Sooner Politics.org
  • Front Page
  • Oklahoma News
    • Oklahoma Reports
    • OCPAC
    • Oklahoma Constitution News
    • Citizen of the Year
    • Oklahoma History
    • Today, In History
    • Oklahoma Center Square
    • Faked Out Sports
    • AP Wire
    • NewsBreak Oklahoma
    • Inside the Capitol
    • Lawton Rocks
    • Muskogee Now
    • OSU Sports
  • Podcasts
  • SPTV
    • Fresh Black Coffee, with Eddie Huff
    • AircraftSparky
    • Red River TV
    • Oklahoma TV
    • E PLURIBUS OTAP
    • Tapp's Common Sense
  • Editorial
    • From the Editor
    • Weekend Report
  • Sooner Issues
    • Corruption Chronicle
    • Constitutional Grounds
    • State Groups
  • Sooner Analysts
    • OCPA
    • Muskogee Politico
    • Patrick McGuigan
    • SoonerPoll
    • Everett Piper
    • Andrew Spiropoulos
    • Tulsa Devil's Advocate
    • Eddie Huff & Friends
    • 1889 Institute
    • Steve Byas
    • Michael Bates
    • Steve Fair
    • Josh Lewis
    • Tulsa Today
    • OK2A
    • Dr. Jim Meehan
    • AFP Oklahoma
    • Sooner Tea Party
  • Nation
    • Bongino Report
    • Breitbart News
    • Daily wire
    • Steven Crowder
    • InfoWars News
    • Jeff Davis
    • Alex Lains
    • The F1rst
    • Nigel Farage
    • NewsMax
    • America's Voice
    • Ron Paul Institute
    • Bill Gertz
    • Emerald
    • Rooke Report
    • Just the News
    • Trey Gowdy
    • Fox Politics
    • National Commentary
  • Wit & Whimsy
    • Libs of Tiktok
    • It's Still The Law
    • Terrence Williams
    • Witty Cartoons
    • Will Rogers Said
    • Steeple Chasers
    • The Partisan
    • Satire
  • SoonerPolitics.org

Alex Allen: "Voting No On Maps4, Because I Love OKC"

10/11/2019

Comments

 
Picture
​  If a public project or initiative brings a tangible utility to the community that is paying for it, all is well.  Evidently Oklahoma City was satisfied with the MAPS projects; after the first two, they approved a third.  Now, we’re being asked to approve a fourth initiative, which goes to the ballot on December 10th.  

  This one seeks to raise a staggering $978 million via a ‘temporary’ penny sales tax.  It will leave the present rate unchanged, as it’s replacing a different tax that is expiring next year.  This wouldn’t be so bad if the project represented a real improvement to Oklahoma City.  It’s only a penny!

  Then again, it would represent a diversion of $978 million out of the economy into places it would not have gone naturally.  No small sum, and especially egregious, in this instance: of the 16 proposals that make up MAPS 4, only a few are remotely valuable to Oklahoma City at large.  In the interest of space, I won’t describe all of them, but there is some worth mentioning:

- A Soccer, or “Multi-use” stadium

  Oklahoma City is becoming saturated with event and sporting spaces.  Is there a use for them?  Is soccer really a popular enough sport to justify a $37 million dollar expense to build a stadium that will seat thousands?  Oklahoma City tells us that there is, because there’s a lot of “hispanics” here, and that the World Cup was really popular.  Sure it was, because it was the World Cup.  

- Improvements to the Chesapeake Energy Arena

  This provision spends a staggering $115 million on improvements to an existing building.  This is more than Maps 4 seeks to spend on homelessness and mental health, combined.  I might be more inclined to support measures like these if the sole focus was on homelessness, with which we have a genuine problem.  But to spend so much public money on a project that will only really benefit a private organization (the Thunder) isn’t something we should be too interested in doing.

- Civil Rights Center

  Really I think this is some sort of museum, it’s unclear.  What is clear, is that Oklahoma has a troublesome history with Museums.  All of us are old enough to remember the Oklahoma City Native American History Center, which to this day has not been opened.  It began in 2006 and work halted in 2012, after burning through $90 million.  How you can’t finish a museum in six years and after such a considerable amount of money is beyond anyone with a business sense.  Now, an additional $50 million is being “invested” ($9 million of which comes from Oklahoma City, unfortunately) so that it might be opened by 2021.  I know a lot of these facilities (the Oklahoma History Center for example, which is a nice facility) make a lot of revenue as event space, but there is no way that you can recoup an investment of one hundred and forty million dollars, especially considering the considerable operational, security, and maintenance costs of any large building.   

  I think the proposed Civil Rights center is a little more modest in scope, but the point remains: $16 million will be spent, but another $9 million will have to be spent on “long term sustainability.”  Meaning, essentially, that public interest in the Civil Rights center will be insufficient to keep it open.  We’ll have to subsidise it further.  

  Something ought to be said about the fashion of modern museums: the tendency is towards walls of text, photos, video screens, with historical objects becoming sparse.  Not all are like this, but going to many museums now is basically like walking through a book.  We can do that at home; if you don’t have enough tangible objects to fill a museum, you probably don’t need to open a museum.  

  Is there not enough space in the Oklahoma History Center for a Civil Rights exhibit?  They have 200,000 square feet, you’d think they could fit it in.  

