And there's just to set up some duck blines out there nine am on October eighteenth. There's a fee of ten dollars to enter the duck blind drawing, but you can show up at the boat ramp out at Hudson Lake nine am, October eighteenth, pay your ten dollars and you will be entered into a drawing for one of those ten duck blind spots out there. So I know that's always popular and people enjoy that, and we want to allow people to use that facility for duck hunting.
So show up and hopefully you get drawn.
And another facility that has a lot of attention is Adam's Golf Course, and it's been undergoing some changes now that the pro retired. We were kind of doing some things a little differently.
Explain what's going on, well, I want to start off by saying a big thank you our golf pro, mister Benedict, has been running that course in that facility, leasing that facility from us for years. We have officially purchased that facility from mister Benedict, so it is now city owned,
city managed. The city council asked to have a consulting company come in and take a look at the finances, the numbers, kind of the market and make some suggestions to the city about how we proceed forward to the golf course, because we're going to close the golf course down for a little bit here and we're going to do some redo of the greens out there. So we've got bond Isshue money that we're going to do use to redo the green complexes out at the out of
the golf course. And it's a watershed moment for our golf course that we can make some changes about the facility, how we operated, how we funded, how what services it provides to our community. So we asked and we got a report from JJ Keegan about what the possibilities are for our golf course going forward. We received that report.
I mean it boils down to basically that they are suggesting that instead of leasing it to a third party, or leasing it or having a management company come in and run it, it actually looks like the finances and the operations were better if the city owns it and operates its own golf course, which I am encouraged by because I think we can do it better than anybody else. We do a lot of things better than anybody else. But I think we have an opportunity to provide some
better food services we have. We can redo our driving range and short green are green and short chipping areas, we can do some better maintenance and silly operations. And we're also going to probably look the steering committee is going to come back to us in December and talk about possibilities for some green fee rate changes, golf cart rate changes that we might be able to do so that we can better fund the operations, maintenance and improvements
on this golf course as we go forward. So it's really big change and big chairing going on at the golf course. This is one of the premier municipal golf courses in the state of Oklahoma. Even JJ Keegan, who's played on who knows how many hundreds of courses in the United States, says this ranks at the top of
municipal courses. So we're excited about the future and the possibilities for Godham's golf course, but we want to hear citizens comments what they think as we go forward when we talk about rate increases or adding services to our golf course. Let's be sharing reach out to your city councilmen and have discussions with them about that.
Okay, and Lauren, I understand there was a resolution last night to form a task force or the Homeless in bartles Well. Something that's you know, it's been kind of cooking for a while.
So yeah, so we've all had conversations at the city level and our nonprofit organizations and our churches here in town about the issue of houseless people in our city. These are community members and we need to remember that they are community members and we need to take care of them. So what we really want to do is put together a task force involving all of the interested and engaged parties that have some possible ideas, have a
vested interest in the houseless population and helping people. We want to put them together in the same room, at the same table and start looking at actual ideas, actual plans, actual things we can do to help these members of our community to not be houseless, to improve their situation, and this will only help our community in the long run.
But we've passed a resolution last night to start putting together that task force and instruct city staff to help us form that task force to tackle the problem of houselessness and to help these most vulnerable members of our community.
Okay, I understand we're cutting a little bit of a break here for home daycares because daycare, believe it or that's in high demand these days and in short supply. Yeah.
So, as homelessness and houselessness was part of our strategic plan and dealing with that issue. Daycare is at the top of the issues in our strategic plan that our community wants us to help a lot of the things that we've done to help is getting government out of the way, removing unnecessary and overburdened some regulation at both the local and state level. So we're working with the state legislature to try to get some changes to state
statutes get regulation out of the way. But we can do something here at the local level, and we did it last night. We cleaned up a lot of our city ordinances so we're no longer classifying two different types of in home daycare businesses, so they're all classified under one zero to twelve children in a home as a daycare business. We have removed a lot of burdens, some regulation about how they can operate and what they have to do to operate. That we remove some parking restrictions
we remove. We removed some restrictions we had at a local level and deferred and said, as long as you meet Oklahoma State Department of Health guidelines for running and licensing of your daycare facility, then we're not going to put any more burdensome and more restrictive ordinances on your business there in the neighborhood. So I think it's going to open up an opportunity for more spots of daycare
in our in home daycare businesses around town. And I think it's really going to make an impact and at least gets city government and these burden some regulations out of the way of the problem.
