Good morning, good morning, good morning.
Welcome, welcome, welcome.
It is time now for our community connection right here on K one, the one you trust. We have a mayor deal Copeland in here with us today.
How you doing your honner.
I'm good. It's a beautiful day, Tom.
It always is a beautiful day in the city of Bartlesville.
That's true.
Yeah, boy, tell you what, We've got a lot going on.
You had a you got the recent opening of the new health and wellness facility. It's right across the streets there. While they're cutting the ribbon the other day and I was just waving it folks, and they're kind of like, who is that? That's at Yahoo at the radio. But anyway, that was a pretty good, pretty good time. It's an interesting thing. You drive by and it's this small building, but you go inside there's there's two I guess they call them exam rooms, a little office space, and it's
with telemedicine. They say it's all that they need to provide services to people. They're open seven days a week. Interesting. Glad to have them in town. We said we could use a little rain. We had like a little whisper of a rain.
Drive was that a whisper. It barely got the roadway.
I don't think it counted as a sprinkle.
I don't know it didn't.
It's kind of you.
No, we didn't need ras. Yeah, how bad are we? Not as bad as some people would imagine. When the lakes are full, they hold an amazing amount of water. But obviously we haven't had any rain. It's been I see this will ring of deal that it's the worst drought in one hundred years, something like that I read this morning. So we do need rain, and we need the rain to be north of here. If it'd be rained here at my yard, would appreciate it, but really need the rain just north of us. The lakes are down.
I think I got this information yesterday. Our overall is at eighty one point six percent. So we're down, you know whatever that is eighteen point four percent, but we want to be thinking about it. The good news is it is now almost November, so water use will go down, watering yards and gardens and all of those things will begin to diminish. So that's a good thing. But based on our ordinance, if levels drop below eighty percent, we will begin an education thing to make people aware of it.
Of course we try to do that anyway, but I think after that, once it drops to seventy five percent, we do go to a rationing setup, but it's for watering yards on odd and even days in the wintertime. I don't anticipate that being a big issue. Usage has been up a bit. It was better than six million gallons per day during the winter. We're usually four four point two four point five, So I do anticipate that
going down, but something to be aware of that. We need to always be aware of our water usage anytime of the year, whether we have a drought or not, but especially now.
Yeah, well, it looks like the golf course is going to be closing some much needed repairents golf deal I should.
Say overdue overdue, depending on how you talk to.
The experts tell you that golf courses, greens and fairways and trees and all these things have a life like everything, and this one is considerably beyond its expected life. Some of those greens go back to the sixties, and yet they rated as one of the top municipal courses in the nation right there. Yeah, I've always said it was one of the best munist courses in the state. And they agreed. But yeah, we're going to close November the first,
and again during the wintertime when there's less play. I know there's people that go out all year, but going to replace all of the greens, the practice greens, the chipping green, so all of that's due to be replaced. And it's really and I'm not an expert, tom, but it's what's below the green, the drainage and all the pieces that make that green work and be healthy, so all of that will be replaced. They're also we've looked
at what trees need to be thinned out. Love trees, but at some point they create so much shade that the grass can grow. So lots of changes coming and the course will be closed we think probably through about the first of May. Again, it depends on how quickly all the new greens grow in and become stable and ready for play.
The big yard and debris pickup coming up here.
So that's a big deal as people look, and of course as the trees. Timing that is always tough. People say why did they do it here? Why didn't they do it there? If you do it too early, believes, haven't let go. If you do it too late, people think, well, I've got all this stuff stacked up for weeks at a time waiting.
For the pickup, so we're going to have that.
And here it is December the ninth through the thirteenth, on your normal day. So if you're a Monday or a Tuesday, or a Thursday or Friday, they'll pick up that day. You would not put them in or on your trash carts. You'd put them near because most of the time a different truck will pick them up. And always tell people if they don't pick them up with your cart, don't panic because another truck will be by.
But you can put as much yard debris bags. They don't have to be any certain color, just as long as it's just yard debris. You can put limbs and sticks and twigs and bundles not over four feet long that are bundled up and tied into not more than fifty pounds, because somebody has to pick those things up put them in the truck. But they will pick all of that up. I remember, God, it's been several years ago. We had one house in town I think had one
hundred and eighty five bags. It was a lot with lots and lots of trees obviously, but they'll pick all that up, get rid of it for you, and start off the winter on a good foot.
Very good, very good. Cold weather is a coming. It's just not going to be today because.
