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130 STUDENTS TO GRADUATE SATURDAY NIGHT
The Oologah-Talala Class of 2008, led by valedictorians Maggie Maltsberger, Ashley Henderson, Brittney Brown and Ashley McGlothlin, will graduate at 7 p.m. on Saturday night at Mustang Stadium.
Festivities for the seniors begin with a breakfast on Friday morning, followed by graduation rehearsal and a picnic at Oologah Lake.
Baccalaureate is at 10 a.m. on Saturday at the OHS auditorium.
BOTTOMS IS TOPS, ORWIG IS MAYOR
By CHRIS EDENS, City Editor
Talala voters elected Jared Bottoms to serve on the town board Tuesday night and the board elected Lester Orwig as Mayor.
Bottoms defeated Jon Weare in the special election. Bottoms received 39 votes and Weare received 27 votes.
"I want to thank everybody for their vote of confidence and let everybody know that no matter whether they agree or disagree with me, I'll still listen to their opinion," Bottoms said. "One of the reasons I did this is I want my three boys to be proud to say they're from Talala."
Orwig nominated Bottoms for the board seat and former mayor Bob Payne nominated Weare.
The 66 registered voters in attendance wrote their choice on a piece of paper. The ballots were collected in a basket and a mark was placed by each candidate's name on a dry erase board as the votes were read.
The special election was necessary after Payne resigned in February. The board had been unable to agree on new member. With only four board members, votes had been split 2-2 recently.
After the election, the board held its regular monthly meeting. Bottoms was sworn in and then the vote to elect a new mayor was held.
Bottoms nominated Orwig and Eldon Wegner gave a second to the nomination. Bottoms, Orwig and Wegner all voted yes and Gene Harper and Joe Henderson voted no. Most of the crowd broke out in applause when Orwig was chosen as mayor.
CHEROKEE WOMEN HOST PICNIC AT RANCH
Music and a hog fry are part of the plans for an old fashioned picnic on Saturday, May 17, at the Dog Iron Ranch just northeast of Oologah.
The Cherokee Women's Pocahontas Club invites the public to join in the festivities. Lunch will be a traditional Cherokee hog fry with cobbler for dessert. Tickets are $10 for adults and $5 for children, available at the door.
The celebration begins at 10:30 am with a signing of the Lord's Prayer by club members attired in their full length tear dresses and fringed shawls.
"Oklahoma Stomp," a Western Swing fiddling group, will begin the entertainment. The Paul Bogart Band will come from Nashville to headline the event.
NORTHWEST PUTS DISPATCH ISSUE ON HOLD
By JOHN M. WYLIE II, Editor
Fire board members, facing a June 30 deadline to get hooked up with a new dispatching service, put the question on hold for a week to allow further study.
EDS, the Foyil-based contract dispatching company which has been handling emergency calls for the Northwest Rogers County Fire Protection District, has notified the district that it will cease contract dispatching operations on June 30.
A municipality and a commercial ambulance service on Tuesday presented offers to take over dispatching for the fire department. They will be back next Tuesday at 7 p.m. when the board will make a decision.
The Town of Chelsea offered dispatching services for $2,850 per month while Centurion Health Systems, which operates under the name of Mercy Regional of Oklahoma, offered dispatching services for $1,500 a month.
Chelsea's main advantage is that it already dispatches for Oologah and Talala police and the OTEMS ambulance district. If Northwest were added, it would mean a single dispatcher would handle the three main emergency service providers in the northwest part of Rogers County, providing better coordination.
However, Mercy's lower-price offer also includes both technological and training advantages which Chelsea does not provide. Those include CAD (computer assisted dispatching) to keep dispatchers apprised of the status of all units in the field, and a higher level of certification for dispatchers.
Mercy's problem is its connection to the legally-troubled Mercy Regional Health Services Ltd. of Illinois and Clayton Hobbs, onetime CEO of both Centurion and Mercy Illinois. Both face 24-count federal felony indictments involving mail fraud, failure to remit withholding taxes to the IRS, health care fraud, lying to employees about their health and retirement plans and lying to the U.S. Department of Labor.
A receiver's report just filed in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Illinois outlined the entanglements in detail.
Centurion CEO Duke Dixon and attorney Daniel Draper III assured the board that the problems have been addressed, and that all connections between Centurion and Mercy Illinois should be severed by the end of the month.
Asked point blank by Northwest Chairman Louis Gardner if Centurion is "financially sound enough" to perform the services Northwest needs, Dixon replied that it is.
Still, director Don Gray suggested that more time was needed to review the situation, since board members did not receive any paperwork on either bid until shortly before the meeting.
