Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome
in his time now for city matters. If it matters you, it matters
to the city. I'm Tom Davis and joining us here today is City councilor
Billy Ron. Billy Ron. A very interesting meeting with a whole lot of
information. First and foremost folks want to know about the water. Yes,
we've had some rain, but it's not been falling exactly in the right places.
Therefore we were going to have to kind of protect our water supply.
That's absolutely right. I know what you look out. I'm sitting here looking
out and all of our lawns are green. We're getting perfect rain to water
flowers and to water the yard, but it's not falling in the right place.
And so that's exactly right. Our watershed is north of us and they're
not getting the rain that we need to pull us out of this drought.
And so we did last night at City Council. We did vote to raise
the rates. Now we've been in Stage three emergency water conservation, but not
charging the rates. We've been under the restrictions of watering once a week,
even on Thursday's odds on Fridays asking people to conserve. Now we've actually kicked
in the rates. So if you want to know where we started, we
began this journey back in December. That's when we first started talking about what
we could see coming ahead, just because of the lack of rain that we
had gotten. And so slowly but surely we've gone through stage one and stage
two, and we entered into stage three once we dropped below sixty percent,
and so now we're right around fifty four percent, I believe, And so
that's that when we dropped below sixty that brought us into stage three. Now
last night, anytime we raise any kind of rates, that has to be
voted on by the city council. And so even though we were in stage
three, we had not raised the rates. And so now the rates are
are in these stage three area. And so I wanted to be sure and
let everybody know what that is, because it's important that everyone understands that it
is their water that the rate has gone up on. Now that's not on
your trash service, it's not on your wastewater service. That is on your
water, and so a lot of people may not know the first two thousand
gallons of water that you receive is there's no charge for that. And so
if you are one of those who your water usage a lot of single people
stays around two thousand, then you're not being charged for your water. You're
being charged for the delivery and what goes along with that, as well as
your your collection, your refuse collection, and your wastewater. But the new
rates zero through two thousand will still remain at exactly what it is now.
Zero two thousand and one to ten thousand now has a rate increase of five
percent, and so I would encourage you to look at your water, just
your water charge and see what five percent looks like to you. And if
you want to know what the cement it is, I'm sure that you can
call down to the utility ladies. They can take a look and tell you
what five percent of whatever number your rate at year water it usually is and
they can give you an estimate, but it is a very minimal amount.
And being someone who's on a fixed income, I completely understand that anytime we
get any kind of a rate increase, it is a concern. It's also
temporary. As I said, with this ordinance, we look at that and
it takes the city council to raise a rate, but we have to be
sure that we have water to drink going down the pike. And if things
don't change as far as either conservation or more rainfall up north, then we
will need to continue to conserve until we can get back up to that seventy
percent. So that started in aprils when we first started going into the emergency
stages, and we pass that ordinance. Now two, if you use two
thousand and one to ten thousand, you will be paying one hundred and five
percent of the current rate, which means a five percent increase. And I'm
talking about residential here. Ten thousand and one to twenty five thousand is a
ten percent. Twenty five thousand to fifty thousand, now that is getting into
commercial. That's a lot of water that is fifteen percent, and then at
fifty thousand it's twenty percent. So it's not that you can't use the water.
We're asking you to conserve, but we've instigated rates to help you conserve
because if you're like me, when it starts touching my pocketbook, then I'm
paying attention. And there is Remember the rates go up on every council member
and every staff member as well, and so it's not like we're doing something
to you the public that we're not doing to counsel and staff. And so
none of us want our rates go up, but we all want to be
able to use our water. And it's you can't truck in. Usually in
the summer we use around twelve million gallons a day. You can't truck that
in. And so I mean just try to imagine even what a tanker,
how much a tanker holes, how many tankers that would be if they're pulled
in on a train or driven in by a truck. So there are a
lot of things that we can do to conserve. This morning, I was
just talking with Caleb and he said even catches his air conditioning water and puts
it in his rain barrel. Which, let me just right now make this
point. It is not illegal to catch water in Bartlesville, Oklahoma. They
will not find you. Now if you're pretty smart about things. If you're
doing a rain barrel. Some folks catch in a rubber garbage can thirty forty
five gallon garbage can. Just put a cover over it, and that is
going to keep leaves and bugs and other things out of it. There's a
concern about mosquitoes, Well, you can keep those out. You can also
put a little bit of bleach in there if you're just using that water,
depending on what you're using it for, or even soap because mosquitoes don't like
soap. But it is not illegal or against any rules to catch water in
Bartlesville, Oklahoma. And so we have people that are recycling water out of
their showers. Like I said, Caleb was talking about the air conditioner.
