City Council Criticized For Funding Leisure Over Safety Needs

As we roll through the heart of tornado season in Oklahoma, our lunch table discussion turned into a rather serious discussion about how the Lawton City Council and the Mayor's office are spending our tax dollars.

While our elected elites are bummed that the weather has pushed back construction, they're still excited for the mid-July grand opening of the Lawton Aquatic Center in Elmer Thomas Park.

Hear me out. While nobody around the table was bashing a fun new public project for the kids, there remains a curiosity deep down of why this is a project deemed necessary for the general Lawton public, but public storm and tornado shelters are not?

A vast majority of the cities across Oklahoma have at least one public storm shelter in every community, from my own hometown of 20k people (they use the basement lunchrooms at the elementary schools across town) to OKC's massive reinforced public buildings, why hasn't Lawton, or our politicians, ever given it a second thought?

They came in handy in OKC.

Back in 2013, I was living outside of Bricktown in a small second-story apartment. After the 2011 El Reno-Piedmond EF5 swept houses clean of their foundation, and the worlds biggest tornado a few weeks before, everyone was a little gun-shy of the weather there, and for good reason.

When the 2013 Moore EF5 came sweeping across the city, there was a mad rush to either flee out of its path or locate a public shelter to hunker down in. The closest shelter to me was a heart hospital and conference center over in Midwest City.

I'll admit, it wasn't ideal in the heat of the moment, but we were glad to have a place to go that could potentially offer a little protection.

Why does Lawton not have a public shelter?

I've actually asked this question to the city before, a few times, and received different answers each time.

It's too expensive. That was the first reason given. The explanation was that the city didn't even have enough money to fix our horrible roads in town, let alone build a massive reinforced storm shelter for the public.

But they have money for an aquatic center and to buy the mall at 2x the value?

The other time I asked, a few years later, I was told it would create too much of a dangerous situation for everyone involved.

People trying their best to drive to a shelter in the nick of time, or even the liability of having a designated employee responsible for opening a public shelter during a terrible weather event.

It seems, with the forecasting abilities of modern science, we all generally have a pretty advanced warning of tornadoes, don't we? I mean, the news media harps on it a week in advance, really selling the drama of it all, even if the forecast turns out to be way off the mark.

Could the City of Lawton not just keep a shelter open all day during times of elevated risk?

It's a fair question why we have fun money but no emergency money at the city. You might reach out to your local city councilor or the mayor and ask them why.