Check the raidar to make sure that it's raining in the lakes, because I
can't tell you how many times it's rained here and not there. But today
it looks like it got all of us, and well it'll be. It
will be hours and hours and hours before we know what the result of that
is on the lakes. But of course Hula was already full, so that
was good news, and it's continuing to get some water into it. Copane
is the one that we're still uncertain about. It doesn't have a tremendous effect
on our water supply, I think to being pulled to plug it the Buyom
kind of see. Not a big effect on our water supply, But our
neighbors to the North Caney and Copan and the rural water districts that they serve,
they desperately need water in that basin. So we'll be watching that today
as much out of interest for them as for anything else. But so,
but jumping that's I kind of jumped ahead because Terry's the Terry is. He's
got to catch his breath. He just ran up the steps. We're trying
out some new nicknames for it. Yeah, he's rarely on time toall,
rarely was. This was pretty good. I mean, he came in right
of the wire. This is about all we can do with him. But
we're trying out some new nicknames for him. Kelly Williams had nicknamed him the
Sucker of fun. Oh yeah, it was. It's suiting Tom. You
don't know him, you don't know him the way we do. It's shooting.
But now we're trying out with the rain maker because now now every time
I see him, it's raining, So that's a good thing. He's still
he thinks that fun sucker is more appropriate for himself. Well I think his
wife children probably agree as well. I love it when Terry sits back there
because he's not even near a microphone. He can't defend himself if you wanted
to, Tom, can we keep him back there all the time? But
he's in spitball range, glowering. So you give people half a day after
What the heck's are doing with that? Yeah? Yeah, So we got
a couple of announcements and that's one of them. So we do. We've
got a for the first time ever and it's tomorrow, January ninth. That's
the ninth, right, Yeah, yeah, So for the first time ever,
My knowledge. We are pulling together all the employees of the City of
Barlsville and attempting to communicate with them sort of the things that we communicate with
the community. So we get often on a regular basis, we get a
request to go give a state of the city, how are things going,
And unfortunately, that's really difficult to provide that same information to our employees because
we're a twenty four to seven operation. So I understand, We're we're gonna
get Yeah, you do understand, don't you. We are. We're gonna
give this a try. So tomorrow at nine thirty, most of the city
operations will close and we'll open again till one thirty, and we're just gonna
spend some time with our employees talking about how things are going, what's happening
in our community, and what they can expect over the next couple of years.
So will it be We will feed them lunch. That's how we're gonna
get them there. That food, You feed them and they will come.
So that's a city employees, it's a guarantee. So but yeah, that's
so that's coming up. We're looking forward to that tomorrow. Couple of other
things, well, one other announcement and then we'll talk about the council meeting
last week. But so the cleanup coupons should be coming out this month,
I think, Jason, do you know when they actually go in the bills
about this month under these cycle bimbis to the that would be my guess.
So I had seen someone who was concerned because they didn't get theirs yet,
but I think they were too early. Come on until the Elvis' birthday.
We got a little month, we got a little while ago. So yeah,
they will, they'll, they should. You'll definitely get those. If
you don't have them by your next bill in February, let us know and
we can always always provide an extra no concerns there. So, but last
week at the council meeting, there were a couple of items and actually pretty
substantial items. One of them that was one of my favorites was the Bartwell
Development Authority presented to the council and the latest economic deal that we have that
we've had come to us, and this one is Lincoln Electric. This is
a manufacturer from the Northeast. They are looking to expand their operations substantially.
And so most people remember the old Seamens building. It's now I believe it
was the West Industrial Facility or something of that nature that had been renamed to
But the old Semens facility was purchased by the Bartlesviille Development Authority a number of
years ago with the intent of preserving it for economic development and they were very
successful with this. So Lincoln Lincoln Electric is looking to bring one hundred jobs
to Bartlesvielle. This is a very very substantial increase to the job base and
they will be receiving a one point five million dollars incentive to locate there,
and they're purchasing the building and so that is great news. There is also
a reservation for the resident recruitment program for anybody that Lincoln Electric brings with them.
We want them to live here and not just up the street in o
Wassaw. And so there is an available basically ten thousand dollars per person who
chooses to live in Bartlesville if they'll come and join us. So detailing potential
workers in an award winning movie was shot. Now, that's right, that's
right, it's absolutely that's very famous building. Now, huh. Sure we
had Killers of the Flower Moon situated there. For all of the months that
they were here. So but anyway, that is that was great news,
and it was it really kind of capped off. Granted the announcement was made
in January, but it really capped off a great calendar year from last year,
a lot of effort that was put in by the BDA. Sure,
they actually had three announcements that I think totaled over two hundred and sixty jobs.
