The Tulsa City Council met on June 10, 2026, to consider several agenda items including the reappointment of a board member, two rezoning applications, multiple budget amendments, an economic development incentive for IKEA, and a detailed presentation on homelessness programs covering winter shelter outcomes and Safe Move Tulsa expenses and future plans. The meeting included significant discussion on homeless services, funding, and encampment strategies.
They're gonna get into depth of what's going on with that individual. You know, that call came in as a chest pain, but what was it really? I do talk to a lot of different departments across the U.S. And so we're seeing cities want to adopt this. There is models that are similar, but they've not had the impact. I think that the difference you see is R2 is able to respond to real-time 911 calls in place of other apparatus, but they also provide those other social services that are not. Attended the majority of the meetings for council district eight. Um, if you want to join us at the table, thanks so much for being here. Um would you mind sharing um a bit about yourself and why you'd like to continue serving? Well, I'm Rick Hudson, I moved here in 69. Red Way, Georgia Tech in Engineering. I have a company in Tulsa and a company in uh Burton, Colorado. We're an engineering-oriented company. I was appointed in two thousand six by Mayor Kathy Taylor. I've been on the board ever since then. I've enjoyed it. It's been a real pleasure to work with the TMUA and the RMUA. I'm incoming chairman of this coming year. Wonderful. Does anyone have any follow-up questions? Twenty years of service. Yeah. Wow. Tremendous. My wife asked me why am I doing this? Because it does take it's a lot of work. Yes, thirty-three meetings a year. I have to tell you, it's been a real honor for me to work with the city employees. I had a different idea of what city employees were like before I came down and began to work with this staff that we have. And we've had a very good relationship over the years. And uh so it's been a real honor for me. If you know what I'm eighty-two years old, still play good bridge and still play good blackjack. So I hope I'm not diminished. No, but uh, I would uh I'm happy to serve another four, got another four years of VLI for your service. Thank you. Are you part of the National Bridge League? This is relevant, I swear it's not, but are you part of do you do like the National Bridge League stuff? I just play online. Oh, that's good. My grandma was banned from it, just a fun fact. Um, look for cheating. Um just a quick fun family talk. Is there anything out of curiosity given your longitudinal service? Is there anything you think we should know or be focused on when it comes to just you city utilities that the council that you think we should be aware of? You've obviously really don't want to. It's always we consider rates and debt. And in fact, we were just in a meeting upstairs talking about bond issues and the fact that we weren't able to uh have bonds because we didn't properly fund our uh wastewater treatment uh due to a consent order and it affected our ability to uh uh to raise bonds and so we had to borrow money at a higher rate from the OWRB. So we we're facing an aging decaying uh water system and sewer system, and so we need to uh do everything we can to keep ourselves financially viable. And fortunately we've been over 20 years, we've had a good relationship with the city council. You understand our issues, and we worked well together.