In k one, the one you trust, and it's our city matters version
today and we're talking with his honor the Mayor and Mayor Dale Cope. And
how are you doing this? Good Tom. It's a beautiful day in the
ville. The temperatures are down. We've got a little rain last night.
It's all good, all right, Well, you know, talking about the
water here, we'll get to that. I guess here first, A little
surprised to hear that we were down a little bit at Hila Lake considering all
the rain we had. We've had a lot of rain. Of course,
most of it still continues to fall south of the watershed. But even when
there is rain there, unless there's a lot like there was a few weeks
ago, evaporation absorption, you're gonna have losses if no water is taken out.
The core has increased the release slightly. I believe they're up to fourteen
or fifteen qubic feet per second. They have other requirements to release water just
to keep the river flowing for a quatic life and other reasons have nothing to
do with water supply Bartlesville. So you'll see small releases from both Cope and
Angela. All right, but we're okay. We're still in stage one,
which means it's a mighty good idea to conserve, but we're not gonna We're
not gonna write you take it. It's always a good idea to conserve.
It's just the right thing to do. It's a good idea to take care
of controlling trash and all those things that are encouraged. But no, we
don't have a stage two or three or thankfully a four crisis, so we're
encouraging conservation. And honestly, this time of year. We talked last night
at council meeting, it's not unusual in late July and August to see eight,
ten, twelve million gallons per day of water use and we're still holding
in the six million, six point two, So it's up from what it
was. We were down four point one four point three, and it's been
gradually climbing, but not what it has been in the past. So I
think people are still doing a good job overall. And it is the first
of August, it's hot out there, and sure is nice thing that happened.
We always remember people who have a done law for a city and done
well by our kids as well. Jusin Barrs tell us a little bit about
that there are so many people in Bartlesville we couldn't name them. We'd leave
a lot of people out. But last night we had opportunity. The Parks
Board had reviewed, the Community Development Department had reviewed a request from the soccer
club to add a name to the Robinwood Soccer Complex, if you will,
and the council agreed and voted to name that the Joe Bars Soccer Complex.
There's already a signboard there that will be updated, upgraded, painted, and
a sign that looks like the rest of the signs that you see around town.
Those signs have been very well received. Pathfinder identifying parks downtown what's called
wayfinding. They haven't happened yet, and I can tell you that a future
plan that's going to happen, hopefully before too many weeks or months, is
where you come into town on the south side of the north side will be
these new big I think they're like nineteen feet wide and twelve or thirteen feet
tall Welcome to Bartlesville signs that will be of the same style that we already
have. So lots of good things happening, and that was just added to
that to recognize someone who put a lot of their life into soccer for our
youth in town, and the soccer club wanted to recognize him. There's a
lot of kids playing it, it's for sure. We got some new equipment
at city Hall. How's it working. We're still working on it, as
you know, probably both than anybody. Tom technology just keeps going. By
the time you get something, it's already out of date by the time it
gets delivered. But our cameras and sound system were a little behind the curve,
will say. So they have installed the new cameras, still tweaking and
adjusting, particularly the sound. We'd like to have something that picks up nicely
from around the room. On the other hand, you have background noise,
so there's a constant balancing there. But you will notice if you watch online
that the video has improved pretty radically, and we're still working with the sound,
but that is getting better too, and that is just intended. I
think the theme last night perhaps was transparency. We want more people who choose
to Maybe they don't have interest, but anyone who's interested can come to a
council meeting certainly, but they can watch online. It's live streamed. It's
also recorded usually by the next morning, and I checked this morning. A
company that does that for is called swag. It has already taken that and
edited added labels so that if you're only interested in a reasoning, this's item
number six, you can jump directly to item number six. Watch that,
you can back up, watch it again, you can stop it. It's
a great way to say did I hear that right? Or did I miss
something? Too Often people here's something I don't know at the grocery store,
and that becomes fact. It's very easy to go see what actually happened and
see exactly what the council. I talked to some folks last night. I
see the same packet that I get, Like this week was one hundred and
sixty some pages. You have access to six hundred pages whatever it is,
the same graphs, the same charts, the s same information that all of
the council sees is available to everyone. So this idea of transparency and allowing
people, if they choose to get the same information and to go back and
review and get updated rather than perhaps a rumor or a hearsay, and get
the facts and get them right the first time. We're very interested in that
and continue to work this new audio video system as we get that fine tune
and tweak will make that even better. Well, you've got a good chance
to break in some of that stuff. Last night you had about about fourteen
different citizens go back and forth with the council understanding, and I don't think
everybody understands during public comment, the mayor, the vice mayor, and anyone
up there at the day, it's really can't respond. No, it's citizens
to be heard, it's not citizens to be debated, are discussed, and
there's reasons for that. One of them is Oklahoma meetings law that says that
we can only discuss agenda items and act upon them. Agenda items must be
posted forty eight hours two business days prior to a meeting, so we always
post on a Thursday before a Monday meeting because weekends don't count. And we're
more than happy to hear the comments, the concerns. Every once in a
while you get an out of boy, but to hear what people have to
say. Back to the transparency and openness. But we're also restricted into what
we're able to do, and there's good reasons for that. I have nothing
against the open meetings law, but not every as you say, not everybody
understands that, and they say, well, why didn't they respond? I
wanted to engage and I tell people call me, come come visit. I
stayed after a council meeting last night and visited with folks that had questions,
and they just didn't understand. I've come to call it my did you know?