I was amazed at that because if your air con runs like mine does,
it puts off a lot of condensation and runs down that little pipe and I
can actually see the end of mine, and most certainly I'm going to direct
that towards my flowerbed now. So there are a lot of different ways.
We've learned a lot of new ways to conserve water. And it is never
wrong to conserve natural resources, ever when and especially when we're in this kind
of a situation. So we should really be paying attention all year long and
not wait until we get into an emergency situation to actually help us focus on
that. Well, with school getting out, there are some moms on Facebook
wondering how's this going to affect the splash pads and the women pools, well,
the pools would have opened this last weekend. I believe they're not.
The splash pads are not. And if you don't think this hasn't been a
struggle for a city staff as well council members, it is because we know
what is the highlight. I'm old, but I still remember when the pools,
when you could start going to this Wommen pool in the summertime when school
is out. And so right now today, at this time, there are
no plans to open those, and I would like for y'all to think about
this as well. We're not very far away from stage four. I think
we're at fifty four point something right now, and so once it goes below
fifty percent, then we're going into stage four where the pools would be closed.
And the ordinance was first put into place. The first ordinance before we
amended, was with the assumption that we run into droughts and when it gets
hot in the summer and the pools are already open, and then in the
number four it says to close them. So in stage four to set up
the pools. Right now, truly, we're talking about staffing, we're talking
about chemicals we're talking about. Of course, the water going in and the
amount that evaporates every week is quite a bit. But in two weeks we
would probably or by the middle of June, goodness, that's about three weeks
away. It's not too far, we would be shutting them down. And
so right now today, I know that the pools are not open, the
splash pads are not open, and honestly, staff is just we're just paying
attention. You know. Who knows we could get gully washers in the next
two weeks and we'll all be doing the rain dance Hallelujah out in the yards.
But for right now today, that's what we have to look at,
and we you know, it is our responsibility to keep our community safe and
make sure that we have water that we are to drink. That's very important.
And if you've ever been in a town where the water's been off,
and I lived in western Oklahoma, where drought is a familiar thing. Every
Sunday in church people are praying for rain. And I've been in a town
where where there's not water, and it is it's hard to imagine. It's
like if your water freezes up in the wintertime and you're without water for three
days. It's a tough road to So honestly, we're doing the very best
to keep our water safe, keep our community safe, and we understand that
it's not a pleasant task. We've had some questions about the golf course.
