Good morning, good morning, good morning. Welcome, welcome, welcome.
It's time now for city matters. If it matters to you, it matters
to the city. And Lauren Rosel drew the short straw. He has to
come in a day after city council meets, and of course you had the
big budget. But first things first, we had a weather incident last night.
What can you tell us from the city hall perspective? I know the
information it's kind of limited because well, a lot of research is going on
right now, a lot of looking around see what's going on. It's an
all hands on deck situation at city Hall right now. Our city manager and
city staff are dealing with all the issues that are happening in our city.
Our city crews have already been out this morning clearing debris off of roadways,
so you shouldn't have any problems traveling around the city at this point in time.
I think we've got them pretty much all of the debris off the roadways,
only a few minor spots left. If you do have roadway debris,
please call the city and let us know so we can come out and get
it cleared up for you. There was some significant damage along the Tuxedo Highway
seventy five corridor last night. We're still assessing what that damage is and how
much damage went on there, but we do have significant structure damages out there.
There's a lot of trees down, a lot of the city is still
without power, So the city's still assessing and trying to get resources out to
everybody in our community. If you need something, don't hesitate to reach out
to your city councilor reach out to the city staff. We'll be able.
We're there to assist you. American Red Cross has a shelter set up in
Osh County at the Osh County Fairgrounds right now, So if you need to
shelter and you need someplace to go the Osh County's Fairgrounds, reach out to
the American Red Cross. They're evaluating more shelter areas in Washington County at this
time, and they'll respond in open shelters if needed in Washington County. So
yeah, Police, fire, Washington County Emergency Management, they all did a
great job last night. They kept a lot of our city safe. They
they turned on the sirens at the appropriate time. People were able to be
well notified with the storm and take shelters so I think the majority of our
citizens are safe. If you need something, let us know. Of course,
this is what I love about this community. If you need something,
your neighbor's always there to help you. And I saw neighbors out helping neighbors
this morning and stuff. So let's all just take a moment today and go
help someone in our community. It needs help, alrighty. And your neck
of the woods a lot of trees, just a lot of trees. Yeah,
my neck of the Woods was a whole whole bunch of trees down this
morning, looks like the roadways were cleared. I was impressed that whenever I
came down to work downtown this morning that they had the city cruis had already
cut up and removed all of the trees out of the roadways in my neighborhood.
So it props to our city crews out there. We did a little
bit of budget work last night with city Hall. Hew'd that go. We
did a lot of budget work last night. So it's that time of year,
our fiscal year. We'll transition over in July and July first, so
we needed to take care of some budgets. We passed our city budget,
our CIP budgets. We took the year in reports from our Barsville Development Authority
does our economic development here in town, and approved their budget for the next
fiscal year. The BDA does such a great job the economic development. They
had a success in this fiscal year for twenty three twenty four. They did
a lot of projects that really brought a lot of jobs. I think a
total of about two hundred and fifty jobs were brought to Bartlesville. We did
about forty five incentives for people to move to Bartlesville. So we've got a
lot of things going on and a lot of new things, new businesses happening.
Blue Whale out at the Airport's going to be some new stuff. They've
got a plan to capture the momentum into the next fiscal year. So BDA
is doing a great job developing our business and retail here in town. City
councilor I get to feeling those those folks have too much fun. I know
they they got all these secrets they can't tell anybody until the appropriate time.
And I walk around, I see that bell Childer guy just smiled the like
you know somebody gave him, you know, a candy bar something. I'll
tell you what batch Helda is the biggest cheerleader we have for our community,
and him and mister Woods Uh, they do a great job. And all
the staff over at the BDA does a great job. Of course, we
want to mention the visitors visit Barnsville Convention, the Visitors Bureau, they do
an amazing job. They gave us third year and report. They did some
really great work in this past fiscal year, brought visitors to our community.
As Maria gust likes to say, it all starts with a visit. So
bringing people here to Barnswille to see our community, they fall in love with
it and they want to come back, and sometimes they want to stay,
so they go. Ratio is pretty good on that. Yeah, yeah,
absolutely, we get people here to Barsville and they fall in love with our
town because it's such a great community. So they did, they did.
They did a great job in the last year getting visitors and increasing our tax
revenue and our tax base by bringing in visitors to Bartsville. There's a lot
of big events. They brought in a lot of big events going to happen
next year. So we approved their budget for next year to help them continue
doing that great job. They're doing, bringing visitors and bringing revenue into our
city. So we got street projects. Mikeh Seimer's down there, our director
of Engineering at the city. He's going to need a lot of help down
there because we got street projects. We improved, prevented the maintenance schedule for
our streets, we improved some CIP projects, so he's got street projects for
days. I know. Then the last year, this city Council's priority has
been to put funds not only in our yearly CIP budgets, but put sales
tax dollars towards it, but to also put bond money towards getting our streets
back up and in good conditions. So we've got a lot of street projects.
