WHERE THERE IS NO VISION THE PEOPLE PERISH.
SOCIAL JUSTICE, ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY, COMMUNITY RESILIENCE, & ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP IN OKLAHOMA CITY.
In February 2004, Oklahoma City will elect a new mayor. The quality of the present discussion in that political campaign is sadly low. The purpose of this essay is to suggest ideas for public conversation in Oklahoma City and issues that City government should consider and act upon. Robert Waldrop, Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House
ECONOMIC SUSTAINABILITY
Our long-term sustainability is most secure if it is based on our local and regional economies, not on our ability to bribe businesses from other cities to relocate here for a few years until they find better deals elsewhere..
A good economic development policy will encourage the distribution of wealth and economic activity throughout a community, where all can participate. Thus, jobs provided by small business proprietorships and cooperatives are generally preferable to those provided by outside corporations if our goal is a sustainable prosperity over the long term. No cooperative is going to export its jobs to a low wage foreign country, but businesses that move here because Oklahoma City bribed them to relocate will have itchy feet, and always be looking for "better deals" elsewhere. If money is available for economic development, we should seek to strengthen existing small businesses with long-standing ties to the Oklahoma City area. In any event, one of the most important economic development programs is for the City to simply provide a "wise and frugal government."
If Oklahoma City wants to prosper, the cities and counties which surround us must also prosper, and that will happen only if we are united by mutually beneficial economic relationships. We have been slow to re-weave economic relationships between rural and urban areas right here in Oklahoma that once were our bread and butter.
Food is the logical place to start, because Oklahoma City is situated in the midst of one of the most fertile and productive agricultural regions of the nation. By buying more of our food directly from farmers in the countries surrounding Oklahoma City, we will develop more prosperous local and regional economies. The next big thing in food - everywhere - is local food, and Oklahoma City should position itself now to be the place to go to find food grown and processed in a local area. This means that every household can make a serious contribution to bettering the local economy by simply spending part of their food dollars directly with Oklahoma farmers for food products. People spend about $385 million a year on food to eat at home in Oklahoma City, and entirely too many of those food dollars leave the state almost immediately for the pockets of transnational agribusiness corporations. Perversely, our food choices are beggaring our neighbors in the rural counties surrounding Oklahoma City. As their fortunes have declined, so have ours.
Economic sustainability is also dependent upon an effective technological, communications, and transportation infrastructures, and of those three, our most desperate needs are in transportation. The local transportation systems of the future will be multi-modal, involving trains, buses, vans, trucks, and individual automobiles to move passengers and freight through the metropolitan area. All of our regional competitor cities - Denver and Dallas in particular - are aggressively investing in urban commuter rail and bus lines. We are doing nothing, we can't even decide whether we should study the issue. Oklahoma City's presently primitive public transit systems make our economic future hostage to the whims of Middle Eastern religious fanatics and fascists.
When the question of closing Tinker Air Force Base comes up, it won't escape the examiners' eyes that we don't have an effective public transit system. Our inability to get workers to their jobs at Tinker in the event of a national fuel emergency caused by terrorism or a new oil embargo will certainly be a major argument from our competitor cities in favor of closing Tinker and moving its vital national defense operations to an area with a public transit system that can get these defense workers to their jobs irrespective of what religious fascists do in the oil fields of the Middle East.
As with a household, economic sustainability involves careful attention to both income and expenditure, for city government and for the community as a whole. Frugality is of the utmost importance in City government. City funds should never be used for such boondoggles as conferences or travel by city employees or elected officials to conventions. The City should be truly frugal in its operation. But it shouldn't seek a false economy by paying unjustly low wages to its employees or externalize its costs.
SOCIAL JUSTICE
Oklahoma City should not look like a Victor Hugo or Charles Dickens novel. Les Miserables is not a proper philosophy for City government.
City government should never be used as a way for one group in the community to dominate or persecute others, but unfortunately Oklahoma City's history and present suggest that this happens. Due process is sometimes abused, for example, and land and housing that belongs to low income taxpayers is taken and transferred to the use of those who are both rich and powerful. This kind of shameful and tawdry abuse of City government must stop. In particular, the destruction of low income housing by the City should stop immediately. A historical example of this process was the destruction of the Deep Deuce area, and a more recent example is the use of redevelopment powers to destroy the residential community east of Oklahoma City University. The city should never declare a residential area "blighted" in order to drive down property values and force people to sell their homes for lower prices to big corporate entities or the government.
