And good morning, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It is a time now for our community connection right here on K one, the one you trust and with his in studio for city matters community connection. It is Ward two City Council there at Lauren Rosel. How are you doing there, guy? Good? How are you this morning? Well? Every day above grounds a good one. But I'm starting to have second thoughts some days with technology. But Dad, I'm doing okay. Now.
You had a busy night last night. It was a busy night, had a great meeting, got a lot of good things done, accomplishing good things for the city. Oh good. Now, First of all, it can't get any better than this. When he started talking cheesebag, are you talking about something close to my heart and my heart attack? Water Burger coming to town? Water Burgers coming to town. The city council last night. It proves him in sentis through the BDA to help bring and open up a water
Burger here on Highway seventy five year in Bartis. Well, that's a great addition to our for our retail economy. I understand it's gonna be like kind of like it across from your house and you're gonna like hunger pangs all the time. Yeah, and my diet may be vari at risk and don't tell my doctor every time I go stop and get a water burger. But it's going to be right there by my house on seventy five. Also a Neil's Home store. Now, this is a nice almost like a department store at
least has two departments furniture and you're electronics. Yeah, so this is going to be a really nice edition. BDA has worked really hard identifying retail gaps we have here in town. One of the retail gaps we have is this kind of home furnishings, home furniture store opportunities. We're sending a lot of people down south to spend their dollars down south and set us keeping them here locally. So this Neil's Home store fills that gap in our retail and it's
going to keep a lot of dollars here locally. We're gonna help them go into that old Loftist Bob Loftist furniture store in Eastland. That's a nice building. It's a great building, good location, got some nice storefront on Highway seventy five visibility. So that's going to be really good location form. We're excited to help them get opened up here and keep those dollars here in Barswell. That's really cool. Now. The BDA that stands for Barnsville Development Authority,
the Barsville Development Authority. Now there is some kind of misconception out there that they're only there to grab businesses and bringing to Bartlesville, but they're also here to help existing businesses expand if they want to do that. Absolutely so. They have a mission to fill gaps in our retail and bring jobs and industry and new businesses here to Barsville. But they're also here to help all of our local businesses. Any of our local businesses can reach out to them.
If they're looking for helping, the opportunity to expand, to change locations, or anything like that, they should reach out to the BDA and see if there can be some assistance for our homegrown businesses. Speaking them home, water boy, we had what I would call an aggravating rain last week. I could see that, you know, there was rain on the sidewalk, rain on the road, but every time I went outside, I couldn't feel it. But I could see that we had some precipitation. It really didn't
help our problem out. Well, you know, it really didn't help us much. My grandpa would have called it a garden rain. It helps your garden, so nice, slow drizzly rain that soaks up in your garden, gets down deep and helps the things turn green. But unfortunately, because we've been so dry, we haven't put that rain, didn't put a lot of water back into our lakes. And so we're still looking at about fifty six to fifty seven percent of our water supply stage right now. So we're still
in phase three with our water conservation efforts here in town. I'm looking at Wednesday night into Thursday and the Thursday night and on the weather and it looks like we have a chance of showers and thunderstorms, but it doesn't look like anything too heavy. What do you think we need two or three days of that torrential stuff. Yeah, we need a couple of days of torrential day
for the lake. Right Yeah, it's Sedan, Kansas is the primary target for our rain if we can just get a good rain storm for a couple of days right over Sada and Kansas City manager was talking last night that he looked at kind in the driest places in Kansas list of the driest places in Kansas, and Sadan, Kansas was on the top of the list. So we need a good, good solid silken rain up there in Sadan, Kansas. There we go, Here we go. Okay, this kind of got
my attention. Whenever I see FCC, I keep thinking, you know, like the radio cops are going to come and give me a fine because because there was a time where I probably should have gotten wood when I was much younger. But this is first Christian Church, First Christian Church. Yeah, so last night to city Council, I want to thank the people that worked on the committee looked at the proposals for use the RFPs that were put in
for the First Christian Church. We had six RFPs. The committee looked him over and suggested one of those proposals to the city council. It's for Buffalo Rome Company that's doing some studio space. They're doing some film school and education, and they're doing some editing bays. They've got a really good business plan. This industry is growing in Oklahoma. The film industry is taken off. There's a lot of state incentives that can be put towards this kind of project.
It's definitely something the City Council would like to see happen here in Barnsville to take advantage and to bring those dollars to Barnettsville. It's going to be all a question of how do we fund that? And I know in the past there's been some proposals that we might do a two million dollar general obligation
bond to help that happen. Last night I talked to the City Council and kind of my views are that this business is a great business, a great industry, and we'd love to bring it to Barsville, and we want to capitalize on this. But we already have economic development engines, just like we were talking about with the Barswelle Development Authority and the Barswell Redevelopment Trust Authority.
