My 2 Cents: OKC Zoo's Plans For Expansion

Some people don't like it, but since 1990, city leaders have used small sales tax increases to remake our city.

If you caught it, I said since 1990. That was three years before the first Maps program.

Back in 1990, Oklahoma City voters decided to give the zoo a 1/8 cent sales tax to provide a stable funding source, and since then the Oklahoma City Zoo has become a star attraction here, considered to be one of the better zoos in America.

And now, our partners at the Journal Record are reporting that the Oklahoma City Zoo is about to expand again.

For the past three years, they've been setting aside a portion of the $14 million or so they get every year through that 1/8th of a penny, and they're now going to build a two-story restaurant over the elephant exhibit, and include rhinos plus a Komodo dragon exhibit.

For the money, the zoo is already the best entertainment deal in town, and the director Dwight Lawson told me today, it's because of that 1/8th of a penny voters approved 26 years ago that they've been able to keep admission costs ridiculously low.

Zoo surveys of the one million annual visitors they average now show half of them are from outside the Oklahoma City area.

If you haven't been to the Oklahoma City Zoo in the last 5 years, go. You'll be so impressed.  

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