On The Move

The City of Davenport moved to Oklahoma City.   So did Bettendorf, LeClaire and Eldridge.  Not really, of course.  We’re still here.  But the combined population of Davenport, Bettendorf, LeClaire and Eldridge moved to Oklahoma City in the past twenty years.  457,386 in 1993.  610,613 today.

Four term Mayor Cornett is in the pulpit.  He’s telling the Quad City corporate faithful the story of Oklahoma City’s ascension from the depths of economic hardship and domestic terrorism in the 1990s.  He’s too kind to draw the population conclusion that one half of the Quad Cities moved to the middle of Oklahoma in the past two decades.

But he does note some things.  People don’t move to jobs.  Jobs move to where people want to live.   Private investment follows public investment.   Public investment in education, and positive civic attitudes, matter more than anything.

There are hundreds in attendance in Room A (naming rights apparently still available) at the iWireless Center, and we’re to work through some ground rules for participation in the regional vision initiative now underway.  I’m at table 24 and author (after cleaning up my handwriting) our table’s contribution to the ground rules for moving forward.  Two words:  Be inclusive.    

Mayor Cornett tells the story of how his city, region and state were “all in” for the big jobs deal in the nation back in the early 1990s.  United Airlines was shopping the country for a place to land a $1 billion maintenance facility featuring thousands of jobs.  Oklahoma City was all in, and they lost.  Two things happened. 

The first?  City leaders pressed United Airlines for a reason why they lost.  United was too courteous to answer.  But the mayor at the time pressed for an answer until United was forthcoming.  They told him they sent executives and their spouses to visit the city for a weekend, and they came back with the conclusion that United employees wouldn’t want to live there.  People don’t move to jobs.  Jobs come to places where people want to live.

Secondly, they didn’t give up.  They doubled down.  They realized no one was going to save them, except themselves.  They came together for the common good of their community.  A one cent local sales tax was created (sound familiar?), the city worked with 24 different school districts, and the community invested in itself. 

The city grows by 157,227 people in twenty years.  Tens of thousands of jobs are created.  Less children live in poverty, more graduate from high school and stay in the region after college.  Now, 1 in 10 Oklahoma City residents are attending college as this is written, and major corporations are sinking billions of dollars of investment in the city and region.     

Mayor Cornett dryly notes “negativity is not very conducive to moving the City forward” and shares a story as he closes.  He says sometimes he finds himself arguing with a guy and it is always the same kind of guy.  The guy doesn’t like downtown.  The guy doesn’t like taxes.  The guy doesn’t like him. 

The good mayor advises he typically turns the conversation by simply noting he is trying to create a city where the guy’s children and their friends want to live.   No matter how much the guy doesn’t like him, the simple truth creates a moment of agreement and quiet.   

Except, for the clatter of another inbound U-Haul.