Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols said the city will continue to push forward on housing and homelessness initiatives despite a budget shortfall he says he inherited from the previous administration.  

Nichols spoke with The Frontier’s Executive Editor Dylan Goforth as part of the nonprofit newsroom’s 10th-anniversary celebration Tuesday at the Tulsa City-County Central Library. 

Nichols had set ambitious goals for his first 100 days: building housing to reduce homelessness, addressing a police officer shortage, and upgrading roads and infrastructure. Nichols said outgoing Mayor G.T. Bynum assured him there would be plenty of funding and that he’d be the first Tulsa mayor in recent memory to inherit a budget surplus.

“Having inherited a multi-million-dollar deficit, we leave Mayor Nichols with a budget surplus,” Bynum said in a November press conference. “Having inherited total cash reserves of approximately $19 million, we leave him over $50 million.”

Nichols recalled feeling optimistic at the time.

“I had a whole bunch of stuff I wanted to do, and apparently I’ve got money to do it,” he told the crowd. “I can’t wait.”

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But within days of taking office last December, he learned the outlook was very different.

“Day two, I go meet with our finance team and ask, ‘How much money do we have?’ I’m so excited we’re about to be able to do all of these things,” Nichols said. “But then I find out we were on track to spend $15 million more than we were bringing in. So I don’t know what ‘surplus’ means to everybody, but to me, that actually means something different.”

Since then, the administration has had to work on making cuts. Nichols presented his first city budget to the Tulsa city council on Wednesday. Instead of blanket reductions, Nichols asked each department to show how they could cut 3% to 4% and explain the tradeoffs, he said. That process will result in $6.5 million in potential savings without layoffs, Nichols said. 

“This mayor that comes in, who’s a history-making mayor, wants to do all these things that are good for the community. Now I have to go to my first department head being like, ‘We’re going to cut 4% of the budget,’” he said. “That really, really sucks.”

According to Nichols’ presentation at the city council meeting, $4.2 million of the savings would come from eliminating 14 vacant, full-time positions and administrative supplies and services deemed nonessential. Another $2.6 million would come from fee increases. And unlike recent years, the budget includes no across-the-board salary increases for city employees.

Nichols stressed that the work is only beginning.

“Our administration at some point is going to have to confront this and have an honest conversation with voters about how we’re going to fund city government for the next 25 years,” he said. “That’s a hard conversation to have, because usually it ends your job in politics.”

Despite the financial surprise, Nichols reaffirmed his administration’s target of reaching “functional zero” homelessness by 2030. 

The initiatives are supported in part by dedicated capital funding and outside partnerships. He described the city’s housing shortage as a supply issue, not just a financing issue.

“Down payment assistance does not help much when there’s nothing to buy,” he said.

He’s also pushing legislation that would help the city clear titles on abandoned and blighted properties faster, particularly in North Tulsa, so they can be redeveloped.

Nichols has committed to building 6,000 affordable housing units over four years and expanding emergency shelters. He also said zoning reform, redevelopment incentives, and investments in underserved neighborhoods are central to his strategy.

Nichols tied housing to other long-term goals, including public safety and education. He said eviction is one of the strongest predictors of chronic absenteeism in Tulsa schools and that city programs for families can help improve student outcomes.

“It’s not the mayor’s job to teach children,” he said. “But it is our job to make sure they arrive at school able to learn.”

Nichols also discussed his restructuring of city leadership, including the hiring of a city administrator and a commissioner of public safety. Some advisers warned this would make him appear removed from decision-making. He disagreed.

“I don’t care what it looks like. I care that we get the job done,” Nichols said.

He said the change will help the administration better manage its billion-dollar budget and 4,000-employee workforce while allowing the mayor’s office to focus on planning, accountability, and community engagement.

On tribal relations, Nichols said the city has made progress in resetting its relationship with sovereign tribal governments following the 2020 Supreme Court ruling in McGirt v. Oklahoma. Tulsa has begun referring criminal cases involving tribal citizens to tribal courts, and he said a formal agreement with the Muscogee Nation is nearly finalized.

Reflecting on his first months in office, Nichols said he’s optimistic but clear-eyed about the scale of the work ahead.

“I feel really good about where we are, but I’m not content with where we are,” he said. “There is so much work to do.”