copy of the statutory requirements for school board candidates. For this office there is no filing fee. You can view the Oklahoma school board filing packet online. And although school board elections are officially non-partisan, the local and state Republican Party organizations will provide assistance to registered Republicans who are candidates for non-partisan office. (I suspect the same is true of the Democrats.)

There was a time when it was generally agreed that schools existed to transmit knowledge and the values of the community to the rising generation, working alongside parents. At some point, as part of the Gramscian long march through the institutions, the public schools were infiltrated by Leftists who saw them as a venue for missionary work, converting children away from the values of their parents, away from the ideals that made America a prosperous and peaceful nation. The Left has influence over schools of education, textbook publishers, teachers' unions, and continuing education for teachers, administrators, and board members.

Shortly after President Trump was sworn in, Tulsa Schools Superintendent Deborah Gist issued a statement to assure everyone that leftist policies on immigration and transgenderism would continue to be followed in Tulsa Public Schools:

We do not ask for immigration status when families enroll their children. We would not share information about immigration status with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. The Supreme Court's 1982 decision in Plyler vs. Doe found that every child has a constitutional right to equal access to education regardless of their immigration status, and we welcome immigrant and refugee families at Tulsa Public Schools.

We honor the dignity and equality of our transgender and gender non-conforming students. These students have the right to present themselves in a way that is consistent with their gender identity so long as rules are followed for appropriate dress that apply to all students. They also have the right to use restrooms, locker rooms, and other facilities that are consistent with their gender identity. This may include the use of gender neutral restrooms. We recognize the privacy of students in transition and would not disclose information about gender identity or expression without their consent.

Also in 2017, TPS sponsored a series of meetings called "Exploring Equity," featuring one-sided panels pushing intersectionality.

The next step in the LGBTQ fight for equality lies in increased representation and intersectionality, panelists said Thursday during the latest talk in a Tulsa Public Schools series meant to foster equity.

About 150 people sat with each other at 19 rectangular tables to hear a panel on LGBTQ issues and then discuss ideas that struck them during the talk.

The panel included Moises Echeverria, with the Oklahoma Center for Community and Justice; Toby Jenkins, with Oklahomans for Equality; Abril Marshall, with Camp Fire Green Country; Tulsa attorney Alyssa Bryant; and longtime local advocate Nancy McDonald.

If you live in a suburban or small-town district, you might suppose your district is safe from Leftist influence. Think again. Through their college training, their teachers' union newsletter, continuing education courses, peer relationships, and curriculum, your districts' teachers and administrators work in an atmosphere of Leftist presuppositions about the world. It takes strength, conviction, and vigilance for a conservative educator to be conscious of that atmosphere and to resist its influence.

Back in fall 2017, Mandy Callihan, a teacher and parent in Jay, Oklahoma, was infuriated to learn that her 12-year-old daughter was being taught in school about mutual masturbation and anal and oral sex, complete with a worksheet she had to fill out. She and other parents went to the school looking for answers and discovered that the curriculum had been approved by the school board and the middle school principal. The superintendent, claiming ignorance, halted the program, but parents were told it would have to be brought back the following year.

In Minnesota in 2017, the Center for the American Experiment has published a detailed 10-page report on slipping standards at the once-successful Edina school district in the suburbs of the Twin Cities. While academic achievement has declined, Leftist indoctrination is on the rise:

Today, for example, K-2 students at Edina Highlands Elementary School are learning--through the "Melanin Project"--to focus on skin color and to think of white skin as cause for guilt. "Equity" is listed as a primary criterion on the district's evaluation for K-5 math curricula. At Edina High School, teachers are haranguing students on "White Privilege," and drilling into them that white males oppress and endanger women. In a U.S. Literature and Composition class, 11th-graders are being taught to "apply marxist [sic], feminist" and "post-colonial" "lenses to literature."

In short, in Edina, reading, writing, math and critical thinking skills are taking a backseat to an ideological crusade.

The Leftist bent of the school district came to public attention after the overwrought reaction by students and teachers to the election results, but the roots of the problem went back several years, to the school's decision to try to close the achievement gap between students of different races by focusing on structural racism as the cause:

The All for All plan's fundamental premise is that white racism--not socio-economic factors like family breakdown--is the primary cause of the achievement gap. If minority students' academic performance is to improve, "systems that perpetuate inequities" must be "interrupt[ed]" and "barriers rooted in racial constructs and cultural misunderstandings" must be "eliminate[d]," according to the district's position statement on "Racial Equity and Cultural Competence in Edina Public Schools."

The story mentions one race-conscious elementary school principal who adopted a curriculum provided by the slanderous Leftist group that calls itself the Southern Poverty Law Center. The same principal eliminated flex groups -- opportunities during one period for children of similar ability levels to work together with a teacher, receiving targeted instruction -- because they were perceived as insufficiently diverse. A high school literature class describes a course goal in this way: "By the end of the year, you will have... learned how to apply marxist [sic], feminist, post-colonial [and] psychoanalytic... lenses to literature."

There are, it must be said, many good conservatives, many devout Christians serving in Oklahoma's public schools. But they need support in the form of school board members who will set policy and curriculum and ensure that the paid staff adhere to it. Conservative school board members should not give undue deference to "professionals" who have been trained to see education through a Leftist lens. The subject matter taught, the methods used, and the values undergirding it all should be firmly under the control of our elected representatives on the school board.

Education is necessarily ideological, because it rests on presuppositions about knowledge, truth, goodness, and beauty. The ideology of the public schools should reflect the ideology of the community.

If I were running, here are some of the planks that would be in my platform:

• Introduce the classical trivium as the philosophy and method of instruction in schools that are currently failing. That includes a heavy emphasis on memorizing facts in the elementary years, which gives children a sense of mastery and accomplishment and provides a solid foundation for subsequent learning.
• Instill pride in our city, state, and country. America has its flaws, but it is a beacon of liberty and opportunity that inspires hope in hundreds of millions of people around the world who wish they could live and work here. Our children should understand the aspects of our culture and history that have made our country prosperous and peaceful. The "black armband" view of history should have no place in our schools.
• Keep the Land Run re-enactments in our elementary schools. It's a fun and memorable way to introduce students to our state's unique history. There is an activist in Oklahoma City who managed to convince historically ignorant principals and school board members there that the '89 Land Run was an act of genocide. Oklahoma City, founded by the '89 Land Run, no longer has reenactments of that event, because of a zealot who pushed her slanderous revision of history on ignoramuses in charge of the schools.
• Return music to the elementary grades. An early introduction to classical music and learning to make music by singing have tremendous developmental and behavioral benefits.
• Review all federal grants and determine whether the cost of compliance and the loss of independence is worth the money.
• Young people who foolishly believe that swapping sexes will solve their deep unhappiness deserve pity and guidance. It is utter cruelty to humor their misplaced hope that "changing gender identity" will cure their misery. Leadership at each school should craft a way to accommodate these deluded young people with compassion and dignity, while protecting the dignity of everyone else, and while affirming the biologically undeniable reality of the two sexes.

Thankfully, doing the right thing on that last point will no longer require resisting Federal pressure, because the Trump administration halted the Obama administration policy that denied funding based on a perverted interpretation of Title IX. But as shown above, Tulsa's school administration is fully on board with radical gender theory, and it's likely that your school administration has been thoroughly indoctrinated in the same way.

Our public schools need principled, intelligent conservative leadership. Will you step forward to serve?

FROM THE ARCHIVES: My 2015 post on school board filing included links to two important articles about the leftist direction of your local public school board, particularly on sexual morality and gender identity.

Stella Morabito wrote, "Ask Not Who's Running For President, Ask Who's Running For School Board," citing the recent battle in Fairfax County, Virginia, over transgender policy as one among many reasons.

Walt Heyer, a man who underwent sex-change surgery and then, realizing that the change failed to give him the happiness he had hoped for, changed back, wrote about the Obama Administration using its perverted interpretation of Title IX to force public schools to trample their students in the transgender war against science and reason.

