AARON KIRKPATRICK FOR WARD 4

0:00Meet the Red Bull Dragonberry Emergizer. It's one of the many new drinks out now. Who knew ice cold drinks could be so? Fire. Try them all only at McDonald's. Hi, this is Dave Roberts. Heading into summer without a medical emergency kit, that's a risk. Summer colds can linger and getting sick on vacation can derail everything. That's why everyone needs a medical emergency kit. It includes doctor prescribed medications to treat common and serious illnesses. So if you wake up sick, at home or on the road, you already have what you need. It's like having an urgent care and pharmacy at home. Say $45 with code blue at urgentcare kit.com. Slash blue. Urgentcare kit.com. Slash blue. Good morning, good morning, welcome, welcome, welcome, welcome, it is time now for community connection right here on K1, the one you trust. And running for re-election for award for is Aaron Kirkpatrick and Aaron Benbysi, a little term hesitant.

1:05Yeah, oh man it has and first good morning Tom, good morning Bartlesville. It's great to be back with you again. Yeah, man, we've gotten so much done in two years and it's exciting to see what's coming. There's so many good things on the horizon for Bartlesville. And at times it feels like we're just experiencing like the very beginnings of a boom. And man, it's just it's cool to watch, it's fun to be a part of. Well, a boom that has started has been at the airport. I think that is the best kept little secret here in town. Oh man, so yeah, last night at the city council meeting, I had the privilege of sponsoring an approval that we did for more funding for three new box hangers. So we are in the process of completing an enormous box hanger out there. And then we're going to build three more. We're doing infill. So we've been building out infrastructure and all that. And people might say, well, you know, do we have that many private planes or you know, like, where's all this needed for? And we do have a lot of hobbyists out there, a lot of people that might be like. But on top of all of that, the second largest industry in Oklahoma is the aerospace industry, which is planes.

2:12So we're building all of this infrastructure out because there are more and more companies looking to expand because because basically companies fly airplanes from all over the country into the center of the country to get worked on refurbished, torn down whatever. So our we are we're very blessed and we've been intentional about some of this to make sure that our runway can handle like 737. It's like we can handle big, big planes out there. And we are positioning ourselves so that we have a company like Phoenix Rising that is, you know, started doing plane repair and refurbishment. They can grow and other companies can come in. And so like I personally reached out and been talking to management of a company that's outside of Bartlesville that has been growing like crazy and saying, hey, come look at our facilities. You know, come talk to the BDA. We'd love to see if there's a chance for us to partner with you. And yeah, so it's really exciting to have, you know, this big one almost done. It's expected to be done in October. And then we've got three more that they're going to be beginning construction on. All right. Now we also had the boy scouts involved with last night. Oh, yeah. So not with the airplanes, but the oh man. So the boy scouts are I think they're now called scouting America.

3:16So they are doing something incredible. So of course, I think lots of people know that we lost our recycler, which was replenish. And the question was, what are we going to do next? Well, even while replenish was here, the boy scouts started stepping up and voluntarily doing recycling at their headquarters. And it's part of their sustainability push. And so I didn't realize how big of a thing this this needs to them. So if you go over there, like they've already got things set out where you sort it yourself, but it's always clean. It's picked up. It's very nice. And they were already shipping tons of recycling to be used the second time. So they've got their office at Adams and Kuala Pa and so they've already been doing this recycling. Well, they stepped up and said, we'd like to be considered to take over all the recycling for Bartlesville. Well, last night, we approved that partnership. It's actually right now. It's costing the city less than it was before, which is really cool. And they're doing just an incredible job. Part of the reason that, you know, they're doing a lot of this through volunteer hours, but part of the reason they wanted to partner with the city

