Council - Regular Meeting

calls meeting order. This meeting Thank you, mayor. So, we have a short presentation tonight and then we'll open it up for questions and and uh and answers. So, I'm going to run through that and we have a copy of the presentation if from Ryan. Did everyone get a copy that wanted a copy?

You want a copy? So, this is a town hall meeting tonight to discuss the hotel motel tax that's being proposed um a week from this coming Tuesday, November 18th for Midwest City citizens. It is um we'll start with I gota which way do I need to point to make this work? It's out of range. There we go.

Okay. Down. Okay. Got it. [crying] [laughter] We got baby Benjamin here tonight to help us along

and that is just fine. So, so starting with we've been doing presentations throughout the community and and uh some articles with the newspapers since September trying to get out to neighborhood associations and and uh and create and have these same really basically the same presentation that you'll get to see tonight. And once again, November 18th is the election date. This doesn't have a ledge. So to start with on the proposed tax and in the current taxes is uh the same way is if you're a Midwest city resident, you are not required to pay the hotel motel tax. So, if you stay in a hotel in in Midwest City, you're exempt from the hotel motel tax. So, this this um ballot issue will not affect anyone that lives in Midwest City as far as being taxed any new taxes or additional taxes. So, I wanted to start with that. So, that's that's in this ballot language. Um we talked about only residents who live in mid have a Midwest city address and is and are registered to vote may vote on the issue. Next part of this is comparing us to the other metro cities. You can see that um Oklahoma City is at 9.25, Moore's at 8%. Norman's at 8%. Edmond just went up and I did not write down what Edmond's percent is. But our propo what we're proposing is to match what Oklahoma City's done. And we also looked at not just the metro area.

We looked at the regional looking at national. I mean if you go to Washington DC you're paying 15.95. New York City is 14.75. LA is 14%. Las Vegas is 13.38%. San Antonio is 17%. So just some national comparisons, this number is is um much less than many of the other large cities around the country. If we if the voters approve this tax, we currently have the 5% tax. It brings in um roughly $600,000. Now, this would bring in an additional $68,000 of new money once again coming from outside residents, outside visitors to Midwest City. the um the split what we're going to do or we're proposing to do with the tax the additional proceeds is 45% of it to go to economic development and 55% to parks and recreation. And I'm going to break into those numbers a little bit more on on uh what we're going to do. And really we can go like I said 4555 and we go to the next. You can see some economic latest economic development projects that we've done. just as an example, we're constantly um working with new business, attracting

new business, and this money will help us to continue to attract new business to Midwest City in various ways, and we can get into that. Most of the ways that we attract new business is through infrastructure. our our goal is to I mean to to have new business you have to have infrastructure in place and that's what a lot of the economic development money goes to but I'll answer any questions in a few minutes about any of the economic development projects we're working on go to the next one so parks has always kind of been kind of left behind funding wise we have a lot of parks in Midwest Does anybody know how many parts we have?

30. Pretty close. 39 or 40.

So, we have we have 35. And I'm not sure counting some of these may get counted twice because where their locations are at, but yeah, 30 35 parks and we continue to add new parks. Mid America Park. We just recently added that was a part of our 2018 geo bond issue. Um we've added the Bill Atinson Park at Soonertown Center. We've added added some really cool pickle ball courts that's uh off of Midwest Boulevard. We have added the MAC, the multi-athletic complex. We have added turf at the Reed baseball facilities. We have added multiple trails to our city. We've added basketball courts to our city. We continue to add basketball courts. We are adding another basketball court at Mid America Park. We have um trail exercise that we've just put in over at Regional Park. We have the skip trail which is near and dear to some people's hearts here that we um have built. All these have been funded by various mechanisms. Not all of them are geo bond. Some of them have have come through other grants from other um other sources. But at the end of the day, we continue to add parks. We add nice parks. It's it's very good for our community. We add trails. our citizens, as we did the last community survey, absolutely love our trails. They want us to continue to invest in our trails and that not everybody likes that in the city, but at the end of the day, I'm just telling you, the the community of Midwest City wants more trails. And it and so why I bring this up because as

