Tulsa mayor, City Council set second retreat
BY KEVIN CANFIELD World Staff Writer
Friday, January 25, 2013
1/25/13 at 5:22 AM
Get the background: View the 2012 City Council and mayor’s shared goals.
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Mayor Dewey Bartlett and city councilors will sit down Saturday for their second retreat in as many years.
Last year, the mayor and the council used their meeting to come up with five broad goals for 2012 and beyond.
Among them were making Tulsa "America's Most Beautiful City" and the "Safest City in America."
At Saturday's retreat, "I hope we can discuss and evaluate each of the shared goals and (talk) about our successes and what we still need to do," Bartlett said.
The other three broad goals that came out of last year's retreat were developing the economy, developing a transportation infrastructure plan, and making local government more reliable and efficient.
After last year's meeting, citizen task forces were created to provide recommendations on how to achieve the city's goals.
The task forces have since reported their findings to the mayor and City Council.
"We set up those task forces knowing that it would take about a year to get their concrete steps in order and that we would meet again this year to put their recommendations into an action plan," said Councilor G.T. Bynum, who was council chairman last year.
This year's council chairman, David Patrick, said not every task force recommendation can be implemented immediately.
"Some of them will be implemented real quick; some will take time; some will probably be really long-term goals," he said.
"We are going to get them into a format so we can use them for our budgetary process and our decision making to try to achieve these goals to try to move Tulsa to this place we all want it to be."
Last year's retreat is believed to be the first such meeting between the mayor and council since the city went to the strong mayor-council form of government in 1990.
Bartlett said he has not come up with any specific goals to present to the council but that he could see economic development at the airport, the Fix Our Streets program and plans for the third-penny sales tax as possible topics of discussion.
"What I really enjoyed about the last one (retreat) was we talked about some very big things," he said.
Mayor-council retreat
When: 8 a.m. Saturday
Where: Library room of the Phoenix Cafe, 1302 E. Sixth St.
Who: Open to the public
Original Print Headline: Mayor, city councilors planning second retreat
Kevin Canfield 918-581-8313
kevin.canfield@tulsaworld.com
