CITY MATTERS 6-12-23 - podcast episode cover

CITY MATTERS 6-12-23

Jun 12, 202327 min
--:--
--:--
Download Metacast podcast app
Listen to this episode in Metacast mobile app
Don't just listen to podcasts. Learn from them with transcripts, summaries, and chapters for every episode. Skim, search, and bookmark insights. Learn more

Episode description

The podcaster did not provide a description for this episode.

Transcript

And good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome in. It's time now for city matters, and we've got our assistant city manager, Cracy Rolls, in house with us, and he's got a cast of thousands. So we're kind of doing this a little different way today, are in studio cameras, having a little bit of both issues. So I'm doing this with my phone and so if you're watching on Facebook Live, as thousands of you do, and trust me, I know you're getting really

good close up of Tracy Rolls right here. You doing there, Budd, Well, I'm not doing real good. I'm a little bit nervous. Actually you're nervous. I'm the one holding the camera, I know, and that's what makes me nervous. We talked about this and I thought I was going to get to hold the camera so I could get a good shot close up of Terry. But now overy are well, good morning Tom for the second time. I brought a little more reinforcement this time, and we're very excited

to be here. Before I turn it over to the guys with the most information, I want to remind everybody July the fourth is coming up and we will be city Hall will be closed that day, so if your trash pickup is on July the fourth, it will be the following day, on July fifth. So miss Lane told me to make sure that I got that out there, and I'm not going to go against what miss Lane tells me to do. So I've gotten that out there. It's good. That's correct,

That's that's correct. They let me continue to have an office there, and I want to make sure that when I go back that that office is still intact and I'm still welcome to come back there, So I wanted to make sure to get that out there. Good job. So Mike Bailey is out of town today and so it's just us, which is a very scary thing here today with you. So I know that we'll probably fall well short of mister Bailey's bar, but we're going to make sure that we do our best.

We thought about making some things up that just were totally untrue and blame them on Mike, but we chose better so it would have been fun. Well, that was the disclaimer, you know, I had to say that is it what is it FCC that runs this FCC rules we have to have that disclaimer. So we've got that out there now. So but before we digress too much, I'll turn this over to the to the people who we need to hear from more. Terry is here going to talk about water,

which everyone I know is interested in. So Terry, good morning, Tracy, thank you for that wonderful introduction. A couple of things is, we did get a little rain last week, so the water supply did increase just a smidge. We are up to fifty eight point six percent of our overall water supply remaining as of today. Last week, we use an average of four point eight two million gallons of water a day, so we are still within the Stage three restrictions that calls for just a one day outdoor water use

a week. So if you're an even number home, that's going to be on Thursday. Odd number homes or properties are on Friday, and so we just continue to ask for you to conserve water. To be an advocate for that. I think there's a great number of people that are doing quite a bit, so we're very appreciative of all those efforts. It's helping, and so hopefully the rain will come sooner versus later and we'll replenish our water supply. But until then, we'll keep conserving and doing what we can to kind

of maximize the water and make it last as long as possible. So along those lines, so we do have an announcement that the Adams Golf Course, which is a city owned golf course, will be moving off of city water to irrigate their golf course by the end of this week. So I know that's been a topic of much conversation in social media and other forms, that

the golf course is watering the greens. They're only watering greens because of the investment and the size of that investment, but they will be moving to using pond water to irrigate those greens starting at the end of this week. So with that, if you have any questions, concerns, or any type of items, the police will free to reach out to City Hall or to me. The city hall numbers nine one eight, three, three eight four two eight two or my number is three three eight four one one six and I

don't have Tracey's number memorized, but hopefully i'll have that soon enough. So if you really want to talk to somebody who's in charge, that's the person that you should reach out to. So with that, that's kind of where we're at, and hopefully rains. I don't think there's much of a forecast for rains this week, but hopefully that can change or that will change, and we'll continue to get rains to help kind of replenish our warp supply. Could you talk a little bit, Terry. I know a lot of people

know this, but there's probably something that don't. It seems like here in Bartlesville we've gotten quite a bit of rain. I mean, things are green, things look really good. We're having to mow. Can you explain why the rain here really doesn't help our cause when it comes to our water situation.

