Good Bundy, good money, good money, good morning, and welcome uncle,
welcome to stopping out for city matters on K one, the one he
tries, if it matters to the you, it matters to the city.
And we have a city councilor right here from War two and it is Lauren
Mozelle. How are you doing there, young man? Good? How are
you doing sir? And the sun is shining, the grass is kind of
almost well, it's going to be green someday. It's going to be green,
saying, And I'm able to fog a mirror, so it's good day,
good day, good to day. Sunshining is going to beautiful this week,
I think. And I'm seeing some crocuses and some flowers popping up out
there, so it looks like springs on its way. I so, I
hope. So hey, we've been talking about where the city's going and who's
got to say in it. It turns out we the people have a say
in it. How did that happen? It's exactly right. Welcome to America.
It's a good plan. And the citizens of Barzil have the most important
say in the biggest say in what we do as a city. So we're
putting on some we're putting on an effort to do a comprehensive plan update update
our comprehensive plan. We're to undertaking this effort, it's going to call it
be called Endeavor, and we are asking citizens to give us their input to
help us put together this comprehensive plan for the city. We've got a couple
of opportunities. First, you can go online and take a survey. There's
a couple of different surveys you can take. You can go to the city's
website and they'll link you out to the survey to take and give input.
That way, there's a couple of in person meetings that city staff is going
to facilitate, so Tomorrow six to eight pm at the Community Center citizens citizens
can show up and give their input and their feedback on the comprehensive plan and
where they want to see us go. There's also another public house open meeting
on Thursday six to eight pm at the east Side, our Vest Branch.
So there's a couple of in person meetings they can attend this week, or
we can go online and give our input online. So we really want our
citizens to be involved, to have a set and to guide our direction as
a city. You know, a long time ago, I guess we had
a little train, like a like a little trolley thing that, yes,
And they come up with the idea for a mono rail. Well, I
think I don't think we're quits high on the list of things that we're gonna
look at doing in the future. But I don't know about the mono rail.
I don't think. I don't think that's a good idea at all.
I just throwing it out there, so if anybody had the wise idea,
put it away. But you know, the direction of the city is within
your control. If you've got an idea, you never know because there are
almost forty thousand people who live here, yes, almost yes, And if
everyone put forth an idea, I guarantee you there's gonna be a bunch of
good ones. Oh, there's gonna be some great ideas. I mean,
I get emails from citizens every day that have great ideas and great and they
want to give their input, and I think we need to give them that
place to do that. And there's also another effort there with the city's undertaking
to help people get involved in the actual and learn about the actual workings of
the city. We're doing Citizen at Training Academy Citizens Academy. This is really
cool. I like this. The city staff has a great idea here to
say, how do citizens learn about their city and the inner workings and the
functions of their city, and so they get they're putting on this Citizens Academy.
Go online register for Citizen Academy. It's going to start in April.
It's really a great way to get involved, and we'd love to have people,
you know, involved in our committees, our boards, our commissions.
Learn about your city and how it works and how it functions, what the
city is responsible for, and what the state may be responsible for or you
know. So it's it's going to be a lot of great information. If
you want to learn about how your city functions day to day, the Citizens
Academy is a great way to do it. It's like it's like Civics on
generoids. That's exactly right. And it's very local based. I mean,
we take a lot of civics and we talk a lot about you know,
what's going on in the world and the country and even in the state.
But every day you are a fan by what happens in your city and the
things that your city government does for you, and your city staff do for
you. So those are the things that affect you most and the things that
affect you every day. So the Citizen Academy is a great way to get
get in there, learn and get involved. It will demystify a whole lot
of times folks who are just daring convinced that five people run the whole show.
And I'm like, that's exactly ya. I think you know. One
of the things I keep having to remind a lot of our citizens about is
our city staff does the lion's absolute ninety nine point ninety nine nine percent of
the work of everything that goes on in the city. They take the input,
they put together what they find and then they present it to you.
