And tall grass motor. It's into right now we have in our studio. He is honor the mayor And how are we doing, Mayor Copeland doing good? Tom was just mentioning it. It's beautiful out today. It would be even more beautiful if we'd get some rain. But well, yes, it would beautiful day in their bill, glad to be here. Got a lot to talk about, got a lot to talk about. It's a busy time of year it is. Let's talk about the water first, because that seems
to be on everybody's mind. When do I water? How much can I water? Can I water this? What's the day thing? There's a lot of confusion out there, folks. If they we we printed it every day on our website and we announced it every day on the on the radio. But sometimes they take just kind of it's like a drive buyers. You don't need to know to you need to know exactly what did they say? Right? So what are they and I'm pointing at the city, what did they
say? Well, to give you a little bit aboutground everybody, hopefully everybody knows that we have a water issue. It has not rain significantly in a long time, especially north of us. It seems like there's a space up there that just can't catch any rain. To speak up, we got the
Moses effect coming over something storm st divide. So our current water supplies of yesterday morning are overall total of all the different sources was down to fifty eight point two and if you go back to early December when it was just a touch over seventy percent, there has just been that that steady decline over the last several months. We reached the place at the last council meeting the first
part of April that we initiated the Phase two restrictions. So that means that if you use over ten thousand gallons, and truthfully, something like eighty some five percent of us don't use that much in a given month, so it won't affect a lot of people. But if you do use over ten thousand gallons, your amount over ten thousand, not the whole thing, just the amount over ten thousand goes up five percent as an inducement to use less.
The part that you mentioned about watering yards, that is, a large water user, taking a shower might use some amount, but watering your entire lawn is much more. So those right now are restricted if you have an even house number, a number ending an even number, So if you're at one fourteen, that's even. If you're at one fifteen, that's odd. Even
numbers water on Monday and Thursday. Odd numbers. The other side of the street usually would water on Tuesday and Friday, and that means that if you're watering on an improper day, both the police department and the codes enforcement people
have the ability under this resolution Phase two. The first time, they would just give you a warning and say, you know, did you know that you're not supposed to be watering on Wednesday or you're on an even number an odd number, and it would simply be a warning and give you that information. If that were to persist, then there are a schedule of fines that would be in place. The one thing I think could happen, and we
may not think about it months or even years ago. I set my sprinkler system on an automatic timer and it comes on at one in the morning. I'm not even awake, hopefully at one in the morning. If you are, there's problem. Unless you're in the radio business like yourself. Yeah, yeah, And so you don't think about it in the morning, it's already dried off, and yet there you are with your sprinkler system going. So I encourage everyone to check your sprinkler systems, the timers, and just be
aware. Even numbered houses Monday Thursday, odd numbers on Tuesday Friday. I feel like Johnny Fever here. It's the water cops man. That's right. Well, so we just you know, good news, we do yea. So conserve, conserve, conserve, top of mind, conserve, run the shower less, don't fill up this, turn that off quicker, don't flush the toilets. All these little things that accord here in a pint there. But at the end of the day, it saves a lot. There is
good news. Fine, two years it was a great plan. It's still a great plan. But the supply chain. We totally redid the pump system at Johnstone Park, which is just across from the Kiddie Park. That pump station pulls from the Kenny River where we have access to millions of gallons of water. We put in a new pump, We put a new warring, We totally upgraded that thing, made it more efficient, uses less electricity. Could not get the control board. It's kind of a vital piece to control.
Yeah, it's a new and people say, well, why you know, just put in a light switch. Trade on a little bit more intricate to that. This is a three phase, variable speed, variable volume pump system that allows us to match the pumping capacity to what the water plant needs. It's great, but we couldn't get that control for two years. We did get a control. That control has been installed, That pump is now
online. It does not mean there's more water. We're still at fifty eight point two, but it does mean that we have access to more sources. That means that we don't have to pull from Hula Lake all the time. We don't have to pull from Hudson Lake. We can pull from the river where we can get that water, which we normally do, and leave the lakes alone, let them recover or at least not get much worse. Um. So we do have that pump. So that is good news, and
it's the good news of the week. Alrighty, I like that, Yes, I like that. I'm going to go to something that's a very touchy and uncomfortable for a lot of people for a variety of different reasons, and that is the draft of possible ordinance. It came in as a result of the alleged things that may have happened at the Pride Fest. Pride fests have been going on for years. Hasn't been a problem, evidently, one facet of it to cost a big star, a lot of concern on both sides.