Yeah, yeah, that's a great question. So the lakes that we draw from, which are HeLa and Copan, the watershed or the area that feeds those lakes from rainwater runoff is really in southeast Kansas, So Sedan Cedar Vale, that area of Kansas is really kind of the heart of those watersheds

that feed those lakes. They've gotten some rains, some really good rains here over the last thirty sixty days, but they're over twenty inches below normal going into these recent rains, So it's going to take a lot of rain to fill up all the little creeks and farm ponds and different things that are within these sheds that were dry or almost completely dry that that need to refill before

water can start running off to get to the lakes. So it's, uh, it's just a process to kind of replenish those water sheds and once those are replenished and then those next rains that are actually going to run off and get to us. So, um, it's just kind of a side note that even may seem like we had a lot of good rain events, but we are below normal rainfall events from May um when when you looked at the actual rain that we received and what we normally received. So even then,

we're still um kind of trending below what we normally get. So it's just going to take a lot of rains and or one big big rain to get everything back restored to what what is normal for us. Cool, thank you. And also there are conversations taking place to create solutions going forward to prevent this type of situation from occurrent. Correct. Yeah, So we've we've done a number of things to address long term water supply. We've purchased additional water

rights at Copan Lake, we're pursuing the water reuse component of it. We are looking always at potential future things to do, and we've had certain plans in place, which Kelly's covered in several of her city beats in previous weeks.

Through there, we're also looking at continuencies as well. If if water supply continues to dwindle and we get into late summer and with an overlief in sight, what are we going to do at that at that point, So we're looking at kind of what if scenarios at this point we have and continue work on long term water supply. These things usually take decades to implement, so they're not just something where you just we'll just go get water from Call

Lake and then next month we're under construction. It takes years and years worth of study and permitting in different things that are associated with it, and so it took us twelve years to get water from Copan. We've been working on water reuse now for about six seven years. It just takes a long time to work through all the regulatory process to facilitate those types of water supply and

accessing those water supply. So we will continue to do so as we've done a lot of people compare um the O one O two drought for those who are around h Bartlesfield for two thousand and one, two thousand and two, we have exceeded that drought with this current one and that that drought lasted just about a year, and right now we're trending just over a year and without

any really relief in sights. So hopefully that will will be different here when we talk in either late June or early July, where we've gotten some rate events and we're back back hall again. But we are working on some long term solutions as well some stop gap measures to help preserve this precious resource. But again everybody has a part to play in that, and so we just

ask everybody to do what they can. If you don't have to water outside, we'd ask that you not short showers or the biggest consumer of water indoors, not running your dishwasher until the dishwasher is full. Same thing with your clotheswasher, and just be mindful of how you're using the tap water for brushing. Your teeth are just different type of activity. So again, this affects all of us, and so it's going to take all of us to help

manage and get through it for good. Thank you. I really appreciate the job that you've done on coming up with solutions and ways to mitigate it's not an easy thing. And more importantly, I appreciate you being open and transparent with the citizens and tell them exactly what's going on, not trying to fluff anything or hide anything. So I really appreciate that, and I think a lot of people that I've talked to have said the same thing. So thank

you for what you're doing. I know it's it's not an easy thing and when you start messing with things that people rely on. So thank you, and I really respect the situation that you're in and how you've dealt with it. Oh, thank you. So now toime, we're gonna move on to the newest member of the leadership team of the City of Bartlesville. Congratulations, condolences whichever may apply to Chief Kevin Eckleberry. You know, he and I spoke to you this morning, but now he's he's been on the spot.

I gave him exactly twenty minutes to come up with ten minutes worth of words, So I wish you the best, but as a police chief, that's usually what you get So we'll just want to start you off right and and throw you that good curveball right now. So all Chief Kevin Ikler's on me. All right, Well, good morning, Tracy. It's good to be

here. It's kind of hard to call you Tracy, he says, you've been chief for so long, but good morning, and you know, I just I'm excited about the opportunity to move forward in this position and to help grow the police department and help protect the city and serve the city and not only officers, but the but the citizens that we serve. UM. A couple of topics on our list would be the recruitment. We are constantly looking

for good people to be police officers. If you're a good, ethical, honest person, and you find yourself to be a good person, if you're a hard worker and uh put in a good day's work and uh like being productive, we probably have a place for you. Man. We would really like you to apply for the police department. We need good officers. We can take a hard working person and honest, an ethical person and turn them into a great cop. So, uh, we'll put that out there.

