It was great to have Mayor Ron Norick and Mayor Mick Cornett at our arena groundbreaking Thursday. This picture captures at least three of the special ingredients in the Oklahoma City renaissance: 1) Visionary leadership. Once elected to executive positions, you can just manage the crisis of the day if that’s how you want to spend your time. Or, you can proactively push the community to new heights. 2) Continuity in leadership. Our city has had just four elected mayors since 1987 - a span of four decades. And not only that, but each of us has simply passed the baton to the next. No mayor in our modern history has wasted one second of their precious time undoing the work of their predecessor. 3) Investment in ourselves. Mayor Norick championed the passage of MAPS in 1993, which deployed about $365 million to improve our quality of life infrastructure, and set the tone for the decades that have followed. Mayor Cornett championed MAPS 3, Big League City and two bond issues, for a grand total of $3 billion in improvements. And the new community infrastructure commitments made in my mayoral tenure now total $5 billion. My gratitude to those who built the foundation upon which we build!

Upon the announcement of his retirement, we send our congratulations and best wishes to (occasional) Oklahoma City pitcher Clayton Kershaw!