Actually had two meetings.
So yesterday had the Emergency Management Council meeting, which is a joint meeting between Bartoso City Council and the Washington County Commissioner, and you got to heard about the budget because that is a joint project between the two entities.
Right right.
Yeah, we split and I learned a lot last night. I never been through one of those before, but we split a lot of those costs fifty to fifty and as a result, you know, our emergency folks and their emergency folks are able to work together. If there's a fire or an accident or something out of the county, if they need our help, we can help, and vice versa. If we need their help, they can come in. You know,
we had the tornado last year. The Washington County emergency management folks, they came in and helped with a lot of that disaster relief and clean up. And you know, anytime there's something like that that happens, we get alerts from them. So it was very interesting. Everything seems to be taken right along. Yeah, nothing was like shocking, which is what you want from emergency management, which is like things are moving correctly, and it all.
Was Yeah, it was a good presentation carry Cox and his staff, Melissa and John and the new guy. I forget the new guy's name anyway, but they do a
great job here in our community. Now, at last night's City council meeting, I mean, you had some standard business items and we'll talk about here in just a bit, but you had one of those items that you know, thankfully doesn't come before the council very often because they are difficult decisions, and that was specifically dealing with a property that has had some issues on Waverley on the east side of town. And you know, Aaron, I've known
you for years and I know your heart. I know a couple of other city council members, but not as good as I know you. So the decision last night was a tough one to go in and basically because of the circumstances of the home, there was some code enforcement issues and in order to demolish the structure was made, but there was there was some progress that was made on this particular property.
Is so we want to kind of give and I.
Say, these are tough decisions, but it was done with compassion and understanding and with a solution which is really important. So, Aaron, GoAhead, talk a little bit about what we heard last night and how the council came to this tough decision.
Yeah, I would say, so these abatement hearings, where are when code enforcement has said this property is is so egregious the neighbor it's hurting the neighborhood and the neighbors so much that it needs to be torn down. We've
had three of these in a row. They are by far the hardest things that I've had to deal with as a city councilor, because every situation is different, and at the heart of it is an individual or a family and their property that they care about, they've invested in, but that has also become a real problem for one
reason or another, and those situations the same. So, you know, part of seeing every person with individual dignity is recognizing that these are really hard situations because we care about the people involved and it's not just me. I've been extremely impressed by the way that all of our city councilors have leaned into these situations and treated them as individual. It's not there's no rubber stamping going on, and they are difficult, and so last night was particularly difficult because
it involved a gentleman and some adopted sons. So there's like a family history that goes there. And I don't want to air out all these You can watch the live stream from last night if you really want to know the details. I don't want to get into those. But the point is there had been many and a long history of damage to the property and of disruption to the neighborhood, and so the abatement order, hey, demolish
this house. And one of the questions I asked was what happens to you and your and your boys if we do that? And the answer was whow, I'll be homeless. And yet balancing the needs of the individual like there are still I mean, one of the things we talked a lot about is uh I talked a lot about and publicly is you for a society to function, you cannot externalize the negative consequences of your own choices unto the people around you. That's so there's a responsibility aspect
to it. And there had been real harm to the neighborhood. But it turns out there was some situations going on with especially the oldest son who is now an adult and incarcerated and as he was telling these uh, he was telling us what was going on. Uh, you know, Counseman Dorsey, and Trevor leaned over and said, like, I know this is true. I knew this boy.
Yeah, that was that was an interesting part.
Of Yeah, And so I told him. He kind of whispered with to me and said, you need to we need to know that you need to tell And so he said, like this is true because sometimes also you don't know someone's telling you the truth.
True.
