Must-Attend City Council Meeting Tonight

If you are from Muskogee, you simply do not want to miss tonight's City Council meeting.

New councilors Randy Howard and Kenny Payne will be sworn in, and the council will decide on a replacement for Bob Luttrull.

Luttrull submitted his resignation last Tuesday. Hammons nominated Craig Koele, who happens to be Hammons' mother's employer, to replace Luttrull, while Luttrull nominated Bob Coburn.

The last item on the council's agenda is to vote on Luttrull's replacement. You won't want to miss this city council meeting! The meeting starts at 7:00pm, in the council chambers on the 3rd floor of City Hall in downtown Muskogee.

I will be tweeting from the council meeting - follow the action on my Twitter account here.

Hammons' Nominee is Mother's Boss

Multiple sources have told Leif Wright (with MuskogeeNOW.com) and myself that John Tyler Hammons' nominee to replace Bob Luttrull on the city council is actually his mother's boss.

Craig Koele, Hammons' choice, is the CEO of Solara Hospital, where Kathy Hammons is apparently an employee.

MuskogeeNOW was the first to report on this, but was unable to get comments from either of the two Hammons' or Koele.

We were told that there have been instances of sexual harassment at Solara, and that Koele did nothing to take care of the situation.

If these stories are true, and given the close relationship between Hammons' and Koele, it would be a huge mistake for the city council to vote in Koele as Bob Luttrull's replacement.

Vacant Council Seat Nominations

Recently re-elected Muskogee Mayor John Tyler Hammons has announced his choice to fill the city council seat being vacated by Bob Luttrull, who resigned Tuesday afternoon for health reasons.

Mayor Hammons Nominates Local Businessman to Council Post

Muskogee, OK – Mayor John Tyler Hammons today announced his nominee for Ward I City Councilmember to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of Bob Luttrull.

“I want to thank Mr. Luttrull for his work and dedication to the City Council,” Mayor Hammons said. “His family will be in my thoughts and prayers.”

To succeed Luttrull, the Mayor has nominated Craig Koele, a Muskogee businessman and hospital administrator who has served as Chief Executive Officer of Solara Hospital-Muskogee since 2006.

“I have known Mr. Koele for many years and have found him to be fair and honest in all his dealings,” said the Mayor. “He has demonstrated excellent leadership and business skills and possesses an impressive academic background. I look forward to working with him to address the issues facing Muskogee.”

Koele has been a Muskogee resident since 2007 after becoming the head of Solara-Muskogee. Koele has over twenty years of experience in the private sector as a healthcare administrator. He has previously served as the President of the Tulsa Area Mental Health Association in 2003.

"I appreciate the confidence that Mayor Hammons has expressed in me. He has made it clear that promoting job creation is a top priority of his second term, and I look forward to helping him with that effort," said Koele.

Koele, 53, is married to his wife, Kathi, and together they have one son: Quin, 15.
Mayor Hammons will official announce the nomination of Koele to the vacant City Council post on Monday, April 12, at the City Council’s regular meeting.

On the other hand, Bob Luttrull has nominated Bob Coburn as his replacement. Coburn came in second in the mayoral election that took place on Tuesday.

The city charter is vague on the replacement process; all it states is that the vacancy must be filled by a majority vote of the council. It does not say who nominates the replacement. In the past, it seems that the retiring councilman has nominated his choice, and the council has approved that replacement.

The vote to replace Luttrull will take place this coming Monday (April 12th). This will be a city council meeting you won't want to miss.

Fallout from Hammons' Reelection? Councilman Resigns

In a surprising announcement this evening, sitting councilman Bob Luttrull (Ward I) has resigned. Luttrull stated that the resignation was for health reasons; however, the timing is suspect.

It is well know that Luttrull did not get along well with Mayor John Tyler Hammons, who was handily reelected this evening. If Luttrull's health issues were dire enough to merit resignation, why didn't he resign before the filing period, in order to give candidates a chance to run for office?

A replacement councilor will be recommended by the mayor, and must be approved by the city council. Given the suddenness of the resignation, there is no indication from the mayor as to whom he might recommend.

