Kingfisher city officials hosted a citywide open meeting at the Kingfisher County Fairgrounds Exhibit Building last Tuesday night to discuss water, sewer and electricity rate hikes with citizens.

Those on hand included City Manager Jim Thomas, Mayor Geoff Covalt and city commissioners Dawn Taylor, Jeff Wittrock, Debbie Burpo and Kyle Mecklenburg.

Thomas offered a presentation to those in attendance that illustrated Kingfisher’s rates are far below other cities and communities in the area, including Hennessey, Okarche, El Reno and Enid.

The commissioners will meet Monday during their annual budget planning retreat. Among the topics will be to finalize plans as to what the rate increases will be, specifically for water and sewer.

Thomas said needs for improvements for water and sewer were nearing the “critical” stage, as pipes and pumps are becoming clogged and beyond repair.

“We have excellent crews at work for you in all departments and they are doing a great job of keeping our systems operating,” Thomas said. “But with pipe build-up and corrosion, we’re at the point where we can’t kick the can down the road anymore. We have to lay new pipe and make improvements regarding our equipment, or we will have a serious problem sooner, rather than later.”

Covalt and Mecklenburg also responded to questions regarding the necessity of renovation of the city’s power plant.

The two and Thomas said the power plant was built in 1920 and the generators, which are used for emergency and backup power when electricity from the city’s electric provider fails, are at least 60 to 70 years old.

Thomas said the generators must be replaced because replacement parts are almost impossible to find as the manufacturer went out of business long ago and the operating system is increasingly a “unique” challenge for the electric department to keep operational.

“We are proposing to install one new and much more powerful generator made by the Caterpillar company to replace the oldest and most suspect generators, with the others to be replaced later,” Thomas said.

He added that Kingfi sher was a community in a favorable position in regards to having it’s own emergency generating plant.

“Most communities don’t have this option and the OMPA (Oklahoma Municipal Power Authority), of which Kingfisher is a member city, pays us to provide this back up power,” he said.

Thomas said the city of Kingfisher has not raised water, sewer and power rates since 2014 and, during that time, inflation has risen well over 32%.

He said other cities have had several rate increases over this period and with the proposed “modest” rate increases, Kingfisher’s rates would still be on the bottom of the chart in prices charged in comparison with its neighboring communities and cities.

“The bottom line is this: if we don’t fix this infrastructure, it’s going to collapse,” Thomas said.

“We must be proactive and I’m not doing my job if I don’t make our citizens aware of how critical our situation is.”

He said that water and sewage rate increases would be decided upon Monday, with power and electric rate increases to be decided upon by the commissioners at a later date.

“Water and sewer are the most critical needs to be addressed and we’ll focus our efforts on that at the present, with power following behind,” Thomas said.