Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
I mean it's time now for city matters. If it matters to you,
it matters to the city. And we have Mike Bailey, who's been
Mia lately. You're doing bad, you're doing good. I appreciate you calling
me all of that. It's okay, it's okay. I just was over
here watching the chief get kind of nervous a little bit, but he settled
down. Did he get two three minutes? Two or three minutes into it?
He was like, I got I promised him I wouldn't even watch.
I didn't want to make him nervous. He actually did a great job.
And you also are having a hard time not calling him chief, right,
I had a very hard time not calling him chief because they just called him
chief just a second ago. Yeah. See, I've not figured out what
to call him. Well, I mean I got things. I called it.
Tracy is probably the best day, but it doesn't start mister Rolls.
So one of him is how he wrote. One of his employees from the
the police station actually came up with a great idea called him old Chief.
Okay, old Chief Okay. I think it has a nice rink to Big
Chief ball Chief. Well, we could go with a lot of things.
I had to go there. Yeah, we do have old Mike and new
Micah haven six. We tried a lot of names. I haven't settled on
one yet, but I'll let you know what I do. Mike Bailey,
I have a question for you. Has anybody I ever asked you any questions
about water? It turns out a couple of times we here, we here
a couple. I was joking. I made some notes, and usually for
radio I have one page and most of my notes are about things that I
want to make sure they cover. This time I came out of room to
get them on the page. Yeah, so this is this is pretty much
all water. But before I jump into that, I did just want to
take one moment. Last Wednesday we had the Police Officers Memorial and it's for
fallen officers and it is a phenomenal service. We do that every year,
So if you've missed it and haven't had a chance too, I would I
would certainly invite you to attend next year. It's a very somber affair,
but it also is and you really do get to pay honor to those guys.
And it's not just for Bartlesville police officers. We have a memorial at
the police station, a beautiful memorial. It's intended to honor any fallen police
officers or peace officers, and also any fallen firefighters, which I'm grateful to
say that we don't have any on the list at this point in our entire
history. I was, I don't know, I need to knock on some
wood here. I don't want to be that guy. They have been busy,
that's right. But the officers are actually from all over and so they
go all the way back to I believe just right after statehood was the first
one. So there's some marshals, and there is there's ocelated police officers and
ocialated Dewey Bartlesville so and of course Washington County deputies. So it really is
a great event. And if you haven't seen the memorial, it's been there
a few years now. It was designed actually by our firefighters and our police
officers. They formed a committee and at my encouragement and formed a committee and
they actually designed that. So it's a it's a beautiful memorial to them.
And just wanted to take a moment and thank everyone who has served in any
capacity. Peace officer is a very challenging profession, no matter what level you're
doing it at, and I'm grateful to everyone who serves. I know that
not everybody in the country is grateful for what you do, but those of
us who know, we are very grateful. So thank you all, and
thank you for your sacrifices, and thank you to your families for the sacrifices
that they make as well. So after that, somber, No, let's
jump into water, because this is a much more cheerful topic, right,
Okay, let's talk water shortage. So I have a little bit of good
news, but I want everybody to hear me when I say a little bit.
It's a little bit. So for the first time since we started monitoring
this, as we reached the seventy percent level, water supply has actually increased
two weeks in a row. Both weeks though it increased less than one percent,
so it's still an increase. It was good news. So the rain
did have some impact, but it is it's difficult. I don't think people
truly appreciate exactly how big of a drought there is in those areas, and
Terry put up a great graphic that really was. It was very impactful for
me. And it was the Miso net from the State of Kansas, and
he overlaid our drainage basins for Hula and Copan both and they are anywhere between
I think it's twelve to twenty one inches over the last year that they're short
and rainfall, and when we really keep in mind that they normally only get
about forty inches in a year, they've only got about half the rain that
they should in that area. So the area is very dry. And then
that leads to rumors. People start thinking that, you know, well,
there must be a diversion, and so we've heard that, and just to
make sure we've left no stun stone unturned, Terry contacted the corp of Engineers
that are in charge of Copan and Hula Lake to ensure that there was that
there was no diversion in that drainage basin. The answers, no, there's
not. The reason that when we get rain doesn't immediately fill the lake is
is that that collects over an area. I don't even know how many acres,
but it's a huge I say it's huge. It's really not very big
for a lake and some of it gets absorbed to the ground. And that's
that's what we have is that if you've ever been in an area where there
is a drought, and not only do you have the big cracks in the
ground, all of the ponds are have capacity, the bar ditches are empty,
and so when it rains, all of those things have to fill it
first. And that's the reason we're not seeing significant inflow into the lake,
even though there's rain in the area. And so they get you know,
they get a half inch of rain, people say, well, that should
have done it. Well, not when you're five feet below normal. That's
right, that's right. So we're just going to have to continue to pray
for to pray for more rain, and that that's the solution. I mean
that that really is our only solution at this point. Now there people are
concerned because they don't feel that there's been enough planning done. Other people feel
like we're we're moving too quickly on this. So it really depends on which
side you are. Go out to link and to see how much new beach.
