Council re-elects Paxton as city mayor

Regina Garvie
The Tuttle Times

TUTTLE June 14, 2006 03:48 pm

— The Tuttle City Council affirmed their confidence in Mayor Lonnie Paxton by re-electing him for another term during their Monday night meeting. Paxton has spearheaded many initiatives within the city, including the “Tuttle 2020 Plan” and the hiring of the current city manager. The council also re-elected the vice mayor, Henry Biddy. Biddy has been a part of city government for several years. His current stint on the city council comes on the heels of a long tenure on the Tuttle Planning Commission, where he served as chairman.
Another government official also got a nod Monday night. City manager Jerry A. Taylor was evaluated by the council during executive session, and the five men voted to give him a raise due to his work with the city. Taylor’s annual salary was raised by $5,000, going from $63,000 to $68,000. Taylor has been with the city since August 2005.
“It takes a new city manager about a full year to go through the cycle where they really get their feet on the ground and know what’s going on,” Paxton said. “It’s a hard job being city manager. He’s done a remarkable job of handling all he things the council wants handled and the citizens want handled.”
The council voted to hold a public hearing on June 20 for the city’s annual budget. The topic brought up some discussion after city attorney David Perryman reviewed the ordinance book and found that the date for publishing the required legal notice for the hearing had already passed. The ordinances read that Tuttle’s budget must be adopted at least seven days before June 30, the end of the fiscal year. Perryman said the latest the public hearing could be held, according to the ordinances, was June 16. With the newspaper only publishing on Thursdays, the legal notice would have to be in the paper no later than June 8.
Perryman recommended that the council schedule the public hearing as quickly as possible, which would be five days after the notice appeared in the paper. The council set the public hearing and a workshop meeting for Tuesday, June 20 at 6 p.m. and a morning meeting to vote on the budget on Thursday, June 22 at 7:30 a.m.
Since the legal notice was submitted to the newspaper after the deadline, that section had already been printed, so the notice has been placed on page 5 instead.
During the public comments portion, Gary Knowles and his wife, Kathy, spoke. They discussed a fire that had taken place in the Whispering Pines subdivision over the weekend (see related story below).
“I’m not here to bring blame or anything like that,” Knowles said. “It took some time for help to arrive. I think [the family affected] probably have lost their whole home on something that started outside.”
Knowles said that he and his neighbors were worried about the distance from Whispering Pines to the Tuttle Fire Department.
“As a citizen, I have a great deal of concerns that I’m not really protected from a fire, and a lot of my neighbors feel the same way,” he said.
Mayor Paxton told Knowles that he and the council would look into the problem and find out what happened during the fire.
Councilor Taylor Henderson was particularly interested in the fire, since it took place near his own home. Henderson said he had not even known a home had burned near him. He later said that when he bought his own home in Whispering Pines, he was told that the addition was in the Bridge Creek Fire Protection District, and that Bridge Creek would be first responders to the scene in Whispering Pines.
Both Mayor Lonnie Paxton and Fire Chief Gerald Cook said on Tuesday that although Whispering Pines is in Bridge Creek’s fire protection district, it was also in city limits, and Tuttle was also considered the first responder for the area.
The council also discussed entering into a contract with Sterling Codifers to maintain city ordinances. Sterling Codifers would enter all of Tuttle’s ordinances onto the Internet, and residents and others could access all of them by visiting the city’s website. Jerry Taylor said that he has worked with the company before and found it to be a good resource. A motion was made to accept the idea but was later withdrawn after questions arose about some of the terminology in the contract. The council directed Taylor to seek clarification on the wording before a decision is made.
In other action, the council:
• Adopted an ordinance amending the subdivision regulations, regarding fees to defray costs incurred by the city during the platting and subdivision process;
• Entered into an agreement with the Oklahoma Criminal Justice Resource Center to allow ODIS to transfer data to pay citations online;
• Voted to approve going out for bids for the Homeland Security Grant Project for the police department;
• Appointed planning commission chairman Tom Wilson to the board of adjustments for Ward 4. Two positions remain to be filled - Ward 2 and the at large position.

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