By Roland Murphy for AZBEX
The Phoenix City Council will vote next week on whether to send a $500M general obligation bond request to voters on the Nov. 2023 ballot.
The request covers 47 projects assembled after months of meetings and negotiations between City leadership, department staff and community members. It would be Phoenix’s first request since 2016.
The General Obligation Bond Committee broke the requests down into seven program areas. The specific areas and their funding totals are:
- Arts & Culture: $50,385,000;
- Economic Development & Education: $38,000,000;
- Environment & Sustainability: $26,000,000;
- Housing, Human Services & Homelessness: $63,000,000;
- Neighborhoods & City Services: $44,615,000;
- Parks & Recreation: $64,000,000;
- Public Safety: $132,500,000, and
- Streets & Storm Drainage: $81,500,000.
The full breakdown of projects is available in the Committee proposal recommendation here. While several are too small or too preliminary for inclusion in the DATABEX project database, other should be familiar to subscribers. Among the included database projects and their bond request amounts are:
- Latino Cultural Center: $21,626,050;
- Branch Library at Estrella Civic Space: $8,574,460, and
- Infrastructure and public building improvements related to Arizona State University’s Health Technology Center, $12,000,000.
Among the projects we’re tracking that are not yet sufficiently planned for listing in the database are:
- Three new fire stations,
- A permanent home for Valley Youth Theatre,
- Expansion at the Children’s Museum of Phoenix,
- Land acquisition for the Rio Reimagined waterway and development incentivization project,
- Property preservation for affordable housing,
- Housing development gap funding,
- Various Americans with Disabilities Act-related facility improvements,
- Two pool and splash pad projects,
- Two new civic spaces,
- A Police Property Management Warehouse renovation, and
- Various pavement maintenance supplementation, drainage and flood mitigation efforts.