Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, Welcome
to a Monday and it's City Matters on K one fifty five degrees at nine
thirty one. Tracy Rolls and the City crew with us. Tracy, good
morning, Now are you pretty good? Nice to have you guys with us
on an eclipse Monday? Yeah. Yeah, so Tom's not here, it
has to be part of the eclipse. Yeah you think so? You think
that has something to do with it? In might I don't know, full
moon. Tom can't come to work on an eclipse. Yeah, some weird
stuff happening Monday. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I agree with
you for sure. Probably just all go home. Yeah, at least at
least from twelve thirty to three h seven or whatever. Yeah, the boss
isn't here today, so I'm it's not like he could tell us no.
Yeah, I don't know. Maybe that's an eclipse deal too. Mike Bailey
and Tom might be together, that's right. Yeah, that's that's that would
be an interesting combination. Yeah, i'd watch that, Yeah, I would
to. I'd actually pay a little bit, a little bit of admission to
watch it. Not a lot, but well, thanks for having us.
We really appreciate you guys and what you guys do for our community. I
want to start off with some very sad news and talk about the passing of
councilperson Billy Rohan last Friday. She was a true champion of the people.
She really cared about this community. Her and her late husband Tom were true
public servants who really cared about making things better, not just for a select
few, but for everyone. And so we will really miss Billy and her
contributions not only to the city but as friends of so many. And what
she did for our community was beyond words powerful and impactful. Her shoes will
be very hard to fill on city council and within our community. She gave
so much to so many and really cared about the advancement of so many causes.
So it's a sad day to have lost such a great person. You
know, there's so few really, really wonderful people in society today, but
Billy was one of those people. So she'll be truly missed in many ways
by many people. And I know her path the city government was kind of
how a lot of city people like it to be done. She kind of
worked her way up through just getting involved in you know, committees and stuff
for free, and she kind of worked herself into that role. She absolutely
did. She did it the right way, and then once she got to
that position, she continued to do things the right way, always kept a
community first approach, really cared about the community and wanted this wanted the City
of Bartlesville to be the very best. So she'll truly be missed, oh
question. So moving away from that to more exciting news, the promotion of
Laura Sanders to the position of assistant City Manager beginning May the second. The
previous or the current assistant city managers at the assistant city managers at the bar
very very low for you, So I have full faith and confidence that you
will exceed expectations that have been set, and I know that Laura will do
an outstanding job. The city staff is very lucky to have someone like Laura
in the position that she's going to be in, and most importantly, the
citizens are very lucky to have someone with the passion of Laura and the professionalism
of Laura to take over that position and really advance that position forward as she
works alongside mister Bailey in doing what we can to advance the city. So
I'm very excited for Laura, very excited for the city, very excited for
the citizens because I know that that you, Laura, will do an outstanding
job. So congratulations to you and I wish you all the best. So
a few announcements. April fifteenth, at noon at City Hall, there'll be
a public hearing in regard to the wastewater Treatment Plant expansion project where citizens will
have the opportunity to discuss or to hear and discuss the proposed improvements to the
facility and some alternatives to the proposed improvements, talk about cost, some environmental
impacts or possible environmental impacts, and just to really give their input on how
we're moving forward with that project. It's a very big project, very important
project, very meaningful long term for our city. And so noon on April
the fifteenth at City Hall, come and let your voice be heard if you
have concerns about or thoughts about, not necessarily concerns, but any thing that
you want to talk about when it comes to the wastewater Treatment plant expansion.
Also on May the sixth, and we'll talk about this again at the end
of the month, but May the sixth is the free Yard Debris collection day
for the city. Place your items at the curb and the city crews will
come pick them up. They're not picked up with at the same time that
normal trash services, So don't freak out if you look out and your trash
is gone but your yard debris is still there. There will be another truck
that will come around at a later time to pick up that stuff. And
again we'll talk about that at the end of the month as well, just
to remind people. So today we have Laura who's going to talk about the
Citizen's Academy, which we're very excited about. She's going to talk about some
openings on the city team, and we're excited to get new people. We
have a lot of change coming, a lot of high level positions that are
going to open up in the very near future. So it's with that it's
going to come from challenges, but there's also going to be great opportunity.
We have Chief Ikleberry here who will talk about a very cool project or event,
the block Party. We always have a lot of fun with that,
and then we'll get to hear all about money with Jason and where we are
with sales tax and all of that sort of stuff. So Laura, again,
congratulations. I'm very excited for you. I'm so happy that you were
willing to step up into this position and have the courage to do something that's
kind of outside your comfort zone human resources and assistant city manager or I guess
in some way similar, but in a lot of ways very very different.
