Kingfisher’s governing board is down to four members after accepting Commissioner Ryan Deatherage’s resignation Monday night.

In a letter to Mayor Roxie Alexander, Deatherage wrote that he had accepted a job with Kingfisher County and had been advised by the district attorney’s office that he needed to resign his elected city position to avoid any conflict of interest.

Deatherage serves as county deputy emergency management director. He was not present Monday night.

City Attorney Jared Harrison advised commissioners at the meeting that they had the option of appointing a replacement to serve the remaining three years of Deatherage’s term or call for a special election at the annual municipal election in April.

“The filing period for the April election is in February and honestly I doubt you could go through all the steps to appoint someone before that time,” Harrison said. “It makes sense to just wait and elect two commissioners in April.”

The seat currently held by Vice Mayor Wendell Prim also will be up for election next year.

“My only concern is whether we’ll have trouble getting a quorum if we leave the seat vacant until April,” Commissioner Kyle Mecklenburg said, noting that his business frequently will take him out of town in the first part of 2023, causing him to miss meetings.

“As long as three of us are here, we’ll have a quorum,” Alexander said.

Transmission Woes

City Manager Dave Slezickey told commissioners that he will be meeting with representatives from OG&E and the Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority to discuss transmission issues coming into the city that caused a lengthy power outage last month.

“People are trying to tell me it goes off all the time,” Prim said. “But it doesn’t go off as often as it used to. When we get electricity from someone else, we don’t have control over it.”

“The electric distribution part of it that we do control has continued to improve since I’ve been here,” Commissioner Geoff Covalt said. “Transmission and distribution are two different things. Because we depend on OG&E for transmission, there are things outside our control but our distribution system has performed so much better.”

Mecklenburg commended the city in getting the word out through the Times & Free Press and social media explaining the current power situation.

“I think it’s a matter of educating our citizens and getting that information out there explaining what we can control and what we can’t and how we can’t just start generating at our electric plant everytime the power goes off,” he said.

Chamber Discussion

Kingfisher Chamber of Commerce President Heath Redwine and Executive Director Shauna Rupp attended the meeting to discuss a possible solution for issues with the downtown speaker system.

Redwine said John Bolt of Ford Audio, which installed the downtown wireless system, reported the speakers were assembled incorrectly and will be returned to the manufacturer and then reinstalled.

“The downtown speakers will do what they are designed to do once they’re fixed,” Redwine said, referring to the background music that is played during special downtown events.

“But we’re expecting more out of those speakers than they are capable of for the Christmas parade and fireworks,” he added.

The event routinely attracts crowds of several thousand, all armed with cell phones, which is likely creating too much interference for the wireless system to operate correctly.

In discussions with Bolt, the chamber board has decided to rent a different system for next year’s Christmas event, consisting of 10 15-inch speakers that are fully wired and placed on stands along the west side of Main Street.

“We’re going to rent them for the Fourth of July parade so we can give the system a trial run,” he said.

Redwine said local businesses describe the Christmas parade night as the “best revenue and sale date of the year,” with visitors doing plenty of shopping and dining while they’re here.

Commissioners commended the chamber, police, fire and street department workers and all the volunteers who make the event spectacular.

They also indicated that the city will help with the cost of the rented speaker system, estimated at about $2,000.