After I posted my tribute in memory of Bob Gregory, I received an email from his son, Jason Pitcock, who included a copy of the eulogy he wrote for his dad and delivered at his service. What an amazing life he led! Like Bob Gregory's work, Jason's tribute to his father leaves me delighted by a story well told, better informed, and yet wanting to know more about the subject. With Jason's kind permission, I'm republishing it here.

I'm tickled to read that The Sports Buff was a regular haunt of his. It was a sports memorabilia store that was located in the shopping center that stood on the north side of 51st east of Harvard (demolished during I-44 widening). The Sports Buff was where you went to get authentic Major League Baseball caps and other sports fan apparel, as well as books and cards, when there wasn't another store like it in Tulsa. (I've got a Cardinals jacket and hat from The Sports Buff, and I liked to pick up the annual NCAA Football preview. Somewhere I've got the OU media guide with Billy Sims on the cover for his senior year, wishing for a second Heisman Trophy.)

"Dry your pretty eyes / And let me have a smile / Think how it's gonna be / When we're together again..." Lyrics from the musical "Applause." Dad loved Broadway.

Robert Bruce Pitcock, later Bob Gregory, was born in Fort Smith, Arkansas in 1931. He was Bobby to his six siblings, his mother, Leona, his father, Reves, and his stepfather, J.B. The Great Depression hit hard in the early years. But dad and his beloved little sister, Betsy, often reflected, "It was tough on everyone and we always had family. We had each other."

In the early 1940s, dad and older brother, Billy, would take the bus out to Camp Chaffee, a nearby army base, to shine soldiers' boots. One pair got you ten cents. Everything back then was measured in nickels and dimes - hamburgers, cokes, movie tickets. And dad never adjusted for inflation. World War II, an event that imbued his life, was in full swing. A lifelong passion for newspapers was born.

After the war, at the age of seventeen, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. He served between World War II and the Korean War. And his father, Reves, barely averted combat in World War I. He was on a train in 1918 headed to fight in Europe when the Allies and Germany signed the armistice. Dad knew full well that life, as John Cheever wrote, is a "collision of contingencies."

He felt duty-bound to serve. He also knew that joining offered a chance to make his own way in the world. But it wasn't easy. Basic training in the freezing cold. Family thousands of miles away and no trips homes for the holidays. Letters and Western Union telegrams sustained him. He credited army buddies, many from the east coast, with broadening his horizons. Jocko McDermott, Augie Carlino, Russ Sarami, George McReynolds - his band of brothers. Stationed in Alaska, they were purportedly training for ski patrol. But dad, half-joking, would say, "we couldn't have taken Aspen." Always witty and ready with a quip.

In the service, he took an interest in jazz, tried Pabst Blue Ribbon, shot dice, and played cards. After a hot streak one night, he wired most of the winnings to family in Arkansas.

Dad kept a pocket edition of Shakespeare in his army fatigues and studied as duties allowed. He was self-taught. His trademark elocution and diction were the result of diligence, insatiable curiosity, love of language, and a burning desire to excel. A gifted pitcher, he was a star on the baseball team. And in order to rest his arm before starts, the commanding officer exempted him from "KP" duty. A professional baseball scout later expressed interest only to rebuffed, "I'm going to be an actor."

One evening in the barracks, inspired by a radio disk jockey spinning Stan Kenton records, he resolved, "that's what I'm going to do." And man, did he do it. His persistence won over doubters. Told repeatedly by a station manager back in Fort Smith that no positions were available, dad sought permission simply to observe, without pay. The manager relented and for the next six months, aged nineteen, he showed up every day, watched, waited. Finally, he got the job he dreamed of. The deep voice, the cadence, the delivery; dad was a natural.

Several years later, as television was in its infancy, he transitioned to that medium. Telegenic, articulate, hungry, he cut his teeth in Arkansas and Tulsa. His buddies in those days were Gary Chew and Hal Balch. In 1967, one year after he married the love of his life - our beautiful, kind, sweet, selfless mother - his biggest professional break came. It was a pivotal moment. Bill Small, CBS Washington Bureau Chief, called Tulsa. Come on up to the network. Without hesitation, off to the nation's capital they went, baby Kendall, just months old, in tow.

Walter Cronkite anchored the evening news at the time, a tumultuous period in American history. Eric Sevareid, one of Edward R. Murrow's "Boys," was a mentor. Dad worshipped him. Dan Rather, Roger Mudd, and Bruce Morton were among his colleagues.

When Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated, dad received word from headquarters, 2020 M Street in Georgetown. He took an early morning taxi out to Hickory Hill, the Kennedy family compound in McLean, Virginia, to cover the story. Positioned on the lawn, dad was moved that Ethel Kennedy - grieving, distraught widow - brought out coffee and pastries for the press. Crooner Andy Williams was on hand to comfort the clan and donned monogramed slippers.

Dad saw Martin Luther King preach at the National Cathedral two weeks before his assassination. And after King was shot, he was at the White House and delivered the news to President Johnson's aide. Days later, as riots broke out on 14th Street in the Northwest DC, his cameraman was hit in the head by a protestor's bottle and the two fled to safety on a motorcycle. Soon after that he was with LBJ in the Texas hill country. Johnson wielded a pocketknife and tossed freshly sliced peaches to the assembled reporters, alternately fielding questions and telling folksy tales with that heavy drawl.

Dad, an ardent New Deal Democrat, interviewed President Nixon on numerous occasions and maintained that, politics aside, he was among the most charming, engaging men he'd ever met. He would say the same of Ronald Reagan, governor of California when they first crossed paths. There are hundreds more of these stories. Dad relished telling them. He never paused or failed to recall the slightest detail. The man spoke in complete paragraphs of lapidary prose.

Mom, dad, and Kendall left DC in 1970. He remembered the Cherry Blossom trees in full bloom along the Tidal Basin as they headed for Tulsa. They settled in. Scotty was born that year and dad began a 14-year run at KTUL, Channel 8, under James C. Leake. At the time, Leake also owned KATV in Little Rock, where little brother, Jimmy, would become a star. Dad wore it as a badge of honor. "Jimmy built that station," he would boast. It was the same with his older brother, Billy, who anchored at KOTV, Channel 6, in Tulsa. "Everyone loved your uncle. Mr. 10 o'clock."

Bob Gregory's documentaries and special features at KTUL won dozens of awards. The "Oil in Oklahoma" series, and companion book, were a sensation. For that program, he traveled to England to interview J. Paul Getty at his Wormsley Park estate. "I know people say he was a bastard but I found him fascinating," he'd say.

Dad's encounters were legion and legendary. Dinner with Menachem Begin at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem after the Six-Day War; a chat with Washington Post editor Ben Bradlee at the Mark Hopkins Hotel in San Francisco; a few minutes with Steve McQueen in Texas on the set of The Getaway, the Sam Peckinpah film co-starring Ali MacGraw (he'd gone down to interview cowboy actor and Pawhuska native, Ben Johnson); and over the course of just one weekend out in early Las Vegas with Balch, they hit a trifecta: catching a glimpse of Arnold Palmer on the golf course, receiving a warm "hello, boys!" from a tuxedoed Frank Sinatra in the lobby of the Sands Hotel, and watching Dean Martin lay thousands at the blackjack table.

In the 1970s in Tulsa, dad found his way into a loosely assembled quartet of creative camaraderie: Gailard Sartain, the actor and painter; Jay Cronley, the sportswriter and novelist; and Darcy O'Brien, the professor and author, who'd gone to Princeton only because F. Scott Fitzgerald had, and whose parents were Hollywood royalty in 1930s. Is it any wonder, then? They convened over drinks at Cognito Inn, Little Joe's, and the Tulsa Press Club. Lots of laughs, sure, but it wasn't all light banter. They loved books and movies and the art of the conversation. Dad treasured those times and reminisced often.

So many large personalities and famous names. So many momentous occasions and interviews in faraway places. But this was only the more public side of the man.

