The mayor of Oklahoma’s largest city told Billings business leaders Wednesday that a series of public projects over two decades transformed his hometown into a livable, vibrant place.
Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett, elected to his fourth term this year, said at the Billings Chamber of Commerce annual meeting that a voter-approved, one-cent sales tax in 1993 was the catalyst for $2 billion in developments.
The strategy helped stabilize a boom-and-bust economy that was paddling through hard times, Cornett said. And it’s a model he thinks can work in other cities, though it comes with hurdles, he added.
“Yes, people don’t like paying taxes. Yes, they want to know why their neighborhood isn’t as green as the downtown corridor. At the end of the day, it’s all about trying to set it up so the next generation can succeed. And in Oklahoma City, we feel like we’ve done that,” Cornett told a crowd of about 600.
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Cornett and Roy Williams, president and CEO of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce, were the keynote speakers at the Billings Chamber’s annual meeting at the Holiday Inn Grand Convention Center.
The Billings Chamber has identified Oklahoma City, population about 620,000, as its next “aspirational city,” a model for how Billings can grow and improve its economy. Chamber leaders are planning an educational trip to Oklahoma City next April.
During the last legislative session, a local option sales tax was the Billings Chamber’s top priority, but no lawmaker agreed to sponsor the bill. The proposal would have given local communities an option of applying a sales tax within their borders.
Rural lawmakers have killed other sales-tax proposals over the years in Helena.
John Brewer, president of the Billings Chamber, said leaders in Yellowstone County should listen to their counterparts down south to remain competitive throughout the region.
“We have a beautiful community, but at times we can be a complacent community,” Brewer said.
Brewer touted other goals: improving the city-owned Logan International Airport, building a new convention center and converting the shuttered Corette coal plant site to an attractive southern gateway.
In Oklahoma City, the push to make a more livable community was born from one of the city’s greatest business recruiting failures, Cornett said. In 1991, civic leaders made a major push to lure a new United Airlines maintenance plant and 7,500 jobs, only to lose out to Indianapolis.
Cornett said his predecessor, former Mayor Ron Norick, asked United officials what they did wrong.
The problem wasn’t the pitch, Norick was told. It was the city itself.
“The CEO said, ‘We just couldn’t imagine our employees living there,’” Cornett said.
Voters approved the first Metropolitan Area Projects tax in 1993, with 53 percent saying yes. It was levied on top of state and city sales taxes, which now total about 8 cents for every dollar.
It started slowly, and some wondered if the plan would work. Then, in 1995, Oklahoma City suffered the nation’s worst domestic terrorism attack, when bombers blew up the downtown federal building and killed 168 people.
Residents in town could’ve given up, but instead, they rallied, Cornett said.
“It’s almost as if the community grabbed hands, pulled each other up and dared the world to stop us,” he said.
Since then, the city used MAPS money to build a new stadium for Triple A baseball, the Chesapeake Energy Arena, now home to professional basketball’s Oklahoma City Thunder and the Bricktown Canal.
“I would maintain that no city has come as far, as fast, as Oklahoma City,” Cornett said.