Absolutely. And the City Council is just a representation of the citizens on a
board and a commission that hopefully enact the will of the people and do what's
best in the best interests of all of the citizens of Barswel But the city
staff from Mike Bailey down to the guy picking up your trash, and the
policeman and the fireman, and the Parks Apartment and the city Development directors and
the Communications lead and hr they doing all the work every day to keep this
city great. And we are really we really have a great city because of
the work that those people put in. Now, if I want to be
a part of this Citizens Academy, does it cost me anything? So it's
the Citizens Academy. I believe it's going to be free if you're a work
here or both. That's all I know. The program, no costs.
It will take place between on Thursday afternoons beginning April eleventh, running through June
twentieth. There's a If you go to the City of Bartlesville website, there
is a link out to register for that Citizens Academy. I think they're going
to limit it to the first twenty people, but there's still space available,
so get out there and register for it soon. No, our water,
we seem to have plenty of it for right now. Yes, it doesn't
mean like, you know, a few months from now, we could be
right back where we were, because there's every chance in the world that we
could. I understand that our Water Resources Committee is looking at a lot of
options. They are, so, you know, just an update everybody in
the city. We are in a good spot right now with our water supply.
Copan's still low, but it does look like it's filling up with some
of the recent range that we have. It's a little fuller than it has
been in the past, but it's still really low. But our supply of
Yula and Hudson is good. We're full there and in fact, we even
the corp of Engineers had to let off some let out some water just to
control the floodplain. So we are good on our water supply. But that
doesn't mean that this summer and two summers or three summers or ten summers down
the road, that we won't be back in the same spot we are.
And so the city Council did stand up the Water Resources Committee to look at
options for how we can deal with supply into the future. They've come with
come back to us with a couple of options. One of the ones that
sounds like it's most beneficial and the easiest and best to do is getting trying
to get some water from Call Lake and that Carll Reservoir. But we need
to study that and we need to get some information, some hard data about
what that would take, what the numbers are, how many you know people
we're going to have to pay right of ways and easements to get the pipe
back to Bartlesville, all that kind of stuff. We need to be able
to evaluate out on hard data. So the city Council authorizes them to go
out and pay for a study that'll give us some of that data that we
need to make good decisions down the road about whether this is really feasible for
us to do, whether it's cost effective for us to do, and whether
it actually really will solve our water supply issue going forward. So it's not
going to be a quick fix. It's not going to happen overnight. It's
going to probably take years for us to get it in place, even if
we decide to do this, So we need to make some decisions on some
hard data. The Water Resources Committee has done fabulous work meaning and suggesting things
to the city council this They came to the City Council and asked for this
study to be done, and I think that's that's the right thing to do,
so we can get data to make good decisions. One thing we were
talking about before we came in here to the studio was, you know,
they're really working hard on the US sixty just from the city limits of Bartleville
all the way up os Yeah, be a darn shambe if we had to
start digging up things, but pipe to get done with that. That's where
these studies are going to be really because we will be able to identify where
the right place to put pipes is, where the possibility where the different routes
are, and we can kind of plan for that so we don't have to
go put down a nice new highway and then dig it up to put down
a pipeline. Oh goodness sakes, well, I tell you what that study
is going to be really good. I understand that there's an aquifer, but
I don't know how far along the resource board is. And and even looking
at that, I know the call thing was the one that we wanted to
look at first. But the aquifer in Osh County, this thing could be
really really really really big or it could be really really tiny. Nobody really
knows for sure. And that's the thing. You know, it's underwater,
underground, underground. You don't have eyes on it. So you have to
do studies. You have to look at it. And you know, as
we progress through the process with the Water Resources Committee, it's going to be
one of the things we're going to look at. We're going to get a
study and some data off of that so we can make the decisions there.
There's a couple of different options that are just in the exploratory stages right now,
kind of ideas stages. As we move forward and the Water Resources Committee
brings it to us, we'll look at doing more hard data studies on that.