Oklahoma City is a place where many employers do not pay just wages to their employees. Such employers always claim that their actions are dictated by "economic necessity." There isn't much that City government can do about this, but it can act to make things easier on those who do work for low wages in this community. The most important thing that the City could do in this regard is to provide an effective public transit system.
Many working families in this community struggle to pay their transportation costs. Their cheap cars are "fifty and one hundred dollaring" them to death, and paying for insurance is always a problem. But they have to own a vehicle, otherwise they probably won't be able to get to their jobs. Effective public transit can make the difference between success and stability or failure and tragedy for a low income family. We should not close our eyes to the consequences of failures of families that are driven by economic desperation: crime, divorce, violence against women, abortion, delinquency, teenage pregnancy. Making poor people even more desperate is a good way to utterly destroy the quality of life in this community, yet incredibly this is the model Oklahoma City presently is following.
Public transit also can be an important asset to the middle class. It's no secret that many middle class families are way over-extended financially and are struggling to make ends meet. The community has a big stake in this because unstable families make for unstable communities. Maintaining two or three cars can be a huge expense, and if families could get by with only one car because Oklahoma City had an effective public transportation system, this would be a huge benefit to the middle class.
Another area where we must consider social justice is in paying for the new city infrastructure that is required by the rapid growth of the business and residential construction in the various suburbs at the city's peripheries. It is doubtful whether the infrastructure development required by this new construction is funded by the taxes and fees of those benefitting from the growth and thus resources are taken from older areas of the City to subsidize the new.. The City must do a complete study to determine whether this growth is paying for itself, and if not, appropriate fees and impact charges should be levied to ensure that all of the infrastructure expansion required by the growth is paid for by those who are benefitting from the growth, and money is not siphoned from older central city neighborhoods to subsidize suburban growth..
COMMUNITY RESILIENCE
The problems of crime, drugs, and prostitution which plague our city are directly related to the breakdown of social, moral, and economic systems. The first job of city government is to keep the peace, and Oklahoma City government is not doing this. Those who would violently prey upon their neighbors must be restrained and held accountable for their actions. The City should properly allocate its resources so that issues of community safety - law enforcement and fire protection and emergency responses - are adequately provided with the resources needed.
A city government which can't keep the peace in all neighborhoods of its jurisdiction is a city government that is failing in its duty, and that is the situation right now in Oklahoma City. Our political leaders have squandered and mis-allocated resources and thus the crime situation is practically out of control in some areas of the city. The bread thrift store at NW 9th and Virginia closed in December, for example, because it had been robbed too many times and someone tried to rape a clerk! During that same month, the City Council sent the acting mayor to tour the flesh pots of South America to troll for economic development prospects. What a sad commentary on the priorities of the present city government and their methods of allocating city resources.
The City's response to crime, however, cannot be limited to police alone, because by themselves the police are not able to deal with the entire constellation of problems that are driving the breakdown of law and order in our city. Thus, City government must intervene in an emergency manner to break the crime cycle that is rooted in lack of economic opportunities for young people. For way too many young people, gangs are the best opportunity they can see for their lives, and that is a poor commentary on the social and economic and moral health of Oklahoma City, and the quality of our present political, economic, and religious leadership.
One way to create immediate economic opportunities for at risk young people would be to organize cooperative businesses, that would be owned by the workers - who would be at risk unemployed urban young people. The most practical businesses that can be started involve growing certified organic vegetables on vacant urban lots for direct sales to the public. Much of the expense for this could be covered with grant funds, and ready markets for the products are no available throughout our residential neighborhoods..
There are other issues relating to community resilience that need to be addressed as part of a comprehensive program. Idle hands and minds are the devil's playground. Parks and swimming facilities are inadequate and not open enough hours. Libraries are not open enough hours. Bicycle trails not maintained and are inadequate. False economies can be as dangerous to the city budget as boondoggle expenditures.
ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP
Our grandparents advised us well: waste not, want not. If only Oklahoma City government would heed this advice! Every day the city hauls valuable organic materials to landfills and buries them. Oklahoma City needs a municipal composting system similar to that operated by the city of Norman. There is no real economic incentive for city residents to reduce their garbage, and thus it should be no surprise that the amount of garbage produced by this city is growing every year.
