Episode 89: Glenn Barham Joins Us: Local Politics and Community Spirit Uncovered!

The trio talks events, burritos, and visits with Glenn Barham, former Wichita Falls mayor and current president of the Sheppard Military Affairs Committee.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You make this rather snappy,won't you? I have some very heavy
thinking to do before 10:00.Hey, welcome to another episode of
get it Right Texoma with thetrio. I'm Mike Hendren. This is Terry
McAdams at the Tres Seralaover there. We're glad to have you

(00:20):
here. We get together toentertain and entertain and inform
you. That's hard to say earlyin the day. And we also hope to enlighten
you as well. And it has been areally, really interesting few days
here as we record this. Mostof us got rained on over the weekend

(00:41):
total.
What have we had since the weekend?
We.
A lot.
We think the area average isgoing to be around 6.6inches on average
overall. I know we had closeto six where I live. I know a couple
of people said they had sevenplus. So it's. Yeah.
We good for Texoma in thewhole area.

(01:01):
It absolutely is. But thankyou for joining us. Be sure to visit
our website. By the way, getit right texoma.com.
Also, today is election day.
Yes.
We're not going to talk aboutit because it just. You won't hear
this until it's over. And wehave a great special guest today.
We do have a very specialguest today. Glenn Barham is a former
Wichita Falls mayor and aretired Wichita Falls police officer.

(01:25):
He currently serves, I believeas the chairman or the executive
director or he'll tell us.
Yes, we'll find out.
It's the Shepherd Public affairs.
Military Affairs.
Military affairs committee.Yeah, we'll let him explain all that
when he gets here. But, well,needless to say, Glenn's been a very
busy guy. Very Busy the last45 years or so. So anyway, Glenn

(01:49):
will talk to us about thatwhen he gets here a little later
in the program. So we'll getright into it. We've got s'mores
and pours coming up featuringthe killer dueling pianos, which,
by the way, if you've neverseen these dueling piano guys do
their thing, pretty interesting.
Whoo.
On fire.

(02:10):
Killer dueling piano.
Killer dueling pianos. Now, Idon't know if I've seen this one
specifically, but I've seen acouple of different duos do this
dueling piano thing. It'sreally cool to watch. This is going
to be at the Sykes Lake EventCenter 6 to 10pm on the 16th. You
get the tickets at CampfireUSA office.
This Campfire of North Texasis putting this event on. This event

(02:32):
was a happened a few years agopre Covid then went on hiatus I know
when I was on the board wewere planning to revitalize this
event and they've done it andI think it's great. And it's kind
of a neat. I don't, I don'tknow what the whole concept before
the concept was s'mores andpours. It was a bar, they had beer

(02:53):
and then they also hads'mores. I don't really know all
the details on this, but theyare gonna have the killer dueling
piano thing, which is gonna begreat. And the s'mores. Campfires
of course known for s'mores.So for more information, I think
you can get it on the websitecampfire ntx.org you know, I can
see where.
An ice cold shiner Bach mightpair well with a s'more. I can see

(03:17):
that.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, nice dark beer witha nice sweet s'more.
So go check it out.
That's right. Then on the25th, something that's kind of near
and dear to me because I'm ontheir executive committee, The Fantasy
of Lights is going to open at6pm on the 25th. Now for those of
you that may be watching this,that aren't familiar with this, that

(03:40):
maybe you don't live aroundhere, this is a, this is a truly
local event. It started local80 plus years ago with the Burns
family.
Wow.
It started with onedecoration, with the Burns family.
The Burns family was a localfamily that started out with very
humble beginnings and thenbuilt an empire, an oil empire in

(04:01):
the local area.
Yes, they did well. So Back inthe 1970s, after the Burns family,
the elders, Mr. And Mrs. L.T.burns had passed away, all of the
exhibits kind of went intostorage down in Archer City, Texas.
Yeah, they were actuallydonated to Archer City. What this

(04:23):
is exhibits that wereChristmas exhibits that Mrs. Burns
that the Burns family wouldput out on their lawn. They had a
rather large yard, so theywould put out on their lawn every
year and, and the public wasinvited to go and see these, these
displays. So some of thesedisplays that are still being used
today date back from the 40s,40s and 50s. Yeah, yeah. And they

(04:47):
require lots of maintenanceand stuff. But they were, the whole
thing was dedicated or donatedto the city of Archer City, which
is a community that'sprobably, I don't know, 20 miles
from here, 25 miles from here.And a lot of the workers that work
for the Burns family lived inArcher City. I think that was the
reasoning. That's what I'veheard is the reasoning that they,

(05:07):
they want to donate to thecity of Archer City. For city of
Archer City looks and goes,what the hell are we going to do
with this? Because ArcherCity, if you, once again, if you're
not familiar, the word city isa little of a misnomer. Yeah, more
for community.
More of a hamlet.
Yeah, exactly. So, so anyhow,they didn't know what to do, so it
sat in storage. And then acommittee was formed.