Everybody has a story, but this gentleman was he was telling us the truth. And he had been trying to do a good thing for his family and had been a very hard situation. Of course, these boys had gone through a lot of trauma and uh and and so at that point, I think every body realized, you know, this is a very unique situation. We want to be compassionate here, but also we have to be compassionate for the neighbors. And it does nobody any good to have
a vacant lot. Also, well, this gentleman had been very proactive in this situation. He said, if nothing else, if there's no way for me to stay in this property, he said, I've talked to my Lenning company, and we could do a deed in lou which basically means I can give him the title and I don't have to get foreclosed on right. And then when that happens and the bank comes in, they bring the property up to code, they fix it, and then they will sell it try
to recoup their investment. And that and is really credit to that gentleman who who brought this solution to us. But this gave us a way to help him and his family because it doesn't destroy his credit, which means they can find a place to rent with without something
bad in their history. We weren't worried about like, well, it's just exporting the you know, these issues somewhere else because because a lot of the problem is a lot of the problem is gone gone, and and then you have and then the neighborhood, the neighbors will also be will benefit from this. And then you know, we haven't just destroyed a house. We also have an affordable housing crisis exactly. So so really, like I said last night, I laid it out and said, I think there's three
things that we care about here. Number one is the person in this family. We care about them. Number two is the neighbors. These are other individuals that we care about, and number three is a structure. Ironically, the structure is the only one that we have authority to do anything about. But there was a path forward, and so that's what
we did. Is this gentleman will be doing the deed and lou but there's a there is a time period for them to still be in the house until they while they find a place to move and the bank can take it over, fix it up, and it will benefit the whole neighborhood. And I think we've had three of these in a row and all three have now are in the process of resolving themselves in a positive way. I know there will be a day when we when the structure has to be knocked down. That is inevitable.
But I am so impressed by our city councilors, and I want to give a special shout out to Councilman East. There's been a synergy I think between Larry and I at times in these that we neither of us that he had any idea this was gonna be a big part of what we had to do, and I hope
it isn't. I hope this is just a weird run of them, but Larry is very good at diving into the technicalities of the issue and then and then we have really been able to His compassion comes through as that I'm trying to sure absolutely and I really it's true for all five of us, I think, But in those questions, I think he and I have had a synergy that I didn't expect as I've gotten to know Him'm not surprised, but I think he deserves a real
kudos because we've been able to navigate these more effectively because of the way that he dives into the technicalities and still sees the person behind.
Them absolutely well.
What I witnessed last night was was a objective, objectively focused conversation about this is where we are. But you could also tell that those objective questions were done so out of an act of compassion. And I think I think that's really important for our community to know, is that these are very tough decisions. Nobody wants to be in this position, specifically an elected official who's telling a
person I'm gonna have to tear down your structure. But these decisions are very difficult, but they're done so in a way that is beneficial to the community as a whole and hopefully for the situation to be remedied as well, while keeping in mind there's a human impact here too. Yeah, that was really important. Now, a couple of other things I've covered it this morning. The Sunset Bridge project, a
little change to that. You know, it was originally kind of like grouped together where it would be a road structure for the Sunset Bridge over Butler Creek, and then an alternative to that was to also add in a pedestrian bridge on the side.
Unfortunately, the pedestrian bridge as of right now is not able.
To move forward because of costs, right, Yeah, Yeah, And I hope that's not the last word on that.
Yeah, I don't think it will be.
I am I'm on Pathfinder every single day when the weather is, when the weather allows it, and I think Pathfinders are real of our community. And one of my long term visions or hopes is that is that Pathfinder will be connected safely and easily to every neighborhood in Bartlesville. And that's a very as a long term vision because a lot of costs associated a lot of a lot of projects, but this was one of those places where Pathfinder was going to be able to connect to Oak
Park and that's a win for Ward four. So I hate that this has been removed because of the cost of the funding. And really it's just waiting on a grant. There are some government technicalities here that they were explaining last night that I got to tell you I'm frustrated by, and I'm also not done asking about I cannot I just cannot imagine that there's not a way that we can't figure out to get around this. I'm may be wrong, right,
but what I'm saying is I'm still on this. I know that I know that our engineering department wanted to see it. All of our city staff want, like we all want this to happen. But the real frustrating thing is our staff is really good about balancing the objectives and the goals we have with the limited resources of funding, and they had figured out a way to do this
as a cost effectively as possible. And because of a hang up at the grant level, we are now waiting and that that project may not happen, or if it does, it'll be more expensive because it's inefficient.
