Mayor G.T. Bynum doesn’t spend much time these days looking back. He will be out of office in a year, and he’s intent on making it a big one.
He keeps a whiteboard in his City Hall office with a month-by-month list of projects that are scheduled to be completed before he leaves office. And he’s using a foam pin board to track the major public and private projects that have either been completed during his time in office or are still in progress.
It’s gotten to the point that he’ll routinely wake up in the middle of the night and add another to-do item to his list.
But he’s not complaining.
“The thing I am most proud of … is the way that we have elevated expectations for Tulsans,” Bynum said. “When I ran in 2016, I think there was a sense that we were just kind of managing decline in the city.
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“And now, I don’t know anybody that feels that way. Tulsans expect to win and expect to compete nationally and internationally. You do not see fights over shopping centers.”
It’s a change in mindset he believes will be consequential long term, particularly for young Tulsans.
“My kids’ generation will grow up with the assumption that this is a city that aims high, and what that will mean 20, 30 years from now when their generation is running the city I’m really excited about,” Bynum said.
That’s why 2024 is such a big year for him. Three major capital improvement projects that he’s advocated for and helped develop are set to be completed: the renovation of Zink Dam and the creation of Zink Lake; reconstruction of Gilcrease Museum (which will open to the public in 2026); and the opening of the new Public Safety Center.
“That’s why I ran for the City Council in 2008,” Bynum said of the river development project. “It was to get that lake built, and so knowing that it will open next year is really exciting.”
The same goes for the Gilcrease Museum, which he first discussed with Susan Neal, who now serves as the museum’s executive director, in 2013.
“So 10 years now that I’ve been working on that and we will, we’ll finish the building,” Bynum said. “… Either one of those is a once-in-a-century project. So the fact that we get to open two of them next year is incredibly exciting.”
Bynum’s other major objective for 2024 is another building project, this one made up of human capital. He wants to leave behind the best city staff possible for his successor.
“I think it’s in Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. He asked him, ‘So what are you most proud of from your time at Apple?’ He’s like, the team that we built. Not the iPhone, not the Mac, but the team that we built,” Bynum said. “When I leave here, I want whoever wins the mayor’s election next year to have the best team in place at the city of Tulsa and to have as many of the problems as I can take off of their plate off their plate so that they’re set up for success in the job.”
The First Seven Years
Bynum, 46, ran for office promising transparency, data-driven policies, a focus on education, and a commitment to doing everything possible to reduce the life-expectancy gap between residents of north Tulsa and the rest of the community.
Like every government leader, he’s had his hits and misses. His administration was awarded the international Cities of Service Engaged Cities award for its work in the use of data to inform policymaking and established a department focused specifically on that effort.
Bynum acknowledges that he was a bit naive in thinking that he could close the life expectancy gap during his two terms in office.
“The reality is that gap came to exist over more than a century, and you don’t change it,” he said. “If it could be changed in that small amount of time it already would have.
“And so what we’ve tried to do is systematize the things that can close that gap over time, so that they are there and running and making that difference regardless of who the mayor is, and over time they will close the gap.”
With that goal in mind, the Bynum administration has established a number of initiatives designed to identify areas of inequality and address them. They include the Equality Indicators, an annual report that compares outcomes of groups likely to experience inequalities, and the Tulsa Authority for Economic Opportunity, or Partner Tulsa, the city’s economic development arm. Its stated purpose is to create equality of opportunity in Tulsa.
Bynum said he believes those types of efforts, coupled with an emphasis on attracting businesses to north Tulsa, will over the long run help cut the life-expectancy gap.
“That’s another mistake that I think I made early on was thinking that this life- expectancy gap between north Tulsa and the rest of the city is just about public health, and that impacts it, but so does economic development in a big way,” Bynum said. “And so we’ve channeled our economic development focus into north Tulsa in a way that I don’t think it ever has been.”
The Trump era, 111 books and what’s next
Bynum has been mayor during a period of extreme polarization in American politics. He was elected in 2016, the same year Donald Trump was elected president. Yet Bynum, for the most part, has stayed out of the fray — quite a feat in the age of social media and 24-hour news cycles.
“There have been many times where I thought to myself, God, being mayor when Barack Obama and George W. Bush were president would have been awesome. Less controversy, not daily social media reaction.
“So, yes, it has made it more challenging. And it has made it more challenging because the people that I’m trying to bring together to solve our greatest challenges are being reminded every day of the things that divide them.”
But there’s a flip side, he believes.
“It has reinforced for me that the greatest hope for the country is in local government,” Bynum said. “Because it’s the last, I think, the last area of government in the United States that isn’t polarized on partisan lines and where people of divergent viewpoints still have to work together to solve problems together for the community that they care about.”
Speaking of social media, Bynum last month posted a message and picture on X, formerly known as Twitter, stating that he had read 111 books this year. One hundred eleven. He swears he read them all.
“Every one that I read, I write down the name of the book and my take on (it),” he said, pulling out his phone. “So, yeah, I keep it all there in Google Docs. But also, for everyone of those books, there were at least two that I would skim and decide I didn’t want to read it, and return it to the library.”
During a recent Press Club luncheon, Bynum said he’s beginning to hear from potential employers about coming to work for them after he leaves office.
But he’s adamant that he has no idea what he’ll be doing come 2025. He’s much more certain of what he wants to do.
“I just want to find a way to continue serving the community. I love working in service to great institutions,” Bynum said. “I did that working in the (U.S.) Senate, I’ve done that here at the city.
“I will have done it for 16 years by the time I’m done being mayor, so I’d love to find some opportunity to continue to serve. I just don’t know what it’s going to be.”
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