Councilors, Mayor Meet To Prioritize Vision 2025 Spending

The Tulsa City Council and Mayor Dewey Bartlett are meeting at Gilcrease Museum to hammer out Vision 2025 proposal specifics. Councilors are working to figure out what city and county projects are going to be funded by a tax renewal.

The retreat started early Friday morning and should run all day. It's expected to be the last working meeting where the city council decides what projects will get millions in funding.

The city's leaders are expected to make important decisions on how long to extend the tax, how much money to spend and which projects will take priority. Based on the council's proposed funding for 13 years, they're working to allocate about $870 million.

Some of these projects would also get funded by "Improve Our Tulsa" funds. The big projects getting a lot of money are the river dam projects, funding for Tulsa County infrastructure, public safety and streets.

12/17/2015 Related Story: Tulsa County Considers Projects For Vision 2025 Renewal

Other projects include Arkansas River projects, funding for the Gilcrease Museum, the Tulsa Zoo, parks, business and sports initiatives. 

Councilor G.T. Bynum says today's workshop is the culmination of two years of meetings to decided who will get Vision funding.

"What we're trying to do today is looking at the funding we have available to us that we feel is a responsible to ask people to pay for to renew existing taxes that are already in place without a tax increase and to see what projects we could prioritize in within that framework to be funded," Bynum said.

Bynum and Blake Ewing expressed disappointment in the county's plan to do separate 1/10th of a penny Vision sales tax. 

"I'm done discussing things with them," Ewing said of the county. 

Councilor Anna America cautioned against tying the hands of future councils and mayors with a 15-year Vision plan.

"It sort of concerns me that we want to sort of make the pot as big as possible," America said.

Voters will get a chance to vote on this package in April.