Error Causes Email Trouble For Tulsa City Councilors

An error at Tulsa City Hall means some city councilors haven't been getting your emails.

The trouble comes at a bad time since, in less than two weeks, the council votes on next year's budget.

The hope is they’ll start getting emails again Friday, but the reality is that it might be next week, or possibly a little longer.

"Apparently we have not gotten a lot of emails and we don't know that we're not getting them," City Councilor Anna America said.

Your questions, comments and concerns may not have been seen, and voters wanting to know why they got no response alerted councilors to the problem.

"That's where we first started realizing this, is people would show us, we'd look and say 'Yep, you got the address in right,'" America said.

But emails weren't coming through.

The IT department told councilors part of the problem is the City's email set-up.

The City said councilors have two separate city emails - a "district" one and a "name" one. While the City is consolidating the two mailboxes into one, an error caused some councilors to not get any emails on any devices.

"We couldn't access email through many of those methods last week," America.

Councilors rely almost exclusively on mobile devices to communicate, so the whole ordeal has been frustrating.

"Email is overwhelming the method of choice for citizens to contact us," America said.

It’s all happening as the City tries to collect feedback on the mayor's budget proposal.

In a statement the City says:

"…IT is working around the clock to make the single email transition…The hope is to have all of the councilors transitioned tomorrow."

But the reality is that some emails might not make it through while the City reconfigures all the councilors’ devices.

America said, "At least some of us, maybe most of us, didn't have email through almost any method."

The City added, "The public will not see a difference in contacting the councilors in the future as their district emails will remain in place."

If you'd like to email your councilor, here is a list of district emails:

• Councilor Vanessa Hall-Harper:  dist1@tulsacouncil.org
• Councilor Jeannie Cue:  dist2@tulsacouncil.org
• Councilor David Patrick:  dist3@tulsacouncil.org
• Councilor Blake Ewing:  dist4@tulsacouncil.org
• Councilor Karen Gilbert:  dist5@tulsacouncil.org
• Councilor Connie Dodson:  dist6@tulsacouncil.org
• Councilor Anna America:  dist7@tulsacouncil.org
• Councilor Phil Lakin, Jr:  dist8@tulsacouncil.org
• Councilor Ben Kimbro:  dist9@tulsacouncil.org