- The Innovation District

  Everyone I've talked to is really scratching their heads on this one.  It’s not even certain that Oklahoma City knows the purpose of what they have proposed.  One of the seven objectives seen in the MAPS literature reads thus:

  To design a place for convergence that fosters synergistic connections and builds on existing strengths.

Huh?

  From what I gather, Oklahoma City intends on spending $70 million on some sort of meeting/event space over by the General Electric office in Oklahoma City.  They claim that innovation can be “facilitated” within this building, and that we’ll bring together all of the major industries of Oklahoma.  It’s also purportedly going to bring better jobs to Oklahoma (somehow) that pay better than the existing ones (somehow) and will bring over a billion dollars into the Oklahoma economy (somehow.)

  Perhaps I'm being cynical, and maybe this is something that will one day be of use.  However, it seems to me that we should occupy ourselves with solving the homeless and mental health problem, solving the traffic congestion problems, both of which serve as thorns in the side of a growing city?  

  For this reason, I’m voting no on the Maps initiative, and I encourage you to do the same.  
Comments

    Sooner Politics
      Editorial  

    Picture
    David Van Risseghem reports the events and adds some perspective. 


    Search Our Archives.

    Get A Daily News Email

    * indicates required

    Get new posts by email:


    Archives

    May 2023
    April 2023
    January 2023
    October 2022
    September 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    November 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    August 2015
    January 2015


    Subscribe in a reader
    ​We recently moved our blog. Our archives are still partially stored at our old site. 

    Author

    David Van Risseghem  is the Publisher of SoonerPolitics.org. The resource is committed to informing & mobilizing conservative Oklahomans for civic reform.  This endeavor seeks to utilize the efforts of all cooperative facets of the Conservative movement...

    ​"No politician 'checks off every box" in your list of issues. You have to prioritize and use personal discretion regarding every current and future issue that you can imagine. Then you have to also judge integrity & consistency. A candidate's openness to study the issues & courage to think for themselves. Then you need to review their honesty & work ethic.  I respect any voter's decision, when they've informed themselves and took voting seriously." - David Van Risseghem
​FRONT PAGE •  OKLAHOMA NEWS • EDITORIAL • SOONER ISSUES •​ STATE GROUPS •​ SOONER ANALYSTS •​ LAWMAKER'S JOURNAL •​ NATION •​ NATIONAL COMMENTARY •​ CARTOONS •​ ​
Picture

918 . 928 . 7776

 SoonerPolitics.org is committed to informing & mobilizing conservative Oklahomans for civic reform & restored liberty. We seeks to utilize the efforts of all cooperative facets of the Conservative movement... Content of the diverse columns are solely at the discretion of the dozens of websites who create the content.   David Van Risseghem  is the founder of this platform.
 Sooner Politics News is a platform, not a media site. All our bloggers get their feeds promoted regardless of content. As soon as We suppress or delete even one posting, we become an endorser of whatever We didn't censor..The publisher doesn't (and could not) logically agree with all the content, so we would not expect any rational reader to agree, either. What we do hope, is that readers will think for themselves, and at least be better informed of the issues, events, and values that our citizen journalists work hard to provide for free.. We automate much of the tasks so that our sources' content gets as much exposure as possible. We encourage constructive discussion & debate. The solution is more free speech, not less.​

  • Front Page
  • Oklahoma News
    • Oklahoma Reports
    • OCPAC
    • Oklahoma Constitution News
    • Citizen of the Year
    • Oklahoma History
    • Today, In History
    • Oklahoma Center Square
    • Faked Out Sports
    • AP Wire
    • NewsBreak Oklahoma
    • Inside the Capitol
    • Lawton Rocks
    • Muskogee Now
    • OSU Sports
  • Podcasts
  • SPTV
    • Fresh Black Coffee, with Eddie Huff
    • AircraftSparky
    • Red River TV
    • Oklahoma TV
    • E PLURIBUS OTAP
    • Tapp's Common Sense
  • Editorial
    • From the Editor
    • Weekend Report
  • Sooner Issues
    • Corruption Chronicle
    • Constitutional Grounds
    • State Groups
  • Sooner Analysts
    • OCPA
    • Muskogee Politico
    • Patrick McGuigan
    • SoonerPoll
    • Everett Piper
    • Andrew Spiropoulos
    • Tulsa Devil's Advocate
    • Eddie Huff & Friends
    • 1889 Institute
    • Steve Byas
    • Michael Bates
    • Steve Fair
    • Josh Lewis
    • Tulsa Today
    • OK2A
    • Dr. Jim Meehan
    • AFP Oklahoma
    • Sooner Tea Party
  • Nation
    • Bongino Report
    • Breitbart News
    • Daily wire
    • Steven Crowder
    • InfoWars News
    • Jeff Davis
    • Alex Lains
    • The F1rst
    • Nigel Farage
    • NewsMax
    • America's Voice
    • Ron Paul Institute
    • Bill Gertz
    • Emerald
    • Rooke Report
    • Just the News
    • Trey Gowdy
    • Fox Politics
    • National Commentary
  • Wit & Whimsy
    • Libs of Tiktok
    • It's Still The Law
    • Terrence Williams
    • Witty Cartoons
    • Will Rogers Said
    • Steeple Chasers
    • The Partisan
    • Satire
  • SoonerPolitics.org