City Council tables Municipal Property Naming Rights Policy

January 10, 2013

Guymon City Council met Thursday night to discuss various items including a presentation of Service Awards to City of Guymon Employees for numbers of years of service, a presentation of progress on the new Fire Station, Animal Shelter, and Library, the discussion and possible action on approving a Municipal Property Naming Rights Policy, and the discussion on authorization to advertise for bids for IP telephone and Wireless Networking systems.
Timberlake Construction gave a brief presentation stating that the progress of the Fire Station, Animal Shelter, and Library are all on schedule, and there is a lot of the progress that is ahead of schedule.
The discussion on approving a Municipal Property Naming Rights Policy, that not only would involve the current buildings being built, but would also include buildings in the future, was tabled due to the council wanting to do more research on other cities and their policies and the relevance that it would have in Guymon and the city's buildings.
This policy will provide guidelines as to whom and what corporate businesses providing donations for buildings will be able to name certain sections or parts of the building in their honor.
Interim City Manager Kim Meek helped explain to the council the basis behind the prospective policy.
"This is not just about the library," said Meek. "This is about in the future, any building that we may build, if people want to donate money for a room, or a bench, or a plant, or whatever they want to put there whether it is a park or a building, it kind of sets out what they have to do to allow that so that we're not randomly allowing citizens to do it and then telling other ones that they can't."
Meek went on to explain that if the city builds a building, then it is unlikely that they would put a corporations name on the whole building, but rather a room or a part of the building instead.
The council had some questions concerning the necessity and reasoning behind certain items that were provided on the prospective policy, and they decided to table it until they can look further into details to find what would be the best fit for the policy in Guymon.
The council went ahead with authorization to advertise for bids for IP Telephone and Wireless Network Systems for the Guymon network which will be extra money spent on the three major new buildings being constructed that was not included in the contracts with Timberlake Construction.