City of Norman Should Acknowledge Conflicts-of-Interest and Pledge to Serve the Public
And Stop Negotiating with Terrorists
If you didn’t get a chance to attend or watch the livestream of the Study Session the City of Norman Council Members and Staff had on Tuesday July 30th to facilitate a “discussion regarding the City of Norman’s infrastructure needs related to the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority’s Access program,” I encourage you to do so.
You won’t understand the forces we are up against until you do. But just be prepared.
You might find yourself yelling at the screen.
It is exceptionally obvious to even those who haven’t been waging this war for the last 2.5 years that members of the the CoN staff have been captured with the promises of something of value. There is no other explanation for their behavior.
These promises may include a lucrative private consulting gig within a company on the OTA payroll after pushing the OTA’s ACCESS program through the City’s channels. I mean - that’s what Shawn O’Leary cashed in on earlier this year after he sold out the citizenry by not telling the City about the turnpike plans back in 2021… oh… and his SON, Colin O’Leary, works for POE and ASSOCIATES TOO!! Don’t tell me that Shawn didn’t know about the turnpike plans way before the public announcement.
And that’s certainly how Interim Public Works Director, Mr. Scott Sturtz was acting Tuesday night. Mr. Scott Sturtz was the City Engineer working underneath Shawn O’Leary for years. He knew. He was being groomed.
Did anyone else think that Interim Public Works Director, Mr. Scott Sturtz, was acting like an OTA shill with the way he was presenting the information to the Council? I logged on late and for the first two minutes I watched the presentation, I thought Mr. Sturtz was an OTA spokesperson from the enthusiastic way he was describing the 7,000 foot long Canadian River Bridge span and the 5-level stacked Indian Hills Interchange… all in a City of 130,000 people. He was drooling.
The G.W. Bush Turnpike is one of the worst places on earth. It is full of noise and air pollution. The kids that are forced to live near these places get asthma and micro plastics in their blood. Dallas has no plan to maintain these interchanges. It makes their city poor, and is one of the many reasons why they have said repeatedly that they are broke. Dallas’ development pattern is insolvent.
After completing an extensive research project looking at urban infrastructure in four major cities across the country (New York, LA, Chicago and Dallas), SMU Civil and Environmental Engineering Professor Barbara Minsker noted that
“Dallas has the worst infrastructure of all of them.”
…And engineers view this as progress? … and the City of Norman is considering approving a “surrender resolution” to let the OTA destroy our watershed, cross-timbers and displace 5-10% of our people?
I’m having heart palpitations.
Is this the best TRAFFIC engineering we can come up with? Why is the City capitulating to an entity ready to wipe out FIVE TO TEN PERCENT OF THE City’s POPULATION? (~130,000 in 2024)
Did you fully comprehend what I just said? I said that 5-10% of Norman’s population is going to be wiped out depending on the final route chosen. That’s about 6,500-13,000 people for now, and more when they want to widen the roadway to three lanes each way. We estimate (using Google Earth and the proposed routes) that there will be 3,670 homes impacted within 1/2 mile of the tollroads, and assuming 2.4 persons per household as the average, that’s 8,808 people.
How about NO MORE FREAKING NEW ALIGNMENTS!!!! EVER!!!!
WE DON’T NEED MORE ROADS. Especially tollroads to nowhere, with no sound safety, traffic OR revenue justifications.
Mr. Scott Sturtz seems to be paving himself a golden road to a high-ranking partner position at one of the big engineering firms that does the dirty work for the OTA.
And he was paving his golden road right next to one of his potential future co-workers. Did you notice who was in the room at the study session Tuesday night? None other than POE and ASSOCIATES, the OTA’s ACCESS Corridor Manager.
Mr. Gene Wyckoff was sitting in the study session intently listening to the discussions that he helped orchestrate after a clandestine meeting with the City Staff on July 15th.
The City Staff met with POE and Associates on July 15th, in SECRET, to discuss the ACCESS program.
At that meeting POE and Associates apparently made it clear that if the City doesn’t tell the OTA what infrastructure wishes they have, in the form of a resolution, by the time the 60% design is done, then the OTA will start taking away interchanges, service road promises and other amenities like sound and light pollution mitigation.
Just look at the last line of Slide 11 from the Tuesday, July 30th Study Session.
Are we being blackmailed into signing a partnership resolution on a tollroad that we don’t even want on a design that isn’t even finished?
