OKC Council votes to annex closer to Moore for $3.6M street project

Oklahoma City Council voted to expand its city limits toward Moore on Tuesday — by about half a street. But that small adjustment is part of a larger $3.6 million project to improve and maintain the busy neighborhood.

City council members voted in favor of annexing about 2,600 feet of SW 149 along the boundary of Moore, which is a mile west of the Target and Walmart in the Fritt's Farm shopping area off Interstate 35. Set to go into effect on Nov. 23, the annexation will add the south half of SW 149 between S Hudson Avenue and S Santa Fe Avenue within Oklahoma City’s proper limits.

That portion of SW 149 had been removed in March 1990 from Moore's boundaries; then a month later, Oklahoma City annexed the western 545 feet of that area. That left more than 2,000 feet of SW 149 under no specific city’s responsibility.

Officials with Oklahoma City’s Public Works Department said the annexation needed to be done so that the city could properly take care of maintenance and improvements on SW 149 as a whole.

“We have a bond project where we’re going to widen 149th into four lanes,” said Debbie Miller, the city’s interim Public Works director. “The city limit lines in those areas are very confusing, but there is a section that is in Cleveland County and we need to have it in Oklahoma City limits in order to do the work.”

SW 149 is directly lined with houses, but Miller said the annexation would pose no significant change to residents in the area. However, since a majority consent from locals was needed, Public Works reached out to homeowners on SW 149 for approval of the annexation petition, telling them the project would improve access on the roadway itself.

In the past, portions of SW 149 and Santa Fe had been split up to allow for shared maintenance between Moore and Oklahoma City. Officials said this caused challenges over municipality responsibility as the years went by, and recent street repair initiatives compelled Oklahoma City’s Public Works Department to push for expansion of the city boundary.

Tuesday’s adoption of the ordinance moved that city limit boundary from the centerline of SW 149 to 50 feet south of the centerline in order to encompass the entire street area.

“When you have a shared roadway like that, it’s difficult to maintain,” Miller said. “You have to do a joint agreement if you make improvements. Technically my crews can’t go work on the city of Moore side. It gets difficult, so this is a way of tidying up those city limit lines.”

What roadwork will the city do on SW 149?

Part of that “tidying up” will include an estimated $3.6 million of reconstruction and resurfacing for that area of SW 149, which should begin in 2024. The widening is being funded through the voter-approved 2017 Better Streets, Safer City initiative, although Miller emphasized it was the bond part of the package, as the sales tax collection for the plan expired in 2020.

Tuesday’s vote was the final of three hearings for the annexation ordinance, which had been introduced late this summer shortly before the departure of longtime Public Works Director Eric Wenger.

Councilman Matt Hinkle, who represents Ward 5 that SW 149 runs through, said he supported the annexation because it would allow the city to free up some of the traffic for one of the busiest thoroughfares in the metro area.

“That’s a really rapidly growing part of Oklahoma City,” Hinkle said. “If you were ever in Edmond five or six years ago, you had two hours’ worth of four-way stops trying to go anywhere you wanted to go, and that’s what 149th Street at 5 o’clock is like now. You’re 200 cars deep when you stop for the first time.“

Of the city councilmembers present at Tuesday's meeting, Ward 7’s Councilwoman Nikki Nice was the sole “no” vote for the ordinance. She said she voted against the ordinance because the city already was struggling to improve infrastructure and provide adequate services to its rural and urban communities.

“It’s a struggle to maintain the spaces that we already have, so for us to annex extra, even if it’s just a block, is going to put more strain on the things that we’re already doing,” Nice said.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OKC Council votes to annex closer to Moore for $3.6M street project