Hey, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, and
welcome, welcome, welcome in. It's time now for our city managers.
It matters to you, it matters to the city. Vicy versy versus vicey.
How you doing there, City manager of Mikey Bailey. I don't know.
I'm my breath. Just listen to you, Tom no more energy than
I do. Yeah, boy, that's why you played running back a long
time at home. Yeah. That's see, that's it. That's the different
story is right there. Good morning, good morning, and this will be
I guess this will actually be the last time on the radio Christmas. Good
that's right, because you guys, you guys got bumped for the Green Country
Christmas. That's right. Well, that's we got to know that it's more
important than we are. So I would did say that the priorities are similar,
but sort of not similar. We'll just keep it that way. I
know who most people would rather hear from my city. They want to be
good. I get it enough of being nice to be practical. That's right.
What you got going there, guy? Well, speaking of Christmas coming
up, we just want to let everybody know about our holiday hours. So
there are some closures coming up towards the end of the year. Most of
our offices will be closed on December twenty fifth, of course, but we're
also going to close on December twenty sixth. So every year we give our
employees we have a floating holiday, and we give them the opportunity to decide
if they want to take it as a group. This year they decided they
wanted to take it the day after Christmas, so we were we aren't happy
to grant that to them. So most officesill be closed on Christmas the day
after, and then of course we'll be closed on New Year's as well,
which I believe it's a Monday this year, so we'll be closed on New
Year's Day, which is the first course uh for us trash routes. There'll
mean no trash routes on Christmas or on New Year's Day. We'll collect.
Both of those are Mondays, so we'll collect on Wednesday of that week,
but we will have our normal trash route on the day after Christmas, and
that one the Wednesday after Christmas is gonna be big. Oh, it'll be
a big one, There's no doubt about it. That will be a good
sized one forger So yeah, I'm sure Keiths guys always look forward to the
post Christmas absolutely is the busiest day of the year for us. So yeah,
we're excited about it. I'm to pick it up in Giblet. So
you had to deal with the the last go round. Absolutely so, but
that's so those will be our hours. We look forward to, uh letting
our employees off spend a little time with their families as we come into this
end of the year. And we, as I said, one wish everyone
I marry Christmas, because I won't. I won't get a chance to be
on the radio again until next year. So but before we befo we jump
into the discussion, I did want to take just a moment here. We
had a we had an event. Let's say it was a couple of weeks
ago. Chief this was the one where we had the car that went off
into M. J. Lee Lake. So we had a citizen who had
had a medical event. Uh and he actually went off of Adams Boulevard,
went off down into the lake into Lee Lake. We were very fortunate in
that we actually had an off or no, he wasn't off duty. He
was on his way. He was on his way in so stud we been
here, that's right, So technically he was off duty, but he was
on his way into work, and that was Lieutenant Chris Neil was on his
way in. He was the first one he actually saw the actually saw the
gentleman veer off of the road, responded, and then we had two more
people responded, one of them sergeants Steve Steve Johnson was a sergeant. And
then I believe from the fire department, we did have a we did have
an off duty firefighter, uh in Krispy Cannon, who was the next on
scene. So between the three of them, they were able to break the
window because the cars the doors were locked and they weren't able to get him
out that way. So they were able to break the window and extract him.
And I know that he survived. At the time, I assume he's
doing well. I haven't I haven't checked back, but so Ard was last
week last we heard he was doing well. So I just wanted to take
a moment and thank all of those guys their their quick work there, uh
likely saved this man's life. So I just wanted to just wanted to take
a moment. This is that was a pretty special event and thankfully, not
something we have happened often. Although we did have an interesting event that I
almost witnessed downtown not too long ago, and we had had somebody who had
a medical emergency in their car drove down the sidewalk and wiped out a few
light poles and uh think pedestrian was hit. Thankfully, the pedestrian was only
hit by the mirror, and the last I saw her she was standing and
see him be doing well. So we were very fortunate on both of those
that they weren't more severe than that. Unfortunately, motor vehicles are very dangerous,
specially if you have a medical emergency. So buddy, be careful out
there. Let's all come back from the new year together in one piece.
