Alex Waters
Jarrod Whitehouse was sworn in as District #3 Commissioner for the unexpired term formerly held by his late father on Monday morning at the Board of County Commissioners of Creek County meeting. Whitehouse received 986 votes to opponent Chris Root’s 308 in the September 14th election.
Friends and family watched as Judge Laura Farris officially had Whitehouse take his oath, and he was welcomed to the Board by District #1 Commissioner and Chairman, Newt Stephens. Whitehouse wasted no time in discussing County business with his fellow commissioners.
One order of business was a request for a seven-day burn ban for all of Creek County put before the board by Covey Murray, Emergency Management Director. Enacting a burn ban requires that a certain range of criteria be met, such as weather conditions and recent fires.
A fire last week in the Olive area burned for three days and proved difficult for six departments to extinguish. Murray said it’s been nearly a decade since he’s seen fire reach above the tree lines like that fire did.
The unpredictable nature of Oklahoma weather made it difficult for the Board to come to a decision on whether or not to begin a burn ban. The drought conditions have to be considered at least “severe,” but, currently, Creek County lies in only an “abnormal” state of drought due to our lack of rain. (There have been 29 days without at least 1/4” of precipitation.) The small chance for rain this week, although not enough to change the drought status, did dampen the chances of a burn ban.
Twelve of 15 Creek County fire departments supported the ban. Each of the 12 cited one of the criteria, such as the drought or recent fire, as reasons for the ban to be put into effect. Three departments didn’t answer the request for their recommendation and Mounds was the only department to oppose the suggestion.
Murray expressed his concern over residential areas with houses and yards and not acres of woods. He said that an out-of-control fire would be on a different level of devastation in towns than out in fields. However, “if the rain in the forecast actually shows up, I’m not too worried about it. We’ll know today,” he said.
Don Engle, County Treasurer, joked that the sure way to get it to rain was to go ahead and pass the burn ban, since surely nature’s sense of humor would take over and let it pour.
The Board decided to wait to impose a ban and to wait for rain. If the rain does not come, it can choose to hold an emergency meeting to revisit the issue.
Engle had his own request, one for upgraded security cameras. He explained that his office’s current cameras are not ideal, in that it’s difficult to make out transactions at the counter, and that there are blind areas that need to be addressed. He said money had been stolen before by employees taking advantage of the inadequate system. It is a four-year old analog one, overdue for an upgrade.
The requested new cameras would be part of an entirely new security system, which would include a larger-capacity 3 TB hard drive for storage. The Collins Building might also receive a new set to replace their decades-old system.
It was highly recommended by Stephens to update the systems and to integrate them in a way that Sheriff Bret Bowling and his department could access them, if needed. The current system is difficult to access and the quality of video from the cameras is not good enough.
The Board elected to postpone approval of the request until it has a clearer understanding of what needs to be done and where, and until it has secured accurate bid numbers. Therefore, the item was denied, but is expected to be discussed again in the future.
