State of the City

2026 State of the City

 

AS PREPARED FOR DELIVERY

Thank you so much, Mike. I’m grateful to you and the Chamber for this platform, which we have used to great effectiveness over the last eight years. But more importantly, I’m grateful for the secret sauce on display here today. The modern Oklahoma City renaissance would not be possible without the partnership between city government, this Chamber, and the people of Oklahoma City. So thank you, Mike, to you and your board, and Christy Gillenwater and her team, for all that you do.

And thank you to each of you either here in person or watching online now or later, for carving out an hour to focus on the civic life of our city. We don’t just use this time as a recap. We get work done each year in this room. This is my eighth State of the City address, and each of them has served a specific purpose to take this mission-focused city into its next endeavor. Over the last three decades we have elevated Oklahoma City to the global stage, and yet, even more remarkable is the fact that we have never grown complacent. Each time we notch a win - and all we do is win - we ask, “what’s next?” Once again, I will answer that question today.

First of all, since we last gathered, we have had two municipal votes. The first I’ll mention was pretty important to me – it was my re-election in February, when you bestowed upon me a third term with 86.5% of the vote. It remains the honor of my life to serve my hometown in this way, and I thank you for the validation that came with the magnitude of the support.

The other election was important to all of us, it was overwhelming as well, and that was the passage of our $2.7 billion core infrastructure bond issue that puts $1.5 billion into 433 individual projects improving streets, bridges and traffic, and another $1.2 billion into core needs like police, fire, drainage, parks, transit, libraries, economic development, and affordable housing. The bond issue vote last October contained 11 questions. The lowest one received 75 percent support and the highest one received 85 percent support. Once again, in our city, voters that are registered as Republicans, Democrats and Independents found consensus and voted the same way on the same day for the betterment of our community. We truly are united as One OKC.

Of course, as we know, our ability to find common ground in the name of community investment is a hallmark of our city’s ethos that now goes back 33 years. The number one reason we stand here today as America’s most dynamic city is that we have continuously committed to investing in ourselves. Starting with the passage of the original MAPS in 1993, and through October’s bond issue, our voters have approved fifteen initiatives to invest in capital projects – to build or maintain things – and the dollar amount of those 15 initiatives – and this number is not adjusted for inflation – totals just under $10 billion. And, $5 billion of that commitment has come since I took office and so most of the projects funded by that $5 billion still await their ribbon cutting. We still have much to look forward to.

In 1993, led by Mayor Ron Norick, we set out as a city to improve our quality of life. We said at the time that we were doing that for ourselves and for our kids. I was 14 in 1993 so I guess I’m the kid in that story. And indeed, people of all ages are now staying in Oklahoma City. But we’ve long since passed the benefits of mere retention. At a pace unprecedented in most of our city’s history, people are moving here. Just a few weeks ago, U.S. News wrote that we were the number two best big city in which to live. People have been saying stuff like that for years. And as it turns out, someone is listening.

So let’s talk today about the growth that is resulting from our success, specifically population growth. I think we all kind of know that this city is growing. But today I’m going to share with you just how stunning that growth truly is, and what it means for us right now and in the decades to come.

I sat down this week and created a relatively simple breakdown of our city’s population growth since the first post-statehood Census in 1910. This isn’t a terribly complicated analysis, but I’d never actually seen it presented this way before. You see on this chart Oklahoma City’s Census population every ten years since 1910 and then you see how many people were added to the city’s population each decade.

You see there that we started in 1910 with 64,205 residents inside the city limits. Over the next ten years, we added 27,090 residents. Then oil was discovered in OKC in 1928 and we were an overnight boomtown. By 1930, we had added 94,094 new residents in that decade. Because of the oil discovery, that period between 1920 and 1930 was an enormous growth decade for our city. The next big decade for growth was the 1950s, when we added over 80,000 residents. And then you see that in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, growth was more muted, around 40,000 each decade. Then, MAPS passed in 1993 and in that decade – the 1990s - we added 61,413 residents. Then, the last original MAPS project opened in 2004, the Thunder arrived in 2008, we just kept passing all those initiatives I just talked about, and we’ve been on a rocket ship ever since. Between 2000 and 2010, we added 73,867 residents. And then between 2010 and 2020, we added 101,055 residents. Five years into this current decade, we’ve already added 38,795 residents, which means we’re on pace to add nearly 78,000 residents this decade.

So four years from now, in 2030, we will have added over 250,000 more residents in the city limits than we had living here in 2000. In 1950, there weren’t 250,000 people living in the entire city, but that’s the number of people we have added just since the year 2000.

Here’s another way to look at it. After our founding as a city in 1889, we reached 250,000 residents around 1950. It took us 61 years to almost reach 250,000 residents. It took fifty more years after 1950 to get our second 250,000 residents, as we reached that milestone around 2000. And then in only 30 years since 2000, we will have added our third quarter-million residents, when we will likely pass that milestone of 750,000 residents in 2030. Sixty years, fifty years, thirty years. How long do you think it will take to add our fourth quarter-million? My money’s on twenty to twenty-five years. That would mean our city will have a million people living in the city limits by around 2050 or 2055. This isn’t a complicated analysis. It’s looking at us right there in black and white.

