Open Letter to Norman City Council
The depravity of the OTA's predictable and repeatable behavior is difficult to explain concisely to people who haven't lived the nightmare for more than two years.
The OTA has a playbook that they use OVER AND OVER AND OVER again. When are our city and county elected officials going to start learning from other municipality’s experiences and change the game for the OTA?
Come on City of Norman! Be BRAVE. Be the GAME CHANGER.
Here goes…..
Letter sent August 6, 2024
Dear Norman City Council Member,
I am writing to you today because I oppose the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority’s (OTA’s) proposed toll roads through Norman. I write to provide factual data so you can have the courage to push back against the OTA’s recent demands of a “partnership” resolution you heard about from Mr. Sturtz at the Thursday, July 30th Council Study Session.
I’m also providing you information that will make passing the no turnpikes resolution that lays out the city’s stance on protecting our watershed, assets and citizens easy.
I am a Professional Civil Engineer and an east-Norman homeowner of twenty years and have spent the last two and a half years meticulously researching OTA’s historical practices and trying to stop their assault on our city. In that time, I have observed several egregious behavioral patterns the OTA employs on every turnpike project.
I need you to fully grasp and internalize these OTA behaviors as you help navigate our city through this tumultuous period:
1. OTA does not always honor agreements with cities and towns. There is no enforcement mechanism if they renege on promises.
2. The OTA does not have a history of operating with honesty, transparency or integrity.
3. OTA does not have a history of respecting environmental regulations.
4. OTA extracts wealth from homeowners and communities without adequate compensation.
5. OTA does not build turnpikes that are financially feasible or desirable for citizens or municipalities.
Because of these patterns of bad behavior by the OTA over the last seven decades, I am asking you to
A. Please say NO to any OTA partnership resolution or demands they make of the City at this time.
B. Please say YES to a resolution that lays out the City’s NO tollroad position and policy direction to staff to protect our city’s watershed, assets and citizens. The City must not allow staff to conduct these negotiations without Council oversight.
In support of these two requests I have made, please think about the following questions and look through my easy-to-follow list of what the City should require of the OTA before any partnership resolution is crafted. I encourage you to ask these questions to the OTA directly - not through your City Staff.
How can the OTA threaten the City with withholding interchanges, wetland mitigation and service roads if the City doesn’t sign a partnership resolution when the OTA has not been forthcoming about the location of all of their toll roads?
Note that everything in BLUE is unknown according to the OTA and *should* change due to the Bureau of Reclamation denial to cross fee title and easement lands.
How can the OTA demand a partnership when the OTA has NOT yet received permission from the Bureau of Reclamation to cross federal easements surrounding Lake Thunderbird and the Little River?
How can the OTA demand a partnership when the OTA has NOT received permission or 404 permits from the US Army Corps of Engineers to cross the Canadian River?
How can the OTA demand a partnership when the OTA has no permission to build across federally controlled land and have not performed any environmental impact statements (EIS) to satisfy the required NEPA protocol that would qualify the OTA to apply for permissions and permits?
How does the City even know that the OTA will garner permissions from these federal agencies to build in their preferred route? The feds could very easily deny the routes AGAIN, just like what happened in December 2022.
After the BoR denied the OTA passage over the Norman Project fee title lands in December 2022, the BoR required the OTA to come back to them with ALTERNATIVE ROUTES that would not impact their fee title lands or their easements because the BoR found that the tollroads were “NOT COMPATIBLE WITH AUTHORIZED PROJECT PURPOSES.” They also said quite clearly that “Reclamation has determined that the Proposed Project could be designed such that it does NOT interfere with the provisions of Reclamation’s Norman Project pipeline and flowage easements.”
Some pages of the document are shown below. If you’d like the read the entire document, please click here.
This follow-up OTA application to the BoR has NOT BEEN FILED YET. In other words, the BoR can very well deny them again. If the BoR denies them passage again, then the routes will have to be moved out of the federal lands; so the City shouldn’t even start negotiating until we determine without a doubt that the BoR has given permissions.
For your information, the OTA has also NOT APPLIED to the US ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS to cross the Canadian River either. This is part of their playbook. They try to steamroll municipalities first and then beg for forgiveness to the federal agencies when the project is too far along to stop.
Why won’t the OTA release the southern extension route location, and by default the location of 50% of the east-west connector?