No kissing the phone polls, No, No, they kissed back. Yeah,
they so all right. Well, before I turned over to these guys,
Tom, I wanted to talk just a little bit about some charter changes
that the city Council is considering. And there's a number of things, and
just back up just a little bit. Back in twenty ten, the city
Council appointed a Charter review committee and this committee spent I believe it was eleven
or twelve months reviewing the charter, and they met at least once a month.
Typically they met two to four times a month. And so this committee,
it was chaired by Roger Box. The entire city Council were members of
it, and I know that George Halkiatis and some others were members of that
committee, and they did some exceptional work. If you look through our charter,
which is, of course it's a little bit like the constitution it is,
it's just like the constitution for our city. When you look through that
charter, you'll see that almost every section was amended back in twenty ten.
So this group did some tremendous work. However, there are a few things
in there that the council now is considering changing for various reasons, and again
it's not a reflection of the work of those individuals. In fact, I
would say that it is a compliment to the work of them that we have
gone thirteen years and not needed another amendment. Previous to that, there's been
amendments every five years or so. But looking at it now, the charter
overall is working very well. But there are a few things that they did
want to consider changing, and so we're actually going to bring in an attorney
to review some of the proposed amendments. But the proposed amendments effect actually four
articles of the Charter, but I'll just kind of break them down into what
the affect ex of those are. And the most important one and it kind
of drove everything, was to extend the council terms. So right now the
City Council has two year terms. Back in back in twenty ten, when
we had our last election, the council was on four year terms and so
there was a lot of debate at that time. The City Council felt like
those four year terms were too long, and so they wanted to shorten the
terms. And I recently reviewed the minutes of that committee and there was a
lot of discussion about two year terms or three year terms. Ultimately the committee
decided on two year terms. Now, thirteen years later, as we're having
a harder time getting volunteers, we've looked at that and decided that we would
the council and City staff feel that it would be wiser to have a little
bit longer term. Don't want to go back to the four year because that
was still a very long term and it actually impaired our ability to recruit council
members, so now looking at a three year term, which would have split
the difference between those. As a result, now you no longer compare or
election with the general election. So that was part of it. We went
to two year terms. We paired it with the general election. But if
we go to three year terms, we also want to stagger the terms of
the council. So right now, all of the council comes up every two
years, and you run a chance that every two years your entire council may
decide not to run or they may be defeated. So that's a pretty big
risk for a government. That's a tremendous lack of stability. You rarely see
that in any form of government, that everyone turns out at the same time.
I realize it is done at some of the state levels, but the
state also has you know, they have hundreds of representatives whereas we have five.
So to help moderate that risk, the Council is proposing that the terms
be staggered, so they would go to three year terms and every year there
would be a council election with no more than two council members being terming out
in any given year. So that just helps provide that continuity. Also to
better align election with other local elections rather than when with national elections, we
would be proposing to move that from November to April, and there was a
lot of discussion in the council meeting about this. The November date has a
higher turnout, there's no doubt about it, but those people generally are there
for national issues. Those that are familiar with local issues they vote, they
also vote in April. Those who aren't familiar with local issues sometimes were surprised
by what they found when they were given about for a city council member.
So there was a lot of discussion about this. The council liked the idea
of moving this back to April, which is when we have a lot of
other local elections. You have your statutory town council elections and city council elections,
you have your school board elections if I believe they have a runoff first,
and then they'll have their general in April. So there was a lot
of reasons to sort of solidify that around a local election date rather than a
national election date. So that's the proposals essentially to change the elections. It
wasn't These were probably the most significant changes that the council discussed. Those were
Articles two and three. Article four. This is dealing with recalls, and
in this there's a little bit of ambiguity in some of the language, and
then there's also a timeline that's not long enough. So the ambiguity is is
it doesn't state a period of time in which a petitioner has to gather the
signatures. And so there has been some debate and a discussion with the city
attorney about does that mean that these could cross terms? And so the mayor
technically has been in office for about twelve years. So could I have started
a recall petition on the mayor twelve years ago and still be using the same
signatures through this term? And the answer is, we don't know, and
so we need to defind it. And so that was part of the discussion
there. So the council had discussed creating a timeline there, they didn't decide
on any period of time. They wanted to ensure that there was sufficient time
for anybody seeking a recall petition so that they would be able to do that,
but at the same time to make it within a reasonable period of time.
