UTW Column Archive: March 2008 Archives

An edited version of this column appeared in the March 26, 2008, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is no longer available online. Posted on August 4, 2018.

The Road to April Fool's Day
By Michael D. Bates

Tulsa goes to vote next Tuesday, April 1. The main event is a District 3 rematch between Roscoe Turner, Tulsa's Most Believable Councilor, and his perennial opponent.
There are no citywide candidates, but every polling place in Tulsa will be open because there are two election-related charter amendments on the ballot. Both deserve a resounding "FOR" vote.

Proposition No. 1 moves Tulsa city elections from the spring of even-numbered years to the fall of odd-numbered years. If it passes, the next city general election will occur in November 2009 and then every two years thereafter. Filing for office would happen in July, and the primary would be held in September. Newly-elected officers would be sworn in on the first Monday in December.

(The exact date of the election will be whichever Tuesday state law specifies for the given month. Currently 26 O.S. 3-101 designates the second Tuesday for both September and November in odd-numbered years.)

The change would solve a number of problems. The city's fiscal year runs from July to June, and elected officials currently take office with just two months to find their feet before the deadline for a new budget. Effectively, the newly elected mayor and councilors have to live with financial decisions made by their predecessors. A November election and a December swearing-in would give new officials plenty of time to get oriented before the budget-creation cycle begins.

Early spring elections mean that most of the campaign occurs during standard time, when the sun sets shortly after people get home for work. It limits the opportunities for potential city officials to meet and listen to the voters. Candidates are more dependent on phone calls and mailers to get their message out, and that gives an advantage to those with access to special interest dollars over those with strong volunteer support.

A fall election helps both voters and candidates by putting most of the campaign during Daylight Savings Time and during better weather. There's a better chance you'll have the chance to ask direct questions of each of the candidates seeking your vote.

City elections in the fall of odd numbered years would be far enough away from state elections that the two sets of candidates wouldn't be competing head to head for support from donors and volunteers.

Changing to the fall would also avoid any possible conflict between city election dates and the presidential preference primary. Late last year Shelley Boggs of the Tulsa County Election Board implored the City Council to move the 2008 city primary date, because it would have coincided with the presidential vote. The Council complied even though the current date had been approved by voters just two years ago.

Ms. Boggs feared a repeat of the confusion in 2004, when more votes were cast than voters who signed the register in 50 precincts across the city. In one District 3 precinct, about 50 Republicans who came to vote in the presidential primary were given Democratic city primary ballots. That was more than the margin of victory, so the election results were mathematically indeterminate. A revote was held two months later, reversing the invalid result.

Proposition No. 2 brings the Tulsa City Charter in line with state law regarding who is eligible to vote in a given district. The differences between the current charter language and state law are slight, but enough to give election board officials some headaches.
After you've voted FOR both charter changes, you might have a City Council race to decide.

Four of the nine Tulsa City Councilors have already been returned to office - Rick Westcott (Republican, District 2), Bill Martinson (Republican, District 5), and John Eagleton (Republican, District 7), by failing to draw an opponent, and Jack Henderson (Democrat, District 1) by failing to draw a non-Democratic opponent and then winning the Democratic primary. City Auditor Phil Wood drew no opposition to his serving a tenth straight two-year term.

That leaves five districts with City Council races still to be settled. Three-term District 8 Republican incumbent Bill Christiansen should easily see off a recent arrival in the far-south district, perennial candidate and frequent party-switcher Austin Hansen, a Democrat (this year, anyway).

In District 9, newcomer Republican G. T. Bynum has over 40 grand in his campaign fund and is running in a Midtown district that has never come close to electing a Democrat to the City Council. We hope that Democrat Phil Kates and Paul Tay, running as an independent, can add some ideas to the debate, but neither is likely to beat Bynum.

District 6 Republican challenger Kevin Boggs could pose a threat to first-term Democrat incumbent Dennis Troyer. The district has majority Republican registration, and Troyer has failed to do much more than keep the seat warm. East Tulsa, too often overlooked by City Hall, needs a councilor with more energy and persistence than Troyer has displayed. (We miss former Councilor Jim Mautino.)

The two most interesting races are in Districts 3 and 4. We covered the District 4 race, between incumbent Democrat Maria Barnes and challenger Eric Gomez, last week.

The names on the District 3 ballot are a familiar sight: Council Chairman Roscoe Turner (roscoeturner.com) has shared a ballot with David Patrick every two years since 1996. The series is tied 3-3. All of the previous head-to-head matches were decided by Democratic voters.

