[Music] welcome to lon's Legacy even more in 24 a new video stories that I'm starting with our city manager John ratp hi John hi all right it's great to be here we're excited to be doing this in order to tell our story even better so many great things are happening in Lon Fort Sill and it's important that we find ways to get the story out sometimes I don't even realize everything that we have going on I want to tell you a little story about that John last week uh as you know I was at the Oklahom Municipal contractors Association where the city of Lon was presenting their projects and what we were doing obviously was trying to get more people to come and bid on our projects so that we get lower cost for our citizens and my job John was to stand up and say nice things about the city of lton and introduce our amazing Public Utilities director Rusty wee and hunt and Rusty got up John and he gave this presentation it was a slideshow and with every project we have going on he had a different slide while he didn't tell of any project that I wasn't aware of I had never seen all of the projects we have going on with there must have been over 40 and he left a few out as a matter of fact we're going to talk about some of that in a in a little bit and that was the 10 wins road projects so my point of all that is we have so much work going on here in the city we need to find ways to get our story out to build pride in the Community mayor I think that's a great introduction and I'd like to talk a little bit about the 10 wins um and in a recent council meeting um we discussed this and it was approved and I just can't I don't think you can overstate how significant these road projects are um you know I've driven a couple of these segments myself um they're very smooth where as you know in the past there was potholes there was all kinds of um asphalt uh that was that was decaying or giving away and it it means a lot to our citizens and you know it means a lot to our businesses you know businesses want to come to communities where the roads are in good working order families want to come to places where they can get around easily and and they're not having to navigate Ro roads that are um filled with pot with potholes so I think that that's an important uh First Step it's not the not the end of the road per se um but it's a first good first step to get our city infrastructure back to where it needs to be and we called that first segment uh 10 wins for the citizens On Target and on time and what was behind that was we've never had a project before that I'm aware of where we completed 10 Road Pro uh resurfacing projects in one year but at the at the last council meeting the council added 30 roads and directed those to go out for bid now something significant about those is that would be equal to about 60 road projects the size of the 10 winds so we are making great strides and just a little heads up the council's going to want the those completed by Thanksgiving I'm sure we've talked about that and um in councilman Warren's words who is our longest serving council member he's had 20 years off and on on the council he's never seen so much work going on in this city of Lon at one time in his 20 years on the council that's amazing truly impressive I think everybody's heard about our true north statement by now and the true north statement is all about what we really aspire to be it starts off with our vision a community of choice where families Thrive now for me that Vision says uh our focus on everything that we do and every decision that we make is about becoming that community of choice where families Thrive and we saw things happen at the council meeting that are going to come up over time that we see now the true north culture statement also says everything is about the citizen and uh world class customer service it's even what's behind our 10 wins and now what will be 40 wins on 40 roads for the citizens John can you talk a little bit about the true north culture and how this how the staff is adopting it and how it's getting embedded in our culture uh yes mayor sure um I I think that the the first place to start here is you know you've got to realize that there's an issue and I think for years uh our our our government wasn't responsive to our citizens um we didn't do things efficiently um we did the bare minimum to get by in many cases and so once you identify the problem you can go about fixing it and I and I feel that the true Nord philosophy and and these Awards and the award recipients are the individuals that embody and personify that change um and and I'm glad that you mention the citizens because everything that we we do is for the citizens and it's not just lip service you know we talk about it at Council meetings we talk about it at director's meetings and you know I'm not suggesting that we have accomplished everything that we want to accomplish we know that there's still a lot of room for growth uh we acknowledge that and we're going to continue on this process until we get to the point of Meeting those ideals and even when we meet those ideals we're going to there's always going to be something else to improve so it's it never stops it's just constant evaluation of yourself and being honest with yourself and the citizens and we're going to continue to strive to make this a community of choice and to make our government the most efficient municipal government in the state I love that you know I love hearing that so I got to tell you I heard something the other day and I believe it's absolutely true and I know each of our department is coming up with strategic initiatives that they'll be presenting at budget time which is coming up f faster than we think and they're coming up with goals and and all of that but you know here's what I heard culture eats strategy for breakfast so we can have strategies to move forward and we do but the culture of our organization is so much more important than even strategy um you got any thoughts on that um I I I do because if you don't have the culture to support strategic initiatives you're never going to get there and so the culture has to be one of constant Improvement constant evaluation and that's you mentioned the budget one of the things that we're going to do in the budget process is we're going to evaluate our Performance Based on metrics and you know with with government and and service to to people you can't you can't quantify everything but I think that you've said it well in the past that if you don't measure anything there you never really have any empirical data to to you know to objectively look at yourself and to determine whether or not you need to improve so I I I agree with that statement mayor and I think that you do the culture has to be in place first and and of course the strategy is important and at the last council meeting uh I was very impressed that um we had three departments Report with metrics comparing to peer cities and I really appreciated that uh very [Music] important you know John our vision a community of choice where families Thrive we repeat that often and for me I've said before um everything revolves around that vision statement now at the last council meeting we approved authorization for the Youth Sports Authority to proceed with leasing or purchasing property for the sports facility which I think is expanded in its idea to include indoor and outdoor activities can you as a as a parent of school AG children can you talk a little bit about how you feel about our vision statement and how important the youth sports are to a a community of choice where families Thrive uh sure mayor I I I would I'd be happy to I I think that you Sports um are critical in the development of children there are multiple studies out there that indicate that children that are involved in use sports are more likely to uh perform better academically um are more likely to go on to higher education um and and and a and essentially achieve more in life and the discipline and the uh skills that children get in playing us Sports um are absolutely essential for their their life you know they go in they're on a team they're part of something bigger than themselves they interact with other children of different socioeconomic groups and different ethnicities and by playing these Sports together they learn critical skills like problem solving and communicating and working together as a or for a common purpose and and so you just can't you just can't overstate how significant that is and lot in becoming a community of choice in Southwest Oklahoma because that development is essential for that child's long-term success and not to mention the additional benefits that the childes like children that play sports are more confident um they're more uh likely to to uh get out there and try different things and that's what we want to challenge our children we want to uh put them in situations that are out of their comfort zone so they can for so they can grow so our our uh if I'm not mistaken I'll Pro I hope I get this right the goal of the Youth Sports Authority is for lton to become the premier youth sports program in the state of Oklahoma as a parent how do you feel about that that that makes me extremely happy for all those reasons that that we've talked about but I think what has happened in the past and I've I've been a part of this group is that families they felt like they had to go some where else they had to drive to Duncan in our case we we've driven to Norman so our kids could could participate in different athletic programs that weren't available here now that those programs are here that just is going to make our community stronger so John I I really don't think that you can have a community of choice where young families Thrive if you don't have a great your sports program and I think our goal of being the premier youth sports program in Oklahoma actually gives that a great Kickstart and as a great place to be that's about all the time that we have for today we've got so many things to tell you we're going to be coming back again and again every month we're going to do this segment with the city manager myself we're going to talk about the great things going on in L for S we're going to have other ways to tell you all the great things going on in loton Fort S and you'll see a continuous uh release of videos made by our awesome media Department as they work to tell even more in 24 now I want to let you know ahead of time at the February 13th council meeting at 2:00 and if you can't catch it live that's okay because you can go to the city of Lon YouTube channel and watch it later but we're going to have a presentation of all of the project going on in lton Fort S at the February 13th council meeting you will be blown away thank you for joining us today
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