What we'll cherish most, what we'll miss most, is the lesser-known side. Birmingham Avenue has been home for almost 50 years. He loved it. Growing up, kids in the neighborhood enjoyed dad's many kindnesses. The Saturday runs were a particular treat. Cliff, Jonathan, Stemmons, Bandy, Jay Reed, cousin Marc. We'd load into the burgundy Cadillac and make the rounds: QuikTrip, B. Dalton books, the Sports Buff, Coney Islander. Dad savored every minute.

His bedroom was part-library, part-newsroom, part-shrine; signed photos adorned the walls. Stacks of newspapers and magazines. The seemingly scattered books were in fact organized, his way. At one point, he had three televisions on his desk. One for news, one for sports, and one for Turner Classic Movies. When the sports world was quiet, two were for news. For big occasions, the Oscars or Oklahoma Sooners football, he would join us in the den. There was the favorite lounge chair on the back patio. "I need some color," he'd say on sunny days. New York Times in hand and music playing, always.

I never once heard him say the words, "I'm bored." He found abundant joy in the simple things. He loved rain. "Listen, Jay. Isn't it great?" he'd gush, as the drops began to fall. The colors of the trees. The roaring fireplace in the living room. Homegrown tomatoes from his small garden in the backyard. Taking a photo of a red cardinal perched on a branch at the perfect moment.

In the old days, when he hauled us to Colorado Springs and Santa Fe for summer vacations, he took pictures of us - and of the West - with a Pentax. But after sister Betsy one year sent as a gift a digital camera, he photographed everything in sight. Flash drives replaced rolls of film. Thousands of moments - frozen in time. Family meals usually meant dozens of candid, mid-bite shots, our mouths full of food. He got a real kick out of it. And even as he slowed down, energy flagging, we still took him on drives so he could observe and capture nature.

Trivia contests were a mainstay of family dinners. Featured topics: The Golden Age of Hollywood, literature, history. Subjects he'd long ago mastered. He read avidly and his mind was a vault. Politics, war, biography. He was encyclopedic. A dear friend offered this astute and comforting appraisal: "Your dad, no doubt, lived an incredibly thoughtful and examined life. People are the richer for it."

He was kind. He was gentle. He was funny.

Music was another passion. The Great American Songbook: the Gershwins, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hart, Lerner and Loewe. He knew songs, lyricists, composers, dates. And, oh how he loved those melodies, especially when interpreted by Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Nat Cole. And so many movies: film noir, Westerns. Clark Gable, Cary Grant, Gregory Peck.

As the grandkids came along, the difficulty level of his trivia contests decreased. Dad wanted them involved in the fun, so he crafted questions by researching things he cared very little about. And he closely monitored the kids' progress, delighting in their successes.
Dad was effusive in his praise. He was a fierce advocate, an unwavering supporter. His love was unconditional. He was proud of every single thing we did. And he never played favorites.

All was vicarious when it came to family - the pleasure and the pain. The day Scotty's Columbia University acceptance packet arrived, dad was euphoric. His boy was headed to the Ivy League. Kendall's artistic abilities and gifts as a teacher were an immense source of pride. And I think he enjoyed my time working as a lawyer for the US congress in Washington more than I did. We were in touch constantly. Discussing who was testifying on Capitol Hill or sharing thoughts on the news of the day. He liked to know where I was. The Monocle, The Occidental, The Willard Hotel. His old haunts now were mine.

One afternoon when I lived there, I called home, anxious and upset. He could hear it in my voice. "Get on a plane," he said. "You can be home tonight. I am here for you. You're a great kid."

On the morning of the 9-11 attacks, he was on the phone immediately, as Scotty and Kendall were then living in New York. Kendall alleges that dad broke the story before NBC. The preschool staff where my sister taught, in lower Manhattan, hadn't heard the news but assured him that Kendall was safe.

Six years ago, I visited Antietam, a seminal Civil War battlefield. Standing by Burnside Bridge, I called dad. I listened raptly as he recounted troop movements and tactical blunders. He lamented missed Union opportunities. History was alive. It was September 1862 once again.

Dad was fond of quoting, as he did that day, Lincoln's rejoinder to the feckless, tentative George B. McClellan, "If the General doesn't want to use the army, would he mind if I borrowed it for awhile."

Ever the art enthusiast, dad awaited summaries when we visited museums: The Frick Collection, The Met, The National Gallery. He conveyed his tastes and judgments and in so doing cultivated ours.

For my 26th Birthday, he bought us tickets to see Bobby Short, the virtuoso cabaret singer, perform at The Carlyle Hotel on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Scotty, Kendall, mom, and me. "Come on, dad. Come up and join us." "No," he said, "I've had my day, but call me right after and tell me everything. I mean, everything."

A few days before he died, a hospice nurse paid us the dreaded visit. Dad insisted on shaving, put on a Brooks Brothers button down and his New Yorker baseball cap. After a brief exchange, he said to the nurse, "Thank you, madame, you've been a great help, and we appreciate it very much." Dignified, brave, and courteous to the end.

The Roman poet Horace wrote, "I shall not wholly die, and a great of part of me will escape the grave." I know this is true of dad. He was too big of a presence, too brilliant a mind, too loud a laugher, too adoring of his family, too much a lover of life, to ever really die. He lives on in the photographs, the documentaries, the grandkids he treasured, the memories, and all those beautiful words he wrote, private and published.

We remain very proud of his critically acclaimed biography of Cardinals pitcher Dizzy Dean. The Washington Post's Thomas Boswell said of it, "Put 'Diz' on the short list of baseball's best biographies." Fitting, then, to conclude with that book's final paragraph.
Bob Gregory, our mentor, our hero, my best friend, wrote:

"The funeral was held...and a thousand people came. His favorites were there - the hillbilly singers, football coaches, politicians, and businessmen - and from baseball came Ken Smith...Hank Aaron; and Dean's old Gas House teammate...Joe Medwick. Most of the talk was about Dizzy's accomplishments and all the fun he'd had and the laughs he'd brought to others. Nobody, they said, ever loved baseball more. He was buried near a magnolia tree on a slight mound in the center of the...cemetery, and Medwick said, 'Well, that's the ballgame...'"

I think it was in the spring of 1971 that Casa Bonita Mexican restaurant opened in Tulsa. I remember a girl in my 2nd grade class bringing a map and menu to school for show and tell and talking about how pretty it was and the sopapillas and the treasure room. We were all envious. Map nerd that I have always been, I was intrigued at the idea of a restaurant that had its own map.

My first visit to Casa Bonita was the night before my first day ever at Holland Hall School; I started in 3rd Grade in September 1971. Our immediate family went with my grandfather and some other extended family members. I suspect I had the Pony Plate: Beans, rice, cheese enchilada, taco, and sopapillas. Most of the adults had the Deluxe Dinner. I remember seeing the adults eating some green mushy stuff which looked disgusting. Then we went back to our house and had strawberry shortcake. Later that night, I got sick to my stomach and threw up. I thought it was because of the juxtaposition of guacamole and strawberry shortcake, but I suspect it was nerves at the thought of a new school and new classmates. (I threw up the night before 5th grade and 9th grade, too.)

Going through some old papers I came across the map from that first visit. You'll notice that this was before Casa Bonita's expansion to the south, when they added an arcade and the Acapulco Room.

Here's the map (click for full size):

And here's the menu:

Strong Towns is once again using Black Friday to call attention to parking minimums, zoning laws that require a ridiculous amount of land to be set aside for off-street parking.

#BlackFridayParking is a nationwide event drawing attention to the harmful nature of minimum parking requirements.

Parking minimums create a barrier for new local businesses and fill up our cities with empty parking spaces that don't add value to our places.

Each year on Black Friday, one of the biggest shopping days of the year, people all across North America will snap photos of the (hardly full) parking lots in their communities to demonstrate how unnecessary these massive lots are. Participants upload those photos to social media with the hashtag #blackfridayparking.

You can follow the #BlackFridayParking hashtag on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to see examples of empty parking spaces on the busiest retail shopping day of the year.

RELATED: Back in 2013, Tulsa won a national competition for worst "parking crater" -- the expanse of uninterrupted asphalt in the southern part of downtown. A brief effort to pass an ordinance that would require a review process prior to demolition of buildings in the IDL was killed by developers. I have updated a blog entry about that 2013 anti-demolition effort with details of the TMAPC and City Council meetings and links to agendas, comments, minutes, and meeting video.

