Stan Geiger

Welcome to the Grand Arena

I got this thing in the mail a while back: the ‘Tulsa County Projects Report.’ It’s a glossy piece of government propaganda, produced and sent forth at taxpayer expense. Here we see yet another good example of your tax dollars at work.

The publication discusses many projects funded by 4 to Fix and Vision 2025 sales tax money. It lists an expenditure of $188.8 million for construction of the BOK Center, and it contains an article bragging the center has gained “worldwide fame.”

The arena has, indeed, done well to this point. That was to be expected. It’s new and state-of-the-art. The arena has, according to reports, paid for itself up until now---operationally speaking. But then there’s the issue of the $188.8 million plus interest spent to build it. Paying for itself operationally isn’t quite good enough, is it?

One of the points used to sell the arena to voters was the one about all the money the arena would pull in from outside. Some questioned the wisdom of spending so much money to build an arena when there were so many other needs---like the needs for more cops and street repairs. The comeback from the “leaders” was the arena would create the money for such needs through its ability to draw money in from outside. We would, in other words, get more cops and better streets and we wouldn’t even have to pay for them if we built the arena first. Outsiders would pay.

That was the story then. Nowadays, we get a different proclamation.

In the article proclaiming the arena’s “worldwide fame,” a Bruce Springsteen concert is noted. The article uses that concert to tout the ability of acts to sell tickets locally, stating “only 6 percent of ticket buyers [for the Springsteen concert] came from Oklahoma City.”

If Bruce Springsteen can’t sell tickets to our nearby neighbors in the biggest metro area in the state, I reckon it can be assumed that no act is drawing much in the way of outsiders. Locals are buying the tickets.

The article says the arena is managed by an outside entity. The acts, of course, come from outside. The money that flows into the arena, however, comes from inside. That means our fabulous arena acts as a conduit for shipping large sums of money out of our local economy rather than drawing large sums of money into it.

Since the opening of the grand arena, the city’s budget has suffered. We have added no cops. A half-a-billion-dollar property tax increase has been installed to address street needs.

Politicians lie, folks. They lie a lot. People that have something to gain from a massive expenditure of tax money lie. They lie a lot. File those points in the back of your brain somewhere and recall them when the next great tax initiative that promises prosperity for all makes it onto a ballot.

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