Broken Arrow voters will decide on $53-million bond issue in May

Broken Arrow has its own version of Vision. The city council Thursday night approved a plan for a $53-million bond project to build new public facilities and widen roads. <br><br>The proposal goes to

Friday, February 20th 2004, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

Broken Arrow has its own version of Vision. The city council Thursday night approved a plan for a $53-million bond project to build new public facilities and widen roads.

The proposal goes to the voters in May. As News on 6 reporter Steve Berg tells us, city leaders say itâ€™s vital for BA to be all it can be.

Broken Arrow isn't broken; it's bursting at the seams. And city leaders are proposing a number of projects to keep pace with the growth. The biggest ticket item on the list is a new Emergency Operations Center downtown that would house both the police and fire headquarters at a cost of about $7-million.

The next biggest item is a city conference center just north of the Expressway, coincidentally planned near a spot that's rumored to be a possible location for a Bass Pro Shop.

Broken Arrow's mayor Richard Carter says it wouldn't compete with Tulsa's new convention center, but would instead complement it. "Many cities have found that if you have a convention-conference center that can handle groups of 500 or a thousand people that you can attract many of these smaller groups that do not want to go to a huge convention center."

Another big difference between Tulsa County's Vision plan and the BA bond proposal is that the bonds will not require any new taxes. "How often do you see something come along where you can do $53-million in capital projects over a 5 year time span and not have a tax increase, we think that's phenomenal."

More than half of that $53-million goes to roads all over town, with the biggest projects on Aspen between 101st and 111th, on New Orleans between Lynn Lane and 193rd, and on 71st street between 23rd and 37th. And there are 17 more roads that will be widened in addition to those.

Ted Allison with the Broken Arrow Chamber of Commerce: "The road to the future is only going to get more crowded in Broken Arrow, with an estimated 130,000 people here by the year 2020."

Russell Peterson with the Broken Arrow Chamber of Commerce: "We've had phenomenal growth over the last couple of decades. We're actually anticipating more growth and more of the growth that we'd like to see out in the city as far as economic development more retail, more rooftops and to accommodate that."

According to some projections, Broken Arrow could soon overtake Lawton and Norman, to become the 3rd biggest city in Oklahoma.