Following a little housekeeping Tuesday night, Watonga City Council got down to business.
The housekeeping was the swearing in of newly elected or re-elected council members. New on the council was Ryan Bruner, sort of. Bruner had been a council member several years ago and has returned to the seat. Travis Bradt was re-elected to his seat and Bill Seitter is the atlarge member, who ran unopposed.
When the three had been sworn in, Seitter was returned to the mayor’s seat and Bradt will serve as vice mayor. The council then presented a certificate of appreciation to outgoing council member Allen Cowan who has been a representative for some five years.
The city financials were presented via teleconference by Dacia Phillips of RS Meacham. Phillips usually comes to the meetings in person, but as Tuesday was the deadline for filing federal income taxes, she was understandably pressed for time.
Those financials show the city in a good place financially with three quarters of the year elapsed. Oil and gas revenue and sales tax income were both over the amount budgeted previously and the only department showing a loss was the sewer portion of the light and water enterprise. That deficit was due to money spent on repairs and came to $32,993.
There followed an extended discussion of the city contract with the Friends of the Ferguson Home to maintain and reopen the museum. Todd Lafferty, a member of the board of the Ferguson Home outlined the group’s plan to begin fundraising to repair and repaint the building, which is owned by the city. It was determined the organization should accept the donations, and when the time came to hire a contractor or contractors, pass the funds through the city to pay for the work.
Council also worked on updating the city codes to reflect the council- manager form of government.
The format had changed four years ago, but not all the city codes had been updated. Some of those codes included hiring rather than electing a city clerk and city treasurer.
Seitter wondered if the residency requirements for the city manager – which state he or she must live in the school district – should be amended to living inside the city limits.
He later walked back his stance on that requirement in case a future manager wished to live somewhere they could keep horses or the like.
The city also entered into a contract with WarCon, the construction company who will build the planned Zona Verde home in town. City attorney Jared Harrison had gone through the contract and pointed out an oddity. There was no caveat for a performance/payment bond. That bond is a form of insurance to be brought into play should the contractor fail to pay the subcontractors or if they do not complete the construction.
The added cost of the bond was $1,657 and was left off the original contract because the company does not use subcontractors and the build is expected to take only three weeks. “There are good reasons to do it (place the bond) and there are good reasons not to do it,” Harrison said.
However, Bruner pointed out that since this is the first build for the company in the United States, the bond would be in order to protect the project against any unforeseen circumstances.
“Since it is an untried, an unknown company that we haven’t worked with before, I think we should get the bond,” Bruner said.
In the round the council agreed, amending the contract to reflect the addition of the performance bond before signing and giving the green light for the project to begin.