UPDATE: The announcement was made in the afternoon, before the polls closed, essentially proving that it was not made due to election results. There has been no further elaboration on the particulars of why.

Another Contentious City Council Meeting

Muskogee's city council meetings have taken a contentious turn the past few months. The past two meetings have been attended by standing-room only crowds of over 100.

The two issues that have sparked the action are flying the POW/MIA flag at the Civic Center, and reviewing and changing the city charter. One seems to have been resolved at the this week's council meeting, while the other has gone back to square one.

Again, as at the July 13th council meeting, over 100 people came to hear the resolution of the POW/MIA flag issue. And again, the feeling in the room was very much against the way the council has handled this issue.

To review from last time, the city attorney wrote an ordinance that would address set the requirements for flag flying on city property. There were no copies of the ordinance available at the meeting, so one of the pro-POW/MIA attendees distributed copies at his own expense. That doesn't help public opinion...

The council decided to follow their standing policy of allowing public comment (without council response), but restricted to three minutes per person (and only one time speaking). They rarely follow this policy, which again, does not lend itself to a good public image for the council. Several citizens ran out of time, and had to have others finish their remarks. On a side note, three minutes is probably a little too short for common citizens who are not accustomed to speaking with a time limit.

The ordinance originally stated that the requesting parties would have to pay to put up the flagpole. City Manager Greg Buckley stated that the current flagpole cost between $500 and $700 to put up. Councilor James Gulley proceeded to move that the city pay for it instead. Buckley then clarified his statement, changing the figure to $10000 to $12000, on account that the city merely used the flagpole that had previously been up (before the remodeling of the Civic Center), and his cost estimate was just accounting for labor. I personally think that the $10-12,000 figure is a little high - a quick perusal on the internet found comparable flagpoles for half that price.

Buckley did note that the original remodeling plan did include several flagpoles, mentioning the U.S., POW/MIA, Oklahoma, and Indian tribes' flags as planned, but the project ran out of money and had to cut them out.

Gulley maintained his motion, and the council voted unanimously to pass the resolution as amended. In later conversations with councilmembers, they expressed frustration at the animosity towards them. One councilor said that he wanted to tell the people present that the only thing keeping this ordinance from passing was their arguing in favor of it - all of the councilors were planning on voting for the measure, but were being kept from it by the citizens dragging the public input time out. Another councilor accused Mayor Hammons of stirring the veterans up and starting the whole controversy for his own political self-interests.

With the POW/MIA issue settled, most of the crowd left; still leaving about 30, which is much higher than a usual city council meeting. Before exiting, veteran Pat Davis presented Mayor Hammons with a POW/MIA flag, to be flown whenever the flagpole is set up.

The next issue taken up was the implementation of a new city council policy. Policy 1-4 dealt with requests from the councilmembers or mayor to city staff, i.e. writing new ordinances for presentation to the council.

Basically, the policy states that if the staff member estimates the request to take more than one hour of his time, the request must go on the next council meeting's agenda for approval by the whole council. The council can then give or deny permission for the staff member to fulfill the request.

The argument from those in favor was that no one member should be able to monopolize the time of the city manager, city attorney or other staff members. Mayor Hammons protested, but he was the only vote against the policy. Essentially, now the council can vote down an ordinance before actually voting on an ordinance.

The council then moved on to the city charter issue. As mentioned in my post on the last council meeting, the city council formed a committee to review the charter last September. We learned more about the committee at this council meeting. At this meeting, the council was to go over the reccommendations of the committee.

Each councilor appointed a citizen to serve on this committee (Councilor Jackie Luckey did not appoint anyone, since the charter was not to be reviewed in whole). Councilor Bob Luttrull chaired the group, with Councilor Jim Ritchey also serving on the committee.

Mayor Hammons asked if the review committee ever voted on the reccommendations; John Vincent, the city attorney, said that he did not know if they did. Hammons pressed his point - "It is my opinion that if the charter review committee did not vote on these reccommendations, then these are not the reccommendations of the committee." Councilor Shawn Raper then asked if they were going to follow their policy of public input first; Hammons wanted to make sure that they were actually dealing with the reccommendations as voted on by the committee, but moved the meeting to the public hearing.

