Welcome, welcome. Guess what, folks, it is time now for city
matters. Yeah, that's right. If it matters to you, it matters
to the city. And it's a nice little representative government we have going on
here. But anyway, we uh we do have the trio in today because
Tracy and uh Mike have decided to take the day away from US Court for
US today called in the C team. I guess no, not quiet.
I'd tell you what if either one of you three or missing we're in trouble,
things will run smooth at least probably on my end. But oh god.
So we've had a busy couple of weeks. Well we have we have,
um, just a couple of general announcements, um for the people that
are enjoying and using the path. We've had really mild weather here at least
this past weekend. But the Pathfinder is going to be closed just south of
Dinks for PSO for them to replace an overhead line that they have in that
area. They're initiarily doing some clearing work that started here about a week ago
and that's anticipated to take another week to complete, and then they'll have the
transmission line of poll replacement portion of that project to do. So if you're
on the path and you notice that area is closed, that's what's going on
with that. Last week, council did approve or authorize the call of an
election on October the tenth to extend the General Obligation bonders for a general Obligation
bond, which uses property taxes to fund certain capital projects. So there's actually
going to be four propositions part of that bond election. We will talk about
that more in detail as we get closer to the election. Data itself there,
but if you want to see what's on the packet or what's set for
the election, those had to be established or set by council, which they
did last week. But you can go to CityBeat, which is just through
the city's website, and you can kind of follow a couple of links to
see what's on the proposition and all the projects that are being proposed or asked
other voters to approve through there, so a lot of information. If you're
not a subscriber to city Beat, we would encourage you to do so.
That's a wonderful resource for not only these types of items, but all the
news that is covering the city as well. As the water shortage that unfortunately
we're still dealing with. But you can sign up at the City of Barswell's
website. It's city Beat. Kelly Williams is the kind of the editor and
the content person for all that. She does a wonderful job for it.
So if you're not a subscriber, we encourage you to do so, but
those are contained in those in the CityBeat and as well as all the other
news that happens within the City of Barswell there and she's a tremendous job and
for fingers ever getting sore, we're introl Yeah, absolutely, absolutely well with
this. This morning. We have Shelley McGill who's our director over the library,
and Jason Muniger who's our CFO city clerk, and I don't know what
other title that you carry, but there you go those two. So Shelley,
we've got it. We're right in the heart of summer and I think
you guys got some summer programs and different things that are going on with the
library, so let us know or inform us what's what's happening. Great,
Thanks, Terry. As you knew, I wear two hats. I'm the
museum and the library and I wanted to start with the museum. We've just
put up a new exhibit as of July fifth. It's called a Century of
Education and it's all about the education in Washington County as we traveled through our
history. And it's quite interesting. You know. We have that one room
schoolhouse that we give a lot of tours to and teach the children how it
used to be back in the back in the day. But now we have
a whole exhibit kind of detailing education, and that will be up through September
twenty ninth. We encourage you to come see it. Um we have a
specific program that Granger Metter is putting on on July twentieth from twelve to one.
It's education past to present. And Granger, I think, knows everything
about education there is to know, and he's a He's a wonderful person to
hear speak. So I'm attending that myself and I hope anyone else would come
and attend that as well. You're welcome to come anytime after eleven thirty and
bring your lunch or we'll have light snacks available for you there as well.
I specifically on the library, hat wanted to talk about our summer Reading Program
and we're in our last month of that. It ends on the last day
of this month, and I wanted to tell you about some of the stuff
we're doing at the library, So let's talk about Today. We have Read
to Hodge program, which is a you can come and read to our special
dog and a lot of the kids like to read to him because it's very
non threatening. They can pet the dog and read their story and it's very
relaxing environment for the readers that may have trouble reading to people or a little
s And so that's from one to three. Today. We are having our
Magic show this evening at six pm and that's for all the kids that are
in the summer Reading program or anyone who would like to attend. Tomorrow is
our craft classes that we're having at the library, and they are from two
to four and six to nine. Those are mainly four adults, but we
do do children's craft classes all the time for teens. We're making dessert chartistory
boards at the library on Thursday, the thirteenth, and that is at six
pm, and we've had a lot of interest in that by the teens and
kind of excited about that. Saturday is our Lego Club. You can come
in as a family type activity. We often give you a challenge and as
a family or just a child can try to meet that activity and kind of
win in that situation. And it's a lot of STEM activities and a lot
of challenges. So we invite you to come once a month and play with
legos with your kids or just as a kid, came play, or as
an at all, come play, it doesn't matter. We let anybody play.
So um, next week we have a lot of other activities going on.
