Speaker 1: Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
Speaker 1: It's time now for one of our two community connections
Speaker 1: here this morning. We're going a little bit early today.
Speaker 1: We have Aaron Kirkpatrick in and he is running for
Speaker 1: the office of Ward for city counselor here in Bartlesville.
Speaker 1: And welcome back. You've been here many times.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good morning time.
Speaker 3: I'm excited to be here, excited to get talk to
Speaker 3: you and everybody else about I guess local politics for
Speaker 3: the first time.
Speaker 1: What made you want to jump into the waters.
Speaker 3: Man, I've been thinking about it for years, but I
Speaker 3: was in Mayor Copeland's district when we first moved here,
Speaker 3: and of course.
Speaker 2: I thought he's done a great job. Didn't want to
Speaker 2: run against him.
Speaker 3: Moved downtown several years ago, and Billy Roan was our
Speaker 3: representative and I admired her.
Speaker 2: I thought that she was phenomenal.
Speaker 3: Unfortunately, she passed away suddenly earlier this year, and so
Speaker 3: when that happened, I thought, Okay, I love what she did,
Speaker 3: and there's an opportunity now to not run against her,
Speaker 3: but instead just step in and run for the things
Speaker 3: that I'm excited about that I believe in, and for
Speaker 3: hopefully the future of Bartlesville.
Speaker 1: That's a very positive outlook. Running for you're not although
Speaker 1: there are others running for the same office. You're all competing,
Speaker 1: but you're not running against each other. You're all running
Speaker 1: for the goal.
Speaker 3: Right And it's really common to hear people talk about, oh,
Speaker 3: you're running into you're getting into politics, like you must
Speaker 3: be angry.
Speaker 2: What are you mad about? Who you know who ticked
Speaker 2: you off? Are what are they doing that's wrong?
Speaker 3: And I mean there's room for improvement and all those
Speaker 3: kind of things, But for me, at least, the idea
Speaker 3: that I'm going to get in because I'm mad about something.
Speaker 3: So I've been leading organizations churches for almost twenty years now,
Speaker 3: and what I can tell you is when you are
Speaker 3: led by people who lead out of fear or anger
Speaker 3: or frustration, that flows out to everybody else.
Speaker 2: And the last thing that you want to be.
Speaker 3: Is in a community that is run by anger and
Speaker 3: fear and frustration.
Speaker 2: It just becomes a very toxic place.
Speaker 3: And what we want And one of the things I
Speaker 3: think is great about Bartlesville is that it feels like
Speaker 3: a community even though it's really large. You see the
Speaker 3: same people at Walmart at the baseball field, downtown, eating
Speaker 3: out on a Saturday night, whatever, And that sense of
Speaker 3: community needs to be a positive, healthy place for people.
Speaker 1: Oh indeed it does. So you've got your campaign started.
Speaker 1: You're going to be in the big November election because
Speaker 1: city council will be all in that as well. And
Speaker 1: we've got, like you said, a beautiful community and you
Speaker 1: mentioned improvements. What improvements would you like to see?
Speaker 3: Well, one that's I've got one big one that I'll
Speaker 3: tell you about it in a second.
Speaker 1: Let's we'll build it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's let's talk about some that everybody is really
Speaker 2: concerned about. Right.
Speaker 3: One that is on top of everybody's mind after the
Speaker 3: last two years is water infrastructure. And everybody's seen their
Speaker 3: water bill go up and that stresses people out. At
Speaker 3: the same time, we all saw pictures of how low
Speaker 3: our lakes got, our reservoirs got over the last couple
Speaker 3: of years. So both like sustainable water infrastrutructure, but also
Speaker 3: safe water at the same time, you want to make
Speaker 3: sure the water you're drinking is water you want to
Speaker 3: put in your body. And we got great people who
Speaker 3: work on both ends of our water infrastructure, both treating
Speaker 3: and getting it to us and also treating it on
Speaker 3: the way out, but making sure that we have not
Speaker 3: just a vision for the future, because we've had ideas,
Speaker 3: but to continue.
