Metro OKC football stadium map
Just in time for Friday Night Lights, my colleagues over in Sports have created a nifty little Google map of the high school football stadiums in the metro Oklahoma City area.
You can find the link to it at our Your Right to Know page under the Maps section.
The map also has all the high schools in the metro area and their fall football schedules. Take a look and let us know what you think.
–Paul
State restaurant inspections online
With the latest news out of Mayes County that a likely food-borne illness has killed one and sickened dozens of others, you might be curious about how your local restaurants fare in food inspections.
You can look them up by county and/or name at the state’s Food Service Establishment Inspections site. (The link is also under the “Data” section of our own Your Right to Know page.)
While officials haven’t yet figured out what caused the recent illnesses, they also haven’t ruled anything out. The Country Cottage restaurant in Locust Grove was last inspected on Aug. 23, according to the online data. At that time, inspectors found nine violations.
–Paul
Hospital care stats
USA Today has a good story today on the latest mortality statistics of hospitals across the country.
You can search for local hospitals by ZIP code here on the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Web site, although I found USA Today’s interactive map a little easier to use.
A word of caution, though: These mortality stats are just for Medicare patients in the areas of heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia. The stats are from 2006 and 2007.
–Paul
Sealed court records
Our friends at the Tulsa World had an interesting story over the weekend about the patchwork system of sealing court cases across the state.
Turns out there’s no one way to decide if a case should be sealed, meaning the public’s access to court documents could be curtailed in some instances. Judges make the decision to seal court records, but county clerks are in charge of administering the court files.
Some times, it’s just one or two documents in a court case that are sealed; other times, the whole record is sealed. The problem is, few court clerks track the number of sealed documents.
“There are 77 ways to do this,” Cotton County Clerk Deborah Hodenfield told the World. “The statute does not address it.”
This isn’t just an Oklahoma issue, either. The Seattle Times ran a series a couple of years ago about sealed cases in King County, Wash.
–Paul
“Grandstanding” in Bartlesville
Summer’s a slow time for TV ratings. But maybe not on Bartlesville’s cable access TV.
How else do you explain the council’s decision to turn off the cameras for the public comment section of city council meeting broadcasts?
Among the reasons cited by some council members was “grandstanding” for the cameras. Sure, in this era of YouTube, blogging and Twitter, everyone can have their 15 minutes of fame. But do council members really think budding starlets are seeking out the spotlight in council meetings?
Of course, Oklahoma City residents might remember the time a few years ago when “Borat” comedian Sacha Baron Cohen used the public comments section of an Oklahoma City Traffic and Transportation Commission meeting to go on an extended riff on democracy, traffic and women.
In Bartlesville, it looks like residents wanting to see the same kind of hijinx — or even just routine concerns about their local government — will have to show up in person at council meetings.
At your own peril, check out the first part of Cohen’s speech from 2004 below.
–Paul