Ye, there is a lot, and it's a hard pan basically a
clay beach that was on the bottom of the lake. So the reality is
is that the city has been planning and attempting to acquire additional water since all
the way back in two thousand and one two thousand and two when we had
the human drought. So to say nothing happened the last twenty years as false.
But what people have to understand is that to acquire water supply literally requires
an Act of Congress, and we worked for fifteen years and got one Act
of Congress through which allowed us to buy one million gallons a day off of
Copan. So we do have water on Copan Lake we did not back in
two thousand and one two thousand two. We do have some water on Copan,
But to put that in comparison that one million gallons a day we have
in a normal day with no outside watering, we have over four million gallons
of use. So it took us fifteen years to get one million gallons a
day and that was all that was available on Human. So since that time,
we've can tendue to work with the legislature to get the law pass that
will allow us to purchase some additional water rights on Copan. We're making progress
on that, but we're not there. I'd love to make an announcement,
but we're not there isn't it costly? Is all get out once we start
doing Copan I here, it's an outrageous amount of money. And that is
the other side of this is that once we do get the water in Copan,
to build the infrastructure to be able to bring it by pipeline is expensive.
And so what we have to do is we take our water from Copan
out of the Candy River, or we're already taking water out of the Candy
River. So it's not an instant fix in any by any stretch of the
imagination. But it is important to have our water supply diversified. So we
have we actually have four sources of water right now. We have Hula Lake,
we have Copan Lake. Both of those lakes are relatively close in geography.
We'd love to have one that was a lot farther away, but that
wasn't available. So the state did what it was called the planning Assistance to
state back when after we had had our drought, and at that point in
time, they told us where we were going to get our water. They
didn't ask us where we wanted to get it. So I've heard, you
know, conversation about Call Lake or Grand or revert or whatever. The state
would not permit that. Now, perhaps we could ask them to redo it,
but it was a study that they did for the entire state and about
water supply, so those really aren't options. We certainly have investigated them.
Our first plan actually was to take a pipeline to Call Lake. It was
eighty million dollars twenty years ago, so you can imagine what that is to
day. It'd easily be two hundred million. So we are still working on
those things. But the rumor that there has been no planning is false because
this is the plan. We've been talking about this since February. That's right,
this show. This is the plan. The plan is is that as
water supply contracts, you begin to implement. First, we did public campaign,
we asked for voluntary conservation. It really didn't make any difference, and
so then you start to move into restrictions. And our restrictions are relicly moderate.
I know that some people think that they're that they're worse than what they
are. So we're now in stage four, or sorry, we're now in
stage three. Stage four will happen when we go below fifty percent so stage
three we did have some increases to the water rates, and I want to
address a couple of the rumors because the way we did it was that the
water rates for block one, block two, block three, those are how
we build. So block one is zero to two thousand, you don't pay
for that, You pay for it as part of your annual, your monthly
feet. So then two thousand to ten thousand is a different block and it
gets a different rate. And so this latest increase means that for our purposes,
we call it one hundred and five percent. And so I realized that
caused some misunderstanding in the public and people thought that we were going to double
their water bill. Well it's a five percent increase, yeah, And so
we haven't hit on that too hard because honestly, people being scared about what
they're going to pay has actually driven people to reduce their water. We don't
want there to be a public misunderstanding, but at the same time, we
want people to take this seriously. So just for today, I'm going to
do something that I don't normally do, and we're going to talk about the
dollar amount of that means for average people. Let's do that. So if
you're an average consumer, then you probably use about six thousand gallons a month.
