Kingfisher school board members and Superintendent David Glover are hopeful they have a method in place to keep a portion of a settlement from falling to taxpayers in the district.

Now they just need the proper person to sign off on it.

The board held its final meeting of the 2023-24 fiscal year Monday.

Among the items on the agenda was the discussion and possible action of issuing an additional payment on the settlement agreed to with Mason Mecklenburg.

The board voted last December to end the civil lawsuit brought against the district and four coaches by Mecklenburg in 2021.

Among the terms of the settlement was agreeing to pay $5 million to the 2021 KHS graduate.

The agreement called for the district to make a $1.25 million payment within 90 days and then subsequent $1.25 million payments, plus interest, from the sinking fund each year for the next three years.

That meant it would affect the ad valorem taxes of those within the school district.

Estimates provided to the Times & Free Press suggested a potential 12 percent tax increase through the life of the payments.

The board voted 4-1 in favor of that agreement with Brad Wittrock voting against it.

During that December meeting, Wittrock vowed that the board would seek all avenues for the school district to pay off the debt without it affecting taxpayers.

Board members during the June 3 meeting discussed making an extra payment - up to $1.25 million - to help ease the burden to taxpayers.

However, they decided at that meeting to hold off on any decision until this week’s meeting so they’d have a clearer picture of the district’s end-of-year financial status.

In the meantime, Glover, Wittrock and board President Charles Walker met with the Kingfisher County Excise Board.

Anytime a school district in the county accepts an estimate of needs or a budget from its auditor, it must then be approved by the county excise board.

The excise board sets the ad valorem rates within the county.

That meeting resulted in providing Glover and the KPS board with a clearer picture of what might be possible.

“I think it’s a great idea on the surface,” Glover said during Monday’s meeting. “I hope beyond hope we can do it.”

It calls for the excise board - not the school - to direct the amount of millage necessary into the sinking fund when working with the school’s estimate of needs.

It would essentially mean the district will have $1.25 million plus interest less to work with in its budget during those three years.

“We can handle that. Financially we can handle it,” Glover said. “We’ll have to tighten the reins up, but it’s very doable.”

The district had previously looked into moving the money into the sinking fund itself.

“Then we were told … ‘You can’t do that; it’s illegal,’” Glover said.

He was referring to a 2000 opinion offered by then Oklahoma Attorney General Drew Edmondson that stated school districts cannot use general fund monies from state and local sources to pay a judgment.

“We have tried to exhaust every effort that we can to pay this as a school,” Wittrock said on Monday. “We’ve been shot down several times on how to do that.”

There’s no guarantee the newest method won’t reach the same fate.

“What I’m working on right now is I want to make sure, because of the liability on you five people, I want to make sure that we get something in writing from somebody that says this is legal to do,” Glover said.

The superintendent said while he’s had some discussions in which he’s been told it’s a viable option, he’s had others in which people discussed concern about its legality.

He said he’s requested the Center for Education Law to research it and will also seek an opinion from current Attorney General Gentner Drummond.

“If I can get somebody at the attorney general’s office to write a letter and put their signature on it, that takes the liability off you five, then we can move forward and we’ll do it,” Glover said.

“I think it’s a great solution to a tough deal. I never liked it in the first place, but if this is something we can do, then we need to look at it.”

Also in researching the option of making an additional payment now, Wittrock said it’s not viable.

“We can’t make a payment to the treasurer’s office because they can’t receive it because they don’t have anything to apply it to,” Wittrock said, noting the settlement isn’t yet on the tax rolls.

“So if we made a payment, we’d have to make a payment to the plaintiff directly.”

He said that although it would ultimately be applied and would reflect a smaller amount for taxpayers, there would still be an increase in ad valorem taxes if that was the route the district chose.

“So making the payment at the end of this fiscal year does not make sense,” Wittrock said.

The board took no action on that item.