There are people of confusion. There's there's been a lot of confusion people. I've heard this, and they've heard that, and they see things on the internet and they assume whatever their tendencies would cause them to assume. And I get that, I understand it, and I try to be sens to you to that. I also explained to people that the city council, rightly so, is limited to do things that meet certain legal requirements, certain legal
standards. So we had instructed the city attorney to go out and search and research to find if there was options available to better define what we felt would be allowed. And a lot of work has gone into that. As you might know, Tennessee was the first state that went through that process. Their law, signed by the governor, was enjoined in federal court before it took effect. In fact, I was told by a federal judge appointed by President
Trump. So this is an issue that really as much beyond Bartlesville. There are many states, I'm told fourteen states working with the concerns of constituents to try and find solutions. In government, we're always trying to find solutions that observe the most people, but we must do it in a legal way. So we did at the last city council meeting inner into agreement. I think everyone in Bartlesville wants to get along, or most people in Bartlesville want to
get along and just be good neighbors. The one group on the one side agreed to move that event indoors where it had been before, and the big complaint had been that this was outdoors in a park people walking by, so that will be moved indoors. Had a one year agreement, and I think that's a positive mood. It illustrates that both sides, I hope, are trying to get along and find some consensus. Okay, so you had some
choices here. One reject the agreement and would occur again or be approved the agreement and the event will be moved indoors for at least one year, and there was no seat. Now there was other options that the agreements that they agreed to was that if we would agree to that, which we did, that it would be moved indoors for a period of a year, give this
thing time to progress through the court system and the legal developments. If we not agreed to it, then it would have I'm not in charge of that program obviously, but it wouldn't all likelihood have occurred again outdoors, which a number of people had found unacceptable to them. So we felt like this is a good compromise. Appreciate people working together to find solutions to keep Bartlesville a
good place to live and work and play. More good news here we local sales tax collections, and that one thing that's called a use tax that I was I was told never to ask about that for a long time is finally kicking in use tax is a word that was derived many years ago at the Capitol to describe what is the same exact thing as a sales tax, but applied to remote sales, which would be a sale that occurred out of state.
If you decided to buy this new microphone, you could buy it at the Bartlesville Microphone Store, which we encourage everyone to do, and you would have paid sales tax if you had ordered it from online. In the universal microphone store. Under that old ruling, you would not have paid let's put the local business to a disadvantage. Same quality, even the same price or
a lower price. But because of that, so this simply made an equity that everyone get what you want where you want and pay the same sales tax. But they call it a use tax. We were the largest city. The next largest city that did not have a use tax Oklahoma, I believe was about three thousand people. So everyone doing all of these places. To
give you an idea of the impact. In the first two months of this year, which January February, perhaps not the major retail shopping money usually kind of a loan there has totaled about seven hundred thousand dollars, so you can see the impact. And when we're trying to fix streets, pay police and fire, take care of our parks in the path, find all the things
that the city does, this will have a sizeable impact. And our total sales tax is up now, it's up slightly, but it's up slightly because last year was a banner, yes, so to be up over last year, we're continuing that and it's because I think people are shopping in Bartlesville We put a lot of work into inviting more retail so that there's not as much need. We hope to go outside of Bartlesville to find the things you want. That's good news, Believe me, this is it. You know,
we're kind of like the Tulsa for some of communities around here. And I've been told that for people from Independence, Coffeeville, Caney. They said, well, you know, we go to Bartlesville. That's kind of like the big deal here. When you look at car tax parked around town, you do see tax from all over. I've heard us described as a microton. Yeah that's but I was, yeah, yeah, right, that's good. Uh, and we continue to work on that. Well great, I understand
talking about heavy stuff. I hear, I hear the budgets coming up and you guys need like a forklift to kind of get that into this almost it's part of our physical fitness training. Um. The average budget will run six to eight hundred pages. I hear. It's taller than Billy Ron careful time, you'll get both of us in trouble. She's a sweet lady. But it is massive because there's a lot going on in the city, and this details all of the cost for all of those operations for a full year,
and it sets the pattern or the plan for the year. How much is community development and parks and sanitation gonna need. When you look at the price of a trash truck at two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, all the way down to paper towels, you know how much of that will we need in our department. So it is massive staff works. They start working on it months ago. Ce council begins to get involved and decide how should this work
because we have to stay in budget and not as a state law. It's just good practice and we do um that then links directly with the general Obligations or what we call GEO bonds and the CIP sales tax. You know, how are we going to get that to do the most things that need to be done for the most people. Okay, now we've got the first Christian church. What's what's in it? Come on? Come. It's like we're opening a present here, and we use abbreviations. We call it FCC.
