Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, Welcome's
time. Now, if the city matters, it matters to you, it
matters through the city. I'm Tom Davis, high aloft our perch here from
the second story of the K one building. I really, I hope everybody
can see you on camera. Think it's very disappointing. Somebody gave me a
barstowe. I said, oh, I'm used to this your perch. I'm
perched also, so if our listeners hear a sudden crash and clatter, we
know I'm a little on them one one because Thomas hurt. I'm a little
on the chubby side. So if you heard of the leaning Tower of Pizza,
this is the Leaning Tower of Pizza right there. All right, they're
all right, Well we got here, mister Bailey. We gotta we got
the crowd assembled here, we got a quorum, well, we gotta.
We got a lot of things going on. I beg you do the first
thing. I just wanted to make everybody aware. Let's see, what is
today's day, the fourteenth, so starting August eighteenth, and this is an
important one, starting August eighteenth through the twenty second. Frank folks boulevard west
of Keeler Avenue will be closed. So this is actually the railroad they're coming
to replace some some track and some ties and things of that nature. So
they will be in here and it will be August eighteenth through the twenty second.
And it's a pretty substantial upgrade that they're making in there, So obviously
we will be we will have detours in place for that and they will they'll
work as quickly as they can. But when the railroad comes in and tells
you they're closing the road, the railroad's closing the road, Well it's a
good thing is there's folks are taking at sixty train to get some air flight
over the tracks. Like I've seen it time. No no fun for you
this weekend. No no fun for you this weekend. So well, things
are starting to pick up. So during the summer it slows down a little
bit. It didn't really this year, but things are, things are stow.
It didn't slow down at all, No, it didn't. It was
it was straight on through. But the one thing I did want to make
sure everybody was aware of is that even though the swimming pools are closed,
a lash pads are still open and so now that we're out of our water
crisis, at least for now, the splash pads are open. They will
be open until really until it's too cool for them to be open, So
we don't have a set closing day. As long as the temperatures are accommodating,
we'll keep them open. So I understand the one down there Unity Park
getting good workout. It always is. It's not a bathing facility. It's
definitely not a bathing facility. Discourage yeah, oh so, But honestly that
that's about all that I have. And so I have brought with me a
cadre of individuals who all have really cool things to fuck about. So they're
gonna do a program today and we'll start off. I lied to him.
I told him I was gonna let the chief go first, and I'm gonna
make Jason go first, because we have we got a couple of things going
on. We've got. First off, we got our sales tax results,
which I don't think i've even heard. They are good. I've got my
fingers crossed. We're all gonna learned together. They are. You know,
we were up a little over four percent, about four point two percent over
last year. Last year. I mean, the last three years have been
really pretty high. If we go back to you know, twenty one twenty
two at a ten percent increase over the prior year, twenty twenty three was
about flat, and then this year about four point two percent, which is
about eighty thousand more than we budgeted for for this month. It's pretty great.
Yeah, in fact, we were we were over two million. Yeah,
I lied, I've already heard of this conversation with Jason, but you
just forgot I did. I know you're calling me out on radio. Thanks
for bat. We'll talk about that later. That's how good my memory is.
But I think what this is only probably only the fourth or fifth month
that we've ever had collections over two million dollars. So it is I'm looking
back here on two three. This is the fourth time yea, So this
is it really was a good month, and it's it's it's the first time
we've ever had it in the first quarter. Yeah yeah, normally those two
million dollars months or around there. It's in this town shopping time, which
is always our peak and sales tax episode. It's really good news. It
is good news. Started started out the year pretty well, so how I
know you don't have these numbers with you, but how has used tax been
fair? Number? Does have these numbers when you look at these taxes,
it's staying there steady. We were at you know, three hundred sixty seven
thousand dollars, which is honestly the lowest out of our six month collection.
But it's all been in that well, not the little second lowest, yeah,
but it's all been in that you know, one hundred three fifty to
four hundred thousand dollars range. It's singing right in there steady. Having no
history on it. I'm certain what kind of cyclical patterns use tax is gonna
hold. I'm certain we'll see in the next month and the month following probably
people ordering back to school supply. So I imagine September and October are going
to be higher than these numbers we've seen from from the light in the ending
quarter of last year. So it's hard tell. It's uncharted territory for us.
So we're just gonna track it and see how it goes. Play it
every month, Yeah, month by month, we conservaily budget at two point
five million annually s breaks out to about two hundred and eight thousand dollars per
month, so we've we've exceeded those pretty substantially in each month so far.
