About 30 Hennessey citizens gathered last week for a scheduled meeting to further air some recent complaints with town operations.

“This is a citizen gathering and not an official town board meeting,” Kelly Bullis told the group Wednesday night at the 122 Center.

During last week’s town board meeting, Bullis told Trustee Bert Gritz she’d planned the event for others, like her, who wanted to speak up after having high water bills due to the town’s defective water meters.

Bullis also told the group Wednesday night that Mayor Randy Bohnstedt had called and said that their town attorney told him they couldn’t respond at the meeting because it would be a violation of the Open Meetings Act (for three or more board members to discuss town business outside of their meetings).

“Their attorney told them not to come,” said Tim Hopkins from the audience.

Town board members who did attend were Trustee Harold Shaw, Trustee David Jones and Bohnstedt.

Then about 30 minutes into the meeting, Shaw said he was leaving the meeting because he wanted the other two members to be eligible to make comments since there would be no quorum.

Jones was the last speaker at the meeting and Bohnstedt did not speak.

Trustees not present were Vice Mayor John Peach and Gritz.

Town staff at the meeting included Town Administrator Tiffany Rowen and Public Works Director Alyssa Kubat.

Vendetti’s $400 Water Bill “This is a time for citizens to come and, if you have issues, or if you’ve got good things to say, I don’t care, it doesn’t matter. I think the trustees who are here deserve to hear you,” said Bullis.

Korey Vendetti said he’d complained “a couple of years ago over a $400 water bill.”

He also questioned whose decision it was to go with that company that had been sued over its product.

“I’ve been tracking the water bill for at least definitely a couple of years,” he said, “and the more this came on, the more I had to look into it.

“If you Google it, it’s just freaking page after page of different cities that have filed suits against them.

“And the meter that we are currently using, the iPurl, they don’t even use it anymore.

“So I don’t know whose decision it was to bring that meter, these meters in.

“And my concern, as a citizen, is what did we do to decide like this? What made us say, like, this is what we want for our town? Because if you did any research, this meter was…They don’t… They sell this meter, but the company now has actually replaced it with a new one, that they claim is better.”

Vendetti had a similar complaint made by a citizen at a previous meeting in that water usage was peculiarly high for the exact same time stamp in the middle of the night for several nights.

“It randomly eats 44 to 48 gallons per hour and all 11 times, 11 times all night.

“That makes no sense,” he said. “And not only that, so when I did call (Town Hall), same thing as everybody else: you’ve got a leak, blah-blah.”

Vendetti said he hopes the town board eventually votes to move away from the current meters, which indicated in February that 19,000 gallons were used in his home.

“That’s completely ridiculous,” he said. “We got a $204 water bill. We’ve got two toilets for a family of five.

“And like I said, if there was a decision that wasn’t to go with this meter, I would probably be making that decision.”

Jones Said He Has Been Threatened With Lawsuits by Town Employees The event ended at about 7:30 p.m. and Jones, who was elected to the board for another four-year term in the spring, was the last speaker of the evening.

“I’ve been on the board three years and six months,” Jones said. “I’ve tried to do good for the town of Hennessey. That’s all I ever wanted to do.

“I’m highly motivated. “I’m retired. “I have time. “And, after about six to eight months on the board, I experienced two threats of lawsuits by two town employees. That’s the way I’ve been working under them ever since. I think it’s important for town citizens to know that.

“I’m not going to speak for anybody else. I’m just speaking for me. I want you guys to know that. And I have one more thing: I’m disappointed. I have a sense of disappointment.

“I appreciate being re-elected, and I’ve just been struggling with trying to accomplish what I haven’t accomplished in three years and six months on the board. And let me tell you why: I have tried to accomplish several things. I’ve tried to come up with ideas, great ideas.”

He brought up an example, which was when the town negotiated Rowen’s most recent contract. Jones said he “made 33 inputs and not one was adopted by the town board.”

“It wasn’t that Tiffany rejected it,” he said. “She didn’t need to debate it. I was expecting Tiffany to do some healthy debate on all 33 of them, but she didn’t do it. So that tells me that if the board agreed with me, those inputs would be in there.”

He said one of the first items he offered was a quality management system with an emphasis on customer service.

Jones went on to discuss some of the issues he’s faced as a trustee.

“A whole lot of resistance,” he said.“Arguments and confrontation. I’ve been laughed at during meetings. I can give you an example of being laughed at…I’m a technical guy and I brought that to one of our meetings. I was laughed at. It didn’t hurt my feelings. It did irritate me.

“And it made me realize how hard it is to communicate, coordinate and get things done with some of our long-term board members who are very, very resistant to change. Thank you.”

