Good morning, good morning, come morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
It's time now for our community connection right here on K one, the
One He Trusted is brought to you by Tall Grass Motors and Arnold morn he
Camp Funeral Home. And today we have a Commissioner, Mitch Antel with us
here from Washington County. First of all, good morning, young man,
Good morning, sir. How are you. I'm doing great, you know,
Mitch is one of the first people that I got to got to know
when I came into the town about four years ago, and it's it's really
been nice in knowing that you're representing in as well here in Washington County.
A lot of good things happening. We're talking off here just a little bit
ago about how blessed we are to be in Washington County. Absolutely, I
can't say enough about the community that we live in and what we have as
a community, and we're just hoping to maintain that we're doing so far,
so good. One thing when it comes to bodies of government is that sometimes
not there's not a whole lot of communication, but it seems like everybody communicates
quite well where we have to at the county level. At the county level.
Absolutely. I think that's a function more than anything of our budget board,
which is a specific way that we budget here in Washington County. It's
not common throughout the state, but all AID elected officials sit around one table
and have those conversations about our budgetary concern and I think that has a has
a provides for a space to tear down silos, realize that we all have
different functions in our offices and we all do our jobs well and serve the
community to our best. That's that's where we as a county succeed well.
We have a lot of good partnerships, not only with the people in our
county, but also with the tribal nations. The Cherenkey Nation has supplied us
with some nice grants here lately. We can't say enough about our tribal partnerships,
not just well, specifically with the Cherokee Nation. Obviously being a fourteen
county region in essence, UM, we've got our Circuit Engineering District which is
eleven counties and most, if not all, uh not all UH sit within
the Cherokee Nation, but we also have the Osage UH involved or we have
some Creek involvement I mean, there's there's there's a lot of tribal commitments within
our within our Circuit Engineering district, and we work as as partners and as
people all working toward a common goal, which is a pretty good thing.
Correct. I think legitimately we're all Oklahoma's and I think legitimately, um all
the tribes want to work together to better their communities as well as all of
our communities. So I again, we're blessed and we get the opportunity to
partners, specifically here in Washington County with Cherokee Nation. Uh, and it's
it's a great, great partnership. I'm going to come at you from the
field. Awesome, Okay, Because water is a big topic around here.
Of course, the lack of it is even bigger topic presently. Certainly now
the city has a lot to do with this because a lot of their infrastructure
provides water for our area. Correct, But where does the county have any
kind of play or involvement in water decisions? No, our goal is to
stay out of the way now initially probably rural water districts. Absolutely. That's
one thing I've learned in the eight plus years in the office at this point
is trust those that you have in positions to do and stay out of their
way. You're simply a resource to provide and ensure that they have what they
need to complete the job that needs to be done. But rural water districts
were initially a function of county government just by way of developing a mechanism by
which it passed through us. We have no governance over those rural water districts.
We do not want governance over those rural water districts. They're all run
independently by their own boards. So again it's just a matter of stay out
of the way and be a resource if necessary. Wow, good planning,
Yes, those those that do do those that do do well. Yes,
alrighty. We were talking also before hand. You know, when it comes
to being a commissioner, we have three correct, and I think every county
has three, and these are divided up into districts, and each district um
when it comes to roads and other parts of infrastructure or areas of concern.
Uh, you have kind of like your own your own little division of government
right there to help people out and describe what happens in your district as far
as you know, roads, maintenance, bridges and other functions, so civics
thing for folks who've heard what a commissioner is, but they don't know what
they do. So independently, each county commissioner has a district, of course,
which is broken down based on population. We try to be plus or
minus five percent. That's our that's the goal that we always shoot for in
that redistricting. We're all the way down at the bottom level of that tier,
though, so you get up into the legislative branch, for example,
of your legislators in the state, they're within two and a half percent.
So at any rate, it's broken up more or less equitably by population.
Washington County is unique and that you've got your core Bartlesville population, so each
one of us have to kind of tap into that population correct in order to
make those population thresholds. So we all have some implications here in town.
Most people don't don't use their county commissioner in town because the roads and bridges
are a function of the city of Bartlesville. In town, you get outside
of the city limits of Bartlesville, and that's where you really begin to see
what work we do. So District one, for example, has roughly one
hundred and seventy miles of road that we maintain. We collectively, with those
on staff, can probably turn over about ten miles a road a year.
So you can see really quickly it's gonna it's gonna take seventeen years to turn
over an entire district. The prob the likelihood of that's slim to none.
But these farmer market roads are maintained by us typically and that's that's the intent
of them is they're just kind of little feeders to get us into those major
and minor collectors or minor collectors major collectors to the highways UM. And it's
a very difficult task. So a road of a mile of road here in
district ones roughly about thirty thousand dollars for us to construct or RECONSTRUCTUM. We
get five thousand miles or five thousand dollars a year, uh for that mile.