We're going to read to hodg again on Monday, which is the special
needs dog, and then we're going to have a throw together show which just
is a show by a performer at two pm and it's been raped about so
I can't wait to see what it's all about. And then on Tuesday the
teams are making felt succulents at three o'clock. And so those are all the
main events. Next week. We are having our read to hodg Aga in
the following Monday. It's every Monday. You're noticing a trend here from one
to three, you can sign up and get your get your time that's for
your child. On our website, we're trying something new. On Tuesday,
the twenty fifth, we're going to have a cuponing class and it's how to
digital cupon in today's digital h And so we've had a lot of people that
love to cupon, but they've kind of, you know, now that you
just don't cut them out of the newspaper anymore and go we use them at
the store as much as you used to. It's kind of hard to know
how to do that these days. And so if you want to learn how
to do que potting in today's digital age, that's on Tuesday, the twenty
fifth, and that will be from seven to eight in the evening. Final
thing for Summer Reading is our pool party. We had a hard time having
a pool party this year because the pools were closed, so we're gonna have
it at the YMCA on their indoor pool and it will be on Sunday evening
from five thirty to seven thirty. You must have participated in the Summer Reading
program to attend, unfortunately, So we're going to give out our prizes for
the year and we're going to have a good time. So we've had a
really good crew of Summer readers this year. Our programs have been well attended,
and the reading scores and times that we're seeing our above average. So
we love our kids, we love the times that we can share and read
in our summer reading program. And that'll wrap up our program for July.
Were good. Well, that was a ton of information. Is there a
place on the website or can they look to see all the upcoming events there
at the library? Where that? Where's that information? We are everywhere in
social media. You can you can check our Facebook and all those events are
on our Facebook. You can go to the website and those events are there
as well, and they're also in our newsletter which is available on the website
as well. We're on Instagram, we're on Twitter. Um, you can
call the library and we'll give you that information as well. Good phone still
works, We still answer the phone great. Well. On the lego program,
do they have to bring their own legos? You guys furnished legos or
how does that normally work? We actually did a program about five years ago
where we asked for donations of legos and we had a telephone booth and we
almost filled it up with our donations and so we have legos to go and
so no, you don't bring your legos. We have acres and acres of
legos, and you know, we didn't realize how expensive they were till we
started tried to start the program, and we couldn't afford it because they're too
expensive. So the community came together and they just were ridiculously generous and now
we have our own legos, and so don't bring your legos, and we
do worshoers occasionally bought a dishwasher and we run them through the dishwasher. But
yes, we have the legos, and we'll give you a nice set of
legos to work with. Fantastic, fantastic. So I think you guys normally
do a Lego build at some point. I don't know if it's already been
or if it's upcoming, or we did do it in April. Yes,
And you can look online at our Facebook page back in April and see all
the builds that we're done. I swear they get better every single year,
and you just drop your mouth. This year someone built a cornucopia and all
the fruits and vegetables coming out of it and it looked off in it,
and I'm like, how do you do that with Legos? But they did
it, so it was amazing, Wow, excellent. Well, how's the
new team? I know it's not quite brand new, but it's still new.
Where the tin edition there at the library? How's at working? It
has become exactly what we hoped it to be. The kids are coming and
enjoying it, and they're respectful of all the equipment and they truly feel blessed
that they have that equipment to use. Of course, you know, we
have an Xbox gaming station, we have a Switch gaming station. We have
two group gaming stations. Those are the two group gaming stations, and then
we have individual gaming stations, two PCs that we have game passes through Microsoft,
so they can sit down and pick whatever game they want to play and
just play. And then we have in a board games and a couple boosts
that you can set out and bring your own laptop or your own games or
play our games. We have a pinball game. Of course, the graphic
novel collection is up there so you can set and read. So they are
really loving it, and we're loving the group of kids that are coming.
