Good money, good money, good morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
It's time now for our community connection right here on K one and the one
you trust being brought to you by Arnold Moore and Ni Camp. You all
we stay in Kidney College, tall Grass Motors and get real ministries and once
it's here on this July fifth, is Commissioner Mitchandele. How you doing today,
young man? I am well, Tom and you I'm doing great.
I had a great celebration of our nation's birth yesterday and hope you had a
great time too. Absolutely, and now things are happening here with the commissioners
and what have you. We it seems like every week there's something new,
but some of the things kind of stayed the same for a while. I
know that a few of the things that stay the same are, of course
our thoroughfares, ore roads and bridges and things like that. Usual meeting and
this time of year sometimes we have some problems with the heat buckling, Yes
sir, yes, sir, that's of course, that's of course an ode
issue down there on highway. Said that, I've noticed several of the comments
about you know, it seems to have every year. It does so I'm
not quite sure what that's going to look like, but we will. We'll
always have those conversations with the district engineer. We did recently have a transition
in District eight for the engineer, so we will see what we can what
we can get accomplished by way of having those conversations. If we have these
overlaps and you know who does what and where and everything, yes, sir,
because you know the highways run through the county. Bit is it a
part of the county. Well, yeah, but there are county only maintained
roads and thoroughfairs, and there are a city depending on which town you're in,
in correct, And then sometimes they just kind of like all mixed together,
and it's kind of hard to keep a streets good thing. We have
smart people who know what's going on well, or at least there to argue,
at least if you we're pretty good about no, that's not mine,
that's yours, and oh that's mine and not yours, and we're going to
do this and you're going to get the road and we're now. It just
it's always a mess, but we try to work together and accomplish a common
goal for a common good. Now as a commissioner. It's just not roads
and bridges. It's not snow removals, not patch and holes and stuff like
that. There is the business of the county, yes, that you look
after. You tell us a little bit about that. Give us a little
thumbnail sketch. Thumbnail sketch sketch would be basic oversight and administration of the taxpayer
funds. We want to make sure that as a board collectively we look at
those on a weekly basis, kind of the concept of take care of the
take care of the pennies and the dollars will handle themselves. We look at
things on a very minuscule level to ensure compliance with purchasing procedure and check transactions
office by office by office weekly we go through those claims. One of those
transactions took place with some vehicles here recently where Washington County opted to lease,
purchase or lease out either equipment or vehicles, and there was a reason for
that. We're in a strange place economically, we are. I approach things
a little differently up in District one than we do in Districts two and three
with regard to leasing heavy equipment. Sure, I'm not saying we won't end
up in that position. But we like to acquire in district one piece by
piece through the years, okay, and sometimes that puts us in a in
an odd position. We've got several other well, the two districts here both
lease equipment, and then throughout the state you'll see a lot of leased equipment
because we're getting to the point with vehicles where a the cost is excessive.
I mean some of these things, you're looking for five hundred thousand dollars to
purchase this particular piece of equipment. No swimming pool included, right, So
then it's the maintenance behind them. And of course, with the increase in
technology and computers and things like that, we've all seen that with our personal
vehicles too. So you know, when a computer fails in a car,
that's a that's a lofty expense. If it fails in a greater that's a
more lofty expense. Yeah, that is absolutely huge. When that happens,
I think we just lost something here. There we go, we're back on.
But yeah, that is that is really incredible. With costs and of
course technology, those are those are two huge factors to consider in anything.
Really, so kind of tongue in cheek and jokingly. My we recently acquired
a new oil distributor, and I've joked that our old one was used in
the movie cool Hand Luke. Oh really it was not. But it was
interesting where we sent a couple of personnel to the facility that was manufacturing our
truck for some hands on training and to watch the process. In part.
They they kind of joked with us, this company about giving us a plaque
because we had been using that distributor for twenty four years. Their normal lifespan
is ten, so we've kept it up, been running for the last decade
that I've been in office, but it was fourteen years old when I came
in. So normally they're not They're just not designed to do what they do.