Right because it has to be bid separately. As city attorney just kine.
Yeah, and because and I don't understand, I really don't understand how I know why all the bid process has to happen. That's that is transparency and lack of anti corruption like, all of that is wise. But to have zero flexibility when you're talking about a sixteen thousand dollars gap and it may end up costing the city significantly more than that, to pause, that's just that is the that is a level of foolishness that can only happen
to the government. Government, And like the entrepreneur part of my brain does not accept that as fact. Yet I understand that the realities may you know, physics may hit me in the face on this one, but I'm not done pushing.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's it is as you you know, you are, what eight months into the job here, and you learn something new and know that unfortunately government sometimes stands in the way of its own progress.
And it's just and I think or usually that's that's worthwhile because when there's when there are those inefficiencies, there almost always because somewhere in the history of our country there was corruption because those checks and balances didn't happen, right, So I support them being there I think.
I think transparency and accountability are necessary. They are good, and that's part of what I part of the reason I ran for city council, not because there was corruption, because I wanted to be able to be transparent, communicative and let people know what's going on proactively. So I don't have a problem with the things that sometimes gunk up the works, but sometimes the rigidity of law. Right,
anything that is legalistic can can become its own worst enemy. Right, end up layering so many things onto each other that all of a sudden it is now counterproductive. And so that's the balance of rules in general. When you're writing policies, how do we make sure that we are doing what is right for the people, but also giving enough flexibility to the process that we can still do what's right for the people.
Sure, yeah, it's it is. It's an interty thing. Now.
Another big thing out of last night was the box hangar that's going to be out at the airport. We've we've talked about that quite a bit. You guys went ahead and moved forward with that, and it's important for I think the community to also understand that these are not City of Bartellsville funds.
They're not coming from the city budget.
These these are things, Uh the Oklahoma Department of Aviation and Aeronautics is paying.
Uh yeah, that's forty percent of it. Uh.
And then the Barbolesville Development Authority through their real estate fund, which is not a tax on it. So this is all money that is not coming out of the taxpayers dot right hand.
So uh, so that's going to be built.
And then because of it being on city property out at the airport, that is city property.
Now the city actually has to own the building.
Yeah, so we're gonna end up owning a structure that we're not gonna have to pay for. The BDA is paying for it. We are leasing the property to them for a dollar for several decades, which will allow them to you know, basically gather that the rent from that hangar so then they can then reinvest in other economic development in Barblesville. The b d A is exceptionally well run. I mean I get to sit down with those guys regularly, and just I just learned the math they use. There's
a reason they have been so successful. They are out performing other entities like them all in our all around our region. I think we're running out of time there. We're okay because I want to make sure we get to a few things that that were covered in the in the staff report last night that I know you weren't sitting in there for, but I know they're really
important to our community absolutely. So, like if we can put a ribbon on the on the on the new hangar, it's going to be great for we have a growing aviation repair industry. I'm looking for some day. I hope that someone will open up, like, uh, a quad copter taxis you know, service from here to you know, from here to the Tulsa Airport or something so that so that consumers and you know, really take advantage of it.
Yeah, but it is great for our economy.
It's not costing the taxplayer.
Anything, not at all, not at all.
Now during the city manager reports last week, we uh have a couple of things we'll touch on here and.
I can get rid of some of this stuff. So we're good.
But uh so what we're what we're the things again was the boil water issue where everybody was saying, oh my gosh, there's eat.
Coli in our water, eat coli in our water, and scary. Come to find out it was something a little bit different.