This year the rules are different. Patrick filed for office as an independent, forcing the race into the general election. Although Democratic voters (about 60% of the district's electorate) will still dominate the vote, this will be the first time in nearly a decade that Republicans and independents will have a chance to choose between Turner and a Patrick.

In the November 1998 free-for-all special election, Turner defeated Patrick's sister Synna to win his first term on the Council. On the same day, David Patrick was trounced by Republican State Rep. Mark Liotta.

This year Patrick evidently thought that moving the battle to the general election would work to his advantage.

Perhaps Patrick was confusing the middle-class, blue collar, grassroots Republicans who actually live in District 3 with the wealthy Republican donors from outside the district who have funded Patrick's campaign as a reward for his constant devotion to powerful special interest groups like the development lobby.

Looking at Patrick's donor lists from campaigns past, it's apparent that special interests from outside District 3 see David Patrick as someone who will carry their water, even when it means betraying the best interests of his own constituents.

David Patrick's 2004 donor list was dominated by board members of F&M Bank; Patrick had been instrumental in getting the bank a controversial zoning change it sought.

In 2006, Patrick's campaign accounts were filled by supporters of reducing the number of council districts and electing three councilors at-large, a change that would have diluted north Tulsa's representation on the City Council. Bank of Oklahoma Chairman George Kaiser and BOk Financial Corp. PAC gave Patrick a combined $2,500. Realtor PAC gave him $3,000, as did midtown developer John Bumgarner.

The daily paper's editorial board, the voice of Tulsa's well-heeled special interests, desperately wants what they no longer have - a City Council they could control. They can't stand a man like Roscoe Turner, who puts the interests of ordinary Tulsans ahead of special interests. They'd love to get rid of Turner, who considers basic government priorities a higher priority than frills and non-essentials.

Roscoe Turner's detractors have called him a ward-heeler, too narrowly focused on his district's priorities. But look at the record and you'll see that it's Turner's stands on citywide issues that really give the daily paper fits.

For example -- the county sales tax increase for river projects. Turner opposed it, pointing out that when Tulsa County increases its sales tax rate, it reduces the City of Tulsa's options for funding basics like streets and police.

On zoning issues, Turner has been a friend to homeowners across the city, giving them a respectful hearing and working to ensure that they're treated fairly when a controversial zoning issue comes before the Council. That's made him a top target of the "build anything I want, anywhere I want" developers'lobby.

On regional issues, like the proposed Bixby toll bridge, Turner has always put Tulsa's best interests ahead of the suburbs. While the toll bridge wouldn't directly affect District 3, Turner understands that building the south Tulsa road improvements to support the bridge will divert money that could be rebuilding streets in the rest of the city.

Roscoe Turner's citywide focus hasn't prevented him from looking out for his own district's special needs. His attention to constituent concerns throughout the district has allowed him to win avid supporters in what once was Patrick's base east of Yale Ave. For example, Turner has worked with neighborhoods near the airport to address problems with the noise abatement program, an issue that residents feel Patrick ignored.

Turner's aim is to do what is right by the people of District 3 and the whole city of Tulsa. His integrity has won the confidence of Urban Tulsa Weekly readers, who have twice voted him Tulsa's Most Believable Councilor in the annual Absolute Best of Tulsa awards.
Let's hope the voters in District 3 believe share our belief that Roscoe Turner deserves another term on the Council.

An edited version of this column appeared in the March 19, 2008, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is no longer available online. Posted on August 4, 2018.

Barnes vs. Gomez
By Michael D. Bates

I've attended, watched, listened to, and participated in many debates and candidate forums over the years. Last week's Tulsa City Council District 4 candidate forum was one of the best I've ever seen.

The hour-long event, sponsored by the Pearl District Association, featured written questions submitted by an audience obviously well informed on zoning, land use, and other issues affecting Tulsa's Midtown neighborhoods.

(You can listen to audio of the entire forum at BatesLine.com.)

The questions were ably organized and presented by Jamie Jamieson, developer of the Village at Central Park (west of Peoria on 8th Street) and a relentless booster for the revival of the 6th Street corridor between downtown and the University of Tulsa. Jamieson used his intimate knowledge of the issues to clarify the questions in a way that led to more informative answers.