They're really great kids. Good kind of jealous because they're really sounds like fun,
yeah, fantastic and really kudos to you and your staff. It's not
the library, it's not just for books anymore. You guys offer a number
of programs and a whole host of opportunities. So it's been fantastic, especially
with the pools closed. I know that that's a viable alternate for the whole
family to enjoy and to get out of the heat and to do something maybe
they're not typically used to doing it at this time of year. So thank
you, Shelley. Anything else that you want to add for a museum library,
if I can do it, you bet. We have a group of
outdoor games now that we check out. So we've got the giant jinga set,
the giant yard yacht see. We've bought darts and horseshoes and croquet and
all those things that you can check out. Our intention is that if you're
having an outdoor party to get together just anything that you need some entertainment with,
you can either check it out, play it on the green space,
which is very close to the library, or you can take it home and
have it for your outdoor party. So those things check out for three days,
and we've got well over a hundred things from soccer to t ball,
that you can check out and just play with your family. So don't forget
if you're putting together some event to come check out something to have a lot
of fun. The Library of Things, yeah, it is, yes,
and to check something out that you just have to have a library card or
what's the You do have to have a library card in it only takes a
minute. If you don't have one, bring a form of ID, a
piece of mail with your name on it and we can sign you up and
have you a card and have you out the door in minutes. So it's
not hard. And we serve everyone within a thirty five mile radius, all
right. And the cost for signing up for a library card is it's free,
free, free, doesn't cost you a thing except just the time and
effort to be up there. So that's a fantastic community. And thank you
Shelley for all that you do with that. So we're gonna shift gears to
a more dynamic topic here talking about money and accounting and everything that's reguards of
that. So Jason kind of phill cent on how we did with our financial
We're gonna start off with kind of how we ended the year on sales tax
and use tax and then go into what we've collected in this first first period
in the new fiscal years. So finished the year off very well in sales
taxes. I think everybody knows reported pretty much every month some pretty good,
pretty good uh increases. I will say, we didn't do a report on
June. We haven't done report on June yet. June actually was it was
down a little bit about half a percent, but I would say pretty flat.
It's comparing back to some monstrous numbers historically, So even being in the
ballpark is a win by our our estimations. So when you look at the
total fiscal year, we were seven hundred and sixty one thousand dollars over the
prior fiscal year. That's about a three point four percent increase over the previous
year's collections. But when you look at that budget leagues, we were pretty
conservative on budget. We were two point two million dollars over budgetary expectation,
which is a little over ten percent to finish the year, which is is
great news. Means people are spending money locally, keeping a lot of our
tax dollars here in Bartlesville and not our surrounding surrounding municipalities. So use tax.
That one was a little bit of a a little bit of unknown.
We hadn't how to use tax Bartlesville. There weren't certain the parameters of when
we instituted versus when the state collects it, when they were remitted. So
we had initially kind of thought we were going to get maybe three months of
that. We end up getting four months of it. We had budgeted four
hundred thousand dollars really conservatively, we received one point five million dollars in four
months. So a quarter, you know, no morning quarter, third of
the year, one point five I mean you guys can strapolate that out,
that'd be you know, close to four and a half million over a year.
Do we know if that's how it's gonna work. Not really, because
we don't know are those typically high months that we receive those in? Is
there some months that are going to be relatively low, some one time buyas.
Because this is it is now an internet sales tax, but it also
is a traditional use tax. You can have big ticket items come into municipality,
you receive the tax, and those big ticket items move out, and
then you'll receive the percentage you have to rebate it. So a lot of
unknown, a lot of uncertainty in that moving forward. In this fiscal year,
we had budgeted based on the history we saw at those four months,
we budgeted two point five million dollars for the upcoming fiscal year. If that
being said, our first collection gun was three hundred and sixty eight thousand.
Obviously two point five twelve two hundred and eight thousand, so we're almost one
hundred and sixty thousand dollars over budget at this time one period in so we'll
see that's still unknown. Until we get you know, a full year,
probably two years of history on that, we won't really be able to trend
it and see what kind of volatility or fluctuations happen for month to month.
Water the high months, you know, if it follows sales tax, it's
gonna be around the Christmas time. They're gonna be the large months. We
didn't we didn't have any collections in those times in our previous collections, So
I'm eager to see what those are going to generate moving forward. Yeah,
so let's talk about you know, we've got taxes that fund fertain certain activities.
So we get the general fund, so what's paid through the city services
by the general Fund. So the general Fund obviously it covers administration, covers
accounting, and finance, covers the library, history, museum, Street Park.
I'm legal Police Fire obviously, Police fire the main too. You know,
they're the two of the larger departments in the city, both with well
over seventy employees per department, and they equal. They take the lion's share
of the general fund budget. Between the two of them, that probably somewhere
around three quarters of the general fun budget probably goes to police and Fire.
