After a two-hour executive session Monday night, Kingfisher city commissioners voted to reappoint administrative and judicial staff but said they would vote on amendments to City Manager Dave Slezickey’s continuing contract at a later date.

Mayor Roxie Alexander, Vice Mayor Wendell Prim and commissioners Geoff Covalt and Ryan Deatherage voted unanimously to reappoint Slezickey, Clerk Brittney Hladik, Treasurer Anita James, City Attorney Jared Harrison and Municipal Judge Kurt Bollenbach.

Commissioner Kyle Mecklenburg was absent.

City manager, clerk and treasurer are salaried positions, while the city attorney and judge both work as independent contractors, but the city’s charter requires the commission to reappoint all five annually.

Slezickey has served as city manager for 10 years and also is a command sergeant major, the most senior noncommissioned officer in the Oklahoma Army National Guard, where he’s served for 25 years.

Budget Vote Tabled

At the request of Covalt, commissioners also tabled adoption of a proposed $17.3 million budget for Fiscal Year 2022-23.

“I do appreciate all the work you’ve done and all the time you spent explaining it at the budget workshop,” Covalt said to Slezickey, referring to a recent half-day workshop where budget priorities were discussed.

“Sitting there for three or four hours is great information, but as quickly as we went through that, it’s pretty detailed and I’m asking to table it to give us time to get through the depth of it.”

The vote to table the budget was postponed to the end of the meeting to give Harrison time to research whether state law deadlines would allow budget approval to be delayed.

After Harrison reported that commissioners had until June 24 to approve a budget, a special meeting was scheduled for 5:30 p.m. next Tuesday, June 21.

Slezickey asked commissioners to contact the city staff with any questions they may have about the budget process prior to the meeting.

Deatherage asked if a pie chart could be prepared showing what percentage of the budget is spent where.”

“You don’t have to actually create a pie chart if we could just see the percentage of what is going where,” he said.

“The largest percentage in any department is going to be personnel, except for the electric department, where it’s power purchases,” Slezickey said, adding that exact percentages would be provided.

Firemen’s Union Agreement

Commissioners voted to approve the Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiated between Slezickey and the local firemen’s union for FY 2023.

Changes include:

•Biennial boot allowance increased from $100-150.

•Promotional officer pay changed from hourly to a step-scaled pay classification, with an officer reverting to a lower step if he steps down from his duties.

•Changes hourly EMS and instructive incentive pay to base wages through the step scale.

•Provides for interim assignment of new officers until testing and promotion can be completed.

•Requires 100% reimbursement of training expenses if a fireman leaves at any point during the first three years. (Previous wording reduced reimbursement to 75% after one year and 50% after two years.)

•Adds a section providing that a firefighter appointed to a higher classification to fill a temporary vacancy for any reason other than vacation or holidays will be paid at the hire rate and the vacancy will be filled from the same shift in which it occurs.

See Sunday’s paper for more city meeting details.