Today’s your last chance to vote on a new Tulsa flag

TULSA — Voting closes Wednesday for those interested in helping to choose a new flag for the city of Tulsa.

Jacob Johnson and Joey Wignarajah first approached the city council with the idea last November, and they’ve devoted a lot of time, energy, and even money to accomplishing their goal.

“We’re not making any money off of it, in fact, Jacob and I and a lot of other people in the community are putting money up, and every dollar will be spent in the process,” Wignarajah told KRMG. “Any money that’s left over will be used to buy flags, and stickers and other giveaways just to get as many people out there covered in Tulsa flag things as possible.”

He said the current flag - the city seal on a white field - has two main problems.

First, it’s poor flag design, he said.

Secondly, if a business wanted to create the flags, or t-shirts for example, they’d be committing a felony by reproducing the city’s corporate seal.

They studied flag design, and solicited ideas from the public.

“We asked the question: What event is important in Tulsa’s history? And we got all kinds of great input, everything from the oil boom, to race riots and Black Wall Street and the importance of that. Some people thought Tulsa’s sound and Tulsa’s music was very important. So we took all of that input and we put it together into a design brief that said ‘here are the things the community thinks are important, and here are the principles of good flag design.’ And then we gave that to designers, and the public, and opened up the flag competition.”

They got about 400 responses, from which an independent panel chose the three finalists.

People can text one letter - A, B, or C - to 918-376-5690 to vote (in the illustration above, A is on the left, B in the center, and C on the right).

To see a short video explaining the meaning of the designs, visit the Tulsa Flag website.