There will be an election later this year for the Kingfisher City Commission seat currently held by Jeff Wittrock.

City commissioners last Monday approved Resolution 2025-001, which sets Tuesday, April 1, as election day for the four-year term.

The filing period will be Feb. 3-5. Currently the vice mayor, Wittrock took office last April when he defeated Kaci Farrar in an election to fill the unexpired term.

The seat originally belonged to current Mayor Geoff Covalt, who was elected to the commission in September 2021.

Covalt was then appointed mayor in August 2023 when Roxie Alexander retired from the position.

Farrar was appointed to fill Covalt’s seat until an election could be held in April 2024.

Wittrock told the Times & Free Press that he plans to seek re-election to the commission.

Joining Wittrock and Covalt in passing the resolution setting the election during the January regular meeting were commissioners Kyle Mecklenburg, Dawn Taylor and Debbie Burpo.

Also during the meeting, commissioners approved a five-year service agreement with Zoll ExpertCare for ventilators at the current Kingfisher Fire Department at a cost of $13,224.

The commissioners also approved Ordinance 2025-001 which relates to cleaning up the language of vegetation issues regarding city easements.

City Manager Jim Thomas commented that Linda Garcia, the city’s compliance officer, had asked for the approval as much of the excessive wording in the previous ordinance was problematic and unnecessary.

Thomas said the updates to the wording made the ordinance more understandable to all parties.

The commissioners approved the final payment of $267,652.44 to Asphalt Paving for the project recently completed west of 13th Street on Will Rogers Avenue and Starlite Drive.

The commissioners also approved the surplus sale of a 2000 Tymco International LTD Street Sweeper that is no longer operational.

The routine purchase of bulk fuel for the Kingfisher Municipal Airport as requested by the Kingfisher Airport Authority at the cost of $16,000 was approved.

There was light discussion regarding the recommendation of SRB Engineering to develop a fullscale capital improvement plan to establish a list of assets of all city equipment.

Thomas commented that he and the department heads needed the CIP program so they could be fully assessed of material, age, condition and life expectancy of all the city’s equipment so that budget plans could be more exact.

The commissioners approved that the firm be contracted for the project.

Along those same lines, the commissioners approved the hiring of Parkhill Engineering to work with the city to develop a plan for future water resources, water and wastewater treatment analysis, along with the review and to make recommendations for the city’s water distribution and collection network and to design a Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition system, (SCADA) to monitor, control and analyze through a hardware and software collection site.

The final business of the evening was to approve the purchase of a pump for the water department at the cost of $23,245.60.