Director Mel Dainty said, "I agree with Don. This is something we need to research."
Officials from Mercy Oklahoma and Chelsea agreed to return next week for final action from the board. Both services said they could have dispatching in place by July 1 if a decision is made at next week's meeting.
Click here to read the receiver's report
Click here to read the complete story.
COUNTY PONDERS BUILDING CHANGES
By CHRIS EDENS, City Editor
To read the proposed regulations, click here.
Building regulations and guidelines may soon change in Rogers County.
County Commissioners approved a draft of proposed changes to the Rogers County Planning Commission building regulations and guidelines on Monday.
The Planning Commission met several times to update the regulations, then sent the draft to the county commissioners for approval. The draft now goes back to the Planning Commission and the changes will be published in county newspapers.
The public has 30 days to comment on the new draft before it goes back to the county commissioners for final approval.
Oologah developer Mike Hudgens asked how the changes would affect lot splits.
Planning Commission Director Magan Green said if a property owner splits a lot they must provide a minimum width of 30 feet of access to a county road. Green said the change would only affect lot splits of less than ten acres.
"In hardship cases, if the piece of property is on the interior of the section and doesn't have access to a county road an access easement can be utilized," Green said.
Other changes include a requirement for RS-30 lots or smaller to have an asphalt or concrete driveway to a county road and an increase in the size of commercial driveways.
Hudgens said requiring the paved driveways would be a cost small developers could not absorb.
"When you make these changes, small developers can't do it," Hudgens said. "It's pretty much gonna stop me."
DeLozier said he didn't want to discourage small developers. He encouraged Hudgens and anyone else with concerns about the proposed changes to speak to the planning commission during the public comment period.
Green said some of the changes were necessary because of "renegade subdivisions" putting in gravel roads that are not maintained by the county.
The commissioners said they receive phone calls frequently from homeowners complaining about the condition of roads leading to their homes. They said the county is not responsible for maintaining those roads.
CREAM OF THE CROP
John Jarred (from left), Chance Keith and Derek Taylor were the three finalists in the Mr. Mustang Pageant.. Keith had to compete in a dance off with runner up Derek Taylor to win the title.
Keith performed a ribbon dance in the talent portion of the Mr. Mustang Pageant at Oologah High School on Tuesday. Oologah Senior Derek Taylor tap danced to Michael Jackson's Billie Jean.
WYLIE COMMUNICATIONS COMPLETES MAJOR NATIONAL PROJECT
The Manhattan Institute, a highly regarded New York-based national think tank, today released a major report on the asbestos litigation industry, which imposes "staggering costs, causing $70 billion in direct losses, bankrupting 80 companies…(and threatening) the very integrity of the legal system itself."
Wylie Communications Inc. of Oologah provided the principal research, writing and graphics for the in-depth, year-long project.
It continues an investigation begun in April 2006 by WCI President John M. Wylie II for the Reader's Digest and is the culmination of two years of work by WCI.
"The more I have dug into the asbestos litigation industry, the more shocked I am by the unconscionable greed and chicanery," Wylie told a national conference call unveiling the report.
Jim Copland, director of the Manhattan Institute Center for Legal Policy, said the report is the fifth in the Center's Trial Lawyers Inc. series. He contacted Wylie after his initial Digest investigation, "The $40 Billion Scam," was published in January 2007.
Copland was director of the project, which involved a half dozen Manhattan Institute participants in New York and three WCI employees in Oklahoma.
A key finding in the new report was that after several years' absence, mass screenings of individuals for signs of asbestos-related diseases were resumed in Oklahoma late last year, with events held in Bartlesville and Pryor.
Such screenings in the past have produced widespread abuses, first documented in court in a 2005 landmark opinion by Texas U.S. District Judge Janis Graham Jack.
The report also documents cases involving a judge seeking bribes from attorneys with asbestos cases, an asbestos lawyer who stole millions of dollars from his clients (some of whom died destitute), and other instances where both legitimate victims of asbestos and companies trying to settle claims were ripped off.
"The saddest part of the entire story is that many of the truly injured have received little or nothing while the attorneys, doctors and consultants have grown wealthy," Wylie said. "In a nation of laws, it is a disgrace that the legal system has not put an end to this nightmare."
WCI Vice President Faith Wylie took John Wylie's research and the thousands of pages of documents it had produced and reduced the data into a series of arresting, easy-to-understand graphics for the report.
The entire report and the original Digest article are both available at the Wylie Communications Inc. website,
www.wyliecom.com.
Wylie Communications offers small-town, common-sense communications solutions in multiple media that meet the needs of major national clients.
John and Faith Wylie also publish the nationally-known weekly newspaper, the Oologah Lake Leader.
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