A healthy rural Oklahoma makes a healthy urban Oklahoma! In todays special broadcast, Karrie Beth highlights upcoming Watonga Events: town-wide cleanup through the 19th and tonight only open until 7:00PM Main and Forrest Plus have you heard Rex’s Ex’s are in town this weekend! Get your tickets for some Comedic entertainment! Watonga theatre showings, Saturday, Sunday and Monday afternoon. Also this upcoming Saturday night, local Watonga HS seniors are having a downtown block party! And mark those calendars for next weekends events; Watonga Bikes and BbQ, RomanNose trail ride, and Watonga’s first farmers market Saturday, also next Saturday the Watonga Masons are cooking breakfast at the Senior center. Looking ahead, the Ferguson Museum is hosting a tea May 4th and Watonga will be hosting a Fly In with free plane rides May 25th. That Memorial Day weekend the Former Watonga Students association are having an event at the new HS. So many great events coming up in our city! Tentative date has been set for the City wide Garage May 31 to June 1st, keep listening for more details. Today’s special guest is Mike Sanders, Executive Director Oklahoma Broadband. It’s been a little over 1 year since Director Mike Sanders took the reins at the Broadband Office. In this time, he has visited over 30 cities and towns hearing directly from Oklahomans, he launched the first grant program. “High speed internet is a way of life,”he shared; in economics, tourism, healthcare, and educationally. Currently, 600,000 Oklahomans do not have high speed internet. Closing the digital divide; there has been 1.3 billion Federal dollars appropriated for this Oklahoma project. Currently, 2906 individuals, that’s 35% of Blaine county that does not have high speed internet. The Legislature designated ARPA State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds to create and administer the broadband investment grant program. Grant funds of $374 million will be coupled with more than $90 million in matching funds from 31 internet service providers (ISPs) that submitted approved proposals for service expansion, that includes 57 of the 77 counties in Oklahoma. Access to high-speed internet builds connections not only in business and education, but also families. With new digital technologies, families can stay in touch while grandparents visit with grandchildren via face time technologies. Connectivity is how we make a better tomorrow!
Enjoy the podcast and check out the Oklahoma Broadband website