And welcome, welcome, welcome, and we are live right here on the air with our good friends here in the city. And it of course it's our City Matters program right here on a K one, the one you trust in here with a shitty Matters Remember, if it matters to you, it matters to the shitty Mike Bailey and company. How are you doing there, young man? Good morning. I like the end company. Yeah, he
did look over his shoulder anymore. I got everybody in the shot. How do you like that, guys, Larry Larry thought he got out that. I like that. I like your new camera. Larry was trying to hide. It's a good sea shot. Well, good morning, Well, good morning. How's the air show? Happy Monday. The air show was actually pretty fantastic. I hopefully everybody had a chance to check it out. I went out Saturday. Unfortunately the wind didn't cooperate, so they weren't able to
do the static line parachute drop that they'd discussed. But regardless of that, it was pretty awesome. There were some great aircraft out there, and they said the total the total number of visitors over two days was twenty three hundred that went in to see it. So a little over twenty three hundred. Yeah, it was, it really really was great. Just I wish I wish they'd have been able to do that static line. I want to admire those people, and I want to believe that I want to do that,
but I don't. When I was younger, I was convinced that I wanted to do that, and now I just want to want to. Yeah. Well, he goes around telling everybody was born to be wild, at least till eight thirty, sometimes nine o'clock, you know, but about nine thirty it gets done. Get a little quieter. You're born to be mild these days. That's right, you are correct. It's probably better once upon a time, maybe that not anymore. Flying Bailey, that's it now now.
Our representative, however, was out there with his ultra life, which is it is something, and after looking at it, I'm still convinced that he's absolutely insane. Took that long. I visited with his father. When I was standing in lite, didn't realize who I was talking to until until he said, my son won't he won't fly in an antique aircraft, but he does fly that little ultra light. And I said, oh my gosh,
mister Strom, I know your son. Yeah, so it was. It looks like a cross between an airboat, a go cart, and a parachute. I think that bad about it. I think that pretty much captures it. Now you go, You got the DNA of all those things combined in there, and it's like it's a fly in which it flies, but not with me in it. So anyway, we're often running. Last week we had a bunch of us went to a conference, so we're all trying to get caught up this morning. And last week was the first week of our
new city Hall hours. It seemed to go very well, so if anybody is wondering what that is. We're open eight to five now Monday through Thursday, which our hours were a little shorter than that. When you don't have a lot of staff, it's hard to cover everything. So right now we're open eight to five, including lunch, but on Friday we are open eight to eleven thirty, so we've got a little time off for our employees and we feel that this makes us more accessible to the public. Monday through Thursday.
It seems to be going very well. It'll take a little while for everybody to get used to the new hours. Anytime you make a change, it does, but did seem to go very well. There was a lot of phone calls to be answered come Monday morning for people who weren't aware of it yet. We'll all figure it out together. So a couple of quick announcements. We've got a soccer survey that we have issued, So if you have an interest in youth soccer in Bartlesville, go on over to the City
of Bartlesville dot org and fill it out. We're particularly interested in hearing from people who have current players in youth soccer. And this is just in any youth soccer in Bartlesville. But of course if you have experiences from back in the day when you had other children, when you did have children and it, feel free to join us. But it'll ask you to differentiate whether you
have kids in soccer or don't. Trying to get trying to get a really good picture of how well the programs serve our public and so that all right, see's a lot of kids, there's a lot of kids. It is a hugely popular sport in Bartlesville. We just want to make sure we're taking care of people to the best of our ability. So City of Bartlesville dot org if you have an interest in that. And starting today, we have
a water disinfection project that's going on. And so for anybody who's a water chemist, never mind, you don't need me to tell you if you're a water chemists, so I'll explain it for people who aren't water chemists. So we use a disinfection project product called monocleoor means, which means it's chlorine mixed with other chemicals. And it is a really mild disinfection project. And what that does is, over time, you can have build ups of certain biologicals
in your system. In order to address those, you switch over to free chlorine, which is what most people using their swim pools and that they're used to at their houses. We switch over to that. I believe it'll run for about six weeks, but it starts today. You will likely notice sometime over the next couple of weeks a stronger smell of chlorine in your water. Right now, the water shouldn't taste like it, so that you'll start to notice some changes. As far as the taste and odor, The water is