(05:28):
Well, around 1973 or so 74,the Bobby Burns, the son of Mr. And
Mrs. L.T. burns, died veryunexpectedly. We'll just say that.
And the city of Archer Cityapproached, or someone there approached

(05:50):
Midwestern State Universityand said, hey, would you guys like
to have this stuff? Well, MSUin and of itself could not legally
spend money to put thesedisplays out there. They couldn't
pay for it. So a non profitcommittee was formed to raise money.
And In December of 1974, thefirst MSU Burns fantasy of lights
opened on the campus ofMidwestern State University. It all

(06:15):
is lined up on the campusgrounds along Taft Boulevard. You
can drive through and look atthe exhibits, what you can see from
the, from the drive there. Butyou can also get out and walk this
stuff. And there's thousandsof lights. Several of the buildings
are draped with, with lights.You've got all these exhibits. I've

(06:38):
lost count of how many thereare, but it's, it's, I want to say
it's 50 or 51 exhibits.
51 exhibits.
And now we're, and we're upto, you know, 20,000 plus lights.
And as Trey had mentioned,some of these exhibits go back to
the 1940s. The oldest one mayactually go back to around 39 or
40. And I think that may bethe robot that blows the bubbles.

(07:02):
I think that may be the one.It's one of the oldest ones.
You can tell by looking atsome of them that some of them are
weather old. Not that they'rein disrepair, but it's just the design
of them. Especially the one,the Night Before Christmas one, which
is a pretty elaborate exhibitconsidering the age of it.
Yes.
But you could just tell by theway it's designed.

(07:22):
Yes, yeah.
That it's.
Well, there were a lot oftechnologies that we would use today
to create, to create theimages, to create the characters
and so forth. That didn'texist 70 or 80 years ago. So you've
got a lot of, a lot of stuffthere. But some of these exhibits
are very old. It is 100% runby private donations. Midwestern

(07:44):
State University collectingmoney. Exactly. Well, you Know, my
wife and I will stand outthere, you know, three or four nights
out of the, out of this yearand help collect money. We have volunteers
that step up every HumptyDumpty just about every night to
stand out there and helpcollect money for this. We also have
donation boxes on the campus,various places throughout the exhibits

(08:04):
where you can make a donation.You can go to fol msutexas. Edu and
you can see the site, you cansee the exhibits and you can make
a donation online there as well.
Go check it out. It's really astaple now. It's opening a little
earlier. I don't know thatit's earlier than normal, but usually

(08:25):
it opens real close toThanksgiving. But it actually opens
before Thanksgiving this year.
Well, we usually try to openthe Monday prior to Thanksgiving.
Right.
So that way the exhibits arethere, everything's operational,
in place, running and going.And we have 200,000 plus people every
year that show up to see this.It really is November 25, 6pm There

(08:49):
will be food trucks, foodvendors, several of the high school
choirs will perform. The mayorwill give some opening remarks.
It's a big event.
It really is an event. Thefirst 30 minutes of this thing on
the 25th is going to be a lotof, you know, pomp and circumstance.
Yes. So I would get there, Iwould get there by 5:30 and you can,

(09:13):
you can get something to eat,get some, something to drink and
kind of enjoy the pre openingevents. And then the lights go on
at 6 o'clock and we're off and running.
You're under our localrestaurant focus and then we can
get to our guests.
Let's do that. Yeah. So each,each program we try to focus on a
local area, family owned,locally owned restaurant. This week,
this program, I should saythis week. Listen, this program,

(09:36):
Sevy's Burritos is our focus.
They've been around a longtime. I don't know how many years
they've been in business, butI don't know either. I heard of Sevy's
Burritos. I mean I've eaten atSevy's Burritos I believe since high
school.
I'm pretty sure we have.Sevy's is one of those legendary
brands around here. Yeah, it'sa burrito shop. They do, I guess

(09:57):
mostly breakfast burritos. AndI don't know anybody that doesn't
like them. I mean they arebig. They're, they're huge.
Oh, it's a meal. It's morethan meal.
Yeah, you get your money'sworth out of big time. Get your money's
worth out of.
Thumbs up from the audience,but yeah.
Seve's Burritos. What is.They're located on.

(10:19):
They're on 9th Street.
I try to think of the. I knowthey're on Ninth Street. Yeah.
1710. Oh, they're at thecorner of Ninth and Brook. Ninth
and Brook.
Ninth and Brooke. Yeah. Soreally easy to find.
Not right off the street.
They're across from the Walgreens.
There you go.
Yeah.
Across.
Yeah, that's right.
From the Walgreens.
That's right. Yeah. So if youcan find a Walgreens, you can find
seven.

(10:39):
Tight parking, too, becausethey're so busy. But anyway, they
are.
They are very busy. My adviceis get there early and, you know,
bring a 20 bill and you'll.
Or you can call in and pick itup. That's kind of the hot setup
to me is call the order in.That way you can go by and pick it
up. It'd be nice and fresh for you.
Big burrito, bottle of Coke.Yeah, it's all baby.

(11:02):
And it's actually Sev.Severiana. Severiana. Is that Severiana?
Sevy's burritos.
Yes, that's the.
Is that the Facebook page?
Yes, that's the Facebook page.
But I don't know how longthey've been around, but it's been
a long time.
At least since I've been andsince 95.
And before I'm gonna say they.They've had to have been here at
least 35 years. And probablynear 45.