So every time we're over that, we're I had a budget. Yeah,
so that's good news. This is this is something obviously very new for us.
We've only had it going on for six months. Yeah, and it's
we've got our fingers crossed it'll continue. Yeah. No, I mean I
can tell from looking at it doesn't. It doesn't track and follow the same
curve sales tax does so, which is interesting. Yeah. Part of that
could be a component of the traditional use tax piece of it, a couple
more of a business tax type coupled with the Internet sales type part of it.
But it just doesn't seem to have the our history so far, doesn't
have the fluctuations of sales tax of the growth in the same month. So
we'll see, we'll see what the future assholes see. Yeah, let's see
how it goes right, exactly, all right, Jason, and at city
Hall we have we have pretty big transition going on, so we do you
know. In twenty sixteen, winn and engagement with Tyler Technologies for muncy RP
system, which is our accounting and financial software It really is pretty much every
software at the city utilize and if we don't utilize it now, we will
in the future at some point. But like I said, we started that
in twenty sixteen. I think we probably got our servers in twenty seventeen.
And the server it's change and an ARP upgrade, which this probably is great
because it's software for life. This is I think now our third installation of
the upgrade. Before we didn't have to have upgraded servers. For this time
we do. So the system has to actually be down for two days while
we do that converg migrating it over to the new servers. So and by
this system being down, what do you mean? It means we mean we
cannot take payments at the cashier's windows. So that's what the public it is.
There's going to be a brief disruption and service that can be handled down
the City Hall and that affects Larry's apartment, definitely affects our department. So
we should be back up online. Fingers cross barn no kinks in this in
this transition Wednesday to the business as usual, So this will cover utility building
business licenses permitted. I will say you still have the ability to go online
and pay your utility bills. You still have the ability to go online and
pay your court bills. I'm not certain later what this does for your department
permitting or business license. They said the building all because it's that's totally Tyler
on that side and ours our third party on those. Yeah, so I
think I think your side's gonna be down for that. So during this period
of time disconnections, Yeah, we're not. We're not. We're not going
to do any of that. We're actually gonna treat if we got your payment
over this break or we get it the next day, it's it's gonna go
in as if it was paid on time first day. Yeah, we're not.
We're going to make sure we've accumulated all receipts up to that point and
then apply penalties post post receipt. If someone's concerned about payment, that to
do and they're concerned that if they don't pay it, they'll have a warrant
issued. I'm sure certain we're not going to be issuing warrants based on that.
But you do have the ability to pay for corner online. The court
side technically isn't on this server migration, but we can't accept payment of the
cashier's windows for it. So well, there's gonna be some grace geting during
this period time. No disconnects, no warrants issued, no late fees,
no penalties, nothing of that nature. So we'll have a couple of days
grace period here for somebody who's and even if you find if you slip through
those cracks, I mean a phone call, we can we can take care
of that as well. We're not We're not going to cause you know,
hard times for someone though this was an issue that that's our faults. Certain
I won't penalize somebody during this period sidely not. We do have a couple
of drop boxes. Can people still drop off their payments? They can drop
off We have a drop box located inside the doors of City Hall. We
also have a drop box in the City Hall parking lot of that's it's just
south of the City Hall building. Okay, Any of the way that people
can can make payments, well, like I said, they can make payments
online for utility bills, online for your court payments, and outside of that,
everything else will be down. This will probably also be a good time.
So our system, our court system in particular, it's still a little
bit older. It's scheduled to be updated, but we're not there yet,
and so our ability to pay online on that system is a little limited that
you only you can only pay for the current months. You can't set up
recurring payments. However, we do have an ability for people to set up
recurring payments if they're interested. So maybe this is a good time to mention
that to people as well. For I'm not certain on the court side,
because we have time not court. The utility utility building, Yeah, there's
going to be future progress. We're in the middle of that. You be
utility building upgrade and bring it on to Tyler as well. And there's it's
it's far more robust than the current system. We have to tell you,
I know all the ins and outage of what you're going to be able to
do. I haven't seen it with my own eyes, but for right now,
if somebody's interested in setting up recurring payments for their utility building automatic payments,
then we can do that through Ah. Yeah, well, you can
always sign up for ACIH, which means we're gonna hit your checking account or
credit whatever you have that set up to you every time your bills do so
right now, we don't have the ability to set you up as on recurring
payments for the credit card, but if that's something's interested in, we can
set you thank accounts. Okay, so we do have people do we'll have
some options. I know, I try to set up all of my stuff
onto min equations that I don't need you I don't forget. We've already discussed
that form. My memory is within the last five minutes, so we'll I
try to keep everything automatic. So all right, Jason, anything else,
anything that anybody needs to be aware of other than that, as far as
what's going on at city Hall. So we want account very exciting accounting,
and this is the first time. Most people generally don't care about acounting and
finance, but this is obviously something that has affected taking anything, interruption of
services. So I got you know, it needs to be it needs to
be talking about. So that that'll be we'll be back on line Wednesday,
back on fingers crossed. That's right. Nothing is ever certain, isn't all
right? Thank you, Jason, I appreciate that. So Chief, good
morning, good morning, he returns, returns, say, so, the
first off, have I had a chance to introduce you on the radio.
