Good morning, good morning, good morning, Welcome, welcome, welcome, any time now for our community connection right here on K one, the one he trust it is outter the Mayor Neil Copeland. He is in with this today and asagi, good morning to you. And it's soggy and good go together for a change.
It's a good morning. It's a wet morning. We need a wet morning. I don't know that we needed it all at once, but I heard the radio this morning. The lakes are filling up and it's looking good. I think I think we'll probably see runoff into the lakes. I've watched this in the past, and as we all have, the runoff will happen for a week or more. It's not just when it rains, it's it just continues to
run in. So I think those will look good. In fact, won't surprise me if they actually start letting some water out of them. But it's a good thing.
We are Copeland. Something really cool happened over the weekend. Kind of came in under the wire, but wow, sure was nice for our town.
It was I don't I've seen nothing about it, but there was an amazing thing. I had the privilege of having a very small part. But uh there's a group called the Oklahoma Association of Student Councils the OASC, and they had their eighty fourth conference in Bartlesville. In fact, they are having it's still going on, but they had their opening event on Saturday. Got a chance to visit with them. There are over two thousand people from across
our state in Bartlesville. If you've been out this weekend, you've seen buses and vans and shuttles at the hotels and motels, at restaurants. It's a tremendous thing. It gives you confidence in our young people to see this many young folks and their leaders focused on learning leadership skills. It was kind of interesting, of course it's it's younger people and the theme that they selected they've been working on this, I guess for months and even years was
once upon a Leader. It's kind of a Disney sort of a thing. But it was great. Got a chance, like I say, to talk to them and see them. And it's a huge impact for Bartlesville. And it's huge impact. I was talking to someone said, who knows five or ten or forty years from now, who in that group will be in positions of leadership that perhaps got starred or at least got some training here today.
Cool, very cool. You know we got the election coming. I hear we have an election. I've heard that, yeah, and I've heard city hallsmen got it busy too, because the election board right upstairs. And who you've been getting the visitors? You represent Ward one on the city council as well as being mayor of our community. Tell us a little bit about.
The war I do Ward one, And first I want to thank you Tom and Nathan and the radio station for hosting the forum that we had last week. I think it was a great chance. Obviously you talk to people all the time, but it was a great way for everyone to get to be introduced and know a little bit more about each candidate. And I enjoyed that
and appreciate you doing that. Word one that I represent and where I live, of course, runs from Highway seventy five Washington Boulevard east to Madison Boulevard, so between the Highway and Madison, and then from north to south. It runs from No Water Road, which is Highway sixty up to Nebraska. Now there's a little bit of a jog offset over by Wilson's School. But basically it's rectangular and covers that area, so anyone living there is in Ward One when you go to vote, and I encourage you
strongly to vote. If everybody votes. It was great last week to go to city Hall and although perhaps not what I anticipated, but to stand in line and visit with volks, But there were lots of people with the same idea. Turnout has been tremendous, and I think that's a great thing. It's discouraging when you have a vote and only a few people turn out, so this is a good thing. But represented Ward One have lived here
for a long long time. I attended schools in Bartlesville, went to McKinley, which McKinley's not McKinley anymore, but it was when I was there. Then went to Ranch Heights Madison and graduated what was called Sooner. We now call that Madison. So change happens. Both of my sons also went to Ranch Heights and later Madison and on through the schools system. My grandsons, two of them have gone through the school system and graduated. One of my sons
is in law enforcement. One of my grandsons, hard to believe because I'm not that old. Is now a teacher here in Bartlesville. So we've enjoyed this community, gotten a lot from it, and hopefully have been able to give back. We operated, my wife and I with my parents and then they retired, but we operated a local appliance sales and service business. Finally retired after fifty one years. Been here a long time. Had FedEx Ship Center for a while for about thirteen years of that. So we've been
involved do a lot of stuff. With the Scouting program. I've worked with them since the eighties when my kids were in Scouting and later my grandsons. I've been involved, of course with our church. Worked with city government now for several years. I had opportunity to be a member. This one is another long one. The ODEQ has a group called the Hazardous Waste Management Advisory Council. I was appointed by governors to serve on that in twenty twenty. We just had a meeting a couple of weeks ago
and then it was really honored too. It's amazing when you live in a small community because you know all the other people, but every once in a while they turn around and look at you. That is always a surprise. I was surprised. I was awarded the Tom Shoemake Award in twenty twenty four. So it's been a great place to live. It still is a great place to live. We just want to keep it that way.
