Speaker 1: And good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome.
Speaker 1: It is time now for our community connection, a little
Speaker 1: thing we call city matters. If it matters, you have
Speaker 1: matters to the city, and we welcome in the brand
Speaker 1: new mayor of Barnellsville, Mayor James Kurt.
Speaker 2: How are you doing there, sir, Great, glad to be
Speaker 2: here this morning.
Speaker 1: A little bit of a lengthy process last night, from
Speaker 1: what I understand, well it was.
Speaker 2: It was a great meeting last night.
Speaker 3: Understand, everybody got heard.
Speaker 4: Everybody got heard. We had a lot of citizens speak
Speaker 4: last night. We had some good conversation on the council.
Speaker 4: We had support for several members of the council last
Speaker 4: night to be the mayor. And I came through at
Speaker 4: the end and as I said the last night, I'm
Speaker 4: humbled and honored and thankful to be elected the mayor
Speaker 4: of Barnesol, Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: Well, you've got a whole new set of players except
Speaker 1: you and mister Dorsey. We do, and it's going to
Speaker 1: be interesting to see how everybody comes together and how
Speaker 1: we we call.
Speaker 3: Us as a council.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think last night was a good indication of that.
Speaker 4: We just you know, you get you get used to
Speaker 4: doing things the way you do them. And now we've
Speaker 4: got new people and new ideas, and I'm looking forward
Speaker 4: to working with mister Shrick, mister East and h mister Kirkpatrick.
Speaker 2: It's going to be a good counsel.
Speaker 4: I think they're all interested in proving in improving Bartlesville
Speaker 4: and making us helping us move forward.
Speaker 1: Well, very good, like you say, you know, with some
Speaker 1: fresh blood, some fresh ideas.
Speaker 2: Who knows, change is good change. It's not always easy,
Speaker 2: but it's good.
Speaker 3: So you've been a vice mayor for what two terms?
Speaker 2: Right, that'll be my three terms. I've been for six
Speaker 2: years and then this will be my first term is married? Ye?
Speaker 3: Okay, Well, so how do you how do you see
Speaker 3: that role?
Speaker 4: Well, it's a I've got to sit to one of
Speaker 4: the next to one of the best mayors. I think
Speaker 4: bartles has had many years of Dell Copeland and uh
Speaker 4: uh we said some nice things about him last night.
Speaker 4: He's been a selfless mayor of service community well for
Speaker 4: thirteen years and uh I've learned a lot from him.
Speaker 4: And I think just being the mayor is just I'm
Speaker 4: just one vote. I've just got to figure ahead of
Speaker 4: the meeting basically to make sure that the meeting proceeds smoothly,
Speaker 4: we worked through the agenda and continue the city's business
Speaker 4: every day.
Speaker 2: So it's an honorable role and you.
Speaker 4: Could see last night that there was other people available
Speaker 4: for that role. But as I said, I came through
Speaker 4: at the end and I'm proud and looking forward to
Speaker 4: being that.
Speaker 3: Mayor speaking and looking forward. You've got a brand new
Speaker 3: year coming up.
Speaker 1: What do you see coming up here as things we
Speaker 1: need to address, like water and things like that.
Speaker 2: I imagine we certainly do.
Speaker 4: I think this was on the list of several of
Speaker 4: the new councilors. They want to know what the water
Speaker 4: situation is, how it's moving forward or not.
Speaker 2: They're interested in homelessness. We certainly have.
Speaker 4: Issues social issues that we're going to be facing here
Speaker 4: that we've talked about before. The drag shows and things
Speaker 4: will be things that I think will come before us again.
Speaker 4: So those are things that the council's faced before and
Speaker 4: looked at, and we've got new voices and fresh ideas,
Speaker 4: so we'll bring those forward and then see what we
Speaker 4: can do to improve our processes going forward.
Speaker 1: Well, we have the place for having a few of
Speaker 1: the new council members in here already and talk with
Speaker 1: them a bit and a lot of reading goes into
Speaker 1: this before you really take the oath, and yes, go
Speaker 1: take the deep dive.
Speaker 3: I understand.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's you know, the learning curve they do say,
Speaker 4: it's drinking from a fire hose and stepping into the
Speaker 4: arena of politics on a level of city politics like this,
Speaker 4: there's a lot to learn very early, and I'm eight
Speaker 4: years in and still learning every day. But thankful for
Speaker 4: our city administration, for our city directors that we have there.
Speaker 4: They make our job so much easier. They're all engaged,
Speaker 4: they're interested in making our city go better. And I
Speaker 4: think new counselors will come to see how things operate
Speaker 4: and still have their own opinions of what we could
Speaker 4: do and do better and look forward to hearing from that.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely, having a wide spectrum of opinions is good
Speaker 1: because people come from different you know, backgrounds and what
Speaker 1: have you, in different neighbor hoods and different experiences. It's
Speaker 1: going to be an interesting blend. Now, mister Mike Bailey,
Speaker 1: forst works with the city staff, but he also works
Speaker 1: with the the older people too.