There was Blue Whale, there's an ABB expansion, and now we have
Lincoln Electrics. So great year, great year, and good news for the
citizens of Bartlesville. We have more employment opportunities and more higher wages and more
well for all of us. So I like that. It's hard to not
like that, right. One of the other items that we talked about at
the council meeting was a settlement agreement, and it's actually a class action lawsuit
against a couple of large corporations dealing with pfasts and other classes of chemicals that
are very similar. These are those forever chemicals that you're hearing a lot about.
These are the settlement with I think it was three M and DuPont.
Those settlements. The settlement language is a little unclear we're not sure exactly what
it would exempt them from in the manner of liability. So after discussions with
some very qualified attorneys, the city elected to withdraw from that settlement, with
the reason being that we want to investigate our options without being part of that
settlement. So we're not we weren't very excited about the terms that settlement.
Would believe that it may it may give them, it may release them from
liability that's not contemplated at this point in time, and so we would rather
not be part of that. But we will be examining our own options.
So for anybody who was asking why, the why was is we want to
be certain that we that we did the right thing, and the right thing
right now is for us to examine this individually rather than being part of class.
So that'll will hopefully, well, we'll come back with that at some
point in time, but it'll be a while, you know how long these
things take to develop. And then the only other thing really well, there
was a couple of other things, but we'll they'll I'll let I'll let the
directors here talk about that. One of the other things that was discussed.
It's still a pretty big, pretty important issue. Is the potential charter changes.
The council actually did approve some preliminary language that will that would go on
a future ballot if they choose to call the election, and so these are
just to summarize them at their highest level. There's really three major categories.
The first one is elections, and we would extend. It would be extending
the council terms from two years to three years. It would stagger the terms.
Right now, they all expire in the same year. And then it
would move the elections to April. Right now, they're in November, which
is when all the national elections are. This would move it to April,
when all of the other local elections are, so this is when you have
school board elections and all of your statutory city in town elections. So it
would move us back with them and get us off of the state and federal
elections. Recall there was a proposed change to the recall provision. This is
if you want to recall a city council member. The change was that the
signatures would have to be gathered in one hundred and eighty days. Right now,
there is really no limit on that, and we're uncertain if that means
that you could spend ten years getting signatures for a recall petition, So this
simply puts some barriers around that and better defines it. We also extended the
amount of time that the city clerk has to do his duties. He receives
a recall petition. Under our current charter, he has ten days to verify
all of those signatures, and that could be a very substantial amount of work.
So we're proposing that thatd be moved to thirty days, which should be
sufficient time for the clerk's office to do with their duties. And then our
current charter prohibits a recall in the first four months of a council member's term,
but it did not prohibit it in the last four months of a councilor's
term. And the last four excuse me, the last four months don't make
a lot of sense that you would go to the trouble and the expense of
having a recall election when that council member will be coming up for re election.
I believe that the election process is a better method of determining their worthiness
than the recall protection the recall provisions, So those were the two biggest ones.
Then there is something that is more internal. It deals with purchasing this
right now, when we purchase things, we have to determine whether it's a
con or Materials and supplies and contracts are treated completely differently and they have a
totally different set of rules, which frankly aren't as stringent as the rules for
materials and supplies. So we're proposing that contracting and materials and supplies all be
treated the same. That it would unify those rules and so that required some
changes to the charter to get that done. But so those are really the
three big sections. If the Council does choose to proceed with this, which
they haven't yet. They've approved the language, but they still have to call
the election. If they do choose to proceed with this. We're proposing that
the election would be held in April this year, so that would be April
twenty twenty four US sour that's the local election time, So that would be
that would be the intent. So right now, again, anybody who's interested,
the next step would be for the Council to call an election. Everyone
our meetings are open to the public. Everyone's welcome to attend and let the
council know their thoughts on this or you don't have to wait. If your
council members, their contact information is available on our website Cityobartlesfield dot org.
