Here.
But we also have a council member, Aaron Kirkpatrick here today and he has he has an announcement of an upcoming event.
That we wanted to talk about. So, but before we.
Jump into all that, wanted to talk something that I know people are at least a little bit curious about because they participated in it. And so we have the results of our survey back. And this was a survey that was identified in our strategic plan. This is one of the things that we wanted to do to get a better feel for our community and honestly how we're doing as a government and areas we can improve on and areas we're doing well in. And so this is this has been a little it took us a little
while to get through. This turns out, doing a survey of an entire city's pretty good process. So we hired a company named Polko and they also they do what they call a national Community Survey, and so they have a set number of questions that are the same for every community that they survey across the United States, and they have surveyed a lot of communities throughout the United States. They put a map up on Monday night and it
was everywhere. It's it's across the country. So they asked those same questions in every community, and that creates a benchmark so that they can come to your community ask those questions, and then no matter what the result was, they can tell you whether you're doing better or worse than other communities across the country. So the reality is is that municipalities face some degree of headwind on certain areas. And so while your score, your raw score of sixty
percent or sixty five percent, may not look great. If every other city in the United States got a thirty, then you still want to do better, but you're doing better than they are already.
You're you're the tallest short person, You're the tallest short person.
That's it very much so so that so it was it was an interesting survey. We there was some really great information in there. There was some really good news, and then there's some there's information in there about what we need to be focusing on and what the areas of greatest concern to our citizens, and so they so we went through this.
The high points.
Were I don't think they'll surprise anybody who knows them, but or who's from Bartlesville or has spent any time here. Ninety percent of our residents feel safe. You'd love that to be one hundred percent. That's unrealistic. So ninety percent is about as good as you're probably ever going to get.
And that meant primarily that they felt safe in their homes, they felt safe in our business districts, and so that was that was good news for all of us to know that we still have that level of safety and security and confidence in our community. About seventy percent of residence their interactions with city customer service have been have
been favorable. And again, seventy percent isn't exactly light in the world on fire, and we would love that to be a lot higher, but again, municipalities face some headwinds. A lot of these interactions were somebody who had who got a speeding ticket. Well, that's not going to be viewed as a favorable interaction no matter how well.
We do, and whose fauls it was.
Of things that we have to deal with.
And so seventy percent was actually higher than the national average, so we felt pretty good about it. Again, we'd love that to be eighty ninety percent. But again, some of these I always say, and Jason and I This was one of the things we always told our employees is you have to understand that all of the transactions that we do here are involuntary. Nobody chose to come in,
and they didn't choose us as a water company. They didn't choose to get a speeding ticket, they didn't choose it's they live here, and so they're forced new business with us, and so we always started a deficit. But I think we do a really good job. And I think that was very reflective of that. They against sixty five percent approved of the quality of services that they receive from the city, and again that's not a figure you would normally brag about, except for that it was
higher than other cities. And so again that's an area that we're actually ahead in still want to continue to improve on. And for anybody who's ever been to our library, I'm sure this won't shock you. It was the second highest score on the deal. Eighty six percent of the people basically love the library.
I'm surprised that wasn't one hundred percent. And this is best, that's best daycum library, phenomenal life for a small town.
And so I think that these are so when you're dealing with a community and you're dealing with a municipal government.
These are the challenges that we have.
Anybody that has used the library loves it, but if you don't use it, then you're not aware of it. And so this could have just been a neutral and.
So well it's a library, okay, yep.
That was It was either great, okay, don't care, don't like it, or hate it. And I mean, those are basically your five scores. So anything from I don't care or I'm not aware of it down didn't didn't make it into them into the positive category.
But so so.
Those were all of the things that I think we were really expecting. I was glad to see that we did as well as we did, but those were really things we were largely expecting. Some other areas that came out of it, and we'll just call these sort of focus areas. And these are areas primarily where the citizens gave them a high priory but then a lower score, and so that created essentially what we were calling a gap. And so in these and these are the ones that
have more to do with the city. There were other things in there that aren't specifically cities, but some cities may do them. And so for us, one of the scores that is probably the closest to being within our control and that had the biggest gap in it was recreational opportunities and facilities, and so this is something that cities actually do. There was concerns about our economic health.
I don't know how much we can do to influence that more than what we do, but we're gonna, We're going to That's obviously something to take a look at. I think that generally speaking, this is based on, you know, concerns about our largest employers. They've reduced their employee count, and so citizens of Barts will have expressed that there
that they're concerned about the economic health. And of course we've we've recruited new businesses and we've created new jobs, but we still have some work to do there apparently. And then the variety of businesses, and we've seen this before. I think us UH primarily relates to like our retail businesses, people want more and that's the reality.