Speaker 2: Most of everybody needs to understand this is I understand it.
Speaker 3: Most of our struggle long term comes from actually dealing
Speaker 3: with the Army, Corps of engineers and things at the
Speaker 3: federal level.
Speaker 2: So it's actually not stuff that we control a lot of.
Speaker 3: And there's this what I think is a really backwards approach,
Speaker 3: which is it's eventually it is cheaper to build the
Speaker 3: new lake than to fix the ones we've got, and
Speaker 3: that that is a logic that could only be thought
Speaker 3: up at the federal level, right, I mean, at some
Speaker 3: point it is better to be a good steward of
Speaker 3: what you have and help it lasts as long as
Speaker 3: possible than it is to go, well, I'll just use
Speaker 3: it till it breaks and then buy something new. That's
Speaker 3: a really poor way to govern anything. But that requires
Speaker 3: ongoing conversations and just an unwillingness to quit when dealing with.
Speaker 2: The federal government.
Speaker 3: We ought to be every time it gets a Drought've
Speaker 3: been saying this for ten years. Every time we hit
Speaker 3: a drought, year. Why don't we put people out there
Speaker 3: with backos and tractors getting the silt out of the lakes,
Speaker 3: you know, and then taking them somewhere, putting a cover
Speaker 3: crop and getting the heavy metals out of them. These
Speaker 3: things seem like common sense solutions in the meantime, since
Speaker 3: since the federal government and the Army Corps of Engineers
Speaker 3: says not let us do those things. Now we're talking
Speaker 3: about what building a pipeline to call lake drawing out
Speaker 3: of it with you know, three or four other cities,
Speaker 3: and also everybody's bill is going to go up dramatically
Speaker 3: from something like that. On the back end, I want
Speaker 3: to see make sure that as we do these these
Speaker 3: big infrastructure improvements on our water treatment facilities, that we're
Speaker 3: doing it in a way that is good for the
Speaker 3: whole community and addressing one of the big problems that
Speaker 3: we now know we have that prior to this we
Speaker 3: hadn't focused much on, which is p fast.
Speaker 2: These forever chemicals.
Speaker 3: These forever chemicals are in all of our water supplies
Speaker 3: at this point, and they're all linked to to a
Speaker 3: host of issues, including like intocrend disruptors, meaning your hormone
Speaker 3: levels get all jacked up and long term cancer.
Speaker 2: So there are ways to remove that from the water supply.
Speaker 3: The city council just approved an eighty million dollar overhaul
Speaker 3: to our water our waste water treatment, which is a
Speaker 3: necessary infrastructure investment, but it does not have that component
Speaker 3: built into it that I'm aware of. So one of
Speaker 3: the first things I did once I announced that I
Speaker 3: was running was I met with Mike Bailey, or our
Speaker 3: city manager, and said, hey, are you aware of this technology?
Speaker 3: And I shared it with some videos and information with
Speaker 3: him and said, this technology, as I understand it is
Speaker 3: cheaper than what we're about to put in. It is
Speaker 3: energy positive, not energy negative, which is energy is like
Speaker 3: it usually accounts for something like forty percent of the
Speaker 3: cost of water treatment, and then on the downstream of
Speaker 3: that it removes pfasts, which I mean, that's just a
Speaker 3: win win win as far as I can tell. So
Speaker 3: it's this is a big one, like a big improvement
Speaker 3: we like to see. Obviously we have, you know, ongoing
Speaker 3: retail development downtown. I think that's awesome and want to
Speaker 3: just do whatever I can do to help supercharge it.
Speaker 2: The west side of town where my ward is. My
Speaker 2: ward's actually it's huge.