And just to put into perspective what it will mean to have a million people living in Oklahoma City, do you know how many American cities today have over a million people? Ten.

Now those cities will keep growing as well, so I’m not suggesting we’ll be in the top ten cities by 2055, but think of the cities today in the top 10 and imagine that we’ll be the size that they are right now in just a quarter-century. I mean, you know which cities I’m talking about? Counting down from number 10 to number 6 – those cities today are Jacksonville, Dallas, San Diego, San Antonio and Philadelphia. Those are some of the biggest cities in America, and we are 25 years away from being where they are today.

And there is no reason to think we won’t maintain this growth, because as I said earlier, we are still about to deploy almost $5 billion that has already been approved.

We’re about to open one of the greatest arenas in the world. We’re about to open a new stadium. We’re about to host seven events of the Olympics. Our crime rates have been in decline for a decade. Our unemployment rate has been below 4% for 55 of the last 58 months.

We’ve run this experiment already for thirty years. We know what happens when you do what we’re doing. People will vote with their feet and they will continue to move to this safe, inclusive, exciting city with plenty of jobs. This population growth is not going to stop.

Here’s one more way to look at our population growth. Sometime in the next couple of years, we will pass 732,000 residents, which means at that point we will have completely doubled the population we had in 1970. Who lived here in 1970? It wasn’t that long ago.

And if you lived here in 1970, you drove on I-40. You drove on I-35. You drove on I-44. The fundamentals of our city’s transportation network are the same today as they were in 1970. But within two years, there will be twice as many people on those highways than there were in 1970. Have you noticed the difference?

I know you have, because each year the Census quantifies how much time you spend commuting to your job each way. In 2005, twenty years ago, they said that you spent an average of 19.2 minutes driving to your job in Oklahoma City. Today, they say you’re spending an average of 22.1 minutes. That’s three minutes more each way, which is a 15 percent increase. Since 2005, that’s an additional six minutes per day and a half hour more per week. That’s 26 hours more a year. A full calendar day each year that you’re spending in traffic that you weren’t spending in 2005.

Nothing is more precious than our time, and we’re spending more of it each year in our cars. And that’s not to speak of the behavior changes you might already be making to limit your time in traffic. Rush hour is getting longer, and people tell me their new avoidance strategies every day. People are starting to go to work earlier or leave later to avoid traffic. It used to be in Oklahoma City that if you showed up to a meeting late, and you said, “Sorry, I got stuck in traffic,” people kind of gave you side eye. Not anymore. Which is, actually, convenient for people who were already late to everything.

Listen, everything I’m describing – the population growth, the increasing traffic – these are cold, hard realities. Nothing I’m describing is suddenly going to reverse itself.

And I can’t stop people from moving here. We can’t build walls around the city. And the only way to encourage them not to move to here is to make it miserable to live here. But then we have to live in that miserable place, too. We ran that experiment already as well. Nobody wanted to move here in the 1980s. But nobody tells me they want to bring back the 1980s in Oklahoma City.

We want a high quality-of-life in Oklahoma City. We are unapologetic about that. But when you have a high quality of life, people are going to move here and the first place you’ll feel it is on our roads.

Now, you might be saying, “Okay, you’re right, we’re growing, and I don’t want to sit in traffic for hours. Can we expand the highways?” Well, no, not really. I give a lot of credit to Secretary Tim Gatz and the Oklahoma Department of Transportation for the innovative things they’re doing, and we’re always grateful for the investments they make in OKC. But there is a harsh reality that there is only so much they can do to lessen our time in traffic. We already have three interstates and multiple turnpikes. Yes, the new turnpike to the south will divert some traffic, but that’s kind of the last big project there’s room for. The metro has pretty much reached the point of saturation with highways.

Now there’s always improvements that can and will be made to choke points in our existing network, and that will help. But new highways, or adding significantly more lanes, is just not feasible for most of our existing system. And I would also add that adding lanes is not the panacea you may think it is.

This is a photo of Interstate 405 in Los Angeles. If you’re intoxicated with the idea of adding lanes to our highways, there’s nothing more beautiful than this image. Look at that – twelve lanes across. And all those cars are still just sitting there. Here in OKC, we live in the 405. In Los Angeles, they live on the 405.

But it’s not just Los Angeles that has bad traffic. You know, as Mayor, I meet people frequently who are experiencing our city for the first time. The comment I’m about to share is one I hear quite often, and you can take it however you wish, but it is just reality that this is something someone says to me almost every week. They’ll say, "This city reminds me of Nashville and Austin twenty years ago.”

Now I know for a fact that they mean that as a compliment. Nashville and Austin are known nationally as two cities that suddenly burst onto the global stage, and I don’t disagree that we are living through that kind of elevation in OKC right now. I spoke to it last year here on this stage after our Thunder won the championship. We have arrived.