Since the council was following their public-input-first policy at this particular meeting (although they did not keep to the time-restriction policy), several citizens spoke. One person in particular had several very good points.

Brian Fuller, president of the local firefighters union, had requested and received from the city the list of the members on the charter review committee.

According to Fuller's research, most of the members only attended one committee meeting. The majority of those members were either never notified of other meetings, or were told that the meeting was canceled without being told when or where it would be held. One of the members is not a current resident of the city.

Fuller's findings also showed that the meetings were not properly posted, and were not held in a public forum; both violations of the Open Meetings Act. Several other provisions were, according to Fuller, in direct violation with state law.

There was a section that dealt with firefighter residency in the reccommendations, which said that firefighters had to live within 20 miles of the intersection of Main and Okmulgee - a change from the previous within-city-limits-for-one-year-before-hiring requirement. Fuller stated that 1/3 of the city's employees live farther than 20 miles from the aforementioned intersection, including many department heads.

Fuller closed by asking that the council start the whole process over again, do it right, and include the three city unions in the review process.

After the public hearing was closed, Mayor Hammons proceeded to ask Councilor Ritchey if the committee ever voted on the reccommendations. Ritchey said that he was never under the impression that the committee was to vote on reccommendations, but thought they were to complie them. Hammons restated his question, "Did the committee vote to approve these?" Ritchey again repeated himself statement. After several rounds of Hammons repeating the question, and Ritchey repeating his statement, Hammons asked Councilor Luttrull the question. Luttrull said that the committee voted on them, but he could not remember when the meeting was.

Hammons and Shawn Raper both suggested to restart the review process, since the facts were muddled. The council voted unanimously to take no action on the agenda item, and to come back another day to start the process over.

So, the POW/MIA flag will fly, but the charter review situation is unresolved. Stay tuned for the latest developements, available on the blogosphere exlusively at Muskogee Politico.

Follow-up on July 13th City Council Meeting - Part 2

After the POW/MIA flag issue was settled, the city council took a short recess, and then continued business. About 35 people stayed for the rest of the meeting, still a very significant increase in attendence from usual council meetings.

Mayor Hammons wanted to discuss three possible changes to the city charter: ward voting, term limits for the mayor and council, and a possible change to the form of government.

Last year, the council formed a committee to review the charter, with the express command to not touch anything regarding the form of government. Councilors Bob Luttrull (chair) and Jim Ritchey sat on the committee, in addition to one citizen appointed by each councilor. They were to submit a report to the council in May with their recommendations.

May came and went without any word from the committee. An email was finally sent out the night before the council meeting with the committee's recommendations; the delay was attributed to not being ready until that evening. However, the Muskogee Phoenix had bullet points in the Sunday newspaper , meaning they had copies on Saturday, before the committee supposedly had compiled the report.

Councilor Luttrull stated during the council meeting that the highest attendence on the committee was three members in addition to himself. He also said that most of the report was his own thoughts, due to the lack of attendence.

One of the citizens present commented that the city council committees have to have a quorum present to conduct business, and wondered why Luttrull, as chairman, did not try to get the members to the meeting.

Hammons stated at one point (in the context of getting people involved in local government) that he contacted the National League of Cities to find out what they say gets citizens involved. The NLC gave him three items: strong mayor form of government, ward voting, and partisan elections. Hammons said that he is not in favor of partisan elections, but he wants to put the other two up for discussion.

The general feeling from the council was opposition to all of Hammons' proposals; the audience was very supportive of Hammons, and pretty hostile to the council. Several times, council members got involved in heated debates with citizens (even though it's against the council's stated policy to have two-way discussion during meetings), to the point that the mayor had to gavel them down at one point.

Councilor Ragsdale gave one reason for his opposition to ward voting. According to Ragsdale, currently councilors do represent wards, but they're elected by the entire city. Therefore, they have a responsibility to represent the whole town, not just one ward. He gave the example of people talking to him in the grocery store about issues that they have, and he said under ward voting, he wouldn't be able to help them since he'd need to have them contact their councilor (which, frankly, is just stupid).

