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City of Bartlesville
Posted: Aug 05, 2025 9:58 AMUpdated: Aug 05, 2025 10:10 AM
CITY MATTERS: Ward 4 Councilor Aaron Kirkpatrick
Nathan Thompson
Ward 4 Bartlesville City Councilor Aaron Kirkpatrick was our Tuesday guest for City Matters on KWON.
Kirkpatrick discussed several items of interest from Monday evening's City Council meeting, including a bridge project on Sunset Boulevard, the new box hangar that will be built at airport by the Bartlesville Development Authority and an abatement and possible demolition of a house.
Additionally, Kirkpatrick brought some good news after the E. coli scare that spurred a water boil order in July. He said the Water Department investigated the test site to determine exactly what happened to cause a positive test for the bacteria. Kirkpatrick said the stand pipe where the test was initiated did come back with a problem, but it did not spread to the rest of the water system.
"We never had E. coli in our drinking water system. There was a standpipe, which is essentially the place where we test the water. Water can flow into it, but it cannot backflow out of it," Kirkpatrick said. " There was a spot between the backflow valve to our water supply, where it was going to the houses, and where the water came out to be tested, that was not getting fully flushed. When they pulled it out, they cut it, they removed it, they sealed it off and they're gonna put a new standpipe in."
Kirkpatrick said the source of the bacteria appears to have been an animal that got into the stand pipe, but again the E. Coli never spread from that point.
Another item that has been the focus of many community members is the road preservation project that has many streets in Bartlesville looking like a gravel road.
Kirkpatrick explains what the status of the project is and some of the lessons learned during the work.
"We did a whole bunch of road projects at once. The goal, the way this was supposed to work, is within four to six weeks, you'd start ripping up a road here, the process has to sit for a couple of weeks, so they were going to be moving through the community, ripping up roads. By the time they got to the last one, they'd circle back around, start laying the new topping, and it was going to be a very efficient process, which again, saves us money," Kirkpatrick said.
"Two things happened. Number one, it's very moisture sensitive, and we got a ton of rain this spring and summer," he said. "That delayed everything in a way that I don't think city staff fully anticipated, fully understood. We've learned from that.
"That delayed things and we had a subcontractor that was doing the process wrong, so kudos to Micah Seamers and the rest of our engineering and our guys over there, because they went out and inspected the work that was being done by the subcontractor. The general contractor fired that subcontractor, and then had to hire someone else to do the job.
"It didn't cost us any more money, but in doing all of that, that created another delay. So a four- to six-week process has now been going on for like three months."
The projects are expected to finally be wrapped up in mid-September.
Listen to "CITY MATTERS: Ward 4 City Councilor Aaron Kirkpatrick 8-5-2025" on Spreaker.
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