The remaining departments get to divvy up the rest. But I mean, it's
it's obviously when you're talking health and safety, it's probably the number one priority
that the city can can offer to its citizenry. So well, and I
think those are our largest departments as far as personnel goes. But so the
general fund, that's actually the sales tax and when you talked about sales tax,
that gets routed to the general fund and pays for those types of sales
taxes. Split into three different categories, you'll get the general fund portion,
which is a little over seventy percent goes to the general Fund. Then you
get a portion that goes to our CIP sales tax fund the bonds capital projects,
and then we have a smaller portion that goes to economic development. So
it's broken into three. It funds three different three different uses within the City
of Artlesville. And then so the use tax is kind of a newer revenue
stream force. And as that being used to supplement the general fund or is
that used for capital we're where are those times being the use taxes. It's
an unrestricted general fund revenue. So all of this proceeds go to the general
fund. It's kind of one of the same that it's not really known how
much it's going to generate. Over it's it's a twelve month period. So
for right now we're utilizing it to supplement the general fund. And so then
the last one is the bond election. Since I've opened with the bond election,
so that's uh, you know, so sales tax was approved by voters,
and we have the half sent sales tax that has a sunset and has
to be renewed by voters as well as this general obligation bond is a set
term, set period for the plus a set amount. Usually it's a three
to five year type of period to generate that revenue. But tell us a
little bit about on this general obligation bond issue, what's the revenue stream that
is funding that and how's that calculating? So I know people want to know
the real nitty gritty accounting wise how that gets calculated. So this bond in
particular, we're fixing to have aboved on seventeen point six million, and it's
I believe a five year bond. I think it's a five year bond.
So the way cities have to pay back channel obligation debt is through avalarm or
property tax. Our city has an informal tax levy that we impose on ourselves
of fifteen meals, which if you're not served, what a mill is,
it's a tenth of a percent, So a tenth percent of whatever your assessed
property value is, that's a millage point. We keep it around fifteen meals,
and that can fluctuate, you know, to fifteen and a fraction of
something, or fourteen in a fraction of something. Because we do all this
estimating on where we're going to be at for fifteen meals, not no one
where the county assessor's evaluation is going to come in every year and typically it
goes up, you know, very rarely is a go down. Oftentimes it
I don't know if you guys are like me, but you see your your
property increases. It usually increases by the statute maximum, you know, every
every time they reassess you. So it's constantly going up. So it does
give us more capacity that in that instance, but we have to wait for
other general obligation bond debt to roll off. The debt service cards payments.
We're paying them off as we're putting new ones on to try to maintain that
fifteen meal cap yep. And that's the reason that these will go over three
to five years is because old ones that were approved by voters are getting paid
off and new ones that are approved by voters are potentially being rolled in or
started to that. So it's a kind of constant balance of old ones going
off and new ones approved by voters coming on. Because they can have anywhere
from and depend on the type bomb. We've had some of them that are
really small bonds for like wastewater projects, would have a one year debt service
term, and then we'll have some that'll have, you know, a tenure
debt service term. So it just depends on the platform, the nature of
the bidders when they're bidding on the bonds. The overall dollar Now, obviously
in the seventeen point six there's probably gonna be a larger portion in there,
probably several you know, one and a half to two and a half million
dollars bonds and one that's probably gonna be a nine to ten million dollar bond.
Obviously, the nine to ten I'll have a longer debt service life than
than the one and a half to two and a half million dollar bonds.
Yeah, so quite an intricate process for all that. But you know,
we don't ever watch how the sausage is being made. We just eat the
sausage there at the end. So this is kind of the same thing.
Is that a lot of effort, a lot of things go into it.
But at least for this upcoming October bond election, again, if you want
to find out more information, go to CityBeat to have projects and the particulars
for that. It's really going to be a heavy street issue. I think
the majority of the projects will be street but there's also projects planned for a
pathfinder um as well as a fire station, so kind of a wide range
of projects. That are included within the bond issue. So um again,
we'll be talking more about that as we get closer to that October election date,
but just to get get everybody's uh, you know, maybe thinking about
it or if you really have a passion for it, you can take a
look at it and all the information is out there to uh you know,
and it's available for you to view and to proves at your at your pleasure.
There where on our July salese okay, sorry there Jason July shal Sex
collection was one million, nine hundred and eighty six thousand dollars. It's five
percent over what our last July was, and last July was pretty dang good.
So uh compared to our budget, we had budget exactly what we had
received last year. So we're one hundred and one thousand dollars over over anticipated
budget one one period end of the year. Wow. So yeah, people
are shopping locally at I love it. I really think COVID curbed. I'm
obviously some inflation factor and they're right, things cost more and people are spending
their money here. But I think COVID curb spending habits pretty significantly for our
municipality because we're seeing a lot more dollars spent within our borders. So yeah,
fantastic, thank you citizens. Yeah, everybody keep doing what you're doing,
spend locally. So talking about doing what we're doing was was talk a
little bit about drought. Let's talk drought. Let's talk drought. So last
week we had a nice little rain, had several nice little rains later in
the week, and fortunately that did not correlate to a substantial increase in our
lake levels or our water supply. So as of today, we're at fifty
seven point one percent of our overall water supply remaining. We're up from last
week, which we were at fifty six point nine percent, so that's encouraging,
but we're normally at one hundred percent this time of year. So the
drought in Southeast Kansas has been a fairly significant drought. It's been an exceptional
drought as classified by the US Drought Monitor Group since August of last year.