However, another thing that a lot of people know about Nashville and Austin these last twenty years is that their traffic has exploded. Both cities now rank in the top 10 or top 20 of every ranking I can find for U.S. traffic congestion. Both cities have now passed transportation initiatives – Austin in 2020 and Nashville in 2024. But both did so much too late in their growth phase, and leaders in both cities would tell you that. If we really are where they were 20 years ago, that means we still have time. But not much.

So to sum it all up, we have spent three decades improving our quality of life. And the pipeline for that continued improvement is already full of projects, so we know that people are going to keep moving here. That means population will continue to grow and by 2055, we’ll almost surely be a city of one million people. And the first place we will feel that pressure is in our transportation system, which we already are.

So if the question at this speech each year is, “what’s next?” I have your answer.

Our ability to freely move around our city is in jeopardy, and it is time for a sense of urgency. The urgency comes from the reality that funding and planning and implementation of major improvements in our transportation system will still take many years, no matter how fast we move from this point forward. The best time to start was yesterday. The second-best time is today.

If you have horrendous traffic and it’s already here and that’s when you decide to do something about it, like they did in Austin and Nashville, you are way too late. We can learn from their mistakes. The time to make a commitment is now.

That commitment must give us the resources we need to strengthen our existing system of city streets for those who remain in cars, and it must provide public transit alternatives that take some cars off the road and at the very least, give each of us a choice.

And this new commitment will require new resources. Thanks to the taxpayers, we can generally meet your expectations for services and infrastructure as those expectations exist today. But the resources we have today are not sufficient to meet the looming challenges of growth. Meeting this new transportation challenge is going to require a new commitment from each of us.

Now I want to be clear, on the planning side, we’re not starting from scratch. Thanks to the foresight of city leaders, we started the planning and the collaboration twenty years ago. That work we’ve already done makes this timely opportunity for commitment possible. Let me recap that history a bit.

In 2005, our city adopted a plan for public transit that included better bus service, commuter rail that connects downtown OKC to Edmond and Norman, bus rapid transit lines along key corridors, and a downtown streetcar to circulate all these people who would be arriving downtown via the rest of the system without cars. Ever since the adoption of that plan, with the resources available, our city, led by COTPA and EMBARK, have made progress on those priorities. Through MAPS 3, MAPS 4, bond issues and federal grants, we’ve done a lot to invest in some of the infrastructure we’ll need.

Notably, MAPS 3 built the streetcar, which by the way, just recorded its biggest month ever, with over 33,000 rides in March. A federal grant built our first bus rapid transit up Classen and Northwest Expressway. By the way, that line just recorded a record month for ridership, with over 60,000 rides in May. MAPS 4 is adding hundreds of bus shelters and adding bus rapid transit to the South and Northeast. All of that is progress, but it’s taken twenty years. The growth is passing us by, and the work that needs to be done requires greater resources and a permanent commitment, not a temporary one like those initiatives.

Through these last twenty years, we have also engaged in the collaboration and planning necessary to take this next step.

My predecessor Mayor Mick Cornett began convening our regional cities over a decade ago to talk about a regional transit authority. In 2019, it became official, when our city formally joined the state’s first Regional Transit Authority, which now includes Oklahoma City, Edmond and Norman. All regional cities were invited to be part of this initiative, and ultimately these are the three that have moved forward. And that is fine, because based on both geography and population, Edmond and Norman are the two most critical suburban partners in the metro.

Once we created the regional transit authority, I asked one of our state’s most successful and popular leaders to chair the effort, and since that time, Governor Brad Henry has been working with his fellow board members from all three cities to develop a plan. They have all worked incredibly hard for seven years. I’ve talked about this in every State of the City address since 2019, and there’s been a lot of media coverage as well. Recently, the regional transit authority rebranded itself as ONE Transit. Interestingly, the letters in the word ONE happen to align with Oklahoma City, Norman and Edmond. More importantly, the development of ONE Transit’s plan for our community is now nearing completion.

Their plan will include additional road funding for all three cities. Roads are absolutely a part of this community’s transportation system and always will be. And funding for roads is desperately needed in all three cities. We don’t receive significant funding from anywhere else to maintain our city streets. We do it with the taxpayers that we have, and even with the resources we received last year in the bond issue, it’s still inadequate to a city of 620 square miles with 9,000 lane miles to maintain. It currently costs between $800,000 and $900,000 to resurface one lane mile. So to resurface every street in the city would cost between seven and eight billion dollars. So we will make good use of additional road funding, and so will Edmond and Norman.

The ONE Transit plan will also include funding to build and operate a commuter rail line that connects downtown OKC to Edmond and Norman, with stops at key points along the way. This will be a game-changing new amenity for the community that will change the way we commute to work, and the way we travel to Thunder games and concerts, OU football and date nights. And the stops along that line will become booming commercial developments, as we have seen in every other city in America.

The ONE Transit plan will also include bus rapid transit to serve Canadian County and to Tinker to complement the bus rapid transit lines already operating in Northwest OKC and funded through MAPS 4 for Northeast and South. And the ONE Transit plan will improve bus systems in all three cities and will ultimately make a downtown connection to OKC Will Rogers International Airport.

