Good morning, good morning, come morning, and welcome, welcome, welcome. It's time now for our community connection right here on K one, the One He Trusted is brought to you by Tall Grass Motors and Arnold morn he Camp Funeral Home. And today we have a Commissioner, Mitch Antel with us here from Washington County. First of all, good morning, young man,
Good morning, sir. How are you. I'm doing great, you know, Mitch is one of the first people that I got to got to know when I came into the town about four years ago, and it's it's really been nice in knowing that you're representing in as well here in Washington County. A lot of good things happening. We're talking off here just a little bit
ago about how blessed we are to be in Washington County. Absolutely, I can't say enough about the community that we live in and what we have as a community, and we're just hoping to maintain that we're doing so far, so good. One thing when it comes to bodies of government is that sometimes not there's not a whole lot of communication, but it seems like everybody communicates quite well where we have to at the county level. At the county level.
Absolutely. I think that's a function more than anything of our budget board, which is a specific way that we budget here in Washington County. It's not common throughout the state, but all AID elected officials sit around one table and have those conversations about our budgetary concern and I think that has a has a provides for a space to tear down silos, realize that we all have different functions in our offices and we all do our jobs well and serve the
community to our best. That's that's where we as a county succeed well. We have a lot of good partnerships, not only with the people in our county, but also with the tribal nations. The Cherenkey Nation has supplied us with some nice grants here lately. We can't say enough about our tribal partnerships,
not just well, specifically with the Cherokee Nation. Obviously being a fourteen county region in essence, UM, we've got our Circuit Engineering District which is eleven counties and most, if not all, uh not all UH sit within the Cherokee Nation, but we also have the Osage UH involved or we have some Creek involvement I mean, there's there's there's a lot of tribal commitments within our within our Circuit Engineering district, and we work as as partners and as
people all working toward a common goal, which is a pretty good thing. Correct. I think legitimately we're all Oklahoma's and I think legitimately, um all the tribes want to work together to better their communities as well as all of our communities. So I again, we're blessed and we get the opportunity to partners, specifically here in Washington County with Cherokee Nation. Uh, and it's it's a great, great partnership. I'm going to come at you from the
field. Awesome, Okay, Because water is a big topic around here. Of course, the lack of it is even bigger topic presently. Certainly now the city has a lot to do with this because a lot of their infrastructure provides water for our area. Correct, But where does the county have any kind of play or involvement in water decisions? No, our goal is to
stay out of the way now initially probably rural water districts. Absolutely. That's one thing I've learned in the eight plus years in the office at this point is trust those that you have in positions to do and stay out of their way. You're simply a resource to provide and ensure that they have what they need to complete the job that needs to be done. But rural water districts were initially a function of county government just by way of developing a mechanism by
which it passed through us. We have no governance over those rural water districts. We do not want governance over those rural water districts. They're all run independently by their own boards. So again it's just a matter of stay out of the way and be a resource if necessary. Wow, good planning, Yes, those those that do do those that do do well. Yes,
alrighty. We were talking also before hand. You know, when it comes to being a commissioner, we have three correct, and I think every county has three, and these are divided up into districts, and each district um when it comes to roads and other parts of infrastructure or areas of concern.
Uh, you have kind of like your own your own little division of government right there to help people out and describe what happens in your district as far as you know, roads, maintenance, bridges and other functions, so civics thing for folks who've heard what a commissioner is, but they don't know what they do. So independently, each county commissioner has a district, of course, which is broken down based on population. We try to be plus or
minus five percent. That's our that's the goal that we always shoot for in that redistricting. We're all the way down at the bottom level of that tier, though, so you get up into the legislative branch, for example, of your legislators in the state, they're within two and a half percent. So at any rate, it's broken up more or less equitably by population.
Washington County is unique and that you've got your core Bartlesville population, so each one of us have to kind of tap into that population correct in order to make those population thresholds. So we all have some implications here in town. Most people don't don't use their county commissioner in town because the roads and bridges are a function of the city of Bartlesville. In town, you get outside of the city limits of Bartlesville, and that's where you really begin to see
what work we do. So District one, for example, has roughly one hundred and seventy miles of road that we maintain. We collectively, with those on staff, can probably turn over about ten miles a road a year. So you can see really quickly it's gonna it's gonna take seventeen years to turn over an entire district. The prob the likelihood of that's slim to none.
But these farmer market roads are maintained by us typically and that's that's the intent of them is they're just kind of little feeders to get us into those major and minor collectors or minor collectors major collectors to the highways UM. And it's a very difficult task. So a road of a mile of road here in district ones roughly about thirty thousand dollars for us to construct or RECONSTRUCTUM. We get five thousand miles or five thousand dollars a year, uh for that mile.