(11:24):
80S. Yeah, at least in the80s, but probably near. Great. Great
local. Local restaurant, goodfood, good service, good people.
Go check them out.
All right, we're going to takea break here for just a moment, and
when we come back, GlennBarham is going to be our guest.
He'll join us here on get itRight Texoma. Back in a moment. Hey,

(11:53):
welcome back to get it RightTexoma with the trio, Mike, Terry,
and Trey. And our very specialguest, as we promised, is Glenn Barham.
Glenn has served with WichitaFalls police department, served on
the city council as both atlarge council member, mayor for six
and a half years. And then youwent on to join the shepherd military

(12:15):
affairs committee. Am I sayingit right?
That's correct?
Yeah.
Or smack daddy.
Yeah.
Smack daddy. Yeah.
Glenn, how are you?
I'm good, Mike. Good to seeyou, Terry.
Yeah. Good to have you.
Morning, sir.
Good to have you.
Now, you're. You're a localguy, right?
I mean, you grew up here. Wemoved here when I was very young,
so I 18 months old when wemoved here. So I was. Wichita Falls

(12:37):
is my home. And went off tocollege back in 1969 and got tired
of being away from WichitaFalls. Came back, went to Midwestern
and I went to work for thePolice Department in 1972 as a dispatcher.
And then also went, went aheadand enrolled out at Midwestern in

(13:00):
criminal justice. And took mefour more years to get that degree
because I decided I wanted tobe a police officer. Went through
the Academy in 1974, graduatedon Memorial Day in May of 74.
Wow.
And 30 years later, plus 2005,June of 2005, I retired and did nothing

(13:23):
for two years. Just sat aroundthe house, did a lot of work around
the house, outside things thatwe needed to get done that just never
got done. And a lot of folksat the Fire association started pestering
me about running for cityCouncil, wanting me to run for council.
And I said no, my plan is towait, wait about five years. Two

(13:45):
years is too soon. They'd askwhy is that? I did not want the perception
that I had an axe to grind.And a lot of times when a retired
or former city employee turnsaround and runs for city council,
he's got an ax to grind. And Idid not want that perception. So
I wanted to wait about fiveyears. But Fire association talked

(14:08):
me into running. And ifnothing else, it gave me a little
bit of experience as far aswhat you have to do in the election
process. And I filed for theat large position on the city council
the last day to file. And inMay when the election was held, there
were, there was three of us inthe race. So you had to have a majority

(14:31):
vote. Now, not plurality.Nobody had a majority. So there's
a runoff between me andanother gentleman. And a month later,
I won the runoff election by20 votes. I'm here to tell you that
voting at the local level andthe county level and somewhat to
the state level really matters.

(14:53):
I've. I've been screamingabout that on this program that everybody
wants to focus on thepresidential election, but you're
never going to talk to thepresident because there's a good
chance you'll never talk to aUS Senator. A very limited number
of people will talk to a U.S.congressman, but the good news is
you could talk to a schoolboard member, a city councilor, the

(15:14):
mayor, the countycommissioners, county judge, and
even state representatives. Atsome degree, you have a lot more
influence on that localelection and it influences your life
more than what happens in theWhite House.
That's absolutely true. Andsometimes that talking is a little
bit too much, but that's okay.That's why you run and well, your.

(15:36):
Local elected officials, Theseare the people you're going to run
into at the grocery store.These are the people you're going
to sit next to in church or atsome concert event or something like
that. These are, these are thepeople you're going to rub elbows
with regularly in the public sphere.
Absolutely.
So you're going to see them.You're going to. Even if you don't
know them personally, you'regoing to see them and you're probably,
probably going to recognizethem. It would be hard not to recognize

(15:58):
you, Glenn. You've been aroundhere doing things. You've been active
in this community for so long.
Well, after what Channel 3 didto me last night on the 4B board
meeting yesterday, when theyzoomed in and full screen face shot
of me.
Oh, and you serve on the 4Bboard, right? Yes, as well.
So I'm on the 4B board now.And when I ran for mayor after three

(16:21):
years as the at large, therewere three of us in that race and
I won that, that election by57% on the first ballot.
Wow.
So that told me that what Ihad done as the at large councilor,
everybody was pleased with,especially the business community,
because they were totallyopposed to my running for council
when I ran for the at largeseat and the police and fire association,

(16:45):
they're the ones that got meelected to the council or at large
position. But over the threeyears that I served in that position,
I feel like that my work onthe council as the at large changed
some minds in the businesscommunity and they supported me when
I ran for mayor.
Yeah. Now when you ran formayor and, you know, six and a half

(17:06):
years as mayor, I guessbasically term limits is.
Yes.
Why you.
Term limited out.
Term limited out. But duringthat time, what would you say were,
you know, two or three of themost challenging things that you
faced as mayor?
Number one, the drought.
Yeah.
That drought started in 2011,as we all know, and ended in 2015

(17:30):
in May, when we had 17 inchesof rain. But the big issue during
that time frame, of course,was how are we going to soldier through
this? The restrictions werebecoming a little bit draconian.
Towards the end, of course, westarted the project to pipe our wastewater
from the wastewater treatmentfacility back over to the Cypress

(17:52):
water treatment plant andblended that water, ran it through
microfiltration, reverseosmosis, stored it In a holding tank
for about 30 days, thenblended it with the lake water coming
in and ran it through theconventional treatment process. So
that wastewater got fourdifferent treatment cycles.

