Good money, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
It's time now for city matters. If it matters to you, it
matters to the city. We've got Vice Mayor James Curry Jr. And the
new guy. How you doing, Quinn Ship. Thank you, that's a
great morning. And welcome to the city council. Thank you. It's going
to be back in the steer. Have make sure I have the right hat
on. Here you go. Well, we wanted to bring mister Shipper in
this morning, and welcome to the Borloo City Council. You had a good
meeting last night and we're very pleased with all the applicants. We had a
lot of good applicants and but at the end of the day, mister Ship
approved to be a very asset in to the community in the past, and
I think we all very unanimous. We felt he'd be a good addition to
the council. Well, you've been here for just a few years, Quinn.
But if you dove right in once you got here, something to deep
end ye there coming up on four years the end of this month. Actually,
So you came here from Denton, Texas. We're in Denton, Texas
for three years, but lived in Stillwater for twenty two years before that,
so we're not strangers to Bartlesville. My background. I've talked about this before.
I think about with the Franklin right a school of architecture of the Price
family, and once we moved to Stillwater got involved with the Price to our
Art center. And we've always loved Bartlesville. You know, drop a hat
something going on Bartlesville. We'd be over here, so might as well move
here. I We'll move here. Here we are now you're on the city
council. Great. Yeah, an interesting meeting last night, Pathfinder. Finally
we got some we did. We did finally we were chatting about this morning.
It's been a not over long, overdue, but it's been just kind
of caught up in the windmill of getting things done out of the city.
Starting in twenty nineteen, we put some money together in the bond issue,
and then we put some more money together in twenty twenty one. And so
if we finally got the plans drawn up, it's in our city packet,
I said last night on at our meeting, very extensive drawings of what will
be addressed throughout there, and several really key areas that needed new pathfinder put
in will be removed, various parts that will be putting in, a new
drainage system to keep the water off the paths. So a lot of great
improvements coming our way on the pathlinder next couple months. And I kid had
thought that hopefully they'd be starting tomorrow, but actually they will be starting this
fall. They've just got to get a few more things cleared and ready to
go, and they'll be keyed up and ready to go this fall hopefully.
One of the things that the council took a look at was the nice little
thing we have for people are moving here to work and you reauthorized that tell
us a little bit about that. Well, the BDA has an incentive program
again in twenty twenty one, I believe every years. I don't want to
be quoted on the exact amounts, but their incentives that people are coming here
to rent or if they were to build or by bye, yes thank you,
and also with primarily with major employers, but I think they're looking at
both. It was approved to extend the program right which has been a real
plus for the community because you get people living here, then the kids are
in school and they're buying the groceries and doing stuff in town. And so
I don't know where the branch old for that. I'm sure it was with
leaders of the BBA. We've had one hundred and eleven people utilize the program
somewhere on the rental program originally and then have gone over and bought the home.
And so it's one hundred and eleven families that have located here that could
have We're incentivized to stay here as opposed to living Awas or Collins Bill somewhere
south of us. We've had we struggled for years with a lot of our
employers employees living working here, but living elsewhere. And over the past six
or eight years we've done a lot to try to improve choices, improve retail
choices, and make it a more viable community when they look at it.
But now we've also put on top of that and then sent it to home
here and live in our community rather than just come in for the day and
work and go home and look what's happened. We've got the electric company,
Lincoln Electric, Blue Whale coming out there. ABB is making bigger improvements too
of bringing in people. This has worked out well. This is a win
win win win win. Yeah, and even connic Or Philip sixty six bot
Marathon Oil yes, recently. So that's a I could hopefully someday, you
know, add some more future employees to the town too. So, as
we discussed, and I brought up last night, we've got a currently kind
of kind of a housing shortage, and I think I was asking mister Batchelter
to kind of key that back up hopefully at the BDA, to see what
we can do to try to incentivize builders locally first and then beyond local builders
to come into the area and develop some more property, because we've got to
have some homes for people that are upwardly mobile and moving up from their first
home looking for a home, and then we've got to certainly have some homes
for new employees they're working for these companies to locate here and live here.
Oh indeed, indeed, Yeah, And homes are like not that available.
There aren't that many homes for sale in town, and they turn over pretty
quickly. Doo. Yeah. Another thing coming up here too is that carry
Cox made a very interesting presentation last night to both the council and to the
county commissioners. Where you guys kind of get together and join forces, you
know, wonder twins, And it was about making a nice little notification system
so that you don't have to blast out everything to everybody. You can only
hit the areas you need to hit, kind of take an ex cue from
the city there. From that little thing that we got going, Yeah,
no, it was Lauren made a good point one to make sure we're not
duplicating our efforts. But you can never get enough information out quick enough,
true to all the service organizations, emergency organizations, when certain things happen in
the community where you want to notify them of just mundane issues or urgency issues.
