Q&A: Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols reflects on first 100 days in office

It has been 100 days since Mayor Monroe Nichols took office as Tulsa’s 41st mayor. He sat down to discuss his administration’s progress and future plans.

Q: Mayor Nichols, how have the first 100 days been?

A: "It's been great. It's been great. You know, we have a phenomenal team at the city, and when I say the team, I mean all 3,500 employees. The mayor’s office is fully staffed. We’re working on all the issues that we not only campaigned about, but had strong conversations with citizens about during the campaign. We have gone through the mayor-council retreat. We’re aligned on the priorities for the city. We’re rolling."

Q: You recently signed an executive order addressing homelessness. Can you tell us about that?

A: "Yeah, the executive order did four things. It first laid out and established a decommissioning team. So we’re working to decommission encampments the responsible way to make sure they don’t come back. That team was established yesterday.

"Then, it establishes and formalizes our plan around a winter weather shelter. We went through a couple of winter events, one of which the temperatures got to 11 below. We had 1,400 folks who sought shelter at emergency shelters. This next year, our plan is to make sure we have a shelter that opens up Nov. 1 and is open until March 31 so we’re not scrambling. There was no real formalized plan, so we’re not scrambling.

"The third thing it does, it lays out a pathway forward on increasing shelter capacity across the board—the low-barrier shelter, making sure we have spaces for folks, not just on the encampment side, but also making sure folks who need a place to stay have that.

"Then the last thing it does, it actually establishes the Mayor’s Coalition on Eviction Mitigation. We’re No. 11 in the country in evictions. We need to engage landlords. We need to engage all the folks who have been working on this issue so we get out of the top 15 and make sure we’re stabilizing people in place."

Q: You’ve talked about eviction as it relates to school children. How does that align with your education priorities?

A: "Absolutely. One of the reasons why I’m so passionate about this eviction issue is because I think the numbers show us that over the last three years, 4,400 students at Tulsa Public Schools have been in families who have faced eviction. What the data tells us on those students is that they are 50% chronically absent after the first month, 70% chronically absent after the first year. It is a huge education issue, and we’ve got to make sure we’re doing our part to stabilize kids so they show up to school ready to learn.

"The other interesting thing about that data is that those kids tend to be younger. So as we think about the challenges we have in literacy and school readiness, that chronic absentee number is killing us. For us to jump in and work on this eviction issue, bringing all the best ideas together to make sure we can stabilize people in place, means that kids are going to do better in school. We give our schools the opportunity and a real shot at making sure they can educate young people."

Q: You repeatedly talk about public safety. What is the best way to make Tulsa a safer city?

A: "You know, we started when I got elected. We created the Office of the Commissioner of Public Safety, and right now, Commissioner Roberts is working with both the chiefs of fire and police to establish what I believe to be a more cohesive and coordinated effort around public safety. Everything from how we’re going to reform the 911 system to how we’re deploying our resources and, more importantly, how we are working with the community on these issues.

"Very soon after I got elected, we announced the Tulsa Crime Intervention Pilot Program, which is us working with the community to go into those areas where we know we have challenges—not just bringing our law enforcement presence, but bringing some trusted messengers who can work with young people to turn them away from crime and give them the opportunity to pursue things that are more productive."

Q: Economic development and housing often go hand in hand. How will Tulsa encourage new housing development?

A: "Yeah, so we had a housing executive order that did a couple of things. One, it created the Housing Acceleration Team, which is meant to help streamline housing projects so we make sure the city is not an impediment.

"We announced the Community Builder Program, so we have these trusted builders who have proven over and over again that they can perform, so we can fast-track them through the process. We have our pre-approved plans model coming out, so we are finding all these different ways to not only fix our permitting challenges right now, but build a system where those challenges aren’t challenges for the long haul.

"On top of that, we have a team internally working with the council on how we’re going to invest that $75 million that voters approved in Improve Our Tulsa 3 to make sure we can get not only affordable housing out of the ground but also ensure that even the housing that’s built at market rates gets out of the ground. There’s a 13,000-home number that we need to hit in Tulsa, and we’re going to get on track to do it."