For their part, the candidates - first-term Councilor Maria Barnes and challenger Eric Gomez - gave direct and thoughtful answers to most of the questions. The debate allowed both to display their strengths, but it also revealed the policy differences between the two, particularly on the issue of Neighborhood Conservation Districts (NCDs).

Asked to describe the most useful skills she brings to the Council, Barnes cited the relationships she has developed over more than a decade as a leader in the Kendall-Whittier Neighborhood Association. In that capacity, she worked with other neighborhood associations, developers, and staff in nearly every city department.

Responding to the same question, Gomez emphasized his real estate and development background. He grew up in the custom homes business and is now both a real estate agent and a contractor, with his own construction business restoring and remodeling Midtown homes. (In his concluding remarks, he mentioned his many years as a leader in the Renaissance Neighborhood Association.)

Barnes's goals for her second term are to bring several efforts in progress to completion: The form-based codes pilot project for the Pearl District, addressing concerns about infill development, and seeing a new comprehensive plan - the first one for Tulsa in over 30 years - come to fruition.

Gomez said the single biggest issue in District 4 is streets. Selling real estate takes him all over Tulsa, and he's convinced that District 4 has the city's worst streets. Improving the streets, he said, is crucial to economic development and redevelopment.

Gomez later made the point that widening roads to accommodate growth in south Tulsa had left less money to maintain streets in Midtown. He suggested that it was a mistake for Tulsa, in an effort to be "developer-friendly," to drop the idea of impact fees - requiring the developer to share in the cost of public infrastructure to support a new private development.

The two candidates were in sync on a number of issues. Both support the Pearl District Association's request to be a pilot project for form-based codes - an alternative to zoning that is more interested in compatibility of a building's exterior with its surroundings than in what goes on inside the building. (Barnes said she is working with INCOG to address problems with funding for the pilot project.)

Both also expressed support for the neighborhood's drive to get out of the floodplain by getting the city to fully fund the Elm Creek stormwater management plan. And both favor the incorporation of more grassroots-driven neighborhood plans into the city's comprehensive plan.

Both would love to see the Drillers play in downtown - Gomez said it could be a catalyst for high-density mixed-use development; Barnes called it an important piece of the downtown revitalization puzzle.

But neither wants to see the taxpayers foot the bill for a new ballpark. Gomez said that in light of the enormous $1.6 billion need to fund street improvements, "it's hard for me to justify more public dollars" for a ballpark.

Barnes was open to putting public funding before the voters: "I don't want to see us raise taxes to pay for it, and we are looking at other ways to try to fund this, but if it does come to a tax than the people will vote on it. They'll decide what they want to do."

The two split on the question of whether the city should fund the expansion of 101st and Memorial to meet the demands of the developers of a Super Target slated for the northeast corner of that intersection. The developers are threatening to locate just across the city limits in Bixby if they don't get their way.

Barnes says the city has to stop caving in to such demands, and the developers should pay for the widening if they want it. Gomez considers the intersection work a strategic investment to keep those sales tax dollars in Tulsa.

The highlight of the forum was a series of questions about a contentious current land use issue: Neighborhood Conservation Districts. Barnes has championed this idea, which involves customized zoning rules for older residential areas. An NCD would allow for new development in an older neighborhood while preserving the attributes that make the neighborhood appealing.

In answer to the basic question - do you support NCDs? - Barnes gave a one-word answer: "Yes."

Gomez's response: "Neighborhood conservation districts are a tough issue, and I'll tell you why: Because, in my opinion, I will not support anything that infringes on private property rights and is negative to property values, and that is all I'll say about that."

But the audience wanted Gomez to say more, and further questions aimed at getting down to the philosophical underpinnings of his views on zoning and land use regulation. How would he balance private property rights against the reality that what I do with my property affects the value and enjoyment my neighbors can realize from their properties?

So here came the next question: "Many District 4 residents are concerned about inappropriate infill development, particularly homes that are out of scale with existing development. Is it appropriate for government to regulate this in any way, or should it be left entirely to the free market?"

Barnes replied first: "I think it should be left up to the neighborhoods, to the areas that are being affected by this kind of development. You decide what you want."

Gomez acknowledged that government is already involved in regulating new construction:
"Well, the question about whether it's appropriate for government to regulate it, that's already the case, we already regulate what can be built. Although it may not be what everyone would like to be built, we already regulate through our current zoning ordinances and land use policies."