Legendary Tulsa television broadcaster Bob Gregory died earlier this month, November 6, 2019, at the age of 88.

As Vice President for News and Special Projects at KTUL, Gregory wrote, directed, and hosted the popular series of "Oil in Oklahoma" television programs, which aired throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s, received much acclaim, and appeared in book form. He created many other award-winning documentary films and television shows focused on Oklahoma history, politics, and culture. Along the way, he trained or mentored a host of Tulsa-area TV journalists.

Longtime Tulsans might recall that Gregory's older brother, Bill Pitcock, was for more than a decade the evening news anchor at KOTV/Channel 6. His two other brothers, Jim Pitcock and Jerry Pitcock, worked in TV and radio in Little Rock. Gregory was the second of seven children.

An avid reader and gifted writer -- and a born storyteller and tireless researcher -- Gregory was largely self-taught as an interviewer, filmmaker, journalist, and author. Throughout his career, he contributed articles, profiles, and book reviews to Oklahoma Monthly, Tulsa Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and other publications.

Bob Gregory's documentary series Oil in Oklahoma, which aired when I was a pre-teen, was one of several influences that sparked my lifelong interest in Oklahoma history.

The approach of Oil in Oklahoma was similar to that later used by Ken Burns in his historical miniseries: Photos, film, interviews, narration, and an atmospheric soundtrack with a focus on the larger-than-life characters who shaped Oklahoma's early growth, people like Harry Sinclair, E. W. Marland, W. G. Skelly, Thomas Gilcrease, Waite Phillips, Frank Phillips, and J. Paul Getty.

The book Killers of the Flower Moon has brought the Osage oil murders back to public attention, but viewers of Oil in Oklahoma learned from Bob Gregory a half century ago about the Osage Nation, their sudden oil wealth, and the murders of Osage citizens for their headrights. Two images from that episode stuck in my mind: (1) The photo of an Osage family going around town in style, in a sitting room set up in the back of a glass-sided hearse. (2) A clip of a house exploding from the 1959 Jimmy Stewart movie The FBI Story, which includes a fictionalized retelling of the Osage murders among other important early FBI cases.

Unfortunately, the series predated the home video boom by half a decade, so it was never offered for public purchase, nor are there home off-air VCR recordings circulating.

An episode dealing with the Oklahoma City and Seminole oil fields, edited down to a single commercial-free hour and repackaged for OETA, is available online courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society. KTUL news anchor Bob Hower, who referred to the program as "Oklahoma December," a monthly magazine program. My recollection is that Oklahoma City and Seminole were at the end of the series, as they were the last of the big oil discoveries in Oklahoma. This will give you a good sense of the style of the series, along with a strong dose of Bob Gregory's rich, warm baritone.

Part 1:

Part 2:

When people over the age of 50 say that local TV really was better in the 1970s, this is the sort of thing we're talking about. (Along with Mr. Zing and Tuffy, Uncle Zeb, Lee Woodward and Lionel, Don Woods and Gusty, and Mazeppa Pompazoidi's Uncanny Film Festival. See tulsatvmemories.com for all the details.) This is what ownership with deep local roots and a commitment to excellence can produce.

About 2 1/2 years ago, on a whim, I reached out to the Leake Auction Company, founded by James C. Leake, Sr., and the successor to the company that owned KTUL when Oil in Oklahoma was aired. I received a reply from Richard Sevenoaks, Mr. Leake's son-in-law and president of Leake Auction, who wrote, "We have the rights and copies of the programs. But we have been unsuccessful finding a broadcast partner to air the series." I wrote back, asking if he might consider releasing the series on DVD, but never got a reply. I provided his contact info to Bill Perry, VP for content production at OETA, with hopes that the two might talk. I haven't heard anything further from either gentleman.

Since those emails, Leake Auction was sold to Ritchie Bros. in 2018, but Richard and Nancy Sevenoaks continued to operate the business until retiring earlier this year. I would suspect that the family retained all the non-automotive assets of the company, like Oil in Oklahoma. Perhaps in retirement, the Sevenoakses could find a way to make Oil in Oklahoma available to a new generation of Oklahomans. It would not only be a wonderful teaching tool for Oklahoma history, but a fitting memorial tribute both to the vision of James C. Leake and to the storytelling gift of Bob Gregory.

MORE: Read Jason Pitcock's tribute to his dad, Bob Gregory, full of fascinating anecdotes about his life and career.

CORRECTION 2023/07/08: Thanks to newly available archives of Tulsa newspapers, I have learned that Oklahoma: December was the original title of an episode of KTUL's monthly "Oklahoma" series which began in 1970 as a monthly anthology of local feature stories. In 1973, it evolved to become hour-long specials about the men, events, and places in Oklahoma's oil history. Here's my tribute to Oil in Oklahoma on its 50th anniversary.

STILL MORE: The Oklahoma Historical Society has two boxes of Bob Gregory's papers, including scripts from Oil in Oklahoma and Oklahoma Diamond Jubilee episodes, research, and interview transcripts. The catalog entry indicates photographs and film/video as well, but these are not itemized.

A press release issued on Tuesday, November 12, 2019, announced the organization of a group to rescue Paul Harvey's childhood neighborhood from demolition for redevelopment under the guise of stormwater management.

Save the Pearl: New Group Formed to Oppose Tulsa Development Authority's Eminent Domain Plans

A community in Tulsa joins together to stop city officials from following through with plans to tear down homes for "urban renewal"

Tulsa, Okla.--Today, residents and supporters of Tulsa's Pearl District announced the formation of a new group, Save the Pearl Coalition. The new group is dedicated to stopping the city and Tulsa Development Authority (TDA) from taking residents' homes against their will for the purpose of redevelopment. While the TDA has publicized the plans as a drainage project to improve public safety, the city's plans show that the Pearl District project is actually meant to make the neighborhood look different by bulldozing existing homes and engaging in redevelopment. Save the Pearl Coalition seeks to protect Pearl District residents and won't stop its campaign against Tulsa's landgrab until the city abandons the use of eminent domain in pursuit of its redevelopment plans.

Tulsa's attempts to force Pearl District residents to sell their homes or else lose their property by force via eminent domain are not just wrong: They're unconstitutional. In May 2006, the Oklahoma Supreme Court held that the Oklahoma Constitution prohibits the use of eminent domain for economic development, giving Oklahomans greater protections from eminent domain abuse.

Rather than respect the limits the Oklahoma Constitution places on its power, the city chose to hand its so-called flood control project to the TDA years ago and it is now being used for one purpose: economic development. Tulsa has left a paper trail over the course of several years that shows that "flood prevention" is merely a pretext for the TDA's redevelopment vision for the Pearl District.

Back in 2010, the Pearl District detention pond project was described in Tulsa's Elm Creek Master Drainage Plan. That document stated that drainage ponds "have tremendous potential to become catalysts that will accelerate the revitalization of the Pearl District and surrounding neighborhoods." In a document from the city from 2018 titled "Final Plans for Elm Creek West Pond," Tulsa makes clear that the purpose of the pond is "to allow for redevelopment and revitalize the Pearl District." And the 2019 Pearl District Small Area Plan concedes that the flood control facilities "were intended to serve as a catalyst for new, large-scale, urban infill development to be produced through public-private partnerships."

In other words, according to Tulsa's own descriptions spanning a decade, this pond is not tailored to address drainage for Tulsa. It is perfectly tailored to help Tulsa and the TDA take over a neighborhood where families are currently living because it wants to redevelop the area.

"We welcome progress to the Pearl District, but not giving up our homes and this neighborhood for others to develop on," said Gabriela Tarvin, whose home is being targeted for the TDA's redevelopment plans. "We as private citizens have put our effort and money into making the dream of having a home in the city come true. And here we are, fighting for our home."

