Good morning, good morning, good morning.
Welcome, welcome, welcome, meet It's time now for City Matters program right.
Here on K one, the one you trust. We have a full house today.
I'm going to try to expand the camera as much as I can to get everybody in. But once again, if it matters to you, it matters to the city.
Laris, the award winning Lauras Anders, I present.
To you, Thank you, thank you, absolute honor, but I appreciate that. So we've got lots going on at the city. I've got a full crew here today. I've got Jason Munninger, he's our CFO and money man, and we've got Chief Ikleberry with the Police Department, Micah Seemers with Engineering, and then Keith Henry with our public Works department. And so
we've got lots of updates for you this morning. My favorite one is we've spent so much time on the golf course and trying to get this project going, and we were actually able to seed last week on the twenty first, so it was twenty one days late, but we did get to seed. And then I got a text over the weekend where there was some little sprouts like a text of sprouts, and so I was like, that's exciting, that's great news.
And so we're taking these little victories really big.
Every way and you can get absolutely And so the other thing I did want to remind everyone of is that today is the last day to submit the city wide survey. So if you haven't done that, now's your opportunity to do that, to submit the survey. And then
we also have a workshop tonight. So our workshop tonight is over budget, and Jason'll be able to talk more about that and what to expect tonight, but it's at five point thirty in the City Hall in the first floor conference room, and so we do the workshops in the conference room just to give the council an opportunity to kind of spread out, be a little bit informal, ask questions, and have some ussion and dialogue in that room instead of in the council chambers.
We've been having a lot of those. Lady, Yeah, those are good.
I think we've got one more after this one, Yep, getting through our hot topics and so then we'll be back on maybe a more normal schedule for our council meetings. And so yeah, so first up, I wanted to talk to Chief Ikeleberry, he's got a police update for us, and then they had an event a Day in the Park and so I was going to get an update from him on those two items.
All right.
Well, Day in the Park was last Saturday, perfect time for the rain and we got lots of rain in the park. We had it at Lee Lake. We had a good crowd show up and then we got washed out, but it was good. We got to bring out our two new golf courts that the city Council provided for us to a grant, and our command us and some other tools that we have, and we also gave some rides on the park out in the park on the
pathfinder in the golf course. That was a hit until it started rain, but really engaged with the community.
It was good.
We had some good partners out there with us. We had raya Hope, which is an advocate center here. They came out, and the Barswell Public Library brought some books out and and just some really good interaction with our sponsors, so to speak. Barswell Police Foundation was out. They're going to give away They're still going to give them away. They've they've got them two bikes, a boy and girl bikes, so they're having a drawing for those to give those away.
But the idea was to get everybody back in the parks. We've spent a lot of time out on the Pathfinder, cleaning the Pathfinder and making sure it's a safe place for everybody, and spent a lot of time out there and really wanted to get the community back in the parks and on the Pathfinder. And those that have been out there really have enjoyed it. It's nice and clean now and really just a nice place to hang out and get some exercise and enjoyed nature. So I want
to keep that going. One other thing I want to mention before I get off here is that we have the Police Officer Memorials servis coming up on May fourteenth at the Police Department at noon. We'll have a US attorney from FOLS be our guest speaker and we'll do that just memorizing the memorializing the officers that have fallen in Washington County. And believe it or not, there's ten or twelve of those that have fallen, so we'll memorialize
them like we do every year. So we want to have the public come out in front of the police department be part of that celebration, sort of a celebration memorial so that we can share their history and their story with the community so they know what the officers go through every day.
So yeah, those are the update from police Department.
All right, thanks Chief you.
So next we have Keith Henry. He's going to bring us our public works update.
Well, good morning. A lot going on in public works. It's the time of year where everything's really fired up. First thing we've got that we want to let the public know about is our leaf and grass collections coming up. It is actually next week May the fifth through the ninth, So as usual, if you've got leaves and grass and sticks, you can put those out of the curb, buy your polycart on your normal collection day. Material can be in any bag you want clear. It doesn't have to be
a clear bag. It can be just the regular refuge bags. And the sticks can be cut in links of four foot or less and bundled up and weigh more no more than fifty pounds. So this is for your residential customers. Only get those materials out there next week and our guys will be coming by to pick those up. It won't be the automated truck that normally picks up your polycart. More than likely it'll be a rearroad truck with a crew guys. It'll come by and collect those things. Excuse me.
