I park downtown for $5 , all the time, never pay more.

We have an adequate tax base to fund city operations, I believe its 3% of sales. Its not the 3% part that is wrong, its the sales part that is down. The 3% part is very adequate, you want more money, grow the economy.

Besides, it does not hurt for any government entity to go through bad times and have to trim the ship. The last thing you do in bad economic times, is raise your tax base. Business trims in the bad times and they come out of it leaner and meaner and better for it, government should be no different.

But you can not put off working on improving the city's economy during the bad times, if there's any time you need to make yourself even more attractive to new business, then that is the time.

And folks, the oil and gas business is not going to last forever. In a lot of ways, we need to diversify our economy and these are steps we need to take to get there.

And you also can not sit and be happy with the status quo, for cities, they are either growing or shrinking, there's no middle ground. It takes a lot of work in the economic development area just to replace jobs a city loses every year.

Right now, Tulsa is gonna have a big hurdle to get over when they are faced with replacing the Thrifty Dollar Rentacar jobs. And those were primo jobs, the home office jobs, the kind of jobs every city covets the most. They are the top execs, the IT people, the accountants ......... all the really high paying jobs. If Tulsa is not working hard to attract new business, then before long, they become Lawton.