City Limits

[Kerry]

I know we have a thread on this somewhere but I can't find it. It seems the City has recently discovered what some of us have known for a long time - sprawl is not cost effective. They need to start bringing the city limits in.

http://www.newsok.com/cost-of-oklaho...adlines_widget

As people continue to move away from Oklahoma City's core into outlying areas, the cost of providing city services continues to climb. If trends continue, Oklahoma City could be spending $21.7 million more for such services in 2016 than it will collect in revenue to pay for the services.

[betts]

Nowhere is deannexation suggested, or simply not incorporating rural areas like we have been doing in the past. Those are two very simply solutions I see. Want to live rural? Fine. Congratulations. Here's the phone number of the septic company and all the other people who live near you. Form a RFD and you're in business.

[Kerry]

Nowhere is deannexation suggested, or simply not incorporating rural areas like we have been doing in the past. Those are two very simply solutions I see. Want to live rural? Fine. Congratulations. Here's the phone number of the septic company and all the other people who live near you. Form a RFD and you're in business.

Betts - you are correct - they never said deannexation. All they did was rule out everything else. They are just finishing MAPS for Kids so OKC schools are currently as good as they are ever going to get so that comment from Ryan is a non-starter. Spending more on schools is not going to make cost go down. The only way to lower cost long-term is to eliminiate the exposure.

[redland]

More than fifty years ago, OKC took the bold move to expand the city limits, a step that was widey ridiculed at the time both locally and by other cities. This was done largely to avoid being strangled by suburbs. By contrast, just look at the many cities (St. Louis, Cleveland, Minneapolis, to name just a few) that have been choked off by a ring of suburbs which are getting the lion's share of growth and expanding tax base. IN our own state, Tulsa is now losing population, while the suburbs that enclose it are seeing the growth. Oklahoma City, while it has robust suburbs, has plenty of room for growth. So while there might be a downside to the expanded city limites I think on balance they are a boon to OKC. Deannexation wold be sheer folly.

[Kerry]

Did you not read the article? The larger city limits is a losing proposition for the City and those losses start kicking in - in 4 years. There is a 100 years supply of in-fill space available if the city limits were reduced to the current urbanized area. St. Louis and Cleveland have problems - but they have nothing to do with the size of their city limits. The sprawl is not sustainable. The city limits were expanded in OKC to prevent white flight, but that trend is over. The smart thing to do is to start bringing the city limits back in (or create 'no development' zones).

[swilki]

Did you not read the article? The larger city limits is a losing proposition for the City and those losses start kicking in - in 4 years. There is a 100 years supply of in-fill space available if the city limits were reduced to the current urbanized area. St. Louis and Cleveland have problems - but they have nothing to do with the size of their city limits. The sprawl is not sustainable. The city limits were expanded in OKC to prevent white flight, but that trend is over. The smart thing to do is to start bringing the city limits back in (or create 'no development' zones).

Agreed

[redland]

Yes, I acknowledged that there are problems with the extended city limits. However I think a case can be made that they are outweighed by the advantages. You say the problems of such cities as St. Louis and Cleveland have nothing to do with city limits. But they do (even though other factors come into play). With the growth of the surrounding suburbs the cities are left with virtually all low-income residents, and this leads to many problems, financial among others. On another pont, white flight in OKC did not begin until Judge Bohanan's ruling on bussing in the mid-sixties. As late at 1963-64 OKC high schools were still segregated (Classen, Nothwest, Harding, etc. were white; Douglas was black). The expansion of city limits preceded that.

[Kerry]

However I think a case can be made that they are outweighed by the advantages.

If trends continue, Oklahoma City could face a $21.7 million gap by 2016 between the cost of providing services to city residents and the insufficient revenues collected to pay for them,

Read more: http://newsok.com/cost-of-oklahoma-c...#ixzz1LP5VmgnW

Please feel free to identify $21.7 million in advantages.

[krisb]

The solution is not narrowing the city limits, but greater density within those limits. We need the tax base to stay within the city. Cities like Philadelphia are struggling because the wealthy citizens live in the suburbs, but they demand urban amenities paid for by the less wealthy Philadelphia residents.

[Kerry]

The solution is not narrowing the city limits, but greater density within those limits.

The only way to do would be with 'non-development zones' (i.e. a total freeze on all rural development including when more than 50% of the value of home is damaged it can't be rebuilt). We do that here in Florida everyday along the coast.