That's the north at six thousand gallons a month. This radio increase that
we have an effect right now will cause your monthly bill to go up eighty
eight cents. So that's the dollar amounts that we're talking about. If you
happen to be a large family and you probably do some outside watering, then
you might use up to twenty five thousand gallons a month. This is a
big, big, heavy water user. For this heaviest of water users,
they would be paying about an extra eight dollars a month. So you can
see that the intent is not to target that family who uses six thousand.
The intent was to target those who were using significant amount of water. Twenty
five thousands a lot of water. This is more than showers and normal water
for a family. So we're really asking those people to find ways to conserve.
You know, don't do your outdoor watering. You still are allowed to
do it right now. You can do it once a week, and so
for an even address, you can do it on Thursday. For an odd
address, you can do it on Friday. So it's not there's no intent.
One of the rumors is that the city is seeking to profit. You
all have screwed up, and so you're trying to profit. Well, it's
not true. What we hope is that by increasing these rates, So for
that family that uses six thousand gallons, if they manage to decrease their usage
by a thousand gallons, then they'll actually pay less than they were even with
these increases. So our hope, honestly is to get less money because that
means that these things are working, so are voluntary calls for conservation. These
rate increases mean that people are actually conservative. So that's the idea, and
I hope that everyone will take this seriously. This is not intended to cause
a panic. That's not it at all. And the reality is we just
want people to be cautious and more observant of the amount of water that they
use because the supply that we have right now is the only apply that we
went. There is no quick way to fix this. There is no simple
way to fix this. And we'll we'll talk some about some of the rumors.
In fact, Mike and I were laughing about some of them because we
have members of our family who who will ask us, you know, well,
why don't you say, Okay, well let's talk. Can I have
won a rumor? Can I fill up my own private swimming pool? Well,
you can, but you have to pay for it at a higher rate,
and so that there is no there is no prohibition on private swimming pools.
However, you can only fill that up on your designated day. So
as part of the outdoor water you so if you're even, you can do
it on Thursday. If you're odd, you can do it on Friday.
And as far as makeup water, you need to do that on your designated
day as well. I just want to be clear. I don't have a
private fool, but i'd ask you for folction for those who have for a
friend, yeah now, because I don't want anybody just jump into my fancy
saying well where is it man? And I would say that people need to
consider this because as we go to fifty percent, then there will be a
ban on all outdoor water US. At that point in time, technically you
would not be able to put water in your pool to bring it back up.
And so I hope that people are considering that part of it. And
that's the exact logic we went through in discussing sooner in frontier. Not only
do we want it's not good for us to fill the pools when we're at
this low of a water supply. The other side of that is is that
if we go to Stage four, which is likely. Stage four has a
ban of all outdoor water use, so at that point in time, we
would no longer be able to add water to our pools, and that actually
will be true for the rest of the community as well. So unless the
council amends, I should always preface everything with that. That's the rules we
have in place today and they can be amended. So but those are the
sort of things we're looking at as far as Stage four, you know,
just looking into the future. The reason that we're doing these things is that,
yeah, my crystal ball, which is wrong, by the way,
I gotta show you it's wrong. But we all we can do is based
on information we am So we're expecting to enter into Stage four in June,
and with these last few increases it will probably be late June without significant rainfall,
and so if that happens, then we will enter into the Stage four
restrictions, which are some of the things we talked about at current rates.
If we continue to use four to four and a half million gallons a day
and there is no rainfall, then in January of twenty four, we will
be where we were back in two thousand and one two thousand and two,
will have less than what about fifteen inches left or fifteen percents a right,
not inches in some areas already help you, let's be clear. So at
fifteen percent of water supply left, that is a significant issue. And so
that's what we're looking at. And so that's the timeline that we see.