We encourage everybody to take advantage of that. It's a good Program's really popular. People wait on it every years, like, hey, when's that happening. Well, it's happening next week, So get that stuff out there. If you've been holding on to it, get it out to the curb, and we'll be by to collect those no cost to you, no sticker required,
So just get that material out to the curb. Also, elect to remind people as we're you know, we've had a few holidays just passed by, and as always, anytime there's a holiday, if it's a Monday or a Friday, or whenever it falls, it's always collected. If your your collection day falls on a holiday, the trash will be picked up on that Wednesday of that week.
So always keep that in mind.
For the people that the holiday normally falls before the Wednesday, it gets a little awkward because the time they figured out they've done missed it in their week behind. So any day there's a holiday that falls on your collection day. The trash will be picked up on that Wednesday, so keep that in mind. We've got Memorial Day coming up here before long, and then you know, Fourth of July, all that creeps up on us, So keep that in mind for the holiday season. Something else we've got going on.
Believe it or not, I think the opening day for the pools will be May the twenty fourth.
On the YMCA.
We'll be operating those again for us this year City Council, just to prove contract with them again. We've been doing this with the YMCA partnership for several years. Worked out really well. I haven't talked to Robert recently, but I would imagine they're looking for help like we are.
So again they're operated through the YMCA.
So if you're interested in probably a job at the summer job at the pools, i'd get ahold of the YMCA, Robert Phillips down there. I'm sure they're looking for help. Also, we are looking for help. So parks department here in town were usually hire six to eight people in the
parks department. Use those guys to weed eat, primarily do some mowing, do some weed eating, click trash, just help us with the heavy workload during the summertime, with all the use of the parks and the facilities, it's a good time to you know, increase our staff and get the extra help we need. We've been struggling struggling a little in the past getting help, so we're interested. And then anybody is looking for a summer job part time job.
When I say part times, it's every day during the summer, but it's just a summer job. Typically they can start any time between now and usually run through through September, sometimes spending on our workload. If you're sixteen year old or older and got a driver's license, we'd encourage you to come down to City Hall or get online and apply for a summer job in the Parks department. So we're looking for those people now. I mentioned the pools earlier.
A couple of things I wanted to mention about those is we recently just had the slides at Frontier Pool reconditioned, so we're really excited about that.
The guys just finished up last week.
That if you've driven by the Frontier Pool recently, you know they're bright shiny blue. So they've been repainted. New jail coat's been applied to the inside of them, so they're super slick, so you can go sliding down the pool this summer. So we got those all ready to go.
Does it have the Mike Bailey squeal like a child seal of approval?
We may have Mike tried it out first just to make sure it's all good to go.
So we've got that going on.
We've also got some new furniture ordered for out at the Sooner Pool. With the expansion of the water slides a couple of years ago and the expansion of the park, there was a need for a new furniture or more furniture actually, because a lot lot more attendance out there and we have a lot of older people coming bringing their kids. So we're trying to help those people out with providing some places for those to lounge around and sit and enjoy the facilities out there.
So some good things going on there. So Keith on the.
Pools talk to us about what the process is for opening the pools, because it seems like it's it's bigger than maybe what people think it is.
It really is.
The guys that are already working on the pools right now, we operate the pools as far as from a maintenance standpoint, winter rising and getting the pools up for operation. Each spring we go out, you know, they've they all got to be winter rise during the winter, so when you bring them back up in the springtime summertime, amazingly, Yeah, we've got water leaks, we've got busted pipes.
There's always seems to be something happens.
Even though we go through the process and we run our rise and we blow out there the water lines and do all those things, every time you go to start them back up, there's always problems. Lots of electric motors out there and pumps, so we go through those. We get the motors going. The shade structures have to be and reinstalled. Usually we'll repaint some of the pool liners they have a pool paint and we'll freshen those up.