They want more.
We can shop on Amazon, but restaurants are something that they're that's the very local thing, and so people want more restaurants, they want more opportunities for those.
So Popeye's Chicken coming.
It used to be it used to be Red Lobster, and then it became Olive Garden.
To know it's Popeyees. So we're there, they're all coming, Tom. We just don't know what.
When do you fix? When do you fiction Adam Street?
Yeah, there you go. You know, that's something we can do.
So, but those were those were really sort of the areas that were that were more out of alignment, which is good because those are not our are necessarily our core functions. I mean, our core functions are primarily in infrastructure, public safety, things of that nature, and so we we appreciate that those were the areas that we weren't doing as well as we wanted to. But obviously we still have to focus on those.
Uh.
One of the other questions, and this was unique to Bartlesville, so there is no comparison between these and other communities. We put in some specific questions and we really wanted the citizens to rank their priorities and so over the next several years, what would you like to see us
focus on in the community. And the highest scores were given essentially to improving existing infrastructure and public safety, and so those are the things that they would like to see the council invest in and this again, this didn't surprise us. One of the other options was is for new infrastructure. Would you like to see an expansion of our streets, expansion of our trails and our parks and things of that nature, And it got a little bit
lower score. So it tells us that city of the citizens of Bartlesville are probably relatively satisfied with the number or with the size of our infrastructure, but they'd like to see it be improved. So that's something that we actually like to see. It means that we're doing pretty well. We just need to continue to make improvements to what we have. And then we specifically asked a question about water supply, and so we asked it. There's really three
questions related to it. The first one was do you support the expansion of our water supply planning for the next fifty years? And then the other question was for the next hundred years. Both of those received very positive marks. But there was a follow up question to it, and this is why I say there's always a conundrum when
you're a city. I know they know what it is, and it was, how are you willing to increase your utility bill in order to fund those, and only forty percent of people were willing to pay for and so this is the disconnection that.
We deal with.
The reality is is that there's no way to expand our existing water supply without paying for it.
There's a cost.
We'll either have to pay the core of engineers or we'll have to install additional infrastructure.
So there's lots of.
Things that we'll have to do and it will always cost. But we were grateful to see that people were aware of this issue and.
That they supported it. But there will be a cost.
So unfortunately to those sixty percent who didn't want to pay for it.
It's only one way to get Yeah, I saw that.
I was the one snort and shaking my head just because I mean, it's just human.
Yeah, it was unanimous. It's human nature. But didn't our utilities?
Wasn't there a cost when we were going through the drought, when we're going through water restrictions, aren't there normally costs associated with that?
So there are, and in fact, when we go into our water restrictions, there is increases.
For people who use a certain amount of water.
And so yes, there already is some degree of cost built into it. I think that what we ran in, what we run into with all of these in particular, is that we've had so many demands lately, and so we had to build a water plant, and I think we started raising rates for that in early two thousands. We almost had to double water rates for a water plant we have. That was the biggest infrastructure project we'd ever done at that time, at about forty eight three
million dollars. We're now planning and again planning not because we want, but planning because we have to have it for an eighty five million dollar expansion to our wastewater plant. On the heels of that will likely be about forty million dollar improvement to our wastewater collection system. And these are all things we have to do. That's those were required by the state. And so I think that there's some degree of fatigue and people have just seen their bills continue to increase, and.
It's not just us.
I saw people upset about their electric bills the other day as well.
So you tell the story.
Of why we have, why we are now required to update our wastewater treatment system, why we no longer need to make those choices for.
Ourselves so that was it actually started all the way back in nineteen eighty six was the first. I think that was the first, I'm going to get the word wrong consent decree, which is ones that's actually handed out by a judge, which consent orders and decrees are a little bit different. And in nineteen eighty six, after the eighty six flood, apparently there was some mishandling of our
wastewater and at the wastewater plant. Essentially, I think they just opened the valves and let the wastewater go during the flood, thinking that the dilution would be sufficient. In nineteen eighty six, none of us were here, we were alive.
I was in middle school.
You got a tennis shot back then, that's what we all got our first tennis shot. And so anyway, the state, when they realized what had happened, actually issued a consent consent order or decree, and at that point in time, the city had to contract out the operation of its wastewater plan. We've continued that because it actually has worked out very well. Having a contractor operated. But all of these improvements since then are mandated is part of that.
And so you're right, it's nothing we want to do. These are things that we're required to do. And again I'm not even this isn't even a criticism of the state. The reality is is that we can't have wastewater spilling out on the streets. We can't have untreated racewater going into the river. And that's what all of this is about.