safe. It's perfectly safe to drink. There are always medical advisors for anyone who uses it for medical processes, like I'm blanking out him this medical process. That'll just do it right there, dialysis specifically, so but yeah, those are so for anyone who's using that. Of course, contact your doctor and make sure that everything's good. But we worked with the hospital and everyone else, so this is it's a relatively normal thing. Some cities will do
this routinely every three years. Other cities will wait until they start the show signs of that biological build up before they do it. So this is the first time we've done it since we switched over, but it didn't want anybody to be alarmed. Also, a couple of quick updates. Got a lot of stuff happening right now, by the way. So the Bardsville Water Resources Committee has been meeting met twice so far and we'll meet again on Thursday of
this week. They're kind of working on a couple of projects. One of them they're working on our long term water supply, and so we have presented a lot of information to them and some possible options and ask them to help us narrow those down on the ones we want to focus on. Specifically, they are recommending that we pursue reallocation on Hula and Copan, which essentially raises the lake levels so that you have more water available in your existing lakes.
Those are the more most cost effective. However, as we have seen, Hula and Copan are fairly and they are not very drought tolerant, and raising the water level will help that, but they're still going to be very geographically dense. They're just right there together. So you have to have rainfall in a you know, a thousand square miles. How does it happen that the rain hits Heula and missus Copan and like, buy am it did? Right? I mean it? I mean, I mean it's six and a half
too. It's right pretty close to anyway, and Hula was actually up in the floodplain not too long ago, so it is that is a little frustrating. It's of course worse for the town of Copan. They get all of their water pan lakes, so they are currently dealing with a water emergency, which we've already gone through and so but so those are those things are really cost effective and we want to pursue those right now. However, we wanted
to also explore some other opportunities. So there is a aquifer to the west of us that is very it's not really used for commercial purposes. There are some private whales on it, but not a lot of commercial whales, and so that is the aid of Amosa Aquifer. We are going to apply for a grant with the assistance of Senator Lankford's office, to see if we can get a grant to study that. So once we study it, we'll know whether this is a good source of water for us or not. And the
other thing that the committee has opted for is to explore regional partnerships. And specifically when we're talking about that, we're talking about a pipeline to Call Lake and the potential of building Sand Lake, and so both of those happened to fall in the actual Osage nation, and so the committee was interested in seeing if the Osages have an interest in forming a regional partnership with us. There's also a couple of small towns and cities through there that may also be interested.
So we'll begin to do those those things, some of them are more easily accomplished than others, and so we'll begin tackling those right now. Though. The other thing that they're doing is that they're reviewing our drought contingency plan, and so the drought contingency plan that we had in place, we asked Council to put a pause on it about well the first meeting of this month and because the Water Resources Committee was reviewing it. So we expect that this
Thursday they'll finalize a recommendation to Council. They'll likely take that up at the first meeting in October, and I would expect a decision at that point. Of course, things things could change, but that's the plan at this point in time. So as far as water goes that that's where we are right now. As you mentioned, Copan Lake is actually below forty percent. Now Hula Lake, I believe, is at ninety six percent. So that good news is most of our water comes from Hula and it is still in good
condition. But I certainly feel for the town of Copan and that Copan Lake is in our water supply, so we we're monitoring that as well. One other quick notice before I turn it over to these guys, we have the General Obligation Bond coming up. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on it today, but we've got several more programs that will have before before the actual election date to describe the projects in detail, but essentially this will
be on October tenth. This is a seventeen point six million dollar bond. I'll take about three to four years to issue all of those. And it's as far as how the projects are broken up. Just in general, there's two point four million for public safety and there's about point there's about seven hundred thousand for it needs parks two point two million, but the lion's share of this is going to streets, and so about seventy percent of the funding is
for streets and that that comes out to about twelve point three millions. So that's that's the good news there is that we have got a substantial amount of money ready for streets. And if you want more information on this, go to City of Bartlesville dot org. There's a map that shows all of the
streets. And frankly, I think that the Street Traffic Committee did a great job and selecting these They use data to select them to determine, you know, what streets are in the worst condition, but also applied metrics such as how many cars do they carry and all of those things, so they had a lot of data to sort through. But I think then made a really good decisions. So that's October tenth. This is not a tax increase.