I said we bu we have built parks. We have built infrastructure. We have um I think a TR with with that number of parks with the infrastructure that that we have built we have not added any additional funding for maintenance. These parks have all been put in place and there has not been one penny that we have budgeted for maintenance into these parks, any new additional dollars, new funding source. Now, I say that with a little bit of a caveat. I want to be a little careful because the 0415, which was the extension of the sales tax, the 4015 that was paying for the sewer treatment plant, we asked the citizens to to make that um a forever tax. to be used for capital improvements. And 25% of that money was dedicated to parks. So, some of that money, I mean, we did get some money there, but overall it was like um maybe $900,000 a year, which is not even, you know, a pent of what it costs to maintain all these parks. And so, it's really important as we look at our 35 parks, we also have the swimming slide, the Reno swimming slide. it is reaching the end of life period. We're going to have to deal with it. We have um we have a senior center that is that is not really any real dedicated money to that. There's a little bit of dedicated money through some old 123 tax, but it needs a major renovation. We're paying for that renovation out of the general fund because of our commitment to the senior center and but it's a project that's over way over budget right now. So, we're asking for some grant money to come up to help um help with that project.

So, as you can see, I mean, it is a it is a a very large number of maintenance that that we really need the uh this money to be used for. So 600 roughly $68,000 of that will go to uh help with the parks and help with help with maintenance of the parks. And I think that's an important important uh point to to talk about through here as this slide talks about the the um ongoing updates and upkeep. And then um on economic development, economic development has some funding, but at the end of the day, it is um it's based on how much whether there's money sent to economic development from the hospital authority. It's not dedicated to economic development, but it it is it's established to help us with economic development. We have um we received some of the money for the rents on Soonertown Center. So remember, we own the land at Soonertown Center. The buildings are owned by Sooner Investments. Target owns their own building, but at the end of the day, they they um the the share they pay the rent. we get after all the maintenance of the facility, all the upkeep, we get half the rent and we put that into our 353 account, which is the economic development account. So, there's a little bit of money over there, but this will this will um this will give us another couple hundred,000 towards economic development. Oops.

I I don't I think that the economic development side of things is is um something I would kind of like to point out. I I let Robert um Coleman go home early tonight. is, but he is an amazing economic development director for our city. Everybody that knows Robert knows what he brings to the table. And we have really taken, I think, under really after this council's administration and and Matt and and Pat being here as long as they have, we've really taken a much different approach to economic development maybe than the city did in the past. and we really have focused on doing projects that when you see things that are coming to Midwest City and you think there's incentives involved. When we do incentives, we we don't just hand out the taxpayer dollar just for anybody to come in and I want to set up whatever business it is. It's not really how it works here. Some cities do tax rebates, sales tax rebates. We do not do that here because 62% of our sales tax dollars are dedicated to police and fire. So you can't really rebate sales tax like more doesn't do any tax increment financing and they don't do the rebates like we do rebates. So, our rebates are are incentivized rebates on based on performance, based on labor, how much they pay for their jobs, how many people they have working for them, what they're what they're going to generate for our community, and we usually do that via land. That's our traditional way of doing that. So, it's a really huge difference than a lot of other cities do that, but it's something that we don't talk a lot about, but I really think with with Robert and with our council, we have been, I think, very successful in continuing to promote

economic development in our city. We're very excited about 29th and Douglas, which will be a development that'll be coming out of the ground soon. We're excited about um some of the infills around town that we continue to see. center town center. We're getting Montana mics will be opening soon. There's more business coming in over there. So, it is we live in a in a time where you know capital investment has been very difficult for the last few years. You just don't see a lot and that the internet sales has tremendous impact on brick and mortar. So, we we have been very very strategic in how we've done economic development in this city. And I'm not going to spend a ton of time on that. I'll answer any questions, but if anyone and anyone that's on the television that's watching tonight would like to ask questions of Robert and I, we're always um you're always welcome to set an appointment with us and and discuss these things. But I just want you to know we we are we try to be very good stewards of your money. And we live most of us live here. Not all of us do, but most of us live here. We don't live here like Dawn. We we shop here. So, um it is it is our money, too. It's an investment in this community. And um you know, we we try to uh we try to stretch every dollar that we can here. But we are in a position now where our our hotel motel tax is really low. And I don't really believe I've my former job I traveled a lot. And I can tell you I never I never looked to see what the mo hotel motel tax was to determine if I was going to go rent a room somewhere. It was based on where I want I needed to be that night. So, I