What is this nonsense?
Ah yes… the OTA playbook.
This powerpoint, by the way, according to the metadata, was produced by Kevin St. Jacques of Freese and Nichols, a consulting firm out of Dallas, TX. It should be interesting for you to note that Mr. St Jacques used to work for CDM Smith.
Who is that, you might ask? CDM Smith is the transportation and revenue study firm that produces trumped up justification and revenue studies to satisfy the OTA Trust Agreements.
If you haven’t figured out the playbook yet, let me help you.
THE JUSTIFICATION AND REVENUE STUDIES ARE ALWAYS WRONG!!!!! If you don’t believe me, click the report title page for yourself and read it.
The point of the reports is never to do real studies with real data and factual information. The point of the reports is to spread the bond money around to different firms to buy compliance and satisfy the OTA Trust Agreement to ensure that the OTA gets the Council of Bond Oversight (COBO) to approve their bond sales. CDM Smith makes about $4 million dollars for a report. The OTA and CDM Smith have been in cahoots for decades. It’s a good gig.
There is no requirement for these studies to be reviewed by an independent entity…. it’s just a checkmark in the OTA’s list that some rubber stamp board ensures is completed. Nothing to see here folks. ANOTHER RABBIT HOLE! I’m getting side-tracked.
But before I leave the hole, here’s the 2017 Comprehensive Traffic and Revenue Update on the Eastern Loop (aka Kickapoo) that I’ll dive into at some point. They actually say the quiet part outloud; that the roads through eastern Cleveland County aren’t worth it.. from a development stance, from a revenue stance, from an environmental stance and from a time-saving traffic stance. But they bury the obvious fact nonchalantly in 448 pages of garbage.
Remember you are witnessing OTA propaganda, produced BY the OTA and pushed through Norman City Staff to YOU…. don’t believe the hype and question EVERYTHING. We own the city. The OTA does not. We hold permitting power. We are the only ones that can and will protect our watershed.
The City of Norman is clearly being threatened, under duress, to play nicely with the OTA by signing a nice little cooperation resolution and approving every permit. And if they don’t, the OTA’s muscle, POE and Associates, says bad things will happen.
Newsflash. Bad things are already happening. We have a 59-mile tollroad threatening our existence. The City will make it much worse by signing a resolution cooperating with the OTA. They should keep their stance of NO MORE TURNPIKES and strengthen it with a second resolution to say NO POLLUTING OUR WATERSHED OR CANADIAN RIVER CORRIDOR.
Permanent Surrender Resolution
To formalize these threats of compliance, POE, on behalf of the OTA, requested that the City of Norman submit an unconditional, permanent surrender “resolution.” This resolution was drafted by the OTA, reviewed by City Staff and presented to the Council Members Tuesday night. At least that what it seemed like. When I asked the City Clerk’s office to see the resolution, however, I was told to file and open record request.
When I asked Ward 5 Council Member Nash for a copy, he said that they were never given one and he thought that POE provided the demands to City Staff and that the Staff intended to write it up for presentation and a vote at the August 13th Norman City Council Meeting. It seemed then, at the study session, that Mr. Sturtz was simply summarizing the OTA demands that the OTA wanted the City Staff to put into a resolution; but it wasn’t drafted yet.
How are the Council Members and citizens supposed to comment on a resolution that is slated to be voted on at the August 13th meeting but hasn’t been written up yet? The City Staff suggested that the Council Members vote on it August 13th because the hostage negotiators (POE and Associates) demanded a City surrender resolution with infrastructure requests no later than September 2, 2024 to meet their 60 % engineering design date (on tollroads that don’t even have a LOCATION YET). How are they meeting this 60% engineering design completion date? It is not physically possible. Half of the east-west connector and 100% of the Southern Extension aren’t even in “active” design yet.
Again. Clown-world.
All the Council Members were visibly uncomfortable with the idea of an unwelcome formalized forced partnership in the form of a resolution for the construction of a tollroad that no one wants. Many expressed their concerns and pushed back against the idea being spouted by Mr. Sturtz and Mr. Pyle that the City of Norman had no recourse; that this was a “done deal.”
What they were feeling was CORRECT. It felt uncomfortable and wrong because it IS WRONG. The City Staff was gaslit and apparently threatened by POE with an arbitrary and unrealistic deadline without full information and then the City Staff turned around and gaslit and tried to scare the council.
