Kingfisher City Commissioner Kyle Mecklenburg raised concern about rising operating costs at the Vernie Snow Aquatic Center in a budget discussion Monday at the regular monthly commission meeting.

“The fact that the pool costs $340,000 per year and that we pay $186,000 in salaries and wages (for pool staff),” he said. “I need to wrap my head around that because that’s just an outrageous amount.

“At some point we need to cut the limb off or try to stop the bleeding. We can’t just keep throwing money at it.”

Mecklenburg’s comments came during a discussion of the preliminary $16.59 million budget proposed for Fiscal Year 2021-22, a product of two recent extended special meetings, the first where department heads shared their needs and wants for the coming year and the second where commissioners provided additional guidance to city staff as the budget was being fleshed out.

Monday’s meeting was the first where Mecklenburg raised his concerns, which he said he didn’t expect to be addressed this year but added: “This is something we’re going to have to pay attention to, in my opinion.”

“It’s a service we provide and it’s not a revenue generator,” City Manager Dave Slezickey said. “We had a year where we were closed during the pandemic, but now we’re having more private parties, we’re open for more alternative events and we have more life guards working.”

Slezickey also said an assistant director position was added to the pool staff, to ensure that adult supervision was available whenever the pool is utilized.

“It’s utilized more by out of town people than in town people yet in town people are paying for it,” Mecklenburg said, then suggested later in the discussion that another special sales tax might be considered to help cover operational costs.

“We have to look at it as a community and see if the community really wants to keep it and if they do, they need to consider how we’re going to continue paying for it.”

“It is honestly easy to sit here and look in the rear view mirror and ask why do we have an indoor facility that’s so much more expensive to operate,” Slezickey said. “But none of us made that decision and we’re just trying to figure out how to keep it going.”

Watch for more details about Monday’s meeting in a future edition.