Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 2: Steneveek on Bloomberg Radio.
Speaker 3: Well, if you're a regular viewer or listener of Bloomberg BusinessWeek,
Speaker 3: then you know we like to check in with mayors
Speaker 3: across America for a snapshot of what's going on in
Speaker 3: their communities. After all, Carol, they're the ones on the
Speaker 3: frontlines dealing with the macroeconomic challenges we talk about each
Speaker 3: and every day, economic development, afford ole housing, rising costs,
Speaker 3: not to mention the politics of it all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great snapshot of so much in our
Speaker 1: world and really on the ground. GT Buying him is
Speaker 1: one of those mayors. He's the mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma,
Speaker 1: a city of his family has lived in for six generations.
Speaker 1: And a fun fact, his great great paternal grandfather was
Speaker 1: mayor as well as his maternal grandfather, so it goes
Speaker 1: back many generations. We should point out to Mayor Bynham
Speaker 1: in the city of Tulsa. I work with Bloomberg Philanthropies
Speaker 1: and it's Cities program, but he's here away from his
Speaker 1: own city and here in New York City, Mayor Biden,
Speaker 1: So good to have you here with us. Welcome, Welcome.
Speaker 1: We do like to talk with mayors around the country
Speaker 1: because it does feel like sometimes we're looking up too
Speaker 1: high and not getting down on the ground. And so
Speaker 1: tell us about what you guys are seeing when it
Speaker 1: comes to the economy, the needs of your citizens, kind
Speaker 1: of the stress points or where there's growth. Give us
Speaker 1: kind of an overview, if you will.
Speaker 2: Well, I think at the local level, and I hear
Speaker 2: this from my fellow mayors when we get together. One
Speaker 2: that I think is really important is you never run
Speaker 2: into the partisan divides that you see so much about
Speaker 2: at the national level. Like when mayors get together, we
Speaker 2: want to know what you're doing on homelessness, what are
Speaker 2: you doing on infrastructure and public safety. So I love
Speaker 2: that part of being a mayor for us. I think
Speaker 2: from an economic standpoint, we definitely see the impact of
Speaker 2: inflation in the impact that that's had on people's buying power,
Speaker 2: and even us in operating a city government. You know,
Speaker 2: we're heavily funded by sales tax and we had a
Speaker 2: really from the outside looks like a nice two year
Speaker 2: run where we had this massive increase in revenue, but
Speaker 2: it was because of the cost of goods going up
Speaker 2: and sales tax going up, and so that's eating into
Speaker 2: our employees' paychecks, and so we've had to really be
Speaker 2: disciplined about staying on top of that and proving increased
Speaker 2: employee pay and compensation to couple with that. The other
Speaker 2: big one that I hear from mayors all over America
Speaker 2: really is around homelessness. That there is not a city
Speaker 2: that has it all figured out. If there was, I
Speaker 2: think we'd all be ripping them off and figuring out
Speaker 2: how to pay for it. And instead, you just see
Speaker 2: these laboratories of democracy all over America right now where
Speaker 2: cities are trying out different approaches, collecting data on what's
Speaker 2: working and what's not, and trying to double down on
Speaker 2: those strategies that do.
Speaker 3: Oftentimes, one of the reasons people find themselves on the
Speaker 3: streets is because housing is too expensive, and we talk
Speaker 3: about housing being affordable or the lack of affordability of
Speaker 3: housing in many parts of the country to also by
Speaker 3: no means immune to that. According to your own data
Speaker 3: that you provided us, you need over ten thousand affordable
Speaker 3: housing units in the next few years to accommodate people
Speaker 3: who live there.
Speaker 2: It's exactly right.
Speaker 3: How are you doing it?
Speaker 2: We always thought of ourselves as being a very affordable place.