Gaby loves her home because it lets her live near the city. Growing up, she loved that her grandmother lived in Guatemala City, and she always wanted to live in a city herself. Despite the poor condition of the property when she and her husband bought it, they were willing to take a risk to renovate it into a beautiful home because of the tremendous view of the Tulsa skyline. That is now the view from her kitchen window, and she does not want to lose the home in a city that she's always dreamed of.

"My greatest hope is that the city recognizes this plan is unnecessary and has no real energy of its own. If you take a closer look at the city's explanation for why it's doing this, it simply doesn't make sense. We hope the city makes a better choice" said John Dawson, whose home the Tulsa government plans to take through eminent domain.

Save the Pearl Coalition has created a Facebook group, https://www.facebook.com/PearlDistrictTulsa/, to educate and gather support for residents like Gaby and John.

The group is working with the Institute for Justice (IJ), a national public interest, civil liberties law firm dedicated to stopping the abuse of eminent domain. IJ represented Susette Kelo and her neighbors before the U.S. Supreme Court in Kelo v. City of New London and has successfully litigated on behalf of property owners throughout the country. IJ has helped save over 20,000 homes and small businesses from eminent domain abuse through grassroots activism.

"This is an economic redevelopment issue hiding behind a flood mitigation pond in order to give it the veneer of public use," said Chad Reese, an activism policy manager with the Institute for Justice. "The Tulsa city government is offending the Oklahoma Constitution and our intelligence with this plan. Tulsa must abandon it once and for all."

Postdated to remain at the top through the end of the election. Polls are open in the City of Tulsa November 12, 2019, special election from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The Oklahoma State Election Board's new Oklahoma Voter Portal will tell you where to vote and let you view sample ballots before you go to the polls.

I have no illusions. The election is a classic example of concentrated benefit and diffuse costs. Those who stand to benefit directly from the new taxes on the ballot have strong reasons to give money to the vote yes campaign and to turn out to vote. The cost, although nearly as much as Vision 2025 and over $1500 for every resident of this shrinking city, is divided up among all the property owners and all those who shop in the city limits of Tulsa. There is no organized opposition to the three tax questions.

And yet, I'm hearing from many people that they plan to vote against at least one of the three propositions, for a variety of reasons:

• Because it's daft to invest another $427 million in a financially unsustainable growth paradigm.
• Because, for the first time in the nearly 40-year-history of Tulsa's "Third Penny" sales tax for capital improvements, none of the money will go toward basic infrastructure.
• Because you're outraged that the City of Tulsa would force people from their homes and demolish a historic neighborhood to build a stormwater detention pond to benefit new home construction.
• Because you're generally tired of the City of Tulsa abusing its power of eminent domain and hollowing out our historic urban core in the process.
• Because the current tax expires at the end of June 2021, and the City could have scheduled this vote for the November 2020 mayoral (and presidential) general election, when the turnout would have been much higher, rather than wasting tax dollars on a special election.
• Because the City still doesn't list the election on the cityoftulsa.org calendar of events, or in the city's list of press releases, or anywhere else on the home page, or on the city's Twitter account -- apparently trying to discourage turnout except among those with a vested interest in the tax increases being approved.
• Because you think Mayor G. T. "Selfie" Bynum IV should maybe focus on Tulsa's crime rate and declining population.
• Because you think Mayor Bynum IV should have the guts to defend his tax proposal and record as mayor on the air with a courteous but skeptical radio host like Pat Campbell.
• Because we already gave $65 million to Gilcrease Museum and $25 million to the Tulsa Zoo in the 2016 Vision Tulsa package, and they don't need another $6 million EACH just three years later. (This looks a lot like payola.)
• Because you're tired of Bynum IV & Co. enshrining the deadly religious beliefs of the Sexual Revolution as official City of Tulsa policy.

Nothing wakes up government officials as quickly as depriving them of the money they were expecting to spend.

Click here for just the facts about the tax proposals on today's ballot, including the official legal descriptions of each, and a diagram showing a timeline of City of Tulsa and Tulsa County sales taxes, both permanent and temporary, and how the proposals on the ballot fit into the big picture. And don't miss city planner Brent Isaacs' analysis of the general obligation bond issue for streets from an economic sustainability perspective.

I was on AM 1170 KFAQ with Pat Campbell on Wednesday, November 6, 2019, at 8:05 a.m. to discuss the upcoming City of Tulsa sales tax vote. Click the link to hear the podcast. A couple of callers mentioned the City of Tulsa's declining population: They were correct, and I was wrong. The U. S. Census Bureau's estimate of Tulsa's population peaked at 404,182 in 2016, then declined to 402,119 in 2017 and 400,669 in 2018. Nothing bulldozing a few more neighborhoods won't cure, eh, Mayor Bynum IV?

Also, here is the City of Tulsa's Bond Transparency Act disclosure, as of June 30, 2019, which lists the outstanding principal for each bond issue as of that date ($395,600,000 total) and details bond issues linked to previous elections. Some current bonds will mature this year, others won't mature until 2040, and there is still $160,000,000 authorized but not yet issued from the 2014 Improve Our Tulsa bond package. Add the proposed $427 million to the total and we're at $982.6 million in outstanding and authorized general obligation debt -- nearly a billion dollars. Here is a direct link to the Bond Transparency Act Disclosure on the city's website, linked from the City of Tulsa's capital projects page. And here's the bond document for one specific bond series, City of Tulsa General Obligation Bonds, Series 2014, authorized by the 2013 Improve Our Tulsa vote. You can explore more bond documents on emma.msrb.org.

Next Tuesday, November 12, 2019, voters in the City of Tulsa will be presented with three questions for funding capital improvements through a temporary increases in property tax and sales tax and a permanent sales tax increase for the city's "rainy day fund."

You can be forgiven for not knowing about this election. It has been omitted from the calendar of events that appears on the home page of the official city website:

The home page mentions the Veterans' Day holiday, a parking ticket amnesty, and a surplus property auction. It doesn't mention the election.

The first sheet of the ballot contains a single proposition, which, if approved, would result in a general obligation bond issue to be repaid by an increase in property tax:

PROPOSITION IMPROVE OUR TULSA

(Streets and Transportation Systems
Construction and Repair Bonds)

Shall the City of Tulsa, Oklahoma, incur an indebtedness by issuing its bonds in the sum of Four Hundred Twenty-Seven Million Dollars and No Cents ($427,000,000.00) to provide funds (either with or without state or federal aid) for the purpose of constructing, reconstructing, improving, repairing and/or purchasing streets and transportation systems, as authorized by Article X, Section 27 of the Oklahoma Constitution and the laws of the State of Oklahoma, and levy and collect an annual tax, in addition to all other taxes, upon all taxable property in said City, sufficient to pay the interest on said bonds as it falls due, and also to constitute a sinking fund for the payment of principal of said bonds when due, said bonds to bear interests of not more than the maximum rate permitted by law at the time the bonds are issued, payable semiannually and to become due serially within twenty-five (25) years from their date?

(It's very odd that this proposition has a name instead of a number, while the other two propositions are numbered.)

The second sheet of the ballot contains two numbered propositions, both of which would increase the sales tax:

PROPOSITION NO. 1 SALES TAX PROPOSITION NO. 1

Improve our Tulsa - 2021
Miscellaneous Capital Improvements
Temporary Sales Tax

Do you approve collecting a forty-five one-hundredths of one percent (.45%) temporary sales tax, commencing at the expiration of the 2014 Extended 1.1% Sales Tax, and continuing until June 30, 2025, when it shall become ninety-five one-hundredths of one percent (.95%), and continuing at that rate from July 1, 2025 until either December 31, 2025 or until One Hundred Ninety-Three Million Dollars and No Cents ($193,000,000.00) has been collected, whichever occurs first, at which point it shall expire; to be deposited into a limited-purpose fund; to be used for acquiring, purchasing, constructing, reconstructing, maintaining, repairing and enhancing certain capital improvements, in accordance with Ordinance No. 24180?