You know, I don't recall I think we have, but I think we
did. That's a perfect police I think we did this. I don't recall.
His also code for his memory isn't very good either. So between the
two of us, word sad shape. He just got the chair, but
it's worn in. That's right, that's right. So obviously, uh,
former Chief Tracy Rowels was promoted assistant city manager, and we have promoted.
I gotta make sure I always get your last name correct because you know that
for your entire career here, I've had a tendency to call you by a
nickname. So this is Chief I Coleberry, not Chief Tackleberry. Oh,
it's correct, and I appreciate that. Mister Bailey, You're very welcome.
See, I was very careful to make sure that I got Eichelberry and didn't
call you Tackleberry. You know ed Gordon started that along. He did,
he did, which also means that he watched police Academy, which somewhat surprises
me. Manbert and I go there, I'll punch recalled. So Chief,
Well, congratulations if I haven't congratulated you on air before. But we're very
excited to have you. You've obviously been with the City of Bartlesville for for
twenty plus years. I've been paid by the City of Bartlesville for going on
twenty eight years. Twenty eight years. I volunteered for about five and a
half. Mine started as a started as a volunteer police officer right right as
Borsville Police reserve officer. I became a deputy for almost a year and then
uh and uh Steve Brown actually hired me to work here, brought you on
and so you you have worked many positions through the years in the police department
and now you've you've had the opportunity for your turn at the wheel. So
yes, sir, appreciates that greatly. We're excited about it. We're excited
about keeping things moving forward. We've we've been on a good pace the last
almost five years and moving the department forward, and we want to keep that
movement going. And we want to just get out in the community and keep
building those relationships and get to know our community and uh and make sure that
they know we're serving them and not ourselves. Well, thank you. And
part of that, of course is we've we've got a forum coming up and
I know you talked about this earlier, but for some anybody who wasn't listening.
We have the Thunton Off Forum that is upcoming, So can you give
people an idea of exactly what that is? Sure? Sure, As most
people know, the hot topic in the drug world today is a finnel.
It's a very deadly drug and it's really infiltrated our communities throughout the country and
especially more specifically our community. And so last year we held our first Fennel
form. It was received overwhelmingly. We had probably three hundred people at it
and uh I bought a question and answer session, some experts on the panel,
and so, knowing this is a topic that everybody's concerned about, we
wanted to bring that back again this year. So August at twenty fifth,
at six pm, we'll hold that form. It'll be at the Community Center
or the Center I gotta getting used to say in the center there at Cherokee
and Adams, and we're excited about it. We have a good panel of
people to speak on the on the title, on the subject, and we'll
have Oaklahom Viewer of Narcotics there. We'll have the Department of Drug Administration there,
Drug Enforcement Administration There, we'll have a CTI which is a local company.
We'll have our own community Impact Team which is our drug unit there as
well, and we encourage people to send any questions they may have to us
at bpd Q and a City of bartlest City of Bartlesville dot org. We
want to try to be prepared as best we can for that form and answer
the questions as full as possible, and we want to keep it to a
point that it's not overwhelming for people, but where they can enjoy listening to
the information and not have it drawn out anyone roun has to be. But
it's a very important topic and we encourage people come out and be part of
it. And it's the targeted audiences everybody, or specifically for parents who are
concerned about it or is it uh, yeah, well that's a good question.
The target it is anybody that has a concern about drugs, whether it's
in their family, whether it's in the community where it's school related. We
want to make sure we're answering people's questions and focused on the right right things
good And this obviously is a topic of concern. It's a topic of concern
in our department, in our community, in our schools. Absolutely, I
appreciate you all. You all hosting this is we've we've held this once before.
As you said, what can people expect as far as the length of
it, Well, last year it ran a little longer than we expected.
There were a lot of questions from the audience, and so therefore that's why
we're asking people to submit questions to us to maybe speed it up a little.
