Good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
It's time now for city matters. If it matters to you, it matters
to the city. We have councilor Lauren was only in here. It's been
a while. You been good. How have you been doing? I got
more sleep than you did. Good to see you back in the chair.
Well, it was a long meeting last night with the city council. A
lot of things were discussed to water zoning, something about a whale, the
blue whale. That was the last meeting. Yeah, yeah, and just
a few things going on here. Let's let's dive into the water issue of
where where are we here with the water? So last night we passed and
talked and had a lot of discussion about some new water ordinances that kind of
regulate and try to moderate people's behaviors to conserve water. So there's some new
regulations about what people can and can't do and what the billing rates will be
if we decide to institute some great heights to try to influence people to use
less water. Now, this should just be during a water so this is
during our drought stage. Okay, I thought there's gonna be forever here no,
no, no, no, this is just during our drought stages right
now, according to ordinances and our water supply, we're in a stage two
of the drought ordinances. So we've the city council voted last night to implement
a stage two and to do some things, and and to ask the citizens
of our community to do some things. So the splash plads are closed.
We're asking people not to wash their vehicles, bikes, boats, or other
equipment at their house. And I only use vehicle wash stations and car washes
to do that. No washing outside services. Where our goals here are try
to reduce our consumption to about five point five million gallons a day. If
we can do that, it's a lot. I mean, I don't think
it's a it's a big ask of the community to get down to five point
five million gallons a day. We're just a little over that right now,
I believe. I think at five point seven was the last number I heard.
So if we just do a little conservation, I think we can keep
from having to institute rate hikes that would be you know, that would that
would affect people and their bills. Wow, we that's that's good. Now
they're like subsections here about uh, swimming pools and water rates. And I
understand that you you kind of questioned a little bit of I pushed back a
little bit just for the mere fact that I think city government needs to be
within its mandate of what it does and doesn't do with ordinances. I don't
want to I want to affect people's behavior, of course, to conserve water.
I want to. I want our community, our citizens to realize the
seriousness of the issue that we have. And as we go into each stage,
I think, you know, ordinances where we ask people to limit the
number of days they water outdoors with irrigation systems, uh number, you know,
asking them conserve water and a lot of ice, that's great. I
just feel like, you know, when you start raising people's rates and affecting
their pocketbook and already tight and squeezed economy, that we have to do that
very carefully, and we have to do that and measured and considered way that
we aren't harming people. But these ordinances are good. They've we've a lot
we've kept people being allowed to like hand water their gardens, so if they're
they're depending upon vegetable gardens to feed their family and everything. They can still
hand water them with hoses, flower gardens and pots on your porches. You
can still water with a can by hands. We're just not asking you to
use your use your drip hoses and your sprinklers and your automatic irrigation systems.
Just don't wash your outside services, don't wash your vehicles in your driveways.
So I think, you know, I know our citizens are really good about
conservation efforts. They helped us the last time we went through this. Uh,
they conserved water and they did what was necessary to help each other.
And I really have a lot of faith in our citizens that they'll do this
without us having to try to raise rates. The rate. The rate implementation
this time is a much higher scale we'll be raising. If we do institute
rate rate heights, it'll be much more drastic than we did last time.
And that's kind of where I'm concerned, is you know, I don't think
a higher rate impacts is a higher impact on people's behavior. Is asking them
and kind of giving them the guidelines to follow. Okay, moving on to
be the light mission. Yeah, we've got Keith and Christy McPhail trying to
set up a homeless shelter and get people kind of reintegrated into the community.
Sure, that's the old Nipper Complex. So tell folks where that is so
down on Virginia and the West side here, I think the old Assents in
Saint John Annex building is where that is down. So they came to us
last night and asked us to rezone that for the use for the purpose of
the use of being a homeless rehabilitation and training and ministry. So that is
a great use. I love that, and not everybody on the city council.
It was absolutely board. They do a great job. They'd provide a
great benefit to our community. They help the homeless in our community, the
most vulnerable among us. They take in and they help and they also try
to re educate them and lift them up. Rather than giving them a hand
out, they give them a hand up and that's what people really need.
