I saw on Next Door that the Oklahoma Department of Transportation is going to start work on the $5.7 million Highway 75 project by Sept. 20 or Sept. 27. Is that true?
The $5,665,000 Oklahoma Department of Transportation project is a mill and overlay of U.S. Highway 75 from Road 2400 to just south of Frank Phillips Boulevard. The project is included in the State’s 8-year Plan for District 8 and is set to begin in late September. City staff will meet with the contractor on the project this week to discuss details, including the exact start date, and upcoming lane/road closures. More information will be released as it becomes available from the contractor and/or ODOT.
Cable company query
(There was a) lengthy legal notice was in Saturday’s newspaper. Tell me what this means. Is Sparklight selling to Clarity? Is Bartlesville going to have two cable companies? Since this is a Non-Exclusive permit, is there any assurance that the service will be any better than the current providers? Is there any oversight committee that the City has empowered to see that there is a level of service that the citizens can be assured that this will give us better service than is an improvement over the current provider?
This item was discussed at the Sept. 7 meeting of the Bartlesville City Council and got a unanimous vote of support from the council following the discussion. To watch this portion of the meeting, see Item No. 10 on the City’s webcast.
Essentially, the council voted to authorize a franchise agreement with Clarity Telecom LLC that is similar to agreements the City holds with other utility providers, including Sparklight, which currently provides cable and Internet services in Bartlesville. The agreement approved Sept. 7 would allow Clarity Telecom, a subsidiary of Vast Broadband, to offer cable and Internet service in Bartlesville in exchange for 5 percent of the gross revenues for both services and from advertising.
While the agreement paves the way for the company to do business in Bartlesville, the City is not in any way associated with the business (or any other business holding a franchise agreement with the City) and, therefore, has no oversight of its services or customer satisfaction.
No word from Jimmy’s Egg
I noticed the Bricktown Brewery is breaking ground in the parking lot area by CVS Pharmacy. My question is, have you heard anything yet from Jimmy’s Egg?
The Bricktown Brewery construction (at the former Kmart site) will include space for a second business at the site as planned, but it may or may not be Jimmy’s Egg. The restaurant had planned to occupy the space but hit “pause” on the project when the pandemic started. As of today, the Bartlesville Development Authority has not received any updated information from Jimmy’s Egg about the location. For more/background information on this see https://www.cityofbartlesville.org/qa-bricktown-brewery-construction-set-spring/.