Collectively, this plan will preserve our quality of life by alleviating traffic congestion, it will preserve the mobility necessary to keep our economy strong and growing, and it will spur commercial development, among other benefits.

This plan and its necessary resources will require voter approval in a pooled vote of Oklahoma City, Edmond and Norman voters.

This proposal will come to you in the next year. There are still ongoing conversations as we collaborate with the many partners at the table, including ONE Transit, the Mayors and City Councils in all three cities, and this Greater OKC Chamber. Though we have details to consider and timing to finalize, we all understand that the challenges of population growth I have described today must be faced, and that we have to make a commitment to our transportation system, and that there is a sense of urgency.

This particular challenge stemming from growth is not the only one that will require our attention in the years ahead, but it is the one that requires the most implementation time, it is the one that requires the greatest additional financial commitment, and it is the one that is ready. We have talked about this for my entire tenure as mayor. Governor Henry has given this almost as much time as he spent serving as our Governor. The time for commitment is now upon us.

There is nothing that would be easier for all of us than to do nothing. I’d love to just cut ribbons the next four years and watch the moving trucks arrive. But I cannot do that in good conscience. Because today, Oklahoma City got larger by 21 people. Tomorrow, we’ll add 21 more, and then 21 more on Friday. And so on. The growth is relentless, and we have to address it, or we will deeply regret our inaction.

Our population growth is validation of our success. It is also the challenge of our times. And like all previous challenges, we will meet it. So stay tuned on this topic. More to come in the months ahead.

So today, I didn’t want to bury the lede. What I just talked about is so critical to our city’s future that I needed to get that done right up front. Now I’m going to spend the rest of our time today reminding us why all these people are moving to Oklahoma City.

One big reason for our continued success is, of course, the continued international platform provided by the NBA, our Oklahoma City Thunder, and our incredibly talented players. By the way, thank you to the Thunder for the gifts everyone has received at their seats today.

Though the season didn’t conclude exactly how we all desperately wanted, it was still a season most any city would dream of. A Western Conference final, the best record in the NBA, and a second straight MVP for Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, our city’s fourth MVP Award in the last 13 seasons. When the season finally ended, it felt like the conclusion of a 14-month chapter in our lives that we will never forget. The playoffs of 2025, our first championship, the parade, the two months of community celebration, the raising of the banner, and then the season spent as defending champs. It was a ride for the ages. Again, I want to thank the ownership of the team, led by Clay Bennett and his partners, George Kaiser, Jeff Records, Bill Cameron, Bob Howard, Jay Scaramucci, and Everett Dobson. I want to also thank Sam Presti, Danny Barth, Coach Daigneault, and all the coaches, players, and staff, and everyone in the organization for giving that gift of this past year to the people of Oklahoma City.

And obviously, it’s a gift that keeps on giving. The generous commitment from Clay and his partners to the roster, the brilliant management from Sam, it all means that we’re going to enjoy this ride for years to come. And that winning identity will continue to elevate our city, because we uniquely place the NBA and the Thunder at the center of our brand. We do so because the NBA has a truly global reach, and the Thunder is an organization of almost unparalleled excellence in professional sports. We have the leadership of the Thunder here today. Let's thank the Thunder for this past year.

Of course, all of that is why 71 percent of our voters made a commitment in 2023 to build a billion-dollar arena to secure the Thunder in OKC till at least 2053. That might be the year we hit a million people. Last year at this speech, we debuted the beautiful, stunning one-of-a-kind design for that arena, led by David Manica. And then this spring we broke ground on what we now know as Continental Coliseum. This venue sustains our relationship with the Thunder and keeps us competitive for concerts, but it also makes an aesthetic statement about the city that we want to be. Next week brings the first pouring of concrete as part of the construction, and our arena will soon rise out of that pit. This arena will be a wonder of the world, and just its presence – let alone what happens inside – will become an iconic representation of our city.

We have obviously used sports to lift our city’s brand and there is no question that much of our profile around the nation and the world continues to be driven by sports. We have invested in sports time and again, and every single investment has come back to us many times over. Of course, ranking high on that list are the choices we made in the last 30 years to build a whitewater facility and the greatest softball stadium in the world. And this past year, in the bond issue, we made commitments to further upgrade RIVERSPORT and Devon Park, the competition sites for the two sports and seven events we will host as part of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.

I’ll have more to say about the Olympics in a moment, but first I want to highlight that starting this weekend, our city is hosting one of the most important sporting events we’ve ever had. We’ve hosted the NBA Finals, we’ve hosted the Women’s College World Series, we’ve hosted NCAA championships and tournaments, and rodeo finals, but we have never hosted the official world championship in a longtime, consistent Olympic sport. But from Monday through Saturday of next week, July 20th through the 25th, we will host the World Championships of Canoe Slalom, the sport we are hosting in the 2028 Olympics. The World Championships have been staged since 1949, and this is only the third time the World Championships will have been staged in the United States, and the first time in the United States since 2014.

