Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum Meets With City Councilors With Goal To 'Work As One'

New Mayor G.T. Bynum met with city councilors for several hours Wednesday.

It was unusual, contrasted with the Bartlett administration and the sometimes strained relationship with the council.

Wednesday, after an all-morning series of meetings, the council and mayor worked through lunch.

Bynum has said he hopes the council and administration can work as one.

"We understand each other, we trust each other, we respect each other and I think that's led to a different kind of relationship you'll see," said City Councilor Anna America. 

The council and mayor have planned a goal-setting workshop for next week.

The new administration plans to improve how the city uses data, in many cases the numbers it already has, but doesn't really use.

The mayor's new innovation officer - and there is such a thing - said the change is explained by not what the city is doing, but what improvement the citizens get out of it.

The idea to review city efficiency isn't new, Mayor Bartlett started a whole office for it, but Bynum wants to make more decisions based on the data.

In the first of a series of strategy meetings, Bynum's chief of innovation said it's partly just a change in mindset.

"An outcome really orients around how does the person ultimately experience that thing you provide in city government.  It can be used in streets, in public safety, there's a lot of different areas you could look at in terms of outcomes instead of outputs," said Strategy & Innovation Chief James Wagner. 

The new administration wants more real-time data, presented so it's easy to understand and accessible and not just to councilors - but the public too.

The drive towards opening up city data and making it useful was part of Bynum's campaign.

"We'll work with the council, with the mayor and with our city employees to develop data points we can use to to track our progress towards those goals," Bynum said. 

And the council, which plans another all-day strategy meeting with the mayor next week, said they're on the data decision bandwagon.

"And we are all committed to using that data to help throughout this year, to set some goals we can see progress towards and get regular progress to see if we're moving the needle in the way we need to let's reassess and do something different," America said. 

That mayor and council retreat is next week.    

These strategy retreats are now annual events and guide much of the policy decisions for the next year.