Some of the equipment has to be gone through, so it's a pretty lengthy process, especially with the expansion of the slides that sooner there is more maintenance and a lot more maintenance involved with it. We actually just replaced new controllers at both pools also, so Sooner pool and a frontier pool. Now we're able to control those through your cell phone basically so the guys can monitor and
operate them, you know, when they're off hours. And this goes back to the why they actually do that part of it. As far as once we get the pools up and run them mechanically, we turn them over to the y and they totally operate everything as far as
day to day maintenance, keeping the chemicals right. These new controllers again, they can monitor those through their phones, which makes it nice, you know, after hours these things that they can see the pool levels, the chemical levels are accurate, and if there's any problems pop up, they'll get alarms and Robin will know it so they can make sure it everything's safe at the pool. And it is a lengthy process, but we're actually we're in really good shape
with the mentioning. The guys that's the building maintenance staff of are again already been working out there. So we're in good shape and excited about the season and working, you know, doing some little improvements, a little painting, just touching up, doing things like that. But we're excited for the season and looking forward to it.
Right.
So, one thing I did have on my list, Keith, was Mosquito Spring. Are we about in that season? To start spring for mosquitos.
We actually are.
It could be any time, especially with all the rains we've been having, and you know, the temperatures has been somewhat cool, but we're starting to get some humidity and as it heats up, we will start having mosquito calls and mosquito problems. So far, we're doing good this year. We actually did hire a gentleman that is going to do our mosquito spraying force. We can use our staff in the Parks department, but usually those guys are full
time duties mowing grass. So if it's available, we try to hire part time help to do that and it works out of we you know a lot of times if it's a person that's just looking for a part time job. The best time to spray mosquitos is in the evenings when they come out usually dust hours, so six o'clock in the evening typically what the guy will work or whoever spraying for us from six to roughly midnight. And if we have one individual spraying, they can spray
the whole town. If they work every night about four hours a night, they can spray the entire town in a week. So that we do what we have zones in town that we break it up into and they'll work about four zones a night and in a week's time if they work every night. Saying that there's lots of regulations that you have to comply with when you're spraying, and the wind can't belee over ten miles an hour,
which is very restrictive here. Obviously in Oklahoma. A lot of times, of course, the evening's the wind does lay down, so it allows us to do it. If it's raining,
you can't spray, So there's lots of variables there. But we do have a gentleman hired working right now in the process to get him licensed through the state to come on with us, and we have a couple sprayers, so if we do get heavy workload with a lot of callllians on mosquitos, we will assign other staff to work with him and we'll run two sprayers to make sure that we're covering the town and keeping everybody safe. The program has been going on ever since I've been
at the city. It's a public safety issue, so we try to provide that for everybody to help us much with mosquito control as we can.
All right, thank you, Keith, what's going on in your departments? You So next up, we've got Jason. This is your busy time. Jason Moninger our CFO. So he's our money guy and he's going to talk budget for us. And so I thought maybe we'd go through what the budget process is for those that maybe don't know what that process looks like.
Budget process for our departments a little different from the rest of them. Now we do. We do obviously involve every director in the City of Bartlesville because we need their input on expenditures and upcoming expenditures for the next fiscal year. So my staff will start putting that together in January, starting to get our expensure estmas, put together personnel summaries, you know, trying to calculate, you know, where
we're going to finish the year at. We then turn that stuff back out to the directors, have them kind of spot check it. We don't know their budget as well as they know their budget, so if we're trending it out, but they think they're going to spend more spend less, they make those adjustments to it. Get it back to us. We compile everything together. Mike is a
big part of the budget process. He handles the capital side. So, uh, myself, Alicia and Mike had probably the three heaviest lifters of this.
I'm gonna say Alisia's probably the heaviest lifter as far as get it all compiled, put together then you you know, we looked for everything, find significant issues, trend revenue out, forecast revenue for the upcoming year, put it all together in about a four hundred five hundred page document and submit that sucker the council, which went out last Wednesday, and look forward to the meeting tonight and we'll kind of discuss discuss it from there.
Lift do you.