I can't control the rain, so all we can do is attempt to control
the demand. So that's really what this is. And we mentioned it earlier,
but the Sooner Pool and Frontier Pool we're not going to We're not going
to open those right now. And what we would target is that as the
water supply reach seventy percent, if it's early enough in a season, then
we'll open both those pools. And I'm hopeful that we could do that next
week. You want to go down in water, I already did. I'm
one of the few that has, and I would love to do it again.
It's a lot of fun. So I really do hope that we reach
that, but until then we're I'm just asking everybody to pitch in and bear
with us as we go through this together. Another question that comes up,
and it's always somebody that's got it just a soreness about them. We have
those car washes still open, sure and so and those are some of the
things that that we're working through internally. So the plan doesn't target anything specifically.
The plan has general rules, so it has increased rates for higher water
use yea. So those car washes will be paying higher and higher rates as
the water supply declines. At some point they'll either have to raise their rates
which will cause people to use the car wash less often, or water your
cards on through season fridays except for once we hit fifty percent, there will
be no more outdoor water. So so yes, you're correct, they are
open. And again we didn't target any specific business. We didn't target the
pool supply business and say you can no longer service anybody's pools either. Good
this is we have done these rules based on rates and restrictions that are reasonable
and apply to everybody. So I don't know what we'll do in the future.
Obviously, if we hit stage four that could change things. But for
right now, yes that they are. They're under the same restrictions as everybody
else. So quick run through the rumors, the latest the latest rumors.
There's always more so fines for water use. People have misunderstood. There are
fines. If you're using water outdoors on a day that is not your designated
date, you can be fined for that. If you use more than two
thousand gallons of water, you won't be fined. That's not what this is.
The two thousand gallon mark that is the beginning of Block two and Block
two it now has a five percent rate increase, so no fines, but
you will pay more for water that you use. And Block two. Block
three starts at ten thousand gallons and goes up twenty five and that is a
ten percent rate increase, so you'll pay more for that water. So no
fines for water use. The rates are not double. We address that,
it's a five percent to ten percent those first two blocks. And we also
sort of address the city trying to profit. We're not. In fact,
I hope that we make less money because people have used this water. We
make a lot of money in the summer, so and discouraging people from using
outdoor water is the opposite of trying to make money. We are trying not
to make money. And then there are questions that aren't isn't this drought cyclical?
And the answer is sure. All droughts are cyclical, just like all
flooding seasons and all financial cycles. It's all cyclical. But we don't know
when the end of this cycle is so until we know that. If I
could predict it, then we would plan just based on what I know.
But right now we just have to assume it'll go on for a while.
So it is cyclical, you know. And it's I've heard it was worse
than twenty one or worse than two thousand and one, two thousand and two,
they're entirely great. It was a lot worse back then. We're trying
to prevent reaching that, so we're applying the lessons that the city learned during
that. Oh and the lakes. We claim the lakes are empty, but
the rivers are full, and don't the rivers come from the lakes, And
that is true, But there is a law that requires the Core of Engineers
to release ten million gallons a day from the two lakes. So right now
they're releasing about two million gallons a day from Heula and about eight million gallons
a day from Copan, so they have to release that. It's called a
minimum stream flow. So you're right, the river level stays pretty constant,
but the lakes are still declining, and that's part of the reason. Are
those minimum flows water diverted from Cula. This was the new one, and
I think we talked a little bit about this. There was a fear that
there had been someone had cut an irrigation ditch or something in and so it
was above Hula, and therefore that's why I went a round. We are
getting any water, so it's being diverted. Water pirates, that's a water
pirates, that's a movie. So that is not true. We have talked
to the core of engineers. It's not true. They're reassured us that it's
exactly what we thought. It was a lot of dry ponds, a lot
of dry bar ditches and when it has to rain enough to fill those up
before anything gets to the way. So those are those are our current rumors.
There will be more, I'm sure, and we will will continue to
try to address these things so that the public is as aware as possible and
try to deal with misinformation as it pops up the best of our ability.
Misinformation moves a lot faster than the people who are trying to Oh, it
goes twice around the world before the truth gets to choose on that's for sure.