Path Fighter a little construction going on there.
Yeah, So Pathfinder is one of the duels of our community. I mean, it's a really unique thing. In twenty eighteen, twenty twenty, voters passed some bond issues to try and improve and make some improvements on our Pathfinder. And so we're making some improvements starting with back by the frog Pond behind the high school out there the trailhead off of Shawnee there. We've closed it down for a little bit to do improvements and we're pouring concrete right now.
So it's a really exciting thing to be that's going to be really great, great trailhead and a complex back there. So your tax dollars, the go bond moneies that you passed in twenty eighteen in twenty twenty are being put to use right now rebuilding and reconstructing that. It's going to be closer a little bit but should be opened soon and that's really going to improve that whole Pathfinder.
We've got multiple Pathfinder projects that will go on over the next two to three years that have been passed through bond issues, and this is just the beginning of the provements we're going to make on Pathfinder.
Yeah, I want to kind of jump around here just a little bit here. Did we get that taken care of with the Tuxedo Bridge? Do we get an agreement in place?
So that's a great question because the Tuxedo Bridge has had that lane closed down for a long time over years. Yeah, and if you might remember, I know it was a Jim Kurt was on after the last city Council meeting. We talked about the fact that the bids came in really high to reconstruct that bridge, all three lanes of that bridge. Our City Engineering. City staff did a really great job of going back to the drawing board and saying, how can we kind of break up this whole redo
into smaller projects that we can accomplish. What we really need to do right now is reconstruct that one side of that bridge. We need to reinforce the bases and riverbeds of that bridge and kind of rehabilitate and maintain do some maintenance on the other two lanes. So we accepted a bid last night for the project. We did have a bid come in at the amount that is
acceptable and within our budget for the project. So we're gonna totally redo that one lane, We're gonna rehabilitate the other two lanes and do some river bed maintenance to make sure that the whole complex, that whole bridge complex is safe and structurally sound. So that's going to move forward really soon. The engineering is completed. We had to unfortunately that got delayed a lot by our state level.
You know, muscles and bats that are nest seen in those and we had to do some environmental surveys and studies. But it looks like we're gonna get shovels on the ground on this project really soon.
Great We've got a kind of a unique coming up. It comes up about once a year. Yeah, I mean we have.
We've had in our chnical Phillips and Phillips sixty six main parking lot down there. We've had some chemical and other kind of recyclings. This one's kind of unique in the fact that out by in Sooner Park by the swimming pool on October nineteenth, ten am to four pm, we're going to do an electronics recycling program. So all those things have been accumulating in your garage, your computers, your laptops, your printers, your old microwaves, old cell phones,
all those types of electronics. You can bring them and have them be recycled and get them out of your home and have them disposed of and recycled in a safe manner. So please gather all those up, bring them out October nineteenth, ten a into four pm at Sooner Pool out by Sooner Pool. That's a really great recycling event. There's a company that comes in and does this recycling, and we've worked with them to come in and do this, So bring it all out with I'm sure it's going to be real popular.
Now we don't necessarily recycle your yard debris, but we will be taking it away in December, that's right.
So one of the things we always know, I mean in December, we know there's going to be leaves on the ground and sticks and everything else. You're going to be cleaning up your yards. The city wants to help you get rid of that, and we're going to be doing yard debris pick up on your regular trash day December ninth through thirteenth. So you can set out your yard debris on your curb on your regular trash day and we'll come by and pick those up December ninth
through thirteenth. Get those out of the road for you. So be cleaning up your yard and be ready to have that debris to pick up.
Alrighty, thank you very much. Anything else you'd like to add, young man.
Now, I want to say thank you to everyone out there that makes our community great every day. Thank you our police, fire, ambulance services, our city staff, all of them. I can't say enough. Every City Council meeting I go into the city staff and our emergency services personnel are ready and with information and doing a great job. I want to say thank you to Mike Bailey and all of the rest of them down there at City Council. City city managers and the city staff do a great job.
We live in a great city. We hope to keep making it better at City Council.
Great you've been listening to City Matters on K one.