Lifeguards Complained The following written list of complaints by former lifeguards about Town Hall employees were read to the group by Ashley Zielny: There were claims attributed to former lifeguards at the swimming pool that they were told by Town Hall staff “they bought stuff in bulk for themselves” such as “protein shakes, healthy stuff we did not sell at the pool concession stand.”

Lifeguards were “accused of taking money” although the lifeguards “would double and triple check the money before turning it in …and were told the bag would be short anywhere between $20 to $100 daily.”

“When Starla (Fuksa) was (briefly) hired (in 2023)…she bought us bags with locks on them and we were told to take them to the bank and do nightly deposits. Once we started depositing the bags in nightly deposits, we were no longer accused of stealing money.”

“If a kid pooped, or threw up in the pool, we would scoop it out and notify town hall about it. We would be told to shut down for 20 minutes. They would not have us follow protocol per Health Department. We never followed protocol because we were told not to… If the chlorine was off, they would tell us to stay open. We never shut down.”

“Tiffany, being gone for vacation a lot over the summer, made it harder to bring issues to her,” according to comments by a lifeguard read at the meeting. “Tiffany would give us rules that we have to enforce. For example, no thongs at pool, putting kids in corner for bad behavior and vaping, but then when someone made complaints to the town, we would get in trouble and get told we can’t enforce that rule anymore. The rules changed all the time for what we were and weren’t allowed to do.

“We were supposed to get breaks, legally, but even when we were off the stand, we were still working the concession stand and on 105 degrees days, we had to sit outside with no shade or anything for an hour even though we changed stands every 10 minutes.”

There were about three pages of complaints by lifeguards, including: “… there was unnecessary drama from management and just the people we worked with. The chlorine was low too many times this year. They need to do a better job of keeping the chlorine higher.”

After reading those comments, Zielny suggested: “It may be beneficial to conduct exit interviews with each staff member to hear pros/ cons/opportunities for improvement. To help ensure trust and openness, these interviews should be conducted by the town trustees, or an impartial third party, rather than by Town Hall staff...Another suggestion is to put the cash from pool into a locked bag and drop off at the bank.”

20 Questions Posed by Kelly Bullis

Some of the more than 20 questions asked by Bullis at the start of the meeting were:

• “Are town staff working on the Reserve Police Officers’ Christmas project at Town Hall during regular office hours? Are we to assume that the city has approved this and, if so, are there records of donated money and gifts with who the recipient was?”

• “Why have treasurer reports not been presented to the board? Has she been properly trained?”

• “I see that All About Hennessey is paid $3,500 a month. What exactly is that amount of money for? It is my understanding that All About Kingfisher, Okeene and Enid does not bill those towns for their page so people are wondering why this money is being charged to Hennessey.”

• “The water plant has had some hefty repairs lately. Mainly, I was told that’s because regular maintenance isn’t performed: like filters being flushed out and kept clean of sludge then the hard water filters get cemented in the units requiring big machinery to help pull them out along with the hefty repair bill. I was told these should be maintained monthly and not just when they break down.”

• “Is there money in the cemetery fund to: run long stretches of cement much like a sidewalk along the head of the grave for grave monuments to be placed, which would help resolve issues of stones falling over? And it would considerably help the maintenance of mowing and weed eating.”

• “Is money from night court, or from the pool, taken home for the night by a town employee instead of not directly put in the night deposit at the bank since there were problems in the past by two employees? I would think that the city’s attorney would like to make some suggestions on this as this is a huge liability considering we have an unrevealed (state) audit that has taken two years to complete and still isn’t done…There must be a lot to unravel. I have made inquiries to the state Auditor and Inspector’s office…I did extend an invitation to them to come tonight to address their concerns.”

How to Get on Town Board Agenda

“My first time to address the board was during the board’s Utilities Authority meeting and I spoke under the ‘Citizen Comments’ agenda item,” said Bullis.

The next time, she contacted Town Hall before the meeting and asked to be listed on the agenda.

The Hennessey town boards have two meetings: the first one as the Town’s Board of Trustees and it’s followed by the Hennessey Utility Authority Board meeting.

Both are held at Town Hall.

The town board’s regular meetings are held at 6 p.m. on the second Tuesday of each month.

Their agendas are required to be publicly posted at least 24 hours prior to the meeting, excluding Saturdays, Sundays and holidays.

It’s suggested to make your request to be on the agenda at least five days prior to the meeting for the Hennessey Town Board and on Thursday for the Hennessey school board meetings held on the second Monday of each month.

The Hennessey Board of Education usually meets at 7 p.m. on the second Monday of the month, also with some exceptions, in the Seminar Room at the school auditorium.