City council people have their different ideas of what it does, of what it's supposed to do.
Kind of clarify that. For the Cita council has two primary functions in Bartlesville. This is not television, This is not Houston, this is not Chicago. The city council oversees policy and budget. We do not run the city per se. The city manager deals with his employees. We deal with the city manager. We are charged with running a balanced budget. That budget covers everything from police and fire to parks and streets and water and wastewater. There's a variety of things.
They're all important at one time or another, two different folks in different ways. But our job is to try. I always tell people to run a boring government that just works. You have good people. We have a good staff. You have good people doing good work. You provide them with the tools that they need and they get the job done. The trash gets picked up, the parks are mode, water flows and things happen. A lot of times people see television or whatever and they think the drama very
little positive gets accomplished. When you have dissension and arguments. It's great to have discussions and to look at improvements and changes. I think we do that, but that's the function of government. It can be boring, but the stability and the consistency that's achieved, I think is what people
really want. For instance, a strategic reserve not something that comes up often, but it's our rainy day account that allows us to continue to provide those consistent services even when the economy might go down.
I'd say during the recent pandemic.
During the pandemic, if you remember back eighth nine, that in fact, that's when that strategic reserve was first implemented. Was after that because if you don't have income, then you can't pay your people, and they deserve to be paid. Over fifty percent of our total operating budget goes to public safety, police and fire. Those are the folks that
are out in the storms. They're the people that are out at two in the morning on Thanksgiving Day when I'm home warm and having pumpkin fire, sleeping or whatever I'm doing, and we need that one of the things that it flows out into a lot of different things. For instance, our fire department currently has a rating of two. There's only a few places in the state that have a rating of one, and we're very close to that.
But the reason that's important is not only because it's important for public safety, but that is something that impacts my and your insurance rates. So our premiums. If our fire department is less than that, our ratings would go up, our insurance premiums would change. So there's just a lot of things that go on. It's not important until it's important.
And if you have a problem with a street drained backed up, now it's a problem, and so we try to avoid that and keep things working and going smoothly.
Very good. Got some big issues for the next council term.
What are they, Well, it depends on and we don't know what's going to come up. But in my viewpoint right now, the thing that we've just got to keep a focus on tom is the streets. We've got over five hundred lane miles. They all need attention, some more than others. We prioritize that based on the condition of the index what's called a PCI Pavement Condition Index. Streets and Traffic Committee is a tremendous resource that looks at
that and makes recommendations across the city. How much traffic is this street, Like Frank Phillips in front of the radio station gets a lot more traffic than a cul de sac in my neighborhood, and so all that because we never have enough money, and so we have to use that wisely, just like you do at home. Do I fix the roof or do I buy a new sportscar? Well they're both nice, but at some point I have to decide which one has to happen given the resources
I have. It's probably a bad example, but I like Sportscar. But I think we do an overall good job of that. And it's involving over two hundred other volunteers for all the different committees and things that we have, from parks to cemeteries, to golf courses to streets to zoning City Hearing Committee that looks at all the zoning variances and approvals because ultimately the city council only can do what the citizens have approved. We have GEO bonds, General obligation
bonds or property tax. We have sales taxes or our two primary sources of funding, and I'd like to have a lot more money for streets. But I think we really need to continue focusing on streets. It's just important, and I think it's the number one thing that we all deal with. But we want to also look at our public safety in our parks and all those other things. They're important. Now.
Water supply. We touched on that just a little bit ago because it's been raining and by Collie we needed it.