So I think it's a good addition for the council to consider in our
budget, which we of course will, to expand that system, make sure
that we can do it easily and effect and talk to more people with the
information that we need to get out. I want to talk to Quinn here
real quick. What made you say, Hey, I've been here for four
years, I want to run for city council. There's a bit of a
segue, maybe in one way, because when we first arrived, I started
attending the city council meetings. I was just interested to learn about the city
government. And except for one month when I was out of the state and
I did watch it on video, I've not missed a City Council meeting live,
and I've been to quite a number of the special meetings. I've also
had the privilege of serving on the City Planning Commission for just a little over
three years, and I do want to give a nod to Billy Rohan.
You know, it was very sobering to be on the dais last night when
I was used to sitting next to Billy on the City Planning Commission, a
couple of committees with her. So pretty early on I started getting engazed with
city affairs and it just felt really honored to have these opportunities. Never imagined
I would have an opportunity to plant. Yeah, so it wasn't like you
were going to run for city council at some point. Maybe if she decided
not to run, he would have been thinking about it. But it was
just a very sobering affair to lose her. But from those things, uh,
she would she would be pleased and very pleased to have Quinn here amongst
us today. So I yes, it was we just carry on business,
you know, the city business just goes on, but we we take time
to reflect in a one a wonderful asset. She'd been to the community,
let alone the council for the last three years. She's been wonderful to have
on there, and Quinn will be a good step in her place. Well,
Quinn, you know you mentioned that you're so hard whied in because you've
been a student of this. Yeah, you know, and this is going
to have to pay up quite a bit because so many people they'll pay attention,
but they're not locked in like that. So this is going to help
you. The City Council always mentions, of course there's an agenda for every
meeting. Sure it's posted well in advance, is on the website, but
there's also a packet of material, and I'm accustomed to like scanning through that
because when I come, I'm not actively participant or haven't been actively participating in
an audience to show support, but I wanted to be aware. Now this
was a bit different because this particular packet was three hundred and fifteen pages long,
because of all the details, and so I encourage citizens, as they
do from the council all the time, go to the packet be informed if
you've got concerns about things or an interest in something like the pathfinder, which
I took her real interest in, because the closest access to where we live
is when this boss is going to be repaired. Great, and you know
they can learn a lot of those sorts of things that come in a bit
informed or subsequently to get some more information. But there's a lot of work
involved working through that. We had a citizen and last night asking about citizen
comment and would like to comment, you know more address certain agenda items,
and I think that comes by reading the packet. You can develop questions and
you can certainly ask those questions at the forefront of the meeting. And I
know as a counselor of somebody where if we were discussing an item and there
was an interesting citizen that want to make a comment for that item, we
would generally always allow that comment to happen. So we want to be opened.
We've got a lot of business. We had a huge consent agenda last
night that took twenty minutes just to read, and then we we oftentimes pulled
things off there. I pulled the one from the airport off there again to
acknowledge the fact we're putting in almost two point two million dollars in there,
and it's going to cost a city about one hundred thousand dollars to improve our
taxiway, open up the new area of the airport for future expansion of hangars.
The BDA is considering building a hangar and we're going to get some federal
money to help build that hanger. So just a lot of good things happening
at the airport. So we would have just passed that and moved on,
but it's fun. It's nice to pull those items off and have city administration
come up and speak to those items and what we're doing in the community.
Well, you know, dazzling little spotlight too. Yeah, that is growth
right there. Now, Quinn, going into this, you're already committed for
this duration. You're going to run for the office in November. Correct,
Yes, Okay, we're willing to do that. You're willing to do that.
He's committed, he's going to do it. That was kind of part
of the interview process. We wanted to make everybody aware that this is such
a very short temporary block and it's a large commitment just for the three months,
but in August, you've got to declare your candidacy for the November election.
So we wanted to make sure that everybody understood that, and we hopefully
had candidates lined up that we're willing to not only serve for the three months,
but certainly put themselves out there for the November election. Also, all
right, I got a question for you. What's your plans ahead? I
mean, why should go into your election? Here? Things? Well,
what is mister courage used to be my city councilman until the redistricting and actually
mounted me. I took my downtown chunk of property, gave it to this
little chunk out from thirteen to show me and over and so one is before
any of this consideration. Because we've talked before about my interest in the city.
