And good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome,
welcome in. It's time now for city matters, and we've got our assistant
city manager, Cracy Rolls, in house with us, and he's got a
cast of thousands. So we're kind of doing this a little different way today,
are in studio cameras, having a little bit of both issues. So
I'm doing this with my phone and so if you're watching on Facebook Live,
as thousands of you do, and trust me, I know you're getting really
good close up of Tracy Rolls right here. You doing there, Budd,
Well, I'm not doing real good. I'm a little bit nervous. Actually
you're nervous. I'm the one holding the camera, I know, and that's
what makes me nervous. We talked about this and I thought I was going
to get to hold the camera so I could get a good shot close up
of Terry. But now overy are well, good morning Tom for the second
time. I brought a little more reinforcement this time, and we're very excited
to be here. Before I turn it over to the guys with the most
information, I want to remind everybody July the fourth is coming up and we
will be city Hall will be closed that day, so if your trash pickup
is on July the fourth, it will be the following day, on July
fifth. So miss Lane told me to make sure that I got that out
there, and I'm not going to go against what miss Lane tells me to
do. So I've gotten that out there. It's good. That's correct,
That's that's correct. They let me continue to have an office there, and
I want to make sure that when I go back that that office is still
intact and I'm still welcome to come back there, So I wanted to make
sure to get that out there. Good job. So Mike Bailey is out
of town today and so it's just us, which is a very scary thing
here today with you. So I know that we'll probably fall well short of
mister Bailey's bar, but we're going to make sure that we do our best.
We thought about making some things up that just were totally untrue and blame
them on Mike, but we chose better so it would have been fun.
Well, that was the disclaimer, you know, I had to say that
is it what is it FCC that runs this FCC rules we have to have
that disclaimer. So we've got that out there now. So but before we
digress too much, I'll turn this over to the to the people who we
need to hear from more. Terry is here going to talk about water,
which everyone I know is interested in. So Terry, good morning, Tracy,
thank you for that wonderful introduction. A couple of things is, we
did get a little rain last week, so the water supply did increase just
a smidge. We are up to fifty eight point six percent of our overall
water supply remaining as of today. Last week, we use an average of
four point eight two million gallons of water a day, so we are still
within the Stage three restrictions that calls for just a one day outdoor water use
a week. So if you're an even number home, that's going to be
on Thursday. Odd number homes or properties are on Friday, and so we
just continue to ask for you to conserve water. To be an advocate for
that. I think there's a great number of people that are doing quite a
bit, so we're very appreciative of all those efforts. It's helping, and
so hopefully the rain will come sooner versus later and we'll replenish our water supply.
But until then, we'll keep conserving and doing what we can to kind
of maximize the water and make it last as long as possible. So along
those lines, so we do have an announcement that the Adams Golf Course,
which is a city owned golf course, will be moving off of city water
to irrigate their golf course by the end of this week. So I know
that's been a topic of much conversation in social media and other forms, that
the golf course is watering the greens. They're only watering greens because of the
investment and the size of that investment, but they will be moving to using
pond water to irrigate those greens starting at the end of this week. So
with that, if you have any questions, concerns, or any type of
items, the police will free to reach out to City Hall or to me.
The city hall numbers nine one eight, three, three eight four two
eight two or my number is three three eight four one one six and I
don't have Tracey's number memorized, but hopefully i'll have that soon enough. So
if you really want to talk to somebody who's in charge, that's the person
that you should reach out to. So with that, that's kind of where
we're at, and hopefully rains. I don't think there's much of a forecast
for rains this week, but hopefully that can change or that will change,
and we'll continue to get rains to help kind of replenish our warp supply.
Could you talk a little bit, Terry. I know a lot of people
know this, but there's probably something that don't. It seems like here in
Bartlesville we've gotten quite a bit of rain. I mean, things are green,
things look really good. We're having to mow. Can you explain why
the rain here really doesn't help our cause when it comes to our water situation.
Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So the lakes that we
draw from, which are HeLa and Copan, the watershed or the area that
feeds those lakes from rainwater runoff is really in southeast Kansas, So Sedan Cedar
Vale, that area of Kansas is really kind of the heart of those watersheds
that feed those lakes. They've gotten some rains, some really good rains here
over the last thirty sixty days, but they're over twenty inches below normal going
into these recent rains, So it's going to take a lot of rain to
fill up all the little creeks and farm ponds and different things that are within
these sheds that were dry or almost completely dry that that need to refill before
water can start running off to get to the lakes. So it's, uh,
it's just a process to kind of replenish those water sheds and once those
are replenished and then those next rains that are actually going to run off and
get to us. So, um, it's just kind of a side note
that even may seem like we had a lot of good rain events, but
we are below normal rainfall events from May um when when you looked at the
actual rain that we received and what we normally received. So even then,
we're still um kind of trending below what we normally get. So it's just
going to take a lot of rains and or one big big rain to get
everything back restored to what what is normal for us. Cool, thank you.
And also there are conversations taking place to create solutions going forward to prevent
this type of situation from occurrent. Correct. Yeah, So we've we've done
a number of things to address long term water supply. We've purchased additional water
rights at Copan Lake, we're pursuing the water reuse component of it. We
are looking always at potential future things to do, and we've had certain plans
in place, which Kelly's covered in several of her city beats in previous weeks.
Through there, we're also looking at continuencies as well. If if water
supply continues to dwindle and we get into late summer and with an overlief in
sight, what are we going to do at that at that point, So
we're looking at kind of what if scenarios at this point we have and continue
work on long term water supply. These things usually take decades to implement,
so they're not just something where you just we'll just go get water from Call
Lake and then next month we're under construction. It takes years and years worth
of study and permitting in different things that are associated with it, and so
it took us twelve years to get water from Copan. We've been working on
water reuse now for about six seven years. It just takes a long time
to work through all the regulatory process to facilitate those types of water supply and
accessing those water supply. So we will continue to do so as we've done
a lot of people compare um the O one O two drought for those who
are around h Bartlesfield for two thousand and one, two thousand and two,
we have exceeded that drought with this current one and that that drought lasted just
about a year, and right now we're trending just over a year and without
any really relief in sights. So hopefully that will will be different here when
we talk in either late June or early July, where we've gotten some rate
events and we're back back hall again. But we are working on some long
term solutions as well some stop gap measures to help preserve this precious resource.
But again everybody has a part to play in that, and so we just
ask everybody to do what they can. If you don't have to water outside,
we'd ask that you not short showers or the biggest consumer of water indoors,
not running your dishwasher until the dishwasher is full. Same thing with your
clotheswasher, and just be mindful of how you're using the tap water for brushing.
Your teeth are just different type of activity. So again, this affects
all of us, and so it's going to take all of us to help
manage and get through it for good. Thank you. I really appreciate the
job that you've done on coming up with solutions and ways to mitigate it's not
an easy thing. And more importantly, I appreciate you being open and transparent
with the citizens and tell them exactly what's going on, not trying to fluff
anything or hide anything. So I really appreciate that, and I think a
lot of people that I've talked to have said the same thing. So thank
you for what you're doing. I know it's it's not an easy thing and
when you start messing with things that people rely on. So thank you,
and I really respect the situation that you're in and how you've dealt with it.
Oh, thank you. So now toime, we're gonna move on to
the newest member of the leadership team of the City of Bartlesville. Congratulations,
condolences whichever may apply to Chief Kevin Eckleberry. You know, he and I
spoke to you this morning, but now he's he's been on the spot.
I gave him exactly twenty minutes to come up with ten minutes worth of words,
So I wish you the best, but as a police chief, that's
usually what you get So we'll just want to start you off right and and
throw you that good curveball right now. So all Chief Kevin Ikler's on me.
All right, Well, good morning, Tracy. It's good to be
here. It's kind of hard to call you Tracy, he says, you've
been chief for so long, but good morning, and you know, I
just I'm excited about the opportunity to move forward in this position and to help
grow the police department and help protect the city and serve the city and not
only officers, but the but the citizens that we serve. UM. A
couple of topics on our list would be the recruitment. We are constantly looking
for good people to be police officers. If you're a good, ethical,
honest person, and you find yourself to be a good person, if you're
a hard worker and uh put in a good day's work and uh like being
productive, we probably have a place for you. Man. We would really
like you to apply for the police department. We need good officers. We
can take a hard working person and honest, an ethical person and turn them
into a great cop. So, uh, we'll put that out there.
