Vision Tulsa will bring in almost $900 million for public safety, economic development, streets and transportation, but it may cost the city in other ways.
City Manager Jim Twombly said, for example, 160 new police officers will mean increasing the fleet of cars by 25 percent.
"That's going to impact fleet management, obviously, in terms of the ... repairs," Twombly said. "HR — hiring police officers and firefighters, testing, getting people through that process. I think the police department is maybe the largest user of the litigation division."
City Attorney David O'Meilia said 85 percent of the his staff's litigation work is for the Tulsa Police Department. Meanwhile, the city budget proposes cutting the city attorney’s staff. City Councilor Anna America said that obviously won’t work.
As we look at, for instance, cuts in legal, and at the same time we know we're going to be giving them an additional burden, that probably means there might need to be extra support there, I think," America said.
Twombly said no one has put a number on what the administrative costs of Vision Tulsa will be. Other cities built administrative funding into their Vision ballots, but Tulsa did not.
City Councilor Karen Gilbert said it’s too late for Tulsa to dedicate Vision funds to related administrative costs.
"I would not be in favor of moving those funds to pay for additional employees in other departments since we told the public we're going to use these funds specifically to hire more police officers, to hire more 911 dispatchers and to hire more firefighters," Gilbert said.