So the Council discussed ninety days, one hundred and eighty days, there
was a discussion of two years or three years. Then it was a wide
ranging discussion. So that has yet to be decided, but it'll come back
to the council for their discussion later on. But then the other one in
there was that the city clerk had, I believe it was ten working days
to certify any recall petition. So if somebody submitted a recall petition, say
there was three council members and they submitted three different petitions, then that could
be four thousand signatures. Actually it would be more than that, could be
closer to six thousand signatures, So the city clerk would have ten working days
to verify whether six thousand signatures are accurate, are these registered voters, are
they in the ward that they say they are, did they really sign it?
So it was asking a little bit much. So we'd had a discussion
with the city attorney about that. He felt that that timeline was unreasonable and
that if we faced a recall petition then we would have to go to the
court and file for an action and the judge would essentially have to tell us
what to do either extend that timeline or tell you that you're going to have
to work within the ten So this extends that. It didn't extend it a
lot. It was just thirty thirty days. So we went from ten working
days, which is about fourteen days, to thirty total days, so it
about doubled the amount of time that the clerk has to fulfill his duties.
We believe that that's more than sufficient time and that we should be able to
do that even if we face a recall petition in all five wards, we
could potentially make that. And then the final thing was is that the charter
currently calls that you cannot recall a council member in the first four months of
their term, which made a lot of sense. You've got a brand new
council member just been elected, hasn't had a chance for anybody who determined whether
they should be recalled. So that was in there. But what wasn't in
there was the same prohibit at the end of a council member's term. So
it doesn't make any sense for us to call a special election to recall a
council member in the last four months of their term when there's going to be
an election. So we figured that that was a better that was a better
method for the voters to have it to be able to determine who their elected
official would be would just be to rely on the election process itself. So
those were really the things within the recall petition. Again, no substantial changes
there. It was just providing some a little bit better definition on the timelines
and dates in which the recall petition could be used. And then the last
thing was certainly the most boring, but it's honestly to city staff is probably
the most important. And this really is an amendment to our existing purchasing and
contracting rules. Right now, a contract is treated completely separately than a purchase,
even though generally most purchases are contracts and most contracts are purchases. So
this aligns the two of those with existing rules that we've been operating under.
Well. Actually, since the twenty ten charter change, we've been operating under
certain purchasing rules that work very well for us. This just makes it consistent
throughout the organization. But those are really the big three sections. And I
had to do if elections, recall, and then just contracting and purchasing,
so nothing this is not the same thing that they did in twenty ten,
I would not I don't think that level of work is necessary. They were
reviewing the entire charter, so this is more along the lines of tweaking something
that's working very well rather than actually trying to rebuild something that is not working.
So anyway, that is not decided yet. Obviously the city Council will
have to call an election, but charter is the governing document for the City
of Artlesville and has to be determined by the voters. So the council,
if they decide to move forward, likely would call this election for next April.
And keeping with that idea of putting all of our local elections on April,
and to further expand that, we've been discussing using that date, that
April date, not just for council elections, but for g O bonds,
for sales tax, for any essentially any election that we had, we would
put it on that date so that we would consolidate everything together. So those
are that is the possible future. We'll be working with an outside attorney to
review all of these amendments to ensure that they meet legal muster, and then
I would expect the council they will hear this probably in January, and then
if they wanted to call the election, they would need to do that in
February. So that's that's sort of the future of that for anyone who's interested.
Obviously, the council meetings are always open. We meet the first Monday
of the month at five point thirty, although our next one will be in
January, and it'll actually be assuming that the first is a Monday, it
will be on the second. We always move to the next day. That'll
that'll be your next opportunity if you if you want to listen to what the
council has to say, or if you want to communicate with the council.