It's very important to understand that right now they're looking at another way to water
the golf course. And I'm talking about Adams. Hillcrest has its own water
source that is not city water that flows into on the Hillcrest Greens, but
at Adams it is at our Adams golf course. And so they're looking at
now to start using pond water, which is not the best, but then
it's not using potable water. And so if we don't want to the greens,
then we lose them, we lose the whole golf course. And a
lot of people say, well, I don't play golf. You know,
there's just a few that play golf. I need to help you understand what
happens with that golf course. Every year, United Way runs our United Way
Agency here in Bartlesville, which supports nonprofits, which in turn supports the people
in our community. They run a golf tournament that brings in over one million
dollars, not to mention I think it's three hundred volunteers. There are a
thousand golfers. I mean, it's one of the biggest United Way, if
not the biggest, in the United States of America. And it's in Bartlesville,
Oklahoma, and so that is a huge deal. That is actually an
asset. As a matter of fact, we count that as a one million
dollar assets. So it's important to water the greens if you don't have all
the money that we've spent, all the effort that's gone into that to our
Adams Golf Course, and all the dollars that it has generated for our community,
not to mention the recreation, and there's also activities for our youth that
go on there at the Adams Golf Course. It is most certainly a well
worthwhile investment here in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, and we need to protect it so
that, like I said, they're doing everything they can to not use potable
water to be again using pond water to keep those greens. You know,
you just really kind of scratch the surface when you said the million dollars raids
for a United Way. With all these people coming into town, there's an
economic impact behind that. These are people who are using hotel rooms, are
restaurants and also maybe getting gas, maybe buying clothes, maybe buying other things
too, And that's hundreds of thousands of dollars of economic impact. Like hi,
thanks for coming by. And every time we do have one of these
tournaments, and we do have others that take place too out there at Adams
that might not be as big, but they're just as impactful bringing people into
our community when they stay for an entire weekend and stuff like that. Again,
more heads in the beds, more feats going to the seats in the
restaurants, and a few other places too. It is, it is something
where the dollars make sense in this And if we were to let that go,
that's two million dollars you've already paid for. It's going up to shrivel
and die. That's exactly right. And you know, even Wounded Warriors does
a golf tournament here. Yes, I believe it's in around Memorial Day right
in there. I'm not sure I can't remember exactly, but yeah, it's
a very important asset in our community, just as much as so many other
things that we had invested dollars in. You know what. We're going to
take a quick break when we come back. There's another half of what happened
last night at the city council. We're going to get to that with Billy
Ron right here. Nine K one. Never forget this call. My freshman
roommate. His mother called one day and she said, Tim, and I
can tell about her voice something wrong? And I said, what's wrong?
She said, can you get my boy home from California? He's passed away
out there. And that crushed me, but I said, I sure will.
I'll take care of it. I said, I'll figure it out.
I will get your son home. If that's what you do and your loved
one dies, doesn't matter if it's three in the morning, you call your
funeral direction and say, Tim, my loved one just died. What do
I do? And I tell you one of my greatest stories I could tell.
Six o'clock one Christmas morning, a lady calls me. She said,
they came over to get my aunt for Christmas breakfast and found her dead in
her home. What do we do? I said, let me get dressed.
I'll be right there and we'll just walk through this together. It's gonna
be all right. I'll take good care of her. Years later, she
told me that was the single most comforting phrase she'd ever heard. It'll be
all right. We'll walk through this together, Arnold Moore and me Camp Funeral
Home seven ten, Dewey Martel's event, We'll walk through this together eight forty
seven. There in our community connection continues. It's city matters, and we
have a city councilor Billy Road. We talked about bondie bonds the last night
too at the City Council for a special meeting we did, and we had,
of course, we had a budget workshop first, and I was just
going to tell you just really very briefly, because you know, I believe
that numbers and mathematics are kind of a spiritual mystical activity because how they all
work together as an amazement to me. But we have an excellent staff that
puts our budget together, and I would say just right up front, that
is one of the most enjoyable workshops that we have. I learned more from
that budget when I first came on the City Council than any other training anything
else that I have looked at, because there's a wealth of information in there
about Bartlesville. But our staff is very good. We put together a conservative
budget. It's much easier to have a little more that you can spend than
to have to go in and start amending the budget to cut things so that
you can do what you need to do, and so they do a very
good job of that. Of course, we get to hear about all the
funds, the enterprise fund, at sector ET sector and how they work,
as well as our all of our different committees and our services that we offered
a Bartlesville the Budget Book. I brought it last year, but this year
I walked down from tape Boy, so I wasn't going to carry the thing.
It's heavy, it's over four hundred pages and it goes into great detail
telling what each one of the committees, the boards, our departments do,
what their mission is, what their activity is. Then of course then it
goes into their dollars. But of course sales tax has been a boon for
us, and we have been very, very fortunate over the past three four
years that it has increased and we've had minimal months, you know, maybe
two three months that it has decreased over the year before, which was already
over And so many people don't realize that that's how we run our city is
on sales tax and then what grants that we get through the state and federal
government. So it makes a big difference in our sales tax. One of
the things that's kind of interesting is we have to budget that into our budget,
so we have to guestimate, and they have a great formula that they
go about doing that, and they get pretty close. Of course, this
year. What's kind of nice is now we are figuring in use tax.