(18:15):
It was about as clean asyou're gonna get. Yeah.
And it was a. It was somethingthat hadn't ever been done the way
that y'all did it, right?
Not to the extent that we didit. No. Not in this country.
The technology existed. Yeah.
But we were one on cases. Whata community would do is they would
pipe that water out to areservoir just like we do now. Like
we do now. It would be blendedwith the lake water. It would just

(18:37):
become part of the lake, andthen. Then it all becomes, you know,
one. But this was the firsttime anyone had attempted this. And
I gotta tell you. And I know Iheard all the jokes and everything
about I. But you know what? Itwas a brilliant idea, and it saved
us. It saved us.
It literally saved us.
It saved businesses. It savedthe community, and it was a brilliant

(18:58):
idea. Looking back at it now,it's like that was. That was a stroke
of genius to.
Do that, because part of theproblem is. But you don't lose water
as much through usage as youdo through evaporation.
That's correct.
So if you go put that stuffright back in the lake out there,
the sun is going to take mostof it, a large portion of it.
We lose more water to evaporation.
That's correct.

(19:18):
Than we do consumption.
That's correct.
Yeah.
There's nothing you can doabout that. I mean, it is what nature
is. Nature, man.
We tried several differentthings. We tried. There was. There's
a powder or something that wecould put down on the surface of
Lake Airhead. We tried. Thatwas limited success, but not enough.
You know, not success to theextent that it would have done what

(19:41):
the reverse osmosis system didfor the wastewater.
Yeah.
We're gonna get in a big pieceof Saran wrap and just put it right
over the top of the lake there.
A lot of luck.
Yeah.
With our luck, it would frayand tear just as you got to the end
of it, you know?
Exactly.
Yeah. No, but it really was.It was a genius idea. Now, that water
that pipeline was relocatedout to goes now directly to Lake

(20:04):
Arrowhead. I've heard and readwe dump somewhere around 6 or 7 million
gallons a day.
More than that, it's. It'sprobably closer to 10 or 15 million
gallons, really. But keep inmind also that if. If we're not in
a drought like we are now,they don't pump that water back to

(20:24):
Lake Arrowhead, right?
Yeah, it's, it's, it's one of those.
You know, we, we, we surviveon the water that we get naturally.
There's no reason for us toreturn the wastewater because what
you're doing, you return it tothe lake. We have rains. And what
you return, the lake goes overthe spillway and goes to the Red
river and then downstream toLake Texoma and all those metroplex

(20:44):
cities. So we don't, the citydoesn't pump it back unless we're
in low water situations likewe are now. So it is 100% of it's
going back to Lake Airhead today.
Yeah.
And that has slowed down theprocess. You know, in the drought
from 2011-15, we would, wewould lose a percent of water every

(21:05):
four or five days.
Yeah.
Wow.
Today it's, it takes a week tomaybe 10 days before you drop 1%
lake level. So pumping thatwater back has made a big difference.
And it's a project that we hadplanned to do all along following
the drought. Now if I had mydruthers, I'd say we've got this

(21:27):
thing in place. Let's burythat pipeline. Let's keep the reverse
osmosis and the wastewatertreatment going. But it's very expensive
to treat that water,especially through the RO process.
Takes a lot of electricity andelectrical cost. Would offset any
good that you might have.
Is there some. Are you on thewater board?

(21:47):
I chair the Water ResourceCommission, which.
By the way, I want to give youprops here. I think you did a great
job. Was it two or threemonths ago in speaking to the city
council about dropping thewater restrictions that had once
again kind of become a littlebit on the draconian side. It didn't
make a lot of sense based onthe current environment.

(22:08):
Yeah.
And, and so I think Iappreciate you going in and thank
you. Trying to speak a littlebit of. Hey, we, we all, we all have
to be concerned, but we can'tfreak out about every time we weren't
worried about water. And wehave to use logic because it's like
any kind of government thing.And you dealt with this as mayor.

(22:29):
Yes.
You have to run the city orrun, run a portion of the city or
something from a governmentalstandpoint. But you do have citizens
that have rights and, and thatsort of thing. You have to balance
those two things.
You do, you do. And thatparticular situation was just a misunderstanding
on two counselors parts. Plusthey were down a couple of members

(22:49):
that day. And that voteRequired four councilors voting in
favor of doing whatever theproposal was. They had five members
there. The vote was three totwo to stop it. But because of what
our city charter says takesfour votes. And it was just a misunderstanding

(23:10):
on two counterparts. They werefurther educated up until the next
council meeting. And ofcourse, there are several of us that
went to that meeting toexplain the situation as well. And
that was a majority vote thesecond time around.
You've obviously had someinput and some ears and eyes on this
Lake Ringle project, somethingthat's been on the. On the drawing

(23:32):
board for 65, 70 years now.
You know, I like. I've got acopy at home of a newspaper article
from May of 1956. It's thefirst article I could find where
Lake Ringgold was mentioned. Wow.
Almost 70 years ago.
So the big controversy whenArrowhead was built. Do we build

(23:53):
Arrowhead? Do we build Ringo?And they went politically, they decided
to build Arrowhead. And therewas a good. It was a good decision
to make at the time.
Yeah.
But in hindsight, who knows?
Yeah.
Lake Ringgold, the state ofTexas is divided into five water
districts, huge districts. AndLake Ringgold is the last viable

