OKC adjusts budget for revenue, prioritizes safety

OKLAHOMA CITY Operating funds are down slightly in the city’s proposed fiscal year 2025 budget in response to the slowdown in revenue growth.

“This budget year is a little bit of a challenge,” City Manager Craig Freeman said. “And really the challenge has been we’re projecting still to have sale tax growth but it’s about half of what our normal growth is in sales tax.”

The FY25 budget is based on about 1.5% sales tax growth whereas historically the city has experienced 3% growth, Freeman told the Oklahoma City Council on Tuesday.

At the same time, the city has made a $15.8 million investment in employee wages to keep up with the market.

“We’ve had growth in salaries, growth in other costs due to inflation. We’ve got a lot of pressures on us that have pushed the budget upward, that have increased our costs, and revenue is just not keeping pace,” Freeman said.

“With expenses growing faster than revenues, we needed to make adjustments where we could to reduce costs and balance the budget,” he said. The police and fire departments were directed to propose a .75% budget reduction, and most other city departments proposed a 2% reduction.

Budget Director Chris York presented the budget overview to the council.

“For next year we do reach a new highwater mark at over $2 billion. This is the highest budget the city has ever had, but there’s some nuance to this,” York said. “We’re showing 4% growth overall but in reality, our operating funds all took cuts. This is where we pay for our services and our staff primarily.”

The operating budget, which pays for day-to-day operations, is $918 million, a 0.3% decrease in the general fund and a 0.4% decrease in other operating funds compare to the current fiscal year.

Nonoperating funds or capital-related funds are up by 8%. “That is almost exclusively driven by our MAPS 4 program spinning up their projects over the next year. They plan on spending some money,” York said.

The city tends to overbudget, especially on capital funds, so what will be spent probably will be less than $2 billion, he said.

Sales tax and use tax are “the lifeblood of the city,” providing about 71% of general fund revenue, York said. Two-thirds of that revenue pays for personal services and 27% for other services.

Despite the budget cuts, the city is adding nine positions for a total of 5,117 employees. Only four city departments are gaining staff.

The fire department proposes adding 20 positions, equipment and supplies to launch a Crisis Response Program, with 70% of the program to be funded by the general fund and 30% by an opioid settlement.

That puts the department’s budget at $236 million, up 6.7% from this fiscal year.

The Crisis Response Program is to be staffed with a program manager, mental health clinicians and navigators, paramedics and a physician. It would assist the fire, police and ambulance staff responding to overdose and mental health calls.

So far this year, the police department has “seen a 25% reduction in the amount of calls that our patrol officers are responding to related mental health, and that’s significant,” Police Chief Wade Gourley said. “The less times that you have a police officer interact on a mental health call I think is always going to be better.”

The police department proposed a $285.9 million budget.

Three residents addressed the council, all in support of moving funding away from policing to support other public safety efforts.

Additional city departments will present their budget proposals to the City Council in meetings May 14 and May 28. Budget adoption is scheduled for June 4.

Residents can submit comments on the budget online at vision.okc.gov/ , by email at budgetcomments@okc.gov , by texting 405-252-1053 or by sending a letter to Budget comments c/o City Clerk, 200 N Walker Ave., 2nd floor, Oklahoma City, OK 73120.

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