By Burt Mummolo, FOX23 News
MUSKOGEE, Okla. — It was just last week when Muskogee Mayor Ryan Lowe was fuming after the City of Muskogee Foundation voted 10 to 3 against his pitch to have the foundation pay off the city’s massive legal obligation, without which residents are facing a hike in either property or sales tax.
“We’re talking about placing a $29.25 million dollar obligation on a community where nearly one in four residents live in poverty,” he said.
But just one week later week…
“We’re excited,” said Mayor Lowe, having earlier revealed to a crowd a residents at the civic center that a possible a solution has been found, thanks to that very same Foundation.
“The proposal involves a guaranteed loan to fund the settlement with repayment coming from future franchise fee revenues expected to begin in the third quarter of 2027,” he said.
The loan would allow the city to avoid a hike in property or sales taxes, and it would be paid off by franchise fees from things like data centers.
“This is a win-win for our community, and we hope everything goes smoothly, and that’s what we want for the community, we don’t want to raise taxes, we want what’s best for Muskogee and we want to see Muskogee thrive and move forward,” he said.
The plan was met with strong enthusiasm from residents.
“I hope that works out, that would be probably one of the best ways to do it,” said one man.
“Mr. Mayor, love it mayor, you stepped up and I appreciate it,” said another resident.
At the same time, however, residents called for accountability for the massive blunder as a whole.
“Transparency demands that we acknowledge who screwed up,” said one man.
“I think it’s very important that we figure out what went wrong and also how to prevent it from occurring again,” said another man.
“Gentleman here said that three of you councilors were on here and didn’t do anything about it, you guys should be ashamed of yourselves, every one of you that didn’t do anything about it years ago, now we’re stuck with $30 million dollars,” said another man.
The rocky road on the journey towards the light at the end of the tunnel.
“We’ve been working night and day to find a way to fund this settlement without raising taxes on our citizens,” said Mayor Lowe.
Wednesday evening at a special city council meeting, the City Manager was given authorization to negotiate a loan agreement with the Foundation.