PROPOSITION NO. 2
SALES TAX PROPOSITION
NO. 2

2021 Limited-Purpose Economic Stabilization Reserve Permanent Sales Tax (Rainy Day Fund)

Do you approve collecting a permanent sales tax of five one-hundredths of one percent (.05%) commencing at the expiration of the 2014 Extended 1.1% Sales Tax, to provide revenue for the City's Economic Stabilization Reserve, also known as the Rainy Day Fund, pursuant to Tulsa City Charter Article II, Sections 7.4 through 7.9, any amounts collected that would cause total monies in the Economic Stabilization Reserve to exceed thirty percent (30%) of actual total General Fund revenues being allocated to the General Fund Emergency Operating Reserve; any amounts collected that would cause total monies in the General Fund Emergency Operating Reserve to exceed ten percent (10%) of the total General Fund budget being allocated to the General Fund, for maintenance and operation of municipal infrastructure, facilities, and equipment?

Here is the ordinance enacting the new sales tax in Proposition No. 1, officially known as the 2021 Miscellaneous Capital Improvements Temporary Sales Tax, and the "Brown ordinance" spelling out the list of projects to be funded by the new temporary tax. Here is the ordinance enacting the permanent new sales tax in Proposition No. 2. These were all enacted at the July 31, 2019, Tulsa City Council meeting.

The graphic at the top of this entry shows the changes in city and county sales tax rates going back to the beginning of the Improve Our Tulsa tax in 2014 and continuing on to infinity and beyond. You can download a printable copy of the graphic, with a legend and explanatory text, and tax opponents are welcome to make unaltered copies for distribution.

Brent Isaacs, a native Tulsan and city planner active for many years in advocating for a better Tulsa, has has written a piece below about why you should to vote against the first item on the November 12, 2019, Tulsa ballot. Labeled on the first sheet of the ballot as "PROPOSITION IMPROVE OUR TULSA (Streets and Transportation Systems Construction and Repair Bonds)," it is a $427,000,000 general obligation bond issue "for the purpose of constructing, reconstructing, improving, repairing and/or purchasing streets and transportation systems," which will be paid for by an increase in property tax rates within the City of Tulsa.

When Brent posted an earlier version of this essay on Facebook, I commented that the Engineering Services Department is like a computer, and it's running a program that it was given to run 50 years ago. The neighborhood-destroying zombie project that is the Elm Creek West Pond is another case in point. It's time that Tulsans, through our vote on November 12 and through our support for candidates for mayor and city council in 2020, terminated the current, outdated program and launched a newer, better program that takes these economic realities into account. He has kindly granted permission to publish an updated version of his essay here at BatesLine.

Why I am Voting No on Improve our Tulsa 2's Streets and Transportation Package

Brent C. Isaacs, AICP, 10/29/19

Tulsa is trapped in a structural infrastructure deficit- and that's why I am voting no on Improve our Tulsa 2, item one on November 12. Item one is a general obligation bond for mostly street projects. Say what? Why would I vote no? Wouldn't that make the problem worse?

I get that there are legitimate capital improvement needs for our city, the third penny sales tax is up for renewal and there will be no tax increase required. I wanted to vote yes, and will do so on item three that would create a standing "Rainy Day" fund for the City, and leaning toward voting yes on item two, for all the non-street projects that will be funded by extending the third penny sales tax. Normally, I am in favor of all propositions funding capital improvement projects but this time I have decided to vote no on the streets package. Here's why.

1. When it comes to streets, Improve our Tulsa 2 is doing the same thing we have been doing for over 40 years and it hasn't worked. Yes, streets have been widened and improved but we are still are no closer to ending our structural infrastructure deficit.

The land area in Tulsa grew dramatically in 1966 when the number of square miles in the city limits more than doubled nearly overnight. While that allowed for a population increase and allowed the City to capture sales tax revenue from the booming growth to the south and east, it also created demand, particularly for new street infrastructure, that has yet to be met. For a while, as the growth periphery continued to largely be in Tulsa's city limits, sales tax dollars continued to increase. However, over the last 20 years, as the growth periphery has moved beyond the Tulsa city limits to places like Jenks, Bixby and Broken Arrow, the growth in sales tax revenue has slowed dramatically and City operating costs just to maintain the same level of service have outpaced available tax revenue. The population of the city of Tulsa has been around 400,000 for nearly the same time frame.

Now we are faced with not only having to add infrastructure just to catch up with all the sprawling growth for neighborhoods developed long ago, but also having to rehabilitate infrastructure that was built in the 1960s, 70s and 80s that is largely worn out. Item one, the general obligation bond for $427,000,000, includes $64,000,000 for additional street widening with $295,800,000 for existing street repairs. But, this is just a portion of what's reported to be needed. The current capital improvement needs list is estimated to be in the billions. This is occurring as the city is no longer growing in population, sales tax revenues are flat and operating costs for the City of Tulsa are increasing faster than tax revenue.

2. The current growth patterns that have been fueled by our street infrastructure investments aren't sustainable.

The reality is that we cannot continue to invest in street infrastructure that does not more than pay for itself and fund its replacement with regular sales tax revenue. Otherwise, we will never get caught up. By continuing the cycle of investing in more of the same infrastructure, we are facilitating low density sprawling development that will not adequately pay for the cost of this infrastructure.

Joe Minicozzi, Principal and Founder of fiscal, development and tax analysis firm Urban 3 (http://www.urban-three.com/), stated in a 2012 Atlantic Cities article, now Citylab (https://www.citylab.com/life/2012/03/simple-math-can-save-cities-bankruptcy/1629/) "Low-density development isn't just a poor way to make...tax revenue. It's extremely expensive to maintain. In fact, it's only feasible if we're expanding development at the periphery into eternity, forever bringing in revenue from new construction that can help pay for the existing subdivisions we've already built."

This describes the situation in Tulsa accurately. The only way to fund all this street infrastructure and even possibly get caught up is to dramatically increase sales and property taxes. This is largely viewed as being politically unfeasible and, as I argue below, is economically unwise.

3. Infrastructure should generate additional wealth for a city, not create additional tax burdens.

Minicozzi and Chuck Marohn, Founder and President of Strong Towns (https://www.strongtowns.org/), an organization promoting smart, incremental development that is financially sustainable for cities, have created models showing the amount of property tax created per acre for different types of development. They have showed that while everyone thinks a big Walmart on a suburban site will generate an enormous amount of tax revenue, because of the infrastructure required to service such a large site, the amount of property tax revenue per acre is much lower than traditional denser development found in downtowns and older urban neighborhoods. While the City of Tulsa is dependent on sales tax, not property tax, revenue to fund operations, locally the Urban Data Pioneers civic group attempted to do a similar analysis of Tulsa development patterns based on sales tax revenue in 2017. The picture was largely similar.

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

4. The list of street projects included in a proposal needs to be subjected to more than just the analysis from Engineering Services. The economic value created and whether the improvement facilitates the type of city Tulsans desire should be part of the selection criteria.

As I currently understand it, Engineering Services maintains the list of needed capital improvement projects. Street projects are reviewed and ranked to determine which have the greatest need based on traffic counts, age, pavement condition index, etc. However, nowhere in these is the level of economic activity, tax revenue likely to be generated and whether the type of development helps create Tulsans' desired city, considered. With a few exceptions, Engineering Services largely controls the capital improvement process.

The most recent gauge of what Tulsans would like for our city is the Tulsa Comprehensive Plan, that came out of PlaniTulsa. It represents the views what thousands of Tulsans said they wanted our city to look like. Currently, the plan is administered by the Tulsa Planning Office at INCOG. They should have a formal role in reviewing and determining which capital improvement projects are needed to achieve this vision.

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

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

You don't have to look far to see projects, particularly projects impacting our streets, that have taken a really long time or have been redone multiple times in Tulsa in recent years. As I speak, there has been a large hole on Denver right in front of 5th Street by Central Library and the Tulsa County Courthouse that has been there for weeks and weeks. Nothing seems to really be happening but it is causing back ups regularly for people going to court, the library or the BOK Center. I don't understand why there hasn't been more a sense of urgency in getting this inconvenient construction completed. Or, outside of downtown, Lewis between 11th and 21st Streets has been in different stages of construction for years. First, it was redoing the intersection at 15th and Lewis, then multiple projects from 15th to 21st Streets, then work from the Broken Arrow to 11th Street to narrow the street creating on street parking. Now, with the work on the Broken Arrow Expressway bridges over 15th and Lewis, the area is torn up again. I don't understand why these projects, along with countless others, couldn't have been better coordinated and completed in a much shorter timeframe.