really um think this is an opportunity for our city and it's not going to cost any of our taxpayers additional dollars and we will use this money very wisely and for the benefit in the of Midwest City. So, with that um and before before I forget because I'm old and I'm blonde and it's a bad combination. So, I I want to thank the staff. There's been a lot of work done on this. Josh and Ryan uh rushing Um, and Josh Ryan, who's our communications marketing director. Ryan's our director of operations, have done a lot of work on this project. So, they've been out in the community doing presentations. I think Bon's done some presentations, too. So, I just want to personally thank these guys for the work and they've they've made this sales tax or this hotel motel tax um much easier on me in the past. Matt, I mean, this council, I mean, we've done I don't know how many presentations over the years for sales tax, for for geo bonds and and uh so uh anyway, so I'm I'm thankful, personally thankful for those guys. Okay, with that, we are here to answer your questions. So, anybody have let's just

All right. First, let me let me just preface and say that I'm total support. You guys have done a great job targeting what to be targeted, finding the needs to potentially supplement and proponent. That being said, I live over deterioration over there and so economic development is great. It's already earmarked. We also need to take a look at existing offices code enforcement. Thank you. Uh things of that nature to make sure that we're keeping our tax base up to speed. so that we are attractive to new businesses coming in. So ask you put that on your radar later on down the road. Um had another point. Oh,

social media. I saw it on social media, so it must be true, right? Yeah, I can tell you that's not right. But yeah, one of the things [laughter] that that I saw on was opposition to this measure because the poor airman out of Tinker was going to cost them money. And without getting argumentative, if I come out and I said, you know, I'm retired military. They file their travel vouchers. They get reimbursed for anything. Yeah. They they they are exempt. They've always been exempt. Yeah. So, they're exempt all over the country. I I think some of our citizenry don't understand that. So,

okay. Well, that's something we'll we'll definitely get out. Josh can get out. Appreciate you letting us know that because we'll we'll address that because that's definitely not accurate. And one thing I do want to say also, and I I skipped this on my notes, is we are currently under we're working on a parks master plan. And the parks master plan will go through and look at all these parks and determine kind of what the needs are of the park, identify pretty much kind of what they estimate the costs going to be, and they're going to prioritize those needs. You know, things like uh we have budgeted quite a bit of money, and I'll I know that I was probably going to get this question from Glenn, but the regional park playground, there was there's people in the room here that our own hands built that playground. That was a community-built playground. I know exactly the piece of equipment that I built right over there, which is really pretty cool back in the day. But that thing is 24 years old, maybe 23, 24 years old, and it is needs replaced. We have been budgeting money. Once again, we don't have a lot of money to discover. That's going to be probably millions of dollars to replace that playground and bring it up to standards where it needs to be, make it ADA accessible and do the things that we need to do with that playground. So, this will really help us. We We are already starting phase one. Josh is doing that who's in charge of parks and recreation as well. We're starting work on phase one. I've budgeted with a council approval roughly a million dollars for that project and that's probably not going to touch it, but we're at least going to get that started because that playground is an eyesore and uh you know taking I've taken little kids over there and watch them go play and I'm like holy cow I I don't like it because the kids disappear and you can't find them, you can't see them and it's

just way behind times. It served a great a great um as a great park for many years, but it's time time for it to change. But anyway, those are the kind of things that we'll use the money for, but we want to do a master plan so that we can prioritize those things and help us identify what the costs are going to be because it's it's going to be a big number. We can't do all this overnight. Jim, can I say something about economic development?