Are they planning to steamroll the BoR into using the original location after the OTA gets too far along to stop?
At the July 2024 OTA Board meeting, the OTA director of Engineering was overheard telling a citizen that “The federal agencies always deny us the FIRST time.” Was he insinuating they were going to wait a few years and then just build it in the original location where they were denied the first time? They pulled these same shenanigans along the Creek Turnpike in 1990.
They are currently holding more than 30,000 plus east-Norman, Noble and Purcell residents hostage by withholding the routes. As a homeowner in an area that could potentially get bulldozed (anywhere between 48th E and 84th E and Indian Hills to Etowah, I find this action unconscionable and the City should push back HARD against the added stress that living in limbo is causing its citizens.
THE CITY MUST DIG THEIR HEELS IN AND REFUSE TO PARTNER WITH THE OTA AT THIS JUNCTURE.
It is well within the City’s right to DEMAND that the OTA show the City of Norman permission and permits from BOTH the Bureau of Reclamation (BoR) (Lake Thunderbird fee title lands and easements) and the US Army Corps of Engineers (Canadian River Crossing) with a COMPLETE route location plan first.
Don’t let them threaten you with their “60% design” deadline nonsense. No good decision ever comes out of a place of fear.
Please tell the OTA to
1. Present the City of Norman with evidence of permissions and PERMITS from all the federal agencies involved (e.g., Bureau of Reclamation, US Army Corps of Engineers),
2. Finish their 60% design on ALL OF THEIR 50+ miles of proposed tollroads,
3. Present the City of Norman with a detailed map of the routes INCLUDING all the Right-Of-Way they will have to acquire to build the tollroads, interchanges and service roads,
4. Present the City of Norman with number of houses and properties impacted,
5. Present the City of Norman detailed instructions of how the eminent domain process works at the OTA, how the OTA will compensate property and homeowners how they propose to alleviate the citizen burden of being removed from their property. Will the OTA use the federal Uniform Relocation Act policies that ODOT is required to use or will they continue their practices of low-balling the citizens and forcing those that have the means to sue?
6. Present the City of Norman with the location and mileage of all the service roads the OTA will acquire ROW for and fund,
7. Present the City of Norman with their environmental impact statement showing wetland pollution mitigation needs,
8. Present the City of Norman with a commitment to pay for damaged City and County Roadways due to construction traffic,
9. Present the City of Norman with a commitment to mitigate and pay for any flooding damages caused by the 20-30 foot high raised embankment toll road either on City, County or Private land WITHOUT having to go through lengthy litigation.
Then, and only then, when all of these very reasonable Civil Engineering and Transportation Planning steps for constructing new alignments have been completed, should the City of Norman enter into any sort of partnership resolution.
The City of Norman needs ALL THE FACTS before they start negotiations. Anything less is unacceptable.
Force them to follow standard transportation policies and get PERMISSIONS TO BUILD prior to wiping out 10% of our population and paving over our watershed.
To learn more, please subscribe to and read my substack.
.
Amy Cerato
PS. Want to learn about what happened to other municipalities that signed resolutions with the OTA? Check out my next post.
One more great letter!
Dear Council member,
I have been a resident of Norman for the last 55 years. My retirement home is located in the orange zone (as shown on the ACCESS website) of the south extension turnpike (SET).
The first and foremost ethic in the Code of Ethics for the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), the American Society of Highway Engineers (ASHE), and the American Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), and other engineering societies is to hold paramount the protection of the health, safety, and welfare of the public. ASCE advocates that civil engineers must: Continually guard against conflicts of interest, either real or perceived. Adhere to codes of ethics, including ASCE’s Code of Ethics, to a level above reproach and beyond the influence of competing interests.
I am deeply concerned there may exist conflicts of interest among the engineering firms that will be responsible for the environmental studies, environmental permitting, and environmental field compliance pertaining to the ACCESS program. These firms will be responsible for the acquisition of environmental information and data, analysis of the data, environmental study conclusions and recommendations, preparation of environmental reports and statements, permitting, compliance, and interfacing with governmental agencies.
Poe and Associates (Poe) holds the contract with OTA to provide overall management of the ACCESS program. According to the attached project organizational chart Poe and Associates provided OTA (a public record), the environmental aspects of the ACCESS program are to be performed under Poe’s program management contract.