Because people say, well, I don't visit or there there, so
well did you know? Well, they didn't know. And after you visit
with people, it's they may still not like something, but at least they
understand more of why and how we got to the place we are. Do
you mind if we go into a did you know? No? Okay,
the concern last night with some was about the Pride event and possibly a drag
show. Tell us the did you know? Well? I think, having
been pretty much immersed in that for almost a year, I know I think
that people to understand the council in many other groups, but in our case,
the council is under oath to not only operate according to state law,
federal law, the constitutions, and whether we agree with all use something silly
a speeding limit. I think the speech, but I'm still bound by that
and I ignored at my own peril. I can work to change that,
and certainly I think that's being done, but in the meantime, we are
constrained by what we can do. In that particular instance, a group of
people came and brought a petition that said, we do not like to have
an event of this type in a public space, the outdoor park, and
the result was an agreement to have that moved indoors and not in a public
park. Then the focus appeared to change for some folks who said, well,
but there were these other things that we prefer, and that was not
attainable at present. Who knows what the future holds, but that has created
some confusion and a lot of misunderstanding. So I think that in the end,
just about everybody in Bartlesville was concerned and wanted to make things the best
they could be. An agreement was reached to move that particular event out of
that outdoor public space. So you know, the did you know part was
like I say, it's a silly example. But if I don't like a
speed limit, if I don't like some other restriction that government places, I
can work to change it. But if I ignore it, there will be
repercussions. And I did not feel, and I think other council members exposing
all of the citizens of Bartlesville to those possible repercussions. When we had an
agreement that achieved at least a part of the goal that was being sought by
an agreement between people willing to work together reasonably, very good. Hey,
did you know the streets are going to get fixed at least some of them?
Okay, well there's another Did you know we're never going to get them
all? I believe our director of engineering gave us an estimate that to do
all of the streets, even if we had the capacity both the trucks and
the asphalt and the money, would be over one hundred million dollars. And
for a community our size, that's just not reasonable. What we are proposing,
and we're going to ask the voters to approve at a general obligation bond
we call them GEO bonds. On October tenth is a seventeen point six million
dollar GEO bond that will include twelve million of that for streets. We feel
like that we need to put more into streets. We need to commit to
try and move the needle. We use the thing. He's a lot of
shorthand government and every other thing, but called PCI. PCI stands for Pavement
Condition Index. Okay. We have a company come in that goes down every
single street and records that street's condition, what's the pavement, what's under the
pavement. They have a device that I don't know if it's echo or radar,
but anyway, it looks at that what's the curbs and then we rate
them. And then once you know that the street is rated a twelve or
a ninety six or a forty nine out of one hundred, you can decide
what streets deserve attention first. And unfortunately, if it's a major arterial like
Frank Phillips, it will get attention before a cul de sac where there are
four houses. They're both important, but Frank Phillips has so much more traffic.
Last night, we did a contract somewhere here I wrote it down for
with me. I'm sorry I didn't come prepared with that. And that's okay,
six hundred seventy six thousand, four hundred seven dollars and fifty two cents
for an asphalt rehabilitation of Delaware and Clear Creek Loop, so those two streets
have come up. That was a bond issue that was approved in twenty two,
and at least the funding was provided in twenty two. That's the other
thing. A lot of people say, well, there's a bond issue every
year. We generally sell bond amounts, but if there was ten million,
we might do three million this year and five million the next year. And
the goal of that is we try to keep our bond commitment to fifteen mills.
Now people say my taxes went up, well, your assessment may go
up because your house value was raised by the county assessor. Are the schools
are the county. That's all combined. But the City of Bartlesville has worked
for as long as I can remember decades to hold it a fifteen mill levy.
So as we pay off bonds, then we would sell more. So
every year there's a bond sale. There is not a bond issue every year,
but there is a bond sale, and that provides the funding to do
these street projects and other things, parks and all the other things that the
voters approved. I understand we have a big contract that was also approved with
the firefighters. Yes, we have two groups that we negotiate with the police
and the fire. Police signed actually a two year agreement some months ago,
the firefighters. Last night we were able to come to agreement with the iff
and get another agreement for a year that everybody found acceptable. That's very important.
Our police and fire makeup about fifty percent of our budget for operating,
and obviously public safety is critical. I tell people, you don't care about
a firetruck until you need one. You'd like it to be there in about
two minutes and working and working. So that was important, and I think
that now we can move forward and keep doing the business of the city.
Very good, Very good. Well, it is summertime, and like we
said, we're getting a little bit of a reprieve now, but it's we
still have. We still have the rest of August and hall of September to
worry about the heat. We do, and I tell people, you know,
some of us stand the heat better than others. There was a time
a few years ago, Tom that I hauled hey for four years. I'm
a slow learner. It took me four summers of that, but I was
younger, and we didn't even ask what the temperature was. You got on
that truck and you did it, throw those bales around and thought that you
were okay. Today, I don't think I can do that. But my
point there is think about people, your neighbors, your friends, your family
members. Just check in on folks. Sometimes an air conditioner quits are someone
has an issue, and by the time that happens, they might not be
able to get the help they need. So just look out for each other.
It's that time of year. It's the right thing to do. Speaking
of that time of year, guess what happens on Thursday. The kids are
excited. Some are excited for good reasons and some not. But school starts
most of the schools in the area on Thursday. I know Bartlesville, and
that means those buses are going to be out. These kids are excited.
They got their new clothes and their haircuts or whatever. Starts at school and
they're wanting to go see their friends. They might not be looking when they
run across the street. And if you're in a hurry, We're are always
in a hurry, but slow down. I can tell you the police will
be paying special attention to these school zones. We need to keep our kids
safe, so watch the crosswalks. Watch the little ones. They move fast
and they can be from there to here quicker than you think. So slow
down, get there a couple of minutes late, or leave a couple of
minutes early. But watch out for our kids.