Tulsa City Council Puts $920M In Capital Improvements Before Public

The City of Tulsa is ready to spend $920 million. Now, they're asking you to sign off on their to-do list.

They've made a list of what the council thinks is important, but they will take it out to public meetings for more input. There's a lot of road projects, more for mass transit and parks, and new equipment for firefighters and police.

Voters will decide whether to spend the money on all this in the fall.

Most of what's on the list is basic infrastructure, paid out of a penny sales tax always used for things like new streets and repairs of the old ones. The almost constant pace of road construction would actually increase if everything on the list stays on the list.

"It increases the amount of street rehab by 12 percent over what we had in the 2008 package, and that was the largest street program in the history of the city," said Councilor G.T. Bynum.

The council's list of capital projects would spend $920 million collected by continuing a penny sales tax for another five to six years.

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The $654 million for transportation is mostly street work: $470 million for street repairs, $88 million for street widening, $28 million for bridge repairs, $28 million for mass transit and $23 Million for bicycle and pedestrian work.

City Councilor Karen Gilbert said, in making the list, the focus was on spreading projects across the city, spending generally the same in each council district.

"It's going throughout the city and that's the important thing that we need to focus on as councilors, is that this package is improving our city, it's helping everywhere," Gilbert said.

There's a substantial change in the bus service on the list: $29 million to replace part of the bus fleet and speed up service to 15 minute intervals along Peoria Avenue.

There's $34 million for parks, including replacing all of the city's pools, like the one at Lacy, and improvements to one out of every five playground sets in the parks system.

Read the council's list of projects

Public meetings could lead to changes. Those start next Tuesday and we've got the schedule for those meetings as well online.

Go here for a schedule of meetings