So we're really in about month ten, month eleven of the highest or worst
classificational drought that the area can be classified at. That is really the postage
stamp that covers the watersheds that drain into both Heila and Copan Lakes, So
it's going to take quite a bit more rain and fortee to kind of overcome
some of that deficit that we've experienced so far. But we're I think anytime
that we go up from a week prior is a good week, especially during
the summer here. But we're still under the Stage three classification, which is
when our water supplies between fifty and sixty percent. So that's again just the
one day a week on outside watering. So if you're an even number property,
that's Thursday. Odd number property is Friday, and we're just asking you
to conserve water as much as possible indoors as well. So the biggest user
of water from an indoor perspective as shower, so shorten your shower if you
can. You are able to water plants with rain barrel So there's been some
information or maybe some misinformation about rain barrels and collecting rainwater to use outdoors.
You can do both of those. There are no restrictions to that. You
can capture use sink water if you're washing dishes in the sink, you can
bucket out some of that water to use for plants. I know a number
of people are using that are they're capturing that initial water to get warmed up
for a shower to use outdoors. So there's a whole host of things that
you can do to capture water to use if you want to water outdoor plants
with that that wouldn't fall within those outdoor water restrictions with the one day a
week there. So anyways, we're at fifty seven point one percent as far
as our water supply goes. Consumption was down from the week prior, So
last week we averaged four point eight nine million gallons of water used today,
so the week prior were at five point four nine again, so everybody seems
to be doing well as far as conservation. We encourage people to continue to
do so. It is likely that we will carry this drought at least through
the summer UH and likely into the fall, just based on historic trends and
where we're at currently. Um, but this is Oklahoma. You never know.
It could rain next week and all could be kind of a memory.
Huge rains yet several days. Kind of a couple of things here. Questions
from folks in the audience. One, you already answered it earlier this week,
But for folks who didn't hear it or last week, I should.
It's a bard lake, that's that's something we could tap into. Yeah.
So Bardu Lake was a city and it was owned jointly by the City of
bartles Hill, City of Dewey long long ago. That was sold in the
early two thousands to a private owner, to an individual. That lake was
really never intended to be a water supply. I think maybe long ago when
Bartlesville and to Be partnered to purchase that area, they thought it would be
a water supply. But it's quite a bit smaller than our Hudson Lake and
just not an approachable amount of water that would would do us much good.
I think we probably use that within about three to five days. We would
dry that thing out. Oh wow, that's quick. Yeah, not a
ton of water that's there. But no, there's not a possibility to retap
that resource. Since we've sold that. The property owner has indicated that they
wanted to be have remain private, I guess, or you know, and
so it is, so it is. I don't think they were doing interviews
or anything else do there. But as far as a water source goes,
it's just not much water that that would benefit us to to pursue a second
question from a listener, and I already know the answer to this one,
but I just want to hear your version. They wanted to know if they
could go up to Hula Lake it maybe like unload unpopular beer these days into
Hula Lake and if that would cause you know, any kind of damage,
well, um, you know that's gonna be a core of engineer zone lake
and so you would have to get their permission to do so. From thinking
the fish might have something to say about it. Yeah, I think the
environmentally they'll probably say no, Um, so you guys, you can't do
that. Yeah, so I knew this. Yeah that's yes, it's mostly
water, but the rest of it is probably they probably frown upon dumping in
bulk through there. Okay, yeah, that's a good option there, You
got that round you can't do it? Yeah? Yeah, Well, I
mean, if you're into camping and you want to go up in camp at
Hula Lake, because it always seems to rain when people camp, help,
we encourage you to do so. It would be a great recreation activity for
you. SunFest one to hold their deal up there. Yeah, it always
rains there in SunFest absolutely absolutely so. Al but we've got a couple of
seconds left. Do we have commissions and boards and things like that where people
can volunteer, We certainly do. I think we have over twenties. I
think twenty four twenty five different committees and commissions that people can serve on.
I don't have a list of what's opened right now, but I think there's
several. You can go to city Barsville dot org and if you go under
the city Council there's boards, committees, and commissions and they have their openings
there, and the openings are also listed, I think typically in CityBeat as
well. So again, subscribing you'll be in the know already. Thank you
very much everyone for being a part of City Matters.