Cedric Johnston, one of many citizens to speak, said that in his research, most towns Muskogee's size that have ward voting are growing at a great rate. I spoke next, and pointed out that most of the towns in Oklahoma our size already have ward voting.

Towards the end, Mayor Hammons said that he wanted to publicy state that "if Muskogee moves to a strong mayor system, I have no desire to be that strong mayor."

Several councilors complained of the general lack of involvement by the community, and the lack of attendance. Dean Swan, the last citizen to speak, addressed that issue. He said, "If you don't want to feed a lot of people, you ring a little bitty bell and hope a lot of people don't come to dinner. This council is ringing a little bitty bell."

The council adjourned without taking action on the charter changes, since there were no concrete proposals (the agenda said they were to "discuss and take possible action").

Muskogee Businessman Denied Re-Zoning Request

The City of Muskogee Board of Adjustment denied a local small businessman's request to allow towing services under the E-1 Local Commercial zoning classification.

Chris Fulton, owner of Bargain Wrecker Service, purchased a building at 620 South Main Street in Muskogee last November, with the intent to run his towing service out of the facility. The building had previously been used as a storage facility for a concrete company.

But, problems arose when an employee parked his car on the grass outside the building; vehicles must not be parked on the grass, per city ordinance. Someone complained to the city, and Fulton was cited for illegal parking. City Planning Director Gary Garvin then informed Fulton that his facility was not zoned correctly for a towing service. Garvin said that the property would need to be zoned F General Commercial.

For clarification purposes, here are the definitions for E-1 Local Commercial and F General Commercial.

E-1 Local Commercial is defined in the city ordinances as "intend[ing] to provide for the conduct of retail trade and personal service enterprises to meet the regular needs and for the convenience of the people of adjacent residential areas." Some of the 73 examples listed in the city code as falling under the E-1 label include antique shops, appliance stores, laundromats, pawnshops, and used car lots. The ordinance further states that "no article or material shall be kept, stored or displayed outside the confines of the building."

F General Commercial is "intended for the conduct of general business to which the public requires frequent and direct access, but which is not characterized by either constant heavy trucking other than that which is necessary for stocking and delivering of retail goods or by any nuisance factors other than occasioned by the congregating of people and passenger vehicles." Examples include bakeries, blacksmiths, cabinet shops, electrical transmission stations, mini-storage units, and sign shops.

Therefore, under the current E-1 zoning, Fulton would have to park the towed vehicles inside this building, something that he has stated he would do. He estimates that the facility could hold up to 25 cars - more room than he currently uses.

Most of the towing Fulton does is related to road-side assistance/insurance and impounded vehicles. A very small percentage of his work is wrecked vehicles (Fulton stated that 90% of his income was from the road-side assistance and insurance jobs).

Per Gary Garvin's instruction, Fulton and his attorney, Steve Scherer, attempted to have his property rezoned F General Commercial. Most of the area surrounding the building is E-1 Local Commercial, although a few of the nearby businesses are F General Commercial.

The Public Works Committee of the City Council deliberated on the issue on April 7th. Councilors Raper and Ritchey were the most out-spoken opponents of the rezoning. They opposed it on the grounds that rezoning it F General Commercial would open up the possibility of other types of businesses coming in if Fulton sold the property down the road, as well as the fact that F General Commercial doesn't fit into the Future Land Use Map for the area enacted by the city in 2003. Raper said that several citizens, as well as an official with Downtown Muskogee, Inc., had called in opposition to rezoning.

Robert Perkins, David Ragsdale and Bob Luttrull were in favor of rezoning. All three councilors mentioned that the South Main area has changed very little over the past thirty to fourty years - other than vacant, dilapidated buildings being torn down.

Jim Ritchey moved that the rezoning be denied, with Shawn Raper seconding. Ritchey, Raper, James Gulley and Jackie Luckey voted in favor of the motion; while Perkins, Ragsdale, Luttrull and Mayor John Tyler Hammons voted against. Since it ended in a tie, the issue was sent on to the full council meeting on April 13th. Councilor David Jones was absent, causing the tie.