(24:19):
reservoir site in the districtin which we reside. There's no other
place in the district that youcould build a reservoir. There would
be a viable option. So it'sthe last place it needs to be built.
Are we going to need the waterin 30 years? Who knows? I think we

(24:41):
will. I think there's thingscoming to Wichita Falls in the near
future and maybe five, six,seven, eight years out. I think you're
going to see this. This citystart exploding in growth.
Well, I think when you. Whenyou look at the migration of America,
I mean, we have thousands ofpeople every day relocating here

(25:05):
from the west coast,literally, and to Texas. To Texas.
Most of them are going to theDallas Fort Worth area. Not to here
or the Austin area, SanAntonio area, but at some point,
particularly the Dallas FortWorth area, that growth is going
to have to start moving northand west.
And it has been moving north.Yeah. You look at.
Yeah.
Prosper and you know, LittleElm and those places that are right

(25:28):
north.
You look what's happening evenin Decatur right now. Look what's
happening there. That growthis going to start really pushing.
It's going to have to, becausethey're running out of space.
For Mike Campbell mentionedwhen we had him on as a guest, that
there was a tract of land thatwas purchased and has been started,
divided it up and they've soldall the or most of the lot.
Huge, huge amount of lot.

(25:49):
So that's.
Yeah, I'm a little bitperplexed about some folks. And,
you know, I get it. The folksthat own that property, they don't
give up their property forreservoir. I fully understand that.
But what I'm perplexed aboutis, is the citizens that don't really
have a stake in that, otherthan that they're going to get a
reservoir out their back door.The tax revenue that that's going

(26:12):
to generate for Clay county istremendous because the cities, as
I understand it, there's noplans for the city to hang on to
that property surrounding thelake like they did out at Arrowhead
and lease it. They're going tosell it. It's going to be. There's
going to be homes there,there's going to be businesses on
that lake, and all of that'sgoing to generate tax revenue for
Clay county, not WichitaFalls, Clay County. And, you know,

(26:37):
and Clay county is more arural county than Wichita county
is. You know, we'retechnically a rural county, but Clay
county is especially a rural.
More than two and a half timesthe size of Wichita county is about
12,000 people.
Yeah. And it's, it's going to.It's just going to explode when that
lake's built. Yeah. Propertyvalues are going to go up. Tax revenues

(27:01):
will go up. It's a win, win.And the water is going to be needed.
Trust me.
I firmly believe that.
But if we don't do it, I thinkthat could be an impediment because
businesses, larger businessesare going to look at that at the
capacity of Wichita Falls inthe future and, or the area.
I don't know. There's a.There's a lot to. There's a lot.
There's a lot of back andforth on that. And Russell Schreibert's

(27:23):
going to be on with usactually, next. Next week. Well,
a little bit about that.
So all this stuff we'retalking about does have a tie back
into smack.
Yeah, let's talk some smack now.
Yeah, I was just fixing tobring up that during the drought
when, when I was the mayor,shepherd was making contingency plans

(27:44):
and they had plans in place tomove missions out of shepherd to
move them to otherinstallations. Now, we all know the
four of us sitting here, ifyou move an incident, if you move
a mission, the chances of itcoming back are slim and none. And
so we fought tooth and nail,thank goodness to the local folks
in this community thatprovided water. So shepherd swimming

(28:05):
pool could stay open. A localbenefactor provided water on a daily
basis so that pool could stayopen for those kids and airmen there
at Shepherd. Water wasprovided to Castaway Cove for that
matter. But we. Shepherd wasvery close to pulling the trigger

(28:25):
on moving missions. And May2015 came around and saved us.
Everything changed with arecord record flood.
So tell everybody what is smac?
Okay. SMAC is the ShepherdMilitary Affairs Committee. It was
established in 2006 followingthe Base Realignment and Closure

(28:46):
round in 2005.
So SMAC followed BRAC?
Yeah, better known as theBRAC. In the 2005 BRAC, Sheppard
lost all of the medicaltraining. Shepherd was the place
that army medics, Marine corpsmedics, Navy medics, Air force medics,
all came to Sheppard to learnhow to do their jobs. And when the

(29:09):
BRAC round occurred, Sheppardlost that training and it was moved
to Fort Sam Houston down atSan Antonio. Now people wonder why
we lost it. If you go back andlook at the scoring documents that
were established during thatBRAC round, Shepherd was number one

(29:30):
on the list to keep that. Keepthat training here based on the scoring.
But a political. I never havebeen able to find out what political
move was done, but it was apolitical move that moved it to.
But it wasn't San Antonio. Butwasn't the BRAC commission supposed
to be outside the politicalworld? That's why they had an objective

(29:50):
list of criteria that theylooked at.
Absolutely. That one wentwell. So the community came together
following that sorrycircumstance and established the
Shepherd Military affairscommittee. And the purpose of Shepard?
The stated mission is toprotect the future of Shepard Air

(30:11):
Force Base. And we've donethat very well over the over since
2006, shepherd has gained somemissions following the BRAC loss.
You know, not as big. One ofthe, probably the most prominent
is the non commissionedofficer academy that they host. It's