So we love that that ministry and we want to support it, and rezoning
that was a no brainer for us so that they could do that. Well,
you know, City councilor Billy Rone was really a big proponent of these
folks. During the icy cold temperatures that we had. She was the one
that was calling us and saying Hey, look, you know that we've got
a place where folks can keep warm and what have you, and she sounded
the alert. Yeah, well, I think we probably saved a few people's
lives during those icy cold days. Absolutely, and in fact, BE the
Light Ministry also had a cooling station during the summer as well as a warming
station during the winter, just to help people out. There was also another
organization in town that was running a warming station of the Disciples Christian Church.
So there's a lot of there's a lot of organizations here in our town.
A got a mission and others that are just really focused on helping helping our
community. BE the Light Ministry is one of those, and we value them
and we're glad to be partners with them and helping them start that up.
Oh wow, that is cool other businesship, because I know that took a
lot of time last night, both those two issues. Those two issues took
quite a bit of time last night. Yeah. I know that we've got
a special city election coming up here in just a matter of early voting starting.
I tell us about that. What is the issue? So we have
asked voters to decide some general obligation bond issues. So We've got four general
obligation bond issues slated to be voted on by our community and our city citizens.
Early voting starts Thursday. You can vote early in person down at the
County Election Board on the on the fourth floor of the City how you can
vote in person early Thursday and Friday in person. Normal regular voting is Tuesday
at your regular polling place. So you'll be voting on a bond issue for
streets. That's the biggest of our bond issues. We're asking voters to approve
twelve point three million dollars to do street replacement, repair and improvements. This
is the one that we've really worked hard on. We've got a large list
of projects. Our streets need work. Our streets need improvement, repair,
replacement. Our Streets Committee did a great job of putting together a list.
We had our Pavement Condition Index that we did here a couple of years ago
to give us data on which streets need the most work and should be repaired
first. And we've got a plan on how to improve our streets by accomplishing
these projects that are named in this streets bond issue. So we're asking we're
asking voters to approve twelve point three million dollars to get our streets back up
to the condition we need them in. We've got we're asking two point four
million dollars on a public safety bond issue. That public safety bond issue is
going to help us rebuild a fire station that has needed some work out here.
The trucks are bigger than the Holy Drection. Yeah, if they needs
some foundational work and the foundation is not up to snuff, and when you
look at it, it is better to build a new station than try to
repair that foundation. So we would like to the voters to approve this bond
issue so that we can build a new fire station for our first responders out
there on the west side. And then we've also got a park and recreation
we're asking two point two million dollars for some improvements along pathfind Or and other
park improvements. That's a lot lesson we've asked in previous years, but this
will really help us get Pathfinder. We're also going to do some greens replacements
on Adam's golf course. Our greens are green should be replaced, you know,
fifteen to twenty years our our greens are twenty to twenty five years old.
There, Yes, especially with the Big Phillips and Conico. With the
United Ways. The United Way is a great They just had their twentieth anniversary
or the United Way Golf. They raise over a million dollars. They that
tournament brings in over two million dollars of revenue for our city. The golf
course brings in revenue for our city. So we need to marry take care
of it. We need to take care of it. We need to maintain
a replace and those greens are valuable. This will be the first stage of
green replacement. So we're looking forward to getting that accomplishing game that done.
We're asking voters of our vote on that and we're asking them to vote for
point seven million, about seven hundred thousand dollars to do some equipment replacing in
city Hall, up grade some servers and switches, and some IT equipment at
city Hall. So all in total, we're looking we're asking voters to vote
on four bond issues totaling seven team point six million dollars. That's our bond
capacity that we can service that debt with no issues. We've got a good
credit rating, we can we can sell. We can sell that debt with
no issues so we're asking the people and the citizens of Barsville to vote yes
for all four of those bonds so we can get some streets repaired, we
can do some facility replacement and build a new fire station, do some parks
and golf course repairs and improvements, and upgrade our I equipment. That's what
it boils down to. So go vote either in person early Thursday and Friday,
or in person at your regular holding place on Tuesday, October tenth.