Absolutely. I'm sure most everybody in this room realizes that our our budget, the funds that we get, probably 99% of it is based off sales tax. We don't get anything off the adalorum. The schools do that's where they get their money from. Ours is on sales tax and one of the best ways to generate sales tax is to get businesses in the city to sp to come into the city that are sales tax generating. We are competing with Shaune, Chalkaw, Eastern Oklahoma County for bringing in businesses even if the restaurants whatever it is the homegoods store and we have to spend money to make money because if we don't dedicate money to the economic development process in Midwest City, Midwest City will dry up because that's where we get 99 98% of our money's comes from sales tax generated. We don't get anything off the property taxes. Oklahoma is the only state in the United States that doesn't get the cities don't get revenue from the property tax. We get zero from it. So economic development is critical for us to survive so that we can generate sales tax. The hotel motel tax is coming at a great time because here in the next two years, I think 28, the Olympics are coming. They're coming to Oklahoma City and if you listen to how Oklahoma City's pushing it, they're asking for they're telling people the hotel rooms are going to be full from here to Dallas and then east and west. As far as we know, there's going to be a lot of people coming into town. We need to take advantage of that because right now one of the biggest generator of uh economic development is also sports uh

sports tourism.

Sports tourism. We have the MAC on 29th Street and there's some other things that are fixing to happen. We're going to have a lot of people come into this town to go to the MAC. In fact, Josh can tell you that he's turning people away. That's such a good good place for them to play. And they're going to build more fields there, which will mean there's more people coming in there, which means the people that are the restaurants on Douglas Boulevard are they have to put more people on to work when the tournaments are in town. So that's more sales tax, but we won't get any of that if we're not out in the community, if we're not out nationally trying to get businesses to relocate or build or expand in Midwest City. And Tim brought up Robert Coleman. The man doesn't there's no way we can pay him what he's worth, what he's done for this city. And he's constantly out trying to get people to move their businesses into Midwest City. And we need them because that's how we survive. If we if we didn't have the sales tax, Midwest City would dry up and we won't get the sales tax if we don't have economic development. And he mentioned the survey. One of the big things on the survey was quality of life. People want to be able to take their families to places like parks and that's been identified as critical issues in Midwest City, the parks and the economic development. And this is an opportunity for us to get some funds generated without taxing the citizens of Midwest City. And I guarantee you there isn't anybody in this room and you can ask them when they go, like you said, you go to stay in a hotel in a different city, you don't look at what the tax is, the hotel motel tax. You're looking at the quality of the hotel. And we have some quality hotels in Midwest City. And we think we we need to be able to support the the city and this is one way we can do it by increasing it and not

taxing because if you do a bond you're taxing people off that's going to the property owners. You do a sales tax a lot of that's going towards the people that the town that they live in. This will never tax the people of Midwest City.

I think it's important and and I kind of glossed over this a little bit. the cost of of the MAC and the maintenance of the MAC and the cost of the synthetic fields at the Reed Baseball Park. Right now, they're in really good condition and we have tremendous tournament play there. I think uh we have determined Robert um Coleman did some research that we are averaging. So when we have when he has a weekend tournament Josh Ryan when they have a weekend tournament at the MAC or Reed baseball that an average an average of people come from five different states to Midwest City. Five different states. these these traveling teams, these premier leagues, I don't know whatever they call them, all these things. They didn't exist when I was a kid. You practice started, you played, it was over, and you went, you know, on your merry way. Now they're 12 months out of the year, you know. I mean, it's amazing the soccer, the softball, the baseball, I mean, all the different the different sports. and and we and we have done our staff has done a tremendous job attracting these tournaments and and we really at a point where we've oversaturated our fields. So, we're adding three additional fields. We're going to pay for that out of the hospital authority money, some of the compounded um interest, but we're going to make that investment especially before the Olympics get here. But we have become a sports tourism town. our facilities and we add three additional fields to the multi-athletic purpose complex down by 29th in Douglas. We're going to may have the nicest facilities in Oklahoma. I don't know of anybody that's really any better. You might you you're more familiar, but

we have one competitor.

We only have one competitor. Well, that's better than having 10 or 20 or 200. So, it's uh it's been really good to us. and where we're situated on I40 in central Oklahoma. We are really we are really fortunate and we need to we need to seize the moment because this city ever since I've been here has looked for something. They've looked for this bright light of how do you get people to Midwest City. You know, we don't have a huge museum. We don't have this. We don't I mean it's just hard to attract people here. And I think you know who will be one of the biggest bene beneficiaries? the hotels will be a huge beneficiary as we add additional fields, more people here because we can offer much larger tournaments than we have now. So, I think that we've found a niche and we really need to seize the moment and and we're working hard to get to get there as quick as we can. And I think Von, you're thinking the fields are going to be you gave me the Gant chart, but I can't remember the end date, the critical path.