That's that's one of the areas that getting law enforcement to day, we kind of struggle due to the national stories that go go on around the nation and UM, we want people to know that in Bartlesville it's a different story. Bartlesville is a great place to live, great place to work, great place

to play and uh and a great place to serve. We have great citizens and we have a great city council and city management that really supports the police department and UH and in turn that allows us to really serve the citizens in the best way possible. So UM recruitment is important. It's where wherever the officer starts and UH and UH you know, it's endless to where they can go from there. The second thing in mind is also is with the officers

and that that's the mental health issue that comes along. We have a couple of mental health issues that we want to talk about. One would be for the officers. Want to make sure the officers are have a resources to reach

out when they're in need. UM, once they've seen something tragic or had to deal with an issue that really has left them u uh in in a bad way mentally, we want to make sure there's resources for them to go to and to to kind of dump the trash, so to speak, get that out of their mind and so they can serve fully for the future. Along with that, we also have our Crisis Intervention Response Team that we've just started up that's going to be in the community dealing with the mental health,

mental health and welfare of our citizens. Um. Hopefully we can get ahead of that and start really addressing some mental health issues. Mental health for Barswell, police department is multiple calls a day dealing with people in crisis and uh so we're we're going to try to address that in a more proactive way to try to get those people into recovery or back on the path to success. Um. We want long term success for those people and that's what we're going

to strive for. UM. Another thing I'll talk about is we city council was kind enough to add us a couple of officers this year. Um. Those officers are for the parks and Pathfinder. We're excited about that. Get get those officers out patrol and the Pathfinder and patrol in the parks. Uh. You know, we mentioned it earlier today that there's not a lot of crime in the parks are on the Pathfinder, but there's there's uh a lot

of fear of crime. And you know, part of our mission statement, uh, part of our job as bars of police officers is to reduce the fear in the community, and we want to we want to uh complete that task as well. So having the parks and Pathfinder patrol will help us to reduce the fear as people can get out and try to enjoy the parks and and uh the Pathfinder and so we're really excited about that opportunity and I think

it'll serve the community. Well. Good, Any any uh, I know today you've been you've been officially the police chief of an hour and forty five minutes. But any any big plans as far as cha coming with the police department, the operations of the police department kind of in your first hundred days. Any goals that you want to to reach or accomplish. Well, we have some goals that we had started while you were in place, and I want to try to go ahead and complete those goals. One of those will

be the new Strategy Center Tri County Tech. As some people know, we have the East Side substation currently inside the main building at Tri County Tech. Tri County Tech and has agreed to allow us to utilize the Strategy Center, which is on the east side of their campus facing no other road, standalone building. It will be our new substation beginning August first. It has some classrooms in it and it also has some office space in it, and we're

planning on housing the training division out there. And with that being said, we're also in the process, along with Tri County Check, bringing online the Basic Peace Officers Course, which is a police academy at the Bartlesville and that will be housed out there, and we should be able to bring people into that course and turn them into police officers, and that'll save the city money as well as get us outfitted with new officers on the street and ready to

go to work for us. So it'll be a cost savings to the City of Bartlesville, but it'll also be something very proactive into something that we really look forward to doing as well. Some more exciting things is since I was the deputy chief with the police department, that opens up a deputy chief spot, which will in turn open up a captain spot in lieutenant spot and sergeant spot and corporal spot. So that's exciting and I'll get the opportunity to promote

within the ranks of the police department. So I'm really looking forward to putting a good team together around me. We've already got a great team around me, and it just to add some more players to the game be great. And so that's those are thanks we're looking forward to in the first few days. Well, very good, congratulations on your appointment. I wish you all

the best. I know the police department is in good hands. And like we mentioned earlier, I had told mister Potter that he kept asking who we were going to hire as a police chief, and I assured him we were going to hire the best police chief Bartlesville has ever had, and I think that we've done that with you. So congratulations and thank you, and thank you for your willingness to serve our community, not just as a police chief, but for the last almost thirty years. So thank you. Thank you.