Three engineering firms (Garver, Poe, and Hudson Prince) are shown on the organizational chart to provide “environmental studies & permitting, and field compliance”. This is all an astonishing “fox guarding the hen house” moment writ large. It is an understatement to say that it stretches credulity to imagine that these three engineering firms, each holding multi-million dollar prime contracts with OTA for engineering design on the ACCESS program could do any environmental analysis here free of the conflict inherent of having such enormous economic interests in seeing the proposed “Kickapoo Extensions” come to fruition.
All three of these firms are listed on Poe’s organizational chart, and the ACCESS website, to serve as ACCESS’s “Corridor Managers” under Poe’s program manager contract. In other words, all three of these engineering firms listed to perform environmental studies, environmental permitting, and environmental field compliance have unimaginably lucrative financial incentives (from their ACCESS OTA prime contracts for design and various subcontracts to other ACCESS engineering firms) in seeing the ACCESS program being fully implemented and constructed.
If you believe Poe, Garver or Hudson-Prince could possibly render truly objective environmental decisions vis-a-vis our irreplaceable Lake Thunderbird watershed, I suggest that the words of the George Strait song “Ocean Front Property” apply here:
“I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona.
From my front porch you can see the sea.
I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona,
If you’ll buy that, I’ll throw the Golden Gate in free.
It greatly concerns me that due to their complete lack of independence and impartiality to the ACCESS program and having breathtakingly enormous financial incentives based on the full implementation of the ACCESS program, these three firms would almost certainly be biased against fully evaluating and reporting negative environmental impacts of the ACCESS program.
Engineering firm proponents of the OTA ACCESS program should not be performing the critical environmental studies needed for the ACCESS project.
These are not the engineering firms the City of Norman should want performing environmental studies to determine and evaluate the myriad of environmental impacts the OTA ACCESS program will have on the watershed of Lake Thunderbird and the water source for the City of Norman (as well as Midwest City and Del City). The City of Norman should firmly insist on, and accept no less than, the environmental studies, environmental permitting, and environmental field compliance being performed by legitimately independent and unbiased third-party entities with no financial incentives hitched to the implementation and construction of the ACCESS “Kickapoo Extension” program.
I respectfully urge you to vote NO on any resolution(s) regarding any type of “partnership with OTA”, or the acceptance of the OTA ACCESS turnpikes in the City of Norman. OTA’s past actions have proven they are no partner with the City of Norman and Norman residents.
I respectfully urge you to vote YES on a resolution which will protect our Lake Thunderbird watershed and our (already impaired) water source from being further polluted by the OTA ACCESS program.
Thank you.
Another great letter!
This email is in opposition to the pro-turnpikes, “partners” resolution the OTA is pressuring you to adopt.
GOOD COUNCIL RESOLUTIONS SERVE VERY IMPORTANT PURPOSES
At their best, City Council Resolutions serve two important purposes. First, they restate the policy position of a City regarding an important issue. Second, they provide important policy direction to City Staff, who are ultimately obligated to carry out the policy directives of the Council. The Council, in turn, is ultimately obligated to serve their constituents: the Citizens of the City.
City Councils must stand strong in asserting these policy directives. Special interests and outside influences frequently exert pressure on Cities to adopt positions and take actions without regard to whether those things are in the best interest of the City and its Citizens as a whole. This is exactly what some of us warned the Council – verbally and in writing - when the Council unanimously passed a resolution against the turnpikes over two years ago. We warned the Council to stay firm, because the OTA and certain special interests would inevitably be coming at the City to undermine the policy directives contained in the resolution.
THE OTA’S PROPOSED PRO ACCESS OKLAHOMA RESOLUTION IGNORES THE OTA’S POOR TRACK RECORD
The OTA is asserting exactly that kind of undue influence on the City of Norman now. The OTA wants the Council to de facto overrule its prior resolution, come out in support of the turnpikes, and assert that the City and the OTA are now “partners” in the turnpike projects. The OTA wants you to set aside many other priorities and do this fast. As usual, the OTA wants you to do it without having solid plans, studies, due diligence, or in critical areas even routes, in place. Good partners, especially ones who are also supposed to be public servants, do not pressure their other partners to “hurry up and sign off, fall in line, or else.” Yet that is what the OTA is trying to do to you now.
The OTA has clearly not been a good partner to the City. The OTA has done little or nothing to work with the City or respect its citizen’s rights in this process.
