Good Bonnie, good morning, good morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It is time now for city matters. If it matters to you, it matters to the city, and I guess so we just find out something here Mike Bailey.
First of all, that nice to see you.
I haven't seen you in about a month and a half.
It's good to see you, you know.
Yeah, And I'm glad you took it because during that vacation, I understand that you became the.
City Manager of the year.
Sir, What was the entry fee on that?
I wrote a great self thought. No, no, I was. I truly was surprised and honored. It's it was given by the City Managers Association of Oklahoma. They give that They give it out annually and they do it based on different city sizes. So this year was the large city size and I was I was honored to receive. Well, very very good.
It was the qualifiation.
You just had to be a city manager pretty much. It in a city of a certain size, and somebody thought enough of you to actually to put in an application for you.
Well, good on't you.
No, it was I think I know who who nominated me, And I don't know whether to thank them or scold them. We'll figure out when I when I find out for sure, who do you get extra golf privileges out it? Maybe on Saturday, Yeah, on Saturday for sure and play all I wanted to turn down. So what's happening in the city. Well, you know, there's actually so First off, it's a beautiful day. I enjoyed it is out this morning and wandering around
and it's pretty gorgeous. Although now I think it's warming up a little bit, it still looks good through the window. It's going to be tropical here in about twenty four hours, That's what I'm afraid. So we'll enjoy it while it last. But the city council met that was last week, wasn't it. Yeh met last week and had a couple of items on there that were pretty substantial. One of those I know the public has been very curious about what's going on with the Buffalo Rome, which of course is the
business is moving into the old First Christian Church. The city has been involved in providing a economic development incentive to them, but however they had to close their own financing to prove that they had the funding because we were only matching and so they've been working with banks for quite a while. It took a little longer, I think than the management expected, but they actually I got word from one of the principles involved in it that they are indeed closed. So that's good news. So it
looks like that project will be moving forward. We still have some details to work out. I was happy to see that it took a little while, and of course the council's real interest in this was the preservation of that building. There was some concern that that would simply become a parking lot, and there's a lot of history there. It was built. I think the basement was dug in I believe the eighteen nineties, if I'm not mistaken. Wow, And that was actually where they had their original they
held their original services in the basement, believe it. They built the basement before they built the rest of the building. So all of that is still there, a huge part of our history, and so we're glad to hear that it is going to be preserved and put into functional use. So it was pretty exciting.
Now big investments often make news.
As they say yes sir, yea there, and that has certainly had people's attention so we look forward to seeing what's coming in the near future. Got a couple of things going on. Of course, we've got our golf pro here with us today when we're talking to him in a minute, but before we do that, so you know what, now, let's cut the line here, do that. So Jerry Benedict is our golf pro. He still is our golf bro. Jerry has been the golf pro at Adams Golf Course
since nineteen eighty six. Six nineteen eighty six, so a couple of years before I graduated high school, believe it or not, he became the golf pro out there and has been ever since. So it is truly hard to imagine Adams Golf Course without our golf pro, Jerry Benedict. But we are about to enter into that era, and so that is I think pro. Your last official day is on the sixteenth, right, but we'll be having a party for you on the fourteenth, and we would invite
everybody to attend that. That's actually on August fourteenth, from two to four at the clubhouse. Right. The public's invited. Anyone who'd like to attend, come on up and tell Jerry goodbye. Although I don't know that he's leaving Linda. Linda Maylenda ha plans for you, but I'm not sure whether she can drag you out of Bartlesville or not.
So yeah, I'm going to get out of it.
Pro we are careful what you agree to. They don't forget. Linda definitely didn't forget. So pro we.
Don't make any promises when you're drinking.
I think those are words to live by. That is that is sage advice. I think that is sage advice. Bro. So that if you take nothing else from his career, listen to that. This is a man speaking with experience. So thirty see if I did the math right, thirty eight years thirty eight as a golf pro Adams Municipal Golf Course, this time, this time, that's right.
You were actually an assistant bro seventy seventy five.
Seventy to seventy five, So thirty eight years is the pro, five years as the assistant pro forty three years at Adams Municipal Golf Course. It's pretty incredible Commenty.
I don't know Howney how I got here, but here you are from Michigan.
A good Michigan boy down here in Bartlesville. Oklahoma. So but we're going to miss you and any anything you want to tell everybody.
I'd like to go through some of the things just real quick. When I came, the place was a mess of asphalt around the clubhouse with holes in it and stuff, and uh, every ice there was buckets in the room catching the rain drops and stuff. And I said, what the heck is the dealing. Well, the city won't help us. A city won't hell. That was the big excuse.