First, I get nervous when I see that, speaking as a broadcaster. So the radio cops, Well, that's true, I haven't thought about that. Yeah, fcc UM. Yeah, Tomad you heard about the FEC coming down. But yeah, now First Christian Church had unfortunately reached a place where they felt like they needed to make a change. They had an amazing facility in the heart of downtown, right next to the Community Center, across from the Price Tower, and a beautiful building. It is a unique building in
every way. Like a lot of churches, it's a collection of buildings, if you will, where things over the years changed. This had that expand and that happens I think with a lot of church buildings over decades. But anyway, they came to the city and said, would you be understood is there are a good use for the community, because if there is, we would consider donating this. So it's amazing to have that opportunity. The first
thought was a convention center. Study was done, a lot of discussion, and the cost benefit ratio just couldn't seem to make it work at seventeen million dollars. So we decided to try to pivot. Requested anybody in the community that has ideas how could we best use this what would be a really good use for the community. Had six different proposals come forward. A group of city staff self, the Vice mayor mister Kurd met and looked at these,
studied them, ask questions, had really good discussions. Those proposals covered a broad swath of ideas about how to serve the community, and we've begun to work through that. It's my expectation that in just a couple of weeks, I know mister Bailey, our city manager, is working on that to bring a presentation to the council of the proposals, the benefits, the options, the things that might be done. Also, we have to work with First
Christian Church. There are people because again we talked about misunderstandings. The City of Bartlesville does not, as in own that building. Nope, Okay, people say, well the city the city has what's called a one year triple net lease. As we explore, if we can't find a use that we think is good, that the church leadership thinks is good, then that building
still belongs First Christian Church. Now if we do, then it would be my expectation they would complete a donation to the city and that process could move forward. So we're working on that. I think that there's a lot of good ideas. We'll see if something rises to the top that we can then try to pursue and make Bartles feel even better. Okay, we got the yard debris collection first of two coming up. We have two per year,
one in the fall, one of the spring. People that are I've been doing it working in the flower beds, cleaning up all the leaves that got blown back up under that bush. That's a little that's a job. Oh it turns into work. I got my first sunburn of the summer on my neck. But it people are defatching yards or they're trimming limbs, especially the winds that we've had. My tree keeps on. How there's any tree left, It just limbs, and you pick up limbs and there's more limbs,
but you can bag those up and there's no stickers needed. The week of May eighth through the twelfth, on your regular tray. If you're a Tuesday, it's on Tuesday. If you're a Thursday, it's on Thursday. You put those out at the curb. Do not put them on top of the polycart trash cards. Don't put them up against them, piled up like a pyramid. Because the trucks they're automated. That big arm has to come out and grab your polycart to lift it up and dump it. But put them
near and you can put as many bags. We've had some neighborhoods with lots of trees. However we're one hundred bags of leaves. I've seen that it's limited to leaves, grass clippings. If you have limbs and they're cutting links of four feet bundled up no more than fifty pounds, somebody's got to pick those up and throw them in a truck. And by the way, it will probably almost certainly be a different truck. The automated truck trucks don't really
have a way to do that. Another truck would come by later. So if you see your cards emptied, oh they didn't pick up my stuff, well they will just be patient. But that's coming up maybe eighth through the twelve. And if somebody one figure out how it all works. You can be a part of the operation of the city based simply volunteering your services from some boards, authorities, commissions and committees and things. I hear people I have told you this before, Tom. People say they I said, you
can be one of they. What you do is you go to City Bartlesville dot org, go over to the right hand side. You can scroll down there you can get an application. You can look at all. We have twenty five what we call boards, authorities, commissions, and committees. It's
got over one hundred and eighty five of your friends and neighbors. That's they who decide about streaks and parks and the White Rose Cemetery, and the library and the museum, and the community center and the golf course and firing codes, on and on and on. Twenty five boards that serve an invaluable task of helping the city council. But because by the time something gets to the council, it has been through an extensive process of discussion and ideas come forward,
and it really is a big help. Means that not only will you help the city, but you will learn a lot about the city and have a voice in a lot of those decisions. So City Bartlesvielle dot org. Sign up, go to the city call, go up to the second floor. Talk to Elaine bains give her a call. I think it's three three eight four to eight two. I don't swear to that because it didn't write it down. But when you call the city manager's office, Miss Baines would
be the one you would speak with. She knows a lot of things. Elaine is amazing, Yes she is. Hey, mayor, thank you for being with it, thank you all righty