And good morning, and welcome to city matters here on K one and fourteen
hundred ninety three point three on ninety three point three from ninety five point one.
Man, I tell you I got up way too early this morning,
but I'm managing energy. So we have city manager Mike Bailey with us,
and he brought in an entire crew with him today as well. We have
a cadre of Yeah. Absolutely, well, right now we're only seeing you
and Moniker, so that's fine. We'll let the rest of the guests be
surprised. Guests. There we go. What's going on in the city of
Battles all. Mike, Well, first off, what we're not gonna talk
about, Nathan. We're not gonna talk about the Super Bowl, are we
No? Just just just to be clear, there are three g fans in
the room, and Nathan is also a Chiefs fan, so there's four Chiefs
fans in the room, and then there's me and so I don't want to
talk about super Bowl. And so since the City of Barttles will paid for
this, Nathan's not gonna talk about the super Bowl. And since you u
three are all due for an evaluation at some point, we're not gonna talk
about Super Bowl ar I'm also a swifty Yeah, my daughter can get into
that anyway. Great game last night. I'm a little cranky, so we're
gonna move past it quickly. So but other than that, it's a great
morning. Had a touch of snow. I did visit with both of the
chiefs and Keith Henry and public Works, and thankfully there have been they're not
aware of any snow related accidents, so that's good. That's good. Buddy,
had Chief Hyckelberry in here about an hour ago, so well, there
we go. He save me in a little bit of an up to get
you a little bit of a scoop on that. So I went to bed
last night thinking that maybe we weren't going to get all the snow that they'd
promised. Woke up this morning to find that we did. Yeah, thankfully,
Keith Henry gets up earlier than me. He got up, he checked
it and set the guys out. So this is one of those snowstorms that,
thankfully not much of it stays on the roads, not much for the
guys to do. But it's a good snow. It looks pretty and then
it goes away. He got one of the best kinds. So for anyone
who is interested in what the city does, including how we plow the streets,
why we plow certain streets, all the way up to what Larry's department
does, what Jason's department does, and what Terry's department does. We have
launched a Citizen's Academy and this is modeled after some citizens academies around the state.
It's also modeled after our Citizens Police Academy, and so we've had a
lot of success with that. The public seems to really enjoy these types of
events. So we have launched our inaugural, our very first Citizens Academy.
We hope to make this an annual event depending on how successful this one is,
and we're currently accepting applications and so we'll be accepting applications through March first.
For anyone who is interested, you can go to Cityobartlesville dot org and
there will be a lot more information on there about it. There's not a
lot of criteria in order to participate, but one of them is that you're
a resident of Bartlesville, you own a business in Bartlesville, or you're employed
full time in Barnisville. So you don't have to it's not just for residents,
but it is for people who spend a lot of time in Bartlesville based
on those three criteria. Will meet every two weeks. It will be meeting
during the day, and it's at some relatively convenient times. I say relatively,
it's at some very convenient times so that it shouldn't be a barrier to
anybody who's interested. And we are really excited to get this started. It
will actually be facilitated by the Assistant city Manager, Tracy Rowles and our HR
director Lour Sanders. This was actually her idea and she may never voice another
idea to me again because she came up with it. Now she's getting she's
in charge of run in a way right, But no, they're doing the
two of them are doing a great job. All of the departments will be
involved in some degree or another. We really want people to get a full
feel for what we do and why we do it. It's there's there's a
lot of unanswered questions and there can and there's there's generally good reasons for everything,
and so this will this will increase that civic iq and we're really looking
forward to getting our citizens involved in it. I've I've had experience with Leadership
Bartlesville for years. I thought it was an incredible an incredible program the Chamber
ran and so this is this is sort of in that vein just focused specifically
on the city, and it is limited participation. You gave it this criteria
earlier, so I think, is it twenty twenty limited to just gonna take
twenty reason for that? Right? That's right? Well, and there are
a lot of reasons. One, we want to make sure that the experience
is good for everybody. I think we already have more than twenty applications.
So some people we will not get in this first time, we'd encourage them
to apply again. But yeah, it is it's important that we maintain that
size so that number one the class. This is going to be fun and
it can be very stressful if you're trying to move forty people around. It
limits your transportation options. It makes for very large groups. Terry knows.
For years we've done on Leadership Bartlesville. We've done tours of the water plant.
