October 2025 City Council meeting

Oct. 22, 2025 

The monthly meeting of the Watonga City Council had 18 items on the agenda. It can be seen on the official city website: www.watongaok.gov.  The minutes of the meeting have not yet been posted anywhere, but there are recordings of the meeting on a couple of Watonga facebook pages, including Blaine County Talk. Unfortunately, the audio is not of good quality and a lot of the comments by council members cannot be heard.  A good reason for people to attend these meetings if you want to know what our city government is doing. Meeting minutes have not been posted on the city's website since February 2025. The October meeting was well-attended. 

Since the public will not see the minutes of the meeting for at least a month (they say their policy is not to post the minutes on their official website until the next monthly meeting when those minutes are presented to the council for approval, but history shows us that it could be months, if not longer, before those minutes are actually posted on the website for the public to read), I am providing a summary of what I could get from the recorded video:

On the Action Agenda --

1. Consideration, Discussion and Action: To censure Councilman Neal Riley for violation of the Ethics Code of Conduct. 

2. Consideration, Discussion and Action: To remove Marcus Wray from the Board of Adjustments due to his posting of sensitive information, concerning the City's Bank Account information from First State Bank, Watonga, on a social media site.

     The mayor first made a motion to move these first two items to the end of the meeting. Before a second could be voiced, Neal Riley made a motion to strike items 1 and 2 from the agenda. The vote was Yes from Neal and Roy and No from McGee and Howard Hursh. The mayor voted to break the tie with a No vote. Then the mayor repeated his motion to move items 1 and 2 to the end of the meeting. There were several objections from the audience, probably because most of the attendees were there specifically to support Neal Riley and Marcus Wray, and by putting those items at the end of the meeting, it was possible that many people would have to leave before the council addressed those items. In fact, the meeting took almost two hours before it was adjourned. At approximately an hour and twelve minutes into the meeting, the mayor addressed item 1. of the Action agenda and Neal Riley was allowed to speak about how those items came to be on the agenda and then presented a valid defense to Ms. McGee's accusations.  It was stated that the items were put on the agenda by Debbie McGee based on Marcus Wray posting a copy of a City check on social media. McGee claimed that Neal was guilty of violating a code of ethics by providing a copy of said check, which is public record, to Marcus Wray, a private citizen of Watonga, who then posted a copy of the check on his facebook page. 

Neal stated that the check was public record, and it was within his obligations as a council member representing the public to provide a copy of such public record. McGee's problem with posting the check on-line was that it revealed the bank account number and routing number of the City's account on which the check was drawn, which she deemed "confidential information." It was pointed out that the information on the check was not confidential information, and if Ms. McGee thought it was, it was her responsibility as keeper of the City records to make sure that information was redacted before it was presented to the City Council for approval and made a public record. [The city council later considered and passed a motion to draft a "policy" that confidential information be redacted in the future. That matter was referred to the city attorney to draft a policy.]  After discussion, a motion was made to strike both items 1. and 2.  All council members except Ms. McGee voted to strike those items from the action agenda.