Alrighty, here we go here, k one one, you trust we do have an early what we call a community connection today and I'm having all kinds of fun with our computer.
Hey, how you doing that? Panell? Anyway, if you're trying to watch.
This connections, you know, Facebook is something a little bit different. So anyway, we have in here not one, but two two city councilmen, well one who is retained his and we also have a newcomer in here today too. So my goodness sakes, how are we doing today, mister Dorsey.
I'm doing pretty good at uh uh. I'm glad we we got that rain we ordered back in August finally, and we're I mean, you know, now it's kind of like can we turn off the tap and turn it on it? But you know, we talk a lot about water and and sometimes it seems like we need water, and we were in about in one of those situations, and the Good Lord delivered for sure.
Oh yeah, we got it at the brim up there at the lakes and at the river and everything. You brought a friend with you here, mister Kirkpatrick, gonna be back.
Good to see you.
Good to you.
I did.
I brought Aaron and uh, unfortunately I also invited Larry East and Tim Sherrick, who will also fill the positions in new new seat positions.
I guess December the fourth.
Second, second second, Sorry.
Well when they show up, we'll bring him in.
Yeah.
Then that they had their schedule was already booked up, so unfortunately they couldn't be here.
But I want to.
I wanted to make sure all these guys have the opportunity to, uh see how this works. I'm I'm sure they they've all been in a position where they've done something like this before, but just kind of get them, get them acclimated. I know, this is the mid month meeting where we sit down with you. So when you don't have a meeting it sometimes you're kind of like, well.
Well, you got resourceful. He brought the new kids in town.
That's right, And I thought I would give them an opportunity to where they, you know, people could.
Get to know them a little bit better.
I know, obviously people in their wards know them because they elected them to serve in those positions, but you know, maybe not everybody knows them. So it gives them opportunity to be.
Able to speak Aaron, you're with the church right behind the hot, warm and cold tanks.
You get Church of.
God, the Church Christ Church Christ there on Adams, I'm sorry, And you're also ran a pretty good campaign there and you got across the Finnish Slange in good fashion, and you're representing Ward for and.
Tell us what you bring in to town.
Well, I mean I was very honored. Is the first time I've done any kind of election. It's an honor as Trevor's done this several times that people say, yeah, we believe in your vision and we support you and we want, you know, we want to give you this opportunity to serve. So I still kind of wake up and pinch my stuff a little bit. And but also it's a little bit like the dog that chased the rabbit and caught it, you know, like now what do
I do now? The work starts, you know. But as you said, I've been a minister here in town for ten years. Love our community. You know, we're raising our kids here. Our little ones were two when we moved here, the twelve now my oldest is sixteen. So this is just home and having the opportunity to serve in another way, you know, service is just core to who we are.
So we've served in all kinds of different capacities and this was just an opportunity to serve in a way that I hope it's my gifts and will bless the city around us.
Well, we got a lot going on, and Trevor, I imagine they've been asking a few questions. So what do you think these these fine a gentleman who'll be joining you on the council.
What should be looking for? What's big on the rise here?
I think water right now has kind of been taking care of for right now, but it'll come back. Yeah.
Yeah, Well the water is all you know, it's a it's an up and down topic, you know, as the lakes go up and down. So you know, that is a big topic and that is something that for many years we've been working on and so that you know, we got to figure out a lot of things. Number one, I know, the water reuse is something that we've been working on and that I think will probably come online. But that's not even when when we're that would be
in the most dire or severe of drought situations. Long term is working out additional water, which there is some additional resources there at Copan and Hula, and then there's simokrafers out I believe east of town, and there are communities like Ena did a pipeline from the Kaw River. Of course, I think that came along with the price tag about three hundred million when Enid did that pipeline.
So I don't think any of us have that in our pocket.
No, Well, and we want to limit you know, that's that's always the you know, you want to try to be a magician is figure out how to accomplish a lot of things without any increases in water bills or those type of things.
So we've got that task in front of us.
But I know whenever I came into the council and I told these guys some of the new things. When you go to the OMAG training and you learn about you know, what you can do, what you can't do, then you're kind of.
Hey, that's that class where they keep you out of jail. You know.
That's Thursday. Larry East and I are carpooling down there. We're hitting the first thing. We would like us to stay out of jail as much as possible.
Yeah, well, it was good for a politician to do that.
That was one of the more educational for sure, but entertaining because you know, you'd have different people in that training. Whenever I went and I was I was down there myself, but I think I was the only probably seat that No, that's whenever I field the role. So whenever I got kind of like Billy Rohan and whenever she filled the seat. Same thing with Quinn. So they had a lot of people asking questions and it's like, well, can I do this?
It's like no, you know, it's like that, what's the Monopoly game?
Yeah, don't pass, go straight to jail.
And so, you know, you learn a lot of those things like what you can and can't do, and I you know, I think that a lot of the community doesn't realize, you know sometimes whenever they ask questions, it's like, well, I can't sit down with their three councilmen, you know, before the meeting and try to figure out, you know, how do we resolve this or how do we do this or how do we do that. So I think that'll be kind of eye opening but educational for him.
And then when we get into.
The budget process that's pretty tedious, and I think it's eight or nine hundred pages in that budget book, so it takes a lot strong.
I walked at that thing.
I walked out of city Hall with about well with three binders this big the other day, and I started reading the budget. I started reading the you know, the long term, the comprehensive plan. I saved the rules.
You know what we're gonna learn at OMG. I've saved that.
Although I've created a bot where I can, like, you know, it can read.
It to me. But yeah, I mean there's I don't know I've read.