They also have a section of the agenda called Citizens to be Heard, so
people have an opportunity to speak to their elected representatives. You also don't have
to wait for a councilmate. You can email your elected representatives, you can
call them. There's there's a lot of different ways to be in contact,
and if you call the City of Artlesville at three three eight, four to
eight to two, Elaine Baines will be more than happy to help you reach
out to your elected representative. If you have something you want to discuss with
So all right with that, let's talk money. It's all right, Jason
Bunninginger our finance director, and many many other things, but that's the hat
he's got on this morning, right now, right now, right now,
talking to sales taxs. So while our collection month is only zero point six
percent, that really is kind of misleading. We're looking back at our December
numbers. If you go back to fisky or twenty one, and we're we're
collecting just a little over one point five million, Go to twenty two,
that's one point eight, go to twenty three, one point nine, and
then once again we're one point nine again, so we're all two million.
Yeah, this is this is our largest collection for December, barely beating last
last year's December by about twelve thousand dollars. So pretty good month. And
you're comparing back to big numbers and you can stay in that that ballpark and
exceed a little bit. That's that's a that's a a good month. Yeah,
I had had over the last two years. Looking at your sheet here,
it's had it was fourteen percent two years ago, and it had grown
seven percent last year. So being even with those numbers is is a good
sing place to be, your place to be. So on the year,
we're up one point seven percent, which is roughly two hundred thousand dollars over
last year. And if we compare that to our budget, we're up about
three point eight percent or four hundred twenty nine thousand dollars. We've budgeted two
percent decrease going into this year and we're we're out pacing that by you know,
we're up one point seven so almost four percent. So yeah, it's
good news. And that's sales tax is by far our largest revenue source and
well as far as general operations, it's by far our largest operation source.
And we have a new source of revenue that we've only been collecting for what
is found nine months or ten ten months, ten months, ten months worth
of the worth of use tax. And of course use tax is essentially like
sales tax, but primarily for online or anything you didn't pay sales tax on
that use tax works. So we don't really have any data over our holiday
months still, and I would even consider this even early to be a holiday
month because this is mainly sales that happened in October, so maybe the beginning
of that. But five hundred nineteen thousand dollars was collected, which is our
largest, our largest use tax month. But we don't really have any history
to see what would it normally have been in December for a collection. So
we're still comparing back to zeros right now. Yeah, and all we can
see is what it's been for the past ten months, which during that period
of time it's it's ranged from three hundred and forty thousand to about four hundred
thousand. It's roughly in that range threees low fours. So this is a
large and I probably honestly expect January and February to be somewhere in this this
ballpark, given the holiday months they'll be collecting for. But I don't know,
you know, it's to be seen. We don't to be seen.
So we don't have any history at all. In every city. This is
one thing use tax. Their trends are completely unique from city to city,
depending on the type of operations. Yeah, and they could have a lot
of just historical use tax that weren't Internet sales. Some of these cities had
large, large amounts coming in there, depending if they were oil and gas
city or what it was coming into and out of their community. Manufacturing oil
and gas. A lot of those things helped to prop up use tax.
So for us, this is totally new. We're collab that it is doing
as well as it is. We're obviously ahead of budget because I think we
only budgeted two point five for the year. Yeah, and this puts us
at one point two and we are, well, we're right at yeah,
we're at we're at two point four. Two point four. Yeah, sorry,
we're almost budgetaryetary. We're halfway through the year. I was looking at
the variant's call them world. We're halfway through the year and we are,
and we're almost a full budget, so that that is really good news.
This we're saying every one of these months. Our largest use tax contributors Amazon,
so you can tell it is majority is online sales tax from and that
was what we had been missing out on for a long time. And as
much as usually making our roads, they better be paying tough. You think
that's right that well, and of course it is. It's it's a substitution
is largely what it was from the brick and mortars. Yeah, from your
brick and mortars and the patterns that people had in the past. So it
will be really curious to see what Amazon and what the online vendors do this
year during the holiday season. So at least now everybody in Bartlesfield is having
to play on the same footing everybody pays the same sales tax. He levels
the field when you're talking about a competitive advantage your brick and mortar. If
you're buying online and you don't pay sales tax, that's a eight point nine.