It's it's pretty lengthy, and we'll hit all this supplementary information and it's probably about seven hundred pages of deformation I took.
I took a look online. Yeah, and you don't get to see the supplementary no.
No, no is the the stick of the doctor.
So yeah, right, So what can they expect of this workshop because we typically do workshops like this every year for a budget.
Yeah, Well, we'll just we'll put together kind of a high level summary PowerPoint that we'll go through it kind of hit the high level stuff, talk about some of our larger estimations we make for sales tax, use tax, go over utility increases. If there are any staffing changes in this year, we always try to say conservatives. So in this year, the two biggest things are sales tax
and use tax. So we're gonna we're gonna propose a one percent decrease over actuals in sales tax, which will give us about two hundred and thirty two thousand dollars less in the next budget year than we actually received. Here, there'll be a budgetary increase in sales tax, but an overall reduction in the actual collections. UH use taxing me the same way, it's gonna be a two percent wage. You're going to be about one hundred thousand dollars less
than actual from a high level company. Other summary high level stuff staffing increase, we have eleven total full time employee increase for those being in a fire department with firefighters, two additional assistant golf professionals, two and a half full time equivalent part time indoor pro shop staff, two and a half full time Goloble part time outdoor pro shop staff.
Just to explain that on the golf course side, we haven't had those look like their new positions, just because we have not had the pro shop under the city before that.
Was split and since you know, the retirement Jered benedicta city overtaking all the pro shop activities, those are now going to be city employees, which will want employees of j the path, So just trying to get the staffing where it needs to be, make sure the operations are smooth out there. It's kind of a trial year because
we're not certain where this thing's going to go. We've never been responsible, you know, for a full year for that side of it, so it's going to be a kind of a you know, we're estimating what we need. We're not certain it's going to be adequately staffed. Over staff it's just decisional need to make at the end of the fiscal year and move forward. Utilities, we're in the fifth year of a five year rate study we did back I believe in twenty just your twenty twenty
twenty twenty one. Overall, the average customer against about a four percent increase, which is about four dollars and fifty three cents on average capital investment fee for water. Obviously, the waste the biggest, the biggest place. You can see it's in the wastewater side with this new uh wastewater creatment plant need to come online. The debt service again it needed kind of be needed to repay that. It's going to be you know, eighty five million dollars over
thirty years. So not certain what we're gonna get on rate on that. We just have the construction note at this point. So so let's see. So that's kind of a high level if there's anything you want.
To so, okay, let's let's assume that everything goes good tonight and there's you know, minimal changes if any. What is the next step in that process?
The next step is we will bring a resolution to council the following Monday, which is our regular meeting. In Monday, we'll have a public hearing, you know, public chance you have any input on it. If there's no input, well, even if there is input, obviously they have a chance to adopt the resolution at that meeting. We'll have a small little presentation that goes with that. That that's kind of it.
So what kind of checks and balances do we have in place or how many eyes do we have on the budget before it becomes approved?
Well, obviously every you know, council members have it, they manager that you have it.
The state.
The state gets it after the fact, so it goes to you know, goes to the state after the fact. The party law, you have to turn your budget in. I doubt they look at it. Last I knew they had everybody's budget stored in the warehouse. You can't even submit electronically, you have to mail it in. So I'm not certain what the state does other than maybe if somebody wants to call and ask questions about it, they probably can. Then they got to go try to locate
and find it. As far as checks and balances, there's you know, there's really it's just an operating budget. So it's just a blueprint.
You know.
Council has the ability to modify that at any regular meeting, so you know, and we've had to modify that in your spas when revenues start going south, we've had to step in make modifications where things change, expenditures or dow staffing, whatever we have to do to make sure we made it through the air.
So process's been going on since January. That's really before for you guys. So I mean it's obviously you guys looking at it, directors looking at everything. So is that early on kind of snowballs.