It went about three hours last time. We're trying to keep it around
two hours if possible. People start wearing down after a couple hours. So,
but it tells you how how intense the interest is that we had over
three hundred people show up and they sat there for three hours to get their
questions answer about this. Oh yes, absolutely, they sat there for three
hours and they participated for three hours. It was pretty pretty intense form,
honestly, and for people who aren't familiar or they don't know whether they should
be concerned about this or not. Fentanyl is obviously it's an extremely powerful drug,
and it's being used to generate false narcotics. So they use fentinyl to
create pills that aren't what they say they are and then sell them illegally correct,
and there's a lot of other forms, but but that's one of them.
So sure, it's become a really large market on the street for for
those pills, and they come in many forms. More commonly they're they're around
pill with a big M on them, a capital MB on them. But
a lot of times those pills are pressed, are made in the same areas
as other drugs, and there's cross contamination and that can that can cause marijuana
or myth. They have some some fittnel in it, or they some some
people who have been known to place their drugs with that, So so it
becomes very potent, very deadly, and it's not uncommon for us to go
at least once a week on our unresponsive person in our community, which is
way way too many times. My understanding is the volume of it necessary for
an overdose is extremely tiny. It's very minew I believe I'd heard something about
grain salt or something of that nature is sufficient for an overdose on this that
it's it's very very potent and just touching it, getting getting it in your
skin pores can can cause an overdose. So it's very very dangerous, so
well appreciate it and we look forward to that, and it's unfortunate that we
have to have this, but I'm grateful that you are will and step up
and write information on it. Sure again, that's August the twenty fifth at
six pm at the Center Downtown. All right, thanks Chief. Anything else
going on we need to know about, Well, we're gonna follow up in
October with a homeless form hopefully it's so we'rek forward to that as well.
We're wanted to address our homeless issues in the city. I know Larry is
aware of because it's neighborhood Serve and his crew are dealing with it on a
cost of basis basis, it seems. But we want to make sure people
understand that we are trying to address that issue as well as we'll bring people
on the panel that'll that are providing services for those folks as well, so
people can have an idea of what we actually are doing to try to not
just combat that issue, but to try to get people off the street and
into homes and back into community where they need to be well. And we've
we've already begun sort of a proactive approach to that. We have a coresponse
model with Grand mental Health and Barstow Police officers. We have two we have
two officers and two two social workers essentially, and they've made contact with I
believe all of the unsheltered individuals and Barslow that we can identify, and there
was a little there was a little over fifty. I believe we had some
statistics on it, so that we could begin to get a feeling for what
was causing the homelessness, where with the coming from. And so that's the
first step in addressing a problem is understanding it. And one of the things
that we found was that most of these people were local or relatively local,
but there are some of them that were that came here by transportation, some
of them from out of state, some of them from surrounding regions in the
state. But the vast majority of them, unfortunately or they're pretty much homegrown.
That's correct. And you know, with the creation of the Park and
Pathfinder officers that was created starting July one, we're working to probably coordinate those
with the Mental Health Response Team as well, because they're going to be down
on the path a lot, so they'll be interacting. So so initially I
hope to have four officers that'll be viewing this issue and taking care of this
issue so it will at least be worth forefront of what we do every day
so we can take care of our our citizens. We've gathered the data and
now we'll begin working with our partners to try and find a solution on this.
So I appreciate your team being a big part of this. No problem,
all right. Chief passed that microphone over there to Larry, our community
development director. I would say, new community development director, but you're not
actually the newest director anymore. Believe Chief, that's true. That is true,
and he's the old community development director. I'm sure he likes that much
better. Keep introducing myself as Lisa Beaman so the news, Yeah, you
gotta be careful with that. That's a mixed bag, now right. I
knew for how long, eighteen eighteen, twenty twenty years, and so yes,
now I love Lisa, and I'm glad that you all have a good
relationship. And that's a great thing about you. Know. What Lisa did
was that she she really explained what a community development director is. So all
I have to say when I would introduce somebody's I'm the new Lisa Beaman,
They're like, oh, I know what you're doing now step having to go
I'm the community Development director and they're like, what does that mean? Wait,
do you do this and this and this? Yeah, So we since
you've been here, you've you've taken on some pretty major projects and we've got
a couple of them actually underway right now. I mean, all about the
strategic plan that the city had laid up before me joining, It has been
really beneficial to help get giving our department guidance on what projects to be working
on. And so the first you know, as you guys were talking about
data and understanding the problem is our sidewalk issue. You know, the city
and initiated an ordinance last year and we're really wanting to better understand what is
driving sidewalks within our community. And so we have a survey that's been out
for about a month and wraps up at the end of this month, and
we've had a little over four hundred respondents so far, which is great.