Pretty well the state are yet, so it's it's our tax rate in
the county because they also have one now as well. Yeah, so that's
that's good news. So we're we're halfway through the year and performing better than
we expected. So we'll we'll keep our fingers crossed that that continues. And
we all know that there are a tremendous number of needs in our community,
from fire, the police, the parks, the streets to libraries, and
all of those things rely on these revenue sources. So we're glad to see
that's going well. Well. Thank you, Jason, I appreciate that,
and we're gonna jump in and give Keith. Give Keith the microphone next.
Good morning morning. So in keeping with our holiday theme, let's pretend it's
a white Christmas Keith, want to make it snow do it's pretend it's white
Christmas? What are you gonna do? Well, we had a little scare.
What's been a month ago. I woke up and had a dusting of
snow on the ground. We were ready. Wow, we're all ready.
We actually were ready. Well, he's always ready. We're ready, you
bet. We keep a store of salt and sand on hand year round,
so we always got material on hand. We usually take the week of Thanksgiving.
It's kind of a holiday week, so we usually take that weeks time
to prepare or go through our equipment, make sure we're ready as far as
all the machinery working like it's supposed to and ready to be loaded onto the
trucks. We have a lot of nice equipment nowadays. We're fortunate to have
this stuff. I can remember days that my dad worked at the city years
ago with actually sanded from the back of a flatbed truck with a shovel.
Yeah, we've come a long ways. Yes, that's not an OCE approved
day of bar. Even myself, with the equipment we had when I first
started was just a tailgate that we replaced or hung on the back of a
dump truck and it spread the sand out with that. So equipment has come
a long ways and we're fortunate to have the new technologies and new equipment that
we have, and the guys are really thrilled to have those type things to
work with. So we do have a snow policy in place. If people
aren't familiar with that, they might go online look at it. I'm sure
it's posted on our website. If not, we'll get it on there.
It is called Snow and Ice Removal, I believe, and it kind of
dictates or describes how we go about treating ice and snow events. Starts out
primarily with treating the arterial streets here in town in Bartlesville, so most of
those would be your main roads that you drive on. Now, keep in
mind some of those roads in town our state highways. O DOT maintains those
roads, so Highway sixty, know what a road, Highway seventy five,
Orshton Boulevard, Highway one twenty three through town, those are all state roads,
so o DOT maintains those. They salt sand those roads. We treat
roads like Frank Phillips as a primary arterial street, Tuxedo Boulevard. They're described
in the manual, So that's our first stop. When we get the call,
we go out in salt and sand those streets. We do actually plow
on those streets. If the accumulation of snow gets to three to four inches,
we will go out and start to plow the snow. So again,
we only do that on the main arterial type streets. We do not plow
snow in the residential neighborhoods. We'll occasionally get those calls, but it's not
very feasible for us to go in there. Obviously, when the truck goes
through, it moves all the material from the center of the road right into
your driveway. It doesn't pick it up, it just moves it. It
just moves it. So now your driveway stopped and you can't access the streets.
So those areas we just go in and salt and sand in those areas.
We also have a kind of a prioritized list in there, the areas
that we treat, you know, Circle Mountain or Oak Park or wherever we
go. We do have a list of those areas and a routine that we
go through. We will divide the area up into four quadrants and we'll assigned
typically one to two trucks to each quadrant, so they're working in that area.
So if we get calls who usually we work with the PD and they
dispatch us. We get calls in from the public with areas of concern,
we'll dispatch a truck out to those areas. But we do have our routines
that we follow. We treat those primary streets first. And as far as
salting and sanding, do you salt and sand the entire road or is it
just do you do hot spots first? How do you handle that? It
depends on the conditions that we're going in Downtown, for example, as one
of our priority areas. Typically when those events happen, we'll do primarily the
entire downtown, concentrating mainly on the intersections and stopping areas. But if it
needs that, we will. So we kind of do it by the type
of weather that we have and you know, actually respond to what happens.