Speaker 2: When you compare Tulsa to the coast of the United States,
Speaker 2: were incredibly affordable. But you have to take in to
Speaker 2: consideration what your local per capita income is when figuring
Speaker 2: that out. And so to your point, we just had
Speaker 2: an independent study conducted funded by a local philanthropic foundation
Speaker 2: that says that we need about thirteen thousand housing units
Speaker 2: in the next ten years, and that's everything from homeless
Speaker 2: shelter space to mansions and everything in between. What we've
Speaker 2: tried to focus on as a city are those things
Speaker 2: that the free market is not going to address, and
Speaker 2: that is homeless shelter space, permanent supportive housing, and transitional housing.
Speaker 2: We just passed in August a seventy million dollars voter
Speaker 2: approved initiative to help subsidize those things to make it
Speaker 2: more appealing for private sector developers to build that knowing
Speaker 2: that they can get some support from the city for
Speaker 2: doing it. We just had The other thing that we
Speaker 2: tried to focus on is reducing the regulatory burden from
Speaker 2: the city. We've seen a lot of cities that will
Speaker 2: have a lot of incentive funding available, but the regulatory
Speaker 2: burden is so great and so private sector developers still
Speaker 2: don't build there. So we've reduced that significantly in Tulsa
Speaker 2: because of that. Last year we had the most home
Speaker 2: starts we've ever had in the history of our city.
Speaker 2: But we're going to have to continue to ramp that
Speaker 2: up just to catch up to the pace we need
Speaker 2: to be keeping for the next decade to get the
Speaker 2: amount of housing that everybody tells us we need to
Speaker 2: reduce homelessness in our city.
Speaker 1: All right, So there's demand for housing, no doubt about it.
Speaker 1: You want to make sure it's affordable right for the
Speaker 1: people who need it, And I'm just curious that at
Speaker 1: the same time, then, so you want to have an
Speaker 1: economy within your city and surrounding environs that can support that.
Speaker 1: What are you doing on that side of the leisure.
Speaker 2: I would say probably a couple big things. One and
Speaker 2: I know last time I was on here we talked
Speaker 2: about our focus on advance aerial mobility. Since then, we
Speaker 2: were one of twenty six cities in America to receive
Speaker 2: a Build Back Better Regional Challenge grant, which we're using
Speaker 2: to build out the advanced aerial mobility drones, especially in
Speaker 2: the Tulsa area. We've partnered with the Osage Nation to
Speaker 2: build a drone testing corridor in Tulsa or in their nation,
Speaker 2: their reservation that's about seventy miles long. So we're trying
Speaker 2: to build that industry out. The other big thing that
Speaker 2: we're doing is focusing on entrepreneurship and fostering that and
Speaker 2: in particular in our immigrant community in Tulsa.
Speaker 1: Did your immigrant community.
Speaker 2: Yes, it's largely, it's going to be well, it's all
Speaker 2: over the world. We have the largest Afghan refugee community
Speaker 2: in Tulsa of any city in America, heavily Hispanic, and
Speaker 2: then also a significant Asian population that has come as
Speaker 2: a result of refugee work that the faith based community
Speaker 2: in Tulsa has been doing for decades. And so we
Speaker 2: just opened up a new business incubator in probably the
Speaker 2: most densely populated area of our city where the immigrant
Speaker 2: community lives, to focus in particular on immigrant entrepreneurs and
Speaker 2: making sure they have connections to the assets that they
Speaker 2: need to build new businesses in our city. Because our
Speaker 2: data we've collected shows that the inclination entrepreneurship amongst immigrants,
Speaker 2: at least in Tulsa is much higher than the non
Speaker 2: immigrant population, so we want to make sure they have
Speaker 2: the resources they need. So there's there's a tremendous amount
Speaker 2: of work that's being done. Those are just two things,
Speaker 2: but you're right, we've got to keep pace with economic
Speaker 2: growth to support all of this housing and the population growth.
Speaker 2: We're also not to belabor the point, but we have
Speaker 2: become an accidental mecca for remote work as well, and
Speaker 2: I know we visit about that a bet last time, Yah,
Speaker 2: you want to talk about work because the unemployment.
