Kingfisher City Manager Dave Slezickey was the guest speaker of the Kingfisher Lions Club last Thursday to explain the priorities for the proposed 1/3-cent sales tax that will be voted on by Kingfisher residents this Tuesday.

“The city of Kingfisher is asking voters to approve a 1/3-cent sales tax for capital improvements,” Slezickey said.

“It is a new tax to replace the expiring 1/3-cent sales tax for the aquatic center renovation project. So, if approved, our city sales tax will not be raised, but remain the same at 3 1/3 cents,” he added.

Slezickey said the city’s No. 1 priority is to build a new fire station to replace the one that was built in 1976.

“We outgrew our fire station long ago,” Slezickey said.

He said it was built to house a three-person crew and three vehicles.

Fire department vehicles are being stored in several locations away from the fire station, Slezickey said.

“Today we have six crew members on each crew and currently 14 fire, ambulance and rescue vehicles,” he noted.

Slezickey said Kingfisher’s sales tax rate was the seventh-lowest in our trade area, which includes cites as far as away as Enid, Yukon, Mustang, Guthrie, Edmond and Weatherford.

He commented that there were currently three new housing developments within the community and that growth was inevitable as Oklahoma City continues to expand outward.

He said the dollars generated through the 1/3-cent would be in the neighborhood of $450,000 per year and all capital improvement expenditures would go to the city commission for approval.

“We had a pretty good run on tax dollars collected because of the energy boom we had here for several years, but obviously that has dropped off quite a bit and the pandemic has taken its toll as we all know,” Slezickey said.

“But I would think that once we get back to some form of normalcy, that it would be somewhere around the $450,000 range.”

He said the city commissioners and the mayor felt it was best to keep this a permanent tax, as opposed to going to the citizens for a vote for individual improvement projects every four or five years.

He said future capital improvement projects could possibly be the renovation of Memorial Hall or the construction or rededication of that building to become a community center for events and functions.

He invited persons with questions to please contact him at the city office, or go to the city’s tax website at: www.kingfisher.org/salestax.

Slezickey then commented on progress with electricity and clean-up efforts regarding the recent ice storm.

“None of us were prepared for something like this in October,” he said. “The entire area was caught offguard by this.”

He said the electric department crew members have been working 18-hour days since Tuesday and he estimated that perhaps 250 homes were without power within the city limits while he was at the meeting.

“We have all our street and parks and recreation departments working on cleanup of limbs in the streets and I think we will have a pretty good handle on that by week’s end,” he added.

The city purchased the Department of Human Services building on the south end of Kingfisher on the west side of U.S. Highway 81 and the Kingfisher Police Department is now in the process of moving into that building, Slezickey said.

“Our police department outgrew their current facilities downtown long ago and the DHS building is a very good fit for our current personnel and we have plenty of parking around it and room to grow,” he said.

Slezickey was introduced to the group by Lions Club member Jeff Minnis, who also introduced Brian Walter as a guest to the meeting.