Those are economic development engines. Those we're already putting tax dollars into those engines and those funds to help businesses here in town, help bring businesses into town. So I would really like to see um, and we're going to try to get everybody at the table and start talking about how we can use those economic development funds instead of going hat in hand to the taxpayer and saying, okay, take on another additional tax burden for economic development when we already are
funding it with tax dollars. If I'm going to go to the citizens and say I want you to take on some general obligation bonds, I'm going to ask you to help me repair a lot of streets. So fully fund our police department, fully fund our fire department, get our emergency services funded, do streets and trash and things like that. That's our core infrastructure, and
that's where I feel we should be concentrating our bond capacity. And that's what I'm going to work for in bonds instead of doing economic development through bonds. Okay, So, if we get a movie studio here in town, plans on changing the name to like Bardie Wood or Hollyville. What was the name they were talking about last night, Like a Hollywood, Oklahoma Hollywood or something I like that. Yeah, so ire, this is a really unique opportunity.
There's only about five sound stages that are usable for big commercial movie productions in the state of Oklahoma, only one in this area right now, in the northeastern Oklahoma area and Owasso, and it's not Tulsa. But if we build this one in the way they plan to build it. We will have a larger sound stage, a larger studio facility, and plus we get the great benefit of doing a film school along with it, so there's learning opportunities
for people to get skills into the film industry. There's a lot of state tax dollars out there that can be put with funds, so there's tax credits and from the Cherokees that can also be put there. So this is a really great opportunity for Barswoll. We want to do this, but we want to do it in the right way. Got it. I understand Bartlesville next, it's that that's the strategic plan. And you know when when the fellow first came into town and started making the proposal for you know, seeing what
we maybe need to work on them, what have you. I'm telling the younger fellows, the younger reporters, they said, this is kind of a big deal. Oh this is huge, and they're like going, I don't get it. Well, you have to know where you're going in order to go someplace. Absolutely, GPS for year down. It's absolutely it's a roadmap for our town. I like to call it a roadmap for our town. The city staff a couple of years ago, a city manager came to us
and said, we want to create a strategic plan. We started having conversations with community members, businesses, and others in our town to talk about what the strategic plan for our town is, what's the strategic vision, and as we move forward into that here in the last couple of months, the city staff has given us some specific projects that they want to work on, specific items that fit into that strategic plan, and they've laid them all out for
the city council, and the city council approved that strategic plan and those projects inside that strategic plan. Last night, they came to us and they gave us those and they are going to start putting them the each of the objectives in our packet every week and how far along we are, what protin EAGs complete, those are, where they stand, and how they're moving along. So we'll be reviewing those every month about how we're moving along with our strategic
plan. And I love that because it lets our city and our people know that we're doing great things. We're moving forward a plan and we're going along that roadmap. So when we look at projects that come at us and are being considered, we can see how those projects fit into our strategic plan and we go down that path of kind of coordinated growth. I see where that's coming from. And it's all about keeping being orderly in your growth because if
you have explosion, yeah, it gets messy. I've seen towns do that. Oh absolutely, I think we need to be very strategic and how we build and grow Bartlesville. Sidewalk ordinance moratorium. What's this all about. Well, so about a year and a half to two years ago, the city Council passed to some sidewalk ordinances dealing with when people have to put in sidewalks, when the when the city has to lay down sidewalks, things like this.
It's caused the city to kind of have some disjointed sidewalks, some sidewalks to know where out there. Yes, we've all seen them. And it's also maybe been a barrier for some people to be able to do anything with their properties because the sidewalks maybank could cost prohibitive to to do what they want with their properties, to remodel, to redo the faces of their properties.
So the city that our new city Development Director, Larry Curtis came to us last night and said, Hey, I want to ask you just to pause and to take a moratorium on that sidewalk ordinance for six months so that we can take a look at our whole, our whole sidewalk ordinances and where we have them in all of our requirements, and redefine them, redevelop them and
make them work for Bartlesville and make them better. So we're going to take a pause on sidewalk ordinances unless there's a couple of cases, like if the neighborhood's less than twenty years old, been plotted within the last twenty years, or if it's within one hundred feet of another sidewalk that it can connect to. Things like that. There are some exceptions, but for the most part, we're gonna pause and do a moratorium on our sidewalk ordinance. Very good.