4:17because the city has the ability to write grants that the Boy Scouts by themselves can't do. So by doing this partnership, we hope to be able to get them lots and lots of resources. And one of the things they're really shooting for right now is they want to buy that old super six building that is right next to their building. They want to be able to expand this operation and they want that building because it will provide a drive through service where you can actually drive through and deposit your recycling. So I would just I would suggest if anybody's feeling charitable looking for a place to do into the year donation, whatever, you know, look at look at the local scouting organization because this might really be a helpful place. I want to share one cool thing about them because I want to brag on Bartlesville whenever possible. So our local, it's a they're called the Cherokee area council. And that's our local scout scout council. They just won the Bellman award for sustainability in Tulsa and when you look at the slide they showed us of the four or five entities that won this award. They're all major corporations and then our scouting council. That's incredible, man. Like they're doing work all over the state to first sustainability and and they're teaching kids about recycling and about, you know, just all this neat stuff and they were recognized at a huge event.

5:29And they're just doing it because that's just this who they are. I mean, I think it's amazing. You know, if you go down there and you talk to Philip Wright, he's about the most humble guy in the world. Oh, yeah, you would never know. Yeah, let's pride it out of him. Oh, yeah, man. We might want. Yeah, we did. So excited about what they're doing, but he's he's on fire. Yes, with their mission and that that is just good stuff. Yeah, it just infectious positive energy. I love it. I wish we could bottle that, but you know, he's blessed with a lot of it, but wow, that is something else. I tell us a little bit about housing downtown and also all over town. What are we seeing here? Yeah, so one of the things. One of the things I know we felt just personally, I think a lot of us have felt is the pinch of housing prices feeling all over the country. You know, we saw we saw housing prices rise about 40% after between 2020 and 2025, which is across the country. And of course, as housing prices went up, so did rent prices. So it made some houses unaffordable for people. The average age of a first time home buyer in America that sure was 40. I remember when it was like 27. Yeah, oh, it was. So that that to me, that is and it makes me angry, honestly.

6:38But so we're feeling it, you know, even though Bartlesville is still one of the most affordable places to live, we've seen that inflation here too. And we saw it doubly on the homelessness task force when we were looking at what are the hurdles that keep people from getting off the street. One of the one of the reasons that people end up becoming homeless, especially when it's a more temporary kind of thing is because the line moved and their income didn't. And so one of the big things was how do we provide more housing? Okay, so that's that's background. Some of this is happening because the state is involved. So there's a new 108 house development going in north of Oak Park. That is being there. There's a developer who is building it. It's being funded partially with state tax credits. And it's kind of confusing. Google that. It's going to be a little while to understand it. But essentially what that means is there'll be rentals, at least a bunch of will be rentals for the first 15 years. And after 15 years, some of them can be sold because the state wants more affordable housing built. But it's not it's not subsidized housing. So sometimes they'll build like, you know, section eight housing and government funds, you know, like, you know, help people pay for whatever it's not the way this is going to work. The way this one works, my understanding is, because there's tax incentives on the front end, the developer will have below market pricing for the rents.

7:55So that is great news for people who own property in in Oak Park, you know, maybe you own a house out there like we haven't seen new development out there for a couple of decades now. So it's really, really good to see new growth going on out there. But also we're going to have more people pulling in now that so the state's doing that we got developers doing stuff all over downtown is a huge opportunity. So we're working for about 18 months now on an idea called rebuild capital hill. I remember that. So rebuild capital hill is going to take money that we have in was called a tiff district. It's tiff to and capital hill is basically everything west of the Canary River and south to 11th Street and ends of the train track. So it just goes around downtown. You can look it up on on my website. But the houses that are in their qualify or they fall into tiff to and tiff to essentially at 20 years ago we said a ceiling on property taxes. Everything that was currently being collected state there every improvement to property tax increase was captured by the barsville redevelopment trust authority to be reinvested into that community.

8:58We are now in the process the final stages of rolling out. We're now rolling out this rebuild capital hill plan which will take existing programs the BRTA already has and it's going to add some more programs to it to make sure that we to to number one help people who want to do like small and important repairs and upgrades their house to help people who need to do those upgrades but can't afford to do so and help people who want to come in and do major projects to totally renovate houses or or build in fill. That that when that tiff rolled off last year it was left with between two and three million dollars about 2.8. And so our calculations are by the time that money has all been deployed we're looking at somewhere between six and 10 million dollars of new investment because people are going to come in with their own money and get these grants and then really re rebuild capital hill. That will not only help the neighborhood and everybody who lives there and homeowners it will also help our rental prices because currently 30% of the doors in capital hill are sitting vacant.