So we've got great people on staff that manage and maintain this equipment up
in District one, so we're able to do things a little differently that way.
Not to say that we don't have great personnel on staff in District two
and three that take care of their equipment, but it's just a different type
of area, different type of road maintenance, which is why in park districts
are split up the way they're split up okay, but you guys got to
all come together. I mean you have your own districts, correct, but
the three commissioners each in every county in Oklahoma have to come together and meet
frequently in order to get things accomplished. Some of the things you have to
take care of course, are you know, budgets and things like that.
And like you said, you will re see the pennies. The dollars take
care of themselves. But it's also investments too, like you were talking about
some of the investments you've just made in your district. But when it comes
together, like say something like for the jail, I'm just going to pick
on Sheriff Owen for a little bit here. If there was something that needed
to go into the jail that's not a district by district thing, that is
a consensus of the three commissioners, you've got to come together to kind of,
you know, work this out. Absolutely charged. Building maintenance being another
sure facet of the job, right. We maintain the structures and provide the
spaces for all of the offices that take place. The jail being the one
that comes to mind most often, and it's I don't want to say it's
showing its age. We've been on top of maintaining it, oh a sheriff's
office, but that's an expensive endeavor. So that's just another When you run
a twenty four to seven operation, a hotel, so to speak, where
you're feeding and housing a lot of people, it gets in a hurry.
Hospitality ain't cheap, No, it isn't. No, it isn't. You
know. One thing that is great is that we're coming up with a new
place for Washington County emergency management. Has he been in such tight quarters and
of course it's greatly appreciated that we had the space to begin with. Absolutely
absolutely no one wants to poop poo that, but it's nice that they're going
to get their own command center independent of everything. And how's that coming along.
It's coming along well, of course everything there's delays in all of it.
That's a that's a project. The Commissioner Dunlap really excels in that area
of capital TIPE construction, so he's he's all up in the middle of that,
all tooled up on what's going on there. We've got good subs,
good managers, so everything's moving in the right direction there. But that particular
facility is being designed with a lot of different things in mind, from the
emergency management and continue the continuity of operations, if you will, by being
built in such a way that it's constructed to withstand any four tornado. Good
so the primary occupied space of it also can be split up. So if
we suffer a huge loss of our administration building or our court operations or something
along those lines, we can relocate out there with the flip of a switch
and begin operations or continue our operations as if they weren't interrupted. So redundancies
are cool. Correct. Redundancies are cool. Redundancies are expensive. You don't
want to over plan, but at the same time, you want to make
sure that your your operations don't really hit You know, you don't want to
see the hiccup. No, no, nobody wants that. No, and
getting ahead of it is the name of the game here. It makes it
it is. It is planning and preparation. Prepare, not scare correct.