(30:31):
the largest one in the AirForce. There's two of them and this
one is the largest. Theygraduate a class every six months.
So they have two graduations ayear. Ordinance disposal, training,
basic training. Military folkslearn how to do that. The basic training

(30:53):
is now done at Shepherd.That's a very physically intense.
What do they call it in theair force job titles?
The afsc. Yeah, yeah. And alittle story on that. I entered the
air force in 1984 to go intoEOD. And although it was a tough
school, I went through fiveand a half months of training. And

(31:16):
fortunately or unfortunately,I guess depending on your perspective,
I washed out, ended up goinginto avionics. But in this case,
yeah, it was a tough school.
It's a very tough school. Alot of injuries. Shepherd has partnered
with Midwestern StateUniversity's kinesiology program.
Their injury rate dropped fromabout 80% of their students down

(31:37):
to about 10%. Once thekinesiology folks got involved and
do what they do, a lot of it'sprevention. So those are the two
biggest missions that shepherdpicked up. Of course, the in jet
program. We all know about thejets flying around.
They're Euro, Euro NATO jointjet pilot training.
In jet, for sure.

(31:58):
And I want to. I want to pointout something they get all. Honestly,
in my opinion, since I've beenhere, since 1995 as an air Force
member and then, of course,retiring and then going to the civilian
community is thatunfortunately, the pilots get all
the glory.
Yes, they do.
And they don't graduatenearly. There's. It's a fraction
of the number of tech traininggraduates out of Shepherd Air Force

(32:21):
Base. And I love the pilots. Imean, we gotta have them and. But
you also have to have thosemaintainers. And that's a good. A
significant. In fact, almostall aircraft maintenance training
is done here. Avionics, jetengines. Most all of that, I believe,
is here. And I was in avionicsand 365th. Hoorah.
But anyway, yeah, I think mostpeople don't realize just how large

(32:44):
shepherd is in terms of itsmissions and the economic impact.
What is the economic impact inthe community?
I'm glad you asked us to have it.
Right.
These are the 2022 numbers.These numbers were compiled from
a study that Smack in thechamber commissioned.
Okay.
A firm out of Austin did thestudy for us about a year and a half

(33:08):
ago now.
Okay.
And in 2022, the WichitaCounty GDP was, or gross domestic
product was $6.7 billion.Shepherd Air Force Base's contribution
to that was 2.3 billion, or34.4%. Now, we think that number
is higher because when thestudy was done, we put a timeline

(33:30):
on it. We needed to get itdone because we had some issues going
on and we needed the numbers.So they didn't get all the data they
really wanted. We think it'sprobably closer to 37, 38%, maybe
even 40% of our economy. So ifshepherd goes away, 34. Based on
the study, 34.4% of oureconomy is gone overnight.

(33:52):
And I think that drives homethe point that we need to do more
to. For lack of a better wayto put it, diversify our economy
here. We need to bring in morethings to supplement what we already
have. Having shepherd be thatbig a part of our economy, that's
great. But as you said, ifthat goes away for any reason.

(34:12):
Eggs in one basket.
Yeah, you put all your eggs inone basket. If somebody breaks the.
Breaks the eggs, you got a problem.
And it can go away for adecision that's not made anywhere
locally or anybody that's fromhere that can do anything here. So
you're right. But the goodnews is we do have the SMAC committee.
That is the mission is to tryto keep shepherd here and develop

(34:33):
those community relationships.
Smack can get political whenthose folks out at shepherd cannot.
You know, that general outthere, and he is a general now, he
was pinned last week. He can'tgo to a congressman and say, I need
you to do this for me, but I can.
But he's here two years.
He's here two years.

(34:54):
Or she.
Yeah, he or she's here for twoyears, and then we get a new one.
So they can't go to thepoliticians and say, shepard needs
this, this, and this. ButGlenn Barham can. And the members
of the SMAC committee can go.Members of the chamber can go. SMAC
is more or less the politicalside of what we do to support Shepherd.

(35:15):
The chamber has taken on thequality of life side, finding jobs
for spouses, child care, andso on and so forth. So we do what
the folks out at shepherdcan't do. So if they need something
and they communicate that tous, then we can work behind the scenes

(35:38):
with congressman Jackson,senators Cornyn and Cruz, and other
congressional people withinthe state and even southern Oklahoma
to help and support Shepherd.
Absolutely. That's good thatyou mentioned that, because southern
Oklahoma is tied into Shepardas well. Yeah.
Frederick, Oklahoma, theirmunicipal airport is utilized by

(36:02):
the in jet program on a dailybasis. When T6s are doing touch and
goes, they use the Frederickairport to do that. Instead of tying
up the airspace here aroundShepherd Air force Base, they fly
up to Frederick, do theirtraining, do their touch and goes.
Shefford even sendscontrollers up there when they're
flying and using that airport.So Frederick is on our committee.

