One of the main issues I’ve focused on in these past four years is making Tulsa a city of opportunity for everyone. We must make certain North Tulsa, Midtown and East Tulsa all prosper; that South Tulsa and West Tulsa thrive.  It means engaging every neighborhood and, while maintaining unique identities, working together for the common good.  To ensure this kind of equality of opportunity for everyone, there must be a convergence of effort on multiple issues and by multiple partners. During the past few years, a few of the ways we have worked to provide equality of opportunity for all include:

•         ending years of fighting between the Mayor’s Office and the City Council to instead establish an unprecedented era of collaboration and productivity at City Hall;
•         resolving the decades-long fight with Tulsa County over the jail;
•         working with, rather than against our neighbors in the suburbs on economic development projects to grow our economy
•         successfully recruiting the two largest new employers (Amazon and Greenheck Group) and the single largest economic development investment in Tulsa history (American Airlines $550 million improvements to their Base Maintenance Facility) among other projects resulting in over $1.1 billion in private sector investment for the city of Tulsa;
•         relegating the sibling rivalry with Oklahoma City to sports teams, and working with our sister city to grow our state;
•         establishing the Tulsa Equality Indicators report which uses data to measure inequality across a variety of factors and thereby allows us to direct decision making and budgetary considerations accordingly;
•         creating the Mayor’s Office of Resilience and Equity to implement the Resilient Tulsa Strategy, the city’s first strategic plan to address issues of racial disparity;
•         launching the New Tulsans Initiative, which is focused on making Tulsa a beacon of freedom and opportunity for immigrants all around the world;
•         hosting citizenship ceremonies in the City Council Chambers at City Hall making Tulsa the first municipality in the state of Oklahoma to host naturalization ceremonies.

I spoke often during my first mayoral campaign and during the last four years about my firm belief that no Tulsan should sit idly by while a child born in one part of town has a life expectancy of 12 years less than someone born in another part of our city.  Together, we’ve been working to tackle this issue, but there is no quick and simple fix. We’ve made major progress, but there is still much work to do and I hope you will continue to partner with me again these next four years on addressing this and other issues that help us to provide equality of opportunity for all Tulsans.  We cannot let artificial divisions, partisan labels, geography or cultural differences divide us. Together, we are building the kind of city we will be proud to pass on to the next generation.