When it rains, Oklahoma City's streets flow with toxic waste, as runoff from over-fertilized, pesticided, and herbicided lawns causes problems all the way downstream and increases city costs for water treatment. It would be illegal for farmers to use fertilizers and herbicides in the concentrations that are typically used on urban lawns, and it is time for City government to do something about the toxic waste in our water runoff.
Oklahomans use energy at rates higher than the national average, and every extra dollar we export for energy is a dollar not available here at home to pay somebody a living wage. Wasting money on excess energy expenditures amounts to making bonfires of hundred dollar bills on our streets. Energy conservation is not only a virtue, it is a vital economic development necessity. The City needs to provide leadership to the community to encourage rational and effective energy conservation activities, and can provide informational resources to help people make wise and frugal choices. The City could organize group purchases of energy conservation materials for homeowners willing to do it themselves.
Air pollution is a growing problem, and an effective public transit system would benefit our environment by lessening the amount of air pollution emitted by vehicles and reducing the amount of fuel we consume getting ourselves around town. Oklahoma City has plenty of track available, already in place. With the use of Union Station, by simply creating passenger loading facilities and getting some rolling stock, Oklahoma City could have a functioning commuter rail system that wouldn't cost anywhere near the inflated estimates presently suggested by influential local politicians.
One line parallels I-40 west of downtown, and with park and ride lots at major intersections could serve the entire western half of the city, including Yukon and El Reno. A second line connects the Will Rogers Airport and FAA center, also Wheatland, Mustang, and Chickasha-Lawton-Altus with downtown. The third line parallels I-235 for the most part, and with park and ride lots could serve the entire area between Guthrie and Norman, and go on to connect in the south with Dallas. Line four serves Dell City, Midwest City, and Tinker Air Force Base, and Line Five goes from downtown past the University medical center to the OKC Zoo, Omniplex, and Remington Park.
But the big problem with this is that Oklahoma City's leadership has signed off on a plan to re-route the I-40 crosstown freeway so that it will go right over Union Station's rail yard, destroying all the intricate connections making a united commuter rail system possible as described above. So much for their vision of the future.
Oklahoma City government must move to immediately protect this important heritage transportation asset and resist the demand of the state and federal government that we pave over the rail yard and thus destroy the heart of a rational and cost effective commuter rail system in Oklahoma City.
Water is another vital resource being squandered virtually by city policy. Present city policy subsidizes big water users and allows them to externalize their costs by passing on the infrastructure development required by our ever growing need for water to the entire community. It is time for Oklahoma City to consider a more rational way of pricing water that would require large users to pay the full costs of their water usage.
The city's trees are a vital resource. There is much that city government could do to encourage planting new trees and protecting existing tree cover. In fact, our entire natural environment is an important resource and asset that should be protected by the city. As we nourish our soils, urban forests and landscaping, we help increase the quality of life for everybody. We can also, by wise use of trees and landscaping in general, reduce energy expenditures and increase property values. Edible landscaping and urban gardening are ways to literally grow money on trees and in back yards. From composting, to water use, to issues involved with using poisonous chemicals on landscapes, City government must protect and conserve.
WHICH WAY FOR OKLAHOMA CITY?
Oklahoma City has endured hard times in the past. There are those who believe we have "turned the corner", that we are on the right track, but we must ask: if this is true, why did the bread store at 9th and Virginia close because of crime? Why do so many of our young people find gangs and crime to be their best option? If our economy is improving, why are so many neighborhoods so economically depressed? If a rising tide is supposed to lift all boats, why is it that only the yachts are rising and the row-boats remain stuck in the mud?
In the future, will we see security, prosperity, and hope for all in this community - or will we continue to look more and more like a Victor Hugo novel? I pray for the former, but given the present attitudes of the economic, political, and religious leadership of Oklahoma City, I fear that we will get the latter. Where there is no vision, the people will indeed perish. Life or death, it will be our choice.
Robert Waldrop
Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House in Oklahoma City
1524 NW 21, 73106
This document is available on the internet at www.oklahomacityrail.org/okcissues.htm , and it may be freely forwarded and reprinted in any communications medium,