Spring of 27. Spring of 27 will be open with the three new fields. So, we're in the pro engineering process now. All right. What up? Yes, ma'am. have I'm sure you have, but you didn't mention it tonight. The negative part of the increase of this hotel tax as far as tourism. I know you both said you don't pay attention to the tax when you get in a hotel, but I know I look at the total what that room's going to cost me before I choose a hotel.

Um, but when people come into the hotels here, they spend money at our restaurants. They buy things here. So it looked like that we would be supporting our hotel businesses more to keep our taxes lower than the cities around us so that people would our rooms could be less in price and bring more people in.

Yeah. I mean you you can certainly make that argument. I really think it's a chicken and the egg. I mean you have to if you don't have nice facilities and if you don't maintain those facilities, they're not going to come and set in the hotels on a weekend. They're going to set over there empty, which I mean our weekend business has not been great in this town for a long time. I mean, everybody fights over trying to get the tinker tinker, whatever they call it, the weekend duty stuff. But it is, it is something that these park facilities, these especially the sports facilities are going to help drive and that money will I mean that that that additional whatever four 4.25% 25% will will um most of it will go towards that.

Why uh you're talking about the parks um aiding repair and everything. Why are the neighborhoods around these parks that are using the parks? Why are they not helping with this? There should be a way to involve them and they'll be more concerned with their parks and take better care of them. There there are areas where people do help take care of the parks. the skip trail that um one of our employees sitting right behind you. I mean they maintain the skip. I mean does the city do anything over there?

Yeah. I mean it's taken care of by the users. There's a an association they've created. You know it they're public parks. It's a quality of life issue in in a great way. It is one of our responsibilities as a city is to help maintain those parks. Tulsa, you know, back in the downturn, you saw Tulsa abandoned doing maintenance in the parks and they asked the citizens to maintain their parks and it didn't. I mean, at the end of the day, they may have mowed it once and then it was knee high grass everywhere you went in the city of Tulsa. So, you know, they're just I don't I don't disagree with you. you know, more that we can facilitate people in the neighborhoods helping take care of the parks. Heck, if they would just if they would just keep if they would just keep the parks from being vandalized, it would be a biggest blessing other than we'll take care of them if you'll keep people from vandalizing them. I'll just say it. I'll just be straight up. I have to I have to give public works and the people that have shown up for our cleanup days a lot of kudos because we're seeing Yeah. We're seeing neighbors

get more engaged with that every single year. Even more neighbors come out. We try to cover that as much as we can to get the word out about the people that are that are that are are going out there. And one of the gentlemen that I'm talking about is actually sitting right there that stomp the parks every single day and actually pick up trash getting engaged with it. Um, one of the outreach u one of the one of the neighborhoods uh right across from Carl Albert has recently reached out to us and in preparation for the parks parks master plan asked me some questions about what do we do about getting prepared for this? What do we do if we want to be at the top of your list whenever the park's master plan comes around? Well, I said, "Well, you got to organize. You start start doing some fundraising. It's going to be hard for us to go out there and look at that park and say, "Hey, there's there's actually some equipment that we need some help with, some funding, and maybe you could you could do some piece of it that the that the neighborhood actually, you know, engages with and says, "Hey, that's ours." And then even more people in the neighborhood are going, "We're actually going to help take care of that." And and I I really appreciated that neighborhood reaching out to us and doing that. And as far as I know, they they've actually been trying to do some fundraising for about eight months. They contacted neighborhood initiative over at Code Enforce or over at Neighborhood Services and got that started. So, it's it's it's partnerships like that that we're going to be looking for in the parks master plan.

What else? Anybody else? No, I just and it just seems like we're penalizing the hotel motel business instead of helping them to be if we could keep them lower than other towns, I think it would help all of New York City because it would bring more people here. So, that's the trouble. I think that's what troubles me the most. It seems like we're picking on some businesses to help other parts. Ma'am, I'm gonna Ma'am, I would be I would feel like the city was not supporting my business.