You're right. So with that, I think that's a pretty good coverage
of water. I'm sure we'll be talking about it in two weeks. Hopefully
in two weeks, what we'll be talking about is that six inch rain that
we got up in Cedarville, Kansas, and how we don't have to worry
about it anymore. But I doubt it. So we understand Terry Lawrenson is
every time it is a cloud. He's running out there in front of the
city Hall, going go to the lake and go to the lake. He
is. It's gotten embarrassing. I feel like joining him. I think he
needs our support. It's it's just not working, though, So it sounds
like fun. It does sound like fun. Maybe we should try it.
So all right, well, thank you, and I We've got just a
couple of items here to cover, and I took up most of the time
as usual, so I'm gonna kick it over to Larry first. This is
just kind of a heads up on one of the projects that was identified as
part of our strategic plane and was approved as part of the budget for this
year. So you are about to get really busy, and because you're going
to take on one of the largest planning projects that any city can take one,
which is an update of our comprehensive land use plan, the whole plan
that yellow conference beyond that right exactly, so that you know, the conference
a plan. The last one we had was creating in nineteen ninety eight,
so it's it's a little old, it's a little dated, and and so
you know that complaint that was in effect was a complaint that was more generalistic
whenever it was created, and so it didn't have a lot of specifics to
associated. So you know, Lisa did a really great job, my predecessor,
in providing a lot of plans for specific areas, you know, the
West Side Study, the Parks master Plan, all those things over the years
exactly exactly, so we're actually going to be calling all these plans into one
document, so that way is a cohesive conference a plan for the entire city.
It just helped people understand what a Comperhence a plan is is that it
is the plan for the entire city as we move forward. So it covers
transportation, it covers parks, quality of life, development impact, economic development,
new housing. So a lot of the stuff that we need to know
and understand is that when we have new stuff come into the city, how
does that impact the city as a whole. And so the conference plan will
help help us better understand that and so, um, you know, it's
a very exciting time, an opportunity for everyone to get involved with the within
the community. There'll be a lot of public outreach and input that will be
coming in. So that's what the public really needs to be aware of is
there will be ample opportunity for them to participate in the exactly exactly so you
know, they'll be online surveys, there'll be public forums, all those things,
and so it's a really exciting time. And we started the initial process.
We've created a draft what's called a request for Qualifications in URFQ. We
hope to have that out in mid June, so that way we start getting
interests and people summitting their qualifications in and then there'll be the Planning Commission most
like it will then review those and make a recommendation to the city Council on
who on what consultant we should move with. But just let everyone know this
is not going to be done in a vacuum or anything like that. It's
also not going to be done a couple of months. No, no,
no, this will take about a year to get done. And so we
are very excited by that. Staff is very very excited about this project and
look forward to moving moving forward. Well, we're certainly looking forward to it,
and I know it's going to be a lot of work and you will
certainly hear more about that as we move forward. One I'll take this opportunity
to talk about it. Also, it's that time of year for tall grass
and weeds and stuff like that. Seen a few that are on the verge,
Yes they are, Yes they are. So just remind people to be
out there and be vigilant and making sure that they motocraps and take care of
their trash. We have created some doorhangers and stuff that we'll put on people's
doors just as a reminder. But you know, everyone's going to do their
part. Take care of their grass and trash. Means a lot to our
community, absolutely, all right, Thank you, Larry so Mica, you
have the biggest part of the program and you have about six minutes to get
into it. So we're gonna we're gonna talk about our next geo bond election,
and we're not this is not the only time the listeners will hear about
it. Will certainly spend a lot of time educating the public on it.
But so just to remind everyone, we have essentially a geo bond program,
and this is how we accomplish capital capital improvements large one from parks to streets.
And so our current authorization that we received is that twenty twenty twenty,
so that was the last election that we had. So we're about to issue
the last of those bonds, which means that we're looking at going out for
another election to continue the progress in our community. And of course this will
go out to the public, and so we're talking about in October tenth election
date, I think. And so and as far as next steps, the
council will the Council has heard these projects. We believe these are the ones
that they'll approve at our June meeting. But just a quick caveat that these
haven't been approved by council and our subject to change, but in the interest
of transparency, we wanted to share these with the public and let them know
that they'll be considered at the June meeting. So if they want to provide
input, they have until then. Okay, So yeah, that's that's all
all true. I'll get information. We first presented this on April third to
the council is kind of a precursor to get them thinking about things and so
they could have some some input at the next meeting we had to work out
meeting last Monday on the fifteenth. Um, it was a long one.
