If you’re one of the people who voted in yesterday’s bond election, I have some good news – you’re a much better citizen than me and, ohhh, about 400,000 other Oklahoma Citians.
In case you missed it, roughly 33,000 Oklahoma City voters went to the polls yesterday and easily passed a massive bond issue that’s been pitched heavily by David Holt, Chamber of Commerce folks, and other ruling-class players.
Yep, that’s right — 33,000 people cared enough about a bond issue to actually go vote for it!
Via The Oklahoman:
Oklahoma City voters overwhelmingly passed all 11 propositions in the largest bond election in the city’s history.
Each proposition had to acquire more than 50% of the vote to pass, and each had at least 70%, according to unofficial results from the Oklahoma State Election Board. The City Council will need to certify the election results.
With all propositions passing, the $2.718 billion bond earmarks funds for about 547 projects in 11 areas of city services. Half of that amount — $1.35 billion — is set aside for streets and sidewalks, including resurfacing, widening, street enhancements, and new sidewalks.
That’s cool. The foundation of our ever-fragile democracy is built on the bedrock of small, local elections that very few people follow or care about. So if you work for the Chamber of Commerce, a big downtown employer, or the OKC Thunder — and you actually took the time to vote yesterday — thank you. We can’t take this democracy stuff for granted, and I hope you got an extra voting sticker.
While people like me, who cover Oklahoma politics for a living, totally forgot about the election, you spent three minutes at your local precinct taking advantage of our rapidly disappearing rights and helped ensure that David Holt, his ruling-class backers, and that one friend who attended Loyal OKC all went to bed happy.
The same praise goes to the class of fun-haters, naysayers, and chronic complainers who voted “no.” As usual, this outnumbered hodgepodge of anti-everything libertarians, whiny leftists, and Mark Faulkses weren’t able to muster much of an opposition to ruling-class progress — but through their right to vote, they still managed to trickle out and let their minute, inconsequential, complain-about-anything voices be heard.
You’re the real MVPs.
Anyway, I obviously didn’t have strong thoughts or opinions on the bond issue, which is why I was one of the 400,000 or so people who didn’t vote. Sure, I thought clandestinely giving the Thunder another $50 million was kind of shady, but we need roads and sidewalks and parks and stuff. Bonds are about the only way we can fund that, so I guess we should play along and — at least on this one — continue to not care.
Which, honestly, is probably how bond proposals should be.
Stay with The Lost Ogle. We’ll keep you advised.