So thank you for having the courage to do that and to advance and to
continue the positive momentum within the city. First, I want to say thank
you. I appreciate your kind words, and I'm excited. This is a
tremendous opportunity and it's an honor to even be considered for the position, and
so I'm excited to serve the citizens and serve our employees. And next,
I want to talk about the Citizens Academy. So we've talked about that for
it's been a couple of months now when this first started, and so we're
excited to be able to start this academy on April eleventh, which is Thursday.
We've got our twenty participants that have confirmed and are excited to start with
us, and they will get to see firsthand what city employees do and how
our different departments function, and so our first session will be an introduction into
government, so we'll take an opportunity for them to get to know each other.
But then they'll hear from our mayor, they'll hear from the city manager,
they'll hear from Jason on finance, and then they'll also hear from some
of our partners with the BDA and visit Bartlesville. And then the next session
will be our public Safety session, which they'll have an opportunity to meet some
of our law enforcement officers and kind of see what they do, and then
go to the fire station and see get a glimpse into fire service. And
then we've got our third session, which would be legal, Municipal Court and
Public Works, so they'll get to hear from our city attorney and our Municipal
Court judge, Judge Gentias, and then we'll do a rodeo what we call
a rodeo at public Works, so they'll get to see all of our different
facilities out there and see some of our equipment and you know, kind of
hands on approach to that. So all of these sessions are very interactive and
they'll get to meet our staff and get to see exactly what it is that
we do. The week four is hearing from our communications department HR and then
community development. This one should be pretty fun. We've got a bus tour
or we'll look at some dilapidated structures, we'll go by the center, we'll
see some of our different things around town. And then week five will be
library and history museum and then another bus tour where we're going to go to
the airport and then water plant, so Terry will be there to give a
water plant tour. And then week six is at the golf course, so
we'll hear from Micah on projects there, and then we'll do another bus tour
and this may be the most exciting or not exciting one because we'll tour our
wastewater treatment plant and then go to the sewer lift station. So there's lots
to see, lots to do, and then of course we'll have our graduation
ceremony at the city Council meeting on July first. So we're excited to get
this started and to show show citizens what it is suckily that we do.
And yeah, maybe in increase civic iq I think that was the goal,
is to increase civic IQQ. So it sounds like lots to maybe smell definitely
on Yeah, Week six is going to be a fun one for sure.
I think it's yeah, they may need some viks or something. I don't
know. So Lord, you hit on something that that's very important. Is
that's raising the civic IQ. You know. I think as we look into
what the city does and the services that we provide is one thing. But
then to give people a glimpse of some of the things that we don't do
and why we don't do those things, and why the city is not directly
responsible for some things, I think will be very important because there's oftentimes citizens
will say, well, why don't you guys do X, And we have
to explain to them that that's not a city service, that's not a core
function of the city. And it's hard to make someone from the you know,
someone who doesn't understand city government understand the why we don't do certain things.
So I think it'll be very very cool look into maybe not just what
we do and how well we do it, but some of the things that
we don't do and why we don't do those things. So I think this
is going to be a great idea. This idea was actually brought to the
city by Laura after attending a conference or a seminar that she went to.
She came back and said, I think this would be really cool, and
Mike and I both said yes, absolutely, and have fun putting it together.
Sometimes you have to watch what ideas you might bring back because you may
get tasked with something that you meant for someone else. But that's right,
it'll be very good. So let's talk about jobs and how people can join
our team. Yes, so we've got lots of opportunities here at the city.
We've actually just closed our application process for our fire chief position, so
we're excited to complete that process and get us a new fire chief in place,
with Chief Topping leaving May thirty first, the next big director position that
we have to fill is our Library and History Museum director, so we're accepting
applications for that through April thirtieth. And then, of course we've got some
maintenance worker positions available. We've got golf, street wastewater and water distribution,
and in preparation for our for summertime, we've got some golf seasonal part time
positions or full time also in the parks department, so we usually try to
ramp up during those times to help during the busy seasons at golf and park
and so we've got positions available in both of those departments. So one of
the things that I love about the city is the benefits that we offer.
We have excellent benefits, so we have excellent time off, we have excellent
medical insurance. But the best benefit that I think that we offer is our
zero card benefit. And this is where employees that are covered by our medical
plan can go get services at free of cost to them. And so obviously
there's a cost savings to the city as well, but it's a win win
for everybody, but especially that employee when they go in and get blood work
or they get MRIs or X rays done and it costs them nothing to go
do that. There's even procedures and different surgeries that are covered at zero costs
to the employee. So if you are interested in a job with the city,
we have one for you. I'm sure go to Cityofbertlesville dot org.