When you do a tour of the water plant, you can't get the
group small enough to where people can hear you when you're actually touring. If
you have more than twenty. So this will take two, three, four
people to tour around these groups around the water plant because it is noisy,
there's a lot of machinery and things like that, so there are a lot
of activities that we do that that group size is simply as large as we
can have it. So yeah, there will be Unfortunately, not everybody will
make it this first time, but we hope to generate enough interest to where
these people will continue to come back. Well, it sounds like a great
program, Mike, he really does. Well. We are, we are
really excited about it. It's it's not often that we're able to, you
know, to communicate directly with the public. It's one of the reasons that
we have a radio program, it's one of the reasons that we have city
be and this is just a furtherance of that to where we can continue to
build the relationship with the citizens of Arlesville. So and with that, I'm
actually going to skip. I was going to go straight to Jason, but
that was a great segue into what Larry is about to do. Well.
In fact, last time, the reason I had you second is because last
time you didn't even get to talk so well at least to let you talk.
He's not bothered by it at all. Yeah, that's it. Yeah,
you're sitting next to it. So it was just it's just a great
a great segue into what Larry's department is doing with our comprehensive plan and the
public meetings are coming up, so yeah, yeah, so to kind of
go over with a comprehensive plan is and what's going on with the project.
So the Cyny Barsows updateing is comfrehensive plan for growth and development. The plan
called Endeavor of twenty forty five is a priority identified in the Barsle Next Strategic
Plan that we've been working on for the past two years or so. Now
Indevor twenty forty five will guide growth, progress and prosperity for the next twenty
years in the city. So at all dressed topics settled being including land use,
transportation, housing, economic development, infrastructure and parks, one with several
other things that are kind of near and dear to our citizens' hearts. The
plan of guide long term decision making by officials and shape guidelines for residents,
businesses and stakeholders and of course the community is what we need to hear most
from is our citizens that are associated with it. So just the first and
foremost to kind of get the word out is that we're going to have an
open house coming up on February twenty first at the Community Center and it'll be
from six pm to eight pm. And the Community Centers, you know,
located down there off of three hundred Adams Boulevard. The other open house meaning
that we're having is on Thursday, February twenty second, from six to eight
pm, and that'll be at the Artist Bank East Side branch. So that
way we can be ensured to get you know, everyone's input like it as
convenient as possible. Absolutely, absolutely, and so our consultants from Half Associates
will be in to ask questions and citizens can provide input there learn more about
the comprehensive plan. So you know what is a comprehensive plan. It's the
primary guide for the community to these growth and transformation established as policies for physical
development, including like I said before, land use and all those other attributes,
and a comprehensive plan are legally required by the State of Oklahoma. It
is not an ordinance. These are just policies that are being put out but
in order for us to have good, good city government and good planning as
we move forward, it's important for us to have that comprehensive plan in place
for that development and growth. So, you know, those are the kind
of the key things that we'll be discussing and kind of the key items that
are very important. Yeah, and so for someone if a citizen comes to
these meetings, what can they expect, What kind of questions do you think
that the you know, insultant, What kind of input in particular are we
looking for. There'll be a lot of information that will be provided by our
consultants. In fact, if citizens want to get kind of a glimpse of
what will be out there, if they want to go to our conference,
the plan website that they go to an Endeavor twenty forty five dot HAF that's
dot h A, l f F dot com, they can go out there
and kind of see what's going on. But a lot of the questions that
are information will be out there will be basically right now, be seeing where
the city has been the data that we've collected and reviewing where the city has
been been going for the last ten twenty years or so, and kind of
at not at this point, a little forecasting, but more of the data
gathering. There'll be a lot of questions about you know, hey, where
do you see where do you want to see more growth in parks or you
know, here's our ideas kind of going around infrastructure. What are your thoughts
about that? And so it'll be a lot of idea opportunities to get input
from that direction and that this is this is a critical part of developing this
plan document and frankly it is it is a core plan document. Yeah,
that's been a number of years since we've had this updated. It has it's
survived as long as it has because of the works of staff and your department
to continue to interpret it and make it work. But it is certainly pastime
for this update. These are these processes take how long? Oh yeah,
this this process you know, it takes about a year. And you know
we already kicked this off last uh late last fall, early winter, and
so we are going to be going through this entire process this in coming year.
Uh and hopefully we'll have a plan together by October time. And so
by that time, you know, I'll be through a lot of committees.