We're not gonna be a day or tomorrow. I'm looking at your weather map right, but the day will come.
In fact, we've.
Already had two days freezing. We got down in the twenties.
In the morning. Right back up.
But you do need to begin to think every year it kind of sneaks up on us. Have I unhooked the hoses outside? Have I winterized the outdoor faucets, made sure they're covered or drained or whatever they need to be at your house? But more particularly, and I think far chief chief call would tell you, are your smoke alarms working?
Do you have good batteries? Test them?
They got the little button. You can push the little button and it'll tell you that it's working. Get those things working. Think about maybe even a carbon monoxide detector. Things that I saw in my years in the appliance business. Don't use your cook stove to.
Heat the house.
It's just not made for that. It not only is not safe in some cases, but it's very hard on the cook stove. With Thanksgiving coming up, you don't want that. So if you're running portable or space heaters, whatever you want to call them, plug them directly into the wall. Don't plug them into extension cords. Certainly, don't plug them into a six strip outlet. That's where things happen that are not nice. Unfortunately, our incidents of house fires picks up when we have that cold weather.
Get your furnace checked, have someone check it.
Vacuum the dust and the stuff that's accumulated, make sure the burners are working, the vent doesn't have a bird's nest or something over it. That everything is ready to go, so that when you get that first cold snap, you're good to go and keep your house nice and warm.
Already very good Sooner Park. We've got a lot of work going on down there. Been waiting on that for a while. Everything.
It's really interesting because we pass a bond, don't have the voters pass a bond issue, for instance, in twenty twenty and here we are in twenty four. But you bond issues are for three or five years. Normally you don't get all the money the first year. You couldn't do all the work in one year anyway, So we're now working from a twenty twenty bond issue to improve the road. Now that's what we call the Ring Road.
It will no longer be a ring road because the northeast portion of that will not be available for traffic. It'll be for foot traffic, bicycles, more of a path. But from the swimming pool, the house or building there on the east southem, I'll get my directions right all the way around to the tower, the play equipment, all of that will be repaved.
They're working on that now.
Parking lots will be improved and enlarged, but it's going to be inconvenient for a while. Brent Bell is doing that. He does good work. You'll remember he did Hillcrest Drive. So I expect that'll be done as quickly as possible. But the weather always always ask city engineers, say mister Seemers, when is this going to be done? And he always tells me the same thing. Well, we think about this day, depending on the weather, give or take sixty days. Hopefully
that will be done sooner than later. At Sooner Park and that roadway and all the parking spaces and all will be improved.
I understand it's going to go in two directions, which coming home from Freedom Pest is going to.
Be a lot easier. Yeah.
In the past it was always counterclockwise. Oh yeah, and you can only if you were here and wanted to get there, you had to go all the way around. Now because that northeast section of the loop is going to be taken out of play, it will be two way, so you can go from here to there and it'll work nicely. Okay, we've got the Tuxedo Bridge repairs and I guess we don't have a date set yet, but.
No, my golly, we know it's coming.
We're closer than We're closer than we were. I know everybody is frustrated. I am frustrated. Very briefly, we had two issues. One was an environmental issue that we had to wait and learn about muzzles and bats.
That took some time. And then we had.
The situation with a bid that came over one hundred percent over bid and we had to back up and come at that again kind of reduce the scope. But we did approve that the bid has been awarded the contractor. They're now working through the stuff you don't see, but there's a lot of work getting all of the paperwork, getting ready to mobilize the equipment to be on site. They think that that will happen again, depending on weather, but they think that that will happen probably in mid
to late December. One of the reasons they have to is we want them to number one, but also they have to get that deck removed by March because of again all the EPA things about bats nesting and muzzles and stuff. I don't claim to understand completely. So it is coming, just not today, but it's a lot closer than it was. Good Halloween.
Every time I have you in here about this time of year, you always set the record stream on Halloween.
Halloween is coming now. Everybody has ideas about when that should be. This year, October thirty first falls I think on a Thursday. That the City of Bartlesville does not decide when Halloween should occur. So people call and say, well, when has the city set The city does not set Halloween. If you want to have it traditionally on October the thirty first, that's fine. If you want to have it a different date because it's not the weekend, that's your
decision to make. What we do remind people, and Tom, I gave you it's maybe too much, but there's a sheet here that has kind of a neat little what is that called. It's not an acrostic anyway. Each letter so H in Halloween stands for hold of flashlight, wear reflective clothing. If you're out at night, sometimes people are in a hurry to get somewhere and they might not see little people wandering about, and the little people are excited and they might not pay attention to the vehicle.
