The Tulsa City Council has set its meeting schedule for 2010. Below you will find the schedules for regular Thursday meetings, committee meetings, and budget meetings. Cutoff date/time refers to the deadline for submitting items for the meeting agenda. Click here to download a printable version of the 2010 Tulsa City Council meeting schedule (PDF format).

The City of Tulsa Public Works Department has prepared a summary of street maintenance department activity for Fiscal Year 2008 (July 1, 2007, to June 30, 2008).

During FY08, the street maintenance department devoted the equivalent of 10 full-time employees -- 19,516.99 hours -- for 860 non-street maintenance work orders for other departments and non-city entities, at a total cost to the city of $1,075,266.19.

Another 170 work orders, with a total cost of $309,041.52, involved special projects such as pushing trash at the dump, required 4,372 hours, equivalent to about two full-time employees.

In FY08, only six overlay projects were performed -- two on arterial streets and four on non-arterial streets -- covering an area of 38,199.66 sq. yards.

Tulsa City Council staff have released the 2009 Tulsa Quality of Life Report (click to download 13 MB PDF), showing quantitative measures of public safety, neighborhood vitality, economic vitality, transportation, recreation and culture, environment, human investment, and civic engagement, as compared to our peer cities across the US and to Tulsa in years past. Here is a summary of key findings from City Council policy analyst Jack Blair:

Among the findings in this year’s report:

• Since last year’s report, our environmental and transportation indicators have declined, relative to our 19 peer cities.
• In the last four decades, the population of the City of Tulsa has increased by about 13%. During that same period, Oklahoma City’s population grew by 50% and the combined populations of our largest suburbs grew by more than 300%.
• Through 2008, our employment indicators were best among all of our peer cities, but Tulsa area employment has begun to decline, in both production and service sectors. On a seasonally adjusted basis, there were 8,800 fewer jobs in the Tulsa area in October 2009 than there were in January.
• In 2008, Tulsa’s crime rate (part 1 crimes per capita) was the lowest in more than a decade, and our overall crime rate has continued to decline through October of 2009.
• While overall crime is down, there has been a 1300% increase in methamphetamine labs in Tulsa. Through mid-November, we have already set an annual record for the most meth labs seized in our history — even more than in the previous peak year of 2003, before state laws were changed to restrict the sale of pseudoephedrine.
• While Tulsa has not escaped the effects of the national housing crisis, data indicate that the impacts occurred later and were relatively less severe than in other areas of the country. That does not mitigate the fact that the Tulsa area has experienced the largest decline in new home construction in the last quarter century — since the 1980s oil bust.
• Oklahoma leads the nation in early childhood education, and Tulsa’s Educare has been called the “showpiece” of the state system. 71% of Oklahoma 4-year-olds are enrolled in preschool, compared to 24% nationally.
• Oklahoma’s health risk factors and outcomes are among the worst in the nation, and they have declined substantially in the last 20 years.
• Tulsa has relatively less park land than most cities as a percentage of total land area, but we have relatively more park land per capita.

State leaders need to find a better solution for municipal finance than sales tax alone, according to a December 1, 2009, presentation by Michael A. Crawford to the Coalition of Tulsa Area Governments (CTAG). CTAG members inclulde the cities of Tulsa, Bixby, Broken Arrow, Claremore, Collinsville, Glenpool, Jenks, Mannford, Owasso, Sand Springs, and Skiatook, Tulsa County, and the Indian Nations Council of Governments (INCOG).

The presentation shows the importance of cities to the state's economy, compares Oklahoma's approach to municipal funding to that of other states, explains the effect of sales tax dependence on municipal policy, the impact of using utility revenues for general government needs, and proposes a list of remedies, including actions that the legislature should consider in the 2010 session:

• No unfunded mandates
  • Require municipal fiscal impact statements on legislation
    
• Office of Emergency Management reporting
  • Require semi-annual report to legislature on outstanding payments to municipalities
    
• Allow counties to help once again
  • Remove population limitations on county’s ability to assist with street building and repair
    
• Expand retail opportunities
  • Allow municipal public trusts to participate in retail operations
    
• Interim Study on municipal funding structure

Click here to download a PDF, including footnotes, of the CTAG municipal finance presentation.