Tulsans have expressed frustration with continual street construction. Bumper stickers have been spotted that say "Tulsa...finish something!" or "Welcome to the City of Road Construction". I realize that construction is often the price of progress but can't we figure out a way to do it better? Other cities don't seem to have as much constant construction as Tulsa does.

While some people will say voting no on the street improvements will halt progress in our city, I disagree. There are plenty of capital improvement projects, including streets, that have been approved by the voters but have yet to be completed. In the meantime, can't we rethink our street capital improvements approach and come back with a new proposal that considers these options above? Tulsans deserve better and we should start now.

Brent C. Isaacs, AICP, is a local urban planner in Tulsa.

Greenwood Ave., north of Easton St., looking north along Sand Springs Railroad interurban tracks toward intersection with Greenwood Pl. and the Del Rio Hotel, which was listed in the 1954-1956 editions of the Green Book.

Mike McUsic, a historical researcher on the topic of the Green Book, the segregation-era travel guide for African-American tourists, will be leading walking tours of the Green Book locations in Tulsa's Greenwood District on November 16 and 23 at 11:00 am. The tour is free (donation requested), with tickets available via Eventbrite.

Mr. McUsic has developed the Green Book Travelers HistoryPin site, locating 1,900 Green Book locations across the country, with names, descriptions, and historic and present-day photos. This link will take you to locations specific to Greenwood.

MORE: Here's a collection of links to BatesLine articles and other resources about Greenwood and Black Wall Street. Earlier this year, I wrote about the Green Book as additional evidence of Greenwood's post-1921 rebuilding and listed the Tulsa Green Book sites still standing.

Prior to yesterday's meeting concerning the Elm Creek West Pond in Paul Harvey's old neighborhood, the Institute for Justice issued a media advisory:

HEARING: Tulsa Residents Protest City's Attempt To Take Their Homes Using Eminent Domain For Redevelopment Project

Today, the city of Tulsa has scheduled a public meeting with residents of Tulsa's Pearl District to explain why the city will use eminent domain to take residents' homes if they refuse to sell. Tulsa residents attending today's meeting plan to protest the city's attempt to forcibly take their homes against their will. Tulsa, in partnership with the Tulsa Development Authority and Universal Field Services, have targeted approximately 45 homes in phase one, near VFW Post 577 and the Indian Health Care Center Resource Center on Sixth Street, to pave the way for a mixed-use development where the neighborhood currently sits. The city's plans call for taking almost every residence in this subdivision.

"The city's claims that it needs a stormwater pond are a thinly veiled attempt to do an end run around the Oklahoma Constitution's prohibition on the use of eminent domain for economic development," said Arif Panju, a managing attorney with the Institute for Justice. "Eminent domain should be reserved for public use--such as roads--not for redevelopment projects that involve the use of public power for private gain."

The city's claim of using eminent domain for a public use due to needing stormwater drainage has raised eyebrows in the neighborhood, both due to the existence of stormwater drainage immediately next door in Centennial Park, and because developers have purchased homes and land in and around their neighborhood.

John Dawson, whose home Tulsa plans to take through eminent domain, calls his home in the Pearl District "his family's little slice of paradise. He added, "I can see how it might not be appealing on the surface to some people, but it wouldn't take long for most people to realize it's pretty awesome."

The Institute for Justice is a pro-bono legal-aid organization that helps citizens fighting unconstitutional government overreach. The abuse of the government's power of eminent domain abuse is a principal focus of the group.

The IJ's statement seems to allude both to the concept sketches from Alaback Design which shows new condos and mixed-use development surrounding the pond and to the acquisition by the Indian Health Care Resource Center (IHCRC) of nearly all the remaining property in the neighborhood (outlined in blue in the map below), including the entire block between Owasso and Peoria Avenues, 5th Street and 5th Place, which would have a view toward the downtown skyline over the new pond.

This will be brief, as I'm worn out. Over 100 people turned out for tonight's meeting between city officials and contractors and neighborhood residents to discuss the Elm Creek West Pond, a stormwater detention facility which would wipe out Paul Harvey's childhood home and his neighborhood, using eminent domain to displace families who moved into the area because of the neighborhood's well-built but affordable homes near downtown, parks, and entertainment.

I live-tweeted the meeting as a Twitter thread; the unrolled version is here. Councilor Kara Joy McKee livestreamed the meeting on Facebook.

Councilor McKee did a fair job of running the meeting. She started with a recitation of her "communication norms" -- ten practices to keep the meeting focused and civil -- then collected questions from the audience. There was a presentation from members of the project team, including the project manager, the hydrologist, and the real estate acquisition manager. The presentation was supposed to have been tailored toward answering questions, but that didn't quite happen, and the final session, which was supposed to have allowed for comments from the community, instead went back to ensure that a portion of the questions had been answered.

One of the key unanswered questions is how the City intends to pay for construction of the pond. We were told that acquisition is funded and that there's money, from stormwater management fees, to cover maintenance of the acquired properties. There was a vague slide about funding from stormwater revenue bonds, but the question "how much?" went unanswered. We also need to know who would authorize the issuance of these revenue bonds.

Because so many questions went unanswered and the building was due to close, Councilor McKee said she would abbreviate a meeting scheduled for Tuesday evening at the Central Center and would devote another 90 minutes to this topic, beginning at 6 pm.

There was a passing mention by City Engineer Paul Zachary about the urgency to acquire a boundary of properties to block acquisition by the Indian Health Care Resource Center. More about the IHCRC's recent purchases later.

Councilor McKee mentioned she would be contacting the City Attorney's office to see what options the council has. I would caution any elected or appointed official to take advice from city attorneys and bureaucrats with a grain of salt, to listen as much for what they don't say as what they do. I've seen citizens elected or appointed to boards, and then they are trained and tamed by the bureaucracy. I told this to my thirteen-year-old son, who was at the meeting, and immediately he said, "Just like Yes, Minister!" We've been watching the timeless British sitcom about the struggle between a government department's permanent bureaucrats and the politicians who are in charge in name only. It ought to be mandatory viewing as part of civics education and for new elected officials.

More tomorrow.

VIDEOS:

October 14, 2019, meeting, as live-streamed by Councilor McKee
October 15, 2019, meeting, as live-streamed by Councilor McKee

DOCUMENTS:

Here are documents mentioned or handed out at the October 14 meeting and its continuation on October 15. In response to my request, Mayo Baugher, Councilor McKee's aide, emailed me these documents on November 20, 2019. I have run optical character recognition on the Pearl District Small Area Plan PDF to make it more accessible to search engines:

• West Pond Concept Report - March 2018: Presented by Guy Engineering, Swift Water Resources Engineering, Alaback Design Associates to the City of Tulsa. The report notes that the $22 million needed for completion of design and construction has not been secured, but the city will continue to acquire properties until the money they have runs out. The report also shows potential private residential redevelopment around the ponds.


• Parcel Right-of-Way map with pond overlay: Detailed map, as of 1 October 2019, showing parcels in Central Park Place to be acquired for the proposed Elm Creek West Pond. Three parcels are shown as in the process of acquisition. Note that 48 lots are going to be permanently under water in order to remove 50 other lots from getting wet once in 100 years.


• Properties Removed From Floodplain: Map and list of 50 properties that are claimed to be removed from the City of Tulsa 100-year regulatory floodplain by the Elm Creek West Pond. It looks like the biggest claimed hazard -- flooding of the Inner Dispersal Loop -- could be handled with detention ponds in vacant state-owned land south of 13th Street.


• Powerpoint for City Engineering Services Q&A presentation on October 14, 2019: Answers seem responsive on the surface, but many sidestep what's really at stake.


