The first step is to admit we have a problem

Ask just about anyone in Tulsa and they will tell you that City Hall is a mess. Open the paper, and yet another chapter in the saga of our city government unfolds. Given the daily dramatics, it isn't surprising to hear the drumbeat to change our current form of government. But what you don't hear is any careful analysis as to whether the current system is actually causing the current problems in our government. We all know that correlation does not prove causation (i.e., just because two things happen at the same time doesn't mean one caused the other). Yet many seem so quick to lay blame at our city's form of government. Perhaps we first need to actually define what the problem is. Just saying something is a "mess" doesn't really get you anywhere.

People will disagree about specifics of the problem in City Hall—some would argue that there is too much "ward" politics; some would say the Mayor's behavior is the source of the problems; some would say that City Council is acting outside of the Charter. We can all agree, though, that at its core the problem is that our elected officials are fighting too much, and that the discord has reached such an extent that day-to-day operations are affected.

So, the big revelation is that our elected officials are not getting along. Wow. How is this any different from the rest of our country? Not for the first time, the Federal government is on the verge of being shut down because of fighting between the President and Congress. As for state governments, we all recently witnessed Wisconsin's civil war. This is nothing new. From the time governments were formed, there was fighting, political wrangling, and struggles to gain more power. It is why people go into politics. If you believe that you are the best person to run a city, state, or country, then you must believe passionately about what is right and wrong. You must have a strong conviction on how things should be done, and a strong desire to lead your city/state/country. And people who are passionate about their beliefs fight for them, as they should.

Why, then, are we so shocked that our city government is no different? And if we believe that the disruptions in City Hall justify a change to our form government, shouldn't we also consider changing our state and federal government?

I'm not saying that we should just accept the fighting. I'm just saying that changing governmental systems because of fighting is like changing clothes because you have a fever.

Introduction

I'm a boom-a-rang Tulsan. If you don't know what that means, I grew up here, moved away in college, and stayed away for many years but then came back to my hometown. I moved back to Tulsa in 1999—one year before the new millennium. While I was away, I lived in various other cities, including New York, Washington, D.C., New Orleans, Dallas, and Alexandria, Virginia. I loved those cities, but they weren't home. Something about Tulsa called me back, and so my husband, a native New Yorker, & I came back here to raise our kids and live our lives. When I try to explain the appeal of Tulsa to my friends who still live in big cities, who live high-paced adventurous sleepless cities, I simply say, "life in complicated; Tulsa is easy." Sometimes we just need things to be simpler.

When I first moved back here, I had no interest whatsoever in local politics. It seemed so dull. I was still living with an east coast, big city mentality pretending that keeping up on the latest in the former eastern bloc counties was somehow more important to my life than the election of my city councilor. Then someone decided to knock down three houses in my neighborhood and replace them with a surface lot. Our home, at that time, was in the Yorktown historic district. For those who live in a historically zoned district, you know that there are some inconveniences—you must get approval before you make most changes to your home to ensure that those changes are consistent with the historic character of the neighborhood. So your storm door and windows must comply with certain standards. For the life of me, I could not figure out how a surface parking lot could in any way be consistent with the historic nature of our 1920's neighborhood of bungalows. It was then that I had my crash-course on local politics.

Since then, I've become much more immersed in local issues. I have served on the Planning Commission and the Preservation Commission. I was significantly involved in PlaniTulsa, and helped in several local campaigns. As my term on the Planning Commission nears its end, and Tulsa approaches an enormous turning point this fall, I have decided to take some time to write down my thoughts. I believe that the city needs more avenues to discuss and reflect upon issues that directly affect citizens. I hope that my blog provides one such avenue.