Bridges and overpasses obviously always freeze over first, so you know, we're primarily
not going to go out and put sand and salt over the bare road if
just a bridge is thawed or froze up. We do not use brine in
Bartlesville. Some of your agencies you'll see O DOT and some of them do
the liquid brine. Most of that's for pre treatment. So if you anticipate
an event coming in, dougle out and put that material down on the road.
It does work good. But you do also occasionally here have events where
you have rains first, so then it worshes that material off, so you
really lost any benefits you would have gotten from it. So again we do
not use that material as strictly just salt and sand and it's it is the
best way that we have to maintain them is to go and ply certain areas
and to spread the salt and sand. And so for for anyone listening,
what do you want them to know, especially if they see if they see
a plow truck, what do they need to know? Well, just give
us some working room, give the guy some room to work. Most of
the sand trucks you'll see a sign on the back. This typically will say
stay away one hundred and fifty foot. That's for our safety and your safety.
Also, those trucks are slinging that material. They're spreading the Sultan sand.
So we don't want to be throwing gravel or chips all over your car,
chipping your paint. So give us some working space and protect your vehicle
and give yourself some space to stop. And in case something happens, you
can get that vehicle shut down and don't pass them because they may if they
catch something with the plow, then they will slide into your lanes. Absolutely,
y'all, let that truck do its work and follow in behind. Hopefully
the road will be treated. Then you've got a good service to drive on.
He'll take you where you're going. Just stay behind him and stay back
far enough. Absolutely, all right, Well, thank you, Keith.
Hopefully I don't know whether I'm hoping for snow or not. It's funny it'll
say pray for raid, but I'm kind of told. And my kids were
always mad at me every year because they always wanted snow days. I said
no, because that means we got to go clean it up. And after
I retire, let it snow all it wants to. City workers don't generally
open for a white Christmas, do they, Keith? All right, well,
thank you, Keith. I appreciate that. So our our final guests
of the day, we have Chief Kevin Ickleberry here and sorry Kevin, I
gotta cut you short. We just got a couple of moments here, but
we got a lot of things going on around the holiday season that it's important
for our police department. You guys do a lot of good work in the
in the community. One of those is is that you all have what Christmas
baskets sixty fifty twenty five families. That's it, twenty five families. We're
all just guessing. We don't have any idea what we're talking about, Chief,
So what exactly does that look like? And can the public assist with
that? Sure, we take donations from the public, but typically we'll go
out with the volunteer staff and we'll deliver five families Christmas. We start by
going to the SRO School Resource Officers trying to find find those families that would
be in need and try to help them out that way, so it takes
a strain off of their Christmas and providing food primarily in the baskets. Yeah.
Sure, so we'll deliver Command staff will deliver baskets to each family and
just wish them Merry Christmas and try to, you know, help that relationship
that may be suffering strong ways. But we want the community to know that
we care about everybody and we're trying to take care of everybody. Well,
I certainly appreciate that. If somebody wants to help you, Chief, who
would they call. They would call Jennifer Purdue and she's our administrative assistant at
nine one eight three three eight four zero five zero. Okay, well,
thank you Chief on that. So real quick here let's talk holiday safety.
What do people need to be aware of this time of year. Well,
that's time of year. You know when we talked about trash earlier a little
bit, but when you take out your trash any oarge items, try to
break those down so people don't really see what you have going into the trash
box Wise, big TV boxes, you don't want sitting out in front if
box outside TV and easy math. That's right. If you're going to be
gone from the holidays, try to have somebody to whatt your house. Set
timers on the lights inside, make sure the outside is taking care of for
the bushes around the front doors or the exterior windows or trim back, so
don't give people a hiding spot. People can see see who's there, and
you can see who's there when you're coming home. So a lot of different
things. Make sure you lock your doors, and that's that's important. Vehicles
this timing years, we also have a lot of vehicle burgeries to make sure
you lock those doors as well. All right, Chief, well, I
appreciate it, and we will. We'll bring you back. And we've got
some discussion about neighborhood watching sentinel programs that we still will continue the next time.
Absolutely flower land where emotions are expressed in creativity is delivered