We're gonna take a quick pause right here, and when we come back, we're going to talk about some openings on boards and commissions and a little something special. You got cooking right so right after these words from Arnold Bore and you can't funeral home right here on K one, the one you trust.
The first conversation I have with someone's loved one, I don't care if it's three o'clock in the afternoon or three o'clock in the morning, that first conversation is mister X, this is Tim how with Arnold Moore and you can't funeral home. First of all, sir, let me say I'm very sorry
we're having to have this conversation right now. And to the nth degree, those people always appreciate you taking a moment to just pause and say I'm aware that someone you care about very much has just ft and I'm sorry that we have to do this, but we have to do this. And if it's three o'clock in the morning, I try to be brief but concise and say do you have any questions or anything I can do for you right now before we meet at our arrangement conference. And sometimes I'll say, you know,
can you call my priest? Can you call my pastor? And I don't mind doing that. It'll be all right. We'll walk through this together, Arnold Moore and knee Camp Funeral Home seven ten Dewey Martels of It. We will walk through this together and welcome back to city matters. We have Lauren Roselt from more than Too in with this, and I understand if people want a piece of the action. They want to they want to be a moving part of this thing we call a city government. We do have boards and
commission openings. Absolutely, our government in our city doesn't function without the volunteers and the people participating in that process. And they can really get involved in our city and helping our city in our city government if they volunteer for some of our boards and commissions. Right now, we've got a opening on our Barswelle Bartlesville Area History Museum Trust Authority. That's a really long name, but
that's a really cool place to our Barswell Area History Museum. We've got a spot open on the Convention and Visitors Bureau Board, the Visit Bartlesville Board. I used to be on that board. It's an exciting and a cool place and to help our city, our visiting dollars really help generate revenue here for us in sales tax and other places. So that's a really cool one that you can get involved in. We've got openings on the Park board, and
we've got two openings on our Adjustment Board of Adjustments. If people want to get involved, there's a application that can fill out online in the City of Barsville's website or they can go up and see a lane lane bangs up there and get an application. Fill out an application, and we will consider and we'll get you involved in one of these boards or commissions. That sounds like a winner town hall. That would be interesting, because every time somebody does
a town hall, you're you're putting yourself out there. Oh. Absolutely, and we should. So during my campaign when I was running for city council, I committed to trying to hold town halls with my ward at least twice a year. And I feel like I'm at the point to where I've got
my feet grounded in city council and doing some good things. And I know people have disagreed with some things that have happened on the city council and they need a voice, and they need an avenue to talk to their representative, even their councilmen. So I'm going to follow through on my commitment and I'm going to hold a town hall on May eleventh at six thirty pm at the
Barsville Public Library in their meeting room. So May eleventh, at six thirty Barswelle Public Library, come out, talk to me, let's talk about what's going on. There's some really great things going on in the city. We're going to start looking at budgets. We're going to start looking at what projects do we put in and ask for general obligation bonds from the city for So we need citizen input. We need to talk about that. We need to
make sure we're staying on our strategic plan. I need to make sure I'm hearing the concerns of the people in my ward, taking them to the council and moving them forward with the city government. And I committed to this, so I'm going to go ahead and follow through with it. I think it's our representatives need to be talking on a regular basis with the people they represent. It's just gonna be more of a listening tour than a speaking engagement or
what it's It's gonna be a little given take here. So I'm gonna try to fill in and give some information to the people of my ward about what's
going on. Tell them what my priorities will be as we go into the budgeting cycle and the bond issues, things like streets and infrastructure projects are going to be I'm going to push really hard to get a lot of funding into streets, to get some of our streets back in shape because we did our PCI Pavement Condition Index, and that's and that showed us that we're a little
behind on repairing and maintaining and replacing streets out there. I don't think anybody in town is going to argue with me on that, but I really do want to push for a lot of projects in the bonds for our streets.
There's a couple of other things. So I want to tell you what I want to do, But more than that, I'm going to take a lot of opportunity to listen to the people of the city, people in my ward, and say, what are your concerns, what do you want to see happening, What do you feel like we're doing good, what do you feel like we're doing wrong? And how can we do it better? All right, and once again, it's May eleventh, May eleventh at six thirty pm
at the Bartlesville Public Library meeting Room. Got it. Hey, thanks for being with us today. Oh thanks for letting me come out and talk. It's always enjoyable. I love letting you know what's going on in the city. I love the city. We're doing some great things and it's really good to talk about. Okay, and if you know somebody that I doing about the weather. Let's let's let's try to see we can't get some kind of a big old thunder storm up there in Sudan and Camp. Absolutely please,
all right, thank you, Lauren, appreciate it. You've been listening to City Matters on kay