Now you some people will say, but if we voted, know, then our taxes would go down certainly, which is why these are These are limited taxes. And so we come back to the citizens of Bartlesville every three to four years and asked them did you like what we did the last time, and if so, we would like to renew it, and here are the newest projects, so that we feel that that provides great accountability to the public. So but this is this is a continuation of existing program, not a
tax increase, not a new program, not new taxes. And October tenth will be your chance to for your voice to be heard on those all right, I took up took up about a third of that. Geeve there you now I'm gonna so we One of the things that we have heard about as we went through our strategic plan and through other processes is a concern over homelessness in Bartlesville. And so we have we spent a lot of time, a lot of and become more much more educated on this. Personally, I'm much
more educated than I ever was about it. And one of the things that we heard is that overall homelessness in the state of Oklahoma is on the decline. And of course when we heard that, it was the assistant city manager Tracy Rowels and I and looked at each other. So that's not our experience. Well, it turns out that our experience is relatively normal because overall homelessness is on the decline, but the unsheltered portion of the homeless, which are
the most visible, that is on the increase. So we've focused a lot of our efforts on that because we think that that is obviously it's the most visible, it's the most concerning when it comes to homelessness. And so chief we've got we established it's a crisis Intervention Response Team, which was a partnership with Grand Mental Health, and they've gone around and actually gotten us some statistics so that we know really how many how many unsheltered homeless are there in Bartlesville.
Sure, and those numbers are again or numbers they went out research, They went out on the pathfind or they went different areas of the city trying to find right, yeah, that's right, trying to find a number. That number was fifty four unsheltered, which doesn't seem that great unless you see them all out at once. That's right. Well, when I come in at three thirty, yeah, yeah, we have the darkest conversations as I'm trying to walk up the steps. They're very kind, very very sure you're
doing so. So with those fifty four, they're you know that's the unsheltered, the sheltered, or you know you've got the lighthouse they've got they stay full at seventy. So, you know, one hundred and twenty four people out on the streets that we know of, I'm sure there's some they've missed. Uh. They they've gone out, they've gone to right links to try to find everybody that they're dealing with on the street, on the paths, in the parks. Uh. And you know that that brings us to the
next thing that the council created two officers for the patrol. Hopefully soon we'll have those guys hired and where we can get those out as soon as possible. So try to reach out to those people, more people on the path and in the parks and make sure people are safe out there. You know,
there hasn't been any crime per se listed out in the parks. It's been pretty calm out there, but the perception is that it's people are in fear because they see things that they're not normal and so with those abnormal sightings
of people that are not familiar with it, it causes some apprehension. So we want to make sure that we're reducing that fear so they can get back out in the parks and utilize all the facilities, because we have great facilities in the works and we've got a number of different outlets for people to go and take their children and enjoy the parks, and it feels like they're not getting to do that because of the fear. So if we can get that
reduced, we'll be doing good. The Crisis Intervention Response Team has been doing that and continues to deal with the mental health issued, which is the greatest part of the homeless or the end shouldered and they've they've gotten people out of the homeless area and they've got them into apartments, they've got them into other cities to where they're living in apartments. So we feel like that's that's right, that's someone that could help them. So so we feel like it's being
successful. It's taken time but they're building those relationships out there. I believe last last month they had two hundred and twenty nine contacts UH. Thirty four of those were in crisis, so they responded to crisis and incidents where they were threatening harm to themselves or others. And that's more than one a day,
so that's that's pretty pretty big number. And then they went out and did one hundred and forty two follow ups and that that's one of the big things for us is we want to make sure that if we're dealing with people, we can follow up on them and maybe get them, make sure they're staying on track, getting their services they need, the medications they need, and and offer them try to get them into other services. You know,