Yeah, I mean I guess really you have all eyes looking on it through the point now the actual compilation of it put together. I mean, we're all gonna they all council got to first look at it, you know, last Wednesday, we saw it, you know, kind of in its finality a couple of days before that. Try to spot check for for errors because I mean it's such a large dog and I'm certain there's errors there, right, It's just I know there's no air area. It's gonna
be catastrophic in there. But there's gonna be something by errors, I mean things that maybe we have ros or lines hidden. You know, it's not gonna be anything in the formulation air or anything like that. But yeah, I mean you're also gonna have fat finger airs because it seems the man it's mainly put together. So all right, thank you, Jason.
It's not fun. It's fun.
There's there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
I get that.
Change your mindset, you get to all right, Micah. So we've got Micah Seemer's here to give us maybe some projects update and as Jason said, he puts together our capital budget.
So yep, so that's yeah, we're planning for that tonight. And that's kind of similar to Jason. Probably not nearly as intensive as what Jason and Alicia do with the budget as a whole, but it's it's still a pretty good lyft for us. And uh so, yeah, we basically
planning for next fisty year capital projects. We basically have to look at it and see everything that we did or didn't get accomplished this year, and if we need to carry over either additional funds for projects that are ongoing or projects that we didn't get to as far as under construction to get that contracted out, so got
to carry over funds for those the next year. And then we start looking at really what we have left for the money that's can be available for the upcoming fiscally year for new projects, and we get with essentially
kind of same as Jason. Same We get with all the directors and get requests from them from there, whether it's five year plans or things that have popped up in the last year that are needs capital needs, and so we go through that and sit down with our I guess ad hoc committee for our Finance Review or our Capital Review or Capital Oversight committee that meets monthly and we go through that and select projects for the next year and ultimate the AMC Coouncil is going to
make a decision, so we'll present that to them tonight and if there's anything they need to tweak or modify, we can take that into consideration and then hopefully fifth having approved capital budget for next year, so and then well we'll get to work on design and implementing stuff and getting equipment bought and all that. So that's sort of the process in a nutshell, and so go through some products we're currently working on as far as underconstruction
right now, we have the Yale Drive construction project. Probably not everybody seeing that, but if you're over in that area north of the Adams between Adams and Frank Phillips, that's in a pretty dense residential area there, and it's gonna be a tough project during construction, but we're working through it. I think the residents are being patient with
us and so we do appreciate that. But essentially this is on Yale Drive from Adams to Frank Phillips and since they're currently working at the top of that on the south end there by Adams, and they will work on Yale Place as well. There's kind of a loop there that it makes with Yale Place, so they're working on essentially replacing that entire roadway. So we're going to salvage the curb and gutter, so they're going through and saw cutting and creating a curb and gutter section. We're
going back in with an asphalt street. We're having a few utility conflicts right now. Back in the day, people did things a little bit different, so we've got some shallow gas and power through there, but we're working around it. So need to give my I guess he'd be my uncle in law some grief on that. He's an O and G guy. I need to bust his chops a little bit on how shall they was We haven't gone through any of them.
No, that's good. So that's good.
That's a plus.
So we're working on that project. We're currently moving north towards Frank Phillips and that'll be kind of a phase deal there. They had talked about whether we just go ahead and tear everything out and go back with gravel and then pave all at once, I think we're gonna we're gonna stair stup that a little bit and we'll pave that section of the working now and then we'll move on kind of.
To the north and do that as well.
So we've got that project should wrap up here the next couple of months, and then our park parking lot project is really wound down, but we do still have some work there at Johnstone Park, so the park is open, though we did have some of the area there around the Nella Johnstone shut down so they can do some concrete working there, But that product is getting really close
to wrapping up. Another one that you've probably seen a little bit of activity on but has kind of stalled a little bit as a Madison Boulevard reconstruction project from Tuxedo to about a half mile north up there a by the water tower goes past Ohio Sentially it's gonna
be a complete reconstruction of Madison Boulevard. Currently it's just an old county road type section barely twenty feet wide in some places with bard itches, and we're gonna widen that up to about thirty three feet total back of curb to back of curb, and so it'll be a nice new asphalt section with curb and gutter, and then we'll taper that into the existing to the north.
We've got a.