What's going on in your district in particular that you like to talk about,
let people know what's going where in that time of the year where we start
doing our road maintenance, not start doing our road maintenance. An ongoing endeavor
start doing our road construction. I will say we just finished a project over
a by Bardow Lake, small asphalt overlay there as far as we could afford
to do it, and we'll pick up a chip and seal and finish that
off. From that point onto what's commonly known as Virginia. It's thirty ninety
five at transition transitions. Right about that same point, we've got several other
sections of road that we'll work through and probably put some additional courses of chips
on with this new distributor where we're gonna kind of take it easy this year
move into those areas we know that we need to kind of top cap a
little bit more. Then. The funny thing to me about chip and seal
roads is it's basically just a rain coat over a gravel road. You're dealing
with a layer of oil and three eight to in chips and we put two
coats down, so that's what's between you and that gravel road. Technically,
it's an asphalt product. It's a very thin as fault product, so it
does it's not designed to handle the weights sometimes that we see on County Road
sure, so we will have blowouts in different areas that need need looked at,
or you're dealing with a lot more subgrade issues at that point, because
you're not too far from subgrade. No, you're you're you're precariously closed,
correct, correct, But it's better than a gravel product. Sure, you
eliminate a lot of dust. You you know, there's there's a lot of
advantages to doing that chip and seal product. If you're dealing with those average
daily traffic counts and the standard commute from your house to a higher capacity road,
a major collector, a minor, minor major collector, and then onto
that highway system. That's where you see different construction methodologies where we're going to
have a higher traffic volume, you're going to have a better, better constructed
road because warrants it. Yeah, sure, you know, is our our
ranching equipment. It's a little heavier, like what seems like by a factor
of five every two or three years. That puts a lot of strain on
the roads. It does. We work a lot with agriculture and the agriculture
community. We know those areas that are historically farmed and and we want to
ensure that we provide the safest, most stable transportation route for those implements of
husbandry that have to move up and down these roads. We all, you
know, we don't eat out of the grocery store. We eat because farmers,
yes, So we have got to understand that. And we're I don't
want to say we're a farming community, but we do have a large agriculture
footprint in Washington County. We do. We absolutely do. What's on the
horizon here for the commissioners here in the next couple of months a year kind
of I think, kind of transitioning at this point. Obviously, we've got
the primary runoff election coming up at the end of August for the District two
commissioners seat. We'd love to have voters turnout for that. We had about
twenty five hundred for the primary election. What we typically see is about fifty
percent of that we'll show up in a runoff. So I'm really encouraging everybody
in District two to get out and vote on August twenty seventh and have your
voice heard as to who you want to see in that commissioner's position. We
need, we need good voter turnout. I always promote that or try to
promote that. I'm not going to tell anybody how to vote. But I
am going to get out and exercise that right. Please please, you know
what, Frank Zappa is not a guy I would quote all the time,
but he has encouraging some great things to say. You can't complain if you
don't vote. It's right, you have forfeited that right. Yes, you
still go out there and do the thing. You can't complain about the thing.
So I can't disagree, Tomy, you disagree, you know, you
know he's not not Plato by any means. Sure, but sure he's alright.
He's got something going on anyway. It's always great to have you here.
Any thing else you'd like to add that I might have missed? No,
I think we always have good conversations. I appreciate your time and the
radio's opportunity for us to get together and connect on that community level. How
can people connect with you they have a question. The easiest way is our
county website County courthouse dot org. You know all of your elected officials are
on that website. My cell phone numbers on there. Call me. I'm
there's there's two things we need out of an elected representation, and we lose
those things at higher levels just because of the number of people serve. But
you have to be accessible and you have to be responsive. You don't always
have to say yes, but if you're saying no, you better know why
you're saying no. Oh yeah. But otherwise you just need to be accessible
and responsive. People need to know they can get a hold of you and
that you're going to communicate with them. That's the that's really foundational when it
comes to those we elect. I will tell you I've lived in a lot
of places over the years, and Washington County and I don't care what level
of government it is. The people who are in elected office are the most
accessible that I have witnessed in sixty five years. Whenever someone calls up to
say, yeah, just give me a holler on the cell phone. You're
giving your cell phone out on the air? Yeah, why not? They
got to call me? Yeah, you have to be reached, right.
But I'll tell you in other places will say, yeah, get a hold
of my office, and someone will tell me and I don't like that.
And here it's just one on what the government shift is the one thing I
knew coming into the office that I never wanted to see. Not my job
go talk to this person. No, that's not how this is supposed to
work. Not my job. But let's go together and have this conversation and
I will. You know, a soft handoff is a whole lot better than
a not my job, and go over that way. Let me go introduce
you to this person. They handle that, and here's what they do and
here's why they do. And it's been received. Well, it makes sense
to me, it makes sense to a lot of people. Yes, hey,
thank you very much for sharing with absolutely Tom all right, poach,
you've been watching and listening to our community connection