2025 OKC Budget Eyes Cuts, Anticipating Economic Slowing

Oklahoma City leaders are asking municipal departments to tighten the belt a little in next year’s city budget.

City Manager Craig Freeman says expenses are growing faster than the money coming in, forcing the city to ask departments for slight budget reductions in next year’s $918 million budget.

“The forecast for FY25’s General Fund revenue is based on just over one-point-five percent sales tax growth, which is about half of the normal growth rate,” Freeman said. “With expenses growing faster than revenues, we needed to make adjustments where we could to reduce costs and balance the budget.”

Most city departments were directed to institute a two percent cut, while police and fire departments were directed to make a point-75 percent cut.

“The budget for next year is really telling two stories,” Oklahoma City Budget Director Christian York said.

One story is of a MAPS4 boom, budgeting $367 million for construction at the fairgrounds, animal shelter, youth center, civil rights center and diversion hub. That's money already in city coffers.

“On the other side of the house, the operating funds were needing to take a little bit of bit of a reduction,” York said.

That's because the cost of maintaining current service levels keeps going up all while city economists are warning revenue growth is half of what's expected. “The employment growth just really isn’t keeping up on a national level. We’re being impacted there and what we’re seeing is our sales tax checks throughout the year are indicating that next year we might have a little bit of a slowdown,” York said.

“We are still fully funded police department,” OKC Police Chief Wade Gourley said.

Oklahoma City Police Chief Wade Gourley is proposing eliminating two civilian positions and cutting more than a million dollars in miscellaneous expenses. 

Despite the tightening of duty belts, this year's proposed budget does increase police salaries and benefits by more than $6.6 million, spending Gourley says was agreed upon ahead of time in a contract with the police union.

“We are the largest department when it comes to our employees,” Gourley said. “The cost of our employees, that’s where the money is in our budget. I believe it’s 70 percent that goes towards salaries, benefits, and other things. It’s people that cost us the money,”

Gourley said the budget considerations will not impact to number of officers on the street. In fact, the department is still slated to hire additional officers and conduct three academies next fiscal year. “I don’t anticipate any changes. That’s one thing that was really good about the budget cut that were able to do is that it will not impact service to our community,” Gourley said,

The Oklahoma City Fire Department is also looking to increase its budget and add a new crisis response team staffed by 20 civilian fire positions. They will take calls for mental health crises and opioid substance abuse.

The $1.8 million program is proposing using general revenue, opioid settlement funds, and money set aside for community policing and homelessness task force recommendations.

The City of Oklahoma City is encouraging citizen feedback through June 4.