Lot of questions about what are we gonna do for that north half mile because it's in a really bad condition. We are aware of that, so keep your phone calls coming if you want to. But essentially, noth's gonna happen immediately, but we will discuss some potential some quick fixes in the near future to get that through until we can
do a reconstruction of that as well. So but essentially right now we're working on getting some ride away on the east side of Madison Boulevard there on the south end and about that south five or six feet or so. As you have a meeting with a gentleman this afternoon to try to work on that. I think we'll have something hopefully on the May fifth council meeting getting that secured. But we're working on that and so hopefully construction get
ramped back up there in May. So the inditional work that you've seen right now is the Vertigree Valley does have to relocate a portion of their overhead electric on the east side, and so there were some trees up there by the west side of Park Hill on the south end, and so they went ahead and top those trees out. Once construction starts, our contract will remove the stumps and the root balls. That way they can get their line shifted over on the front end of construction.
So I think people are pricing the trees come down and then nothing else happened.
This is what we're waiting on.
So but that's gonna be a good project that's been needed for a while. It's a cooperative effort with the Delaware Tribe. So the Delaware Tribe on the west side of that section of roadway as planning to do some development of their property, and as such they would have to platt and when they platt, they would have to donate the rideway and reconstruct the west side of the road.
So they are basically going to purchase pay for half of this project with their funding, and so we do appreciate that, and that's let us basically go from doing a more of a ten year type rehab project to a complete reconstruction.
Allowed us to do that, So we're grateful for.
That for sure.
The other big project that's coming up that we hope we will get awarded on May fifth is our prevented maintenance street project, and so this really takes funding from the past four years. We allocate one million dollars a year over five years in our sales tax fund for prevented maintenance street projects. And so this is projects that could be crack sealing, it could be what they call micro surfacing, thin overlays, basically streets that are in a pretty good condition that we just have to do a
little bit of work to them. We can extend the life home out for seven ten years before we have to do any more work with them. And this is trying to keep streets in good conditions so we don't have to do the full rebuilds. Full rebuilds are costly, your money doesn't go very far with them, and so this is trying to keep good street It's in pretty good condition and so we've been We waited a while on this project to get our payment condition model updated
so we could select projects appropriately. We did that back in twenty twenty three. We then got with Street and Traffic Committee and got a list of projects selected for the funding that we had available to present the council. Council then approve that back in twenty twenty four, and so we've been working on design and getting this project
gall on. So it's a long process, but essentially we have about three point seven million dollars worth of projects that we're going to do and we will be awarding that contract hopefully on Monday night. And so with that being said, it's going to cover a lot of the city of Bartles. It's basically going to be extensive across the whole city. So we've got a portion of Tuxedo from Madison to Bison that we'll address. We've got Bison Road from Tuxedo to No Water Roads, there's two miles there.
We're going to address Madison Boulevard from Tuxedo to Price. You got three mile section there a Price from Madison to seventy five, another mile no Water from seventy five to Silver Lake, and Frank Phillips from one to twenty three to Keeler. Then we skip down town, pick up the commanche you and go to seventy five, and then we take that from seventy five while way up to Madison as well. So again it's gonna cover a lot
pretty much the entire city. There will be some drawing pains with this, and we've never done this type of project before. We've done some micro servicing in the past. He did not have good results. These streets, as you can sell as I read those out, they're all major roadways in the city of borbon Zville, and so they're
striping involved. They're high traffic, higher higher speed limit, and so we've chosen to go with a product that's called a basically a bonded matrix overlay is what they call it. And I'm gonna dumb this down to my level honestly on this, but they call it a high density of mineral bond.
It's called h A five.
It's an asphalt product that essentially will cap the roadway. But before they do that, since these are higher volume roads, they're going to do a basically a chipping seal underneath that. We'll come back two weeks later with this high DENTSIY or this bondo nation over and seal that. So it's going to be a phased approach. You'll have to do stripe earth crack ceiling first, we'll do the chip seal. A couple of weeks later, we'll come back do the cap,
and then we'll have to stripe. So it's gonna be a lot of disruption. You have to bear with us, but hopefully up the good product in all these roads.
So, so lot's going on.
Indeed, my goodness sakes, he knows a lot of words.
We go.
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I look at your weather. I can tell you right now it's probably gonna rain.