So Mica, not much going on in you're an eck of the woods. Not a lot of projects happening, Just kind of getting through the days. Not much happening. Yeah, I'm just trying to find things to do. Yeah, well, let's talk about a couple of those things. Okay, okay, sounds good. First off, we got another a lot of questions about Civitan Park. We've got us the park there off of No Water Road and some of Lake Road that's got the shade structure over it. Some

people call the Dinosaur Park. I think that's the most common term for it. It's an ADIA accessible part. I think it's one of our only ADA accessible parts in the city of Bartlesville. And so we've we've got some issues with the shade structure. So we've had that lockdown now for about three weeks, I believe somewhere in there in that ballpark. So essentially we noticed some

issues with it. There's some some structural connections that seem to be compromised, and so as we got to investigating, it appears as though it may have been installed improperly on the front end. So this was not a city project when it was installed. It was actually donated. We're really not sure who the contractor wasn't installed it. But we have sound some issues that we're actually gonna have to remove that structure and put it back up in place, and

so that's why it's been shut down out for a while. It's trying to get that going. It's you know, anything with the city government. Local government takes a little bit of time. It's not just as easy as a private entity that just goes out and hire somebody and gets the work done. So we've been working on getting pricing on that, getting some quotes some contractors to have that work done. Essentially, what we'll do is we'll have that

removed while it's down, We'll make some modifications to the footings. There are some elevation, some great issues there that put things in a bind as far as the structure, and so we will make those adjustments and we'll put that back up and hope to see that happen at least coming down potentially in the next couple of weeks. Again, once I get some pricing secured, we'll try to get a contract through council to get that work done, and then

we'll get that put up as quickly as possible. I know that's it's a popular park again, it's one of our only parks with a shade structure, and so you know, I know city bars that were shutting you down on water and now we're taking away your shade. And so we're working on it though. We're trying to get that done. But that is what's happening there, So we'll just feel like it's our responsibility to make sure that's safe. And so we realize that potentially is not safe, we want ahead and shut

that down. So we're kind of getting that one going again. We've also got pickleball coming up now you'll see that'll probably start to go to construction later this late summer early fall. I know there's some interest in that. I think it's the fastest growing sport in the country is minor standing and so currently

I think people are using tennis courts. They're at Sooner Park, Johnstone Park, and then I think there's some indoor facilities private facilities in town that people use, but I think the y m c A and also a First Baptist Church I believe allows there as well. And but we're trying to get some on our city owned courts, specifically four pickleball and so these are actually going to go in right there next to the tennis courts at Sooner Park, just

to the north of between the tennis courts and the fire station there. We should be getting construction plans on that later this week to review hopefully from Dan Kelleher. We're looking at doing eight courts total for sure. Six it will include in a base bid, and then we'll have a bid alternate for two additional courts. We believe we can get eight courts, that is the goal.

We'll have bid alternates also for lighting for those courts and then shade structures on the east side for essentially people waiting in line, waiting to play or watching, and there'll be some benches will be kind of I called a bullpen. It's not really a bullpen, but the courts will be separated by an alley of sorts, fenced off alley where they can there's a couple of benches

there they can wait on where they're ready to play. So it should be a good project, agin see it should see that go to construction late summer early fall. We'll get that out to bid here in the next month hopefully, and it should be a good project, should be exciting and know there's a lot of interest in it. And so those are two things we've got really. Uh, I think that I was on task talk about I think I get a little bit more time here, so we'll talk about some other

things. Geo Bond highlights. So we just last Monday night a week ago Monday, the Barnswoll City Council did approve a list of projects for a geo bond election this fall. I think they will call at election at this next July meeting. They're looking for an October tenth election date. So again the city Council has approved these projects, but really a citizens of Barnswoll or the final step in this if they need to prove this as well. So there

were the three separate items on this election. There will be street there will be buildings and facilities, and there'll be parks and rex. Each one of those is a standalone, so he'll vote for each one of those. There's just over twelve million dollars with the street projects plan that was actually the the primary focus of council. This go around our streets or in need of some repair. Always are. That'll be a never ending issue, I guess,