For the price of a movie ticket, this historic event presents an incredible opportunity for you to engage with this sport. Over 300 athletes from 50 countries are descending on our city right now.

The opening ceremony is this Saturday night, July 18th at 7 p.m. at RIVERSPORT. The opening ceremony is free and open to the public. There will be a parade of nations, musical performances, and fireworks.

Competition begins Monday, July 20th and lasts through Saturday, July 25th. Anytime you come by is good and competition will be happening all week, generally from 10 am to 4 p.m. each day. If you’re looking for some high points, I recommend coming to the finals that are at the end of each day, usually around 2:00. The entire schedule is at okc2026.com. And all of these events are accompanied by great food and entertainment.

You can buy your tickets right now at okc2026.com. We all fully recognize that there’s a lot of things going on in the city and the world, and that you may have only vaguely heard about these World Championships before today. Don’t worry about it, because it is not too late to be a part of it.

These Championships are a perfect way to prepare for the Olympics in OKC. All of the people in this room have been clicking on the LA28 web site trying to get canoe slalom tickets in 2028, and I’m telling you, you can see the same athletes in a high-stakes environment right here in OKC next week. And I promise you can get a ticket, and they’re very affordable. So make plans to come out. You won’t regret it. I watched days of canoe slalom at the Paris Olympics and it’s a thrilling sport to watch. Thousands of our residents are going to discover that in the next two years. Let’s get a jump on that process next week.

Oklahoma City is truly a world capital for paddlesports, and in fact, the governing body for canoe slalom and another Olympic sport, canoe sprint,will host their global Congress in Oklahoma City in the days following the World Championships. These next two weeks represent a big milestone in our Olympic journey.

Speaking of the Olympics, yesterday was the two-year countdown to the Opening Ceremonies. As you know, Oklahoma City is the only city outside of Southern California to host the entirety of a sport in the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, and we are hosting two – Canoe Slalom and Softball. We will have sixteen straight days of events here in OKC in July of 2028.

Last fall, the official 1,000 day countdown was hosted by LA28 leadership right here in OKC. This Chamber has created our local organizing committee, and Michael Byrnes is hard at work putting everything together. You may have seen the exciting announcement that the athletic village will be hosted at Oklahoma City University. President Ken Evans and his team are fired up to host hundreds of athletes from around the world, and it’s a historic opportunity for OCU.

In the months ahead, we will have many more announcements to come. One thing I can’t wait for is the day we share with you the official LA28 logo for Oklahoma City. If you’ve followed the games, you know that LA28 has logo variations that utilize different letter ‘A’s to represent different things. Oklahoma City will have its own ‘A’ and therefore our own unique LA28 logo. I think that logo is going to be on a lot of hats and shirts in this state.

And I know a lot of people are also still interested in tickets and volunteering. LA28 really leaned into our partnership and gave our OKC residents an early ticket drop before anyone else. But a lot of tickets are still yet to drop and so keep an eye out for that if you’re already signed up. And if you’re not signed up, it’s not too late. Simply go to la28.org to get in the draw.

As for signing up to volunteer, that is also at la28.org, and sign-ups opened yesterday. Many announcements will come out in the months ahead as we finalize our plans. As you’ve heard me say, we want this to be a festival atmosphere across the city, and so there’s a lot yet to roll out. I’ll leave the topic with one more thing to look forward to. I can share with you today that in the months leading up to the Games in 2028, we will see the Olympic torch pass through Oklahoma City on its journey to Los Angeles.

As I said a moment ago, sports have given us a platform in OKC to tell our story, and this year has been a banner year. We hosted some very memorable NCAA men’s basketball tournament games this spring, especially if you were from Nebraska. We’ve got UFC making its return to OKC this weekend. We welcomed a new LIV Golf team and a UFL team. We’ve enjoyed our Comets all summer, as well as our OKC Spark professional women’s softball team. The Spark play at Oklahoma Christian University in OKC, as part of a new league, the AUSL, with all games on national television. And our Women’s College World Series hosted record crowds and TV ratings, even without OU or OSU for the first time in more than a decade.

Whatever the sport we’ve invested in, our strategies have been rewarded. We believe that will also be true of soccer, the world’s most popular sport, and the sport that most of us have been fixated on this summer, as the World Cup returned to the United States for the first time since 1994. Today, I have the opportunity to share exciting news about our city’s soccer team, and I will do that… in a few minutes. Get ready.

First, I want to update on MAPS 4. Every MAPS initiative is a journey that lasts more than a decade. We’re now in Year Seven for MAPS 4, and we are right in the heart of implementation.

Just a few weeks ago, we cut the ribbon on the Diversion Hub. This is going to emerge as a national model that originated right here in Oklahoma City. The Diversion Hub brings together in a “hub” all the services that would be helpful to someone currently engaged with the criminal justice system so that person can be “diverted” away from prison or jail. Sometimes prison or jail is the necessary outcome, but if someone can live a productive life and contribute to our community, that’s what we want, and that’s the outcome we’re now invested in. And we’re not alone in that investment. The Diversion Hub is very much a partnership with the philanthropic community, and I want to thank everyone who is supporting the Diversion Hub, especially Sue Ann Arnall and the Arnall Family Foundation, who first brought this concept forward in 2019.

