Who We Are

Welcome to the ORED (Oklahomans for Responsible Economic Development) website.

We are a group of Norman neighbors who formed this nonprofit organization to make sure all the people of our community have a voice in the economic development matters that can affect the ability of our city and our schools to carry out their mission.

The current issue before our City Council is whether it is proper to use Normans tax dollars to fund an Arena/Entertainment district in the University North Park area. The OU Foundation and their developer want Norman to guarantee a $600M TIF (Tax Increment Financing) for an arena and parking garage.

Our group is not opposed to the arena, and we are not antigrowth. We oppose public financing of a project plan that saddles our city with a  $600M debt obligation for 25 years. We believe this financing scheme will cripple the city budget for years to come and make it next to impossible to fund any other TIF projects.

The bottom line is the economic and social benefit of this Arena is highly suspect and demands much more public vetting and discussion. The public input and review process on this massive project has been sorely lacking and highly controlled. The advocates for this have been selling our community on this scheme for well over a year now. They have tightly controlled the information on this project and their message continues to focus on Field of Dreams stories of greatness, while ignoring or denying the real risks such a project presents to our city. They are effectively ignoring the communities voice while focusing on selling the City Council on this project.

We believe a project of this magnitude should require a real public vetting followed by a citywide vote of the people. We always get better results when we put our collective heads together and figure it out. All donations made to ORED  will be used to develop, administer, promote, circulate, and defend the petition. Thank you.