as they stay on track. They've got some pretty good UH contacts out there that they're really building relationships with and hopefully those will change into people living off the street but back into housing and being productive again. So that's our long term goal. It was our goal from the start of this program and UH and we want to just keep rolling forward with that. The team is to two Barslo police officers and two Grand mental health case workers and it's it's taking
a team approach. It's it's uh reaching out to all the contacts and all the different agencies within the city to make that happen. You know, all our nonprofits, and we're blessed to have as many non profits as we do. They're out there trying to help the the underserved, so to speak. And uh so with that, the combination of those services, we're hoping to
to make a difference your interactions. Have they become positive, a little bit more warmer since you're going out a lot more and having these interactions with the folks who are unsheltered. Absolutely, they're starting to see us as more of a friend than a foe. Okay, so, and that was the idea behind the project in the first place. We try to interact with them when they're not in a crisis, you know, interact with them, give them
the help they need. If they need a right to get their medicines and they don't have a right to get their medicines, won't give them that right so they can stay on track, so we don't have to deal with them later and maybe in a different scenario, different scenario and a bad outcome. So would rather address it in front rather than try to catch up. You're
doing good work. And what we've what we've experienced is that the Council is very dedicated in applying our resources in the areas where we have the greatest concern from our citizenry. And so that's what you're seeing with the Crisis Intervention Response Team and the park Patrol. Now, those ideas came from city staff, from police chief and his staff, and but the Council has been very supportive of that. And so because we have there's been a lot of concern and
express to us. Those are the areas where we've chosen to put our resources and try to address us proactively. So hopefully over the next year we'll start to see some positive returns on this. I think what we're doing is not unique across the country, but it's fairly unique in Oklahoma. This is this is an approach that not many cities are taking. So I'm glad to see us lead the way on this and hopefully start to see some some positive benefits
of it. Absolutely, I think we're hitting in the right direction, and you know, I know that you know we want to listen to the citizens and address the areas of policing that need to be addressed, and these are certainly the areas that they're they're talking about right now. All right, thanks,
Chief, I appreciate it. We're gonna move on. Now. We have one of our largest projects probably as far as planning, well, I would say as far as planning goes, this is definitely the largest project we've probably done since the late nineties, I think, the last time we updated this plan. And so cities operate off of something that's called a comprehensive plan, and that includes comprehensive land use, and there's housing and all kinds of
good things. So before we jump into what we're doing, Larry, what's the exactly is a camp plan and what's the value of it to a city and its citizens. So the Conference of Plan is the master plan for this city, and it is the plan that the city is following as it moves forward over the next you know, twenty to thirty years. And so it incorporates, as you said, you know, housing, information, land use, things along those lines, but it also incorporates transportation, utilities, storm
water, floodplane hazard mitigation. All of those things were incorporated into this document. So when the city, when the Planning Commission and the city council has to make determinations on projects, say look to this plan to say is this in conformance with the comprehensive plan? Uh? And if uh, this is how we should move forward with it. Or is this something that's not exactly
where we saw ourselves or where we want to be? And so, yes, it has been some time since our last complan update and and so yeah, so we're we're looking to have a new plan created and then typically cities will then revisit it about every five to seven years to make sure that is this where are we where are we going? And is this do we need to make any changes as we move forward? And so it's it's not something that is absolutely set in stone. It's not this is this is a living
document. It'll need to be changed as we go through it. So if there's that's that's one of the figures that everyone has when you create a plan like this is that I, well, we're going to be trapped. It's going to be used against you. Well, the reality is is if you don't like the plan and then the plant exactly. I mean, it's not
it's not an ordinance, This is not law. And yeah, just like everything, it's Uh, in planning is that it is living and breathing and you know, uh, people change, technology changes, and so that's why the Conference of plan needs to be revisited. Everyone's will for that use, so which is which is what we're doing. It is And having never gone through this myself, yeah, I was quite shocked at the scope of it.