MAPS 4 projects currently under construction include Palomar and our new animal shelter. Palomar will also be a national model providing services to survivors of domestic violence, and the Louisa McCune Animal Welfare Center could very likely be the finest in the country.

A week from today we will break ground on the Clara Luper Civil Rights Center, adjacent to the reopened Freedom Center, providing a place to tell our city’s civil rights story in full. As an aside, the Civil Rights Center will be a nice complement to the Clara Luper National Sit-In Plaza, which opened this past year in downtown OKC. Thank you to John Kennedy, Pastor Lee Cooper, Marilyn Luper Hildreth and everyone who made the Plaza possible. It is a stunning and important addition to our city.

Also from MAPS 4, this past year we opened Dorset Place, a new housing community supporting veterans in danger of experiencing homelessness. We opened a new MAPS 4 pedestrian bridge over the River this past year providing a link to OKANA. Another notable recent dedication was the unveiling of a massive new piece of public art funded by the beautification project in MAPS 4. “Kicks 66” adjacent to the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is a new piece by artist Cameron Eagle that honors Oklahoma City’s status in the famous Route 66 song and our place alongside Route 66, which is of course celebrating its centennial this year. This next month we’ll break ground on a mental health crisis center, and in September we’ll break ground on our first youth center.

We also broke ground recently on our MAPS 4 multipurpose stadium, which will of course host our city’s soccer team. We are also under construction on over $30 million in major upgrades to our youth soccer facilities. And I’m going to talk about soccer… in just a few minutes.

MAPS 4’s promise was that it would unleash the power of MAPS in new ways, to address human and neighborhood needs, and to extend the reach of MAPS across the city. All of that promise is being realized. Thank you to MAPS 4 Citizens Advisory Board chair Teresa Rose and the other members of the board, and thank you to David Todd and the team at the City who make it all happen.

Another major focus for our team at the City remains homelessness. In the past year, our work in homelessness has continued to effectively address a problem that exists in all large cities, and is not as easy to address as some would hope.

But our Key to Home Partnership is leading a comprehensive effort that is closing encampments and getting people off the streets in a sustainable way.

This year our annual Point In Time count - which counts all the people experiencing homelessness in the city - found the first decline since 2022 in the total number of people experiencing homelessness. And for the fifth year in a row, we saw a decline in the total number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness. All that population growth I talked about earlier puts tremendous pressure on the issues of affordable housing and homelessness. But in the face of that pressure, we have seen success, thanks to this community’s willingness to pursue effective strategies that actually reduce homelessness.

That progress has been gradual but largely consistent for some time. Twenty years ago in this city, for every 10,000 residents of OKC, about 30 residents were experiencing homelessness. This year, for every 10,000 residents in the city, 26 residents are experiencing homelessness. That’s a decline. In fact, every major statistic about homelessness that you would want to be in decline is currently in decline.

That reality, however, definitely doesn’t mean that the job is done. It’s never done. These numbers are only moving in the right direction because of careful planning, collaborative implementation, and funding from government, nonprofits and the private sector. This will always be a challenge in any large city, and in ours, and it will require our continued focus, especially because of the growth I’ve been talking about today.

I also have said here before, and I will say again, that even if your citywide numbers are in a relatively decent place, compared to your past or compared to other cities, that doesn’t mean much to the person experiencing homelessness, or to the resident or business owner dealing with the issue in their part of town. And that’s why we’ll always stay focused on it and why we’ll always pursue proven and effective strategies. I can’t thank enough the people who have led the Key to Home Partnership, especially past chair Clay Moss, current chair Gary Brooks, all of the board members, all of the many nonprofit partners, philanthropic partners including the Inasmuch Foundation, and the entire team at the city, especially Jamie Caves.

Speaking of the team at the City, everything I talk about here today depends on the best City Council and staff in the country. I certainly want to recognize our Councilmembers who serve our city. Their willingness to give of their time and their vision to lead this city is something I never take for granted. Our Councilmembers are Bradley Carter, James Cooper, Katrina Avers, Todd Stone, Matt Hinkle, JoBeth Hamon, Camal Pennington and Mark Stonecipher. Let’s thank them for their service.

And of course, we owe gratitude to our staff team at the City, led by City Manager Craig Freeman, who is now officially the second-longest serving City Manager in our history. Our success as a city would not be possible without our 5,000 city employees. And though all they do is serve the public, this year they went even farther, broke their previous records, and raised over $615,000 for charitable causes through the Heart of the City campaign. We are so grateful to them and the hundreds of volunteers who serve on boards and commissions. Let’s thank them all for their service.

This city team has been incredibly busy this last year – as always. I wish I had time to get into even more depth on each of these accomplishments, but just this past year we opened the new plaza in Capitol Hill, we opened Dewey Park in Northeast OKC, we debuted Cloud Embrace in Bricktown. We opened the new Customs facility at the airport, we inaugurated our first modern international nonstop flight – to Cancun. We have continued our Fresh Start program clearing warrants at the municipal courthouse, we have engaged in a plat amendment project through our Human Rights Commission to remove racist language from the past, we have fully launched our mobile integrated health unit providing alternative response to some emergency calls. And we opened a brand new fire station 31 on Rockwell Avenue.