Slash careers very good. It's a pretty easy process. I think the online
process is really good. And if that doesn't work for anyone, they can
call city Hall and ask to speak to to the HR department and Dana most
likely will get them squared away and pointed in the right direction. So it's
a great, great team, great team to be a part of, really
professional. They care out the community, they care about the city. They
want what's best for the city. So anybody who's who's looking for a job
and wants to be a part of a tremendous team, I would I would
certainly recommend do what Laura has has advised and reach out. Thank you Laura
for that, and again, congratulations Chief ikle Berry. You guys got a
got an event coming up, and hopefully the weather will cooperate because there's some
pretty good barbecue usually at that thing. We sure hope. So when we're
we're always looking for more teams. So we have the you're really up there
high today than Jason and setting up really high. This is normally how I
said. Okay, and close to the clips about snow, you gotta watch
my eyes. Don't look at it. Don't look look at it, don't
look in it. Ya do we have our bartem the police department, the
annual block party. We've been doing this now. I think actually I believe
you started this back in uh your maybe your second year here and uh it
just keeps growing and we're excited about that. We've got free food, so
we'll have the police department'll be cooking hamburgers and Trudy will be cooking hot dogs
and we'll be giving those out. And there will be a barbecue contest cook
off there at the center there at the Unity Square, and that's always a
fun time be DJ playing music there. And this year we're going to have
a pettying zoo at the at the at the park as well, with like
forty plus animals, a lot of animals, so this should be a lot
of fun. Some inflatables for small kids and large kids, and a little
car show, and then we'll have the drone operation. We'll show how we
operate drones and fly the drone demonstrations. We'll have canine demonstrations, we'll have
all kinds of emergency response vehicles there. Fire department will have some stuff out
and we'll have our vehicles out swat stuff out. So it should be a
really good time. It's free to everybody, and we just want everybody to
come out and have a good time. It's gotten bigger and bigger over the
years, and we're really excited about that, and so we're looking forward to
it. We've got several sponsors that have stepped up this year, partners that
have donated to the cause. Helped us pay for some of the things that
we don't typically have in our budget to pay for, and so we're thankful
for the people like Bordswill, Print Shop, Prices, Meat Market, Specops
Firm, Foundation, Child Development Recognition Place, Trudy. Trudy is a great
partner for this community. I know they do a lot in this community.
Part of time, GJ and Karaoke, the Center, Walmart, Bordsville Public
Library. They're going to be given away or having a book sale. They're
also signing people up for the summer programs there, so they're they're part of
this block party as well. So we'll encompass the area from in front of
the police Department from Adams to sixth Street or Silas Street, and then we'll
go east down down Silas to uh Dewey and into the park and the community
Center. So it's pretty good sized space, a lot of stuff going on.
Just encourage everybody to come out and have a good time and participate with
us. It's such a cool event, you know. One of the most
interesting things that you know, when we started this in twenty nineteen, one
of the most interesting things that I found was that how few people within the
community had ever been inside the police department. You know, it's their police
department, and very few people had actually been inside. And so there's a
lot of cool stuff going on outside, you know, with the stuff that
you mentioned, and it's really cool and interactive and a lot of fun.
But I think the most impactful thing that to walk through and tour the producement.
And I really appreciate your leadership advancing now though we're pretty pretty close to
where we need in advance, so we were always happy to have somebody to
fill them when they when they occur. So we're moving forward and hopefully in
a positive direction. You know, our parks units field, our mental health
units field and be out there doing what we do best, I think,
and that's that's protector of citizens, I think. I think one thing that
I think people need to really remember is UH the Mental Health Unit and how
you were instrumental in bringing that Mental Health UNITUH to life. You know,
it was a concept that that we had heard UH given to us while we
were in Kentucky, and you brought that back and really made that thing come
to life. And I think that it has been vitally impactful in a positive
manner to our community. And I and I'm in my new home. UH,
they should probably expect UH to talk about a mental health unit coming to
them very quickly, because I think it's that important, it's that impactful that
we can provide that service. So thank you for your for your insight and
champion that UH dispatcher positions vitally important. We're actually actually we're for right now,
but we're hoping to increase that in the near future, and so we'll
be taking applications for that. That's a vital part of the community. They're
truly the first responders. They're the other one's answers a call and he puts
those out to all the first responders and they get to hear some pretty crazy
things, but they get to interact with the public and they do a great
job and they So we're trying to grow that because the traffic through that department
has grown tremendously over the last few years, and so there's a lot more
people utilizing the dispatch center, the nine one one center, be it please
fire an ems and so we need more mamping ore over there, so we're
hoping to grow that so we would be hopefully next budget cycle we'll be able
to increase the number of people over there. What's interesting is I think there's
what twenty ish agencies that we dispatchize about twenty five agencies through that center.
