Author Archives: Admin

Public Forum On Tulsa Parks Master Plan Slated

Staff Reports

altThe public will have a chance to comment on the Tulsa Parks Master Plan during a meeting Tuesday, Sept. 29.

The forum will be from 6 – 7:30 p.m. at Central Center at Centennial Park, 1028 E. 6th St.

“Our parks and green spaces contribute greatly to the quality of life in Tulsa,” said Mayor Kathy Taylor. “This is your chance to talk about what you would like to see, both in your neighborhood park and in parks throughout Tulsa, as well as to comment on the developing Parks and Recreation Master Plan.”

The meeting will include feedback and input from the public. There also will be a brief update on the current Master Plan status and highlights. Information will be collected by  Pat Treadway, retired director of the City of Tulsa Planning Department and now working with Land Legacy.

GreenPlay LLC, the consulting firm hired with private dollars to create the plan for the city, presented the results of preliminary research for the Master Plan at a similar forum in July. Research included focus groups, user groups, and community surveys accessed via mail and on-line.

Members of the Core Project Team for the Parks Master Plan include: Chair Margie Warren and Co-chair Jamie Zink; Susan Neal, Director of Community Development and Education, City of Tulsa; Dale McNamara, Chairperson, City of Tulsa Recreation and Park Board; Lucy Dolman, interim Director of  the Park and Recreation Department; Phil Lakin; and Pat Treadway.

Tidy Up With Taylor This Saturday

Staff Reports

Mayor Kathy Taylor is hosting a "Tidy Up Tulsa With Taylor" this Saturday from 8-11 a.m.

Sponsored by the city, the Metropolitan Environmental Trust and the Tulsa Beautification Foundation, the event will be staged at the Green Country Event Center, 31st St. between Garnett and 129th .

 Sign-ins for volunteers and neighborhood associations will begin at 8 a.m.

“Saturday is the day to help tidy up our city– much like our 60 minute makeovers, let’s work together to Tidy up Tulsa,” Taylor said.  

Participants will assemble at the Green Country Event Center, then either clean up at that site or pick up bags and gloves to go into another location. The other staging areas in the Tulsa area are:

·    Tulsa Tech North Campus, 3820 N. Peoria
·    Reed Park, 4233 S. Yukon
·    Fred Johnson Park, 6002 S. Riverside

Neighborhood Associations who want to participate in the Tidy Up Tulsa with Taylor event in their neighborhood can register with the city’s Working in Neighborhoods Department at neighborhoods@cityoftulsa.org. More information for this event can be found at www.metrecyle.com.

Analysis: Oklahoma’s Budget Problems Are Worse Than You Think

Patrick B. McGuigan, Capitol Editor

altI have friends who suffer from drug or alcohol addiction and others who, when untreated, manifest dreadful misbehavior rooted in mental disease. Those who effectively grapple with such issues tell me repeatedly the verity of an old expression that lies at the heart of recovery philosophies: The first thing is you have to admit you have a problem.

The American states, including Oklahoma, have a problem. The current budget and appropriations crises for state and local governments are the result. In sum, we are spending more than we take in, and planning to spend even more based on assumptions that used to work, but don’t any more.

In September, state Treasurer Scott Meacham ordered, for the second consecutive month, a five percent budget cut for state agencies because of declining revenues. Lumped together, all categories of state revenues are down about 31.6 percent in the past year.

The bad news gets worse: To meet government spending goals the last few months, we’ve robbed Peter to pay Paul. The state has shifted some $130 million from agency reserves. By June 30, 2010, by law, all that money must be paid back. To be sure, if we hadn’t robbed Peter to pay Paul, last month’s cuts would have amounted to 20 percent rather than five percent. To be clear: the reserve funds “claw back” is more than half the $223.7 million maximum that can be used this cycle from the approximately $600 million in the Rainy Day Fund.

When the Legislature returns in February for their regular session (or in a fall special session), the Rainy Day Fund may be used to cover some gaps and government will limp along somehow. Stopgap steps can ease, but not entirely counter, the revenue crunch.

In a recent interview, Mr. Meacham outlined to me the process unfolding in our government. “The first response is the simplest, and that is to not fill positions that become vacant due to attrition. The next is to offer early retirement options to some employees. We’re already seeing that … at the Department of Corrections and other agencies. Then comes furloughs, mandated time off without pay. That is the controllable expense, the fastest way to get savings without permanent staffing cuts.”

These first steps are prudential, even essential, but permanent staffing cuts are the only way to get ahead of this curve. Yet, most state agency managers are assuming that eventually the revenue stream will return. The problem is that it almost certainly will not.

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels drew national attention with a September 3 Wall Street Journal column in which he revealed his state will have less money to spend in 2011 than it had in 2007–and that the same problem faces every other American state government and most local governments. His assessment has quickly become conventional wisdom among most conservative, and some liberal, economists and forecasters.

My interviews with state fiscal analysts have revealed a new expectation that Oklahoma government will have lower revenue in 2012 than in 2009. Please take the time to read that sentence again. Economists are beginning to refer to the combination of revenue shortfalls in 2011-12 and inflation fueled by unprecedented federal deficit spending as “the cliff.”

In public, few state officials are talking bluntly about the absurdity of Oklahoma’s government employment growth in the midst of a recession. Bureau of Labor Statistics data reveal that Oklahoma’s private sector has shed more than 36,000 jobs during this recession, while Oklahoma’s state and local governments have added 8,600 jobs.