That was the story. This is eighty six, by the way, I wasn't working for the city yet, so I just want to get that on the record.
There were no cart paths, and there was bear spots by the tea boxes and by the greens with the cart paths where the carts were going and stuff. So that's one of the first things we did was we semeent it around it around the clubhouse and got cement and pixed it up where it was nice, and then
we put cart paths in. I hired a guy from uh Oklahoma City Golfing Country Club is he was the second assistant to one of the best superintendents, and he did he did one half of a job for use and together we all laid cart paths, and we hired this guy named Jody Shahan to help us.
And another got another longtime story at our course.
But the city was there, of course, and and the Lion Foundation was there for it ever since. Then. We extended the clubhouse on the south side because it was just a little narrow locker room and he couldn't see out or anything. And so they made a nice extension on the south side of the clubhouse, which was beautiful. And then one of the best things we did, my son told me to do it. Our scoreboard area was a hill with and people couldn't sit out there. They
have to stand and watch their scores come in. And and so we laid a cement path all the way to the scoreboard, filled in with dirt, filled it in and it was one of the biggest improvements in the clubhouse. People, I mean, Southern Hills doesn't have as good a scoreboard area as we have, and either does Hill Chris. They sit out there and we cook for him, they eat out there, they watched their scores come in and they present the prizes right there. It's really a nice deal.
But the cart pass was the biggest improvement to the golf course.
Can you imagine a golf course without cart pass now?
Target, Yeah, we laid it ourselves, with Judy and me and Larry still still there driving rage t was extended the two thousand rented in two thousand where we put four new greens in that we're having trouble, and did the lakes and stuff. The city was there for that, and the Lion Foundation was there for there for that white Sand Bunkers, which actually the white Sand Bunkers, I raised most of the money from that at the Solo Club. I want to let you know, since we brought it up.
The other day, that was pro second office.
The city was there for everything, and the white Sand Bunkers are wonderful. And now the city's there for the twenty twenty five renovation, which is going to be wonderful and it's really going to be nice, and so is the Lion Foundation going to be there, and all of the members had done so well with her. So it's been a wonderful, wonderful career for me, and I can't believe the city put up with me this long, but
I'm very thankful. Raise my kids. In my house, the golf course was a backyard and the junior program, the senior program and the ladies program. The junior program, now, there's so many good players came out of the junior program that we did. Sean Barker holds the course record. We taught him from the beginning. Many many people are playing golf from that junior program and stuff. The senior program is the biggest senior program because of Adam's golf course.
The people retire from Phillips and they stay here, and the city recognizes the importance of the golf course, and the Ladies Association is absolutely wonderful.
But anyway, it has been quite a journey. Yeah, And the upcoming renovations out there are primarily focused on the greens and it will be the probably it will be the largest investment that the city has made in the golf course, and pro that wouldn't have happened without you. Well, your advocacy for the golf course through the years is the reason that we're doing that. So I'm grateful to
you for your leadership out there. I'm grateful to you for all of the time that you've spent and invested in the golf course, and I personally will miss you.
You think I'll miss you too, but I'm going to stick around for a What.
If you don't leave, I don't get to miss your pro.
Make you up some console, that's all right, in a long.
Time, that's all right. If you don't leave, I don't have to miss your pros. But I truly do appreciate you, and we want to send you out in style. So one more time, We've got a party for the Pro on August fourteenth, two to four at the clubhouse. Everyone's invited come join us. And then in the transition, so
Pro's last day will be August sixteenth. And for anybody who doesn't know the way, the golf course has been run probably the entire time, but I know since we hired PRO in eighty six, the pro actually operates the pro shop out there, the driving range, the golf carts. I think that was primarily it. Yeah, the concessions, all the food and beverage, and so that was a very
common model back then. It's become less common now, and so we are actually looking to transition in the near future with we will be transitioning over to where the city actually owns all of that and operates it. So we wanted to celebrate that as well. So we got a party for the pro on the fourteenth, and then on the seventeenth we're going to celebrate taking over the golf course and it will be free golf for anybody
who's interested. So on August seventeenth, come on out. We'll have carts available, we'll have water available, and it's free golf for anybody in the Bartlesville community. We invite you, We want you to come out. We want you to be part of this course. As the pro mentioned when the process the city, what he really means is the citizens of Bartlesville. They're the ones that have passed these bond issues and sales taxes to allow for the support the golf course. So this is our way of saying
thank you to our community. Whether you're a golfer or whether you're interested in golfer, never played, it doesn't matter. Come on out August seventeenth. We will have somebody there to help get you started, get you set up, and it's a first come, first serve and the pro shop will not be opened that day because again it's transitioned.
