Traffic talk, etc.
Oklahoma City Manager Jim Couch joined The Oklahoman’s Steve Lackmeyer and Bill Crum during the weekly OKC Central online chat.
Oklahoma City Manager Jim Couch joined
The Oklahoman’s Steve Lackmeyer and Bill Crum during the weekly OKC Central online chat.
This is an edited version of that conversation.
To see the full transcript, or to participate in next week’s chat, go to NewsOK.com.
Q: Mayor Holt has talked about education being on his priority list. Do you think adding more charter schools downtown and in the Wheeler district (as has often been suggested by the developers and/ or their representatives) is an appropriate usage of resources versus utilizing the Oklahoma City Public Schools already serving the areas (including John Rex)?
Jim Couch: Charter schools have a mixed success story. There have been successful ones and others that have not been successful. That being said, I think we need to pursue any option we can to improve educational opportunities in Oklahoma City. Additional charter schools could be a part of that solution.
Q: I’m worried that the high concentration of street construction is going to start killing businesses. For instance, we decided to go eat at Nic’s the other night. It seemed that every street we turned down had a detour, was blocked off, had lanes narrowed, etc. It was a confusing nightmare. Then we got there and found that there was hardly any parking because most of the street parking in the area was surrounded by cones. When will this all be over?
Jim Couch: Because of the renaissance of downtown Oklahoma City, we’ve redone a number of streets with Project 180 and now we are impacting the streets with construction of the streetcar. The end is near for the streetcar. About 90 percent of the track is down. We anticipate final completion of track by October and start up by December.
The section of the Oklahoma City Boulevard between E.K. Gaylord and Walker hopefully will be done by late summer and will be a big help with traffic.
Q: Does the city manager oversee the parks department? Just asking because a lot of them need new trees, better and more frequent upkeep, and a little refreshing. We also have lots of beautiful wide medians in this city that, more often than not, look very bad, bare and uninviting.
Jim Couch: Yes, the parks department is under me. Maintaining parks and medians is a challenge. We have been successful in other areas in partnering with OKC Beautiful and organizations to maintain areas connected to these areas. We have medians adopted by businesses. We had some challenges this spring with some of our thirdparty contractors. We know we are behind and we are trying to catch up.
Steve Lackmeyer: Is there an opportunity for areas like Quail Springs and Northwest Highway and Meridian Avenue to create a business improvement district like the one downtown to go the extra mile in improving their areas’ appearance?
Jim Couch: It could be. We’ve been working with property owners around Meridian to explore options out there. We’ve been working with the South OKC Chamber to improve the area around I-240. And the best example is the Western Avenue district that is already doing this and more. We have a 621-square-mile city. We have limited resources to maintain it all. The best maintained areas are where businesses and neighborhoods take interest and supplement our efforts.
Q: Bill (Crum) had a story in the paper about the OKC Boathouse Foundation being reimbursed about $760,000 for expenses incurred at the whitewater rafting course. When MAPS 3 was passed 2009, there was a lot of speculation about how operating costs were going to be covered for multiple projects, including the streetcar, park, convention center and the rapids course. Is this a cause for concern?
Jim Couch: Not much has changed from 2009. We anticipated the only two projects that will impact the general fund will be the streetcar and the park. By partnering with the Myriad Gardens Foundation, we’ve minimized the impact the Scissortail Park will have on our operating budget. The streetcar is about where we thought it will be.
It was $3 million-plus when we first looked at it, and now it is $3.9 million.
We are currently not providing any operating subsidies for the event centers, the white water center (only startup reimbursement and operational launch-up costs) or the wellness centers.
Bill Crum: The city has agreements with foundations to operate the Myriad Gardens, Scissortail Park and the Civic Center. Are there others? Is there a limit to how many partnerships the city can form with these organizations?
Jim Couch: Probably yes, there is a limit. But when people have a passion for certain projects, like the ones Bill has mentioned, we try to capitalize those.
Q: Mr. Couch, so excited to have you back! Huge fan! What do you think is the most important topic the city will be tackling in 2019? And would you rate this year’s successes an “A” for our civic leaders or do we still have room to improve?
Jim Couch: Our biggest challenge this next year will be the decision as to whether we go forward with a MAPS 4 program. Mayor Holt is working on that right now. And education. We need to work together. We need to do better.
There are a number of things that have been very positive. Passage of the bond issue and sales in September were positive. That combined with the rebounding economy gives us an opportunity to replace positions we’ve eliminated the past several years, add police and firefighters, and add funding for transportation and infrastructure.