Ma'am, I I'm gonna respectfully disagree with you on that because in reality, we are helping the hotels and motel. We're helping them by the MAC. I can't I don't know how many nights over a period of a year, but I I know for a fact a couple of months ago, they had a tournament that came into this city that uh Special Olympics tournament where people came from across the country and they filled up that hotel over there over there on Sooner Road close to I guess the the Reed Reed Center by us providing the sports complex the MAC in the Reed ballpark were bringing people into the city for tournaments. Now those people if we didn't have the tournaments there'd be vacant nights in the hotels. So I disagree with you that we're hurting the hotels because we're actually encou we're bringing people into the city to go to those places. So much so, like I said earlier, the restaurants on or the food places on Douglas Boulevard are putting more staff on on the days that there's tournaments because there's that many people that are coming to eat there. So, if there's that many people, then there's that many more hotel nights that people are using up. So, I I I understand where you're coming from, but we're not hurting them. We're getting them more business in my opinion.

Sarah I just wanted to recognize a few things. Um, the city of Midwest City actually has the highest sales tax uh in the metro area. That decision was not made by this council independently, but rather the voters of this city who statistically have one of the lower household income ratios um chose to do. It was a decision by the voters throughout the city to maintain that rate. I believe that decision was partially made because residents who have lived here for periods of time have recognized our city is aging and hardworking residents in Midwest City decided to further invest in the infrastructure that needs updates and maintenance. Um, as a resident, I will forever be grateful for that decision on behalf of many of the taxpayers in this city because that funding is necessary for us to update many things. And furthermore, just as a matter of context, um, aside from that sales tax, there was also an increase to the utilities throughout the city. So again, the residents in this city [clears throat] paying and investing more to maintain the city. The hotel motel tax in comparison to our surrounding neighborhoods has really not been increased for quite a bit.

Yeah. Many years.

As far as targeting any particular business, I I I assume you haven't talked to some of the developers who felt that because they also saw an increase um home builders in this city. So, as inflation and the cost of living and everything has gone up and as we need to make sure we have adequate and appropriate funding to continue to develop our city and maintain the aging infrastructure, we have to look at other avenues because we cannot continue to ask the taxpayers in this city to foot everything and what the residents have built here uh from their pockets. We have individuals that are coming here for tourism, whether it's for the base or for sports. Um, they're getting to utilize what we've built, right? And so all we're asking for is for them to pay the fair share that people in Oklahoma City would have to pay. And my assumption is we're staying competitive in the sense that we're not increasing it any more than what Oklahoma City is charging. Is it's equivalent to what they're raising. Aside from that, I and and I respectfully hear your concern. However, I I doubt that we are going to see a decrease in the foot traffic. Um I think the investment in the economic development and parks and recreation and other things will actually further draw more um tourists to our city. The other thing I wanted to note is um Mr. Coleman, I don't know if he's here and anyone and everyone else that was involved in it. I am a connoisseur of the homegoods. I am so proud. Um I actually got to visit that. Probably the best homegoods that is in Oklahoma as far as the spacing. Um that is one building and one business that is going to attract people from the eastern parts to our city. Um so thank you for that. And then on behalf of the infants and the toddlers

[laughter]

um in in regards to the parks, the infant uh swings, some of our parks like don't have them and some will only have one and so you have infants and toddlers waiting in line to utilize those so we could get two per park. We putting in a word for them. Thank you so much. And so that everybody knows too, you want to expl Well, this parks and trails master plan that's being done, it's being done by a company that that's what they do. And this council has agreed to not play politics with that. We're not going to go well, you know, we're going to go off of what these people say the need is the most. And we've agreed that we're going to as best we can stay to what the they say espec like what Sarah just said we need more if that's the number one priority. They need little kids swings. That's what we're going to that's what we're going to fund. You know we're not going into this at my ward her ward another ward. We're going to go in what is the biggest need for the people and the residents of the city and that's what's going to get funded. Is that not an accurate statement? No, that's that's exactly right. And we've done that with all our studies, all our master studies that we we're working on. And we we'll have a new one coming in at the next council meeting. The water master plan will come in. All right. Any other questions? If not, thank you guys for coming tonight. We staff's up here if you want to come up and ask any personal questions.

Thank you guys.