Speaker 3: It actually goes the west side of Highway seventy five
Speaker 3: north of Adams, all the way through Oak Park and
Speaker 3: then down to thirteenth Street. It's massive. But one of
Speaker 3: the things that we are all feeling to pinch on
Speaker 3: and especially in ward for, is the need for more
Speaker 3: healthcare and quality healthcare and affordable healthcare. So this is
Speaker 3: not something the city council does on their own, but
Speaker 3: I'm friends with a group of people who have been
Speaker 3: working behind the scenes to bring more healthcare options to
Speaker 3: Bartlesville for several years. They made a ton of progress,
Speaker 3: but eventually it gets to the point where you have
Speaker 3: to decide, are there obstacles in the way for them
Speaker 3: moving here?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Is there are you know, are there zoning restrictions that
Speaker 3: need to be changed? Is there infrastructure that needs to
Speaker 3: be negotiated or tax breaks?
Speaker 2: Things like this.
Speaker 3: We need these resources here yesterday, and I have been
Speaker 3: working behind the scenes with these people to kind of
Speaker 3: find out where they are and say, if I can
Speaker 3: get elected, whatever I can do to help, I will
Speaker 3: help do because we need those resources. And then lastly,
Speaker 3: I would say one that lots of us are feeling
Speaker 3: the pinch on is affordable housing and this is a
Speaker 3: nationwide problem, but local is where we have the chance
Speaker 3: to help, and.
Speaker 2: We're part of the nation. Yes, so.
Speaker 3: I have done some real estate development myself, some real
Speaker 3: estate investment myself, and the downtown area is ripe for
Speaker 3: fixing up old dilapidated structures, taking them down to the
Speaker 3: ground and building new stuff.
Speaker 2: We're seeing some of that investment go on.
Speaker 3: But there was a plan that was actually recommended to
Speaker 3: the city council I think over a decade ago that
Speaker 3: suggested ways to improve or to increase the amount of
Speaker 3: small housing that we had, basically making it easier for
Speaker 3: people who own a house or own a piece of
Speaker 3: property to build a free, outstanding building at a above
Speaker 3: garage apartment or a tiny home something like that. We
Speaker 3: have a lot of single people and like single moms
Speaker 3: with kids, who if you get on some of the
Speaker 3: Facebook groups here locally, are always asking I'm looking for
Speaker 3: a one to two bedroom place for one thousand dollars
Speaker 3: a month or less. It's really hard to find that
Speaker 3: right now because we just don't have the inventory. Part
Speaker 3: of the reason we don't have the inventory is zoning regulations.
Speaker 3: That is something that city council can have a hand
Speaker 3: in so directing the city planners and the city managers. Hey,
Speaker 3: we want to see we want to make it easier
Speaker 3: for people to develop the land they already own, to
Speaker 3: increase the supply of affordable housing that we have, which
Speaker 3: will which will then lower rent costs and ultimately it
Speaker 3: may even lower mortgage costs.
Speaker 1: You got a big video on your website, don't you.
Speaker 3: Yes, So I just it's it's on my Facebook page
Speaker 3: aerin forward for Then I have a website which is
Speaker 3: aerinforward for dot com, which.
Speaker 2: Lays out what I'm about to tell you.
Speaker 3: So it goes along with the affordable housing idea, and
Speaker 3: I would encourage anybody to go check this out. I'll
Speaker 3: tell you the details, but watch the video because it
Speaker 3: lays it out really well. And then the website has
Speaker 3: like detailed you know, deeper than I'm sure we'll get here.
Speaker 2: So so here's.
Speaker 3: A little background you need to know that will help
Speaker 3: you get to as excited as I am by the
Speaker 3: time we're done. So, when a piece of property gets
Speaker 3: abandoned or gets dilapidated, people stop paying property taxes on it.
Speaker 3: When that happens, the county puts a lean on that property. Right,
Speaker 3: it's just a tax lien, and you have the opportunity
Speaker 3: to come back and pay it, pay your back taxes.
Speaker 3: But if you don't, after enough time, the county takes
Speaker 3: possession of that land.
Speaker 2: So what used to happen.