So the length of time that it requires is typically about a year for the Conference of plan and so you know, the Council was very wise in
the creation of the Conference of Planning Committee and very excited by that. We had fourteen applicants or fourteen smiles from various companies across the country come through and so the staff whittled those down to fourteen or excuse me at that fourteen down to six, and the committee then reviewed those six potential companies and then interviewed two of those and so now we're down to the final two and the committee did make us is looking to make a recommendation to City Council and so we
hope to have that before City Council on the meeting in October. So it's it's really exciting. I mean, the and what's so amazing about these companies is that These aren't just you know, people that just submitted a document and you know, boiler plated it or anything like that. They took the time and they saw that Bartlesville is very serious about its plan. And so these were very, very good companies that came forward. So it's very exciting that
they want to partner with us as we move forward with the project. And of course we're the vision for the organization is a leading community by choice, and so we chose that intentionally because we believe that Bartlesville got the way that it is by choice. Everything was very intentional. You can you can go back to the heyday of Phillips and city Service, and we chose to be the way we are, and so this plan is simply an extension of that.
We're going to continue to look at what do we want to be, what we want Bartlesville to be. So, now, from a citizen's perspective, what can they expect to see over the next twelve months as far as
it's developed. So as when a company is selected by the council to enter to a contract, is that there'll be a kickoff meeting and so there'll be a public meeting for that, and so that'll be at the very beginning, and so there'll be an opportunity for citizens to come out and hear what the timeline is going to be, what they can expect things on those lines. And then after that there'll be periodic meetings that'll be associated that either be through
the through the consultant, or be through our staff. We'll have periodic meetings throughout the entire process. But the beginning of this is going to be uh, you know, the kickoff, but there will be a little slow just because our consultant, we'll be working with staff to gather all the data together. We've got to analyze the past before we can move forward, so we'll be doing that together. And then after that there'll be a lot of interactive
meetings. Data you know, current data collection that will be collected by the consultants and be able to award at that time, and so the citizens there will be meetings that they can provide their input. We anticipate the probably surveys and things of that nature. Of course, we're not shy about surveys. We've got one out right now as far as soccer, we just wrapped up one as far as sidewalks. So this is how we This is how we get data, and data itself does not make decisions, but it does inform
the decisions that we make. Helps the community, helps sup playing commission, helps it AC Council and the qualities policies decisions. So this is this is going to be quite a project, yes, and it will. I appreciate you being willing to take this on. Absolutely I had it would not have been me, I promise, should have had to be somebody else. So luckily not my first and definitely not gonna be my last. So I look forward to it. It'll be fun, it'll be it'll be a good time.
Anything else the public should be aware of. Yeah, we're currently doing a housing study project. We have to have that route. Hope to have a draft document to administration and to City Council in the next coming weeks with some data on that. I'll really help guide, uh, you know, our economic development process and things on those lines. You know, we're we
are in a unique situation in the sense of our housing. We have both you know, old stock, news stock that are online coming offline, and so we'll be reviewing all of that and kind of see where we need to go. That will help comprehensive plan as well. As we move forward, that'll be it'll be more information that's fit into that exactly. And so we all know that there's a housing shortage, not just here but across the country, but when we don't know is at what price point and by how many?