I've got about a thousand pages ahead of me to read, and I mean it's it's interesting. I mean, you learn a ton, right, but it's drinking from a fire ose, so it's exciting. I want to say, talk about the water thing for just a second, because I think that everybody in Bartlesville needs to understand what we have in those emergency situations that Trevor alluded to. We got to sit through a presentation by the company that's been running a pilot program here in Bartlesville for the water reuse.
So in times of dire drought like Stage four, where things are just I mean about like they have been, we will have the ability to turn on a system that will take our wastewater, which is something like four million gallons a day, pump it seven miles up river, and put it back into the Caney. But in the in between where the water comes back to the wastewater plant and going into the river, it's going to go through a system that is one of the coolest water
purification systems I've ever seen. I had a business where we purified water straight out of the ground for several years, so like I've seen a bunch of different systems, the purity of the water that we will be putting back into the river is significantly better than the water that we originally pull out, So we will actually be improving the quality of the water and the water we'll be using it will be incredibly sustainable and incredibly safe for
people to drink. We'll be pulling out chemicals that aren't even regulated yet, and all of this without adding chemicals to the water. It's just putting it through an activated charcoal process. So I know I'm geeking out a little bit here, but what I would want everybody in Bartlesville to know is this has been a long process that people have been working on, and the initial tests that they have done when they came and shared that, it
was fascinating. I mean, we're set up to be in a really cool place, and because we got into it early, we kind of have first mover advantage where we will get this system cheaper than a lot of other municipalities that are going to want to go to it over the coming decades.
Well, you know, it sounds like we're gonna have a double cleaned water and break happy fish, you know, So I mean, never mind me, but it's gonna be Okay. What else is on the horizon that they need to look at? I know the homeless problem is kind of.
Yeah, and we we will tackle that. And I know Aaron has a lot of passion for the you know, and you've done a lot of work already on trying to trying to figure that out. So I do think that the task forcing group that gets to put together can can really help with that. You know, we got to make sure that we're not stressing all of our resources. We've got a lot of really good nonprofits and you know, Tommy, you and I have talked about the you know, our amazing nonprofits.
I don't know how many times in these.
Conversations, but I think they're probably I would assume, and you've talked to him more than I have, probably recently that they're they're they're a little stressed.
So it uh, we got to get that figured out.
Over to GOFE. So goafe feeds people every single day.
They're running right now, three hundred and fifty people a day through there, just hungry people. It's not all homeless people, yeah, but it's just people who are hungry who don't have enough for you know, to get to buy lunch or to you know, have food.
At home for lunch.
So three hundred and fifty people a day and that's men, women, and some children who are going through there every single day.
And that's just one organization. Really good news for the city.
Be the light past their environmental inspection last week, so that that was like a big hurdle from them being able to house more like to help people get off the street.
So that just happened just in time for winter, just in time for winter.
So I don't know what their next step is, but I know that was a big celebration they had last week. It was really great news for the community that they've got another twenty thirty beds opening up.
Over there, and there are more in the works.
So yes, certainly our organizations have been stressed, but they say that stress makes you worse when you're unprepared and better when you are prepared. And so we've got a lot of really well prepared organizations that under the stress have borne up exceptionally well.
I've been doing really really great work.
Okay, we got the comprehensive plan and the the other thing.
It kind of all runs together for me.
Yeah, you know we uh strategic plan, Yeah, comprehensive plan, then the strategy strategic plan.
Uh.
The comprehensive plan. I think we spent about twelve months on that. And we had a lot of people, various uh leaders and business owners, uh and just citizens throughout the community involved a lot. We had a ton of feedback. You know, you were talking about reading through that. I read through it again Sunday, Saturday night, uh, cover to cover, which took me about two hours, but maybe more than
that because I read every single response. You know, we offered a lot of opportunity for the community to give input, whether you were just a citizen, a business owner, various leaders throughout the community. So and and we did get a lot of responses, and you know, they all the responses were designated almost could take buckets and you know what's what's most important to least important, you know, and
obviously water is very important. And I think when you look at those buckets and pools, we have tried to focus on those. And now that you're getting to go through it sounds like three three budget books.
Then you'll be familiar with. You know, we have this.
Much dollar a pool of dollars, and so we've got to make that go in all these places. And you know, one of our biggest overhead expenses obviously is payroll. You know, we've got you know, you've got streets, you got water, you've got a police, you've got fire.
I mean, I I.
Should know this off top my ed, but I don't know the exact number of people that are employed by the City of Barsville, but I'd say it's one of our biggest employers.
And it's an average about it changes year to year. Yeah, I just read this the other day. It's like three hundred on average of about three hundred and fifty full time employees the city between all the different departments. And I mean these are men and women who go out and you know, I mean they're they're working every single day to improve the community.
We as we get ready to kind of wrap this up, what is your best advice you can tell some of the new guys on the on the council, you.
Know, I think the best advice what I did was just really try to dig in and get the opportunity to know each council person so that that way that can have a lot of really good open communication and
dialogue and then really understand what their passions were. But I think, I know you've done a good job of that, and I feel like I've gotten to know the other two candidates as well, and so I think that we're we're going to be losing some folks that have put a lot of time and energy and effort into it, but we're going to be gaining some folks that I think got a lot of energy, You got a lot of good ideas.
So it's it's been neat to get to meet well.
I mean, I've been doing like you, sitting down with every single one of the you know, the other four guys and as well as city staff.
And you know, people from all over the community.
And I'm excited for the opportunity that we have here, you know, excitement tempered by work.
So that's that's where results come from, is energy and.
The willingness to put the you know, buckle down, put your nose to the grinds done and get after it.
Gentlemen, I want to thank you for coming in, Trevor, thanks for bringing in Aaron and in giving us kind of a preview of what we're going to be seeing.
Here in the next few years.
It's always good to see it, Tom all right, thanks to