Natural beauty

Tulsans make the case to protect Turkey Mountain

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3. It’s a quality of life issue.

Longtime Turkey Mountain visitor Kirk Wester, who attended the meeting with his daughter, said there’s more than one road to sales tax revenue, and some take Tulsa in the wrong direction. 

“Turkey Mountain is designated as a wilderness,” Wester said. “A wilderness means that it’s a separation from development, society. … It’s a unique place that you can go within just a few minutes and not be around all of that. … Where does the issue of quality of life—and what we value as a quality of life—play into all this? I’d argue that the availability of retail sales is not the only driver of sales tax revenue, that one driver of sales tax revenue is the fact that you enjoy your city, you get out in your city, that you’re not sitting on your couch all day watching TV. 

“Our city is finally making that turn.”

Bird agreed that quality of life is important but reiterated his desire that Tulsans approach this proposal with an attitude of trying to make it work. Councilor Cue responded that quality of life is a top priority for Council members and encouraged Tulsans to communicate with their representatives about issues that affect their quality of life. 

4. The plan conflicts with what we know about smart, sustainable growth.

Colin Tawney, government affairs coordinator for the Tulsa Urban Wilderness Coalition, acknowledged the need to respect the rights of private property owners but asked the city to weigh the costs of developing green space over redeveloping areas that have fallen into disrepair. Tawney said the collateral infrastructure and maintenance needs of a new development would largely undercut the alleged sales tax benefits.

“When you bring a development like this in and you’ve got a highway corridor that’s already overtaxed, … that’s going to contribute to the need to widen highway 75. We have a very dangerous road corridor from Highway 75 down to 71^st that people cut through daily that will be used more. So eventually that’s probably going to require—to mitigate traffic safety issues—a widening, leveling, that kind of thing. How many millions in infrastructure do we spend to support this project, which nominally might bring in $4-6 million a year in new sales tax revenue, if that? … What is the real sales tax benefit? Because there’s plenty of national information now that’s coming about that suburban development is actually robbing communities of important assets because of the cost of sprawl—the cost of improving all the extra infrastructure that’s not accounted for and then maintaining it; the additional fire and police presence we’d have, because parking lot crime does follow a development that has 1,800 to 2,000 parking spots. … And then you also have to deal with mitigating the trash. Is that back on the developer, or should that become a public problem when it wasn’t a public plan? So these are the things, in terms of smart and sustainable, that I don’t think anybody’s really hearing about. If anybody could possibly amplify on that—what the national trends are, versus what we seem to be doing that’s a little bit different? Rather than redeveloping, we’re still crunching down wilderness and having to come up with new infrastructure costs.”

Bird didn’t expound much on sustainable growth but said he agrees with many of those sentiments. He also highlighted the city’s continued efforts to redevelop downtown. But Bird essentially said that the proposed property is a good spot for development because it’s an undeveloped property within city limits that’s near Tulsa Hills and Highway 75.

Around this time—halfway through the meeting—Reynolds left. Cue said there would be another public meeting “as soon as we can get Simon here to actually speak.”