Oh well, okay, so you can see really quickly, it's not
it's never enough to cover that mileage, but we do the best we can
with what we have to accomplish. About ten miles a year is what we
try to turn over, UM every year in every district. Bridges UM,
there's different types of bridge structures and obviously average daily traffic count, which is
how many cars go up and down that road, drive how we manage those
bridges good. And then when severe weather hits with the wintertime, people up
north kind of joke they said, well, what do you got down there?
Like five snowplows? I said, well, maybe right. But the
thing is, when we do have the bad weather, it's the commissioners are
the first ones to get the hotline. It seems like, oh, how
the wows the roads? You know, people people try to get out of
their house, they try to get back to those highways, and those major
collectors, those are obviously that the roads that we deal with first as we
take a look at where's where's the traffic volume? Att let's get those roads
cleared first, So we hit those those major collectors, minor collectors, and
then we start working on those third level tertiary roads that get people to those
um and it is it's a challenge, it's it's a task. Every time
snow snow. I would almost prefer snow, I would do yeah, because
I hang around a while. Snow won't. Ice is difficult to work with.
Regardless, UM there are some brining operations that will put down brine at
road intersections. Primarily they're the one. I'm thinking it was Rogers County.
They do this with regularity, and it's probably shooting from the hip, but
I'm gonna say it's a fifty fifty shot when you put brine down. If
you get more rain that doesn't freeze, then you lose what you've already done.
It gets washed off to the sight. So it's it's a real finicky
operation. You almost have to have perfect weather and the perfect application for that.
UM. We've kind of explored it, but but have never really engaged
it. All right, That's it's good to know. But the thing is,
I've not seen people snow bound for you know, days and weeks,
maybe a day and a half, but you know, nothing like I've seen
in other places where I've lived. And we do with we got and we
do it pretty darn well. We do. UM Again, another one of
those blessings of the community, if you will. UM. We don't typically
get these large impactful events. I say that, of course, every community
is going to get touched at some point in time by some major event.
Speaking of ice storms and things like that. Recently, you were able to
procure what a couple of generators so that in case something bad happens, we
are we are we are in the process of doing that. Yes, we
have the we have the funding in place. UM, we're going to put
that that funding forward. We're hoping to get reimbursed for both of those.
I don't know that we will. We will probably get reimbursed for one,
but that that that's just another hardening, if you will, of our infrastructure
and our community. UM. Really, continuity of government's the biggest thing,
you know, UM county government a lot of people. You know, if
you're transacting homes, for example, all that information comes through your county government
or does UM, and if that shuts down for any length of time,
that really kind of cripples operations within the community as a whole on a lot
of different levels. So continuity of government is paramount and critical to us.
UM. One of the one of the processes we're building into our new EOC
facility out on the east side of town is to be able to basically,
if if we lost our entire complex administrative complex downtown just goes away, all
we have to do is migrate out to our EOC and we're back up and
running in a matter of a half a day's time, so we really don't
impact the community. Our operations will continue. Wow, and that is a
that is a big thing that's going on right now at the construction of that
EOC. Yes, that that's on Bison Road, correct, yep, just
north of Noah. Now they were over by what the DSR that build direct
Attle he Betty like Cubby. Now we need got to get him in their
own proper plays And again you mentioned earlier about four years in the community that
was our Walmart when I was a kid, That's what it was. That's
what it was. So the back end of that was the service a station
sure for Walmart. So that that's the space they've occupied, which has been
graciously granted to us by way of DSR. So we've not yes, they've
partnered with us. They they saw the need, they wanted it, and
that's the most stable place we've been as an emergency operations center in our community
until this move. Well, congratulations on getting the funding and everything put together.
I know this didn't take a snap of the finger. This one was
probably years in the making, Yes, sir, Yes, or our current
emergency operations manager, Miss Cox has been with us for well over twenty five
years, and this has been a goal of his since day one. Um,
and you know, this was something I wanted to seek them to fruition.
But you know it's just a matter of timing. Organic development is much
better than forced. And we're talking with Commissioner Mitch Antel here with Washington County.
We got just a few minutes left. Is there anything you'd like to
tell folks about the county government or about your district in particular that we didn't
touch on. Nothing I can think of off the top of my head.
Tom. We were always available. We're always accessible. Our website hosts all
of our information for meetings. We encourage public participation. We enjoy it.
So we're here to serve the community. We are beholden to the community,
and as servants, we ask that you hold us accountable. Very good,
he thinks, Mitch appreciate you've been with us today, Absolutely, sir,
All right, you've been listening and watching Our community connection brought to you in
part by Arnold mooreton Nicamp Funeral Home and Tall Grass Motors on K one