HOCHATOWN — The woman at the center of a 30-year battle to incorporate the small village of Hochatown in southeastern Oklahoma was named the town’s mayor last week.
Dian Jordan, a university professor turned community advocate, was first elected as a member of Hochatown’s Board of Trustees. Then, on Jan. 10, the trustees met and appointed Jordan as mayor.
“This was not something that I expected to do,” Jordan said. “Because I have other projects I wanted to work on.”
Jordan, who hopes to retire from her university post next year, said she hadn’t planned on politics as a second career. However, because she spent so much time on the creation of her community, she decided she wanted to complete the process.
“It was like birthing an elephant baby then handing it over to the adoption agency,” she said. “We need to make sure it’s fed and grows healthy and is taken care of.”
Jordan said the post of Mayor in Hochatown is an honorary position and only designates the president of the town trust itself. She said the actual day-to-day business and administration of the town will be conducted by a town manager, to be appointed later.
She said the trustees are now focused on creating the town’s infrastructure and government. Jordan said Hochatown now has an official city hall – office spaced donated by Vojai Reed, one of the town’s long-term residents. Reed, who owned and operated Vojai’s Winery, offered the trust space near her former winery, located on U.S. 259.
The lease was donated to the community for a year.
“We have lots of people who want to help,” Jordan said. “They are excited about having a town.”
Jordan said the trustees voted to establish several committees to create the town’s government, including committees on taxation, ordinances, planning and zoning and finance. Work by those committees has already begun.
And one of their first goals: establish the procedures needed to collect tax revenue.
While residents approved the question to incorporate Hochatown they will have to return to the polls to approve the collection of a municipal sales tax sometime this spring. Depending on the amount approved, Jordan said the town could capture between $800,000 and $1 million per month in tourism-based sale tax revenue.
“First it has to be put to a vote and approved,” she said. “And then, if it’s approved, we can’t start collecting until the first day of a new quarter. The question is ‘do we try to do something quickly or wait and be very thoughtful, figure out what we need to do and collect on July 1?”
Records show that more than 30,000 tourists visit Hochatown on any given weekend. The spot has become a major Oklahoma tourism draw over the past two decades.
“We have seen tremendous growth,” Jordan said. “We’ve grown 20% every year for the past 20 years. For some it seems like Hochatown is an overnight sensation, but it’s not. We’ve been working on this for 20 years.”
Jordan said Hochatown residents are committed to their community. “
Almost everyone in this community feels like we’ve just had a fabulous birthday,” she said. “They are finally seeing that we have a future and that we will be in charge of our own destiny.”
Jordan said many of the town’s residents were upset by the efforts of the city of Broken Bow and the McCurtain County Commissioners who were “trying to tell us what to do.”
“It got old because people think we collect tax,” she said. “All the taxes that we are collecting up here – millions and millions of dollars a year – are going to the county lodging tax, going to the McCurtain County tax and they won’t even fill a pothole in a road for us?”
She said Hochatown wasn’t receiving any municipal benefits.
“Our tourists need better roads,” she said. “Our businesses need police and fire protection. We need sewer and water and now we can finally have those things.”