Speaker 3: The councilors.
Speaker 2: Ye.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, so he's got his work.
Speaker 2: That out for you. Does that he does? Yeah?
Speaker 4: And then I think the thing that what I like
Speaker 4: to see is just the continuity and government so we
Speaker 4: can continue to do what we've done for the last
Speaker 4: eight or ten years while I've been on there, and
Speaker 4: I know we've we've gotten through a lot of tough
Speaker 4: issues before.
Speaker 2: We've got through COVID.
Speaker 4: We've got things that we've got and we've got more
Speaker 4: tough issues ahead. We've got homelessness, We've got some things
Speaker 4: going on. We've got people interested in our surveillance techniques
Speaker 4: of our city police department, the block cameras. So those
Speaker 4: are issues that we'll bring forward and discuss and come
Speaker 4: up with, hopefully a reasonable.
Speaker 2: Solution for him.
Speaker 3: Well you can't.
Speaker 1: You said something here about the block cameras. That's something
Speaker 1: that's been kind of going around almost every community in
Speaker 1: the United States here late. Yes, what's the price of safety?
Speaker 1: What's the price? What do you forfeiting in order to
Speaker 1: get a.
Speaker 4: Little something right? Where does the information go? Who holds
Speaker 4: the information? Is it just for license plates? I think
Speaker 4: those are learning curves. I have to come up with
Speaker 4: better on our police chief is going to have a
Speaker 4: kind of a citizen's forum, the better explain the police's
Speaker 4: position on it, and then it'll come before the council
Speaker 4: I think at some point as to how we use
Speaker 4: these in the future or not.
Speaker 1: Okay, that'd be interesting. Be also interesting to hear the
Speaker 1: you know, the the public comment on that as well.
Speaker 4: Well, we heard a lot last night, and it's informed.
Speaker 4: There are people that understand it better than I do
Speaker 4: at this point. They've done a lot of research on it,
Speaker 4: so it's an eye opening experience. We all appreciate security,
Speaker 4: We all appreciate making sure that people are safe, but
Speaker 4: there is a cost involved and sometimes it may be
Speaker 4: too high a cost, and that something we should do
Speaker 4: or shouldn't do, And I think that's something we'll look
Speaker 4: at in the future.
Speaker 1: Getting back to the water, it seems like, you know,
Speaker 1: once we have a big rain, people breathe that little
Speaker 1: sigh of relief, but we know it's coming again.
Speaker 3: Yes, because it drought is kind of cyclical.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I think what.
Speaker 4: We try to explain to the public and to citizens
Speaker 4: is that there is a tremendous amount of work going
Speaker 4: on behind the scenes to try to move.
Speaker 2: Our water situation forward. We've got a water Resource Board,
Speaker 2: We've got.
Speaker 4: Politicians, our national representatives are engaged with the corp of
Speaker 4: Engineers in Washington. Things move slowly in Washington, so ten
Speaker 4: years can go by just to get a study done
Speaker 4: or just to.
Speaker 2: Ask to have more reserves in the lake.
Speaker 4: I mean, it takes years and years and years to
Speaker 4: get the federal government to move forward on certain issues
Speaker 4: that we want them to. But our resource committees looking
Speaker 4: into pipelines, looking into dredging, looking into aquifers, We're looking
Speaker 4: into a lot of different ways we can supplement the
Speaker 4: water we have so that our water issues are not
Speaker 4: as critical when we're low on reign in the fields
Speaker 4: up near Copan and Dewey and up north to us
Speaker 4: in our rain fields.
Speaker 1: Well, you've been a little bit closer to the situation
Speaker 1: than the average citizen. But the average citizen really just
Speaker 1: cannot wrap their head around around ten years for a
Speaker 1: yes or no.
Speaker 2: It's very difficult.
Speaker 3: It's got to be does.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, And I've run businesses for forty years
Speaker 4: and I can affect change pretty quickly because I'm yes
Speaker 4: or no yes.
Speaker 2: But when you get in the city government, much less
Speaker 2: the federal government.
Speaker 4: You have to slow your speech down, slow your hopes
Speaker 4: and their aspirations down, because things move slowly. But we
Speaker 4: have a good representatives working for us to try to
Speaker 4: make things move as quickly as we can.
Speaker 2: We find out another note.
Speaker 4: As hard as we've been pushing to pave Adams Boulevard,
Speaker 4: we get a note from the O DOT that says
Speaker 4: we're now moved back another two years. And that road
Speaker 4: causes most counsel and more frustration than anything else, because
Speaker 4: we hear more and more again, why can't we pave Adams.
Speaker 4: And while it's easy to just say, well, it's not
Speaker 4: our responsibility, it's difficult to say that because it's a
Speaker 4: road that goes right through the middle of our town.
Speaker 4: Everybody travels on it every day. It's got ruts in it, potholes,
Speaker 4: and it's in disrepair. And so it's frustrating when we
Speaker 4: run into situations like that where we we as an
Speaker 4: average cities council.
Speaker 2: And can't do anything about that.
