One of the topics the Watonga City Council will take up at the August 19 meeting is the rewrite of the city’s codes. Oklahoma statutes indicate codes shall be updated every two years and re-codified every 10 years. The most recent date of recodification the Republican can find is 2011; it was definitely before the change in the form of government from mayor-council to manager-council. A frequent refrain in recent years has been that certain codes or ordinances could not be adhered to because they did not pertain to the new form of government. A legal consultant for the Republican indicated the old codes remain in force until repealed or rewritten.
Be that as it may, the council is ready to tackle a new set of codes. The rub lies in just how to go about it. City attorney Jared Harrison had suggested a company, CivicPlus, that would do the re-write for $25,146. At that time, the July 29 city council meeting, Harrison told the council the cost for him to rewrite the codes would exceed the cost CivicPlus quoted. However, the council members decided to wait on the matter while more quotes were gathered and presented to them. City council member Neal Riley, when questioned about whether he thought the codes could be re-written for a better price, said he absolutely knew they could be. His suggestion was to have the city council members do the re-write and save the entire cost.