Speaker 3: Is the county takes possession of you know, some house
Speaker 3: that hadn't had its taxes paid, it's been abandoned, it's
Speaker 3: you know, falling apart, the grass is grown tall, if
Speaker 3: it's in city limits. The City of Bartlesville has been
Speaker 3: on the hook for maintaining that land until it got
Speaker 3: something got done with it. Okay, So we were out money,
Speaker 3: out tax money to pay people to take care of
Speaker 3: the property, and then the city or the county would
Speaker 3: auction them off and the county would make the revenue.
Speaker 1: Off of it.
Speaker 3: So this year the state passed a law that allowed
Speaker 3: the cities to take possession of these properties from the county,
Speaker 3: and back in August.
Speaker 2: The city council voted to do that.
Speaker 3: But at that meeting, if you go back and watch
Speaker 3: the discussion, they said, Okay, we're not really sure what
Speaker 3: to do with these properties, but let's go ahead and
Speaker 3: take them so maybe we can figure out something to
Speaker 3: do with them in the future.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: I met with this city planner with the city manager
Speaker 3: and kind of said, what's the plan here.
Speaker 2: They said, we're not sure yet, but some idea.
Speaker 3: Along the lines of will either auction them off or
Speaker 3: will bundle them and sell them to developers. Okay, it's
Speaker 3: not a bad idea, but it's not a great idea.
Speaker 1: You don't know what you're get.
Speaker 3: So I woke up at five thirty in the morning
Speaker 3: a couple of weeks ago from a dead sleep. I
Speaker 3: sat up in bed and went, oh, my goodness, I
Speaker 3: know what to do. Like this is this idea is awesome.
Speaker 3: So I called this idea the hometown hero Land Run. Okay,
Speaker 3: right now, the city owns about a dozen of these lots.
Speaker 3: They're just most of them are just vacant lots. My
Speaker 3: suggestion is instead of auctioning them off, which in the
Speaker 3: past has meant that maybe the neighbor buy it for
Speaker 3: fifty to five hundred dollars and then just have a
Speaker 3: double lot and you don't get it developed. Instead of
Speaker 3: doing that, my suggestion is that we create a raffle
Speaker 3: system for our teachers, police officers, and firefighters.
Speaker 2: So the city owns these properties forget about selling them.
Speaker 3: Instead, if you serve the city in one of these roles,
Speaker 3: however many years you've served, you get an entry to
Speaker 3: whatever drawings we do, to the raffles that we do
Speaker 3: to potentially win one of these properties. So we all
Speaker 3: wish we could pay these people more, and frankly, they
Speaker 3: get sucked away from Bartlesville by cities or states that
Speaker 3: will pay more than we can afford to. And it's
Speaker 3: not that they're all just chasing money, so they're trying
Speaker 3: to figure out how to make wise choices for themselves
Speaker 3: and their families. So one thing that we can do
Speaker 3: now we've got these lots, and so my idea is
Speaker 3: ninety days out, we publish on our website. Hey, here's
Speaker 3: the properties we have. Teachers, police officers, firefighters. You have
Speaker 3: time to go look at these properties, meet with a
Speaker 3: local lender to see if you can see or funding.
Speaker 3: Meet with a local builder or developer to kind of
Speaker 3: drop some plans how you will develop this property, so
Speaker 3: that before the drawing happens, you can come to the
Speaker 3: city planner's office and say, I want this piece of property,
Speaker 3: Here's what I'm going to do with it, and then
Speaker 3: you can enter into the raffle. You don't divide up
Speaker 3: your entries or whatever it says, all in on one
Speaker 3: property that you want to develop, because what we want
Speaker 3: is for those cities to or those properties to move
Speaker 3: off the city ledger back into private hands. Okay, this
Speaker 3: is good for all of us, even if like myself,
Speaker 3: I don't benefit from this, but my tax money is
Speaker 3: no longer going to.
Speaker 2: Keep up a piece of property.
Speaker 3: In fact, it will then be developed, which will help
Speaker 3: the city because it'll start getting property taxes back off
Speaker 3: of that and these people can build a house that
Speaker 3: they can afford.