The City of Norman should unequivocally say NO to everything in this resolution full of OTA demands on the City.
The City doesn’t need to sign a resolution because, by LAW, the OTA is required, at their expense, to provide, “all access roads, interchanges, or lead roads connecting such turnpikes with existing highways.”
And just like Oklahoma County found out, the OTA ain’t gonna play nice no matter what, so you might as well put a resolution together that lays out what the City requires of the OTA that will PROTECT THE CITY. No sense in writing a resolution that spells out what the OTA is already required to do by statute (and will ignore anyway).
The fact that the OTA blows through towns and forces municipalities to take on huge infrastructure liabilities is unethical and unconscionable: like service roads, pollution mitigation and interchanges. This is what they did to Oklahoma County with the Kickapoo. This is what they did to Oklahoma City with the Kilpatrick. This is what they did to Jenks with the Creek. It’s what they do to EVERY MUNICIPALITY they run through, around and over.
Aside: The fact that the Citizens of Oklahoma have not been able to convince their legislators to abolish the OTA yet is stunning. But maybe we’re just going about it the wrong way since the legislators also get paid to comply. Maybe we just skip the legislators and figure out how to pay for a multi-million dollar initiative petition. More on this later.
Back to the surrender resolution. Something is weird folks.
Why would the OTA threaten the City to sign a resolution “OR ELSE” BEFORE the OTA knows the EXACT LOCATIONS of their unnecessary tollroads?
Lessons from Oklahoma County
Oklahoma County Commissioners made an unfortunate mistake by signing a surrender resolution to “partner” with the OTA back in 2016 on the Kickapoo debacle so that the OTA would buy right-of-way for the County to build service roads (that the County didn’t have money to build). They failed to put anything in there about what the County required from the OTA regarding damage to county roads, flooding damage, pollution mitigation, and maintenance agreements. Do you see where I’m going? Who benefited from this resolution? Keep reading.
So after the County observed their roads being trashed, and their residents properties being destroyed, the OK County Commissioners had to scramble and write numerous follow-up resolutions to try and get the OTA to fix the disaster called the Kickapoo Turnpike construction project.
THE OTA NEVER COMPLIED.
The OTA is being sued by several property owners for severe flooding and the OTA hasn’t paid OK County for more than a half million dollars of damage to their county roads due to construction vehicles during the Kickapoo build out. The OK County Commissioners sent the OTA an invoice for damages to their county roads back in February of 2020 but it never got paid.
That’s a hefty bill for the taxpayers to foot. Why can’t the OTA pay this? They have access to unlimited fiat bond money. Why are the tax payers continuously paying for this monstrosity of a state “instrumentality” that steals their property for an unjustified unwanted road, sells the excess land to developers for a pittance and rips up their “tax supported” roads without penalty?
Watch this video of the March 30, 2020 Oklahoma County Commissioners Meeting where they talk about the OTA refusing to pay their invoice and then had the b#$ls to throw a counter contract back at the County that DOUBLED THE COUNTY’S RESPONSIBILITY in building and maintaining frontage roadways and repairing the roads that the OTA TORE UP.
Commissioner Davidson said at that meeting…..
“I think one of the lessons learned from this is that next time we face this issue again in Oklahoma County, and make no mistake we will face this issue again in Oklahoma County, is that I think we need to put in contract in the beginning… these are the roads that you will remain on, these are the ONLY roads that you can use and if we’re able to do that, we should do something like that…..the DA’s office may tell me I’m nuts, but this has proven that they have kind of got us over a barrel and it’s REALLY not fair to the taxpayers, so…..they can’t destroy our infrastructure and just run away.”
Then Commissioner Blough says…
“I agree. I think we’ve all voiced our frustration with tearing up our roads and then telling us which ones we’re going to fix, and how long we have to fix them while those that have torn up the roads, whether it’s OTA or their subcontractors, basically don’t pay anything for the damage they’ve done.”
It’s INSANE. Do you comprehend how insane this all is? This is our reality.
Then in June 2021, the Oklahoma County Commissioners had to transfer tax-payer CASH to pay for the damage the OTA did to their roadways.
