The sun had just set, but the Pete White Wellness Center in southwest Oklahoma City buzzed with activity on a fall Tuesday night.
While the crowd size might have been indicative of a holiday party or wellness event, the occasion was an open house to discuss what OKC’s next slate of general obligation bond projects will look like in the coming years. Aimed at culling project ideas from the public, the event also included personnel from every city department imaginable who were there to explain their departments’ responsibilities and priorities.
The City of OKC has held an open house in each ward to discuss ideas, options and details. In the case of the Nov. 12 event at the Pete White Wellness Center, it marked a combined event with Wards 4 and 5.
Cities use general obligation bonds to make municipal projects a reality. Often called GO bonds, these loans are backed by the full credit and taxation ability of a municipal government, and they do not rely on revenue generation from a singular project. Cities pay these loans back over a long period of time. Although no election date has been set, official city sources say a vote should take place in 2025.
While MAPS has become the public face of progress in OKC, voters can think of GO bonds as a less popular but equally important cousin in the funding-mechanism family. GO bonds allow governments to raise money to fund projects that do not typically generate revenue themselves. That can include refurbishment of bridges, rebuilding streets, improving parks or constructing sidewalks.
Unlike MAPS, which a one-penny sales tax supports, cities fund GO bonds through property taxes — currently 14.78 mills worth in Oklahoma City. A mill equals $1 in tax for every $1,000 in taxable property value. While voting to extend OKC’s current millage would have no impact on property taxes, a rejection of the extension would decrease property owners’ taxes.
In this latest round of bond brainstorming, the ideas submitted will be considered by the OKC City Council before a full list of projects gets compiled and put before the public for a vote. Oklahoma City’s last GO bond package totaled about $1 billion, but the 2025 package could be significantly larger.
With so many wants and needs in the city, officials have been eager to hear people’s priorities, OKC City Manager Craig Freeman said.
“I mean, for us, it’s a case where we like to try and find as many ways as we can to reach out to the community to get input from our residents and to find out what it is they feel like we need in the next bond program,” he said. “Our staff does a lot of work from the time we finish the last program to getting ready to plan and start working toward the next program.”
Most recently, OKC residents approved the GO bond package dubbed “Better Streets, Safer City” in September 2017. The 10-year package provided about $967 million for projects in 13 categories, some of which remain underway.
Those projects included a whopping $491 million for streets and sidewalks and $138 million for the city’s Parks and Recreation Department. Perhaps the most high-profile segment of the parks bond projects included a $27.5 million makeover for the USA Softball Hall of Fame Complex, which plays home to the wildly popular NCAA Women’s College World Series each spring.
About $62 million in the 2017 package went to improve drainage control throughout the city, while $60 million went to economic and community development in the form of affordable housing construction and job creation programs.
Fire and police services received a combined $75 million, while libraries received about $24 million. The city has recently completed several library renovations, including Belle Isle and the Almonte locations.
What could the latest GO bond package include?
As city leaders seek public input at events and online, what projects will ultimately be included in OKC’s 2025 GO bond package remains to be seen. Ward 5 Councilman Matt Hinkle said even before Tuesday night’s open house that some constituents had made their preferences known. As a resident, he has a couple himself.
“My hopes and dreams coming out of this are some streets and sidewalks in south Oklahoma City,” said Hinkle, whose district lies in that part of the city. “I think everyone has different priorities. There are some parts of town that already have sidewalks and don’t really need them, so they have other wishes.”
Input opportunity
Vision.okc.gov
Hinkle said he has already heard some totally different ideas.
“I got a request for a dog park in south Oklahoma City,” Hinkle said. “I don’t know whether that’s in the funding forecast or not. I would say probably not, but you never know. I also had someone request tennis courts. I think all of those ideas are worth considering. That’s what we’re here for: to listen to the public.”
Hinkle said the open houses and general contact with constituents will make the job of the City Council easier, even if not everyone ends up satisfied with the outcome.
“Big time,” Hinkle said when asked if the open houses have been effective. “We’re asking for people’s input. They’re the ones who are paying the bills. I think the more people see how these projects are done, and that the city is doing everything it can to be good stewards of their money, then the better off we are as a city.”
Hinkle has a few non-GO bond ideas of his own, as well.
“I would love to have a MAPS 8 for street repair and to fix bridges and drainage, which isn’t sexy,” he said. “It doesn’t bring tourists to town. It’s not a new arena. But by God, we need it.”
OKC seeks extension after Edmond voters rejected new tax
If all goes to plan, OKC voters will be asked to extend their existing property tax millage at some point in 2025. This year, however, Edmond voters were asked to establish a new property tax millage for an initial round of GO bond projects, and they roundly rejected the public safety, park and street projects put forth by city leaders.
The City of OKC has been holding versions of its community planning outreach events for more than a decade. Freeman said he hopes people take more away from the experience than sitting through a presentation.
“There was one year I was involved and it was more of a presentation as opposed to come and go, and I think we had a hard time getting people,” Freeman said. “A lot of people don’t like being locked in a room for a presentation, and it may not be something, a particular issue, that they care about. But we’ve been doing it like this since about 2007, and every year, we learn a little more, we get a little more feedback. I think the staff likes it. They set up stations, and they get energized because it’s a chance to interact with the public that they might not normally have.”
Ward 4 Councilman Todd Stone, who is up for reelection in 2025, echoed many of Freeman’s thoughts on public engagement for big projects like MAPS and bonds.
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“I think it is great for transparency,” Stone said. “It lets people see all the different ways that the city runs the various departments and how they interact with the city itself. I think it’s easy to think about streets and bridges, but there are other things that go into it. There’s economic development and parks and utilities, and all of the other things we have to deal with and fund, as well. But I think from my experience, people appreciate the opportunity (to learn). In a lot of cases, the people here run their departments, so people can get information from the top.”
Stone said one of the issues brought up at the Nov. 12 open house is something he hears about frequently in other settings: the state of the roads around the Stanley Rother Shrine at 89th Street and Shields Boulevard. The massive shrine has become a popular attraction, and the church holds four masses each Sunday and one on Saturdays, which can also be big draws.
“That street, it’s just — there are no curbs there. The street is in horrible condition. It’s just a big priority for us,” Stone said.
But even when city staff propose and the City Council considers a final list of projects, officials recognize that this GO bond package will not come close to fixing everything the city has on its “wish list” right now.
“The wish list for the city is about $9 billion, and that’s before anyone in the community comes and puts their voice in on what they would like to see happen,” Hinkle said. “So even with this one, we’re going to have a pretty good gap.”
‘A long list’ of wants and needs
To get an idea of the project ideas across OKC’s more than 600 square miles, one needs to look only as far as the city’s GO bond dashboard, which allows visitors to see the nearly 2,000 suggestions that have been received at the public meetings and through other avenues like councilpersons or online submissions.
A person in southwest OKC wrote: “There are no Metropolitan libraries on this side of town, even though population growth has been significant.”
In northwest OKC, someone suggested a publicly funded shooting range.
In northeast OKC, a person wants a portion of Anderson Road repaved.
“It is a long list of things, and it can be overwhelming,” Freeman said. “But the interaction, whether online or in person, is something we want, and something that we need as a city government.”