He went on to raise a concern about "functional obsolescence" where "the cost to renovate far outweighs the value of the property." But nothing in the proposed NCD ordinance would prohibit demolition or require renovation of an existing building.

The obvious follow-up question came toward the end of the forum:

"Doesn't all zoning infringe on property rights, and if so, why is the idea of conservation district different from that? Why is it a further infringement on property rights that are already infringed by zoning?"

Gomez's verbatim reply: "We already regulate land use. We already regulate what you can and cannot do with your property. When people buy a property, they look at what the policies are, they understand what the zoning is, and if that should change, there has to be a - it's a fine line, I believe, between private property rights and zoning, and absent of covenants that are not easily enforceable, when you buy a property in an older neighborhood - I live in an older neighborhood - you do understand that these things may happen and it, um...." As his voice trailed off to a mumble, he sat down.

Gomez fielded another uncomfortable question a few minutes later, when he was asked why he failed to respond to questionnaires from TulsaNow.org, PreserveMidtown.com, and the League of Women Voters (tulsa.lwvok.org). Gomez said simply that he dropped the ball on the LWV questionnaire, and in the case of Preserve Midtown, he didn't have all the questions answered by the deadline, so he didn't submit a response.

Toward the end of the forum, Barnes defended NCDs by bringing along a handout containing "mythbusters" - responses to a number of frequently-heard misconceptions about the concept. She emphasized that the idea is still in the discussion stage. "People need to take a breath, slow down."

Any new idea needs someone to shepherd it through the legislative process, someone to raise the issue, persist through initial opposition and skepticism, argue in its favor during debate, rally public support, bring it back after a defeat, craft compromises to build majority support, and stick with it until the idea becomes law.

That shepherd has to be someone with a seat at the table. An idea might have broad public support, but only a member of the City Council has the access to the legislative process needed to bring the idea to fruition.

Barnes is committed to the neighborhood conservation concept. She has spent a considerable amount of political capital on NCDs, taking the risk that powerful opponents of NCDs - the development lobby, the daily paper - will become her political adversaries.

Gomez doesn't rule out supporting a neighborhood conservation ordinance. His concerns for protecting private property rights and his worry that overregulation will stifle new development are appropriate. But his ambivalence about the NCD concept makes it unlikely that he would actively push for it.

If Gomez wins, he might vote for a carefully crafted NCD enabling ordinance. But if Barnes loses, there likely won't be any NCD ordinance to vote for.

In his opening and closing remarks, Eric Gomez spoke of his desire to see Tulsa once again as America's Most Beautiful City. That's a sound goal.

I hope that he, and others skeptical of NCDs, will realize that the first step toward that goal is one that our rival cities in the region have already taken: determined legislative action to conserve Tulsa's most beautiful neighborhoods.

An edited version of this column appeared in the March 12, 2008, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available on the Internet Archive. Posted on August 4, 2018.

Spinning World
By Michael D. Bates

It's been a tough few weeks for our monopoly daily newspaper, the Tulsa World.

First, a pressroom fire halted production of their Sunday, February 17, edition. Most subscribers received only the preprints on their porches - the TV listings, the ad inserts, and the classifieds. (Ironically, those sections are the sole reason that many Tulsans still bother to buy the paper.)

Then came the city primary election on March 4. The World took aim at the man they consider Public Enemy Number Two - District 1 Councilor Jack Henderson - and missed. The northsider's independence and his opposition to the proposed county sales tax increase for river projects made him a prime target for the paper.

The daily's editorial board pushed mortgage banker Emanuel Lewis, who was funded by more than $14,600 in contributions, at least $12,000 of which came from donors outside District 1.

That's an unheard-of amount for Tulsa's least affluent district, and it doesn't count any money that came in during the last two weeks of the campaign.

Lewis, the editorial board said, "would be a welcome progressive addition to the Tulsa City Council."

Despite the claim that there is no coordination between the editorial board and the newsroom, it's curious that the daily's reporters failed to notice that Lewis and his wife were defendants in an active small claims case, a fact easily discovered in a docket search on the Oklahoma State Courts Network website (oscn.net).

The Lewises failed to appear in court date on Jan. 24, and Judge Charles Hogshead ordered them to pay $868.74 to Tulsa Regional Medical Center, plus attorneys' fees and interest. On Feb. 15, a garnishment affidavit was served on Great Plains Mortgage, Lewis's employer.

