City officials outline funding plan for proposed $25M youth sports complex

City officials said they will pursue a mix of state and federal grants, employer-participation pooled-payroll programs, private donations and limited city funding to reach a roughly $25 million target for a proposed youth sports complex in Enid.

Speaker 2, a city official, told the Mayor and Board Commissioners that the city does not have $25,000,000 available to pay for the project up front. “We do not have $25,000,000 to write a check for this facility,” Speaker 2 said, and outlined several funding avenues the city plans to pursue.

The official described a Department of Commerce pooled-payroll program that routes state withholding payroll taxes back to a participating locality over time; the city has used the program previously for airport hangars. Speaker 2 said that, with enough employer participation, the program could yield about $10,000,000 for a project and cited a recent $10,000,000 award used on the Ames Waterline project (a roughly $32,000,000 project) as an example of success…