You're welcome to reach out to them. You're welcome to reach out to myself
or to the city clerk and anyone you believe needs to hear what you think
about this. And we've heard different things. There are a lot of people
that are very much in support of that. There are some that are concerned
more about moving from the national election date to the local election date. But
I believe that we've addressed those questions adequately, and we've had a lot of
discussions, in a lot of debate, and we believe that that local election
date in April is better suited for local elections because you're going to get more
attention on your local elections in the national elections. It is difficult, and
it also one of the council members mentioned, it's very expensive, so to
run a campaign in November, it is much more expensive all of your advertising
and billboards and all of those things. Because of the demand put on by
national campaigns. It's harder to get radio time, it's harder to get billboards.
So we'll make May time just added at a couple of minutes a day.
Right, we're good. Which yet, which end of the day should
we add it to? Huh? Which in the end of the day should
we had it? Oh, well, we'll just greet it, just squeeze
it in, we'll make it happen. So but that's that was a majority
of the council meeting. However, at the beginning of the council meeting,
we actually had a chance to celebrate the accomplishments of some of our officers in
one of our firefighters and I've got Chief Ickleberry here. We had we had
two police officers and a firefighter that were recognized for life saving awards, I
believe, and that was for it was. It was certainly an unusual event,
thankfully usual event. Chief. Let's tellybody about it. Sure. On
November thirtieth and approximately seven thirty in the morning, Lieutenant Chris Neil was on
his way to work, headed down west on Adams when he saw a vehicle
that was coming up the hill on Adams there by the lows immediately take a
left turn heading north across the lanes down the embankment there by the soccer few
across the soccer fields and launching to Lee Lake. He stepped into quick actions,
radioed it in to dispatch let him know what was going on. He
followed it into the area and another officer, Sergeant Steve Johnson, was also
on the way that we're into work as well as a off duty firefighter apparently
I believe he was either on the way home or coming in. But anyhow,
Chris Buchanan and they followed the Chris kneeling into the area and they entered
the water, tried to rescue the guy out of the vehicle. The vehicle
doors were locked. They ended up breaking breaking the window gaining access access into
the vehicle. Chris pulled Chris Buchanan pulled him out of the vehicle, and
the three pulled him up onto the bank to render aid to him. EMS
got there pretty quickly after that, and he was given medical attention and transport
to the local hospital. So their quick action, we feel like say was
saved his life. He was in a medical emergency and he survived that emergency.
So we're very thankful for that. It's just perfect timing. So absolutely
something bad was going to happen. Grateful that his course he had, as
you said, he had a medical event that caused him to veer off the
road. Thankfully no one else was injured. It was very dangerous. And
then thankfully are our employees, our our two police officers and our our firefighter
were there to pull him and render aid. It's one of those things that
not being certain what the extent of the medical emergency was, but even that
left untreated, could have could have sure could have resulted in his chests.
So I'm grateful to those those individuals, those gentlemen. They did a great
job. Absolutely, it's what what, of course, what we expect from
them, but it is always nice to see it demonstrated. Yes, sir,
I got cold all over again when you yes, because we we got
that just about the time that it happened, man, And it was a
chilly morning. Yeah, that was good to be a water. Can you
imagine? I can't, And you know, so hats off to everybody.
No time to put on the protective gear that no when we go into water.
No, no, no, it was they just went right in.
So oh goodness. Jason says, it's about like being your server room tall
for this kind of call. You put in it every day, all right,
Chief, And we also had one other award. This one was given
by an outside agency. Grand Mental Health came and provided an award to one
of our officers as well. Sure, so, as most people know,
we've been talking about it for quite a while now, we started the Crisis
Intervention Response Team. Last actually started at December I believe it was of twenty
two went all year. They've been doing some good workout on the Pathfinder as
well throughout the community, trying to take care of the homeless and the mental
health and so Grant recognize that effort and awarded Officer Cee are companiment with the
Officer of the Year award. I believe they have twelve counties they service,
and so we're one of those twelve counties and good to be part of that
network. And so we're very proud of her for her achievement in that.
And I know that there are other communities throughout the United States who use models
similar to what we do, but in our region, what we're doing is
very unique, and I'm grateful to you and to the former Chief Tracy Roles
for investing in our community in this way. This is not traditional policing,
but we do believe that this is what is necessary to deal with the types
of crimes and emergencies that the police deal with today. So yes, sir,
I'm very, very proud of Sierra. It's not the first award that
she's received, and I'm certain it won't be the last. She's been an
exceptional officer since she was hired, and I'm glad that she's part this part
of this team. So well, thank you, Chief, I appreciate it.