Creditors generally go to great lengths to settle unpaid bills before they involve the courts. That someone seeking public office would let an unpaid bill go to court, then fail to appear in court, then fail to pay the judgment, casts serious doubt on the candidate's judgment and personal responsibility.

In the past, the daily has been eager to report on long-ago legal troubles involving political candidates. For example, a Jan. 30, 2004, story reported on court cases involving four city council candidates, including one charge that was 15 years in the past. That the daily would fail to inform its readers of the present-day legal trouble of its editorial board's favorite candidate presents an appearance that its news coverage is being warped to match its editorial position.

Despite the help Lewis received from the daily and big-time midtown contributors, Jack Henderson won a clear 55% majority on the strength of grassroots support.

We can expect the daily's energies to be focused now on the man they regard as Public Enemy Number One, but whom UTW readers have twice dubbed Tulsa's most believable councilor: District 3 Councilor Roscoe Turner.

Turner has been a frequent target of the daily's editorials. He refuses to kowtow to the paper and its allies in the Money Belt, putting his constituents' interests and those of the City of Tulsa ahead of the desires of city power brokers.

While Turner is a consistent friend to neighborhoods, David Patrick, his perpetual opponent, was renowned during his years on the City Council as a water-carrier for the developers' lobby. Shortly before the 2004 election, Patrick was the lone vote in favor of a rezoning at 41st and Harvard that all eight of his colleagues rejected.

In that same race, Patrick received more than half of his funding from board members of F&M Bank and Trust Co. A few months earlier Patrick not only voted for a controversial zoning change sought by the bank, he voted to prevent protesting residents from speaking about their unjust treatment at the hands of zoning bureaucrats.

The daily endorsed Patrick, as they have in nearly all of his electoral battles with Turner, but they failed to disclose the relationship between the paper and F&M Bank, on the board of which then-publisher Robert E. Lorton Jr. and current Robert E. "Bobby" Lorton III have served.

As the April 1 general election approaches you can expect Patrick to attract large amounts of outside-the-district campaign contributions along with plenty of favorable ink in both the news and opinion pages of the daily, just as Emanuel Lewis did in his race against Henderson.

The latest trouble for the World is financial in nature, and it came to light last week, as the paper shut down its weekly community editions, laying off all 17 members of the Community World's staff.

As UTW's Brian Ervin reports elsewhere in this issue, the decision caught all but the very top levels of management by surprise. Two of the dismissed workers had been hired within the past few weeks.

Not only were the workers given no time to seek other employment, the severance package was stingy beyond belief - 8 days' pay and benefits only through the end of this month.

One might expect that kind of shoddy treatment and tight-fistedness from a publicly traded company, scrambling to show positive end-of-quarter numbers to demanding institutional investors. It's almost unbelievable that this would happen in a family-owned business with immense wealth and a reputation for generosity in the community and loyalty to its employees.

If they could afford to keep Ken Neal around for several years past his sell-by date, couldn't the Lortons have managed to provide a couple of months' severance to these reporters and editors?

It's not surprising that the daily needs to cut costs. Circulation is declining rapidly, falling from 162,186 in 1998 to 138,262 in 2006, and it might fall even faster if it weren't for aggressive discount subscription plans.

Fewer and fewer people find that the daily paper fills a need in their life. For many Tulsans, the World has gone from beloved to despised to irrelevant in the space of a few short years.

The daily's troubles are only likely to get worse. Advertisers are finding more affordable print media options that are more effective at delivering their message to their target audience.

Accurate and dependable local coverage is the one competitive advantage a local daily might have over the wealth of Internet sources for national and global news. But with every new edition of the World, there's at least one more Tulsan who discovers a discrepancy between an event he witnessed and the way the World reported it.

The latest example is the paper's campaign against the idea of neighborhood conservation districts. Misleading headlines falsely paint supporters of the concept as trying to "fight infill."

Sunday's story quoted extensively from opponents of the concept, referring to them as mere homeowners without telling the reader enough about them to determine whether they might have a professional interest in the matter. Despite the existence of an organization, Preserve Midtown, devoted to the concept and many individual homeowners who support the idea, the only proponent mentioned was City Councilor Maria Barnes.
Janet Pearson's Sunday op-ed on the topic also mentioned only one supporter by name - Councilor Barnes - while quoting several opponents, including an unnamed developer who claimed that the proposal caused him to halt plans for a project on 15th Street, even though the project would be unaffected by an ordinance that hasn't even taken its first step toward approval.