We launched a New Year’s Eve celebration in Scissortail Park for the community. Our golf courses, which have all received recent upgrades through bond issues, welcomed a record number of rounds this past year – 370,000. And our work continues to close Douglas Boulevard to support the expansion of Tinker Air Force Base, our city's largest employer.

And our rates of crimes against persons and property have both declined by a third over the last decade.

The 2025 homicide rate was the lowest since 2018 and so far in 2026 we have maintained that same lower pace. That public safety success is all a testament to our officers, our community’s commitment to fund their work and their equipment, our innovative utilization of violence intervention and prevention strategies, the creation of the Youth Safety Advisory Committee, and the rest of our work through the Public Safety Partnership.

Now, speaking of our city government, its official symbol is our city seal.

Now, I like our city seal. I doubt it’s exactly what we would draw up today, but it’s got a lot of history and it speaks to our city’s roots, not just the participants in the Land Run, but also the Native Americans who preceded them. And it speaks to our aspirations for the future. It’s a good seal, it has served us well, and I believe it will for decades to come.

Having said that, there is a second vehicle for representing our city that I believe we have not maximized. A city’s flag ideally should be a second symbol, separate from our seal. The separation gives us a second opportunity to make a statement, but a flag should also transcend the government. When we look up at the Stars and Stripes, we look at that flag as representing us, as speaking to the entire American experience and ethos, not just the government. We should feel the same as residents of Oklahoma City when we gaze at our city’s flag.

Other cities in recent years have recognized this and seized that opportunity. The most notable example around these parts is Tulsa, where a community redesign process culminated in the adoption of a new flag in 2018. I think that new Tulsa flag is beautiful and it is everywhere in Tulsa. You don’t really see our flag much around OKC, because it is essentially just our city’s government seal on a piece of fabric. There’s probably a lot of people in this room who couldn’t have told me three minutes ago what our city’s official flag even looked like.

I say all this to say, it is time for a new city flag. I might argue it’s time for our first city flag. This generation of residents has changed our city forever, and it is time we leave our mark on our city’s most important symbol. I believe we are up to the task and I believe we have earned the right. I’ve been thinking about this for eight years, and a few months ago a well-organized group of grassroots citizens approached me and said they wanted to work on it. That was just the nudge I needed. I agree that it is time, and if we move with efficiency we can have a new flag in place for the Olympics. This process will take over a year, because we want it to be inclusive and thoughtful. It will culminate in the adoption of a new city flag by our City Council. So today, I am announcing the commencement of that process. In the weeks ahead, we’ll be able to share more details about how you can submit concepts and suggestions, but right now I can share a web site where you can get connected to the effort to create and adopt a new Oklahoma City flag. That address is okcflag.org.

Briefly, I want to mention the great work happening across the city at some of our most important institutions. The Oklahoma City National Memorial & Museum is constructing “Foreword” a beautiful new entry to their museum. The National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum is doing a lot of innovative things, including the new immersive exhibit “The Cowboy.” Our OKC Museum of Art continues to add important acquisitions and stage great programming. Our Oklahoma Contemporary currently has a globally significant exhibit featuring renowned artist Anthony McCall. The Oklahoma National Guard cut the ribbon on a beautiful new museum this summer in the Adventure District. Our city’s Asian Night Market and Scissortail Park Night Market were named two of the ten best in the country by USA Today. And our Zoo welcomed record-breaking visitors this past year and a new baby elephant just a couple weeks ago, bringing our herd to nine.

This is a time that will always be remembered in our lives, and in the history of this place. We’re lucky to get to live in this place at this time, and we know it. Once again, we polled our residents last year and asked them whether our city is heading in the right direction, and 72 percent said yes and only 11 percent said no. That 72 percent is 30 points higher than the national average for large cities.

Our outlying optimism is built on the reality that we stand alone among cities in the level of investment we are making. To live in Oklahoma City in this time is to feel as if every week is Christmas. I break ground and cut ribbons every week. I have to be discerning as to which shovels I keep. And we have to be discerning on what projects we actually have a ceremony for. When you look at the total of the three initiatives for capital projects passed since I became mayor, there are likely well over 700 individual projects included in all of that. It is not normal in the life of a city to have to say no to having groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings for some projects because we would otherwise not have time to live our lives.

Just to exist as a city does not in and of itself provide for the constant anticipation of new things to look forward to. We had to make that happen. Each of you is a part of that story, and I hope you take pride in it. We have left a legacy, but as I’ve said today, there is more to do. There always is.

Now, before I get to my final topic today, I want to thank the folks at my table here for what they mean to me. My kids are usually here, but they had conflicts this time. I am grateful, as always, to have Rachel here. I’m so grateful for what Rachel does for our city as leader of United Way, and I’m also so grateful that she has supported me in my endeavors. She’ll scold me later for this, but would you please join me in thanking my wife Rachel?