I just when I learned that through the budget process seen six. Part of what was so interesting to learn about all that was essentially, I mean, the decisions you make that we made in the past led to consequences that we are still facing this, all right, And so when when we ask people do you want to plan for the future for water supply, they say yes, well do you want to pay for it? No, like we are now once again and was it's just investments the
way investment works, right, Infrastructure isn't sexy. But the decisions we make now will be impacting people in another forty.
Years and we don't We don't want to leave it to the next generation, right, We've seen too much of that. In fact, we deal with some of the consequences of that as you as you noted, so we're still dealing with the consequences of that.
So that's that's certainly.
Not the way we operate today, but we we are, we are paying for it. So but so I think that's again it's a natural reflection. Nobody wants their bills to go up. Unfortunately, sometimes they have to, either because of inflation or because of improvements that have to be made. So but that was all of that was included in the survey. By the way, anybody who's interested in it, it's a pretty lengthy document, but I found it really, I found it very cool. It's on the City of
Bartlesville's website, which is Cityobartlesville dot org. And even better, if you have not signed up for CityBeat, then you can do that at Cityobartlesville dot org and then once a week you will have CityBeat delivered to your inbox. And in fact, all the information I just read to you was included in last week's city Beat, so those are really that's a great resource for anybody who wants it.
Also announced in CityBeat is the renaming and grand reopening of Adams Golf Course, which is now known as boots Hollow Golf Course. And so we are really really excited about this. Any golfer can tell you the golf course has been closed for a long time, and that's what it takes to redo all of the greens, and so that is what we have been going through. In fact, the greens project, I believe we started in September of October of last year.
Michael Attober.
About so we got it started in October last year. And the reality is is that a greens grow in is actually about a twenty four month process. So we're twelve months in and the greens are great. There's a couple of them that are still struggling a little bit, but most of them are phenomenal. I've gone out and looked at them last couple of weeks. But the reality is is that it'll be another twelve months before those greens are fully grown in. So we're getting ready to open.
We wish that everything was perfect, and it's pretty close. The golf course looks phenomenal. The greens look are outstanding, and they're so much better than what they have been in previous years. But there are a couple of greens that are still struggling a little bit, and they're the ones.
If you're familiar with Adam's golf course, they kind of sit down in the hole and so there's not much airflow and this is a cool weather grass, so August isn't the best time to be growing in bent grass, but it's what we had to work with, so we will. But regardless of that, we are going to do our grand reopening. It is going to be phenomenal. The first event in that is our Community Golf Day. We invite everybody in the community to join us. This isn't even
just for golfers. If you're just curious, come on out. It's a free day. It is August twenty second, from ten am to one pm. There'll be live music and food and I think the radio station is going to be out there. You all are going to have a remote setup and you can bring your putter and if you want to walk and put the greens, you can.
If you don't want to, you don't have to.
Just come out and have a little food and enjoy some music and enjoy your golf course because it is a community asset.
So that'll be the community Day.
Now, the first day to actually play the course will be the day after.
So this is.
August twenty third, at nine am, we'll have our very first our grand opening shotgun tournament and it is registration actually open today. We only have one hundred spots, so if you're interested, you're going to want to call pretty soon. And this is you can call nine to one eight three three one three nine zero zero. So nine one eight three three one thirty nine eighty five dollars per player twosomes and foursomes only, call in and get yourself in.
The tournament will be the first one to play on the new greens. Following that, we will have essentially a soft open. And so this is again this is still the greens are We're trying to baby them.
Along a little bit.
And so we've started with a soft open that will be August twenty fourth through September first, and we'll have some limited tea times and so, but those will be available. You'll be able to play the greens, You'll be able to play the whole course. Now, I understand that the green speeds are going to be a little lower than they will become September, and that is because in order to protect those greens from this August heat. And keep
in mind there they're still baby greens. Now, they're really young. They are a little taller than normal. So the green speeds will be a little slower, but they're the course will play phenomenally as long as I'm.
Not having put on a sledge Queen.
This is absolutely one hundred percent.
In fact, the last time I played, Jason was present, I had a tendency to put over the green so much that they started dropping the stick behind the.
Whole as a backstop. I don't know that's regulation, but it was fine with me.
It did work.
It was Bailey Rules.
Had that extra biscuit for breakfast, did you? So?