So we've got to do a big inventory and do a big countdown so that we can handle that change over, but the golf course itself will be open, and we certainly hope that the public will come out and enjoy it. Come enjoy your investment, and come tell pro Bile on the fourteenth. Yeah, we're looking forward to both of those things. Well, thank you, pro mat I said, you are an institution
unto yourself, sweet and we appreciate you. So all right, talking sales tax, Jason Moneger is here, finance director, so he is going to give us a quick update on sales and use tax working.
So where we're through August. So we got two months. You know, July was up a little bit by almost two percent. August is down about point seven percent, pretty flat, down about fourteen thousand dollars. So nothing major, nothing drastic, just a little fluctuation. Budgetarily, we were up those months because we budget a little more conservatively than what we what we did, what we expect to come in versus.
That's important is that we actually budgeted for less than we received in the prior year.
We always expect, you know, somewhat of a correction because we feel like we've kind of been over collecting things.
Things took off, really they come down.
Spun everything up crazy, So we're trying to project project when that that pullback is going to happen.
Hasn't really happened yet, but last year it's flattened out. But that's fine.
So that's kind of where we're at.
You know, for the year, we're still up you know, point six percent, but budgetarily still over you know, two point one eight percent or eighty three thousand dollars from the priority. So that's a budget of good news for this year zero point six. I didn't do a calculation on that. It's probably gonna be somewhere around oh gosh, twenty thousand dollars, twenty dollars over.
From the prior year so early in the year. But things are looking good. Of course, as we've said, we we we budget conservatively because you can't predict what's coming in the future.
Sales tax's volities and that's just depend on the economy and everything else.
Always, always has been, and it's the bane of cities, it is so now. The companion to sales tax, of course, is use tax, which is basically, if you bought something that sales tax would have normally been due on, but you didn't pay sales tax for whatever reason, it falls under category of use tax, and so in use tax, this is something that we've now had, it's about sixteen
months something like that. We're relatively new to it. So so how we start the year on us eighteenth or eighteenth collect eighteenth?
Okay, it was up eleven point eleven zero point two percent, so roughly sixty thousand dollars compared compared I said about fifty thousand dollars compared to last year.
Last year. That's good.
We say conservative kind of on our budget on that a little bit too, and it was up sixty thousand dollars over budgetary expectation. So we're sitting about twelve percent over our budget anticipation for the year on that one.
So all all good news. In spite of some of the shaky economic indicators that are out there, things are still now this this this is historical. Anytime we get sales notes, it's actually from a month to month and aflete and.
We still don't have a whole lot of history. Look at this to see if this is you know, trying it. It looks like we're going to be in the you know, monthly mid hundred thousands, low four one thousand dollars. It's kind of average for that, so we're we're within those from our short history here, we're still in that range. So it's looking good and just expected to to keep on chugging a long bar and any huge economic changes in the story.
So and if that happens, we're in very strong financial position, and we are. You just want everybody to know your city is prepared to weather or whatever it.
Is very conservatively on esthma's for the upcoming year. And we also have contingencies for financial financial downfall in the in this area or country, so we can we can weather a lot of storms.
So so we're we're very well prepared for it. So all right, Jason, Well I appreciate that, and we'll we'll continue to get the updates from you, of course throughout the years as a sales tax goes up, down or all around is what it usually does. Yeah, So all right, Larry, let's see if we can get you up here. So
we've got a lot going on in your department. Oh yes, And so the we we mentioned earlier the Adams Golf Course survey, and I didn't tell people where to go to get it, but go to city at Arlsville dot org. We would love to know your thoughts on the golf course. But we also have a separate survey running which is the Park survey, and the park survey you can find on the same place. Yep, Citybartlefield dot org. Be a link out there for it. So how's that going so far? Yeah, sit a little while.
Yeah, it's been out for about a week and a half. And so this is a part of our Conferensive Plan. That's a part of the strategic plan that we have going on for the city of bartlesviielle. So the Conferenceive Plan is everyone has been we've been kind of harping about for the past couple of about a year now, is the overall master plan for the city as we move forward. This is the plan that we utilize to make all the big decisions for the city over for
the next twenty years. As a part of that, it's we need to gather more detailed information in regards for our parks and recreation program, and so the survey is out there. We did a master plan for the parks about fifteen years ago, and so this is kind of an update to that to provide and to gather information and so it's so important for us to get some detailed information from our citizens.
It does take a.
Little bit of time to get through the survey, but it's it's relatively painless.
So if you five ten minutes, five.
Ten minutes, ten minutes, it's kind of on the usual size.