We have sometimes a group called messing that online. So that was the worst drought in one hundred years for this area, just in the last several months. And then we go from drought and they were having fires at some of our neighbors and having to evacuate neighborhoods I believe in Pasca a week ago or less than a week ago. And then we go to these torrential rains that have begun to refill our lakes and talk to another lady. Their pond had been dry, was refilling, and
that's just apparently the way Olakclum is. Now. We won't have a water problem. Well, maybe we'll have too much water, but we won't have an immediate water shortage problem, but that doesn't mean we're going to stop, nor have we. Now. I know that not everyone has seen the progress the total final solution, but a lot has been accomplished. We've gotten more water supply at Copan Lake. We're working to
get more. We hope that the worda bill that's going through Congress right now will allow us to get the rest of the available water at Copan. We're dealing with the corp of Engineers for Cela Lake on floodpool reallocation. We're looking at other sources, whether it be Calllake. We've looked at Skytook, We've looked at Birch, We've looked at all these different things. We've looked at an aquifer in Osah County. So we're continuing to work on all of that.
The cost can get very, very large. I've had someone mention that another community in Oklahoma had accomplished a water supply from Call Lake. But that was almost three hundred million dollars spent to do that, and that's a number too big for me to comprehend. In some ways, if you divide that by the number of water users that we have here now, it becomes real when I start saying five, six, twelve, fourteen thousand dollars per household. That's
a real number I can understand. And that's what the city council wants to be very careful that we not only find a solution, a good solution, but an affordable solution, and not just spend because we're spending taxpayers money and that's mine and that's yours. But it's important and I think that we've been very careful with that. We are making progress. Our Washington DC delegation, our senators and congressmen are very aware when I call them that I'm going
to want to talk about water. So we are making progress and we will continue to do so, but we will do it to find the best affordable solution.
Del Copeland is a guesstand. Of course, tomorrow is election day and we've already kind of touched on at early turnout. That's been awesome.
It has been It's been great to see so many people. Let's get to visit with people that you haven't seen in a while. But it was great. A little frustrated, stand in line, but there are worse things to do, and the system worked well. Oklahoma has an amazing election system. I wish a lot of the other states would come and learn about it and copy it. But yeah, great.
It'll be open tomorrow from seven in the morning till seven in the evening, and then starting at seven oh one, tom I guess you'll be telling us what's happening.
We'll get your pencils to score cards. Ready, we'll be popping a popcorn.
And plenty of heads. Yeah. I think our reports are our results will come in pretty quickly. I don't know about the rest of it the national scene, but we'll see where we're going to go and then move forward. That's the way our system of a constitutional republic was designed to work, and we want to follow that. It's worked well for two hundred and seventy years. Now.
Yeah, now, Dale, this is the part where everybody gets a closing statement.
Okay, well again, for those that don't know me, my name is Dale Copeland. I remember Copeland appliance for all of those years. That's us, and I want to have the opportunity to serve you for a two year term. On Ward one we've talked about world. Ward one is I'm always available for questions. I think it surprises people to hear that I don't get that many calls, I don't get that many emails, and when we do, I
enjoy visiting with people. One of the things about the election that's been great is the chance to visit with more folks. What I learned is that we're not that different. That we both want good things for the community. We might differ on this or that, and we talk and find out that that's a reasonable thing. So we've had a lot of opportunities. We've got a lot more opportunities.
I'm involved in the community, and I think that it's fair to say that I've got the experience and the understanding of how our city works to continue to help us grow and go forward. We need new jobs for our young people, we need new housing, we need to continue work as I've talked on our streets, and all of those things are important, but it takes a while to learn how government works. And I think ready to
start from day one. Everything needs attention. But we need to take care of our tax dollars and use them carefully and safely. Bartlesville is a really special place, and I just want to help that continue to grow and go forward. I've spent my entire adult life coming up to this point, and i think I've got the skills and the knowledge and the experience to keep Bartlesville going forward.
So Tom, I'm just asking that if you live in Ward One, you're going to see my name on that ballot and just mark that ballot for Dale Copeland that I can continue to work with the city Council.
Thank you, Dale Copeland, appreciate it.
Thank you.