Very good, Very good. Now we had a new business come into town
and I haven't really good chance to talk to you about it. It's a
whale of a deal. Yeah whale. We even had the governor come in
and say, how do you do? Do you welcome to town? Yeah,
well the government will be. The governor even got excited about this one.
This is a great opportunity for Barsville. This is a new industry,
it's a growing industry. This would be the first facility of its kind in
North America. Here. Blue Whale has come in and said we're going to
do some lithium ion battery recycling. So they're basically taking lithium ion batteries processing
them to a material called black sand that black sand is then used by refining
of refining process to create new lithium ion rechargeable batteries. So this is a
processing center that's not it's not trying to refine or the products. What it's
doing is as actually crushing, grinding, and making a common called no emissions.
There's very little environmental hazard to this process. Just a little electricity to
run the machines in the lights and Nancy, yeah, there you go.
So this is going to be great. It's this is a growing industry.
Lithium ion batteries are going to be more and more used as we evolve into
a more mobile community, more mobile society with electric vehicles and rechargeable batteries needed
for everything now. So this is going to be a really great opportunity.
Is going to bring work jobs to our community. Originally, initially it'll bring
about forty five jobs to our community, and hopefully within the next two to
five years we'll bring ninety to one hundred jobs into our community. So this
is a really good opportunity. The Governor's excited about it, City Council is
excited about it. BDA, our Barsville Development Authority is excited and we appreciate
them working with Blue Whale to get this deal done and give them some in
cities so they're in Barnesville. We're excited to have this industry in Barsville.
That is way cool. What else we got on the agenda? What else
we need to tell the folks? What do they need to know about their
city and how there is any conserve you and you conserve you city? Well,
last night one of the things I wanted to kind of bring up a
couple of things. First, we've got a lot of openings on our boards
and commissions. We've got an opening on our Ambulance Commission. We've got an
opening on Library Trust Authority. We've got a library board position open, and
a park board position open. We've filled some position last night and made some
recommendations, but we're still looking for some volunteers to set on those boards.
It is a great way to serve your community, to get involved, to
help your community, to move forward some initiatives that we need to do in
the city. This is a really good way. So if you're interested,
please go online or see Elaine Bains down at City Hall. Get an application.
She knows everything. Get an application, sumend an application. We'd love
to have you serving on one of those boards and commissions, that'd be great.
One of the other things we did last night that we're really I'm really
excited about is that we have agreed to a contract and commissioned a comprehensive plan
study for the City of Bartsville. That's really going to be valuable to us
as we go forward over the next year. There's going to be a lot
of work done with this comprehensive plan. We've got our next next Vision for
Bartlesville, which is our strategic plan that our city staff is put together.
This comprehensive plan is going to help us identify needs in our community. It's
going to help us prioritize projects. It's going to look and say, as
we move forward, how you know, what do we need to do with
economic development, what do we need to do with the housing development, What
do we need to do in all these different areas. And it helps us
drive an actual strategy to grow and to maintain our city and to kind of
move it forward in the direction that our citizens want to move forward. And
so they're going to get a lot of citizen input into this comprehensive plan.
This comprehensive plan will feed into our next strategy. As we outline goals and
priorities and objectives and projects in our next strategy, the comprehensive plan is going
to help us prioritize and kind of know where what the vision is we're driving
forward here in Barsville. It sounds good, all right, thank you very
much. By the way, people want to know a little bit more.
Perhaps they got a question for their city councilor which district do you serve?
I serve in Ward two, so that's my ward. If you want to
contact me, go into the City of Barsville website to click on government and
City Council. You'll see my email address, my phone number all published as
well as if you live in a different ward, your city councilors contact information
is published out there. Don't hesitate to reach out, email me, call
me. I'm always communicating with citizens either by phone or email, answering their
questions, addressing their concerns, and getting their input on what we need to
be doing for to move the city forward. So go out to the City
of Barswell website and the contact information for all of our city counselors is out
there, all right. Thank you. Lauren Roselle, City counselor for Greek
two right here in Barnelsville, and you've been listening to our City Matters program
on K one