This is not new. The OTA has a demonstrated, documented record of violating Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality regulations. In recent dealings with Oklahoma County on the Kickapoo Turnpike, the OTA damaged existing roads leading to the turnpike and refused to fix them or pay to have them fixed. In dealings with Jenks on the Creek Turnpike, the OTA claimed, based merely on its own unilateral, unsupported claims of general compliance, that it did not need a floodplain permit from the City of Jenks, nor did it need to prepare an environmental impact statement for the federal government.
Likewise, the OTA is currently resisting the need for permits and appropriate environmental impact studies for the 7,000-foot bridge from Newcastle to Norman, even though Sections 404 and 408 of the Clean Water Act, together with Corps regulations, clearly call for them. Be skeptical about claims of environmental compliance from the OTA.
Moreover, as recently attested by a local geologist and numerous residents, there is now pervasive flooding of the Mustang Creek Basin in the Mustang, Yukon, and OKC areas near the Kilpatrick Turnpike because of the construction of the third leg of the Turnpike. Local citizens and the City of Oklahoma City have been left holding the bag to figure out a solution. See https://yukonprogressnews.com/2021/04/14/neighbors-speak-out-on-mustang-creek-issues/
No wonder the Oklahoma County Commissioners recently decided to strike a proposed pro ACCESS Oklahoma “partners with the OTA” resolution. https://youtu.be/QySDG18cyDU (agenda item starts at about 11:15, and commissioner discussion begins at about 28:15). No wonder the candidates for the State Senate District 15 seat covering our area have unanimously come out in opposition to the turnpikes and the OTA’s recent behavior.
You should do the same.
THE CONTENT IN THE NASH RESOLUTION RESTATES THE CITY’S COMPELLING INTERESTS IN A MUCH BETTER WAY
The resolution introduced by Council Member Nash serves both purposes that a good Council resolution must serve. It restates the policy position that the City Council first adopted over two years ago – a position in opposition to the turnpikes. Based on my continuing conversations with Council Members, and the words of the Mayor at a recent town hall about the turnpikes, opposition to the turnpikes remains the unanimous, consensus position of the Council today.
The Nash resolution also serves the purpose of a clear policy directive to City Staff. That policy directive is for staff to use the City’s considerable permitting and other powers to protect the integrity of the City’s water supply, and to prevent flooding hazards and polluted stormwater runoff. The resolution directs City Staff to protect the City’s environment and natural resources around Lake Thunderbird, the Canadian River, and wherever else the OTA may be seeking to run a turnpike through Norman.
Yes, the OTA has received state law authorization from the Oklahoma Supreme Court to move forward with the proposed new turnpikes. This came, however, via a dubiously reasoned majority opinion where the vigorous dissenting opinions clearly had the better of the day. Ironically, the majority opinion heavily relied on the concepts of the recently overruled Chevron doctrine, which required federal courts to defer to a federal agency’s own, often self-serving view of the agency’s statutory authority. The dissents, conversely, employed the better reasoned “construe a statute as plainly written” mandate that all federal courts must now employ in determining the statutory authority of a federal agency. For the moment, a thin majority of the Oklahoma Supreme Court has decided the OTA has the bare legal authority to proceed with its proposed new routes. But that authority stands on thin ground.
Moreover, that bare authority does not mean that the City no longer has permitting powers over the OTA’s proposed new turnpikes. It does not mean that the Council has to abandon its well-settled policy position and come out in support of poorly conceived turnpikes. Doing so risks sending a message to City Staff that it’s best if they just stand back, turn the other way, and let the OTA just come on through, come what may.
As for a so-called hybrid resolution, it may indeed be wise to include a detailed list of needs from the City in a well-worded resolution. Just make sure that detailed, comprehensive plans, specifications, and written contracts are entered into which hold the OTA’s feet to the fire. You don’t have to kowtow to the OTA and betray your citizen’s rights in order to work with the OTA where needed and maintain civil lines of communication with them. Indeed, I would say that working with us in our efforts is now more important than ever.
There is nothing more important an elected official can do than provide constituent services. Your constituents are going to need your help in the coming weeks, months, and years. This Council must maintain its policy position in opposition to the turnpikes. Even if you believe the turnpikes are inevitable - and they are not - the Council must nevertheless direct City Staff to use any and all means necessary and available to protect the City and its Citizen’s health, welfare, resources, and rights.