Catching you up on a possible future for Utica Square, a lawyer explaining what needs to happen with lawlessness downtown and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol is dumping some work onto Tulsa Police
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Pushing back against ‘misinformation’ by Ryan Walters
The scoop: Four large school districts in Oklahoma are pushing back against Ryan Walters’ new claims that administrators are sitting on “surplus” funds within their existing budgets to meet his demands to furnish all 700,000 public school students with free meals.
- Tara Thompson, chief communications officer at Broken Arrow Public Schools, said it is demonstrably untrue that the district has a $109 million surplus.
- “It appears this alleged ‘surplus’ can only be derived by illegally adding all funds. Bond funds, debt service funds, student-raised funds, scholarship funds, workers’ comp funds — these cannot legally be added together and used except for their intended purpose,” she said.
- Projects Reporter Andrea Eger received responses from all four districts to this latest message from the state superintendent.
A possible future for Utica Square that is for sale?
The scoop: Tulsa developer who established a $250 million multi-use area in Oklahoma City wants to bring the same to Tulsa — possibly to transform Utica Square.
- Ryan McNeill is the developer of OAK, a nearly 1 million-square-foot area near Penn Square Mall in Oklahoma City.
- It includes a hotel, apartments, several retailers and restaurants, office space, and a newly opened RH (formerly Restoration Hardware), which looks more like a mansion than a store.
- Michael Dekker with an interview with McNeill and what he would do to the iconic shopping center in Tulsa, which for the first time in decades is for sale.
‘It’s just absolutely astounding the types of criminal activity that occurs on a daily basis’
The scoop: An attorney representing business owners concerned about homelessness and associated crime downtown met with Mayor Monroe Nichols to urge the city to enforce the laws related to nuisances.
- In a recent interview with the Tulsa World, Joel Wohlgemuth said the city is selectively enforcing the city’s nuisance ordinances downtown at the expense of all those who live, work and recreate there.
- An open records request of 911 call data made by Wohlgemuth shows that from April 2022 to April 2025, Tulsa police received 1,391 calls for service related to the downtown bus station. That’s more than one a week on average.
- Reporter Kevin Canfield also talked to the mayor about what he thought of the meeting and what’s next.
Oklahoma Highway Patrol withdrawing patrol of interstate highways in Tulsa, OKC
The scoop: The Oklahoma Highway Patrol said effective Nov. 1 it is handing over its jurisdiction on metropolitan-area interstate highways to local law enforcement in an attempt to reallocate its resources to other areas of the state.
- The OHP currently handles calls on Interstates 44, 244 and the Inner Dispersal Loop within the city of Tulsa, as well as the turnpikes.
- “On the downside it’s an unanticipated burden to the department so we will have to reallocate resources from other things that we didn’t have to before,” a police spokesman said.
- Reporter Curtis Killman gets into what this might mean for Tulsans.
- Follow up: The impact of the Oklahoma Highway Patrol’s plans to pull out of Tulsa and the Oklahoma City area in November is beginning to take shape, and some are already voicing opposition to it. Drunken driving, highway crashes are top concerns.
The most popular stories on tulsaworld.com in the past week you may have missed
- Chemistry problems of Oklahoma Joes led to Castiglione retirement? | By Berry Tramel
- Ann Coulter tweet draws rebuke from Cherokee Nation chief | By Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton
- Rising valuations of NBA franchises will prompt Thunder ownership to sell | By Berry Tramel
- Large mixed-use development planned for Riverside Parkway near River Spirit Casino | By Kevin Canfield
- Tulsan behind unique OKC development now eying Utica Square | By Michael Dekker
- New CEO takes charge of Williams, a $73 billion company with a long history in Tulsa | By Michael Dekker, Daniel Shular
- Cops led fatal chase over car’s paper tag. Body cam raises questions about why. | By Corey Jones, Daniel Shular, Mike Simons
- Whatever happened to the Oklahoma Teacher of the Year who left for Texas? | By Andrea Eger
- Ryan Walters issues school lunch demands, threatens audits to force admin cost cutting | By Andrea Eger, Lenzy Krehbiel-Burton
- Attorney for downtown Tulsa business owners urges city to enforce nuisance laws | By Kevin Canfield
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Contact me at jason.collington@tulsaworld.com
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