Several small Oklahoma business to receive federal finding
Several rural businesses in Oklahoma will receive funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for various renewable energy projects.
Over $500,000 dollars in grants from the USDA’s Rural Energy for America Program will help six rural Oklahoma businesses and agriculture producers to develop renewable energy systems and lower their energy costs.
Woodshed of Buffalo Ranch is a locally owned convenience store and truck stop in Afton and is the largest recipient with a grant of nearly $143,000. The business will use the money to buy and install a solar array that will supply enough energy to power 43 homes.
The USDA also announced it will make $300 million in grants available under the rural energy program for small rural businesses and producers to apply for by March 31st of next year.
Interesting bills in the upcoming legislative session
In the latest edition of Capitol Insider, KGOU general manager Dick Pryor and Quorum Call’s Shawn Ashley discuss the TikTok ban, and some of the more… interesting bills that could be considered when the State Legislature convenes again in a few weeks. That includes Senate Bill 30, that would ban teachers from calling students by a nickname.
“It would also require that students be called by their first or middle names that appear on their birth certificates, and prohibits school employees and volunteers from referring to a student with a pronoun other than that which corresponds to the student’s biological sex without written consent from the student’s parent or guardian.”
You can hear the full conversation online at KGOU.org.
New water tower in Roland
The Cherokee Nation is using COVID-19 relief funds to build a new water tower in the town of Roland.
Roland sits on Cherokee Nation land near the Arkansas border. The town’s existing water tower has weathered more than two decades of storms and floods.
The new tower will increase Roland’s water supply to meet growing demands. It will also allow the town to drain and repair its older tower without disrupting residents’ access to water.
The Cherokee Nation provided five hundred thousand dollars for the project as part of the tribe’s Respond, Recover and Rebuild Plan. Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. says the Cherokee Nation is always looking for projects like this one that will have generational benefits for tribe members and their local communities.
Town Manager Monty Lennington says this isn’t the first time the Cherokee Nation has provided assistance with infrastructure projects in Roland, which is home to one of the tribe’s ten casinos.
Speedy trial ruling from the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled last week an arrest on a warrant from Cleveland County violated a woman’s constitutional rights.
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals ruled the November 2021 arrest of Ashley Megan Raby on a warrant from Cleveland County from 2012 violated her constitutional right to a speedy trial.
Raby was a resident of Texas at the time in Oklahoma for work when she was charged with attempting to obtain a Schedule II controlled substance, fraud, and making a false report of a crime. She went back to Texas, seemingly unaware of the charges against her until she was pulled over for a traffic violation last year, when she was arrested on the outstanding warrant.
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