My 2 Cents: Which Comes First?

Kelly Ogle, News 9

Which is more important to Oklahoma City, a big new convention center, or adding new bike and jogging paths and aquatic centers for seniors?

The city's going to get all of those projects and more under MAPS 3, but there's a debate raging downtown, about what order the projects should be completed in.

All of a sudden there's a big push by the MAPS oversight committee to build the convention center first instead of last, and put the streetcars and central park on the back burner for a couple of years.

While that's upset a lot of people the logic behind it makes sense.

The convention center should be a money producer for the city once it's completed, and that theoretically should mean more sales tax collected to pay for the other projects.

The committee is also pushing to move up construction of the white water rapids course on the Oklahoma River.. potentially another revenue producer.

You and I might not ever use the convention center or the rapids course, but building them first could make those later projects we will use even better.

I'm Kelly Ogle and that's My 2 Cents.