LAWTON — Lawton has several projects on its plate for 2022, including street upgrades and renovations to City Hall.
At the same time, city officials are continuing to deal with the lingering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Southwest Ledger recently interviewed City Manager Michael Cleghorn about the pandemic’s impact on local government in 2021 and the city’s outlook for 2022, including upcoming projects. Here are questions and answers from that interview, edited for clarity and length.
Q: How did the pandemic affect city government in 2021?
A: In 2021, the city of Lawton was in a place of recovery from the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, while also still being affected by new variants of the virus.
Our community was able to start out 2021 by receiving the COVID-19 vaccine, which was a tremendous blessing. We had several employees who had received their second dose of the vaccine by the end of January 2021. It was an exciting day for all of us.
Of course, now that it’s a year later, we were not done with the pandemic when vaccines began to be administered. The Delta variant began its surge, which caused a lot of our employees to be absent from work.
At the same time, the city of Lawton, like many other businesses around the country, was dealing with staffing shortages. At one point, we had nearly a hundred open positions. Those shortages, coupled with employees being out sick, caused projects, like road and sewer repairs, to be put on hold.
I would say that the staffing shortages, coupled with the pandemic, are what affected the city of Lawton most.
As 2021 came to a close, the city of Lawton was able to use over $9 million in ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) funding to give premium pay to employees who currently work for the city of Lawton and were working from March 2020 to May 2021.
The first year of the pandemic was a trying time for all of our employees, because we had to keep the city running for our citizens, so it was a blessing to be able to get them the premium pay before the holidays.
Q: Is the city still recovering from the impact of the pandemic?
A: The city of Lawton is still navigating the course of the pandemic. We continue to address staffing issues, along with keeping our employees healthy by encouraging them to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and updating the employee COVID-19 directive to reflect CDC (Centers for Disease Control) guidance.
Q: What steps has the city taken to cushion the impact of the pandemic in 2021? Will those measures continue into 2022?
A: Since the beginning of the pandemic in 2020, the city of Lawton has followed course with guidance from the Oklahoma State Department of Health and the CDC to keep citizens and employees safe and healthy.
We have maintained a close correspondence with the Comanche County Health Department and local health care officials from Comanche County Memorial Hospital and Southwestern Medical Center and will continue to do so as we navigate the pandemic together.
As for keeping city employees healthy, the city of Lawton will continue to encourage employees to receive the COVID-19 vaccine and update the employee COVID-19 directive to reflect CDC guidance.
When the COVID-19 vaccine was first available, the city of Lawton offered an incentive pay of $100 as well as a day off. We are currently offering $1,000 to current and future employees who get fully vaccinated and receive a booster shot.
The vaccine is our biggest defense against COVID-19, and we’re doing everything we can to get city employees vaccinated so we can keep our public servants healthy and available to serve our citizens.
Q: What is the city’s financial outlook for 2022?
A: The financial outlook still looks good.
Revenue is still coming in as we expected. Sales tax is still trending well – slightly up, as it was the previous year. Utility revenues are still holding steady.
So, we’re cautiously optimistic that we’ll continue with that trend line and that we will not have any major hiccups through the rest of 2022.
The fiscal year will stop at the end of June and then start again in July, so we want to make sure that we look at both aspects of it. But if you’re looking at it from a calendar year, we’re optimistic that everything’s going to continue the way it’s continuing now.
Q: What projects are on the city’s to-do list for 2022?
A: We’ve got a lot of projects out there for 2022, and we’ll just hit some of the highlights.
There’s been a lot of questions about Gore Boulevard – West Gore Boulevard, 67th to 82nd Street. We should have construction start sometime in mid-year, summer of 2022.
With the West Gore Boulevard water line and sewer line reconstruction … we estimate that to start in April of 2022.
As you well know, the public safety center was recently completed.
Lawrence Street drainage improvements: That’s Southwest B Avenue to Southwest D Avenue. We expect that to begin somewhere with a bid of mid-January (and) the start date somewhere in February.
We’re still continuing with a lot of ad valorem street projects. … We’re continuing with all those Phase 1 construction of the ad valorem (street projects) and designing and preparing for the Phase 2 portions of the ad valorem.
Right now, we’re about 60% design complete for the Phase 2 portions of the ad valorem street projects. So, we’re continuing to move forward with those.
As you well know, we’re in the middle of rehabilitation of Neal (Boulevard) and Ard (Street). We’re about 91% complete with construction on that, so we expect that to be completed by the end of January, maybe mid-February.
We’re also looking at the rehabilitation of Southwest Lee Boulevard. A lot of questions on Southwest Lee Boulevard. That’s basically 97th Street to l-44, and we’re going to do that in phases.
We delayed last year’s bid to start construction on that from 97th down to 67th, and we expect that to go out here in February for bid again. So that’s coming up.
We will begin – and we’re excited about this – the City Hall renovation project. We’re going to do a CMAR (for the project), which is a construction manager at risk. That’s a different way of doing things.
I’m sure there’s many definitions of it out there, but essentially, it’s a set price that the contractor agrees to do the work for. It really kind of takes that pressure off the city of those change orders. It’s a lot less change orders.
We’re also excited about renovations to McMahon Memorial Auditorium, which will also be a CMAR project.
Q: What other issues will the city face in 2022, and what steps is the city taking to address them?
A: The biggest issue right now that the city of Lawton will face in 2022 is continuing to navigate the COVID-19 pandemic. If more people in our community, and across the country, don’t get vaccinated, then we will see more variants develop and drastically affect our citizens and employees, just like the Delta and Omicron variants have done and continue to do.
We’ve been in this pandemic for two years now, and many times we thought we were seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, but we are still in the thick of this pandemic.
We encourage citizens to please consider getting vaccinated and help us help each other.