If Tulsa wants to reach that next tier of excellence, Mayor Monroe Nichols said it needs to dial up its self-promotion.

“There’s a reality that we are all going to have to challenge ourselves to begin to work together and be really honest about what it takes to tell our story nationally,because I think we have a better story to tell than most any other city,” Nichols said. “We can’t keep that a secret, anymore.”

Nichols was special guest Monday at the Tulsa Regional Chamber’s joint 2024-25 Board of Directors meeting in the Chamber offices.

Nichols, inaugurated Dec. 2 as Tulsa’s first Black mayor, participated in a dialogue with 2025 Chamber Chair Bill Knight, discussing topics such as municipal marketing, homelessness, workforce and tribal relations.

As for better telling its story, Tulsa can look down the Turner Turnpike at Oklahoma City, Nichols said.

The City of Tulsa charges a 5% lodging tax on hotel occupancy in the city limits to promote tourism and fund convention facilities.

By contrast, voters recently approved raising Oklahoma City’s portion of the hotel tax from 5.5% to 9.25%, allowing millions more annually to flow into the state capital’s tourism efforts.

“What we know about Tulsa is that when people get here and experience this community, they absolutely love it,” said Nichols, who spent eight years in the Oklahoma House of Representatives. “Imagine if we had the ability to tell that story, if people didn’t fall in love with us by accident.

“…This is the time of year when you get all those Hallmark holiday love stories when somebody falls in love by accident because they fell and busted their head on an ice rink or something like that…Well, I don’t want to be the Hallmark program. I want to be like the summer blockbuster. That’s what we have to do. It’s going to start with making those investments in ourselves.”

To combat homelessness, the mayor said he wants to raise the downtown presence of law enforcement and alternative response teams.

The Housing Partnership Network (HPN) has teamed up with leading impact organizations in Tulsa to address the city’s severe shortage of affordable housing. Tulsa is the third major city – New Orleans and Detroit are the others – with which HPN has collaborated.

“For 15 months (of campaigning), I talked about 6,000 new, affordable units in four years,” Nichols said. “I feel very confident in our ability to deliver there.”

As for workforce, Nichols said public schools and employers need to find more ways to partner, ensuring that students have smoother pathways to a career.

The mayor also said he met recently with the principal chiefs of the area’s three major tribes: the Cherokee, Muscogee and Osage nations. Some of the conversation focused on jurisdiction in criminal matters.

“Our priority is making sure we are sticking to our commitment to respect tribal sovereignty and do it in a way in which no one is having to sacrifice public safety,” Nichols said.

Nichols is the city’s 41st mayor. He succeeded G.T. Bynum, who didn’t seek reelection after serving eight years in office.

“My role over the next four years is not to be doom-and-gloom guy, but just to knock some of the problems off the list,” he said. “If I do that, there’s no limit to where we are going to go.

“…I think we punch above our weight in most cases. I talk about winning the next decade and being that city that everybody’s talking about nationally. I think that’s going to be us.”