Speaker 3: Rate relatively low in Tulsa about four percent according to
Speaker 3: the Labor Department.
Speaker 2: With all the.
Speaker 3: Companies that you're trying to attract to the area, are
Speaker 3: they going to be able to find the workers they
Speaker 3: need in Tulsa?
Speaker 2: We believe so for one for one big reason, well
Speaker 2: two big reasons. One, we're very much focused on building
Speaker 2: up quality of life in our city, so it's easier
Speaker 2: for them to recruit people to Tulsa. We're on a
Speaker 2: twenty year run now of major investments at our concert
Speaker 2: arena that we built has been the concert arena at
Speaker 2: two of the last four years. We lost out to
Speaker 2: Madison Square Garden one year. We lost out to the
Speaker 2: Staples Center in La one year, So I'm not bad
Speaker 2: competition for concert arena in Tulsa. We just opened the
Speaker 2: greatest park gift any city in American history about three
Speaker 2: years ago, the Gathering Place. It's a four hundred and
Speaker 2: eighty million dollar, entirely privately funded park in the heart
Speaker 2: of our city. We're building a lake in the middle
Speaker 2: of our city that's going to open on Labor Day weekend.
Speaker 2: We're building a museum to how's the greatest collection of
Speaker 2: American art outside of that owned by the federal government
Speaker 2: that is in Tulsa. We just opened the Bob Dylan
Speaker 2: Archive about two years ago. So there's a lot going
Speaker 2: on from a quality of lifestyle and the other is
Speaker 2: and I think this is really important. We want to
Speaker 2: be the best city in America for immigrants. We're working
Speaker 2: very hard to make Tulsa a city that really lives
Speaker 2: up to the hopes and aspirations that immigrants from all
Speaker 2: around the world have when they come to the United States.
Speaker 2: We want them to be welcome, we want them to
Speaker 2: find great jobs and opportunity in our city.
Speaker 1: You're in art great city for a specific reason. Tell
Speaker 1: us about what you were doing last night.
Speaker 2: So The Outsiders, which I imagine a lot of your
Speaker 2: listeners have either read the that's right. So The Outsiders
Speaker 2: was written by a high school student in Tulsa decades ago,
Speaker 2: Si Hinton. She still lives in Tulsa. Then Francis Ford,
Speaker 2: a couple of made a movie that launched the careers
Speaker 2: of just an unbelievable number of actors who went on
Speaker 2: to have big careers. Well, now it has been made
Speaker 2: into a Broadway musical and it's premiering tonight on Broadway.
Speaker 2: So we have about two hundred people from Tulsa who
Speaker 2: are in town to support the show that we're just
Speaker 2: so proud of it and that this story written by
Speaker 2: our fellow Tulson, has become a classic of American literature film,
Speaker 2: and we believe it will be on Broadway as well.
Speaker 3: Well, how was the show?
Speaker 2: It was amazing, amazing. The performers in it are great,
Speaker 2: The special effects and stage work in it. I've never
Speaker 2: seen anything like it, and it they do a great
Speaker 2: job of honoring the spirit of the book and the story.
Speaker 2: That's so important.
Speaker 3: We should note the show on Broadways, produced by Angelina
Speaker 3: Jolie and again, as you mentioned, based on the book
Speaker 3: by S. E. Hinton, really great stuff. It's amazing how
Speaker 3: young she was when she wrote What did you Do
Speaker 3: in High School? She wrote, she wrote a book.
Speaker 2: I was like, Oh, can you imagine being defined for
Speaker 2: your whole life by one thing you did in high school? Exactly? Yes? No, no, no,
Speaker 2: most of us not.
Speaker 1: Great to check in with you again, Good luck with everything,
Speaker 1: have a good trip.
Speaker 2: Thank you boy so much.
Speaker 1: Enjoy Yeah, great to see you. Mary G. T Biham
Speaker 1: of course, the mayor of Tulsa, Oklahoma, joining us here
Speaker 1: in our Bloomberg Interactive Brokers Studio