Generally, I think it's really important for people to know their ward,
whether they're on the city council or who their council person is. Yeah,
and one thing I find I often ask people like, well, what ward
are you? Who's your city council person, And a lot of people just
don't know. And again, you can go to the city council or the
city website find the maps so long before, like right after the redistricting.
Becky and I just started driving around. I mean, we knew the war
generally, this very diverse war, like we're sitting at right now in your
studio. It's the only war that includes the seat of government for city and
county. We've got RSU, We've got entertainment, arts and tourism, we've
got the gamut is in this ward and it goes from the airport all the
way out to the highway and includes Oak Park. And yeah, it's very
long, and you've got Chuck real estate there. So yeah, So I
think one motivation now that a decision that has been made is just to become
even more intentional about getting acquainted with the ward and your neighborhoods and some of
the different businesses and things that comprise this ward. He's been great at just
understanding of the global efforts of the city and working on the various committees.
But he'll he'll have time now to kind of focus in on his ward and
the t now represents and become better acquainted with the needs of that ward and
the people in that ward. And I think that's what he'll do without any
problem at all. No, Jim, just like you and everyone else should
come in here who are a city council members. I always say, folks,
if you want to get involved, look to get on a board or
a committee and find yourself away in so that you can really get to see
how government works. This is what you did when this is the path you
took. Hey, how many different boards and committees where you are in a
short time? Well, the say Planning Commission, on the Water Resource Committee
and other plant committee And yeah, there's a lot involved with that, and
not everything meets regularly, but some do meet with regularity. But there are
all kinds of opportunities. There are several appointments made to some boards and committees
last night. People can call Elane at the office or go online, make
an application, show what areas have interest, and as spots become available,
there are opportunities then to come on. So I encourage people all the time
consider a board, a commission, a trust, an authority, whatever is
available. And if you've got an interest to make a contribution to the well
being of our city, very good. And when they have interests and complaints
or issues within their ward to contact any of us. We certainly can contact
your own ward representative of contact any of us. We have the administration that
we have complaining to engineering, to our general manager, to our city manager
and assistant city manager. We can get responses to people very quickly if they've
got an issue on the property or drainage issue or so. I've always enjoyed
taking customer issues and bringing them to the to to my ward administrators and I
mean to the city administrators, and I get wonderful answers back to them and
can relate those back to the customers or great citizens. Well, you know
the same thing. We're here to serve, right, We're here to serve
exactly. I mean, we're kind of in the same business here. We're
here to serve the community as well. Well, you're all have done with
the chasing storms lately and being out there. You've done a tremendous job and
conservatis of the community. You know, I want to make one thing clear,
I ain't chasing nothing. I sit right here and make sure everybody's look
your head under the desk, make sure everybody's okay, and the commercials play.
But you know, Kevin and Caleb and Tye and Evan and Chase,
they go run in after those storms. I'm not going boy, are you
crazy? I do. Yeah. So it's kind of like our firemen who
run into burning buildings. You know, why would you do that? Well,
you know, we got to save live. We got to give the
information, let them know where it's, where it's at, and where it's
going and try to save some more lives that would And we did have a
good report from carry last night. Also on our storm shelter program, we're
hopefully going to renew that for another half a million dollars roughly, and we've
yeah, I mean we put a lot of people bought storm shelters through that
program and certainly saved some lives doing that great program. Indeed, Gwinn,
what would you like to say to folks that you haven't been able to say
yet because we've only asked you half a being question. Well, I'm really
truly am honored to have been appointed at the position. And of course none
of us were applicants, knew until last night what that appointment, who would
be appointed to that spot. So I just want to say thank you to
those who had, you know, confidence to show support and encouragement not just
for me, but other applicants as well. And I look forward to working
with not only the team that comprises the city Council, but the city manager
of the city staff, and again with some of the acquaintance already. I
know a lot of these people we've interfaced with different projects, different kinds of
things. So it's just like a bit of a segue. Also a learning
curve. I know there be some of that as well, but there's good
coaches and mentors and teachers out there. You got to skip the budget because
we did a month early. You didn't have to. You didn't have to
drink from LP fire. And following Billy's lead, she used to read every
page of that every page. She had put notes on every page of that
thing. So that's always a great introduction to the council when you first come
on. The budget's basically staring you in the eyes in the mid June or
early late April so or May. So he'll have better time to do other
things now and not have to worry about the budget for the next six or
eight months. So just be prepared, young man. Yes, I bring
that thing in with a forklift. They do. I want to thank you
both for being here with us. Congratulations about the good work there, Jim,
thanks to and you've been listening and watching our City Matters program right here
on K one, the one you trust,