(36:23):
A couple of representativesfrom Frederick sits on our committee.
We have, you know, influencewith congressman Cole and into the
state legislature. So as Isaid, we can get political when the
folks out at shepherd can't.
And speaking of political, Iunderstand that. Is it the city or
is it a combination of thecity and the chamber that have hired

(36:45):
a lobbyist in Washingtonspecifically for us?
It's SMAC in the chamber.
Smack in the chamber.
Okay, did that. The 4A and 4Bboard are paying for that.
Okay.
Now, we're a 501C3 and assuch, we cannot lobby for political
candidates. We can lobby forpositions or for issues, but we can

(37:09):
only spend up to 20% of ouroperating budget on that lobbying.
So if my operating budget is$150,000 a year, then I can only
spend $30,000 on lobbying. Soto keep me from going over that,
the 4A and 4B boards picked upthat expense. It's. It's in the city's

(37:30):
framework. It's $12,000 amonth. That's pocket change when
you have $190 million budget.
Right.
But the 4A and 4B boards pickthat up, and then the chamber and
SMAC shares the recurringexpenses that might occur. For instance,
when we go to DC if we have totake folks out to dinner. Or we can

(37:51):
spend money on lobbyingefforts as long as we keep it below
20% of our operating budget.
Talk about taking somebody outto dinner is expensive in D.C. yeah,
you could drop 100 bucks atMcDonald's there.
Before we wrap up here realquick, I want to touch real quick
on the economic developmentfunds. 4A and 4B. Now, 4A funds are
used to attract industry tous. Is that correct?

(38:14):
Correct.
So you use that money, youspend that money to try to bring
new industry in. The 4B moneyyou have a little more flexibility
with. Right.
4B money can be used for thesame thing that 4Amoney can be used,
but in addition, they can payfor quality of life projects. Of
course, the biggest one, andprobably one of the most controversial
things that ever happenedaround here with 4B money is castaway

(38:35):
Cove. The debt service onCastaway Cove is being paid by the
4B board. So any funds thatCastaway Cove generates, any net
funds, goes right back intothat park so that they're not. They
don't have debt service, sothey're able to operate. That facility
has never gone in the redsince it was bought by the city and

(38:56):
went into operation 100%because they don't have any debt
service. The debt services isall paid by the 4B board with the
exception of any attractionsthat they've put in. That's part
of the money that comes in.The net revenues that they make.
That money is set aside forfuture additions and improvements

(39:18):
at Castaway company.
So basically, aside from thesalaries that you pay to the people
that work there, and there'snot that many, we're not talking
millions and millions ofDollars in salaries. We're talking
probably in the thousands, right?
Probably. Yeah. I don't knowhow many employees they run during
the summer. During the offseason, there's only two.
Yeah.
And so it's their seasonalemployees, but.

(39:39):
Otherwise everything goesright back into the operational cost
of having it.
That's correct. So that's.That's the 4 being 4B boards paying
for that. Probably one of theMost recent projects. 4B voted on
it just yesterday. The EyesoreHotel at the Waterfall is coming
down, folks. It'll be downhopefully by the end of January.
Glenn, I'm telling. Let'simplode that thing and sell tickets.

(40:03):
I'll bring the popcorn. Youknow, this will be a. This will be
some quality entertainment.This really.
It'll be good to see that.
I tried to get him to implodeit. I told him I wanted to push the
button.
Big old red buttons.
It is an eyesore. And it's ashame that that's the. One of. That's
the first impression a lot ofpeople have coming from the north

(40:24):
of Wichita Falls as they enterthe heart of the city.
Well, and also see the saltFalls. You've got the falls and you
get the shitty hotel that'sright across the road.
It's terrible.
It's terrible. That facility.It's going to be a conventional demolition
project. A company out of FortWorth had the low bid. And as we
speak, City council's meetingthis morning and they're voting on

(40:45):
approving that project andapproving the contract with the low
bidder. The low bidder tellsthe city that they need 30 days to
ramp up. Once they get. Getthat 30, bring in supplies and equipment,
so forth. Once they get thatequipment in and they start work,
they think it'll take them 30to maybe 45 days to take it down

(41:07):
and clean that lot off.
It's amazing because thedifference between 2024 and 1944,
because in 1944, they wouldhave just bulldozed it right into
the river. Now they'll haul itall the highway. Yeah.
You know, there's a projectout at Shepherd, Child Development
Center. It's an old. It's theold brig out at shepherd where it

(41:29):
sits now. It used to be thejail at shepherd. And they were number
one on the Child Developmentcenter list in the Air Force for
a number of years. And whenRonny Jackson was elected to Congress,
he stepped up to the plate andwrote letters and did his political
thing. And the next NationalDefense Authorization act had the
money in it to build thatchild development center, it has

(41:52):
been sitting dead in itstrack, dead in the water now for
almost 18 months. Because whenthey started the dirt work, they
found asbestos in the dirtwhere that child development center
is going. There used to be abarracks there, and when it was demolished,
what they do, buried it on site.
Yeah.

(42:13):
And so they found thatasbestos in an issue politically,
getting the money to abatethat asbestos. It's in the 25 National
Defense Authorization Act. Soif Congress can ever get their act
together, when they get backafter today's election, then.
Literally get together.
Right, exactly. And then getthat NDA passed, then the money will

(42:36):
be there to mitigate thatasbestos. They can go to work on
that child development center.But the big question is now how much
has those costs gone up?
It's like any other project.The longer you sit there and wait
on it, the more the cost. Theprice of everything just keeps going
up. It never gets cheaper to do.
So that's a big project comingup out at shepherd, and one of the

(42:56):
next things you're going tosee, they'll be letting a contract
out there soon to demolish theold hospital, and they'll take it
to the ground.
Wow.
The old pyramid plan. Oncethey take that down, solid, move
the fence line in so thatproperty is available for. There's
a program in the federalgovernment called defense community

(43:19):
installation projects. The airForce, or any military installation
for that matter, can leaseland that they own back to private
developers. So the Air Force,in this case, Shepard, would generate
a revenue from leasing thatland. Whatever can be built there.
Hotels, theaters, major golf, miniature.

