Mayor wants to add 4.3 million dollars to 3rd penny tax proposal for American Airlines

01/20/06 • 5 min

At Thurday's Tulsa City Council Meeting, Mayor LaFortune dropped a corporate welfare bomb during the Mayor's Report portion of meeting. Citizens in attendance were somewhat surprised to actually see the Mayor "in persona" at the meeting. In some circles the Mayor's persistence absence during the so-called Mayor's report has earned LaFortune the title of "No Show Bill," mimicking famed Country and Western's legendary George Jones "No Show Jones" nickname. The Mayor's attendance at the meeting is an excellent indicator that Tulsa's campaign season is in full swing. The Mayor spoke on two items at the meeting - To urge support for the resolution to eliminate substandard housing in Tulsa, and to announce that he is adding $4.3 million dollars to his 3rd penny sales tax proposal. The additional money will be used to build two hangars for American Airlines use. American supposedly needs more space and capacity at it's Tulsa facility with their transition from a cost center to a profit center. I find this ironic timing since earlier on Thursday, the Tulsa World reported that AMR Corp., the parent company of American Airlines had a whopper of a forth quarter loss of $604 million dollars. American attributed higher fuel prices as the major culprit. The airlines has already benefited from Tulsa's corporate welfare with Vision 2025 to the tune of $22 million dollars as well as receiving upgrades in infrastructure from the City of Tulsa. With staggering loses and pressure from competition, I wonder if American Airlines will be Tulsa's next Great Plains Airlines fiasco? A venture that has cost the taxpayers of Tulsa and Oklahoma dearly and continues to "cha ching" us today. I'm interested in your thoughts on the Mayor's announcement. Vol 2 No 2 Tulsa Topics PodCast is linked below with audio of Mayor's report on this item. Give it a quick listen and let me know your take on this proposal. Feel free to comment on this post or send an email to Tulsa Topics. iTunes Tulsa Topics Podcast Page Comments can be made by sending an email at tulsatopics-AT-gmail.com (replace the -AT- with @) or clicking on the graphic directly below.

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Vol 2 No 1 Tulsa Topics PodCast - 01/15/2005

Saturday I attended the Chris Medlock for Mayor campaign rally that was held at Embers. TulsaBloggers.net was well represented with the purveyors of Roemerman on Record and Our Tulsa World in attendance as well. Roemerman on Record has his thoughts about the rally and Our Tulsa World has some pics and thoughts about it too.. My first impression of the campaign rally was that Medlock has assembled a group of highly motivated and capable individuals looking for major change in Tulsa who wholeheartedly believe Medlock is the catalyst to make it happen. Medlock, family, and volunteers are battle hardened after running three successful elections and will use that experience in the mayoral election bid. Vowing a campaign of "ideas and ideals," Medlock and Co. are "ready to go" for the top position in Tulsa. I was able to catch some audio of the meeting and decided to present it here on Tulsa Topics as the first PodCast of the year. iTunes Tulsa Topics Podcast Page Comments can be made by sending an email at tulsatopics-AT-gmail.com (replace the -AT- with @) or clicking on the graphic directly below.

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Vol 2 No 3 Tulsa Topics PodCast

So you have that new 60GB iPod Video that has more settings than a MIT graduate can figure out and more hard disk real estate than you could ever afford to fill. Two websites you might want to look at are GarageBand.com and the PodSafe Music Network. Both offer up some pretty talented hopefuls looking to get their music career kicked off via royalty free distribution of their original music. If I ever get organized, I might just have a Tulsa Topics PodCast that actually combines Music, News, and Interviews. Until that benchmark happens, here's some music from GarageBand.com that was worthy of downloading and producing into the Vol 2 No 3 Tulsa Topics Podcast. I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed producing it. Comments can be made by sending an email at tulsatopics-AT-gmail.com (replace the -AT- with @) or clicking on the graphic directly below.