It'll be to the Planning Commission. Of course, the City Council around that
time. So just because you participate in the plan, don't expect to see
it completed with the exactly. We love to have everyone participate. The more
people that are involved, the better this will be, but it is going
to take some time exactly. In addition, you know, for those who
can't make those public means and may have something else going on that evening,
if they go to that website, they can provide a lot of input that
way as well. Yeah, I think we have access to a survey for
people to participate in exactly Exactly. There are there are a lot of ways
to participate and we are looking forward to this. I think that this is
this is one of the critical milestones that we identified in our strategic plan,
and absolutely this is really the next step. And in fact, as you
look through our strategic plan, there are a number of other milestones that are
linked back to this one that can happen until we do this. So I
think this is a foundational document exactly. People will be seeing some information on
this come out in their utility bills. Their util bills are receiving this coming
month, so the website Larry's mentioned and just more information on it we come
out in the flyer. Yeah, we're trying our best get the word out
as much as we can so through our utility bills, through social media,
and other avenues that we have access to through city Beat, We're trying to
get the word out so that way we can ensure we get to as many
people as possible to get the word out. Good. Well, I appreciate
it. I know that this is quite a lift, but it is certainly
worth it once it's completed, and we're we're really looking forward to seeing the
final plan and then using that for the future of our community forward for the
next twenty years. Absolutely. All right, Well, thank you, Larry.
I appreciate it, and we will jump back over here to Jason.
I'm gonna skip me again. No I'm not. I'm gonna give you.
I'm gonna give you your moment here so we could talk sales texts, because
we left everybody hanging last month and it didn't talk about it. Last month
was a good month. Last last month was it was at four point seven.
This month is not a good month because we're down about the same we're
up last month. We're down down point a half percent for this month,
which isn't a horrible thing, because anytime you get over a two million dollar
collection, that's a great month. We're just comparing back to some really large
numbers from fiscal year twenty two and twenty three, and last year this same
month was up about four four point six. Yeah, we're seven, so
kind of back down to about where we were two years ago. Yeah,
which two years ago was a thirteen percent, So I mean we're comparing back
some really still a good, normally large numbers, but it's I think that's
probably the largest decrease we've seen in oh it's been I'm sitting there looking at
the sheet. It would go all the way back to years we get close
in October of twenty one, but on my sheet going five years back,
it's the largest, the largest we've seen. But we're comparing back to some
really large numbers. So we knew that there was going to be a plateau
here, there would be level down, there would be and I don't know,
we don't have comparable use tax umbers this month. I'm certain there's going
to be some cannibalism something. From a time on and as online spending becomes
more prevalent and more prevalent, I mean, it's just going to get bigger
every year. There's more offerings. And so your use tax, actually your
use tax the tax you tracked the US tax, but it's the City of
Barts was used tax. It was its dollars, yeah, which you know,
the second largest use tax. Clushing bad. So far, still looked
pretty good. We don't have any historical want it as next month we'll start
having Yeah, we'll actually be able to have one. So when we get
to that point, that'll be great, but we really don't know. It's
uncharted on that. So so right now we have collected it looks like twelve
months of use tax and that's that's the first twelve months in the history of
bar and it's just shy a five million dollars, just about five million,
and that's almost twice what we were expanding anticipating in so that is that is
great news. It also, again, like you said, it helps to
cushion any decreases that we might have in sales tax because it was not this
was we were really uncertain. We kept making that very clear that use tax
we didn't have any idea what it was going to look like. There was
no way to measure it. So now these in comparable cities. It was
all over the board. Look at the cities relatively to our size and not
not at atch to a metropolitan area like Tall Circle in the city. They
were just they were across you know, such peaks and valleys in their in
their data that there was no way we could really put our thumb on a
real accurate measurements. We kind of averaged that out amongst those and came up
with well, we publish and its conservative estimates. We were extremely certainly was
conservative, very conservative, okay, And the good news is that it's been
very consistent. So you know, a half million, it has these months
that are large and the US tax or you know, our Christmas shopping mounts.
They looked similar as far as how sales SAX fluctuates around those times.
