When the Watonga City Council met Tuesday evening in regular session, it faced an abbreviated agenda. The agendas for the Watonga Economic Development Agency – WEDA—and the public works agenda had not been publicly posted. Mayor Ryan Bruner told the assembly that acting out of an ‘abundance of caution,’ the other meetings would be held in a special session Friday.
Getting down to business, city council member Neal Riley asked the WEDA purchase orders be pulled from the consent agenda. In a consent agenda, the voting body may approve measures such as the minutes and claims – essentially bills – presented for payment with a single vote.
However, any member of the body may ask for items to be pulled from the consent roster and discussed individually. That was the process Riley asked for with the WEDA purchase orders. He questioned why there were three orders for cash, totaling $1,000.
Acting City Manager Justin Woldridge said the items were for building rental for the Cheese Festival as well as cash prize money for the Rat Race and food contest, and the contents of a cash drawer to make change for the t-shirt sale concession.
Riley asked for receipts, but they were out of reach since the clerk who was handling the Cheese Festival accounting was not at the meeting. City attorney Jared Harrison advised the council to take no action on the item until the receipts were located and presented.
City accountant Russ Meacham was on hand to present the city financials. The assembled citizenry – about 30 in all – were unable to follow along on the display screen because the laptop used for that purpose was still locked and had not been accessed yet. Woldridge said he was taking several pieces of electronic equipment, presumably the laptop and a microphone setup for the council members, to have it worked on this week.
Meacham, meanwhile, explained there were two overarching impacts on the economy. First, he said, was the consumer price index increase, pushing prices upward. That spike includes the prices paid by the city. Normally one would expect the rise in prices to increase the sales taxes collected for the city. However, in Watonga, the tax income was down by 1.6%. That could indicate that residents are shopping elsewhere, bringing Meacham to his second point. The use tax collected, he said, was up almost 50%. Use tax is collected on sales from companies that don’t have a storefront presence in Oklahoma or who do, but deliver to areas where they do not.
For example, use tax is collected from Amazon and on Kroger and other grocery delivery services.
Even with the shift in tax collections, the city is stable from a budget standpoint in large part, Meacham said, because they had budgeted conservatively.
Resident Richard Hightower was on the agenda to discuss sewer rates with the council. However, he was too ill to attend, and the matter was tabled so that it will automatically be included in the next agenda for regular session.
The council was finally able to seat two more members – Robert Sawyer and Matthew Wickware – on the board of adjustments, bringing the membership to five, a full board. That body convenes when there is a request to planning and zoning for a variance. The action means the city, for the first time in recent memory, has a full complement on both boards as well as the police review board.
Another item on the agenda was to allow the acting city manager to change the general fund bank account number to address a security issue.
City council member Debbie McGee said an unredacted city check and bank statement had appeared on social media, posing a security weakness. The bank had called the city and asked for the change to be made.
A member of the audience asked whether the account numbers and keypad locks had been changed since the last city manager departed, but was told no, they had not been.
The account number change was approved without further discussion.
Lastly the council discussed the planned forensic audit. Harrison had called the office of the state auditor, he said and was told there was a lengthy wait for such an audit, and that it might be more expedient and less expensive to hire an independent firm.
Meacham weighed in at that point, naming a few firms with which he was familiar who could do the audit requested.
Riley said he wanted to instead define the scope of the audit and preferred to have the state do it, even if it took three to six months to begin.
“I just hate that wait,” said council member Howard Hursh. But Meacham said it would probably take at least that long to have a private firm get started.
“Fast and furious and just get it done isn’t what the public wants,” Riley said. “The state auditor can compel records to be presented. I recommend that Jared (Harrison) just get us on the list. I think getting in the queue is what we need to do.”
In the round, that is what the council directed its attorney to do.
The council will meet again at 5:30 p.m. Friday for the public works and WEDA agendas. It is necessary to hold the meeting so that an item approved on the council agenda, a payment to BRB Contractors for work on the grit removal and nitrate improvement projects – water and sewer upgrades – may be voted on from the public works agenda. That payment is $480,786 and must be passed from both sides of the table, general council and public works.
The Watonga City Council meets at City Hall, 410 W. Main Street in the large meeting room.