[Of Sound Mind]

The solution is not narrowing the city limits, but greater density within those limits. We need the tax base to stay within the city. Cities like Philadelphia are struggling because the wealthy citizens live in the suburbs, but they demand urban amenities paid for by the less wealthy Philadelphia residents.

Oklahoma City's city limits are absolutely ridiculously large. Period. I'm continually amazed at how far out on the Turner Turnpike that I see the city limits sign.

It's going to take a massive influx of people to create enough "density" within the limits to make it feasible — something that's just not going to happen.

http://okc.gov/council/wardmap/wardmap.pdf

[OKCTalker]

Hey, Kerry - I don't think you meant a "no development zone" (in which one COULD NOT develop), but rather one in which you can't count on the City to provide all conventional municipal services.

It's a false economy thinking that inexpensive land equals inexpensive living. Not only do you have to bring your own infrastructure, you have longer drives, longer emergency response times, higher insurance rates, fewer choices for products & services (the number of grocers within three miles, for instance), and so on.

Even though Eva Gabor portrayed a ditzy blonde in "Green Acres," I think that she had the winning argument over Eddie Albert's.

[OKCTalker]

(My apologies if you now have the "Green Acres" theme song going through your head)

[ljbab728]

OK, Kerry. Here we go again. You're correct that this has been debated here in previous threads. You and I have had a long disagreement about this and that hasn't changed. Deannextion will solve absolutely nothing.

[Snowman]

Did you not read the article? The larger city limits is a losing proposition for the City and those losses start kicking in - in 4 years. There is a 100 years supply of in-fill space available if the city limits were reduced to the current urbanized area. St. Louis and Cleveland have problems - but they have nothing to do with the size of their city limits. The sprawl is not sustainable. The city limits were expanded in OKC to prevent white flight, but that trend is over. The smart thing to do is to start bringing the city limits back in (or create 'no development' zones).

While desegregation certainly threw full on the fire of people migrating out of the city's urban sections, the trend started with the end of WWII. I don't have a link but their was a recent article that affluent minorities have been doing the same.

[easternobserver]

City limits have NOTHING to do with sprawl. Sprawl is caused by extending water and sewer lines, allowing higher density zoning in far flung areas, and (most of all) by using interstate highways as intracity arteries and by continually expanding two lane section line roads into four, six or eight lane arterials. Dont subsidize the developers, dont get sprawl. It really is that simple. Oh yeah, and the main cause of sprawl is that the federal government subsidizes gas prices and makes them artificially low. If gas prices here were in line with gas prices in Europe, there would be very little sprawl.

[redrunner]

OK, Kerry. Here we go again. You're correct that this has been debated here in previous threads. You and I have had a long disagreement about this and that hasn't changed. Deannextion will solve absolutely nothing.

I think Kerry just wants de-annexation so OKC's population density will go up so that companies like The Container Store will come to OKC 2 years ago.

[Doug Loudenback]

For those interested in the history of Okc's geographical expansion, it is rather completely covered in this 2008 blog article. Until 1958-59, expansion came slowly and more naturally as the city proper population became larger. For example, the image below shows the city and the expansion proposed in May 1949:



That plan met with sufficient public opposition that it did not happen, even though modest expansion did occur by the time this February 1953

In the above, note that Lake Hefner is not even within city limits.

Part of the article reads,

In the early-to-mid 1950s, square mile increases were not shocking: 1953 — 56; May 1956 — 71; September 1956 — 76; July 1958 — 80. A September 19, 1956,Oklahoman article said that Oklahoma City had started a "major annexation program" at some unidentified time earlier and although the city's size was comparatively larger it was not behemothly so. And, the expansions were typically what one would expect — inclusion of areas that the city had naturally grown into. The city's failed attempt to annex the Forest Park area before it became a town — see this May 23, 1956, article for the annexation and this October 30, 1957, article reporting Forest Park's court success in defeating that annexation — did reflect a certain aggressiveness on the part of Oklahoma City, as did the city's expansion eastward toward Tinker Air Force Base (then Tinker Field) in September 1956.

