Good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It's time now for our community connection right here on K one though one you trust, we have Tim Shehrick City Council Award one and welcome.
This is your first recap session with us here. Appreciate you being here.
Sure, thanks Tom, Thanks for having me late night last night, a long session last night, for sure.
I understand. We got a few things taking care of.
One of the things that was on our website this morning the Citizenship grant contract between the Oklahoma Department of Libraries and the City of Bartlesville in the amount of fourteen one thousand dollars to fund salary for the Immigration Citizenship Literacy assisted That wound up in two ties, one for one against vice versa versu. Advice to tell us a little bit about went into that. What was that all about?
Okay, So there's a national grant that comes down from the federal level to Oklahoma for disbursement, and then that sent out to all the local libraries to fund programs and salaries for people to do things like this. And it was not a question of whether or not we were for helping people to learn other languages or to teach citizenship courses.
I'm all for.
In fact, I think a citizenship course might even be a great idea for people to be able to get to vote. If you don't know how our government works, should you vote in it.
I mean, that's to teach civics in high school, but it could probably go a little bit further.
Well, they used to.
Now we've gone to social studies instead of history, and we don't really have much of a civics course, So at least a quick refresher on the constitution in our representative government would probably be a great thing. Homeschoolers have
the total advantage on public schoolers in that regard. But there was some concern that was expressed through our constituencies that perhaps these services that were meant for people who are in the United States lawfully are being consumed by those who are So that's what that came down to was a discussion on whether or not we could perhaps request that the library require a proof of status like a green card, in order to be able to consume
these services. And from what the representative said that the director of the library would probably say that they could not. However, they do require you to have an idea if you're going to get a library card. So I'm not sure where the administrative hang up is on that, but that was the essence of the debate.
Okay, so that's Is it gone for good or can that be brought back up any time later on.
I'm not sure if the grant will expire, so I don't have the expiry date for that.
In theory, it could be brought back up. I suppose.
I believe that we should be requiring people to prove that they're qualified to receive services that are paid for through taxpayer dollars sure.
Service agreement with the trees City of Bartoletville keep Bartleviild beautiful. I understand that this was grant or some money that Phillip sixty six wanted to give the city four trees and that was voted down. Can you tell us what that was all about and how we came to know?
Sure? Yeah, it was delayed.
Delayed, so we have until June to take the Endeavor twenty forty five plan through reconciliation. As you undoubtedly know, the Endeavor plan was adopted or approved, but then there he opened a window for citizen comment of thirty days lots and lots and lots of correspondents from constituents being submitted to the city.
Hey, we think this needs to be changed. We don't like how this might impact our neighborhood.
So they're doing their best to take that through a reconciliation process. And so what we did with the trees grant was to say, this seems to be in line with one of the green initiatives that is contained within Endeavor twenty forty five. We'd like to just postpone consideration until we get a final ruling on Endeavor. Because Endeavor also covers increasing the tree canopy and other things like that, it could potentially be a duplication, but it definitely is
tied together as far as a green initiative. We also know that trees planted in roadways like that very often have roots that go underneath and cause additional road maintenance costs.
There's an issue.
With potential maintenance of the trees because the up with trees folks are great with helping out for the first three years, but then they're going to pass that cost back to the city. So we don't think that it's necessarily a great thing, or at least some of us. Don't think it's a great thing that those costs could be sent back to the city for maintenance after the fact.
Another thing that came up as water situation. That's a big thing, the water issue. Now, I understand you heard a presentation that was something that really wasn't going to require a vote.
It was more of a let's hear what you got it correct on that.
You're absolutely correct. Ter did a great job bringing in what they did. The presentation was very informative. It's quite a lot to consume. Actually, what it boiled down to was, at this time what they believed the best option to be is going to be trying to raise hula by seven feet to provide us with the I believe additional approximate ten million gallons per day that could potentially cover us for the next forty or fifty years on water
supply demand. It doesn't necessarily speak to all the water quality issues that were raised, particularly back during the campaigns, but it does at least begin to speak to a water supply.
That we could utilize for the foreseeable future.
How these are cheap? Are they?
None of them?
In fact, I think the average was on all the things that were presented was over two hundred million dollars. Wow, which raised a question for me that you know, this was just a presentation. We didn't really have time to get into it too deeply. But I once saw an estimate on creating sand Lake that was estimated to only be about one hundred.
And fifty million dollars.
So I'm not sure how that compares at this point because that would have been construction, pipeline and so forth, and of course you've got to wait for the water to accumulate in that storage.
But where would this be built?
Sand Lake? I believe would be out near the sand Creek area.
Okay, where the kind of damm up there? Yeah? Yeah, okay, now that makes sense a little bit.
One hundred and fifty million dollars a scant one hundred and fifty million dollars.
Right, Yeah, Everything, Everything is doable as long as you've got a great, big wallet.
Man.
That hurts now, we were I guess the city was offered seventy six thousand dollars worth of money for electric vehicles, two for the police and two for the golf course.
How do we go on.
That that went through?