So so fairly stable, fairly predicted stables. The other thing we worked and
you know, it comes back to selles sacks. We're still up one and
a quarter percent compared to last year, which is you know, roughly two
hundred thousand dollars, and compared to budget, we're five hundred and eight thousand
dollars of our budget. And I think that's important to remember is that we
compared to the previous year, but we're actually not even budgeting. Were conservative
on our budgetary estimates because we you know, we don't want to expect to
have more money than we do. And I'll we'll provide some even if we
break even with last year, we'll be ahead. We'll be expectations blue budgeted
too. I think a two percent decrease on sales tax well, all good
news. We're getting ready to go into the budget, so it's good timing
to have have some a little bit better numbers, a little solid, more
solid numbers, because we'll we'll be projecting out and trying to figure out what
the next that's fifteen months looks like. Trying to throw you guys on a
condensed timeline. This year you get that sucking wed luck with that and that
bones and your guys sounds like fun. I'm glad I don't do the budget
anymore. Good everybody's going to kill all right, Well, thank you,
Jason, I appreciate it. And our final surprise guests we have, well,
he's I don't know, you know, much of a surprises here.
Just about every time it's been a fixture year, I have well, I
hid behind Larry when the camera panned over, so that's right. I was
still the mistreat. So in case anybody's wondering, this is Terry Low.
It's in our water utilities director. And more surprise, he's here because we
talked about water. So before we get into that, you know, Mike,
I know that you are in a bit of uh on mornings we did.
But as a Dallas Cowboys fan, you guys made it past your first
game, right, So San Francisco did not lose in the first round of
playoffs, So you guys do have some positive things to off that. That's
true. But at the end of the day, your losers, just like
the Cowboys, like, we're first losers, not the champs. So it
doesn't matter. First, it doesn't matter. Nobody will remember it was in
ze of Plex. No they don't, but it does make it. I
just did an informal poll. I think everybody's wearing a Chiefs jersey some sort
of shirt in this radius day. Absolutely, it is all over. I
would just like to point out what did happen to all the Cowboys fans?
They were everywhere and now I see your Chiefs fans. What's happened well,
you got to go after a win. Don't shut people like winards. It's
called the band It's a bandwagon for a reason. So all right, you
brought I digress. Let's talk about water and what we're doing and what's what's
happened. So I always like to point out with the drought that we had
experienced really starting in the latter half of twenty twenty two all the way up
to Christmas of last year, that was the second worst drought in recorded history.
So I'm just gonna let that sink in. The second worst drout in
recorded history, and recorded history starts back in nineteen nineteen, so well over
one hundred years. Let's in the southeast southeast for Kansas is so Hula Copan
and uh, those two lakes really draw from from southeast Kansas where those watersheds
are. So if it rains that location, that's where the rain goes is
into one of those two lakes there. So we are still so Hula Lake
has really been replenished by that Christmas rain event. Copane Lake is slowly returning
back to normal, so it is down around sixty percent right now. Water
is still coming into Copan Lake, but it's still really lower than normal and
it's it's it's going to take a while for it to get back to think
it was. It was frightening and of course the town of Copan during that
period of time was very concerned because it was the water was almost below the
level at which they could reach it. Yeah, they were taking steps,
i think to do some emergency provisions just to get the water to their plants.
So it was pretty dire. So it's good news for lake or Copan
Lake and hopefully that water continues to come in and bring it back to a
normal level. But as all things, rain will happen and it will replenish
it. It's just a matter of wind at time wind, So can we
survive the downtime? That's right. So from a water supply perspective, the
old raw water that we have at all of our water sources, so that
Sheula Copan, Hudson Lake and the Kini River, we're at eighty one percent.
If you look at a weighted weighted water right based on these lakes,
then we're at over one hundred percent. So there are no water restrictions.
There haven't been any water restrictions really since Christmas time, so that continues to
persist, so we're thankful of that, but we still are looking at long
term water supply options. So these are options that aren't really for the immediate
needs because we have plenty of water for the next ten years at a minimum,
but we're looking at looking at water supply needs for the next fifty to
one hundred years. So that's really the items that we're focusing on with the
plan that we've been pursuing through the Water Resources Committee. So one of those
items is call Lake. So Council did approve a contract with S two Engineering
last Monday, with S two or for Call Lake Water Study. So this
was an item that was identified back in two thousand and six through a Core
Partner Planning Assistance to States project. So that study really designated that Copan and
HULA are your most cost effective options to pursue long term water supply and then
Call Lake was a distant third just because of the capital costs with it.