Speaker 4: We can urge our city manager on and then we
Speaker 4: can talk to our state representatives and go from there.
Speaker 4: So that's happens every day behind the scenes with Julie
Speaker 4: Daniels and John B. Keane, those people are pitching for
Speaker 4: us every day to get those things done.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I see where the confusion comes in. Hey,
Speaker 1: this is how I go to work, you know, this
Speaker 1: is where I go to school, This is where I
Speaker 1: do my shopping.
Speaker 3: You know what gets.
Speaker 2: Why can't you fix that road? And I appreciate that?
Speaker 1: And did you want you? You let them know. They understand.
Speaker 1: They don't like it any better, but they understand.
Speaker 4: And some people don't understand because it does seem like
Speaker 4: something we could just go pave ourselves.
Speaker 2: But it's a state highway.
Speaker 3: Don't worry about that.
Speaker 2: It's a state highway.
Speaker 4: And you know, we're just our hands are tied to
Speaker 4: just trying to persuade them further and urge them to
Speaker 4: put us forward in their program and try to get
Speaker 4: the road done sooner. The repairs they've affected in the
Speaker 4: past have been virtually useless and have been virtually no good.
Speaker 4: So those are the That's the way we be, honest,
Speaker 4: That's the way government is sometimes and we do a
Speaker 4: good job trying to explain it, but we can always
Speaker 4: try to do better of getting information to people and
Speaker 4: let them know what we're doing on water.
Speaker 2: Why the roads is the way they are. Things like
Speaker 2: this or things.
Speaker 4: We're always looking for better ways to communicate with the citizens.
Speaker 1: We're talking with the Bartlesville Mayor, Jim Kurd. Anything else
Speaker 1: take place in the meeting last night besides the election
Speaker 1: of mayor andvicement.
Speaker 4: Well, we go over our code of our ethics code
Speaker 4: we go through every year that we you know, pledged
Speaker 4: to conduct ourselves ethically. And we also have a kind
Speaker 4: of a way we conduct our meeting meeting pools, protocols
Speaker 4: that we have that's part of our charter and we
Speaker 4: approve those every time there's an election.
Speaker 2: And the council was agreeable to do that.
Speaker 4: We expend a We extended our area where citizens can
Speaker 4: come before the council.
Speaker 2: We used to have a ten mile radius.
Speaker 4: It was somewhat of an arbitrary figure that I was
Speaker 4: a part of the council when we picked out. We
Speaker 4: didn't have any specific thing in mind other than just
Speaker 4: trying to limit it to Bartlestiell citizens that came before
Speaker 4: the council. To speak, there's a will to try to
Speaker 4: expand that to other people that use our surfaces, that
Speaker 4: buy our water further down the road.
Speaker 2: So to speak.
Speaker 4: So we've expanded it for the all of Orshney County now,
Speaker 4: so that came before us last night. We had a
Speaker 4: good debate on that and we ended up including all
Speaker 4: of Orshney County in the respect where everybody could come
Speaker 4: and speak to the council if they had issues with
Speaker 4: water or any other issues business related issues, they.
Speaker 2: Could come speak to us well. Very good.
Speaker 4: So it was a very productive media It was a
Speaker 4: short agenda, but it had a lot of a very
Speaker 4: important decision to be made in terms of Mayor and
Speaker 4: Vice Mayor and then making sure that we all understand
Speaker 4: we've got we've got a very good council orientation coming
Speaker 4: up tomorrow or all day affair with all three new
Speaker 4: of the council and then then certainly Trevor and myself
Speaker 4: will be there to learn and learn more of how
Speaker 4: our city operates and how our directors operate, and what
Speaker 4: our responsibilities are and things we can and cannot do
Speaker 4: as a city councilman. So those are all good to
Speaker 4: be pointed out to us. I'm not always satisfied with
Speaker 4: our levels of inputs sometimes and mister Bailey knows that.
Speaker 4: But I'm privileged to be on the council and certainly
Speaker 4: privileged to be working with the city administration we have
Speaker 4: today and our new Councilman, it's going to be a great,
Speaker 4: great honor and look forward to moving forward with them.
Speaker 1: May hurting anything else you'd like to tell the people
Speaker 1: as well in all the listening.
Speaker 4: Areas, just you know, I was unopposed this term, and
Speaker 4: I have a great ward. Ward three is a great world,
Speaker 4: and I hear daily from people that support our city council,
Speaker 4: support our businesses here in town. And we're not perfect.
Speaker 4: We work volunteer counselman. We work hard every day at it.
Speaker 4: I know Trevor does, and I know mister Sherick and
Speaker 4: mister East and mister k Patrick will work hard at
Speaker 4: it too.
Speaker 2: We're going to continue to do that. So it's it's
Speaker 2: been a honor.
Speaker 4: I'm privileged to be sitting here today as your mayor
Speaker 4: and looking forward to the opportunity for the next two years.
Speaker 3: All right, thank you very much, Meyor Jim Kurd right
Speaker 3: here on K one