Right after the concession speeches were made at the Vote Yes watch party, County Commissioner Randy Miller said that “the people have spoken” and that river development was dead for some time. She is basically taking this no vote as a condemnation of all river development, both public and private.
Wrong again Randi!
The vote no folks, for the most part, support river development. I would imagine a majority of the vote no folks would support the use of some public funds (a reasonable amount) to be used for river development. Further, I am confident that most of the vote no folks, both Tulsans and suburbanites, would bless a well documented plan that was implemented by the relevant cities, leaving Randi Miller and the County out of the equation.
That being said, what Miller is trying to sell to us, in lieu of this defeat at the polls, is that the County will now move on to other priorities, leaving the river in her waterless wake.
Sorry Randi, you can’t do that!
Tulsa County and it’s elected officials have promises to keep. The monies allotted to the low water damns in Vision 2025 are still there. Your promise to construct three dams using those funds, in conjunction with matching funds, still exists. The voters don’t care if the matching funds are from the Feds, the state or from private sources. They DO care that they not come from additional sales taxes.
THAT is the message they sent you, Randi!
Just because they rejected an additional county sales tax to make up for the lack of the matching funds you and your fellow commissioners promised the voters you’d get, doesn’t absolve you of your promise.
Quit looking for a quick fix at the polls and get to work, Randi!
I have said numerous times on the KFAQ Morning Show that your mistake, and that of your buddies at the Chamber was, that as soon as the Kaiser Foundation approached you with their offer of millions of dollars for the river, you should’ve said, “Fantastic, let’s put the first 50 to 60 million bucks toward matching the voters millions from the Vision 2025 vote.”
In other words, let’s keep our four year old promises first, and then maybe the voters will trust you enough to pony up new money for überparks and "pedestrian bridges to nowhere" at a later date.
We who said “nay” are not buying your spin. We don’t believe you when you say there won’t be any Vision 2025 overage monies [we just think you have other plans for it], so use the overages to pay for the dams. We don’t believe you that Hurricane Katrina caused the arena over-runs, drying up the Federal dollars needed for the low-water dams [pork is still flying out of Washington every day, you just have to make a case to get some].
Regardless of where the money comes from, Randi, you made a promise to “construct” low-water dams, we voted based on that promise in 2003, and you’re not off the hook. As such, the County either moves forward with “river development” or you need to start looking for another line of work.
Friday, October 12, 2007
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