Speaker 2: Now this is important.
Speaker 3: As part of this part of the hometown hero land run,
Speaker 3: I would add a stipulation that whatever building you built
Speaker 3: the primary residence there.
Speaker 2: Must be owner occupied for ten years.
Speaker 3: One of the challenges we have in a lot of
Speaker 3: our neighborhoods is that they are especially in the downtown area,
Speaker 3: it's actually more it's owned by people who rent them out,
Speaker 3: so they're occupied by renters. And what that does when
Speaker 3: you own a bunch of these things, you tend to
Speaker 3: kind of check out. You just collect the rent checks
Speaker 3: and you let the property so slowly fall apart. That
Speaker 3: hurts everybody's property value. It hurts everybody's standard of living,
Speaker 3: It increases crime and blight in the host of other things.
Speaker 3: So when you build this property, for the first ten years,
Speaker 3: it has to be owner occupied. So you can build
Speaker 3: it and live in it, or you can build it
Speaker 3: and sell it. Right, so you can develop the property,
Speaker 3: make a nice profit off of it, sell to somebody
Speaker 3: who's going to live there, and that's good for the neighborhood.
Speaker 2: Right. So if you build and live in it.
Speaker 3: When a police officer, firefighter move into a neighborhood, the
Speaker 3: whole neighborhood becomes safer, So that benefits everybody. When you
Speaker 3: have owner occupied properties, that benefits the whole neighborhood because
Speaker 3: you begin to invest in that community, You keep up
Speaker 3: the property, you take.
Speaker 2: Care of it, so even if they sell it, it's
Speaker 2: still going to be good.
Speaker 3: If a teacher moves in on the neighborhood, she begins
Speaker 3: to get to know or he begins to get to
Speaker 3: know the families the children that are involved in the
Speaker 3: school district, which can make it and invest in those
Speaker 3: communities too. We want our people to put down deep
Speaker 3: roots in these neighborhoods. At the same time, it increases
Speaker 3: property value. So literally everybody in those neighborhoods benefits from
Speaker 3: this program along the way. The way I look at it,
Speaker 3: it benefits the individuals who win the raffle, It benefits
Speaker 3: the neighborhoods where these people move in, It benefits the
Speaker 3: local economy, and it benefits the city government, and it
Speaker 3: decreases the tax burden for the rest of us taking
Speaker 3: care of these properties.
Speaker 2: It is a win win. One more idea, just to
Speaker 2: put a cherry on top, I think that we do this.
Speaker 3: The Bartlesville Redevelopment Trust Authority already has a policy like
Speaker 3: this in place where if you use city funds to
Speaker 3: upgrade your property to build those kind of things, it
Speaker 3: must be done with local labor.
Speaker 2: I think the same thing would apply here. At least
Speaker 2: I would like to see the same thing apply, or
Speaker 2: at least.
Speaker 3: Some percentage of the contractors that you use to build
Speaker 3: a property must be local labor, which then goes to
Speaker 3: stimulate the local economy, but stimulates the local economy.
Speaker 2: Without any of us paying more taxes.
Speaker 1: Wow, okay, where can we find this on your website
Speaker 1: and on your Facebook page? Tell us where your website is?
Speaker 3: So Aaron four fr Aaron for Ward four the number four,
Speaker 3: okay Aerinforward four dot com, there's a tab up there
Speaker 3: that says hometown Heroes Land Run. And then if you
Speaker 3: just search on Facebook for Aaron for Ward four, you'll
Speaker 3: find my Facebook. It's that video went live at eight
Speaker 3: point thirty yep. Share it with all your teacher friends,
Speaker 3: all your police officer friends, all your firefighter friends, and
Speaker 3: if you know people in Ward four, I'd love it
Speaker 3: if you'd encourage them to check it out.
Speaker 1: All right, Aaron Kirkpatrick, thank you for being with us.
Speaker 2: Thank you,