I actually kind of like the slow greens. Maybe I can keep it on the green now when I'm putting in, So I'm excited about that. But so that's all coming up and getting boots Hollow Golf Course. We've got a new golf pro that we've introduced to everybody and we are excited to get that kicked off. So come join us Community Day, August twenty second, ten am to one pm, No appointments necessary, just wander on in. We'll have well, we'll have some food and music and then you'll get
to see your new your new golf course. So all right, well, I have council Member for Patrick here with me, and this is he is a Normally we don't have council members on here, but we actually had an event come up that's part of a committee that he and I sit on, the Unsheltered Homeless Task Force.
I says committee, it's actually a task force.
Uh.
And we have been working for how.
Long we've been meeting now it's January and since yeah, the very end of January was our first meeting.
Have accomplished a lot.
We have seen the local helping organizations that are members of that.
Community or the committee really come together.
That has been the coolest part of it for me is watching them form connections and solve solve these issues. That was the reality. The city wasn't attempting to solve homelessness. We were just going to create a forum so that so that the people that were doing it already could solve it. Uh.
And so that's what we've been working on.
And we've actually got an event coming up to announce, and I know you're a big part of that, so I'll let you let you.
Kick that off.
Yeah.
No, it's been really I'm like you, I'm an outsider who gets to sit in with folks who do this day in and out, get to learn a ton. I love being the least informed person at the table. You just get to spunge me.
To absorb what everybody else's the expertise. Yeah, so we've got an event coming up. It is the Helping Organizations Summit.
It's going to be October twenty second, from eleven to one at Tri County Tech. So that's a Wednesday, and we're going to be invited first, first, and foremost every helping organization in the community. There's gonna be an opportunity to learn the task force has I guess we have learned a ton along the way. And you would think that everybody's sitting there who is an expert, would already.
Know all this stuff, and that's just not true. Right, everybody knows to the grindstone, they know what they do, but actually what everybody else does.
Right, And so it'll be a chance to share a lot of what we have learned about, you know, the state of homelessness in Bartlesville. But along the way, we are trying to invest in and create some resources both for our homeless neighbors and then also for these organizations themselves. Our goal is to send them back more equipped than they were when they got there, and also to allow them to connect in a small way like the organizations around the table have done on the Time Ask Force.
So there will be a lot of information coming out. We're about to launch sign ups for that. Registration will be required because we're providing a lunch along our way just to get the number. The exact cost right right, no cost at all, And a big appreciation of Try County because they're hosting us for free as well. So that's that's a real blessing for this event. In fact,
food is going to be provided by Agape in the Lighthouse. Yes, so we're going to be eating like our homeless neighbors eat every day, sharing in that experience, which I think always increases our compassion. So to be a time for education, time for networking and connection, a time for equipping, I think a lot of these organizations are going to walk away with some resources they didn't have before.
It will be open to the public.
We're going to have a couple of weeks where sign ups are exclusively for helping organizations, and those.
Organs are allowed to bring or invited to bring.
As many people from their staff as they think will be helpful, volunteers or whatever. But then after that we will open registration up to the public who also may want to come and hear things that.
We've been learning and working on.
And we've had members of the public join us that are our committee, and specifically a couple of them said, hey, can we count it?
Yeah, sure, yes, let us let us make sure.
We get all these organizations, and then we'll open it up to everybody else. So it has been it really has been quite an experience learning from these organizations. And it's not all organizations on our committee. We also have business business leaders and so we've got a really diverse committee and it's been it's been pretty fascinating to work through.
Yeah, and we've got, you know, medical professionals as well. We have a couple of people who have experienced homelessness themselves who bring a very unique perspective. Again, I'm really talking to somebody today saying I'm proud of what this group has accomplished already, and I still feel like we are It feels like we are still.
In the building process. Yeah, and you know, you're here all the.
Time, so like there are We've we've got this long list of things we are still working on to accomplish. But even so, I noticed the beginning of this summer for the first time in a year or two obvious, seeing women walking and jogging by themselves again on a pathfinder, like the level of safety the people feeling, and we.
Saw that in our survey results.
The other thing that we saw on our survey results, well, like the number one thing that our that our people were saying, Hey, we want to make sure that we care about this and we want to continue improving it was helping people move out of homelessness or not experience homelessness in the first place.
And that was I sort of lumped that in.
With a public safety perspective, but you're right, that was one of the I think it might have been the second highest score and priority from the community.
Yeah, and so we're I think it speaks well of us that we are we are reflecting the compassion and the care that our community has, and that the community's highest felt priority is something that we are actively working on and improving. And you know, there's lots of other stuff that that's true about too, but that was one that.
I get to touch directly. Definitely aligned.
Yes, feels good and it feels good to be to be making progress because we talk about, you know, unsheltered homelessness, but that word represents people absolutely, and that is something that we talk about all the time in that group, is that these are individual lives and people that we want to treat with dignity.