R right, So here's the good news. So that so our stat did any kind of an action after action report. Uh, you know, they tried to figure out where was there an issue. Right, So we had two things going on. Coliforms and any cola coliforms are you know, they're organic matter that normal that regularly grows in pipes where there's water. Uh, they're not dangerous and they you know, we put chlorine in the water to kill them. You flush those pipes,
that goes away, and then you're good. That happens, not a lot, but a couple of times a year. We find it somewhere in the system, You hit it with chlorine, it dies, you flush it. Everybody's good to go. Ecla is different. E Coli is dangerous. It's a fecal matter bacteria that should never be in our pipes. And in Terry Lawrence is twenty five years here, it had never
been in our pipes. It freaked everybody out right and rightly so and then and then I'm not going to go through the whole process of how it all happened. I was in updates as I understood it along through. Let me tell you the coli thing as we currently understand it, as best we can tell, we actually never had a coli in our water system. Like I want people to hear this, clip this and repost it. We
never had a coli in our drinking water system. There was a stand pipe, which is essentially the place where we test the water. That is, water can flow into it, but it cannot backflow out of it, and that pipe where this testing site is, it was we don't have a lot of standpipes that function like this, okay, And essentially you could put water in it, but then it
wasn't all getting vacuumed out. So you had a spot between the backflow valve to our water supply where it was going to the houses and where the water came out to be tested that was not getting fully flushed. That when they pulled it out, they cut it, you know, they removed it, they sealed it off, and they're going to put a new standpipe in. But that right there, that what was described last night as like a black goo. Yeah, gross, It's possible an animal got in there and died, as
possible that sludge built up over time. But the point is that grossness was totally cut off from our actual water supply that came out of it was great people who were going, well, I'm afraid what my you know, what if my pet got this or was I exposed or whatever? You were not There was no ecoli in our water supply. There was a coli. It's like having it in your hose, right, your hose can't feed back into the system. This is essentially that, and that's where
the city was testing from. That's what pop positive. That has now been removed.
And you know that.
Great news body, But again, no e coli was ever in our water. Yes, good point. Now, another thing that people are really fired up about right now, Counselor Aaron Kirkpatrick, is the state Well, it's the state of the.
Road rehabilitation preservation projects.
Yes, basically for a lot of customers or for a lot of folks here, it looks like gravel on the road and the city is just ruining everything.
I mean, what's going on with this this gravel folks.
Yeah, So, and there's been lots of updates about this. Let me tell you where we're at right now. So this the road project. We did a whole bunch of road projects at once, and the goal the way this was supposed to work, is within four to six weeks, you'd start ripping up a road. Here the process has to sit for a couple of weeks. So they were going to be moving through the community ripping up roads and by the time they got to the last one,
they'd circle back around start laying the new topping. And it was going to be a very efficient process, which again saves us money. Yeah, two things happened. Number One, it's very moisture sensitive and we got, thank god, a ton of rain this spring and summer exactly. That delayed everything in a way that I don't think city staff fully anticipated, fully understood. We've learned from that, but there was nothing It's just it's moisture sensitive. So that delayed things.
And we had a subcontractor that was doing the process wrong. So kudos to Micah Seimer's and the rest of our engineering and our guys over there, because they went out and inspected the work that was being done by the subcontract and said, this doesn't look right. So the general contractor fired that subcontractor and then had to hire someone else to do the job. Didn't cost us any more money, but in doing all of that, that created another delay, so a four to six week process and now been
going off for like three months. You know, as they were talking about this last night, I was like, yeah, like, when we leave this meeting, we're all going to hit the old dusty trails the way if we haven't done since eighteen hundreds. It's not cool. Nobody is happy with this, and the biggest thing people are frustrated by is the gravel that is on the road exactly. That will all be swept up and removed before the final layer is
put on. Ideally that would have happened twice. Like you'd be great if all that had been removed now and then done a second time before the you know, before the topping was put on, because it was supposed to happen quickly. They didn't bid to do that because it should have been a rapid process. Yeah, what has left us with is what we're all frustrated by.
Tully.
Yeah, we feel it too.
I don't know if anybody who is happy with what's going on, but it is an important part.
We are making progress. Over the next few weeks.
This will be wrapping up absolutely absolutely well.
A council member Aaron Kirkpatrick Ward four representative. Thank you so much for spending some time with us.
Thank you, Nack all right, you're welcome.