And of course only a few address the fiscal dysfunction of “holding harmless” more than half of all spending, i.e., public education.

But wait, that’s not all: Knowledgeable state fiscal analysts have told me the Oklahoma Teachers Retirement System, already one of the most unsound public retirement funds in the world, will go “cash negative” in 2019.

The only way to address these issues is to address them–to actually link economic conditions to public-sector employment, rather than trying to force the economy to fit the rose-colored scenarios like those at the Department of Transportation where across-the-board pay raises were awarded just a few weeks ago.

If Oklahoma ignores its fiscal addictions, we will drive off “the cliff,” and the result will not be pretty.

Other than all this, you’re doing fine, Oklahoma.

Have a nice day.

Radar Map Of Buried Mars Layers Matches Climate Cycle

NASA

PASADENA, Calif. — New, three-dimensional imaging of Martian north-polar ice layers by a radar instrument on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is consistent with theoretical models of Martian climate swings during the past few million years.

Alignment of the layering patterns with the modeled climate cycles provides insight about how the layers accumulated. These ice-rich, layered deposits cover an area one-third larger than Texas and form a stack up to 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) thick atop a basal deposit with additional ice.

"Contrast in electrical properties between layers is what provides the reflectivity we observe with the radar," said Nathaniel Putzig of Southwest Research Institute, Boulder, Colo., a member of the science team for the Shallow Radar instrument on the orbiter. "The pattern of reflectivity tells us about the pattern of material variations within the layers."

Earlier radar observations indicated that the Martian north-polar layered deposits are mostly ice. Radar contrasts between different layers in the deposits are interpreted as differences in the concentration of rock material, in the form of dust, mixed with the ice. These deposits on Mars hold about one-third as much water as Earth’s Greenland ice sheet.

Putzig and nine co-authors report findings from 358 radar observations in a paper accepted for publication by the journal Icarus and currently available online.

 Their radar results provide a cross-sectional view of the north-polar layered deposits of Mars, showing that high-reflectivity zones, with multiple contrasting layers, alternate with more-homogenous zones of lower reflectivity. Patterns of how these two types of zones alternate can be correlated to models of how changes in Mars’ tilt on its axis have produced changes in the planet’s climate in the past 4 million years or so, but only if some possibilities for how the layers form are ruled out.

"We’re not doing the climate modeling here; we are comparing others’ modeling results to what we observe with the radar, and using that comparison to constrain the possible explanations for how the layers form," Putzig said.

 The most recent 300,000 years of Martian history are a period of less dramatic swings in the planet’s tilt than during the preceding 600,000 years. Since the top zone of the north-polar layered deposits — the most recently deposited portion — is strongly radar-reflective, the researchers propose that such sections of high-contrast layering correspond to periods of relatively small swings in the planet’s tilt.

They also propose a mechanism for how those contrasting layers would form.  The observed pattern does not fit well with an earlier interpretation that the dustier layers in those zones are formed during high-tilt periods when sunshine on the polar region sublimates some of the top layer’s ice and concentrates the dust left behind. Rather, it fits an alternative interpretation that the dustier layers are simply deposited during periods when the atmosphere is dustier.

 The new radar mapping of the extent and depth of five stacked units in the north-polar layered deposits reveals that the geographical center of ice deposition probably shifted by 400 kilometers (250 miles) or more at least once during the past few million years.

 "The radar has been giving us spectacular results," said Jeffrey Plaut of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., a co-author of the paper. "We have mapped continuous underground layers in three dimensions across a vast area."

The Italian Space Agency operates the Shallow Radar instrument, which it provided for NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.  The orbiter has been studying Mars with six advanced instruments since 2006. It has returned more data from the planet than all other past and current missions to Mars combined. For more information about the mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/mro .

  

Former Sotomayor Clerk To Speak At TU

Staff Reports

altA former clerk to new U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor will recount his experiences with the justice and discuss the upcoming court session in an October lecture.

An associate professor of law at The University of Tulsa College of Law, Dr. Robert Spoo‘s speech is entitled, "The Newest of the Nine: The Honorable Justice Sonia Sotomayor."

The lecture is at 6 p.m. Oct. 5, the first day of the new U.S. Supreme Court session. It will be held in the Price & Turpin Courtroom in John Rogers Hall, 3120 e. 4th St. This is the second installment of the law school’s Faculty and Alumni Showcase Series.

After receiving his J.D. from Yale Law School, Spoo clerked for Sotomayor at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit during 2001-2002.

“Working with Justice Sotomayor was a great experience,” Spoo said. “She takes the law very seriously and demands excellence from those working with her and arguing before her. She is also extremely accessible and eager to help others learn.”

Spoo joined the TU College of Law faculty in 2008. His legal scholarship has appeared or is forthcoming in the Yale Law Journal, the UCLA Law Review, and other publications. Spoo is a member of the Modernist Studies Association Task Force on Fair Use, serves as copyright advisor to numerous academic journals and projects, and acts as general counsel for the International James Joyce Foundation.

 Prior to his legal career, Spoo received his M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Princeton University and taught for more than ten years as a tenured faculty member in the English Department at The University of Tulsa. He was editor of the James Joyce Quarterly and has published numerous books and articles on James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and other modern literary figures.