So you know, if people could please go out there and do the survey mean a lot to us. That way, we can ensure that the plans that we make moving forward are the decisions that are being made by the public.
And that is the public input is a huge part of updating the comprehensive plan. There would have been a number of points for public input and this is another one.
Oh yeah.
And that's the thing I like to reiterate is like, this is not that, this is not you know, city staff plan. This is your plan. This is our citizens plan, and we want to make sure that we get as much input as possible to make sure it is. It's what drives us moving forward.
And how do you know how many results you've gotten so far?
So far, we've had about one hundred and twenty results, but which is a lot more than we had on a survey that we did about fifteen years ago. Which is good and we're really excited to get a lot more. The more the more data points that we get in, the more information we get in, the more more we're able to make, you know, more accurate decisions.
And the larger that survey is, more statistically valid is, and the more reflective it is of our communities.
Absolutely, this is something that you and I both love, which is to data data.
I enjoy it. I love knowing what the citizens of Bartlesville and it also it's always intriguing to me to see people's at people at different cycles of their life and different points of their life what they're interested. And it turns out everybody is interested in the parks. Yeah, they just have different depending on where they are. They just have different preference.
It is, it is, and it's kind of interesting.
You know.
I've been taking some cursory review of the data, and I don't want to taint the data poard. I need anything that It is very eye opening to see what's what's out there. So I know staff will be really excited to share that information to the public once we get closes out. So this this runs for about a month, so closer it'll wrap up close to the end of this month. So the sooner the better that you guys get out there and do the survey, it'd be fantastic.
And we'll we'll keep talking about it to try to drive those results.
So one last thing from Kennity Development. It is the growing season. So just extremely reminder, kindly reminder, please please mow when we need your yards, folks. We don't want to, we don't want to come by and say hi.
Speaking if we're out there, it is likely because someone in your neighborhood has called us about about your yard.
So this, yeah, this time of the year, we are we are definitely we are motivated by by complaints. We're not out there and driving by and seeing anything. We're we're data or we're complaint driven right now.
So if someone has a yard or something of that nature and they want to call and have code enforcement take a look at it, what's the.
Best not the best thing to do is just reach out to us and call us at the city hall, or go on to our city website and submit a complaint through there.
Or download the new city app.
There you go, I know where you're going.
Download the city app and is really simple, U the City app, download that from either you know, from Apple Apps or from Google Apps and log in that way, and then you can file complaint that way, and you can definitely file complain anonymously.
And there is there is a lot available. So the my bartles filld app. Good time to mention that it is on the Apple Store, as you said, it's on the Google Store. So it's my Bartlesville has a lot of functionality, but one of the most powerful things is that just about anything you might have wanted from the city you can request directly from that app exactly. So not quite everything yet, but we're working on it.
Yeah, it's lacking the hay Bailey button.
I'm pretty sure many of those complaints actually fall into the hay Bailey O.
Yeah, you can definitely.
So all right, well, thank you, Larry. I appreciate that, and we look forward to hearing the results of all of those surveys and all of the input that we're receiving. So our final guest, we've got our city engineer, Michah Seemers. Morning. Good morning, Micah. You have a lot going on. This is there's always a lot going on in not just the growing season, this is also the building season. It's a building season.
It's the yeah, get everything else done in season, so get caught up.
Huh. So I know that there's a lot going on. But in particular, we just awarded at the last council meeting. We awarded a pretty big project that I think was combined GEO bond, CIP sales tax. They got had components that came from both of those, right, all all voter approved. But this was the park infrastructure improvement. So can you kind of discuss the scope of that? And sure, and I'm going to ask you to say, when did you expect to get it started, knowing full well that you
don't know exactly. Well, I did start, but I don't know that yet. That's the disclosure, that's true.
So we did just award that project at the last city council meeting. Typically it takes you know, three three weeks to five weeks to get contracts and bonds back from the contractor, at which point we then set up a pre construction meeting to establish what that schedule is going to be.
So we still have that ahead of us.
But you know, most likely if we get contracts and bonds back here, let's just stay by the end of August first part of September. You're looking at construction likely starting towards the end of September and October.
Most likely. It's been a good timing to start that it.
Would be hopefully it's a little drier, hopeful little bit drier. You know, there's some things that we have to work around with that project, so we kind of get was to get into the scope of it. This is really making parking lot and access road improvements at a few of the parks here in town. So the big ones are Johnstone Park and Sooner Park. So each of those parks have pretty extensive let's just call them roadway infrastructure.
