-
City Reaches Agreement With
When the city council met March 19 in regular session, it addressed the contract between the city and Mercy Clinic.
The clinic leases a property from the city next to the old hospital building. There had been some question as to whether that agreement would continue because of the wording in the lease agreement. It stated, in general terms, that the city would be responsible for work on the building anticipated to cost more than $1,000.
However, that clause has long been unused because the city had fallen on hard times. Mercy, for its part, simply did the repairs and maintenance on the aging building as a matter of course.
The issue came to a head when there were some stained ceiling tiles that needed to be replaced. That is neither a difficult nor costly undertaking, but the city was concerned that if a tile were removed, it might uncover underlying damage in the roof, structure or the wiring. And if a discovery was made, the repairs would have to bring the entire system – not just the problem area – up to the current medical building code. That could cost tens of thousands of dollars, money the city was unwilling to spend.
An updated agreement had been drawn up to run from July 1, 2024 until June 30, 2025. Mercy has said it would be ready to make other arrangements for housing the clinic by then.
One possibility is for Mercy real estate to purchase the building from the city. There had been some difficulty in coming up with an asking price, but according to city attorney Jared Harrison, a suggested price had been reached and the matter has been forwarded to Mercy real estate officers. The asking price was not disclosed.
There was no indication of how long it might be until an answer is received.
In other business, City Manager Karrie Beth Little informed the council that the city was the recipient of a $1,000 grant from Keep Oklahoma Beautiful to go toward the flowers for the islands in the sidewalks on Main Street.
The council approved a purchase order for $50,000 to secure additional electrical transformers to have on hand. Two are needed right away at a cost of $9,000 each and hopes are to purchase and stock more to meet upcoming needs. The preferred transformers are pad mounted rather than pole mounted.
Another cost approved was to have a garage door repair company come to Watonga to work on the city’s overhead rollups. At least five are in need of repair, with everything wrong from motors to missing parts.
However, it was difficult to find a vendor who would come to town even to look at the job. Many of the shops in Oklahoma City would not even respond to telephone calls or emails because of their workload. The company that agreed to come out is from Enid.
Councilmember Ryan Bruner asked if the companies in Weatherford and Kingfisher had been contacted, and whether there were any in Blaine County.
“I mean, we did shop local first, right?” he asked the city manager.
Little said they had done as much as they could to find a local vendor, but eventually had to look elsewhere to get the work accomplished.