1958 through 1986. At some point in 1958, apparently December, things changed. In an October 9, 1959, Oklahoman article by Jim Reid, the headline reads, "City Spells Out Annexing Policy." In the article, Reid said that the "current" annexation program started in December 1958. Although no article in December 1958 (or other proximate date) was located which said the same thing, the unsupported assertion by Mr. Reid does match with a conference called by Mayor Street in December 1958 conference on "Oklahoma City's proposed metropolitan planning." This December 11, 1958, article describes the event which was sponsored by the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce. Street sent invitations to city council members, mayors of Oklahoma county's cities and county commissioners to hear consultants from Evanston, Illinois, as they discussed metropolitan planning and urban renewal. And, thereafter, it is quite evident that the city's expansion mode changed from one akin to osmosis to one which projected population expectations in the future so that the city would have more control and management over the growth of those areas. In this time, Oklahoma City leaders were expecting a population growth to a million or so people in a fairly short span of time.

WHY THE ANNEXATION DRIVE? Much of the assimilation during this period was basically sparsely inhabited unincorporated territory. Why assimilate essentially agrarian land into the more densely populated city proper? Oklahoma City was planning for and expecting rather dramatic growth, especially to the north, possibly up to a million inhabitants by a couple of decades (even though that didn't happen, and still hasn't). Oklahoma City wanted to avoid a situation where the central city was carrying a larger share of the cost load than those on the periphery even they they shared in the benefits, plus Oklahoma City wanted control over that expanding development. Oklahoma City wanted more control over its destiny than a more passive annexation mode would allow.

Additionally, such planning projections did not exist in a vacuum — Oklahoma City was not "alone" in the list of regional municipalities wanting their day in the sun. Oklahoma City's needs might well come head to head with other cities' planning needs associated with population expansion, e.g., utilities, water, and transportation. Nationally, it was observed that core cities like Pittsburgh who carry the financial weight for its suburbs have an overly large share of the financial load while having no or little control over their suburban kin. This notion, it seems, is at least a part of Oklahoma City's agenda beginning in 1958.

What would Oklahoma City need to do to insure that other metro cities such as Edmond, Norman, Shawnee, Guthrie, Moore, Midwest City, did not preempt Oklahoma City by beating Oklahoma City to the punch?

The answer was simple — beat them to the punch by preemptive first strikes and lots of 'em! A December 17, 1958, article reported that Midwest City had just amended its city charter to prevent its annexation without Midwest City's consent, Bethany having done the same earlier in the year.

And so it was that from late 1958 through August 1986 that Oklahoma City became seriously aggressive in its annexation of adjoining areas, not just a little, but a lot.

Oklahoma City's expansion agenda came to be seen as a threat by Norman, Midwest City, Edmond, Chickasha, Shawnee, et al., and the city came to be vilified ... my silly graphic is below:

RESISTANCE WAS FUTILE. Efforts were made during Oklahoma City's expansion period to stop it. Almost always, those attempts failed. This September 16, 1959, article describes Chickasha State Senator Walt Allen's intention to slow it down. The article says that he and another senator had said that, "many cities within a 50-mile radius of Oklahoma City are fearful 'they will be gobbled up' unless the present law is changed." A September 10, 1960, Oklahoman article reported that the executive committee of the legislative council adopted a proposal of Norman's State Senator Robert Bailey to study a revision of annexation and dis-annexation laws. Meeting in Tulsa, the article reports that Bailey told the legislative council, "Now they are three miles out on the turnpike and are coming this way," an allusion that Tulsans, too, should be worried. In 1961, legislation was introduced which would limit Oklahoma City's expansion. But, the legislation was ultimately seen as unduly restricting other cities in their own circumstances and it was not passed.

The city's expansion agenda had to do with obtaining the tax base for the expected growth of they city's close-in metro area, and to simultaneously prevent other metro cities from getting the territory before Okc did, as had occurred in Pittsburgh (an example not infrequently mentioned). Also, consider the city of Cincinnati which shows a 2010 population of only 296,943, even though its metro population is 2,130,151 or so.

Here's a chart tracing the number of square miles...



And here's the map:



My personal take? Well, when the city proper gets its 1,000,000 population (and I surely think that it will), we'll be needing that extra space and will be glad to have it.

[flintysooner]

Those of us who live in the "fringe" areas receive virtually no services although trash pickup is much appreciated and well worth the fee even if it is rather grudgingly done. There is one policeman on duty at least sometimes but one should not hold one's breath awaiting a response.