They're not actually public streets necessarily, but they are access to the parks. And so we're gonna be doing some work on that at Sooner Park and then also at Johnstone Park for the loop roads there, and then also
some of the major parking lots at those parks. So at at Center Park, we've got that north side that's there between the tennis courts and the park proper, I guess you'll say, there's that area that we're going to clean up in there, repay that, do some striping to expand the parking there's currently quite a bit of room for parking there now, it's just not delineated, so we'll be addressing that, and.
Then a lot a bit of demand right now because of the new pickleball quite a.
Bit of demand because of pickleball courts. The existing main lot there at the park. They're on the I guess called the west side of Center Park will be striping that. It's currently parking available, it's just not stripe we're not really telling you where to park right now, so and we all know.
If you don't put stripes you lose about after parking.
This is true, so we will address that as well. We'll also right there at the goth Tower, the play tower there in the middle of the park, there's sort of some gravel parking right there located now, so we'll be updating that, adding parking there as well paving that. So that's the Center Park project, and of course with that project we have to work around SunFest, which hopefully we don't get into that that's gonna be next to June, so if we're not that far along by then that'll
be a little bit disappointing. Yes, but that is one of the constraints that's one of the constraints that we have made the contractor where we don't want to be doing that work while SunFest is going. You do have the sooner pool, you know, the swimming season, things of that nature, so we'll try to get that address before those times. But then at Johnstone Park you got the main loop road through there that will be improved. Currently there's gravel pull out areas around that that park.
We'll call it a parking lot.
We'll go in there and actually define those, pave those curve and gutter stripe those, so we'll do periodic parking around that loop, repave the loop. Trying to think what else is going on at john Saw Park. That's the main, main thing going on to Johnston Park. We really one of the alternates that we didn't have enough money to do is actually construct a large parking lot there where the old skate park was in that old softball field and then actually removed the large gravel lot that's further
to the west. Again, money didn't quite get us there, so we couldn't award that, but we'd have liked to done that work.
So that's something and still on our list.
Something still on our list it's on our radar. There will be improvements right there at the intersection with where you come out from the kiddie Park to that loop road. We'll do some parking there by the Nella Johnstone. There'll be a bus pull out there, some things of that nature to improve that are as well.
It's just currently gravel so we'll be.
Addressing that section, but we have to work around there is the Fantasy Land of Lights, which I think they start setting up for that probably in the next month, yeah, pretty soon, I think.
So it's quite a project.
It's quite a project, so we'll have to work around that constraint. We don't want to have that ongoing when Fantasy Land Lights is going on, so there's a lot of moving parts with that. But then we also have Juian Low as included with this as well. So we've got the gravel lot that's up on top of the hill that we will actually construct an actual parking lot instead of a gravel lot there. And then we've got the main lot there on the west side of the park.
It'll just essentially be a rehabilitation of that lot, restriping, repaving, things of that nature. So that's at the Jui and Low and then also a lesser known parking town is Lyon Park. That's a small neighborhood park there really on Hensley, I guess we're really Tuxedo and Hensley kind of split r. Yeah, and so it's a little park there. We'll do some parking improvements there, just a few spaces.
It's a little bit of a hidden gym of a park.
Right Leader's gym. Right now, it's currently just a gravel kind of loop road through there. Will be making some improvements to that as well.
And then.
It does yep, yep, yet the roof going. That's underway right now.
Yeah, we're working on that right now.
So really that's the that's the project scope. We're also gonna do some improvements at Douglas Park. We do have the Douglas Park parking lot at that meeting actually came up as we're planning on so that really is let's call it on street parking per se. There's cast runs through there. It's the street that runs to there. It's in disrepair and the parking is directly off of that. So we did have some funding to do parking lot
improvements for Douglas Park. We're going to use those projects or those funds to supplement this parking lot project, and then we'll use some street funds that we had some savings on to actually address casts and then do the parking at Douglas Park as well. So that's not going away.
So not only are we going to do it, but we've actually expanded the scope a little bit of what we were going to do there, right, identifying a different source of funding.
Yeah, we got looking at that and that was a miss on my part as we got to look at that parking. I'm just thinking parking lot. As you look at the surrounding area it had been, it had been pretty rough if we just parking off of a street, that's not as would have been exactly. So we're going to improve that whole area as well, and that may we may look at doing that in house with city staff using street funds, or we may look at lump of that into that project that we're we're doing the
painting with Brent Bell. So so that's what we got going with that project. This pro did mention we we are replacing or actually adding a nice roof at the clubhouse. There's basically one part, let's call it the north section that didn't have nice roof were replacing that.
So all right, well, I appreciate it. Thank you Micah at the fastest thirty minutes in radio. As always,