We did have you also had an event. I'm not sure exactly what
it was. I think it was towards the end of last year. You
had an event dealing with neighborhood, getting ready to have that, getting ready
to have had you had that. You had the mental health one earlier late
last year. We're trying to find topics that people are interested in, that
really want to know things about, and keep them informed. And so November
the eighteenth, which I believe is a Thursday night, sixth I'm sorry,
I say November. You're just a bad ye. Neither one of us know
where we are when we are thankful to be here though, that was friend
Thanksgiving January the eighteenth, so it was just still right to check. Sorry
about that, you say a long time January the eighteenth, at twenty twenty
four, at six point thirty, we'll be having a neighborhood Watch meeting at
City All in the Chamber Chamber Room there invite any body that's interested in any
type of neighborhood watch program throughout the community, starting one up. This is
actually part of our Bartlesville Next Project, that strategic plan, and we're trying
to move forward on that and try to get as many people involved as possible
for us the neighborhood watch side of things, and we would really like to
have people come out to be part of that. It's an informational forum and
we want to let people know what it looks like in the neighborhoods. We
plan on utilizing the different ones and just try to meet your neighbor, you
know, get everybody involved, and you know, the biggest thing you can
do for a neighborhood watch program is know your neighbor and and befriend your neighbors
so that you can really take care of each other. So know your neighbors
and watch out for each other and don't be afraid to call nine on one
when you see something that's so it's generally better that they do that than to
try to address it themselves. Absolutely, we've had some tragedies that we faulted
from that. Yeah, certainly utilize your resources, but it really does take
a village anymore. Uh. And so for anybody who is interested in how
they can they can reduce crime and make their neighborhoods safer, please come out
and join us. You said it was January eighteenth, January eighteen, six
thirty, City Hall, six thirty at City Hall. All right, well,
thank you, Chief, I appreciate that. And we have the rain
maker here with us Aka, the sucker of joy. Sucker of joy.
It depends on the day. It just depends on the day. Terry,
Well, today it's raining, so it's weird we have we have occasion to
be joyful. Yes, So what are our water restrations? Terry? None?
None. We are in the first time we've been able to say that
in a while. It has been in over a year, truthfully, so
we're very thankful for the rains that really started with the Christmas weekend rain that
really benefit of Hula. So it was a little unusual, right, we
don't normally get a lot of rain at this time of the last of course,
I've poured over data more than I wanted to here to miss Man can
tell you more about rainfall in this region years. So the CORE has a
fantastic website. They archive their data that's successful online. I've yet, I've
gone through roughly about twenty years worth of data. They have never received that
type of rein event in that time frame, so that's how unusual it was.
But we're extremely thankful for it. It was a Christmas git it.
It was Christmas miracle to it's all. But that ran event really added well
increased the lake elevation that HeLa for about three and a half feet, so
it took it from just under the what's called the water conservation pool or stage
into the flood control So the CORE with both Heala and Copen have different zones
that are designated for a specific use, so water supplies what they call water
conservation, and then they have a significant flood control portions. And those lakes
were built primarily for flood control. So Heal Lake is in its flood control
capacity right now. The Core is releasing water a little bit more than normal
just to free that space up because it is reserved for flood control. And
they have a policy to try to get it back to that state as as
quickly as spot there, trying to prevent any potential downstream flooding, right,
which we appreciate as well since we're downstream. Absolutely, Yeah, it's kind
of a mixed bag. We want that water stored in there. We'd rather
hold it a little longer, I'm sure, But then again, you know,
in eighty six they had an incident where they've managed the lakes a little
bit differently and it resulted in a very significant flood event. So it's a
fine line to on management of those lakes in the water within it. It
really is. So well, that was good news. So we've had no
restrictions. If anybody missed that, we are completely off of water restrictions and
we're looking forward. We anticipate that would be the case for a while here,
hopefully throughout spring, and hopefully we can get back to normal and we
won't be facing water restrictions at all next year. But we can't promise that
or predict it. It really is dependent on rainfall. But as far as
our search for additional water supply, now you and I we've had this discussion
droughts or droughts and so when you have significant droughts, you will likely always
have some type of water restrictions because conservation is always going to be one of
the tools that we have to use. However, to increase our water stability
long term, to ensure that conservation and normal methods are enough, we've continued
to look at additional water supply, and in fact, we've got we're trying
to schedule a Barsville Water Resources Committee meeting and so we'll have a little bit
of an update for them at that point in time. But can you give
give everybody kind of a quick glimpse at where we are now. Yeah,
so we have and even with the Water Resources Committee's recent action, we continue
to look for potential water additional water supply at Heugh Lake, Copan Lake,
and Call Lake as well as there is an aquifer in central Osage County that
we're investigating as well. So all water supply takes quite a bit of time
to kind of go through and investigate and to kind of figure out all the
details and costs and what have what have you that are associated with it.
