Kingfisher city commissioners spent some time at this month’s regular meeting discussing city code matters raised at the annual city planning retreat in November.

The planning retreat is a day-long annual event conducted as a special city commission meeting that includes updates from city department heads concerning operations and capital expenditure needs, as well as reports from City Manager Dave Slezickey and other administrative staff members.

A number of potential problem areas in the city code where provisions are unclear or conflicting were identified at the retreat and discussed in greater detail at the December meeting.

No vote was taken on any of the topics, which will be reformulated as action items on the January or February 2021 agendas, based on commissioner recommendations.

Curbside Trash Collection

Although the city’s garbage service has been contracted out to Oklahoma Environmental Management Authority of El Reno for eight years, the city street department still picks up brush and bulky items curbside at residents’ request.

During 2020’s coronavirus quarantines, the demand for curbside pickup “basically has our street department running a second trash route,” Slezickey said.

“COVID has hit and everyone is at home doing home improvements and extra house cleaning,” City Clerk Brittney Hladik added. “From end of March to June, whoa! We’re still making 25-30 work orders a day (from people requesting curbside pickup).”

City staff is recommending charging a fee to help recover the cost of those oversized pickups, possibly with a sliding scale, depending on how large the items are “and whether it takes one man, two men or two men and a forklift” to remove them, Slezickey said.

“That’s going to be hard for people to swallow that we’re going to charge them to pick up things when we limit their ability to take them to the dump,” Commissioner Kyle Mecklenburg said, referring to the limited hours at the city’s convenience center.

“They’re (city workers) picking it up for them and they’re not having to take it to the dump themselves,” Mayor Roxie Alexander said. “That eliminates the work (for residents) and that’s worth something.”

OEMA also provides the city’s roll-off trash carts at the convenience center, which the company scaled back from four to three, due to limited availability of OEMA drivers to remove and replace the containers once they’re full, Slezickey said.

As a result, all the rolloff containers often are full when residents try to dump trash, but adding an extra container might not be a solution either, City Attorney Jared Harrison said.

“If you put four out there because three aren’t getting taken away often enough, pretty soon you’ll have four that are full and still no room for trash,” he said.

Slezickey said the city could put out a request for proposals from other companies who could provide the transfer station roll-off containers and remove and replace them more frequently.

“There’s no easy solution,” Alexander said.

Parking and Trailers

“Our code has two separate chapters that cover parking and trailers are not specifically defined,” Slezickey said. “We need some guidance on what you want and then well bring a draft back to you for your approval.”

“I want our code enforcement officer to enforce code. Fay and Sixth streets have 25 cars in the yards, RVs that are parked out of codes and trailers,” Mecklenburg said.

“As much as you want to say you want to be the enforcer that just goes out to talk to people, some people are just going to say what you want to hear.

“I’d just like to see the word get out that we’re starting to put fines on violations.”

“Remember most of the things I think you’re talking about, there are consequences and they come before you and then you decide whether you want to abate the nuisance,” Harrison said.

“What I’m hearing is that you want to see those start to come here more. The mechanism to do it is already there but so many people are adverse to going that step. If that’s what you want to see happpen, make sure it’s clear.”

Slezickey said commissioners could help the code enforcement officer by cleaning up the code.

“Trailers are mentioned in three different chapters. I think this has made code enforcement that much harder,” he said. “If we want to enforce every code, I need to hire 10 more people to do that.

“Just review it (existing code) and let us know what you want to see there.”

Construction Materials

A fairly recent city code revision requires metal buildings of a certain size to have a certain percentage of nonmetal construction materials used on the front and sides.

The provision has been the topic of considerable debate at city commission meetings when residents have applied for conditional use permits to circumvent the requirement, as allowed by the code.

“The State Legislature has since said that we (municipalities) can’t restrict building composites,” Slezickey said. “We’re grandfathered in, but we don’t have much wiggle room to make changes on our ordinance (without losing grandfather status.)”

Slezickey said one change discussed at the retreat was increasing the size of buildings which must meet the ordinance’s requirements for nonmetal materials.

“Maybe a compromise is that the structure has to have something other than metal on side that’s facing outward,” Mecklenburg said

“It’s all how you define things,” Harrison said. “The current code requires 40% of front and 25% of sides be nonmetal.”

Mecklenburg said he would be more reluctant to approve future conditional use permits that vary from the code requirement.

“Unless there’s an outstanding circumstance as to how someone shouldn’t have to meet the code, then I’m going to vote with the code,” he said.

Harrison said commissioners always have the option of not taking action regarding alleged code violations.

“Remember that you all can very well do nothing and leave it to homeowners associations,” he said.

“If one isn’t in place and residents don’t want XYZ in their neighborhoods, then they can form an association (to impose their own regulations).

“You’re not the last line of defense in making things look the way the community wants them to look.”

In other business, city commissioners voted to:

•Approve meeting dates for all public bodies for 2021 (lists are available on the city’s website at kingfisher.org.)

•Approve an interlocal agreement with Kingfisher County to provide 911 dispatch services for Kingfisher fire and police.

•Approved a new sales and use tax agreement with the Oklahoma Tax Commission, refl ecting the reduction of the city’s tax to 3% after the 1/3 cent HEART tax expired.

•Awarded a contract to Orr Construction of Davenport in the amount of $78,812.93 for grading and earthwork for Newfield Community Park. Orr submitted the lowest of eight bids for the work.

•Approved a new $375,000 grant applicaton for additional work to be done by Kingfisher Trails Inc. in and around Newfield Community Park. The city’s cash outlay would be for preparation of the grant application only, as funds previously received would serve as the city’s required match.

•Approved an expenditure of $24,892 with Trane for replacing controls in the rooftop cooling unit at the Vernie Snow Aquatic Center. A fan and pump also were replaced at no charge to the city because they were under warranty. Slezickey said he will be investigating why the controls also weren’t under warranty.

•Approved an expenditure of $34,776.67 for repairs to the golf course irrigation system, after some discussion as to whether the expense fell under the city or the Kingfisher Golf Association’s responsibility.

•Approved budget amendments.