TULSA, Okla. — Some members of the Tulsa city council are forming a working group to try to put an end to what has become a repeat problem of surprise final security bills for festivals and events like the 2022 PGA Championship at Southern Hills.
Wednesday night, councilors will vote on whether the city will pick up the difference between what the golf tournament was initially quoted Tulsa Police security would cost for the event versus what the final bill sent to the PGA that they city said was due once all actual costs were tabulated out. However, this isn’t the first but rather it’s just one of many events where the city has estimated event security at a lower cost, but the final bill sent to organizers was sometimes more than double than what the city quoted them for.
“We have to stop this sticker shock when these final numbers come in and the bill is sent out,” Tulsa City Councilor Jeannie Cue told FOX23. “Some of these organizations like non-profits can’t afford these extra costs, especially long after the event is over.”
Councilors were shown a presentation Wednesday morning by Councilor Phil Lakin that showed some organizations, festivals, and non-profits that showed TPD security costs have not only varied from year to year, sometimes wildly, but the final bill sent to event organizers was sometimes more than 100 percent of what the group was originally told security would cost.
The latest organization to get a final surprise bill was the PGA, and they asked the City of Tulsa to pick up the $100,000 difference than what they were originally quoted for to have TPD assist with event security.
“I’ve done work with non-profits where we’ve planned for events, and we do have contingencies for things, but no organization has a contingency big enough for these kinds of discrepancies,” Councilor Lori Decter-Wright said about the surprise bills some organizations have been receiving long before the PGA discrepancy came to light.
Cue said the problem is two-fold. The event planning staff between the city and the police department are two people trying to make their best guesses with groups as to what will be needed during the planning process, but they have no set figures as to firm costs. They also have no assistance and no uniform way to complete the security estimates large events requesting TPD are looking for and what to quote them on. The second problem is TPD is understaffed, she said, and so in order to allow for an event that has requested to security to have what they need, some higher paid more experienced officers will be called in on their days off and will have to be paid overtime as opposed to regularly scheduled officers working normal duty but on a special assignment. Some of the events have also exceeded their original security needs they planned for with the city once the event gets underway, and so more officers are called in last minute for things like traffic and crowd control.
“We want to give officers the ability to work overtime and make that extra money if they want to,” Cue said. “We just need to plan for it better.”
Over the next few months, the working group will study what went wrong in previous incidents from LegacyFest to the PGA to avoid future last minute high bills being charged to anyone hosting an event with TPD security they are paying for.
Councilors will vote Wednesday night on whether or not they should waive the PGA’s difference in what they were quoted versus what they were charged. Many agreed that no matter how they felt about the difference being waived, this would be a one-time exception for the organization and would not be something the PGA could request again when they return to Tulsa in the next decade.
“They brought in more than enough sales tax and other revenue dollars into the city in many ways for us to cover this cost just this once,” Lakin said.
Councilors, however, feared they were opening the door for all groups to request the city pick up the difference in what they were quoted versus what they were charged, and that is why the working group is being formed.
“We need to get this figured out so we don’t have these requests over and over and this kind of debate anymore,” Cue said.
Cue said the group will also study if the city should allow event and festival organizers more leniency when it comes to using private security companies and groups as opposed to using TPD as their first option, especially while TPD deals with a recruiting and staffing shortage.
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