Tulsa Enters Fiscal Year with Balanced Budget

With the passage of the American Rescue Plan Act earlier this year, we’ve seen city governments around the country announce plans to use these funds to fill existing budget deficits. Not here in Tulsa.
Thanks to prudent budgeting over the last four years and the sacrifices made by our team at the city early in the COVID-19 pandemic, we do not have a deficit and do not need to use these funds to bailout regular operations. This is truly a remarkable endeavor that we’ve made in the midst of a global pandemic, a national recession, a historic winter storm – and most recently – a ransomware attack.
In April, I made my FY21-22 budget presentation to the Tulsa City Council, and on June 16, the Council approved the $799.4 million budget.
Starting in July, and thanks to the citizens of Tulsa, we will become one of America’s first cities to receive funds into our Rainy Day Fund from a voter-approved, dedicated funding source. The budget approved in June moves us one step closer to our goal of a 10% emergency operating reserve, which will provide us with a much-needed funding source after seeing the types of challenges we’ve had to face, the frequency of which has been unmatched in the last 18 months.
The hiring freeze, halt on employee travel, and furloughs that were implemented in the pandemic’s early days did what we intended them to do: they saved us money and prevented us from entering into the place we were in after the last national recession where 130 police officers were laid off. Those will all go away this upcoming fiscal year.
This new budget is balanced and provides for satisfactory performance increases for eligible employees. The budget allows us to maintain our existing public safety manpower and expand our Community Response Teams’ mobile health crisis response unit to five days a week, along with the addition of a new civilian Clinical Services Coordinator to help that unit. This budget also establishes the funding of a Municipal Court Liaison and a text message alert system to remind people of upcoming court dates – a process that is improving the rate of court appearances.
With this budget, we’re updating our police records management system, rehabilitating our streets, and making economic development investments through our newly launched Tulsa Authority for Economic Opportunity. The budget also funds multiple Tulsa Parks services that were hampered because of the pandemic, helping us open pools, splash pads and expand our day camps.
This budget represents our shared priorities in Tulsa. I want to thank the Tulsa City Council and the citizens of Tulsa for making this a reality as we look ahead in the year to come.