Fire dept does try to keep the grass fires down, that is when they can find a way to get to the fire. Otherwise there's a lot of watching since there's no water. And there's a lot of cooperation with the other communities so OKC is not necessarily the only department responding.

Roads are nearly nonexistent having been reduced to something more like wide paths.

No sewer service of course.

Hard to imagine the City spending much money in the "fringe" areas on the "fringe" people.

[Kerry]

My personal take? Well, when the city proper gets its 1,000,000 population (and I surely think that it will), we'll be needing that extra space and will be glad to have it.

OKC will have to reach a city wide population 1.2 million to achive the density of the current urbanized area (which isn't very dense in the first place). Assuming a growth rate at 2X the last decade, how many decades will it take before OKC reaches 1.2 million people? Will it be in the next 100 years? Meanwhile, starting in 4 years the city will be running a loss of $21.7 million per year. That doesn't seem cost effective to me.

[Doug Loudenback]

Well, Kerry, perhaps you are right. Maybe we could sell south parts of Oklahoma City to Norman, Moore & Mustang, the east part to Yukon and/or El Reno, and the north part to Edmond. But, according to your reckoning, perhaps we should consider paying those cities to take the properties off of our hands? Just kidding, of course, because if we'd merely de-annex, we won't have any need to pay them.

When is it that the city will reach the magic 1,000,000 number? Who can say. Oklahoma City proper was 506,132 in 2000 and 579,999 in 2010, I'm pretty sure. Using straight-line math, that's 7,386.7 per year over the 10-year period, which, annualized, is a 0.014594414054 growth rate. Using that number, city population will be slightly over 1,000,000 in 2067, according to my reckoning. If the rate is 0.02, the magic year is 2047, or if 0.03 the year is 2035, for whatever worth such idle speculation may be worth.



Looking at trends, the city grew at a faster rate than the county, by the way. County population was 660,450 in 2000, 718,633 in 2010, a 10 year increase of 8.8% compared to Okc's 14.6% 10-year change. Have I made any mistakes in my calculations?

[Kerry]

Looking at trends, the city grew at a faster rate than the county, by the way. County population was 660,450 in 2000, 718,633 in 2010, a 10 year increase of 8.8% compared to Okc's 14.6% 10-year change. Have I made any mistakes in my calculations?

I am going to take your word on the math. However, what makes you think Edmond, Norman, etc... would gobble up the land vacated by OKC? They would have the same problem, the inability to afford to provide services to the rural land.

Can someone provide one good reason why OKC should keep 622 sq miles of land within the city limits. Keep in mind, I am going to question if any reason provided is a 'good' reason, but have at it.

[Patrick]

Well, the problem isn't annexation vs deannexation. I think the main problem is not sticking with the original goal of annexation: to control development in those regions. As stated in the article from Doug above: "Oklahoma City wanted control over that expanding development. Oklahoma City wanted more control over its destiny than a more passive annexation mode would allow."

If the city doesn't want to provide services to residential areas within city limits, then they don't have to approve the building permits, plain and simple. They do have control over what gets developed in those areas. It's the city that's approving building permits in new residential areas along the fringes. They could just limit the approval of building permits to retail operations that bring in tax dollars.

[BrettM2]

I am going to take your word on the math. However, what makes you think Edmond, Norman, etc... would gobble up the land vacated by OKC? They would have the same problem, the inability to afford to provide services to the rural land.

Can someone provide one good reason why OKC should keep 622 sq miles of land within the city limits. Keep in mind, I am going to question if any reason provided is a 'good' reason, but have at it.

I remember a few years ago, when I still lived in MWC, I heard they were trying to get the land that is currently SE OKC. Those people already go to Mid-Del/C-NP schools. Edmond is already rural east of I-35, which is where most of our land is. I can see them taking parts of OKC north of Memorial if OKC let them.

[Larry OKC]

I am going to take your word on the math. However, what makes you think Edmond, Norman, etc... would gobble up the land vacated by OKC? They would have the same problem, the inability to afford to provide services to the rural land. ...

Don't know if this is true or not, but they might be willing to annex it because the land is closer to their own core than it is to OKC's? If that is the case, it might be cheaper for them to provide infrastructure expansion? Then there is the same thought process for them that may have been behind it when OKC did it, if we don't get it someone else will (looking only at the revenue side and not the expense side)?