but we'd like to start making some better progress on those. We're looking at just over twelve million dollars with the streets. Some highlights and that'll be Adams Boulevard sent you from Highways seventy five to Bison Road. I know mister Bay likes to point out that, you know Adams Boulevard is really owned by the state of Oklahoma, by Oklahoma Department Transportation. Really, the only portion that we own and maintain is from not even really Highways seventy five is Adams Road

where it meets there right at the Walmart intersection off of Adams. From there to Bison Road is what the City of Bars owns to maintained. So we've got a one point four million dollars project plan to rehabilitate that section of Adams Lahoma. Up in Oak Park, we got seven hundred thousand dollars to do some work on the home. It's a concrete panel project. We tried to package these street projects up into not just individual streets, but I guess there's

packages of streets. So we're all relatively close to each other. And so we've got some work over on Lupo, We've got some work on Morton, We've got some projects planned on Graystone, Michigan. Projects all really all Acrosstown. We tried to scatter things Acrosstown. But again, twelvellion dollars with the streets, we've got just over three million dollars with the buildings of facilities planned for that. The highlight of that really is a replacement of fire Station number

three. This is over Virginian Hensley. This is I think I misspoke I said the other day it's a nineteen fifty model. I believe it's in nineteen seventy two or seventy four model building. We've had some structural issues on there, nothing like the building is going to fall down. Everything, with just some maintenance issues where we've got some walls that are selling whatnot. They are located over utilities that need to be replaced, and so really to make that

work, it just needs to be rebuilt. At this point, it's actually not sized quite right for us now. So the new project would add a third bay. So they've currently got two bay apparatus bays, so they would end up basically as something similar that we've got on Price Road, and they're at tuck Sedo the two stations, those two satellite stations. So we've got that project plan for just over about two point four million dollars for station number

two replacement. And then we've got parks for recreation is a third item. We've got two point one seven million dollars plan for parks for recreation. The largest project in that is actually one point two million dollars for greens rebuild it

Adams Golf Course. We've we've currently got seven hundred thousand dollars planned in the current twenty twenty g O bond that will come online this fall for the twenty twenty two issuance of that GEO bon This will be essentially that will get us not quite half of the greens at this point for that seven hundred thousand dollars.

So this one point two million dollars coupled with the proxy five hundred thousand dollars with a private funding that we've got secured, will be a full complete project replace all eighteen greens at the Adams Golf Course along with the putting green, that hip and green and our green nursery for lack of better terms. So that'll be a good project as well. Likely see the first phase of that and probably in the next year. Using that initial seven hundred thousand dollars

with some private funding that's got to be phased. We can do half of half the course at the time flight at the front nine first and then the back nine. And once you do complete those greens, they have to sit there for months actually unused to get established. So we'll phase that in here the next couple of years with those funds. So we've also always got money for Pathfinder repair. That's a big deal here in the city of Bartlesville,

a great asset to us. And so we've got two hundred fifty thousand dollars plan for some repaving on Pathfinder. And then also a big thing that's been on the Park Board's mine and I think the citizens of Bartlesville kind of along the line with our security our park police force, is security lighting in the parks. And so we've got a one hundred and fifty thousand dollars plan for that. There's nothing specifically identified for those funds just yet, but we'll put

together a project for that to upgrade security lighting in parks as well. Again that's her GEO Bond projects. We'll see that. You'll start seeing some the word get out there for October tenth election this fall and so hopefully the citizens I'll get out and vote one way or another and and the other CITC duty there. So how much time I have tom one minute winding things down, So one highlight just we did wrap up the lighting project at robin Wood Park

and the Lee Lake skate park. They've seen those lights burning there at the skate park particularly. I think that's getting a lot of use. So get out there and use that at the skate park after dark, you'd like. Well, thank you guys, a lot of good stuff going on. Thank you Tom for your time, Thank the citizens for their support and what we're trying to do. And there's a lot that we're trying to do, So thank you guys for your hard work and your dedication for making the city better.

Oh, you've been loosening in watching Should He Matter? Right here on K one, The One You Trust, we want to thank all of our fine department hits for coming down here today and sharing with us a lot of things that you need to know. Still to come in just a little bit. We've got to check out your podcast as well as our local news and our news from CBS, all right here on K one, The One You Trust.

Transcript source: Provided by creator in RSS feed: download file
For the best experience, listen in Metacast app for iOS or Android