A city-county showdown is shaping up over a potential Vision sales tax renewal.
County Commissioners Ron Peters and John Smaligo are looking for a bigger piece of the pie than the 0.055 percent many cities, including Tulsa, are setting aside for a separate county ballot measure out of their own 0.6 percent renewals. Tulsa City Councilor Blake Ewing said he prefers to start with a thorough needs assessment.
"And then come to the table once we've got all of those things in front of us, and then say, 'OK, well, this is the kind of project that might be in the City of Tulsa, but you can make the case that everyone in the county benefits from this. Perhaps we should move this over to the county question and up the number,'" Ewing said.
Peters and Smaligo told the Tulsa World the City of Tulsa shut them out of talks before announcing city-by-city renewals. Ewing was among those upset commissioners didn't come to them.
"My sense is that no one on the council has expressed a lack of willingness to work with Tulsa County on this," Ewing said. "Lumping all of us at the City of Tulsa in together as being difficult to work with, I think, is a mistake."
Councilor David Patrick thought the process would work differently.
"Other entities are putting proposals together, such like the zoo and the library systems and stuff like that," Patrick said. "I assumed that the county would put a proposal together for the fairgrounds or something for us to consider."
The county's stance is what cities propose to set aside will cover only a third of $140 million in capital needs. Peters is looking for double what cities are planning to set aside.