And you know, we began accepting use tax. We voted two years ago
to put that into effect in twenty twenty three, and I believe it was
in March. I believe it was in March February March that we got our
first in income from use tax. And and so they have something to base
that on now because we have some monthly incomes and I think we've taken instance.
I think the figure we had last night from what's from April, the
three month average was one point one million for three for three months, and
so they've estimated three hundred and eighty five thousand dollars a month for twenty twenty
three, twenty twenty four, and so we'll see how that goes and as
I said, there may be much more that we collect, or there's some
more, but it's really better for us to budget conservatively. And Benjamin Franklin
can tell you that. And so let's see what else it looks like.
The overall budget has a two point five percent revenue growth is what's built into
the budget, and as I said, it's very conservative, and our staff
just does a great job. And I will tell you this, this is
what most impresses me about our staff. When they put together their budget.
The different department hends if they got five million dollars last year. They don't
automatically say I need five million dollars this year, and so they're very good
about taking a look at what they actually need. There's no spendence so that
you can get it in next year. It doesn't go on in Bartlesville,
Oklahoma, and so I appreciate them. And of course our counselors are very
good about looking at every detail that goes into our budget. And here's what's
wonderful. When we don't understand it, we call Jason and so he helps
us and so then yes, the next part of our workshop, of course,
was our Goo bond election which is one of my favorite things. And
I love contributing my dollars to our GEO bond projects because it's what makes our
exciting. And of course I think there was Well, first, let me
just give you the schedule real quick. Have we got time for that time?
Okay? Well, you know we started, the staff made the recommendations
and they were presented the council in April at the council meeting, and then
of course then the Council gets to look at that and make their suggestions.
If we think maybe we don't need to spend in that area this year,
even though that's been requested, we might suggest either a reduction or maybe moving
it to another funding mechanism, because there are sometimes there is something that doesn't
necessarily have to be on a general obligation bond that we can move into a
different funding area. And then May fifteenth, of course, that was our
workshops last night. June fifth is when the council project selection. We'll do
that at the council meeting. And then July three is when we call for
the election, and October tenth should be our election day, So that's how
the election schedule goes. They didn't just start working on this in April,
even though that's when we get to see it. Just like the budget,
do you know, they'll start they start working on the budget. They start
working on the budget back in February Januarine February and really working on it.
They work all along, paying attention to what's going on. We get a
percent every month of what's been spent in the budget. So what is really
exciting that I wanted to tell you all about the GEO bond has to do
with some of the recommendations. The recommendations were around twenty and nine million,
but the actual bond will be seventeen million and and so of course there's never
enough that we are going to set our bond at that can pay for everything
we all want. It's kind of like when I go shopping at Christmas,
same kind of deal, because that's really what this is. Many of these
things are mandated for safety that we need to do, that are mandated to
do, and we'll say this, we are spending more on streets this year
in this budget than we have since I've gone on the council and been paying
attention to the budget. So that's very exciting. And the final figure of
course, we'll know that as soon as we vote in budget next in June.
But there were three different budgets prepared for us, and as I said,
our staff does a good job. They look at what the council proposes.
If there is something that stands out that more than one councilman has said
or counselor has said that they that's that's a priority for them, then that's
kind of where we start the budget out, looking at those numbers along with
what the staff has recommended and the committees and authorities have recommended. Billy,
I hate to say this, but we're gonna have to kind of stop her
there. We've kind of run out of time. But my goodness Sakes,
what great information you provided us today. And there are folks who right there
are pretty thankful the thing. Go out and get a rain barrel. Well,
can I just say this one International Police Week? Okay, Yeah,
Tomorrow noon is the ceremony down at our Safety Complex. That is always a
very exciting and very moving commemoration. And then Civitan Park is temporarily closed.
You know, we had some wind dammage and I was actually there on Sunday
with my grandson and we were there for a little while, then we left
because you could hear it creaking. And so that's closed down right now while
they fix that structural structural damage there. And so sign up for the City
Beach front page of the City of Barlsville if you want to know what I know.