Thanks to national media bias scandals, people are quicker to spot media bias and quicker to ignore a news source that is spinning the news to fit a hidden agenda. For example, there was the attempt by CBS's Dan Rather to denigrate President Bush's military service with documents that were obviously forged.

Alternative sources of information on local news, from Urban Tulsa Weekly to blogs to talk radio to live telecasts of public meetings, give Tulsans the chance to measure the World's view against what really happened. When the paper endorsed former Councilor Randy Sullivan, they praised him for his "keen intelligence" and "pleasant demeanor." Voters who'd watched Sullivan curse and fume on TGOV knew better.

At the heart of the World's local news coverage and editorial stance is a disdain for popular sovereignty. On issue after issue, the paper opposes efforts to give ordinary citizens more control over their government.

Some of that bias may be in service of the business interests of the family that owns the paper. Most of it, I suspect, is pure elitism, the sense that most of the public - most of its current and prospective readership - is too stupid for self-governance.

That's not a winning attitude in the competition for our attention, respect, and disposable income.

An edited version of this column appeared in the March 5, 2008, issue of Urban Tulsa Weekly. The published version is available on the Internet Archive. Posted on August 4, 2018.

Neighborhood conservation districts: A proposal on the table
By Michael D. Bates

"CALL YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL REPRESENTATIVE AND TELL THEM YOU ARE AGAINST MIDTOWN TULSA."

So wrote Realtor Martha Thomas Cobb in a mass e-mail protesting the idea of neighborhood conservation districts (NCDs), a zoning idea currently under discussion for Tulsa. An NCD, as we've noted in this space several times, customizes land use regulations for a particular neighborhood, with the intent of allowing new development in an established neighborhood while preserving the essential character of the neighborhood.

To read Ms. Cobb's upper-case-laden e-mail, you'd think that the Communists had infiltrated City Hall:

"Please beware of what is going on with the small minority of disgruntled citizens who want to police midtown by writing an ordinance to tell you what to do with your property.

"IT IS DESIGNED TO TAKE AWAY OUR PROPERTY RIGHTS. BEWARE....
"PRESERVE MIDTOWN WANTS TO PUT AN ORDINANCE IN PLACE POLICING EVERYONES RIGHT TO DO WHAT THEY WANT TO. BAD IDEA."

I've heard the phrase, "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law," but I didn't realize it was in the City of Tulsa zoning code.

Ms. Cobb isn't the only fear-monger out there. Back on Feb. 15, the daily paper used this misleading headline over a story about NCDs: "City officials join to fight infill building." (Infill refers to new construction in an already developed area.)

The officials involved, City Councilor Maria Barnes, whose photo appeared above the headline, and Planning Commissioner Michelle Cantrell, aren't trying to fight infill at all. They're trying to come up with a way to accommodate infill while mitigating its impact on the very characteristics that make a neighborhood attractive to new development.
That's not anti-growth or anti-infill. That's anti-killing the goose that laid the golden egg.
Until recently, it was easy for NCD opponents to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt. Now, however, there's a draft NCD ordinance, presented during the Tulsa Metropolitan Area Planning Commission's (TMAPC) Feb. 27 work session. The four-page document, weighing in at just under a thousand words, is quick to read and apprehend. Here are some of the key features:

• An NCD overlay could only be used in areas zoned single-family residential (RS). It could not be applied to any other kind of development or to areas already under a Historic Preservation (HP) overlay.
• 75% of the existing houses within the proposed NCD must have been built prior to July 1, 1970.
• The proposal for an NCD can be initiated by the TMAPC, the City's Planning Department, the City Council, or a petition signed by 50% of the property owners in the proposed NCD.
• An NCD must be contiguous, containing at least 30 single-family dwellings, with distinctive or unifying features. (Neighborhoods on the National Register of Historic Places would automatically satisfy the definition.) Examples of distinctive features include scale, size, type of construction, setbacks, and street layout.
• NCD guidelines could address four categories of criteria: "density and/or intensity of land use...; area and bulk restrictions...; accessory structures and yard utilization regulations...; exterior building wall materials."
• Specific NCD guidelines could include placement, size, and orientation of garages, roof pitch, setbacks, floor area, lot size, number of stories, and height.
• NCD guidelines must be consistent with the predominant features of the district.

This is a very modest proposal, limited in scope. What it doesn't do is as important as what it does do.