And care and help however we can.
And as a result, because all these organizations and people take that perspective, we are seeing real improvement.
I agree, And like I said, I've been excited to be part of it. And I'm you're not the least informed person there I am. That's officially my title. I think I put that on when I was appointing myself. So yes, yeah, so it has been exciting. But one more time, October twenty second, eleven am to one pm. Watch for registration because registration will be required, but are helping organizations first and then.
It'll be open to the public as well. That's it.
All right, Well, I appreciate you, appreciate your service on that committee. It has been a huge it's been a huge undertaking, I think larger than either you or I anticipated when we started this. But it's been very fulfilling. Yeah, it has been very fulfilling. So all right, Micah seemers, mister engineering manager or engineering director city engineer. You're a lot of things. You've been whipping post here for a weeks. Yeah, definitely.
That so trying to take some heat off Terry. That's it. You got to every so off.
We have to spreading around, right, So Micah, real quick, let's talk. I think the thing that is on most people's mind right now is our pavement preservation project. Yep, and that if people are not familiar with it, it was the one that did result in some dusty roads I did. But we're we're progressing with that right now. So give everybody an update to where we are on that process.
Yeah, we are.
So the chip seal portion is finally complete. Again, that was kind of delayed due to some weather and some contractor issues on that project or portion of the project. Then it took some time to basically because this h a five portion of the project, which is the top coats, which is the black material that we put down, third phase that'll steal it, third places that will steal everything.
So because of the magnitude of the closures that are required for that, it took a lot more coordination than to get that all rescheduled They had a very intensive schedule from the get go, and that pretty well got blown out of the water yep, and so they had to go back back to the drawing board once they had all the areas complete for the chip seal to where they can get that rescheduled and then get the
notifications out the citizens, things of that nature. So we are to that point and they got the first round of that started last Thursday and Friday, and we did some sections there on Madison Boulevard, did a little bit there on Jefferson because again this was supposed to be wrapped up middle of July and then here we are going into school.
Really wanted to get that done before school.
That was a priority to do the areas there in front of Hoover and Baylor over there on Madison and then on Jefferson right there in front of way Side as well, So we attacked those areas first. They got that work done and so what was nice though last week and what we found is with the hot, dry weather, which they could actually get two coats down in one day instead of having multiple closures. The plan for this really is to do two consecutive days of twelve hour
closures from seven am to seven pm. They'll do one coat one day.
Open it back up in the evening.
Then they'll do another coat the next day, and then they should be done with that section. The next step after that would be then to stripe, but if there's any striping necessary. So what we found though is on a couple sections of Madison, a couple sections of Jefferson, they were able to get two coats down in the same day because it dried so quickly, it cured so quickly, which was good. Now, the thing about that is is it doesn't necessarily speed up the schedule though, because they've
already put the notifications out of the next phases. So just a little more convenient exactly get the roadways open up quicker. So that was the nice, wisest part about that. Now, the somewhat depressing part about that is is here we are today and a little bit of rain in the forecast. There was some rain last night. As you were sitting there talking about on the initial intro to this, uh this radio show. Here, there's a TV screen behind you that had the weather going and I was watching that,
probably not paying attention to you. Mike, I apologize, And there's rain forecasting for this afternoon. There's rain forecasting for tomorrow. So what will happen on that is they don't just shift whatever phase they're going to work on to the next day. They will shift it all the way to the end of the project because of the other that they don't want to.
Disrupt any more of their schedule than they have too.
Exactly exactly, so, we think the product looks pretty good. Let's we've gotten this top coat down, sealed things up. It looks a lot better obviously than when it was just travel and an asphalt and the chipseal. So bear with us on that.
We're moving through it.
So the work areas are working, and we're supposed to work today or to wrap up some work on Frank Phillips. Again, they'll push that to the end of the project. They did get the first coat down on Saturday. Same thing over on another section of Jefferson front a Wayside, and then a small section on Madison and a little section on Tuxedo, So those will move to the end of
the project. The work there on Jefferson, it's right there in front of wayside, so they will have to do that on a Saturday because again school he started Ontiday, so they'll work around that, so we won't be closing that during school. But what you will see is if we do get to work tomorrow, if we get to work tomorrow, they'll be working there on another leg at Jeffersons, some work on Madison, a little bit on Bud.
And the people that are the people that are immediately impacted by it will be notified in advanced And for anybody who's curious what the schedule looks like, Citybarblesfield dot org, they're just a story out there.
You can see exactly the.
Story out there, and they've got that, they've got a website for the schedule, all that.
Alright, it's gonna do it for City Matters right here on K one