its so easy for people to say ‘well its like this everywhere’. i dont think so, not like its getting to be here. ya ya, there is corruption in the administration in most, if not all, cities. but here there is some very old oil money running the show, and running this town into the ground. but im sure theres more to it than that. texas has old oil money too, a lot of it. but their major towns and cities are not experiencing the kind of problems we are here.
for starters, tulsa is in serious debt. businesses dont move here, because its not a good place to have a business. some of the major retailers have moved away. someone ran off with most of the money earmarked for road repair – a job direly needed because our roads are so terrible. roads that are built with the cheapest possible material, which doesnt hold up under use and weather changes. kansas has the same road use and weather changes we do here, yet their roads are ten times better. the stuff they use to fill and repair pothole craters is this grainy asphalt stuff that does adhere to the existing road material, and becomes a bigger hole in no time. so the repairs go on and on and on. again and again and again. in spite of the debt, the previous mayor did little else in her term than have a new city hall built that wasnt needed. http://www.batesline.com/archives/2010/01/new-city-hall-and-the-budget-cri.html it was a crazy thing to do. just another idiot in the long succession of idiots running this town.
another thing thats hurting this town is the fact that tulsa was already about 100 officers short in the ratio of police to population, and friday 155 more were given pink slips. they have till next friday. im thankful the firefighters didnt get it as well after all. still, however i felt about the tulsa police department as a whole, i still think this was the worst thing they could do. city hall workers werent asked to take much of a cut in pay, and i already posted on how i feel about that. jeez! what a bunch of fat lazy bastards! yet they ask a much deeper pay cut of the people who are supposed to protect the people, which the police union refused, taking the job loss instead. so now, most officers hired since 2005 are gone. the detectives and desk workers are now out in their cars. the sheriffs, who are not unionized, and are paid less already, are going to be working in town. the other really sad thing was how the mayor and his sidekick asked for the resignation of the chief of police. who, by the way, found out about it from a newsman asking him how he felt about being asked to step down. the mayor, when asked why, just said ‘its a private matter’. how is it a private matter?
its going to get really interesting around here in the coming days.