• "Alternative Pond Sites": The title is misleading. In fact, this shows alternative pond configurations for the west pond, east pond, and a potential third pond northeast of the MKT tracks. Only one truly alternative site is shown: Using open space between the ramps of the 7th Street/8th Street interchange with the east leg of the Inner Dispersal Loop. This document is only maps -- no information about capacity, advantages, disadvantages.


• 2797-1004 (CPA-81) Pearl District Small Area Plan: Includes adoption documents from the TMAPC and the City Council.

In March 1994, national radio commentator Paul Harvey, whose thrice-daily broadcasts were carried on over 1400 stations nationwide on the ABC radio network, reaching an audience in the tens of millions, returned to Tulsa to speak at a Salvation Army benefit. After his visit, he spoke on the air about his bittersweet memories of his hometown and his neighborhood and how Tulsa had changed since. I first came across a transcript of his comments back in 2011.

Recently, I dug through old Tulsa Central High School yearbooks to find photos of some of the people he mentioned. With the demolition of his childhood home and what's left of his childhood neighborhood a topic of discussion at a public meeting tomorrow night, it seemed like a good time to revisit Paul's memories of his old stomping grounds.

Over my shoulder a backward glance.

The world began for Paul Harvey in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Ever since I have made tomorrow my favorite day, I've been uncomfortable looking back.

My recent revisit reminded me why. The Tulsa I knew isn't there anymore. And the memories of once-upon-a time are more bitter than sweet.

Of the lawman father I barely knew.

The widowed mother who worked too hard and died too soon. And my sister Frances.

Tulsa was three graves side-by-side.

Recently I came face-to-face with the place where a small Paul Harvey's mother buttoned his britches to his shirt to keep them up and it down.

Tulsa is a copper penny which a small boy from East Fifth Place placed on a trolley track to see it mashed flat.

It's a slingshot made from a forked branch aimed at a living bird, and the bird died, and he cried, and he is still crying.

That little lad was seven when he snapped a rubber band against the neck of the neighbor girl, and pretty Ethel Mae Hazelton ran home crying, and he, lonely, had wanted only to get her to notice him.

Somehow he blamed Tulsa for the war which took his best friend, Harold Collis...

And classmate Fred Markgraf...

And never gave them back.

In Tulsa, Oklahoma, he learned the wages of sin smoking grapevine behind the garage and getting a mouthful of ants.

Longfellow Elementary school is closed now; dark.

Tulsa High is a business building.

The old house at 1014 is in mourning for the Tulsa that isn't there anymore.

It was in that house that a well-meaning mother arranged a surprise birthday party when he was sixteen; invited his school friends, including delicate Mary Betty French without whom he was sure he could not live.

He hated that party for revealing to her and to them his house, so much more modest than theirs.

Tulsa is where the true love of his life waved goodbye to the uniform that climbed aboard a troop train.

She was there waiting when he got back but they could not wait to say goodbye to Tulsa.

Tulsa was watermelon picnics in the backyard and a small Paul blowing taps on his Boy Scout bugle over the fresh grave of a dead kitten.

Tulsa, Oklahoma, used to be the fragrance of honeysuckle on the trellis behind the porch swing.

Mowing for a quarter neighbors' lawns that seemed then so enormous.

Only Tulsa's delicious tap water is as it was.

That and the schoolteachers...

Miss Harp and Miss Smith and Isabelle Ronan. These I am assured are still there somewhere--reincarnated.

In a sleek jet departing Tulsa's vast Spartan Airport at midnight, I closed my eyes and remembered...

When Spartan was a sod strip...

And a crowd gathered...

And a great tin goose landed...

And Slim Lindbergh got out...

And a boy, age nine, was pressing against the restraining ropes daring to foretaste fame--and falling in love with the sky.

No...

The Tulsa I knew isn't there anymore. But it's all right.

A new Tulsa is.

I'll not be afraid to go home again.

I have made friends with the ghosts.

A recording of this commentary hasn't turned up, but his famous speech, "So God Made a Farmer," delivered to a Future Farmers of America conference in 1978 and made into a celebrated Dodge Ram Trucks Super Bowl ad in 2013, will give you a good idea of his pacing and delivery. Those of us who listened to him every day for decades will have no trouble hearing his voice as they read the words above.

Some notes about the people and places Paul Harvey mentioned:

The photos are senior portraits from the Tulsa Central High School Tom-Tom -- the school's yearbook. Ethel Mae Mazelton, Harold Collis, and Mary Betty French were Class of 1935. Ethel Mae lived two doors east of the Aurandts at 1024 E. 5th Place, and went on to be named Miss Kendallabrum at the University of Tulsa in 1936. Fred Markgraf and Paul Harvey Aurandt were both Class of 1936; Markgraf was senior class president. The photo of long-time speech and English teacher Isabelle Ronan (credited by both Paul Harvey and Tony Randall for starting them in their careers) was from the 1934 yearbook.

When Paul was three, on December 18, 1921, his policeman father was shot by criminals attempting to rob him and a colleague; Officer Harry Harrison Aurandt died two days later. Paul's mother, Anna Dagmar Aurandt, lived the rest of her life in that house, renting out some of the rooms to pay the bills. Here she is on that porch swing with Paul in the late '50s, and you'll notice the vine-covered trellis behind them.

The tracks of the Tulsa Street Railway ran east out of downtown on 3rd Street, forked north and south on Madison Avenue; the southern branch turned east on 5th Place, past the Aurandts' house at 1014 E. 5th Place, and south on Quincy, terminating at 15th Street. In 1922, the Bellview-Owen Park line, as it was called, ran every 10 minutes from 6 am to 11 pm, so there would have been plenty of opportunities for a mischievous kid to put a penny on the track. I imagine the screech of the trolley making the 90 degree turn at Madison would have been a familiar sound in the Aurandt home.

Longfellow School was on the northwest corner of 6th and Peoria. Built to H. O. McClure's "Unit Plan," the school consisted of a series of connected two-classroom buildings surrounding a courtyard. I can't find a photo of it, but Jack Frank of Tulsa Films has a clip of a 1960s news story about a Longfellow School crossing guard, which provides a good look all around the 6th and Peoria intersection. Longfellow was still there, but closed, when Paul Harvey returned home in 1994. It was sold to IHCRC Realty Corp in 1996, and the school was demolished and replaced with the Indian Health Care Resource Center. The shell of the old Central High School building still stands downtown, converted in 1985 to offices for Public Service Company of Oklahoma.

Paul Harvey was slightly mistaken about the location of Lindbergh's Tulsa landing. On September 30, 1927, during that year's International Petroleum Exposition, Lindbergh flew the Spirit of St. Louis into McIntyre Airport, southeast of Admiral and Sheridan, a private airport founded by New Zealand World War I veteran Duncan McIntyre. The aviator's arrow atop Reservoir Hill originally pointed to McIntyre Field. In 1927, Tulsa didn't yet have a municipal airport, but Lindbergh's visit, part of the Guggenheim Tour, provided the inspiration for Tulsa leaders to get one built. It was alongside the new municipal airport that W. G. Skelly built the Spartan Aircraft factory and Spartan School of Aeronautics, about a year later. It's understandable that Harvey would conflate the two.

McIntyre Airport, September 30, 1927. (L to R) Lt. A.C. Strickland (Lindbergh's trainer), Col. Charles A. Lindbergh, Mayor Herman F. Newblock, and Lt. Arthur Goebel. McIntyre Airport was Tulsa's first commercial airport, located at the southeast corner of Admiral Place (aka Hwy 66) and Sheridan Street. Lindbergh always carried his leather flight helmet with him (left hand in photo). The medal on Mayor Newblock's lapel was given to him by Charles Lindbergh. The medal says Lucky Lindy, New York to Paris. Accession #A0045. The Beryl Ford Collection/Rotary Club of Tulsa, Tulsa City-County Library and Tulsa Historical Society.

While looking for something else in the Oklahoma Historical Society's online newspaper database, I came across this startling headline atop the April 17, 1921, edition of the Tulsa Sunday World:

PRICELESS PAINTING RECOVERED HERE
Beligum Reclaims Ancient Million-Dollar Work of Old Master

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Bristow Tool Dresser
Had Ruebens' Work,
'Descent From Cross'