So hold a flashlight. Always try.
If you're going to wear costumes, fine or makeup, but check that. Make sure there's not any reactions to that standard things look both ways crossing the street. Don't wear I know it's kind of cool looking, but the decorative contact lenses you see sometimes with the weird stuff. Only walk on sidewalks. Try to stay as we always teach people on the side. You walk facing the traffic. If you have to be near the street, make sure your
mask fit. You need to be able to see. You've got something over your head and you can't see, that's a problem. Only eat factory wrapped treats. Tom and I was growing up, we had nice people in our neighborhood.
I was a kid.
This was a long time ago, but you had candied apples and all this stuff and nobody's anything about it. In today's world, parents, you have to be aware. Look at that stuff before your kids dig in, or before you dig into. It might be the case too. Don't go into homes unless you're with an adult that you trust, a parent or a guardian. Only go to well lit houses. Don't stop at dark houses, of course, never except rides from strangers. The biggest thing this one really kind of
surprised me. The majority of fires related to this and Fire Marshall Brady Watson shared that from eighteen to twenty two and that four years, there were an average of eight hundred and thirty five home structure fires and they caused three deaths fourteen million dollars in damage. Half of these, almost forty seven percent, occurred because the decorations were too close to a heat source such as a candle or something along that heat lamp, and approximately a third of
them were started by candles. So be safety conscience. Have a good time, have a lot of fun. It's a great time, but it can be a really bad time if something happened. So those are the things that Halloween. The letters they've kind of used to help people remember that.
Hey, I understand we have an election coming up here, Mayor.
I've heard that too. What do you tell me about that?
It it's been kind of going around. Election is two weeks from today. Early voting will start on Wednesday the thirtieth. Early voting Wednesday through Saturday is only at the Election Board, which is downtown. It's actually in City Hall. They call it Sweet four. That's code for the fourth floor. So if you go in the front door of City Hall, get on the elevator, go up to the fourth floor. I've done that when I had to be out of
town on election day. It's a really good system. They'll get you through there quickly and it works really well. So if you can't be voting on Tuesday the fifth, you can vote Wednesday through Saturday the week before. Those polls are open for early voting Wednesday through Friday eight to six and then on Saturday from eight to two, so that's a possibility. Of course, regular polling on Tuesday the fifth will be from seven in the morning till seven in the evening. I know y'all will be heavily
involved with reporting on that. Oh boy, so, but my deal is, yes, I am running as all the city council are trying to talk to people. If you have a question, call, People are surprised. I don't get that many calls. If you have any time, doesn't that to be during election, call your representative, call the city because you'll tend to get the answers you want much quicker.
I had someone reach out Saturday, I think about a question they had on It was a fairly minor thing but at the city and it was taken care of by nine point thirty Monday morning, So you know, you just have to let us know. But the big deal on any election, for anything is vote. If you don't vote, then you didn't get a say. So I encourage me. It's very in Bartlesville, very quick, very easy. You'll see friends, you can visit for a few minutes and follow up.
It's a privilege to vote. It's also a responsibility and we need to take it seriously. So I encourage people to vote. Tell your friends to vote, tell your neighbors to vote. Take a neighbor and go vote together. Hey, Gil, Hey, how's that app working? That city app. Oh, that's the coolest thing. I'm glad you mentioned that. I mean, I really tell people to get City Beat, the email that comes out usually on Tuesday or whenever there's a need.
But the new app my Bartlesville. You download that thing. I've got it on my phone and it has scheduling, has calendar. But the big deal is it has news.
Yeah, like if you're out of Harvard, you wonder why your water pressure is down?
Yeah, So they'll post current news. But then there's an archive that you can go back. Get that to him and look at last week or the week before.
He said, I know, I saw that. I wonder what it was.
And for me it's usually it was last week, and I found out it was three or four weeks ago. But it's just it is the coolest deal. It loads on your phone. It's just like you tap it and it goes blinking there it is.
It's missing one thing, the hey Bailey button. Hey Bailey.
I'll talk to you them about that. That that that's a good idea. He told me not to bring that up. I won't tell him where I heard. It'll be our secret, you know.
And I talked with the about it with the previous assistant city Manager Tracy Rowles, he thought it was a wonderful light.
As long as it said Hey Bailey, as long as it said hey Laura.
Yeah, okay, I understand.
Mayor. Thank you very much for being with us today.
Thank you always enjoy it all right, folks, you've been watching and listening to our community connection.