Candidates for midtown Tulsa’s District 5 seat agree blighted properties are a huge issue but disagree on a human rights ordinance that was tabled last summer.
District 5 residents will either reelect incumbent Karen Gilbert or choose local attorney Adam Burnett Aug. 25 to be their councilor for the next two years.
Gilbert was first elected to the seat in 2011, serving until 2018. After two unsuccessful runs for a legislative seat, she was reelected to District 5 in August 2024. She has served as executive director of Tulsa Crime Stoppers since September 2018.
Burnett is a partner at Frasier Frasier & Hickman focusing his legal practice on labor law, civil rights, criminal law and personal injury. He joined the firm in September 2019 and became a partner in January 2025.
The district runs north from 11th Street south to about 51st Street and west from Yale Avenue to a small section at east Garnett Road. Visit the city’s Council District Finder Map to find your district.
Meet the candidates
Hear directly from Gilbert and Burnett at a free forum 6 p.m. July 27 at Aldersgate United Methodist Church, 3702 S. 90th E. Ave. The event is sponsored by the Tulsa Flyer, Tulsa Press Club and Tulsa World. Let us know you’re coming here, and find other candidate forums here.
For Gilbert, much has changed since she first ran for the District 5 seat 15 years ago. Then, her children were young. Now, all are married, and she has grandchildren.
“That’s why I do this,” Gilbert said. “To make Tulsa a safe place and to make it a place where families want to come and live and raise their own families.”
Gilbert said she returned to the council after being asked by residents, a factor differentiating her from Burnett.
“Two years ago, I was asked by the District 5 residents to come back and run again,” Gilbert said. “I think that’s where we are different — that I was asked by the community to come back.”
In 2019, Burnett and his wife moved to Tulsa after graduating from the University of Oklahoma. He says they are always looking for community involvement opportunities.
“After I started at Frasier Frasier and Hickman, Jim Frasier was a big proponent of all of the attorneys here being a part of public life, because we were. The local government has an impact on everything, especially on the law,” he said.
He likes the representation of several of his local elected leaders, he said, but feels differently about Gilbert.
“Unfortunately, I didn’t have as much in common with Karen Gilbert,” he said. “So, that seemed like a good opportunity for us to get involved.”
Burnett said he disagreed with Gilbert’s vote against an ordinance proposed in June 2025 that would have expanded protections around employment and housing on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity and veteran status.
The ordinance failed with a 4-5 vote but then councilors voted 7-2 to table the ordinance to September 2025. It has since been pulled from consideration.
“That was one thing that I thought needed to pass and should have passed,” Burnett said. “There was strong support from the community. It was something that was germane and was ripe to be acted upon, and instead it was tabled.”
The candidates agree about prioritizing the reduction and removal of blighted properties across their district.
“We are really focusing on increasing property values in Tulsa by addressing absentee and negligent landlords,” Burnett said. “We have a lot of underutilized properties within my district that we need to get put to work.”
Gilbert pointed out the Tulsa City Council approved $840,000 in one-time funding in next year’s budget to demolish two extended-stay hotels in District 5, the OYO and Studio Star.
“The out-of-state owner has not done anything to repair those buildings or even to keep them up to code,” Gilbert said. “So thank goodness we found the funding to go ahead and tear down the structures before someone gets seriously injured or another serious fire happens.”
One of the district’s biggest eyesores is the former Promenade Mall at 41st Street and Yale Avenue. Once a premiere and thriving shopping center, it is now a shell of a building that closed in September 2023 after multiple municipal code violations. The New York-based Mike Kohan of the Kohan Retail Investment Group failed to fix the problems that included a fire suppression and alarm system.
Gilbert called the mall property “a magnet for crime.”
“We do have people that are very interested in purchasing it. I don’t know what it is with the current owner that just doesn’t want to give it up,” Gilbert said. “I really wish that he would so that we can make some progress.”
Burnett said the mall property is a “larger example” of blighted properties within District 5.
“I think that Promenade is a good example of things that we see throughout the district. That’s a property that is already built, already exists. The utilities have already been pushed to it,” Burnett said. “It needs attention at all times, not just during an election or when we’ve got a break-in that causes it to be publicly noticed.”
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