Bartlett best choice
by Robert McDowell(Editor’s note: This endorsement is from Robert McDowell and not the Tulsa Beacon.)
We have finally come down to the last week of the Tulsa city election. The daily newspaper has issued its editorial endorsements of the candidates and questions, not that they would agree with me. The mayoral campaign has degenerated into a series of radio and TV commercials raising questions of the qualifications of opponents.
Surprisingly, none seem to have involved the independent candidates. Of course, Mr. Lawrence Kirkpatrick seems to have been ignored, possibly because he has not put forth a visible campaign.
Sadly, the two major party candidates have been long on dredging up evidences of prior misconduct or making up outright lies about the other, but very short on the usual promises about how they would conduct themselves in office.
In short, it would be nice to know just what promises each candidate would make in dealing with the massive problems the city faces as the result of the profligate spending on frills and mismanagement of staff during the tenures of the last four or five to occupy the mayor’s office.
Council candidate Jim Mautino has prepared a presentation showing some of the outright misconduct in street design and contract performance in District 6. A drive around the city will quickly show, to the informed engineer, that the problems are not limited to District 6. Space does not allow a complete listing of all of the instances of improper design or construction of streets alone.
This does not include the numbered highways as those are under the control of ODOT (Oklahoma Department of Transportation). One of the most glaring examples of their shortcomings is that section of highway designated I-44, US-412, and SH-66 between the Creek and Rogers Turnpikes and the beginning of I-244 as about 145th East Avenue. Recent stories have indicated that the Cherokee Tribe is contributing land and money to a massive improvement of that road at 193rd East Avenue, which is the exit for the casino (Hard Rock).
Back to the city streets, substantial sums of money have been spent recently on rebuilding some “county roads”, such as 81st and 91st streets without taking out small hills that are safety hazards because they block visibility at intersections or widening to at least three lanes to provide left-turn lanes and better mov ingtraffic. Many, if not most, of these streets, all arterial, have NO shoulders on them but have ditches up to seven feet deep beginning at the edge of the asphalt pavement. This is ridiculous since most of those have all the right-of-way necessary to widen the streets. Nothing has been said about correcting these problems or preventing them in the future.
Evidence of poor engineering that results in actual or potential unsafe situations is demonstrated in Riverside Drive south of 61st Street where the lanes on the outside of the curves are banked (superelevated) to the outside. In one recently completed street job in District 6 on Admiral Boulevard, the whole street is banked to one side, rather than both, and all the drain gutters are on that side of the street.
The street crosses a bridge with three or so boxes where the flow goes in a northwest diagonal way under the street but on the north side the drainage continuesto the Northeast in a channel cut by the construction, instead of where it originally existed.
Despite the unsatisfactory choices, this endorsement goes to Dewey Bartlett.