The money on that was accepted, they'll go through a bid process and then do the ordering of the vehicles. Our concern there, of course, is that we want our first responders in particular to have the best possible equipment. We don't believe battery powered vehicles are that. And that also ties into another green energy initiative and into ever
twenty forty five. That could be a slippery slope towards moving city fleets towards electric vehicles which will cost exponentially more than a gas powered vehicle, and the maintenance on them will be exponentially more, with an average battery replacement cost of three to five thousand dollars.
Isn't it true that with the electric vehicles, once the batteries gone, the vehicle is rendered useless.
It is pretty much rendered useless. You can go in and replace those batteries, but that's.
Might as well get a new vehicle.
You might as well because you're going to be substantially into it.
The Homeless Task Force, it was a little confusion toward the end of the discussion on that it was a resolution to amend Unsheltered Homeless Task Force. The resolution for Folks Keeping Track at Home is thirty two to seventy seven tell us a little bit about this and what all took place.
I think it's actually three seven to two two if I'm not mistaken, and it was amended then by the resolution brought last night as three seven two six. This resolution basically just created a couple of additional non voting positions on the task force and named the names of the people to be initially seated.
Okay, was there any objective to the names of.
Oh no, no, there was. There was no objection.
There was some question as to why they chose Congressional District ten Representative Judd Strom instead of ced eleven John Kin, because John actually represents more of Bartlesville than Judd, who is in Osh County, But there was no objection in the end to any of the people who were named to be seated.
How do you see this task force working? Is it going to be just a lot of fact finding and see what's available to do?
If anything.
That's kind of what the resolution actually says is that they will attempt to determine strategies. And then one of the tertiary goals I believe in the resolution was to determine if there's a need for an ongoing task force.
Gotcha gotcha.
There was a discussion about possibly punishing those who dump off homeless folks.
In our community.
We've seen enough tick in the number of homeless people.
And I.
Come into work at three point thirty in the morning, so I see a lot of folks coming from the laundery met the river as they migrate toward downtown for the day, and I'm seeing a lot I don't recognize, and I know there new. I don't know if we've got any kind of accounter that you know says that's a factor, if that's just by observation, But if they're being dumped off here, do we know who's dumping them off here?
We're getting a very good feel for that now. The evidence of the experience of the nonprofits that are already actively involved in serving the homeless has indicated that there are entities in our community that will bring people in from other areas, sometimes in the guise of receiving a medical evaluation perhaps, and if the evaluation doesn't go well so that they're admitted to a program even though they have no residents, they have no friends or family in
our community, they're just released, which means they're stranded.
They have no way to survive.
They have no gainful employment, they have no money, and that puts them on our streets and in this.
Pretty unfair to them too, since they have no support.
Oh, particularly in this weather.
Yes, and so are these government type folks that are doing the dumping or who do we? Because I can tell you that when I lived up north, there were you know, police agencies that would you know, find a way to get a guy a bus ticket, right, and I should say law enforcement, shouldn't say police, And it was the one way to Florida. Therefore, you know, that kind of caught on with other northern states. Therefore, the Sunshine States got some real characters down there, lots right.
Well, we really have some great people that are already involved in this issue. And as they've begun to work with the homeless, they've also begun to work together already they have so they communicate consistently. They at times will share extra food, extra shoes, extra shirts, you know, as
that goes around. But they already have a fantastic strategy in place, and what they've expressed in my conversations with them is what they need the city to do most is to file an injunction against those entities, not any nonprofits, but against the entities who are the outside entities. Correct, So none of the five O one C three's, none of the nonprofits, none of the people who are like a Gape or anybody like that that are already out there trying to help feed and help the homeless.
That's right, that's it wouldn't be filing it.
But people like those nonprofits are the ones who are expressing we need to have the city help us to plug the hole. We've got people bringing people in from Ardmore and Venida and sometimes even as far as Kansas City that are getting left on our streets with no way to survive.
Wow.
Now that that calls for more investigation, a lot more answers, because if this is true, this is a bigger problem than a lot of people realize.
Right, it is something that is being perpetuated.
In other words, even if we had a strategy today that said we could go out and deal with all approximately two hundred and forty is what they estimate that they have currently in Bartlesville. Even if we had something that could put them into a place where we could help them to try to regain a good path forward.
We want to help.
Them to be educated if they needed, you know, whatever we can do to try to help them.
Even if we had that in.
Place today, it's just going to grow as long as we don't stop the entities that are continuing to bring them in very good.
Anything you'd like to add is that we begin to wrap this up today.
You know, it's just really important.
It's on my heart for sure to make sure that we do the right thing with this homeless thing.
These are people that are.
Man.
They are as Pastor Fullerton who gave the invocation would have said, the least, the last, and the lost.
And it is definitely our job. It is the job of the churches.
It is the job of every individual to get out here and volunteer, to give, to help, to do everything that they possibly can to be a part of the solution. And if you're not, I'm not sure you really have a complaint coming. You need to do what you can do, because if you can't go, you can give. And if if you're not doing those things, then I would encourage you to do so, to contact the people that you feel like are doing the best work and to get behind them all the way.
Very good, Hey, Tim, Thank you very much for being with us, Tim.
Sharik Ward one Ward one Ward one City Councilor, thank you for being with us.
You're on city matters. Thanks Tom, alrighty, take care