Oh well, okay, so you can see really quickly, it's not it's never enough to cover that mileage, but we do the best we can with what we have to accomplish. About ten miles a year is what we try to turn over, UM every year in every district. Bridges UM, there's different types of bridge structures and obviously average daily traffic count, which is how many cars go up and down that road, drive how we manage those
bridges good. And then when severe weather hits with the wintertime, people up north kind of joke they said, well, what do you got down there? Like five snowplows? I said, well, maybe right. But the thing is, when we do have the bad weather, it's the commissioners are the first ones to get the hotline. It seems like, oh, how
the wows the roads? You know, people people try to get out of their house, they try to get back to those highways, and those major collectors, those are obviously that the roads that we deal with first as we take a look at where's where's the traffic volume? Att let's get those roads cleared first, So we hit those those major collectors, minor collectors, and then we start working on those third level tertiary roads that get people to those
um and it is it's a challenge, it's it's a task. Every time snow snow. I would almost prefer snow, I would do yeah, because I hang around a while. Snow won't. Ice is difficult to work with. Regardless, UM there are some brining operations that will put down brine at road intersections. Primarily they're the one. I'm thinking it was Rogers County. They do this with regularity, and it's probably shooting from the hip, but
I'm gonna say it's a fifty fifty shot when you put brine down. If you get more rain that doesn't freeze, then you lose what you've already done. It gets washed off to the sight. So it's it's a real finicky operation. You almost have to have perfect weather and the perfect application for that. UM. We've kind of explored it, but but have never really engaged
it. All right, That's it's good to know. But the thing is, I've not seen people snow bound for you know, days and weeks, maybe a day and a half, but you know, nothing like I've seen in other places where I've lived. And we do with we got and we do it pretty darn well. We do. UM Again, another one of those blessings of the community, if you will. UM. We don't typically
get these large impactful events. I say that, of course, every community is going to get touched at some point in time by some major event. Speaking of ice storms and things like that. Recently, you were able to procure what a couple of generators so that in case something bad happens, we are we are we are in the process of doing that. Yes, we have the we have the funding in place. UM, we're going to put that that funding forward. We're hoping to get reimbursed for both of those.
I don't know that we will. We will probably get reimbursed for one, but that that that's just another hardening, if you will, of our infrastructure and our community. UM. Really, continuity of government's the biggest thing,
you know, UM county government a lot of people. You know, if you're transacting homes, for example, all that information comes through your county government or does UM, and if that shuts down for any length of time, that really kind of cripples operations within the community as a whole on a lot of different levels. So continuity of government is paramount and critical to us.
UM. One of the one of the processes we're building into our new EOC facility out on the east side of town is to be able to basically, if if we lost our entire complex administrative complex downtown just goes away, all we have to do is migrate out to our EOC and we're back up and running in a matter of a half a day's time, so we really don't impact the community. Our operations will continue. Wow, and that is a that is a big thing that's going on right now at the construction of that
EOC. Yes, that that's on Bison Road, correct, yep, just north of Noah. Now they were over by what the DSR that build direct Attle he Betty like Cubby. Now we need got to get him in their own proper plays And again you mentioned earlier about four years in the community that was our Walmart when I was a kid, That's what it was. That's what it was. So the back end of that was the service a station sure for Walmart. So that that's the space they've occupied, which has been
graciously granted to us by way of DSR. So we've not yes, they've partnered with us. They they saw the need, they wanted it, and that's the most stable place we've been as an emergency operations center in our community until this move. Well, congratulations on getting the funding and everything put together.
I know this didn't take a snap of the finger. This one was probably years in the making, Yes, sir, Yes, or our current emergency operations manager, Miss Cox has been with us for well over twenty five years, and this has been a goal of his since day one. Um, and you know, this was something I wanted to seek them to fruition. But you know it's just a matter of timing. Organic development is much better than forced. And we're talking with Commissioner Mitch Antel here with Washington County.
We got just a few minutes left. Is there anything you'd like to tell folks about the county government or about your district in particular that we didn't touch on. Nothing I can think of off the top of my head. Tom. We were always available. We're always accessible. Our website hosts all of our information for meetings. We encourage public participation. We enjoy it. So we're here to serve the community. We are beholden to the community,
and as servants, we ask that you hold us accountable. Very good, he thinks, Mitch appreciate you've been with us today, Absolutely, sir, All right, you've been listening and watching Our community connection brought to you in part by Arnold mooreton Nicamp Funeral Home and Tall Grass Motors on K one