10:02Well in a neighborhood of 1400 doors you bring 30% of those online for the first time in a couple of decades all of a sudden you have a lot more rental options and that should hopefully have a deflating effect on on some of the rental prices. So our goal is to make things more affordable for people to buy and live in more affordable fix up if you're already living in them and also more affordable to rent along the way. Great wow super. Hey I do want to recap the the airport things. We've got we're only paying a small portion of it and it's all because of the aeronautics industry really booming right. Yeah and you bring up a good point about funding. So a huge portion of some of it is federal money from the FAA some of it is ODAA. So that's the Oklahoma Department of Aerospace and aeronautics and then a big part of the reason that these even work is because of these projects come to us. This has been because of the legwork done by the BDA the bar was a little development authority. So they have been very intentional by the way they have invested the money that has come through our economic development sales tax.

11:10And they have stored up so that they are ready to move on this. So the city is on the hook for about 5% but a huge chunk of that has been covered by the BDA. Wow that's great. And you've reached out to folks saying hey we could be open for business here right now. I've I've led tours of the airport. No, great. It's one make sure we got that. And so I also local business support tell us a little bit about Bob. Yeah so you know we got all these new employers coming to town which is great it's called primary industry but we want to make sure that our local businesses are supported as well. We want to see them grow and thrive. In fact I mean nothing would make us happier than seeing our local businesses become these massive businesses as well. Right. Yeah, we're pretty great. And so I've had the opportunity to sit down with a bunch of different business owners lightly here their needs, here their hopes, here their concerns. And so we're in the process of working together with them to kind of figure out how do we how do we support them so that they can take what they are doing and thrive in Bartlesville.

12:11And some of the suggestions they have are like are just so practical you slide yourself in the forehead and go how come I didn't think of this. You know like like oh yeah of course and that's what happens when you listen to people who are doing it every day. And I've opened businesses in Bartlesville but each business is a little different. Each industry is a little different so their needs or their costs or their expenses or their you know the marketing needs what are they all different. So I'm excited to see us while we keep courting new employers. I'm excited to see us also courting and supporting our local businesses and trying to try to light a fire you know what it's cooking with gas what they say. Yeah, we want to see them thrive. So I've appreciated those business owners that have reached out and said hey can we share with you it's like yeah absolutely let's do something with this. Alright lastly because we've got other interviews to get to today you recently did an exploration on the resignation of our former city manager. What were your findings? Well this is a long post this on my Facebook page so I'll keep it short. The main and important things contrary to what has been insinuated by people who have not done the research.

13:19Nothing illegal happened. None of our there was no allegation or any indication of any kind of financial mismanagement. We didn't have any specific policies that we had in place that were broken. The mayor mayor occurred asked our former city manager to resign. The city manager accepted that suggestion and part of what you'll hear people upset about is you know entitled to severance it did. And that is really really really common in businesses especially at the executive level. Again there this is one of those things where I think if it happened six months ago everybody would have gone. You know the rumor mill kind of would have done what the rumor mill did and then we said okay what comes next you know let's look for the hire we're doing as the city council we're supposed to be doing. So the reason is how do we fill you know the role and make sure that Bartlesville is led well into the future. It's an election season and so candidates are doing what candidates do and that is well you know looking trying to create something isn't there because it gets attention.

14:25And that's fine again it's reasonable ask questions that's why I went and asked them and did the did the investigation so I can tell you this stuff. Okay very good. And how can people find out more about you with your reelection coming up? It's Aaron for ward4.com you can follow me on Facebook that's where I do a ton of communication and I'd love to have you be a part of the conversation. Alright Aaron thank you very much for being with us today. Thank you.