So you talked about budget and you brought that up to great segue. Actually
that was rehearsed, by the way. We don't we don't do that for
tom but we want to be nicer for you, you know, So we'll
talk to Jason about budget. We are in the middle of the creation of
the new budget stages, so we should have that fucker wrapped up and hopefully
tomorrow getting it rolled out, printing on Wednesday, and hopefully out to our
council members either Thursday or Friday. You know, one of the things about
the budget that I really appreciate that you guys do is is you guys are
very very in the city is very, very transparent when it comes to the
budget. It's not just this is the percentages that are allocated to each department.
You put it all out there and it's very transparent. So I really
appreciate the way that that's done. I mean you've been through the process.
In fact, everybody in here has been through the process. We make you
I don't want to say nickel and dime, but pretty precise on what you're
budgeting for as far as items or office supplies. Well, I mean it's
down to that level of detail. So h and that's open to any scisions
to come in and review or request. We can email that stuff to you.
It doesn't matter. I mean, we're we want to be as transparent
as possible. These are public dollars, and we do hold ourselves to the
accountability to the public for the thriftiness I think of their public dollars. So
anytime anyone has questions, they couldn't either stop by our office on the first
floor City Hall. Our emails are all on the city website. So they
got any questions concerning that, we're more than happy to get them information.
And to me, that's a citizen wants to be plugged in too. So
if they want to be plugged in and know what's going on in their government,
then we encourage that. So anyway. Sales tax use tax another part
of today's topic. Sales tax down a little bit down one point four percent.
Still a great month. I mean, you look at we've had go
back to twenty two was a twenty two percent increase over a month, and
then last year was about a one percent increase, and then we're by one
percent down. So really really still a pretty good month for the year.
We're setting flat. We're point zero three percent up, which is about six
thousand dollars from what we collected last year. So considering that pretty flat,
we budget conservatively, so we're over budget by a little more than two percent
four hundred thousand dollars. So budgetarily, we're sitting in a good spot.
But it just goes back to our conservative approach here and y're out to make
sure we have enough money to fund all the things we're doing, not to
not be aggressive and overstate revenues and then find ourselves in a bond use tax
got Really the first month, it's a comparable month a month last month with
our first time we had a month, but being the first month, it
had some estimates and some prepays the show up there's really it's probably about a
month and a half. So our first true month a month we up three
point nine percent, roughly thirty thousand dollars, you know, for that month
and for the year. We budget way conservatively on this as we had no
real history. We're already two million dollars over budget on this line, probably
about two point five million over budget by the end of the fiscal year.
So good was good to get that institute and get that going. I mean,
if you look at that four million dollars that's probably two to four million
dollars every year we've been losing since we haven't had this tax implemented. So
it's just more things we can do, more police, more fire, more
parks, more everything, and it just helps us provide a better product to
the citizens. So anytime that we can increase our service to the citizens,
I think that is a win in what city governments are supposed to do in
the direction that we want to go. So thank you. And this is
a fairness tax to in my estimation, because it brings the online market more
fair with your local market, because that was something they were getting to to,
you know, a tax deficit there, so they were getting the competition
wasn't equal. So it's a good move. It's good for the city and
good for the citizens. Well, thank you, and thank your staff.
I know that you guys are super, super busy this time of year getting
things together, so we appreciate I thank It's vitally important for the success of
our organization. So thank you. Thank you guys for taking time out of
your day to be here. Thank you Evan for filling in for Tom.
And and I say, this went, this went pretty smooth. Thanks.
So, yeah, I did a lot. I feel like I really pulled
my weight here. Yeah. But the thing sometimes we have to we have
to focus our successes on did we fail or did we not? And you
did not fail. This was true. I can I can usually get that
done. So we got it. We got it taken care of. Now
if we can just survive the day and what's to come for the day,
and I think we're gonna be okay. Sounds good, guys. We appreciate
you coming in. Thanks so much. City of Bartlesville City matters Right here
on K one fifty five degrees, we're just about to ten o'clock. Let's
take a look at the weather from the news on Sex and Stephen Narrian's as
we could set for that eclipse here in just a couple of hours. Steven
some nice temperatures expected for our Monday, but of course all eyes on the sky