(43:40):
I think a miniature golfcourse would be great. Right there,
right next to militaryShepherd. A lot of those airmen that
can't go across town, they cango right there and play mini golf.
I think one of the plans. Idon't know if that's in the. In the
list or not, but there's beentalk about maybe building a hotel
or motel there for use byfolks that come to shepherd to visit.
Yeah, come to shepherd. Tdy.They have facilities on base, but

(44:04):
a lot of times they'reovercrowded and they have to go off
to civilian side anyway. Right.
And then the. And then in thatcase, you require a whole lot of
legislation to get it built.
So we'll see what happens with that.
As we're winding down here.Tell everybody how they can get involved
in smac.
Yeah.
Well, we. We do a fundraisingdrive every three years. Our financial

(44:27):
campaign drive and the budget,or the goal of that campaign drive
is to raise $300,000 pledgedover three years. So $100,000 a year.
We'll be conducting that driveagain next year. Next year is the
last year of it. So towardsthe middle of the year, information
will go out where folks canmake pledges to support us. Short

(44:48):
of that, you know, if you wantto make a donation to Shepherd Military
Affairs Committee, we operatesolely on donations and local government
support. The 4A board, IowaParks Development Center, Burt Burnett's
development folks and Wichitacounty all contribute money. Plus
the money that we raised inthe financial campaign is our operating

(45:11):
monies and we stay pretty,pretty flush. We don't make a profit,
but we're certainly not losingmoney either.
But you can go to the websiteand it looks like the donation button
and become a partner button ifyou want to get more involved. You
can either at least donate oryou can actively.
Are you always looking forvolunteers or.

(45:33):
Covid right now about the onlytime we really need volunteers is
when we do. We do two annualbanquets. We do a banquet for the
IN Jet steering committee whenthey're here in the spring. You know,
14 member nations in that injet program and they all send their
representatives. Shepherd AirForce Base, usually in March, we
do a banquet in honor of thosefolks. And then we do an annual banquet

(45:55):
in October for the entireinstallation where we bring in the
senior leaders, usually fromcaptain on up. We invite them to
a big dinner. We bring in anoted speaker. Typically this year
our speakers bailed on us. Andthank goodness for at the time, Colonel

(46:16):
Filcheck, he said, yeah, I'llbe your speaker. Did a fantastic
job. And he opened a lot ofeyes as to what's going on in the
Air Force and what's going onin the world today. So that banquet
we do every year andcommunity, sometimes we open that
up to everybody if we get abig name speaker. We invited the

(46:37):
secretary of the Air Force tobe the speaker this year and he declined
about three months out.
Wow, that's quick. That'squick when you're doing a big event.
Yeah. And then my next choicewas the Air Education Training Command
three star general. Hedeclined ten days out. And so I was

(46:58):
scrambled.
Wow.
So I was able to get GeneralFilcheck to be our guest speaker.
And frankly, he's probably oneof the best speakers we had in the
years I've been involved.
That's great.
So we'll try to get a big namespeaker and if it's somebody that's
really big and we getconfirmed or coming, that's probably

(47:19):
a situation where I might openit up to the public.
Yeah. Okay.
Public come in. And so we needvolunteers when we do those two events.
Not a whole lot, usually eightor nine.
So financial volunteers arethe big thing, right?
Yeah.
What's the website?
It is smack NTX.org S M A C NT X.org Sounds good.

(47:42):
All right. Glenn Barm, thankyou for joining us. We appreciate
it very much. And thank youfor your years of service to this
community and your continuedservice through smac. It's, it's,
it's good to have people likeyourself that, that have a such a
dedication to the community,to the area, to see things succeed
here.
Thank you, Mike. It's been mypleasure. Terry Dre.

(48:02):
Thank you, sir.
Thank you guys. Gonna take alittle break here. We'll come right
back and wrap it up on Get ItRight Tech. Summa stay t. Alright,
guys, welcome back to Get ItRight Texoma. We're going to wrap
things up here real quick. Wewant to thank you for joining us.

(48:24):
Want to thank Glenn Barm forbeing our guest today. And be sure
to visit our website, get aridetechsoma.com the website you
can find us on Facebook. Besure to like and share our page.
Be sure to hit that subscribebutton on the YouTube page as well,
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No, nothing cost you nothing.Maybe some grief, I don't know. Depends
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(48:45):
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you do that. So anyway, thankyou for being with us. We really
truly appreciate it and we.
Will, since we don't know thisis election day, we won't know who
the winner is obviously thisearly in the morning especially.
But we will be certainlytalking about.

(49:07):
The winner is the American public.
Amen, brother. Amen. So we'll.That's probably what we'll be talking
about heavily on the nextepisode of Get It Right, Texoma.
Until then, y'all take care.We shall see you down the road.