We've got a lot of fire and police projects. We're going to building
new fire station out there. We're going to be replacing the fire station of
Virginia. So there's just gonna be a lot going on in the next year.
And it was great to get those budgets passed so that we can hit
the ground running on July first, getting all these projects started. We're dogging
with City councilor Lauren Brisel, did you approve the budget for mister Bailey's contract.
Mister Bailey does such a fantastic job as our city manager. A lot
of people. You know, we were operating what's called the Council city Manager
reform of government in Bartzil. So the council only hires and fires four people
in this city, the city manager, the City Attorney of the city judge,
and the city accountant. So those are the only people that we get
to hire and fire. City Manager's contract was renewed. He does a great
job. We're happy to renew that contractor and we're happy to have him back
for another three years helping our city. Well, I just wondering. You
know, I got that city app and I couldn't find the Hey, Baan
anybody, Yeah, I know, you got to try out the new City
of Buzzle app. If you haven't, haven't downloaded it your smartphone. You
got to download the city app. It's amazing. I keep trying to convince
him to put you know, Mike Bayley's phone number on the app. Where
I had to do is just hit that app and it'll automatically call his cell
phone, but they just won't do it. I don't know why, what's
the fun? I know we might write it in the next contract. Though.
Okay, we had the loss of a city councilor Billy Roan, what
if any action was taken last night, or what suggestions were made by staff,
or by council or even by the city attorney for what's next. Well,
so let me start off by saying Billy was a good friend of mine,
worked with her in many projects city and community service projects over the years.
There is no way we can fill the whole left in our city and
that was left with Billy's passing. What we're going to try to do is
we're going to try to appoint somebody to take her place on the city council.
The applications were received through last Friday at eleven thirty, so we got
nine applications. Last night, the city accepted those applications. Now the next
step is that our city staff will go through each one of those applicants,
make sure that they are qualified and eligible to hold the city council's seat,
will remove any of them that are not eligible to hold that seat, and
then we'll move into the next couple of weeks. We'll be doing some interviews.
The city council will split up into sets of two so that we don't
violate any opens Meeting acts or anything like that. We won't establish a quorum.
We will separate into groups of two city councilors and we will interview the
applicants that are eligible to hold that position, and then in June we'll come
back and we will we will vote on a one of those applicants to fill
that position. Very good, Very good. It's a hard process, I
know for everyone. Every time I think about it or I start dealing with
it, it just tugs them my heart a little bit. I miss Billy
so much. I miss her sitting there with me on city Council, and
we'll never be able to fill the hole that she left. But we're going
to try to continue her great legacy of service in this community and live up
to the ideals that she had for our community. So she will be missed,
but we will try our best to go ahead and serve in her name.
Very good. Once again, folks, sit tight. If you're having
some troubles with the everything that's going on with the tornadoes, We've got just
about any service agency on the map right here in the city. I tried
to take care of them. Once again. Our street people have been taking
care of the debris on the street with the tree limbs and sometimes in some
cases is actually trees, and also where the city has no control over your
electrical supplier at this point. But PSO is doing everything they do they can.
They had their trucks out last night at my house. Hey guys,
they do yeah, And I want to say thank you to our first responders,
the police, Fire Ambulance Services last night they were on the spot in
Washington County Emergency Management. They all did a fabulous job. You know.
The first responders last night did their job and did it as expected, did
it with with all of the greatness we expect of them, have come to
expect from them. And now it's time for the city crews and stuff to
take over start helping the city kind of clean up and remove some debris and
stuff. So they're doing a great job right now of getting out of that
cleaned up. PSO is working as hard as they can to get power restored
as quickly as they can. If you aren't signed up for it, PSO
does give email and text al arts and they'll give you updates throughout the day
of when they expect a power to be restored in your location, So stay
tuned if you need anything. Don't hesitate to reach out to the city,
don't hesitate to reach out to the American Red Cross, or you go knock
on your neighbor's door, because that's the great thing about this community as we
always are there to help, you know. And folks, here's a little
tip, you know, because we just don't have an eyes to be everywhere.
That's exactly right, and we appreciate it if you give us a heads
up. But calling up and saying leadn't about that tree, and you'll tell
us where you are, what roads being blocked, or you know, use
a little bit of a kinder demeanor and just say, hey, you know
there's a tree blocking this roadway. Wanted to bring it to your tention as
fast as you can. Yeah, that's what's the great thing about the app.
You can go on that app and you report the issue, and you
can tell it where, tell the city where it is, and you can
report that issue right there on the app on your phone hold no holds,
no phones. You don't even have to talk to you if you don't want
it, and just report it right there on the app. So that sounds
good. That's a great thing about that app, and I really appreciate our
IT department putting that together for us. It's going to be great for our
city. Just work on the Hey Bailey button. That's all. Ill we'll
get to a Bailey button. We were worked into the next contract. Lauren
Miselle, thank you for being with us here on city matters.