Michael Bates
for City Council
Tulsa District 4

Come back often -- new issues are posted regularly!

On the issues:

Crime

Sometimes it seems like the world is inside out. We put iron bars on our windows and locks on our doors, imprisoning ourselves in our own homes to keep the criminals out. Midtown Tulsa wasn’t always like that. You could leave your keys in the car and your house unlocked, and no one worried about letting their children walk to school or play in the front yard.

Burglaries and auto thefts go unsolved. We treat those crimes as if they were accidents, instead of deliberate, evil intrusions into the privacy of our homes. Instead of gathering clues and solving crimes, police officers only have the resources to act as insurance adjusters and report writers. The crooks know its open season on our property. We have effectively decriminalized theft.

It doesn’t have to be that way. Tulsa can decide to take crime seriously. New York City, led by Mayor Rudy Giuliani, decided to stop tolerating crime, and New York has seen a huge drop in crime rates. If they can clean up New York City, we can clean up Tulsa!

Michael Bates will work with our new Mayor to find more effective ways to protect our neighborhoods from crime. He will get City Hall back to work to stop the bad guys!

Click here to read more about crime.

Taxes

Michael Bates will oppose any tax increase. City Hall already takes enough of your money.

Michael Bates successfully led the fight to stop a scheme to raise your taxes for the benefit of narrow special interests. He will lead the search for waste, inefficiency, and duplication, so that  we can provide better police and fire protection, cleaner water, and good streets, without raising your taxes.

The City Council can't change your property tax assessment, but Michael Bates will work with our state legislators to change the law so that more senior citizens will qualify for a freeze of their property valuation. (See below for information on applying for the Senior Valuation Limitation.) 

IMPORTANT NOTICE TO SENIORS: 
How to jump off the "tax escalator"

If you were 65 or older on January 1, and your gross household income in 2001 was $25,000 or less, you may qualify for the Senior Valuation Limitation on your homestead.  This freezes the assessor's valuation on your property at this year's value. With this "freeze" in place, your taxes won't automatically go up by 5% every year. You can find more information and an application form on the Tulsa County Assessor's website. You must file the form by March 15.

Utility rates 

Water, sewer, trash, and stormwater rates are all scheduled to go up in coming years. Michael Bates supports a plan that would avoid a trash rate hike. He will work with the new Mayor and Council to find ways to delay, reduce, or entirely avoid utility rate increases by making our utility services more efficient.

Downtown revitalization

Michael Bates believes the key to a lively downtown is to encourage residential development and to make downtown a place where Tulsans want to be.  To borrow a phrase from Roberta Brandes Gratz, we want a downtown that hasn't just been rebuilt, it's been reborn. 

The heart of the word "revitalization" is "vita," the Latin word for "life," and you can't have life without people.  While some people use the word "revitalization" to mean new construction, true revitalization means making an area attractive to people once again. 

Michael Bates served on the 1999 committee that evaluated proposals for redeveloping the Oaklawn subdivision at 8th and Peoria.  The plan that was selected is now under way as "The Village at Central Park," a development of townhomes, designed to look old-fashioned, but with all the modern conveniences. The plan includes space for retail along Peoria, with lofts above. While some proposals called for a gated  community to be built, the vision of the Village at Central Park reached beyond the 9 acres under consideration.

The Village Builders hope to spark new investment throughout the surrounding neighborhood, and there are already signs of new life, like the rehabilitation of an old apartment building as a boutique hotel called the Hotel Savoy. The Village Builders are also active in the 6th Street Infill Task Force, which is studying ways to improve the corridor between downtown and the University of Tulsa.

Michael Bates not only helped select this project, but he spoke and wrote in support of the plan as it moved through the rezoning process. 

An important feature of this project was that it did not involve increasing taxes. Instead, a "Tax Increment Finance" (TIF) district was created to capture taxes raised inside the district for public improvements. Some of this money paid for the land, some paid for utility relocation and other infrastructure improvements.  

Michael Bates opposed the 1997 Tulsa Project and the 2000 "It's Tulsa's Time" plan. He opposed these plans because they both involved a sales tax increase, because they would fail to produce real revitalization, and because a sound business case had not been made, and the city stood at risk of spending millions annually to subsidize ongoing operating costs. Click here to read a 1997 Urban Tulsa Weekly guest opinion by Michael on the 1997 proposal.  Click here to read a letter he submitted in 2000, tracing the history of redevelopment efforts in downtown. 

It took us some 40 years to reduce downtown to its current state. The process of rebuilding downtown will take a long time, too, and a gradual approach, focused on bringing Tulsans back to downtown to live, will produce better long-term results than a massive program of demolition and construction.

Urban design and planning

Michael Bates's approach to urban planning has been greatly influenced the book, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, by Jane Jacobs. 

Michael and his wife Mikki attended, at their own expense, the 1998 National Preservation Conference, in Savannah, Georgia, sponsored by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The conference went beyond preservation issues to discuss concepts like "heritage tourism" and "sensitive infill". 

The notion of sensitive infill is that you can build new in an established neighborhood and do it in a way that reinforces the character of the neighborhood, rather than detracting from it.  Even chains like McDonalds, Walgreens, and Wal-Mart have shown a willingness to adapt their standard plans to fit in with their surroundings, but only if they are required to do so by local ordinance. 

Michael served as Scott Swearingen's alternate on the Mayor's Infill Task Force, which met from 1998 to 1999.  Michael participated in many of the plenary meetings and in the Zoning and Subdivision Regulations Subcommittee. Michael did considerable research into the practices of other cities and pushed for recommendations to encourage conservation of the unique qualities of Midtown neighborhoods, particularly their pedestrian-friendly character.

Conventions

The economic impact of the convention business in Tulsa has been distorted far beyond reality. Our downtown convention center contributes only a tiny amount of our region's economy and our city's tax revenues. The convention business nationally was already slowing down before 9/11.

While we should take care of our city-owned convention center and modernize it, it doesn't make good business sense to raise taxes to finance a major expansion and a new arena. 

There is a market for smaller conventions, enough that John Q. Hammons is building a new 50,000 square foot convention center and hotel on 71st Street. But because so many cities have expanded their convention facilities, there is now an oversupply of facilities able to accommodate larger shows. 

In 1979, Tulsa voted a 2% tax on hotel and motel rooms to pay for expanding the Convention Center with 100,000 square feet of exhibit space and other improvements. Taxes were not raised on Tulsans. 2% now amounts to about $2,000,000 a year. When the expansion was complete, most  of that 2% was redirected from upkeep of the Convention Center to an "economic development fund". This money is paid to the Chamber of Commerce for economic development services. We need to examine the situation, decide if we are getting good value for money, and consider reclaiming that revenue stream for improvements to the Convention Center.  

CONTACT US

Michael Bates for City Council
4727 East 23rd Street
Tulsa, Oklahoma 74114-3640
918-951-3574

info@michaelbatesforcitycouncil.com

Midtown leaders endorse 
Michael Bates

-- Ursula Mueller, Sunrise Terrace and Midtown Neighborhood Alliance leader

"I've worked with Mike on a number of city issues. He brings intelligence, knowledge and enthusiasm to the work of solving problems. Mike will be great for Tulsa and great for District 4. He has earned my support and my vote."

-- Don Burdick, Government Affairs Chairman, Central Park Condominiums