I promise to do an entire post on the Oklahoma County Commissioner resolution disaster in a later post, because it AIN’T PRETTY and I want you to have all the receipts. If you understand how much the OTA blatantly gaslights and lies about EVERYTHING, you can take them to our Council Members and educate them on why it is IMPERATIVE that the City of Norman not sign a surrender resolution and why it is CRUCIAL to sign the anti-pollution resolution with provisions for what the City of Norman requires the OTA to complete instead. We don’t WANT or NEED a partnership with a persistently bad actor trying to build an unnecessary tollroad. We want a document that will legally hold the OTA accountable.
So, ask yourself. What was the purpose of the 2016 Oklahoma County Commissioner’s Resolution? It obviously did NOT benefit Oklahoma County. The OTA still, in 2024, has not paid the County for road damage they caused due to construction vehicles using all the county roads between 2016-2019.
The OTA has numerous outstanding lawsuits with property owners along the Kickapoo for unmitigated flooding damages.
The OTA hasn’t kept up their end of the service road bargains along the Kickapoo.
And you know who REFUSED to sign a resolution with the OTA? The City of Oklahoma City along the northern part of the Kickapoo. They refused to take on the service road debacle because they felt frontage roads were not feasible and they had no intention of ever building frontage roads. And the OTA treated them just like the County. Like garbage. Why is the City of Norman considering acquiescing to OTA’s threats?
Can the City of Norman be smart enough to learn from *recent* history?
The answer is clear.
DO NOT SIGN THE SURRENDER RESOLUTION!
As the third largest city in the state, who else will resist effectively?
It is important that the city realize they do NOT have to agree to anything. OTA does NOT have the upper hand here. They are still subject to ANY and ALL permitting requirements. OTA doesn’t like it, but they can still be told “HELL NO.”
It is important for the City Council to get a handle on the City Staff because EVERY PERMIT has the ability to be CHALLENGED. Scott Sturtz should be forced to comply with the will of the people and challenge EVERY permit; not rush to sign off on every permit in the hopes that the OTA will pat him on the head with an “ATTA BOY” and a golden parachute.
Citizen Call to Action
Of course, OTA wants to gaslight the staff into believing this tollroad it is a foregone conclusion, but it is NOT. The administrative permit process is complex and long. Let’s encourage the City Council to REQUIRE the City Staff to handle it that way.
Help us give the City Council confidence to resist this “surrender” resolution.
Help us tell the City Council to get a handle on their staff.
Help us tell the City Council that the City should NOT go on record as supporting any of the OTA plans.
Help us tell the City that they should continue to register disapproval of the tollroad project.
No more secret meetings without Council present.
No more city staff carte blanche on permit approval.
Make all permits come through Council and say NO to EVERY SINGLE OTA PERMIT APPLICATION.
The City Council should press for an ethics investigation into potential City Staff Conflicts-of-Interests with private consulting firms.
Our City Council and City staff should pledge to serve the public; not private interests.
Contact your Council Members and the City Manager (contact information below) in your own words, and voice your opinion as to why they should JUST SAY NO to the SURRENDER RESOLUTION full of demands from the OTA and say YES to our RESOLUTION TO PROTECT and PRESERVE the Lake Thunderbird Watershed and Canadian River Corridor.
All of you reading and subscribed to this Substack understand the mission and are smart enough to speak from the heart and voice your opinion in a way that will resonate. And if anyone can get their hands on a copy of the surrender resolution full of OTA demands, please send it to me at amy.pikeoffota@gmail.com.
Be brave. Engage. Go forth and conquer!
City Council Members
Mayor - Larry Heikkila; mayor@normanok.gov or 405-876-9216
Ward 1 - Austin Ball; ward1@normanok.gov or 405-876-9170
Ward 2 - Matthew Peacock; ward2@normanok.gov or 405-876-9196
Ward 3 - Bree Montoya; ward3@normanok.gov or 405-876-3143
Ward 4 - Helen Grant; ward4@normanok.gov or 405-876-9237
Ward 5 - Michael Nash; ward5@normanok.gov or 405-876-9239
Ward 6 - Joshua A. Hinkle; ward6@normanok.gov or 405-876-9262
Ward 7 - Stephen Tyler Holman; ward7@normanok.gov or 405-876-9263
Ward 8 - Scott Dixon - ward8@normanok.gov or 405-876-9166
All City Council Members: city_council_members@normanok.gov
City Manager
Darrel Pyle - darrel.pyle@normanok.gov or 405-366-5402
Put your glasses on and see the truth. “They” still live and we need to stop “Them.”
Do NOT OBEY, do NOT CONSUME, do NOT CONFORM.
DO NOT COMPLY!