Well, that is cool, you know what, once again, the
Citizens Academy, this is the first time this has been done, and if
you really want to get a very good look at the inner workings of how
your city operates and how you fit into it. Yeah, exactly, that's
the big party. You know, you're a big you're a player because you're
a citizen, and you you kind of hold the cards absolutely. You know,
you kind of think city government is a big machine out there, but
it's not really. You're the piece of the machine. You're a part of
that, the whole system, and you're the biggest part of it. And
you know your direction and being involved in knowing what the city can and can't
impact, and can and can't affect, and how it works, and you
know, just sometimes knowing the right person to pick up the phone and call
to ask a question or to get something done is ninety percent of the battle
of getting things moving. You know, people don't know the right I hope
they know that they're a city councilor all five of the city councilors are always
their first point of contact. They can always pick up the phone and ask
us or email us and we'll answer questions. But we don't have a lot
of power or authority because we are just at a authority commission board. So
what we would do is we would connect you with the right people in the
city that can actually do that kind of stuff for you. So if you
get involved in like this city Academy, you're going to probably be able to
more quickly move to the right person and the right department to get the thing
you need done done. We're always here at City Councilors to help you and
assist you and connect you in any way we can, but we have no
authority to be able to direct anybody except the city manager, the city attorney,
the city judge, and the city treasurer on anything because of the only
spots we hire and fire. You can bring up an interesting point. You
know, you you are the representative of the people. You're not omnipotent.
That's exactly gone. Well, I'm gonna call Lauren. He's just gonna wave
magic one, say a few words, and by golly, it'll be fixed.
That is really that works. This is why the Academy is so important,
exactly. And you'd like, I would love to be able to wave
a magic wand and make everybody happy to get everything done. But there was
and there's a good example of this in my ward right now. We did
a traffic study on Dorchester out and Colonial. Uh. Some people were complaining
that there was a lot of traffic and a lot of speeding traffic, and
people like a walk up and down that road and children play on kids play
on that road. So we needed data to be able to evaluate. So
I connected the citizens in that area with the process that they can they can
go through to say, let's do a traffic study to see how the traffic
is flowing along there with speeds and how often and what times, and see
if it qualifies for some sort of traffic control device in there. And it
did qualify for a traffic control device. So the citizens are now moving that
directly forward with their Homeowners' Association to be able to put some traffic control devices
along door Chester there to slow that traffic down and make it safer in their
neighborhood. And that was really my role in that was just to connect them
with the process and help them find their way through that process. But it's
a citizen led effort. And this is where the City Academy comes in,
is it teaches you how to be that leady, that citizen that leads and
makes things happen. And you may have something you've been wanting to do and
get done for a long time. This is the right place to learn how
the city can accomplish that. We're talking with city councilor Laura and Miselle,
and you know this is going to take a lot of just a lot of
aggravation out of people because you frustration just festers really bad. Oh yeah,
all thoughts. And if you get through to where you see, ah,
there's the path that that's just how it works, and you're gonna see some
daylight. You know that that frustration is gonna subside and you're gonna realize that
you have all the power and you are not powerless. Absolutely absolutely, you
hold all the cards. You hold all the power. I serve at the
pleasure of the people of my ward, and I hope I represent them well.
But the citizens of the city have the best ideas and the best they
know best. And what's what's the right thing for Bartlesville, And when they
get involved, Bartlesville is better for it. And how do we get a
hold of you here? So you can always get a hold of me.
I do answer my phone. You ask anybody. I do actually answer my
phone. You can contact me by phone. My number is nine one eight
four four zero zero two one five, or you can send me an email
Ward two at City at war two at Cityobartosville dot org. Uh word two
Council, I'm sorry, Ward II, Council at cityofarthoswel dot org and you
can send me there. You can find my email address on the city website.
Go to city website look under City Council. You find my email address
there too. I'm always available before and after all city council meetings. I'm
planning this summer to hold a town hall in my ward to talk about what's
going on in my ward with the people in my wards. So I held
one in fall of last year and want to do that again. It was
really a good way to communicate with the people in my ward and let them
talk to me about what their concerns are. So look for this summer we'll
have another town hall in my ward. All right, Son's good. Thank
you very much, appreciate