That's that's one of the areas that getting law enforcement to day, we kind
of struggle due to the national stories that go go on around the nation and
UM, we want people to know that in Bartlesville it's a different story.
Bartlesville is a great place to live, great place to work, great place
to play and uh and a great place to serve. We have great citizens
and we have a great city council and city management that really supports the police
department and UH and in turn that allows us to really serve the citizens in
the best way possible. So UM recruitment is important. It's where wherever the
officer starts and UH and UH you know, it's endless to where they can
go from there. The second thing in mind is also is with the officers
and that that's the mental health issue that comes along. We have a couple
of mental health issues that we want to talk about. One would be for
the officers. Want to make sure the officers are have a resources to reach
out when they're in need. UM, once they've seen something tragic or had
to deal with an issue that really has left them u uh in in a
bad way mentally, we want to make sure there's resources for them to go
to and to to kind of dump the trash, so to speak, get
that out of their mind and so they can serve fully for the future.
Along with that, we also have our Crisis Intervention Response Team that we've just
started up that's going to be in the community dealing with the mental health,
mental health and welfare of our citizens. Um. Hopefully we can get ahead
of that and start really addressing some mental health issues. Mental health for Barswell,
police department is multiple calls a day dealing with people in crisis and uh
so we're we're going to try to address that in a more proactive way to
try to get those people into recovery or back on the path to success.
Um. We want long term success for those people and that's what we're going
to strive for. UM. Another thing I'll talk about is we city council
was kind enough to add us a couple of officers this year. Um.
Those officers are for the parks and Pathfinder. We're excited about that. Get
get those officers out patrol and the Pathfinder and patrol in the parks. Uh.
You know, we mentioned it earlier today that there's not a lot of
crime in the parks are on the Pathfinder, but there's there's uh a lot
of fear of crime. And you know, part of our mission statement,
uh, part of our job as bars of police officers is to reduce the
fear in the community, and we want to we want to uh complete that
task as well. So having the parks and Pathfinder patrol will help us to
reduce the fear as people can get out and try to enjoy the parks and
and uh the Pathfinder and so we're really excited about that opportunity and I think
it'll serve the community. Well. Good, Any any uh, I know
today you've been you've been officially the police chief of an hour and forty five
minutes. But any any big plans as far as cha coming with the police
department, the operations of the police department kind of in your first hundred days.
Any goals that you want to to reach or accomplish. Well, we
have some goals that we had started while you were in place, and I
want to try to go ahead and complete those goals. One of those will
be the new Strategy Center Tri County Tech. As some people know, we
have the East Side substation currently inside the main building at Tri County Tech.
Tri County Tech and has agreed to allow us to utilize the Strategy Center,
which is on the east side of their campus facing no other road, standalone
building. It will be our new substation beginning August first. It has some
classrooms in it and it also has some office space in it, and we're
planning on housing the training division out there. And with that being said,
we're also in the process, along with Tri County Check, bringing online the
Basic Peace Officers Course, which is a police academy at the Bartlesville and that
will be housed out there, and we should be able to bring people into
that course and turn them into police officers, and that'll save the city money
as well as get us outfitted with new officers on the street and ready to
go to work for us. So it'll be a cost savings to the City
of Bartlesville, but it'll also be something very proactive into something that we really
look forward to doing as well. Some more exciting things is since I was
the deputy chief with the police department, that opens up a deputy chief spot,
which will in turn open up a captain spot in lieutenant spot and sergeant
spot and corporal spot. So that's exciting and I'll get the opportunity to promote
within the ranks of the police department. So I'm really looking forward to putting
a good team together around me. We've already got a great team around me,
and it just to add some more players to the game be great.
And so that's those are thanks we're looking forward to in the first few days.
Well, very good, congratulations on your appointment. I wish you all
the best. I know the police department is in good hands. And like
we mentioned earlier, I had told mister Potter that he kept asking who we
were going to hire as a police chief, and I assured him we were
going to hire the best police chief Bartlesville has ever had, and I think
that we've done that with you. So congratulations and thank you, and thank
you for your willingness to serve our community, not just as a police chief,
but for the last almost thirty years. So thank you. Thank you.
So Mica, not much going on in you're an eck of the woods.
Not a lot of projects happening, Just kind of getting through the days.