At the city council meeting on the 13th, after another lengthy discussion, James Gulley moved to deny the rezoning request, with David Jones seconding. Councilors Raper, Ritchey, Gulley, Luckeyand Luttrull did not change their vote from the Public Works meeting - Perkins and Hammons flipped, and Ragsdale abstained. Thus, it went from a 4-4 tie to a 7-1 denial.

Failing at the council, Fulton had one other option: appeal to the Muskogee Board of Adjustment for an exception to the E-1 Local Commercial zoning, allowing him to operate his towing service without rezoning.

Fulton didn't have any better luck with the Board of Adjustment this afternoon. Members Janey Boydston, Linda Carter, Carter Bradley and Jim Eby upheld Gary Garvin's ruling that a towing service does not fall under E-1, while Gary Dunlap was the only member to vote in favor of allowing it (Earnie Gilder was not present).

Fulton said that he already spent thousands of dollars cleaning the property up, filling several 10-12 yard dumpsters with trash and debris from the facility.

The tone of the Board of Adjustment meeting was very negative on behalf of the board members. Fulton said many times that he would store the towed vehicles inside the building, which had ample room, but Janey Boydston and Jim Eby continually stated that they did not believe he would. Steve Scherer, Fulton's attorney, had to repeatedly state throughout the meeting that he did not feel, from a legal standpoint, that the Board could deny Fulton's request on the assumption that he would not follow the rules. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?

Here, in the midst of a recession, the City of Muskogee is more concerned about how the entrance to the city looks than economic output. South Main is not the main thoroughfare into town, and has always been very tacky. Nothing new has gone into that area for decades, and most of the buildings are in very bad shape.

Rather than allowing a young small businessman to turn a vacant building into something of economic worth, the City Council, and the Board of Adjustment, would rather let the facility rot. And again, Fulton's vehicles would be parked inside the building, rather than outside, eliminating the eyesore potential.

"Now I'm $80,000 in debt, with a building I can't use." Fulton said when I interviewed him. Asked whether he would continue to pursue the matter, Fulton said, "Oh, yeah. I ain't stopping yet. I'm a fighter, man, I don't ever give up."

Campaign Finance Shot Down in Muskogee

Muskogee Mayor John Tyler Hammons proposed a campaign finance disclosure ordinance this past week that would require all city candidates to report contributions in excess of $200, or face a fine and misdemeanor conviction. The City Council approved a campaign finance ordinance in 2001, but voted it out a few years later.

On January 6th, the City Council's Public Works committee voted 6-2 against the measure. Voting against were Councilors Bob Luttrull, Robert Perkins, David Jones, Jim Ritchey, James Gulley, and Shawn Raper. Mayor Hammons and Councilor David Ragsdale were the only votes in favor; Councilor Jackie Luckey was not present.

From the Muskogee Phoenix:

The councilors voting against the measure did not hesitate in letting Hammons know how much they disliked his proposal.

“I’m very much opposed to it,” Luttrull said.

“On what grounds?” Hammons asked.

“I think it’s just stupid,” Luttrull answered.

Ritchey said Hammons’ repeated messages calling for openness and transparency in the city government implies those now in office have something to hide.

He asked Hammons who is doing what that he thinks is wrong.

Hammons campaigned with such an ordinance as one of his main planks in his platform.

On January 7th, the Muskogee Phoenix, so far not one of Hammons' allies, came out in favor of a campaign finance ordinance, although with modifications from Hammon's proposal.

During the city council's meeting on the 12th, Mayor Hammons brought the measure up again. This time, the vote failed 6-3; Councilman Luckey was present, and voted with Mayor Hammons for the ordinance. Councilman Jones voiced his support of campaign finance disclosure, but opposed Hammons' version.

Since the failure of the ordinance, the Muskogee Phoenix's letter-to-the-editor section has been flooded with support of Mayor Hammons' measure, and disapproval of the council's reaction, councilmembers Luttrull and Ritchey in particular.