The Elk City Rotary Club held their regular weekly meeting, Thursday, in the Elks Lodge. President Lake Carpenter called the meeting to order, while treasurer Damon Butcher passed out boxes of dictionaries that will be distributed to area schools’ third graders. This is an annual project for the group.
Basil Weatherly introduced the program for the day, which was City Manager Tom Ivester. He gave the club a rundown on projects that have been going on around the city, as well as those coming in the near future. He started by passing out a paper with comparison sales tax receipts with other towns comparable to Elk City. The only town that brought in more tax dollars was Yukon.
“We generate our income through sales tax and utility sales which is water and sewer. We get some revenue from our landfill. We do get some revenue through our rock yard, but the overwhelming majority of it is through sales tax and water or sewer and garbage fees,” Ivester explained.
He went on to talk about the Main Street streetscape project. The project has been in the works for several years. It started with the water main project at the cost of approximately $1.7 million. The highway department is going to start the road project that runs from Main and Third St. to the railroad tracks at 7th St.
“They’re going to bid it in January. They are probably going to start in April or May. It’s going to be a pretty large disruption to downtown. We set the pace of how to do it with the water replacement project, which was basically a block at a time, trying to get minimal disruption to the downtown businesses. We certainly don’t want to interrupt the holiday season which is Thanksgiving through the New Year. It is where they get a majority of the revenue, or a sizable portion of the revenue, so we’ve made special compensation for that in the contracts,” Ivester explained.
He added that they will be replacing the water mains about every other year. It will take 20 to 30 years to complete the project. He said that the cost is at $8 million. The next subject he spoke about was the landfill. Elk City has one of the few landfills in Western Oklahoma. Most towns do not have their own landfi lls now, they contract it out. Because Elk City has their own, the cost rates for water and trash are lower than other towns.
Ivester then touched on the CAPPS projects. The long rage vision at the time started in 2019. He said that other city managers are contacting him to see how Elk City has accomplished the two major projects, the Arrowhead Center and the Aquatic Center. Additionally, he spoke about how they will pay for future projects which include a convention center and an expo center. Those will be based on a “pay as you go” system.
The citizens of Elk City were credited in making the projects happen. He added that without their support, the new fire station and police renovation would not be possible. Those two projects are in the engineering phase at this time. He anticipates construction to start next late spring or summer.
“I can’t underestimate the impact that having a state representative from this area. It makes a tremendous difference having Nick Archer out there. When we started the talks with the Oklahoma Aviation Commission at the end of the legislative session, Nick Archer was out there to represent our interests. The end result was that we were able to speed up a year timeline on a grant request for a new hangar and a terminal that will be big enough to handle a jet,” Ivester said.
There will be three major projects starting at the beginning of next summer. Those include the fire and police stations, the Main Street road, and the airport construction. It is all going to hit about the same time. The airport is at the cost of $4.5 million, the city’s contribution to the streetscape is $1.5 million, and $9 million between the fire and police stations. Ivester noted that it will be about $15 million within the next 24 months.
Ivester concluded by talking about the number of people coming to Elk City for the swimming pool and the softball tournaments.
“We continue to knock it out of the park,” he said.
The next Rotary meeting will be held Thursday, Sept. 21st, in the Elks Lodge. Anyone interested in joining the group should contact Carpenter at the Bank of Western Oklahoma or any other Rotarian.
