Kingfisher city commissioners voted unanimously Monday night to approve a new three-year contract for City Manager Dave Slezickey at a salary of $125,000 per year, plus benefits.

His salary under the new contract, which takes effect July 1, is a $5,500 boost over his current salary of $119,500, amounting to a 4.6 percent raise in base compensation.

Commissioners also voted to re-appoint the following administrative and judicial employees: Brittney Hladik, city clerk; Anita James, city treasurer; Jared Harrison, city attorney, and Kurt Bollenbach, municipal judge.

The reappointments, all of which are required by the city charter, came after commissioners met in executive session for more than an hour and a half to discuss the personnel decisions.

Slezickey is completing his seventh year as city manager and his second three-year contract (his first contract was for a single year).

His job includes serving as the chief administrative officer of the city as well as the trust manager of the Kingfisher Public Works Authority, Kingfisher Recreation Authority, Special Projects Authority and the hospital trust.

Under the terms of his multi-year contract, Slezickey is still subject to an annual performance review by the board of commissioners. The board conducted his 2019 review in closed session at a meeting earlier this spring.

“Our administration does a good job for the city,” Mayor Steve Richards said after the reappointment vote. “We appreciate all of you.”

Hladik, James and Harrison were present at the meeting, along with Slezickey.

$18 Million Budget OK’d

The city commission normally meets on the second Monday of the month, but held over the majority of its June business for a special meeting a week later because Richards and Slezickey were out of town last week.

The nearly three-hour meeting, the last in the current fiscal year, also included unanimous approval of an $18 million budget for FY 2019-20.

The budget includes appropriations of $18,013, 778 and estimated revenues of $18,107,420 for an estimated $93,643 increase in the total fund balance of approximately $6.88 million the city is expected to carry over July 1.

Anticipated spending breakdown among the city’s operating funds include:general–$7,488,262; KPWA – $8,517, 951; recreation authority – $359,165.

General fund expenditures include payroll and other operational expenses for City Hall and the following departments: municipal court, police, fire, street, park, library, cemetery and general government.

Revenues for those departments include sales taxes, charges for services, licenses and permits, fines and forfeitures, interest income and miscellaneous.

KPWA expenditures include operational expenses for the city’s utility services, including administration, light and power, power plant, water, sewer and sanitation.

Revenue for KPWA includes charges for services, interest income and miscellaneous.

Recreational authority expenditures include expenses for the golf course and aquatic center, with revenue generated from those same sources.

The budget also includes expenditures of $1,134,900 and anticipated revenues of $1,235,843 in 11 restricted funds: airport, cemetery perpetual care, flood control, HEART tax, library endowment, military memorial, Overstreet memorial, self-insurance, sick leave buy-back, street and alley and hotel/motel tax.

Also included are $513,500 in expenditures and $482,000 in anticipated revenues in capital improvement funds for the city, KPWA and recreation authority.

Airport Discussion

Before approving the budget, commissioners spent considerable time discussing recent funding requests from the Kingfisher Airport Authority.

The airport authority is the only one of the city-created government trusts which has a governing body separate from the city commission.

Airport authority board members, including Bill Reitz, Tom Feagins, Randy Pritchett, Mike Rosen and Tanner Farrar, weren’t present for the Monday night’s discussion, which developed in response to a question from Commissioner Bill Tucker during the budget discussion and was not a separate agenda item.

Commissioners indicated they had been contacted by members of the authority asking for financial help from the city to paint the old hangar buildings and install guttering.

“You have the authority to cut funding somewhere else and move it to the airport before you approve the budget or you can amend the budget later if they come up with a plan to justify what they want,” Slezickey told commissioners.

Slezickey noted that the airport board has independent authority to solicit bids and raise revenue through fuel sales and hangar rentals.

“They [the airport authority] haven’t done anything to generate revenue. Their fuel rates are the lowest around and hangar lease rates haven’t been raised in years,” he said.

“It’s a balancing act that we normally don’t get stuck in because this is the first authority we’ve had with a separate governing board,” City Attorney Jared Harrison said. “We lease the airport to them to take care of. There’s still room to work with them, but they need to go through some steps so that we know what we’re dealing with and they are fully authorized to take those steps.”

“From my understanding, they’ll come up on the lease price but they don’t want to increase the cost of fuel,” Commissioner Tammy Mueggenborg said.

Slezickey said his understanding is that the airport board wants to keep fuel prices down so that refueling business isn’t lost to Sun-dance Airport in Oklahoma City, which also has low fuel prices.

“They’re trying to compete with Sundance but Sun-dance doesn’t make profit on fuel, they profit on hangars,” Slezickey said.

He noted that monthly hangar rental fees at the Kingfisher airport are $100 or less.

“That sounds awfully cheap to me to store an airplane,” Alexander said. “I doubt you could store an RV for that much money a month.”

Slezickey said the city has suggested to the airport authority that they collect $20,000 to $25,000 up front from private entities building their own hangars on airport lots so that those funds could be used as a working reserve, but the airport board opted for low monthly leases instead.

“Are we at fault for not making them do that?” Commissioner Roxie Alexander asked.

“That’s a good point to remember, we can talk about hangar rental or fuel costs all day long but in the end it’s their decision,” Harrison said. “Your decision tonight is whether to approve the budget as is or make some change to accommodate the airport.”

At that point, Tucker made a motion to approve the budget as presented, seconded by Alexander.

The motion passed unanimously.