So one of the options that we are looking at is to convert some of
the flood control at both Hugh Lake and Copan Lake to water supply or to
water conservation, so that that entails a significant change in how those lakes are
managed. That effort goes through the CORE, and so we've initiated a study
through the Core through a planning Assistance to States program that they have available that
will look at what all the steps to change the management of the lake in
that threshold and the store more water both at Heugh Lake and Copan Lake,
which would make it available for water supply. They are still waiting i think,
for funding federal funding through their budget allocation, which I don't think has
been officially set yet since there's a little bit of turmoil on the budgeting process
there in Washington, d C. So once they get that resolved, we
are in the top of the list as far as the funding that goes with
it. Playing Assistance to State's study involves a fifty to fifty match, so
the CORE covers fifty percent of the cost and the city covers the other fifty
percent. And so if that once their funding gets squared away, I'm confident
that will get approval for that project, and it'll take at least six to
nine months to go through that It's a significant study, absolutely, because they're
looking at not only the loss or the additional risk that is going to be
potentially encountered downstream because of the loss of flood control, also the environmental aspects
of the lake, the recreational impacts to the lake and to their use as
well. So a fairly comprehensive study to look at all those things to see
if that's a viable option for us to pursue. And so that's our that
is probably our top option that we're looking at, is this reallocation, which
will allow the lakes to store substantially more water than they do now. One
of the other things to increase lake capacity that we hear about and talk about
often is dredging, And I think there's an impression that somehow the city has
ruled out dredging. The reality is we haven't ruled it out. It's just
that it's difficult with the environmental regulations that exist around dredging and the size of
the project. It doesn't it costs more than what we're proposing to do now,
and it has an uncertain even approval if we were to try to pursue
it. So it's not it's not that we would never consider it. It's
that it doesn't in this at this current time, that it's not nearly as
cost effective as what we're looking at for the reallocation, and the reallocation where
relatively certain we can get approved relatively certainly. Yeah, So it was an
item that the CORE recommended back in two thousand and six, and so we
know that it is feasible, not dredging, real re allocation. Dredging they
did not recommend for all these reasons we're talking about, right, So we
feel confident that some form of reallocation will be viable to pursue, and it's
really a matter of timing. So even to go through this study and to
do the mitigation that's required with it, it is probably a five year process
from beginning to end, and that will in essence increase the storage in those
lakes at least a hulo by about fifty percent. And so from a time
time frame standpoint, that's very quick. Now, if we look at dredging,
the dredging permitting process will take us about two to three years at a
minimum, and that's if it's even a and there's a lot of unknowns for
costs, specifically with the dredge material and disposal of it. So, as
many people probably know, there's a little trace amount of mercury in every living
being, so there will be mercury in that sediment or in that material that
we would dredge. So the big unknown is where can we dispose of that
material that does contain a heavy metal. And then if we're able to dispose
of it fairly close to that basin, the cost will be significant, but
maybe not quite a significant if we have to haul that to a hazardous landfield
site. So the ballpark costs to dispose of that within the twenty mile radius
of the lake is about one hundred and fifty million dollars, and so that
would gain us about seven to eight million galls of water a day. But
if we do the reallocation, for example a hula, that would cost us
about ten million dollars and that would net us about ten million gawns worth of
water day. It's really a cost perspective that this is by far the most
cost effective option to pursue and has some of the best timing as far as
how quickly were we going to accomplish it so real quick that obviously leaves a
gap in time at which we'll still be susceptible in the same risk we are
today for drought. So we're also looking to develop potential emergency plans that would
provide additional pattible or raw water that would be something that we could call out
on demand. So not really ready to discuss those, and we don't have
enough time to we can if they wish to call me, uh, because
we're talking about water weave me nine eight three three eight. We've done a
number of studies, a lot of investigation with it. I'd be happy to
share that with you. We do have those links on city Beat and through
the website. Uh, so they're the information is out there, uh,
and we're happy to share sure. Absolutely, all right, thank you very
much. You've been listening to City Back the Tea, Compassion Excellence, Stuffing
Home, Crematory