An NCD can't regulate paint color, window style, or any interior modification. It treats houses like roofed boxes, and it's all about how big those boxes are and where they sit on the lot. Building wall material - e.g. brick or wood siding - is the only criterion that deals with appearance.

The proposed NCD ordinance doesn't modify the process of getting a building permit, a variance or special exception, or a zoning change. It doesn't have a group of neighbors applying subjective judgment over every new home design.

An NCD would simply have special rules customized for that district. No additional red tape would be added to the development process.

To put the current proposal into perspective, let's compare it to an earlier attempt at establishing a protective zoning overlay.

Accompanying the draft in the TMAPC's backup material was a 17-page memo by City Council policy administrator Jack Blair, written last Nov. 20. Blair did his usual thorough job, comparing ordinances establishing NCDs (or similar districts with different names) in Albuquerque, Austin, Dallas, Oklahoma City, Omaha, and Wichita with an ordinance that had been proposed for Tulsa in 1995.

Blair's memo reveals that the NCD concept has been kicked around Tulsa since 1992, when TMAPC staff began researching the issue. Staff put a recommended ordinance before the TMAPC in 1995, but no action was taken on it. From Blair's description, the current proposal appears to be similar in scope to the 1995 draft.

A few years later, a more ambitious proposal gained brief attention.

In 1998, the Infill Task Force was convened by Mayor Susan Savage and TMAPC chairman Gary Boyle. Scott Swearingen, then president of Renaissance Neighborhood Association and founding father of the Midtown Coalition of Neighborhood Associations, was a mayoral appointee to the task force. He designated me as his alternate, and I participated along with him on the zoning subcommittee, a group that included zoning code author and attorney Charles Norman.

At that time, teardowns - the practice of scraping the lot in an older neighborhood to build a new and often much larger home - were not yet prevalent in Tulsa. The greater concern was inappropriate redevelopment of pedestrian-friendly commercial areas bordering residential areas. The core issue was the same, however - preserving the character of a neighborhood.

INCOG staffers presented the subcommittee with a draft enabling ordinance for something they called "Renaissance Neighborhoods" (RN). RNs could include not only single-family residential, as the current NCD proposal does, but also multi-family and non-residential uses.

In that regard, RN zoning would have respected the interrelatedness of midtown residential areas and the traditional neighborhood commercial districts that adjoin them - for example, the commercial and residential sections of Brookside, or Swan Lake neighborhood and Cherry Street.

The proposed RN ordinance never saw the light of day, beyond our subcommittee's discussions. The final report from the task force, issued in May 1999, did recommend the adoption of design guidelines in areas where "higher intensity nonresidential uses are located near residential uses" and "in the older pedestrian-oriented commercial areas."
As a first step, the report suggested a "test case" neighborhood plan, "prepared with broad-based citizen participation, including both residential and nonresidential interests."

The test case idea evolved into $50,000 in initial funding for three pilot infill studies in the Brady Arts District, the 6th Street corridor (now known as the Pearl District), and in Brookside. For each study, a task force was convened involving a variety of neighborhood stakeholders and facilitated by city Urban Development staffers. Work was completed on the Brady and Brookside infill plans in 2002; the Pearl District effort wrapped up in 2005.

These infill plans have been incorporated by the TMAPC and the City Council into the Comprehensive Plan, and the design guidelines have been consulted in evaluating variances, special exceptions, and zoning changes.

But a decade after the Infill Task Force was convened, the goal of these pilot programs - incorporating neighborhood-specific design guidelines into the zoning code - has not yet been achieved. And only a handful of neighborhoods have developed infill guidelines.

Blair's report notes: "A conservation district overlay would be intended to address the 'one-size-fits-all' nature of our current approach to land use regulation. Our current zoning code does not distinguish, for example, between an RS-3 zoning district at 26th & Yale and an RS-3 district at 86th & Sheridan." A three-car-garage "snout house" would fit in perfectly in the latter subdivision, but would be completely inappropriate in the former neighborhood.

Blair continues: "The unique aggregation of small mid-50s-modern homes in Lortondale enhances the property values of each individual home. In other words, the sum is greater than its parts. The coherence of the neighborhood is, in itself, of value."

The NCD proposal now under discussion is a very modest step toward protecting that kind of coherence while also protecting property rights and opportunities for new development. While the details may need fine-tuning, the concept deserves widespread support from homeowners and developers alike. The TMAPC should act promptly and forward a draft ordinance to the Council as soon as possible.