Not much happening. Yeah, I'm just trying to find things to do.
Yeah, well, let's talk about a couple of those things. Okay,
okay, sounds good. First off, we got another a lot of
questions about Civitan Park. We've got us the park there off of No Water
Road and some of Lake Road that's got the shade structure over it. Some
people call the Dinosaur Park. I think that's the most common term for it.
It's an ADIA accessible part. I think it's one of our only ADA
accessible parts in the city of Bartlesville. And so we've we've got some issues
with the shade structure. So we've had that lockdown now for about three weeks,
I believe somewhere in there in that ballpark. So essentially we noticed some
issues with it. There's some some structural connections that seem to be compromised,
and so as we got to investigating, it appears as though it may have
been installed improperly on the front end. So this was not a city project
when it was installed. It was actually donated. We're really not sure who
the contractor wasn't installed it. But we have sound some issues that we're actually
gonna have to remove that structure and put it back up in place, and
so that's why it's been shut down out for a while. It's trying to
get that going. It's you know, anything with the city government. Local
government takes a little bit of time. It's not just as easy as a
private entity that just goes out and hire somebody and gets the work done.
So we've been working on getting pricing on that, getting some quotes some contractors
to have that work done. Essentially, what we'll do is we'll have that
removed while it's down, We'll make some modifications to the footings. There are
some elevation, some great issues there that put things in a bind as far
as the structure, and so we will make those adjustments and we'll put that
back up and hope to see that happen at least coming down potentially in the
next couple of weeks. Again, once I get some pricing secured, we'll
try to get a contract through council to get that work done, and then
we'll get that put up as quickly as possible. I know that's it's a
popular park again, it's one of our only parks with a shade structure,
and so you know, I know city bars that were shutting you down on
water and now we're taking away your shade. And so we're working on it
though. We're trying to get that done. But that is what's happening there,
So we'll just feel like it's our responsibility to make sure that's safe.
And so we realize that potentially is not safe, we want ahead and shut
that down. So we're kind of getting that one going again. We've also
got pickleball coming up now you'll see that'll probably start to go to construction later
this late summer early fall. I know there's some interest in that. I
think it's the fastest growing sport in the country is minor standing and so currently
I think people are using tennis courts. They're at Sooner Park, Johnstone Park,
and then I think there's some indoor facilities private facilities in town that people
use, but I think the y m c A and also a First Baptist
Church I believe allows there as well. And but we're trying to get some
on our city owned courts, specifically four pickleball and so these are actually going
to go in right there next to the tennis courts at Sooner Park, just
to the north of between the tennis courts and the fire station there. We
should be getting construction plans on that later this week to review hopefully from Dan
Kelleher. We're looking at doing eight courts total for sure. Six it will
include in a base bid, and then we'll have a bid alternate for two
additional courts. We believe we can get eight courts, that is the goal.
We'll have bid alternates also for lighting for those courts and then shade structures
on the east side for essentially people waiting in line, waiting to play or
watching, and there'll be some benches will be kind of I called a bullpen.
It's not really a bullpen, but the courts will be separated by an
alley of sorts, fenced off alley where they can there's a couple of benches
there they can wait on where they're ready to play. So it should be
a good project, agin see it should see that go to construction late summer
early fall. We'll get that out to bid here in the next month hopefully,
and it should be a good project, should be exciting and know there's
a lot of interest in it. And so those are two things we've got
really. Uh, I think that I was on task talk about I think
I get a little bit more time here, so we'll talk about some other
things. Geo Bond highlights. So we just last Monday night a week ago
Monday, the Barnswoll City Council did approve a list of projects for a geo
bond election this fall. I think they will call at election at this next
July meeting. They're looking for an October tenth election date. So again the
city Council has approved these projects, but really a citizens of Barnswoll or the
final step in this if they need to prove this as well. So there
were the three separate items on this election. There will be street there will
be buildings and facilities, and there'll be parks and rex. Each one of
those is a standalone, so he'll vote for each one of those. There's
just over twelve million dollars with the street projects plan that was actually the the
primary focus of council. This go around our streets or in need of some
repair. Always are. That'll be a never ending issue, I guess,
but we'd like to start making some better progress on those. We're looking at
just over twelve million dollars with the streets. Some highlights and that'll be Adams
Boulevard sent you from Highways seventy five to Bison Road. I know mister Bay
likes to point out that, you know Adams Boulevard is really owned by the
state of Oklahoma, by Oklahoma Department Transportation. Really, the only portion that
we own and maintain is from not even really Highways seventy five is Adams Road
where it meets there right at the Walmart intersection off of Adams. From there
to Bison Road is what the City of Bars owns to maintained. So we've
got a one point four million dollars project plan to rehabilitate that section of Adams
Lahoma. Up in Oak Park, we got seven hundred thousand dollars to do
some work on the home. It's a concrete panel project. We tried to
package these street projects up into not just individual streets, but I guess there's
packages of streets. So we're all relatively close to each other. And so
we've got some work over on Lupo, We've got some work on Morton,
We've got some projects planned on Graystone, Michigan. Projects all really all Acrosstown.
