When Watonga City Council met Tuesday in regular session, it dealt with a widely varied agenda.
Russ Meacham, principal of RS Meacham, the city’s accounting firm, was in attendance to go over the financial statements and the city audit for the fiscal year 2022. Audits generally lag a fiscal year behind the calendar year, in part because many municipalities change fiscal years in July.
The financials for the present fiscal year, which is at its halfway point, were a little concerning. The sales tax figure usually hovers around $110,000 per month. However, the last month took a nosedive and came in at $98,541.
“We’re OK to get through this year,” Meacham said. “But we need to start looking at budgeting for fiscal year 2024-25. With the economy and how tight things are in peoples’ individual budgets, we need to keep that in mind.” He added that the numbers weren’t a problem until they showed a trend which becomes a downturn. By comparison, sales taxes in January 2023 were $162,000 a difference of more than $68,000.
The saving grace was that the city expenditures were down overall as well, so there were still positive dollars on the bottom line.
The city’s audit, Meacham said, was unmodified, meaning the numbers were correct. There was one ding on the audit, in that the numbers for the Oklahoma Water Resources Board report were not filed by the last day of November. Meacham said the numbers were available at that time, but there were no auditors available to review them, a situation faced by other towns as well.
Following the discussion of the financials and the audit, the city moved on to the redistricting of representative wards. The 2020 census showed Ward 2 had dropped in population significantly when compared to other wards. The redistricting was to rectify those numbers so that each citizen has equal representation. It has also been chronically difficult to find a council member to represent Ward 2, as many of the homes in that area are rentals and the residents tend to move as they purchase homes elsewhere or relocate entirely.
Hopes are that in addition to equal representation, it will become easier to fill the vacant seat. That election is scheduled for April 4 and all registered voters in the city are eligible to vote.
The council also heard from Kristi Hauk, of Mercy Clinic. She said the city had sent a lease for the clinic property to cover the next year. While council hasn’t seen or agreed to the lease, it has been sent to Mercy’s real estate department and legal counsel.
“We don’t want our citizens to go without what Mercy Clinic is providing,” said Mayor Bill Seitter. “That is not our end goal.”
And although there has been no proposal from the city to the healthcare provider to purchase the property as of yet, the new lease is a good first step, Hauk said.
“The opportunity to renew the lease is the bestcase scenario,” Hauk said. “Mercy is going to be here and is working on a long term solution.”
The problem with making a sales proposal is it difficult to obtain an accurate appraisal of the property when there has been no offer made on it.