OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma City Council is preparing to vote on the largest infrastructure funding package in the city’s history as a $2.7 billion General Obligation bond goes up for a vote next month, the result of months – or even years – of work by City staff.
If approved by the City Council at their July 15th meeting, the General Obligation (or GO) bond will go before OKC residents in a general election on October 14th.
General Obligation bonds are the primary way that the City of OKC funds infrastructure projects like street and bridge improvements, City-run parking garages, and facility maintenance for police, fire, and library services.
While these funding bonds are normally considered and passed for OKC every ten years, recently exploding population growth means that the 2025 GO bond is taking place just eight years after 2017’s $967 million GO bond, which came to be known as “Better Streets, Safer City.”
“This one’s a little bit earlier than ten years,” City Manager Craig Freeman told the assembled City Council at the June 17th meeting where the new GO bond plan was presented. “In growing in population, and just the demands and the needs that we have throughout the city… the bonds do provide a great way for us to do this.”
Why a bond?
While City services and employees are paid by OKC sales taxes and major construction and development projects are typically funded by penny sales tax increases like MAPS, the only avenue for infrastructure funding in OKC is through the sale of bonds.
The City sells bonds to be repaid to investors and stakeholders over time through “ad valorem” taxes, and those funds go toward improving and maintaining roads, bridges, sidewalks, parks, City facilities, and more.
With Oklahoma City’s population having grown by an estimated 60,000 people since the passage of 2017’s “Better Streets, Safer City” package, the infrastructural upgrades approved back then are already reaching their limits, leading City staff to compile a new GO bond proposal that nearly triples the 2017 cost.
What’s included?
The primary focus of the 2025 GO bond is, once again, street improvements.
The proposal presented to City Council by Public Works and the City Manager’s office on June 17th would allocate $1.35 billion specifically for streets and bridges, comprising half of the proposed bond amount and more than the entire 2017 bond package combined.
“Streets, bridges, and traffic control are always the number one priority in our community,” Assistant City Manager Aubrey McDermid told City Council. “The majority of our bond is really concentrated on these improvements.”
That means dedicated allocations for major road resurfacing projects, new sidewalks, streetscape enhancements, and even some street widenings, mainly in western parts of the city where residential populations have grown.
The remaining 50% of the $2.7 billion total is spread across parks, drainage, public transit, emergency service facilities, and the construction of a new full-sized parking garage downtown to be used by court visitors, public transit passengers, and Civic Center patrons.
Here’s a breakdown of the proposed allocations:
- Streets – $1,350,070,000
- Bridges – $90,595,000
- Traffic System – $81,030,000
- City Maintenance, Data & Municipal Services Support Facilities – $47,070,000
- Economic and Community Development – $175,000,000
- Parks and Recreational Facilities – $414,295,000
- Libraries and Learning Centers – $52,480,000
- Drainage Control System – $140,440,000
- Transit and Parking System – $129,675,000
- Police, Municipal Courts and Family Justice Facilities – $107,345,000
- Fire Facilities – $130,000,000
- Total – $2,718,000,000
Here is the slide deck from the presentation leading up to the vote of the Council:
2025-GO-Bond-FinalPublic outreach
That $2.7 billion total wasn’t reached easily.
City staff spent months conducting online polls and surveys, hosting in-person outreach events, and pouring over suggestion forms and resident submissions to build a detailed list of exactly what in OKC needs improvement and where.
But the real planning for this proposal started even earlier than that.
“Since the last bond program was passed and we knew that certain projects couldn’t make the 2017 bond, we’ve maintained lists of needs across the city,” McDermid explained to City Council. “And then in about 2023, when we really started in earnest working on the 2025 bond, we started with that package of projects and we know that we need to build and expand on that and engage the community.”
That included launching the vision.okc.gov website where visitors could drop a pin on a specific location and add their own comments about what they’d like to see there.
“Our initial bond list, with all of the needs and wants, totaled $7 billion, so, we had to prioritize the most important things.”
Oklahoma City Assistant City Manager Aubrey McDermid
Suggestions on the site are as diverse as “Kyle V.” advocating for live-work spaces for artists in the city center and “Matthew Rankin” calling for street widening and a roundabout at NW 150th and N. Rockwell, an intersection that saw one of the city’s heaviest concentrations of suggestions.
All told, the site received over 6,000 individual suggestions from city residents.
Even with over $2 billion in bond funding, it would be impossible for the City to address every suggestion that they received.
“Our initial bond list, with all of the needs and wants, totaled $7 billion,” McDermid said. “So we had to prioritize the most important things.”
Next steps
The proposal was passed unanimously by the City Council at the June 17th meeting with recently elected Ward 7 councilman Camal Pennigton commenting on the hard work and efficiency of City staff in compiling and presenting the full bond package.
“Especially as the new kid on the horseshoe,” he said, “it has been so reassuring to hear the systematic, careful, thoughtful work that our city does to put this package together to support all of our residents.”
City Council will vote on final approval of the proposed 2025 GO bond on July 15th.
If that vote passes, it will go to a general public election on October 14th, 2025.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
