City of Durant proposed budgets were approved for fiscal year 20262027 during public hearings in recent meetings.
The city’s total budget is $143,145,394 City manager Pam Polk said a three percent cost of living adjustment will be given to all city employees and that the information technology (IT) service fund has increased tremendously.
Its budget is $1,136,247. “Of course, we all know what that was from, from the cybersecurity attack we had in June of 2025, with all of the upgrades and new equipment that we had to have to bring us up to this century,” Polk said. “But mostly, it just increased 2.42 percent from the general fund budget from last year to this year.”
Durant City Utilities Authority approved its budget that is $17,798,232.
Polk said the city held a budget workshop recently.
“The budget overall is not changing a whole lot,” Polk said. “We do project our sales and use tax to increase by about three percent over this year. The utility authority budget is up about five percent from what it was last year.”
Durant Airport Authority’s budget is $2,100,986.
“This budget has only increased like 1.11 percent from a little under $2 million to just over $2.1 million,” Polk said. “I do want to say though that the airport has been really paying its own way. We’re not having to transfer a lot of funds over to the airport for their budget, so they did really well this past year.”
Vice Mayor Mike Simulescu asked about the control tower and Polk replied that the city received $3 million from the Oklahoma Legislature for the design and engineering of an air traffic control tower that is in the process now. The airport is also working on grants for two hangars.
“There’s a lot of great things going on at the airport right now,” Polk said.
TheDurantDevelopmentAuthority’s proposed budget of $3,688947 was approved. This is sales tax revenue for the high school, and these funds are transferred to the Durant School District.
Polk said sales tax is holding up steady.
“We’re up maybe just a little bit, but our use tax is up about $900,000 from what we estimated this year,” Polk said.
In other business, the council approved a $86,940.00 bid from Miller Asphalt for a parking lot at the Emergency Operations Center. Emergency management director Richard Ezell said the parking lot was never finished since the building opened.
“We have very limited parking that’s on hard surface,” Ezell said. “The rest is grass, dirt, mud, depending on the surfaces or the conditions.”
Polk said this project needs to be completed because of the amount of training seminars held by Ezell.
“We are kind of the hub that everyone comes to,” Polk said. “It’s a very nice facility with a parking area that a lot of times like you said is in mud and bad shape.”