I mean, it really is wonderful. But we have until the end of
the end of the week for everyone to wrap up the other comments five more
days exactly. But the data that we're getting in is extremely beneficial and we'll
help guide us as we move forward with an update to that ordinance and also
have a plan for you know, feeling on the gaps for our sidewalks and
also overall plan for sidewalks within the city as a whole, which is important
because it is a necessary part of our infrastructure. We have limited resources,
so how best can we direct those resources to meet the needs of the public.
Exactly, And you know, the first I think a TACH strategy that
you know be utilizing is is ensuring that we fill in those gaps where we
have you know, sidewalk over here and then you know, one hundred feet
this way we have the continuation of the sidewalk we got in between. Yeah,
so few of those around town have those abandoned sidewalk areas, so that
those are areas that you know, we'll be tackling. But you know,
this is an information gathering serve ban alone. I know a lot of people
wanted to say specific locations, they wanted to identify it. That'll leave the
next go around. It will help us take an even deeper dive into this
in the future. Exactly. Right now, it really was just a broad
look and how how much of a priority to our citizens, is it and
then what areas of concerned it? They? I am, and I really
look forward to, you know, diving down that data, providing reports to
city Council into the public so everyone can see what everyone else is thinking.
I'm excited to see that. And that is part of a larger process than
we have going on. So probably the most significant plan of any scope for
a city. And it's comprehensive plan, right, it's corect because it is
exactly what it is, what it says it is. It is a comprehensive
plan. It's typically done in the Community Development Department, but it's much broader
than that. Oh yeah, and so but we have launched that and I
think you've got a committee in place and right, and so it's really exciting
is that we a couple of months or a month or so ago, we
put out a request for request for qualifications. We received fourteen responses. But
it's incredible, by the way, Yeah, it's a huge number. And
you know, coming from my previous community, we did not have that many
people that were interested in So it's for people that are responding. These are
professional firms from all over the country, so they know what's out there and
they know that they want to be a part of Bartlesville, which is fantast
sac and so that's a testament to the community one people they looked at Barrowsville
and they're like, I want to work with them exactly. So we're staff
is going to help narrow that down to about you know, sixty eight individuals
firms. And then we do have a committee now that was formed by the
Planning Commission and has two members of the Planning Commission, two members of the
City Council and a citizens sitting on it. That will help bring that all
the way down to one firm that will work on a contract with and then
bring that before council and that will be our consultant for about a year long
project. But the Conference of Plan, just that everyone knows is the plan.
It is the master plan for the city. It goes for everything,
for land use, development, for roads, infrastructure. Everything is in this
document and it will be available online to the public. It will be easily
accessible and usable for everyone to understand that what is the expectation for a city
and where it's going, And it's the city's it is the community's plan,
it is it my plan. This isn't your plan. This is the committee
of the consultant's plan erect. It is the community, the citizens of Bartlesfill
what's their plan for what they want to be. So we asked this,
I mean, we always say this sort of tongue in cheek, but you
know, what do we want to be when we grow up? Exactly?
And we we asked that question as we went through our strategic plan. And
this is just a further extension of that much deeper dive, much much deeper
dive, and it certainly will have a ton of action items and to help
set the course for our community for for years to come. The last time
we had a comprehensive plan done nine nine so actually that was the last update.
That was the last update, so we haven't so it's been longer than
that since we've had a new plan. Yeah, and this will so you
have your ad hoc committee, which is the five members you mentioned before.
That'll be so they'll help to select it. But then they'll also be a
steering committee. But the reality is is there will be a lot of points
of input from the public. Yeah, they'll be surveys that'll be going off
to the public online, in person, will have a couple of meetings so
people can get their input that way. Will be a steering committee associated with
that, and they'll be also we'll have people that are in the community,
about thirty to forty individuals that will probably survey as well and get their information,
you know, the ones, the movers and shakers. I guess you
should say. Yeah, So we'll have it's tons of opportunity for an input.
So right now we're not there yet, but we'll select a consultant,
and we would ask our citizens to be aware of this and to participate every
opportunity they have. Absolutely, it's we We are very interested in what our
community has to say about itself and what all of our citizens have to say
about what they want from their community. So we certainly would encourage that.
And all right with that, Larry, was there anything else? You got?
Ten seconds? Business licenses? Get them in the gory