So what exactly is our stock? What's the demand? And what do we need to be aiming exactly? And so you know both historically because the state of Oklahoma did a housing study back in twenty thirteen, and so Barblesville did have its had its own subcategory associated with that. But you know that ten years of passings then, so it's time for us to be you know, definitely seeing where we are and where we're going with that. Look look
forward to the results of that as well. Did open All right, thanks Larry Type for Silence team. There we go, there we goad. I just threw my phone on the floor. Throw So Michael, what we got going on? Project wise? How much time do I have now? Four minutes? Okay, three and a half? All right, well, okay, run on. So the probably the biggest one that people are seeing ongoing right now is going to be the Delaware and Clear Creek Loop project. So
it's an asphalt rehabilitation project. They're currently working in Clear Creek Loop. This is at the northwest corner of Tuxedo and bison Uh neighborhood in that general vicinity, and so they're working on that. Hopefully get the asphalt wrapped up, the final lift of that done middle of next week something like that. So we got Brent Bell Construction working on that and he gets in there and works pretty quickly, so which is pretty good. Yeah, which is a good
thing. So so I should get that wrapped up middle of next week. They should start this week working if they're not already working on ADA ramps on the Delaware projects, I think there's gosh, I forget the number, there's a large number of ADIA ramps. So we have to do with that. Larry's nodding happily in the background. Yeah, So you know, anytime, due to ADIA standards, now, anytime that we're working on a roadway project that a butts a a ramp or an area where there should be a ramp
that's that's not compliant, then we have to bring that into compliance. So essentially there's existing sidewalk. Didn't always used to be the case, but that is the case now, so so we're sticking with that. So again they'll they'll start on that this week, if not already, and then you see it should see them working on the asphalt part of it, then coming into UH in the next week, maybe the week after that. So they're planning on a start at the south end of that, so that's from Fifth Street
to Hillcrest, so they'll start there at Hillcrest work their way north. This is around Central Middle School as well, so we've got some details we got to work around that to keep their their operations running with the buses and whatnot. Always always yeah, not at all, no, no, but we've been working with the schools and they're they're aware of it and had been been
really good to work with. So none of them. It's around schools as well as we have our Crestling Concrete Rehabilitation Project SIS is going to be from Adams to Baylor and Baylor over by Madison Middle School used to be the Mid High It's also inclusive include the Baylor Place, which is a little loop that connects from from Baylor to to Crestling as well. And again it's a little it's not a full reconstruction, but it's a it's a large amount of concrete
panels that will be replacing there on that section as well. There will be some ada some hot sidewalk work on that as well. We actually just awarded that project at the last City Council meeting to Jay Jay Graham Construction should have a pre construction this next week and we anticipate construction sometime this fall, potentially potentially starting October. Not sure if we get on back quick or not.
It really depends on the contractors availab building there and the weather always the weather. And you refer to that as a concrete panel. So we have two we really have two types of streets in Barlsville. We have asphalt and we have concrete cranel And if they're concrete, we prefer to keep from concrete. I know in the past we've laid asphalt over the top of them. We don't like to do that anymore because it degrades the base, which is the
concrete. It does more quickly, So we'd prefer to keep them as concrete. And if they're asphalt, obviously, then that's a that's that's a quick easy right go into a mill and overlayoff of those but concrete has a longer life. It does it's more durable, but it does take longer when you're going to do these repairs, it's longer and more costly, and well at length of time just leaves the more money to won't You won't be driving on
it the same day They lay like you do with asphalt. That's almost you can almost follow the asphalt roller and drive just almost, yeah, just almost. The next ones, we got pickleball. I know I'm supposed to wind up. We're opening bids on that on October twenty third. I know a lot of people are zip interested in. That's hundreds of people playing pickleball at Souonar Park. Yeah, yeah, you do so. We're we're excited to have that done as well. Gentlemen, thank you very much for joining us
with the shitty matter residential and commercial coming in Colination's coming. We're serving you with their k WO in Bartlesville, K two twenty seven s