But now that we have some perspective as far as the drought that we recently
have endured, the Water Resources Committee wanted to revisit Call Lake to see exactly
how much that's going to cost and to dive more into the details as far
as the alignments and some of the environmental issues that may encounter with pursuing that
project. So with the planning assistance to State's Project six, that was more
of a conceptual study to get an order of magnitude with the various options,
and that helped delineate which options to start going after, and we've been doing
that. Unfortunately, has taken us twelve years to get water ice at Copan
Lake, which is the first recommendation from that it can act to Congress to
get that done. So these things just don't move very quickly, unfortunately.
But with that study that is being performed, we're going to look at first
the water compatibility with our treatment system, different alignments, different types of intakes
which is how we would pull the water out of the lake, and then
get cost and timing for those various options that will present to the Water Resources
Committee. So this study will take roughly about five six months to complete,
but it will help really add to the options that that Water Resources Committee is
investigating. So that includes call Lake, potentially reallocating water from the flood control
portion of both Heal the Lake and Copan Lake, and then investigating the aid
of a Musa aquifer which is in central Osage County. So those are the
four options that we are diving into to get as much information and costs associated
with it, so that at the end of the day, I would anticipate
the Water Resources Committee is going to make recommendation on which ones to go after
first, to kind of prioritize each one of those options moving forward. So
when we talk about reallocation, essentially what that is is raising the permanent level
of the lake, and so I think on CULA it was talking about between
three and six feet right, depending on how much of the flood point floodpool
we reallocated. Yep, YEP. So Copan and Healu were built primarily for
flood control and then a secondary use is water supply, so they keep a
level which is what I call the normal level of the lake, which is
really the water supply component of it. The flood control is really anything that's
above that. So the core as a policy, when you get a rain
event that starts filling that flood control portion of the lake, they try to
move that water out as quickly as possible so that is available for the next
rain event. And that's I think primarily a lesson they learned in nineteen eighty
six when we have the flood, really the catastrophic flood here in bart Well,
where they felt they could have managed those lakes maybe differently that may have
prevented or possibly mitigated some of the flooding that we experienced. But we are
the direct benefit of that flood control on those two lakes. So you know,
it's it's kind of a I won't say a double edged sword, but
if we relocate a portion of the flood control the water supply, that potentially
does mitigate or cut into what's available for flood control. So that's a study
that we've initiated with the corp of Engineers to look at because we can basically
sign a risk and based upon what that risk is, then we'll likely have
a recommendation that will ensue. Is that a project as viable to pursue and
how long do we expect this study to take? We haven't got word yet.
So we've had some initial conversations with the CORE. They're still pulling together
a team on their side of it, so we haven't that's for the reallocation
for the call study, it's about five to six months about months. We
expect it will probably take longer with the core based on our experience, it
will take longer than yes. Yeah, So all of that information will continue
to be aggregated and taken back to the Resource committee. One other thing we
have going on, We got about one minute to wrap this up, wastewater
reuse. For anyone who is a student paying attention to the packet, you'll
notice that we are starting a pilot. What exactly does that mean for the
citizens of Borlosa. So we are looking to demonstrate our proposed improvement or plan
to use wastewater treated wastewater as an augmentation for the raw water source. So
we are going through and we're running various tests and different configurations to see which
one works the best and to demonstrate the performance of that system for not only
our benefit, but for the state as far as the regulators go. So
that once that's completed, which will be around June of this year, then
we'll have a bunch of data that's associated with this plan and that will be
used to base what ultimately the treatment is going to have to be on that
water to facilitate a reuse. And so during this pilot there we won't be
transferring water upstream as we will when we actually utilize it in fact, so
this will all happen on site, that's correct. Yeah, it's just to
change anything for the citizens itself. It's just internal to the plant. So
we're just going through that treatment process and measuring results and probably about five hundred
different contaminants within it. Got to make sure it's safe. Yeah, we
actually use it's a very extensive type of study to really look at all the
parameters so that we understand what's going on with it, how it changes by
the season, and then because our goal is the same as everybody is that
we have to have a safe and viable source of water there. All right,
thank you, Terry, all right, I appreciate you getting up.
Absolutely no problem at all. Community Development Director Larry Curtis, Water Utilities Director
Terry Lawrenson, City Treasurer Jason Moninger, and City Manager Mike Bailey. Ben
I got those names out. You've been listening to semimatters right here on ky,
thanks for listening to one on lum of the professional A paid presentation in
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