We tried to scatter things Acrosstown. But again, twelvellion dollars with the
streets, we've got just over three million dollars with the buildings of facilities planned
for that. The highlight of that really is a replacement of fire Station number
three. This is over Virginian Hensley. This is I think I misspoke I
said the other day it's a nineteen fifty model. I believe it's in nineteen
seventy two or seventy four model building. We've had some structural issues on there,
nothing like the building is going to fall down. Everything, with just
some maintenance issues where we've got some walls that are selling whatnot. They are
located over utilities that need to be replaced, and so really to make that
work, it just needs to be rebuilt. At this point, it's actually
not sized quite right for us now. So the new project would add a
third bay. So they've currently got two bay apparatus bays, so they would
end up basically as something similar that we've got on Price Road, and they're
at tuck Sedo the two stations, those two satellite stations. So we've got
that project plan for just over about two point four million dollars for station number
two replacement. And then we've got parks for recreation is a third item.
We've got two point one seven million dollars plan for parks for recreation. The
largest project in that is actually one point two million dollars for greens rebuild it
Adams Golf Course. We've we've currently got seven hundred thousand dollars planned in the
current twenty twenty g O bond that will come online this fall for the twenty
twenty two issuance of that GEO bon This will be essentially that will get us
not quite half of the greens at this point for that seven hundred thousand dollars.
So this one point two million dollars coupled with the proxy five hundred thousand
dollars with a private funding that we've got secured, will be a full complete
project replace all eighteen greens at the Adams Golf Course along with the putting green,
that hip and green and our green nursery for lack of better terms.
So that'll be a good project as well. Likely see the first phase of
that and probably in the next year. Using that initial seven hundred thousand dollars
with some private funding that's got to be phased. We can do half of
half the course at the time flight at the front nine first and then the
back nine. And once you do complete those greens, they have to sit
there for months actually unused to get established. So we'll phase that in here
the next couple of years with those funds. So we've also always got money
for Pathfinder repair. That's a big deal here in the city of Bartlesville,
a great asset to us. And so we've got two hundred fifty thousand dollars
plan for some repaving on Pathfinder. And then also a big thing that's been
on the Park Board's mine and I think the citizens of Bartlesville kind of along
the line with our security our park police force, is security lighting in the
parks. And so we've got a one hundred and fifty thousand dollars plan for
that. There's nothing specifically identified for those funds just yet, but we'll put
together a project for that to upgrade security lighting in parks as well. Again
that's her GEO Bond projects. We'll see that. You'll start seeing some the
word get out there for October tenth election this fall and so hopefully the citizens
I'll get out and vote one way or another and and the other CITC duty
there. So how much time I have tom one minute winding things down,
So one highlight just we did wrap up the lighting project at robin Wood Park
and the Lee Lake skate park. They've seen those lights burning there at the
skate park particularly. I think that's getting a lot of use. So get
out there and use that at the skate park after dark, you'd like.
Well, thank you guys, a lot of good stuff going on. Thank
you Tom for your time, Thank the citizens for their support and what we're
trying to do. And there's a lot that we're trying to do, So
thank you guys for your hard work and your dedication for making the city better.
Oh, you've been loosening in watching Should He Matter? Right here on
K one, The One You Trust, we want to thank all of our
fine department hits for coming down here today and sharing with us a lot of
things that you need to know. Still to come in just a little bit.
We've got to check out your podcast as well as our local news and
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