It also included the you know, our our capital budget and our operating budgets.
Well, um, so you're you're correct, though, June fifth is
a target date for them to hopefully uh select these projects and called the elections.
So um, again, it's not a tax increase like you said,
we already already have this in place. It's really just an extension of existing
really property tax, I guess we got right now, So tax decrease either,
to be fair, it is a continuation of it existing. If it
went away, it would be a decrease with the uh So anyway, we're
looking at four year go bond, this time at seventeen point six million dollars
over four years UM. And so this go around, we're we're placing a
little bit more emphasis on streets. UM. The last couple we've actually put
a higher focus on part I'm gonna say higher focus but more money part able
to accomplish some big part of projects that needed to be done, which was
a good thing. But we're shifting gears back to streets. And really that
came about we just got our payment condition model updated. I got that information
just in the nick of time to just start planning for these That made a
little bit commer something just getting that information. But essentially are our overall system
payment condition is not what we'd like for it to be. And our our
backlog, which is anything that's really considered in poor condition, basically anything under
it it's a scitale of zero two hundred. Anything under a twenty five really
is kind of considered a backlog or in poor very poor condition. We're about
twenty one percent right now, which really we're in that target range. Around
twenty percent is really where you'd like to sort of the industry guidelines. Yeah,
so, but we've been going the wrong direction we've been going the wrong
direction, and honestly, without a little bit more money towards this program,
that's going to start creeping up. So, you know, best case scenario,
if we could maintain that at twenty one percent, we're looking at almost
five million dollars a year in street projects. We've currently got a million dollars
a year budget in our sales tax one. We've got another three years on
that extension before we go to another election. On that, bute know,
we're looking to go around and about twelve and a half million dollars with the
street projects, I think is at least where it appears a council will settle
on this. That's about three point one two five million dollars a year out
of GEO bond. If we couple that with the million dollars a year we
have in sales tax already, you're looking at, you know, just over
four million dollars four streets. So probably we'll look at ramping that up a
little. On the sales tax extension here and coming up and you know two
years we'll start planning for that as well. So but anyway, I thought
i'd hit hit some highlights on the streets we're looking at Adams Boulevard from Adams
Road to Bison. That's one of the larger projects, about one point four
million it needed. Gray Stone is kind of another cut through. They're off
of Adams from Adams Boulevard and Rolling Meadows at three hundred thousand dollars for that
concrete panel rehab. Another one west side of town Loopa, and really it's
not just Loupa, but it's Loopa from Sunset to Johnstone. There's one gap
in there that's not included in that that's already been done. But uh but
but the side three see there as well. We've got about one point almost
one point million dollars planned for that project. And kind of way we looked
at these street projects this go around is not just individual segments. We tried
to lump it into zones or areas at raw sort of each other. Yeah,
geographic areas, and so it's kind of a little bit hard to explain
some of these street projects. But Michigan is another good one. For five
hundred fifty thousand from Queen Sound at Elmhurst. We did have some equipment to
replace technology and police vehicles as well. About just under four hundred thousand for
that a new fire station. It's the station number two. This is at
Virginian and Hensley. It's in nineteen fifty building. It's really inadequate both on
space and the structure itself and some structural issues there. So we're looking at
replacing that on site potentially. And now we do got some parts projects to
get about one point two million dollars four to Adams Golf Court Green's rebuilt to
supplement somend thousand. We already have to do the full eighteen holes and then
always some money in there for pathfinder repaving, security lighting at parts, some
of the highlights there. So really excited about this and you will you'll see
a lot more information coming out and feel like we do it pretty a job
of advertising this and we're going out and hitting streets with it. So Mikey,
you mentioned parts of Adams. Why can't we just toot the whole?
Well, we don't own most of the section that we own. Is this
is this is literally all of Adams that we own, right, that's it
a little bit of a bit of Adams we own. We're gonna fix it
right all right. Well, hopefully everybody will stay tuned in and follow their
city news so that we can all stay up to date on jail bond and water