I’m also joined by my dad Stroud, my cousins Kelsey Fink and Sydney Willis, and my teams at both my jobs, at the City and at OCU Law - Bailey Siber, Bobby Tray Trow-z-dale, Karen Fox and Cindy Elbah. These folks support me every day, and that was an especially heavy lift this past year, as I served as the President of the United States Conference of Mayors. In that respect, Bailey was especially helpful. Please join me in thanking all of these important people in my life.

Now, I’ve been teasing a topic all day that I thought would be a fun way to conclude our time together this afternoon.

There are two team spectator sports played everywhere in the world, and only two. Basketball and soccer. This is why I have always felt that we are exceptionally fortunate to have ended up with the Thunder and the NBA. As much as I’m sure we would have enjoyed the NFL, the MLB or the NHL, the NBA is the most popular American sports league around the world.

And we have global aspirations. We don’t want to just be a center of commerce and culture in Oklahoma. The true competition in the modern world is global, and that means Oklahoma City has to be a part of global culture. We have been reminded the last month that nothing brings the globe together like soccer, or football, as everyone else calls it. Over 1.5 billion humans will watch the World Cup final this weekend.

For most of its history, Oklahoma City has not had a professional soccer team to speak of. But in 2014, Bob Funk, Jr., Tim McLaughlin and Donna Bartley brought us the Energy of the USL, and they ultimately played at Taft Stadium. Why Taft? Well, it’s a simple but frustrating answer.

We were – it would appear - the only top 50 city that has no stadium above the high school level sized to soccer, football and other similar events. And as the years went on, it became apparent that the USL was no longer going to allow the Energy to play in a high school stadium.

So, as we were developing MAPS 4, we finally recognized that this city needs a stadium, and so we included it. The catalyst for that stadium was soccer, but it could also be available for concerts, American football games at different levels, and all kinds of things.

This stadium was the last building block we needed to truly say that we have all the elements of a great American downtown. And our soccer team agreed to donate the land and to operate the stadium without subsidy.

The capital resources provided by MAPS 4 were ultimately not adequate, so in 2024, we were able to allocate TIF funding to the cause. And then in last year’s bond issue, the voters approved the final funding piece, a contribution that brought the total budget to $120 million.

In the meantime, our USL team went dormant to await the new stadium and it was purchased by a group led by Christian Kanady and his company Echo. Christian’s vision and leadership has attracted partners that include beloved local legends Russell Westbrook, Jalen “JDub” Williams and Baker Mayfield, as well as Jozy Altidore, Sydney McLaughlin and Nick Gross. Also supporting Christian in this effort is the Chickasaw Nation. This same group is also envisioning a mixed-use development around our new stadium, working with smart people like Mark Beffort.

The prospect of the new stadium has already attracted a UFL football team and promises to open up other opportunities in the years to come. In June, we broke the ground, and the stadium construction is now underway, with the plan that it will be available for the 2028 USL season. We are almost surely the only city in the world currently building both an arena and a stadium just a few blocks away from each other.

That stadium paves the way for the return of professional soccer in OKC.

Our city is doing more to support and cultivate soccer right now than any other American city. We’re not just building a stadium. Right now at Southlakes in South OKC and at Cameron in North OKC we are currently putting $30 million in MAPS 4 money toward two youth soccer facilities that will be among the finest in the region.

And Tim and Liz McLaughlin and their many partners in Fields & Futures are out there making sure that our kids have great soccer facilities across the city.

For all these reasons, U.S. Soccer just named OKC one of its original three cities it has named Soccer Forward Collectives. And for all those reasons, the President of the Football Association of the Czech Republic and member of FIFA’s Development Committee David Trunda is sitting right here.

Which brings me back to our soccer team. That team went dormant, but that team did not go away. That team – our team – will hit the pitch when that stadium opens and will return the game of soccer to our city. Right now, we are the largest American city that does not have a team currently playing in the MLS or USL Championship leagues. When the stadium opens and our team returns, it will play in the USL Championship league, which also has teams in some of the top American markets, including Phoenix, San Antonio, Indianapolis, Detroit and Las Vegas.

Christian and his partners will tell you that they want this team to bring access, joy and wellness to our community. That they want to be a part of building the game of soccer in our country, and that they want to continue the effort of connecting Oklahoma City to the world and the world to Oklahoma City.

I will tell you that I want this team to do what all our teams do for us. In a world that wants to divide us, our teams bring us together. And in Oklahoma City, where we have worked together for years to find common purpose and overcome the things that could divide us, we consistently stand together, united as One OKC.

Ladies and gentlemen, it is my honor to reintroduce you to Oklahoma City’s soccer team.

(VIDEO)

We welcome the OKC United to our stable of teams that represent our great city. The team name United exists throughout the world of soccer and is steeped in tradition, but it means something more in the home of One OKC. The state of our city is united, and now so is our soccer team.

Thank you again for giving this time today to our city’s civic life. And thank you for the honor of being your mayor.