GTAC approves chair’s letter urging trust plus CDC partnership for Greenwood land after heated debate

The Greater Tulsa African American Affairs Commission voted 6-4 to approve a letter from its chair recommending that Greenwood land be placed under a trust while an identified community development corporation (CDC) serve as a development and financial partner, commissioners said during their meeting in Tulsa.

The commission’s policy committee presented a monthlong review of a community-led process that produced mixed accounts about how a 35-member working group, a nine-member advisory body and a later selection committee chose founding members for the Greenwood CDC. John Paul Ray, vice chair of the policy committee, told commissioners the committee interviewed multiple participants and reviewed records before making its findings.

The policy report said the working group studied national governance models and local input over roughly 16 to 18 months and ultimately voted to favor a CDC. The report recorded that 41 applications were received for advisory and founding-board positions, that a nine-person advisory committee was formed and that five founding board members currently sit on the CDC’s board.

"A trust merely gives an additional layer of protection," the commission chair wrote in the letter circulated for approval, arguing that…