The Guthrie City Council Tuesday was updated by City Manager Eddie Faulkner about the City’s sales tax revenue, and budget planning for the next fiscal year.
“We’re working actively on the budget at this time and we have begun the first round of negotiations with the FOP,” Faulkner said. “As we’re working on this budget, we’re watching our sales tax collections very closely. As we’ve talked throughout the year we’ve had a roller coaster ride. We’ve had a high month. We’ve had a really low period of time, which spanned about four months. And then in May’s collections, we were up 9%.”
Faulkner said the City’s sales tax revenue is down for the year.
“Overall, we are still down 2.1% for the year, so we have a budget deficit at this point of $121,000,” he said. “We’re going to watch the next two months pretty closely. That’ll get us through the end of the third quarter, which hopefully if we continue the trend of being higher rather than lower, we can come out a bit ahead of what the budget projections were. So that is ongoing. The department head’s first budget deadline is June 21.
In other matters, the Council heard a presentation by Curt Foster, Chief Executive Officer and founder of BlueJay Executive Partners, Inc., about the potential use of the BlueJay app to increase information flow between police officers and drivers Police Chief Don Sweger told the Council that the Guthrie Police Department is interested in partnering with BlueJay through a memorandum of understanding. He said there is no cost to the City and can be canceled at any time.
Sweger said BlueJay provides an app that appears to increase information flow between officers and drivers. Driver/ owner participation is voluntary and the police department doesn’t retain any personal information of the driver.
Foster said as an example, the app allows drivers to tie medical, mental or other conditions to their license plate number. This provides the officer more information that may prevent misunderstandings or unnecessary incidents. “BlueJay is a state-ofthe- art technology designed to provide more information for the police officer and the driver during a routine traffic stop,” Foster said. “Traffic stops are anything but routine. The BlueJay profile will provide officers with humanizing information that will include your first language, occupation, health issues, mental health issues, disabilities, and if you are a veteran.
Foster added “If you have a loved one that might have hypertension, dementia, autism speaks another language or someone that struggles with the disability by simply typing in your license tag, the Bluejay profile will give the officer this information before they approach your vehicle. At the same time, the police officer will send you a humanizing profile with their name, badge number, police department, and the reason why you were pulled over and also humanize the picture of themselves.”
Foster said the app will follow up on each traffic stop and ask five questions for app users to relay their experience with the police officer.
“24 hours after the stop you’ll receive five questions. These questions are taken straight from the police handbook, so we’re not creating questions to criminalize police officers. It’s just getting feedback,” Foster said. “That information will be gathered in the Bluejay office where we will send the collective responses to the (police) Captains and Lieutenants so they can see how the citizens are rating their (police officers) car side manner.”
District 31 Rep. Collin Duel, R-Guthrie and District 33 Rep. John Talley, R-Stillwater were on hand at the Council meeting to present a Legislative citation recognizing Sweger being named the 2024 Small Agency Chief of the Year by the Oklahoma Association of Chiefs of Police.
“I would like to thank you personally for letting me bother you all the time,” Talley told Sweger. “When things come across our desk at the Capitol and it deals with police, I need people, we need people that we trust that will tell us the truth of how it’s going to affect all of Oklahoma. I appreciate you that we can bother you.”